A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  Amos said, “You going to lock me in the smokehouse again?”

  “Aren’t they going to miss you at home?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got no other place for you.”

  There was a silence. Then the boy said, “It weren’t so bad.”

  “The smokehouse or the work?”

  “None of it. The food weren’t half-bad, neither.”

  “It’s a clear sky and warm night. Tomorrow we get into the barley. Early as we can. You want to snag a couple peaches if you wake famished the middle of the night?”

  “Mister, I am done with peaches.”

  “Saying that doesn’t change the deal you struck.”

  “All I said was I’m done with peaches.”

  “You might change your mind. No harm with that.”

  “I’ll never eat a peach again, my whole life.”

  They were at the smokehouse. The boy had tugged the door open but stood, waiting.

  Malcolm said, “That’s a big presumption, against a small thing.”

  Amos Wheeler said, “You don’t know the first thing about me. But you will.”

  At noon dinner on the fourth day Amos excused himself to use the outhouse. He and Malcolm had rinsed their heads under the yard pump before coming to the table, so their hair was plastered cool and wet, their faces clean and hands also, otherwise they were grimed with sweat-caked dust, chaff, hulls, dirt tossed up by the cutting bar. They were still at the barley but that morning as they climbed the swell at the end of the field, Malcolm had been eyeing his wheat, washed pale gold, heads tight and high, the field alive as swirls of breeze moved through it, wondering if he might hire the boy at a better wage to stay on for that harvest, also. Amos wasn’t a talker but had been quick to learn and was steady at his job.

  At the end of the first day when Malcolm had placed food before the boy and then carried supper up to his grandfather, he saw that Cyrus Hopeton had clearly been watching best he could these new doings from his perch on high. He’d listened to the story of the capture and the deal made and how it was working out. When he finished gnawing the ham hock stewed with red chard and speckled beans, he’d only said, “You took it on. But tomorrow noon and supper I want to eat in the kitchen with the both of you. There’s that horsehair-padded chair can be pulled to table. I can gimp about enough with both canes to fill out meals; you see there’s all I need on the table to do it with. From the garden or cellar.”

  After ducking his head at first introduction, if Amos Wheeler thought a thing about the old man across from him, there was no telling, as his sole interest in the kitchen was the food laid upon the table and how much he could consume before the platters were empty and Malcolm would rise and stretch and say, as if addressing some obscure corner of the room, “Let’s get back to it.”

  Malcolm knew his grandfather was making a thorough study of the boy and guessed they’d discuss this when the four days ended. An evening conversation, at the table, perhaps on the small porch, Cyrus aided by Malcolm—perhaps even farther, to the barn or the bench before the peach trees, which were now drooping heavy, ripe. The next pressing job to be done mornings before the dew was off the wheat.

  Then Amos went to shit and did not return. After a bit this was clear to both men.

  Malcolm said, “He wants to impress upon me that his calculations and mine differ, and that he sticks by his. I guess we’ve seen the last of Amos Wheeler.”

  “You can be a fool,” Cyrus said. “Every minute he was here, even locked in the smokehouse, he was looking about and calculating what you had and how he could make use of it. Oh, he’ll be back all right but likely you’ll never lay eyes upon him.”

  “I might never see him again but I believe I gave him something to think about, to consider how to live his life. And I think in his way that was what he was after, even if he couldn’t have said it, when he came filching fruit. There’s a smartness to that boy that wants well beyond what’s been offered him so far. I think he might just reach for it.”

  “Be careful of what you wish for, as has been said. If nothing else, you fed him, and he knows he can always find food here. Lock the smokehouse is what I say.”

  “Now then. Hear yourself. You’re up and down stairs, moving about these past days, after months of lying in the bed. I’d say he was good for you, also.”

  “It was the urgency,” Cyrus said. “Malcolm, you’re a fine young man. You show promise. You need a wife.”

  “I thought you and me were doing just fine.”

  “I won’t be here forever.”

  “It didn’t work out so good for you, did it?”

  “You’ve every right to think that. But you’re wrong. Your grandmother was the best thing ever happened in my life. I couldn’t have done what I did without Leona beside me. Not the first bit of it. It was a grand life. All I’m saying is, you need a wife. If she won’t put up with me, tell me. We’ll work it out.”

  “But you left her. And Mother and the rest.”

  “What happened was some strong notion of God caught them up and all of them became people I no longer knew. For you, as well. The most terrible thing that can happen to a man. I could’ve gone along with it all. But what would I have been, then? A liar to myself. God is God and whatever he does, he does not jump down and bestow a man with special knowledge held back from the rest of us. At least not more than once. Once is enough for God. Understand, I think of your grandmother, my son and his wife, your sisters, every minute of every day. And if even one of em was to show up knocking at the door this afternoon I’d open it wide and welcome them in. But they won’t. And I won’t.”

  “You wouldn’t if one did?”

  “I’m saying they won’t. Because they can’t admit God fooled em. They can’t think it was the preacher that did that; he was just the chosen voice. So it comes back to God. And if God fools you, well, what do you have then?”

  Malcolm drummed his fingers on the table. Of a sudden he was dumped into the questions that had been stirring him for a dozen years, and getting glimpses of answers and wanted only to sit and talk on through however many hours, the afternoon, night, the following day and days falling after that until he knew all he could learn.

  He also wanted to finish his barley and look again at the wheat. Once again, he was on his own.

  He said, “Maybe God fools all of us, all of the time.”

  Cyrus planted his palms on the table and pressed himself up, then reached for one cane and then the other. Once he had them he stood no higher, wavering side to side, almost shimmering. He said, “It’s possible I suppose, but I couldn’t see the point in it. Go on, get out, I know you want to get back to work.”

  “There’s work to be done.”

  Cyrus nodded. “There always is. Get to it. Have I ever told you how thankful I am for you?”

  Malcolm was half-turned, stopped and looked back at the fierce old man. He smiled. “Can I get on, now?”

  Cyrus said, “Yes. Find yourself a wife.”

  “In the barley?”

  Cyrus did not smile. “I’ve seen the girls looking at you. The Miller girl is comely. So’s Mina White. Others, also. And some of those have younger sisters. But they all stopped. Looking at you in that way, I mean. Mina got married, didn’t she?”

  “She did. A great strapping fellow from Dresden, works the steamboats.”

  “I’m saying there’s plenty and some. Best is a farm girl herself, already knows the work and the life. Good bones help. Picking a wife’s not like picking a heifer but you want to look at the mother, how many siblings. Of course you have to feel some attraction. Discover it’s there, between the two of you. But like anything that grows good and strong, you need to cultivate it. Nurse it along, allow it to bloom.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “It just hasn’t happened. I’m not dead, yet.”

  “I’ve known my share of bachelors. You recall old Humphrey down the road in Poultney?”

  “He was a hand to
hay.”

  “Most end up sad. Alone, and then all alone, and then on the Poor Farm. Tell me, you like girls well enough? Speaking broadly.”

  Malcolm smiled. “Granddad? When I find the right girl she and I will rattle the rafters all night over your head and you’ll wish I’d waited just a while more.”

  Cyrus grinned back. Most of his teeth were down to yellowed stubs, his gums white and pink. “Most nights I don’t sleep more than two, maybe three hours. I’d welcome the diversion. The worst part of getting old is not how your body breaks down and your mind frets over it; the worst part is when your mind forgets how old all else has got, and sees the world as if all of you was twenty-five. You’d be surprised how often that happens. Now there, you. Get on to work. And don’t worry about me.”

  “You’d quit jawing, I would.”

  “Go on,” Cyrus said. “And keep a sharp eye peeled against the Wheeler boy.”

  “Now, I can’t do it all. How about I do the farming and the wife hunting and you keep on the lookout for the mighty outlaw?”

  His voice rasped high, a scythe into the pliant warm love between them, Cyrus said, “No. You have to do all three. It’s your job, your time. Now get out of here and let me settle down. I’ll have supper, you work long enough.”

  Malcolm swayed with arrested motion, then came and kissed his grandfather’s cheek. He said, “I love you, old man.”

  “Get along,” Cyrus said. And the young man went down out of the house back into the day. The old man stood held up by his two tree-limbs planted from his hands to the ground. As if he was pressing down to the earth he knew in his heart he’d come from, and to which he was returning. He was passing blood in his stools and urine; he had not told his grandson that he was dying, and it would be soon.

  Amos Wheeler did not take long to reappear. Less than a month had passed following his abrupt departure, and Malcolm was cutting his wheat when he looked up squinting with the heat shimmers over the grain and saw the figure crossing from the woods and even with the sweat and dust in his eyes, knew who it was. His first thought: It’s not an hour until dinner. Then considered the hike the boy must’ve made from his family compound in the Outlet gorge and grew more gracious. Hoping the boy wanted work, welcoming the idea of help. He pulled the mules to a stop and tied up his sheaves and waited.

  Amos wore a new pair of serge overalls, cut down to fit him, and a woven straw hat Malcolm briefly coveted.

  Amos said, “I know you think I welshed on our deal, but I was due late that afternoon to do a job of work with my brothers and Pop.”

  “I’m not so unreasonable, if you’d cared to explain instead of just slipping off.”

  “I asked around. Seventy-five cents for a bushel of peaches is a mite high.”

  “Did you tramp all this way to discuss the past?”

  “You need a hand. I can do the work. I ain’t a man but am tough as spit and shoe leather. You seen that. You took a measure of me. I ask you do that again. And pay me a fair wage for a day’s work. That sound like something?”

  “I don’t need a full-time hand the year around.”

  Amos spat. “You think I don’t know that? There’s plenty else I can do, when you’re not needing me.”

  “I imagine there is. I don’t know. I could use some help. And would pay a fair wage. You’d want room and board, as well?”

  Amos shook his head. “Mister, I am done with that smokehouse. I don’t need no bed. You should feed me while I’m working, that’s all.”

  “It’s long days this time of year, most any time I’d need you. Making that hike home and back, that would cut into your sleep, not your work, is that clear?”

  The boy looked off toward a pair of high smudged eastern clouds. Then he said, “The way I see it, that’s my worry and none of yours. Is this oats or barley you’re trying to get up? You want to get on with it?”

  “It’s wheat. And nearly noon-dinner time.”

  “I recall how to bundle, whatever the grain. I could work a hour, even two before I needed a bite. We going to work or did I just waste my time?”

  “You’re some kind of wonder, aren’t you, Amos Wheeler?”

  “No sir. I’m just looking to get things done.”

  He was there at first light and worked until the work was done, which those days was in broad sun-stroked evening or twilight. Ate what was offered at all three meals and in between and walked off into the bat- and swallow-riven dusk. Strode in mornings soaked with dew, the same swallows out as the sun broke fresh over the land. There wasn’t much to him but bone wrapped with hard thin muscle, a sharp face with eyes the shade of river ice, lank, dull brown hair grimed with sweat and grease. Not quite handsome but striking, a feral man-boy quality about him, supple in his movements but with a coiled tension. Malcolm guessed the boy was used to quick words and a quicker retribution, most likely for infractions both real and imagined. But he was impressed with the boy’s steadiness in those very long days. As he was also impressed, and upon reflection, chastened, by the thoughtful, deliberate, and unremitting consumption of food at breakfast, dinner and supper. Mostly, though, he was glad of the help and glad to share his food with a hungry boy. Despite, perhaps because of, the wreckage that the Lord, one way or another, had wrought upon his family, Malcolm held a strong if mostly untouched streak of believing it was up to him to do his share and then some. To provide aid and assistance when and where it was needed, and that determining those degrees was an especial burden gifted upon him. And upon those like him who did not look to God.

  Early August holds high summer’s most brutal blistering heat, the days as long as July, the wheel not yet turned but crimped like a storm across a far plain lay the end of the month when nights were cool, goldenrod and purple asters bloomed, long shadows draped both dawn and dusk longer. So, for the man working those long, hot days, a breath of cool tongue strokes toward him, unfelt yet but there, certain as the first glimpses, late of night, of Orion and the Sisters. Winter rising.

  With all of this, in the hours just past midnight after the fourth day of Amos Wheeler’s return, Malcolm woke knowing he’d missed something. They had finished with the wheat early afternoon and had managed to cut a small field of hay late in the hot afternoon and through the open windows with no air moving the sweet smell of laid-over swathes of long grass just beginning to cure filled the room. Likewise, floating downward from the trays in the attic overhead came the pungency of sliced peaches in their third week of drying. A vinegar tang in the house from the night before when he’d chopped and put up two crocks of pickled cabbage. From outside the window he heard a fox bark, calling kits or just signaling itself. Moments later and fainter he heard a return bark, from over the lake and high on the Bluff. He thought, He’s not going home at night. He can’t be. There’s not anywhere near the time.

  They worked right through the next day, Malcolm pushing hard. They cut more hay in the morning, raked the ready hay before dinner, and got it up by mid-afternoon. Then for the first time Malcolm took Amos into the buttery and they churned and paddled salt in and buttermilk out, and filled tubs to be settled back into the cooling well. Done with that, they returned to the barn, where he left the boy sweeping the cobwebs, dust and chaff from the granaries, readying them for the threshing.

  He killed and set a chicken to roast, dug new potatoes, sliced tomatoes, shucked sweet corn to boil in the kettle atop the potatoes and dropped corn dodgers into a spider of bubbling lard as he stepped to the door to call the boy in to eat. He wanted him worked out and filled up when he walked away into the early evening. He had a bowl of wild plums sliced and stirred with sugar and clotted cream.

  Cyrus watched, a shipwreck of a man in the horsehair chair. Malcolm dropped a handful of ground coffee beans and half a crushed eggshell into the small kettle, stirred it once with a knife blade, and then covered it as he pulled the crane back a bit from the heat. Cyrus said, “What’s this, you’re up to?”

  “It’s been long days
, is all. I thought we’d make a short one of this.”

  Cyrus said, “You’re aiming to trail after him, find out where he’s nested?”

  Malcolm paused, then said, “You’ve already figured it out.”

  “He sure wasn’t hiking all the way to the Outlet and back, the hours you two have been putting in. And get any sleep at all.”

  “When did this occur to you?”

  Cyrus made a wry mouth, as if he was sucking alum. “Bout the second morning. Don’t be hard on yourself; you’re out there thinking one step to the next. All I got is my mind and it wanders all over creation.”

  “Plus you mistrust him.”

  “I mistrust everybody, mostly. But you gotta ask yourself, if he’s not doing what he leads you to believe, what else is he up to. Or will get up to.”

  “I think he’s a clever boy figured out a way to not make a long walk for scant sleep. Now, with all your rumination and cogitation, did you figure out where he’s made his camp?”

  “In the woods, surely. And yours, no doubt, so he can’t be rousted by anyone but you. I seen him out my window twice, once of a dawn and once at sunset. Stepping on the road or off it. He’s cutting crosslots through the flint corn and the lower meadow to the ravine and woodlot. My guess is that old tree you told me about.”

  “The chestnut grove.”

  “If I was a boy, that’s where I’d hole up.”

  Motion caught Malcolm’s eye. Amos Wheeler was coming across the yard. He looked again at his grandfather and said, “Amos recalls yourself to you, doesn’t he?”

  “Not one lick.”

  “You say. I’ll stand my ground on that one and time will tell. You ready for a nice supper?”

  Cyrus shook his head. “I don’t know how it is I can still eat like I’m working first light to last, but my belly takes it. I should be sipping tea and choking down dry toast once a day. I imagine it’s just a bad habit.”

  “Or a good one.”

  “What’s good?” Amos Wheeler asked, stepping in the door.