by Jeffrey Lent
“Where’d you go?”
He breathed in and out, deliberate, and his shoulder rose and fell. “Here and there,” he said. And turned and went on to the barn.
When August rolled down the road toward the farm the long summer day was draining westward, throwing pale golden light down the hillside to wash over the fields and buildings, so all he saw was in softened delicate relief. The barns a dusty rose, the stones of the house like butter, the pastures and hay fields, the grain fields, all muted and dulled, the pools of shade from the orchard and other trees extending broad and wide, as if overall the slow dusk was making its way from out of the ground to meet that from the deepening dark blue of the eastern sky.
His mind was yet troubled by the events of his day but on the slow thoughtful ride home from the burying ground there had come to him a bit of the dream that had fallen upon him as he slept there: Narcissa older than ever in life in the orchard with the apples heavy in clusters pulling down the limbs, September air and two children, a boy and girl of nine or ten helping to fill baskets, the boy up in the crotch of a tree handing down higher fruit to his sister, their mother calling out to take care, to not bruise the apples. She spoke their names and now he could not recall what those names had been. The dream image in his mind remained vivid and he could hear her very voice within him. But not the names, as if sucked off on the mild chill of a September breeze, tugging the grass, spraying the boy’s brown curls about his head. Then, peering within, all was lost but for an empty echo of voice and a single small hand holding down an apple. To be lifted up by someone waiting below.
It was but a dream, but the false memory it provoked was calming, enough so his mind returned to the coming Sunday and Meeting. When, word was, Enoch Stone would rise and face the community and voice his intention to beg clemency from the state for Malcolm Hopeton, in the name of Christ’s Mercy. August mulled this, and easily decided against attending. He had no interest in whatever dissembling Stone would engage in, of hearing how he would present his argument. Dressed up and dusted in plumy rhetoric about Christ’s compassion and how such actions would serve the church within the wider community—no, he was too clever for that. He’d make reference to David and Iris Schofield and their loss, not only their most recent and worst possible one but also the longer and in some ways greater loss as their daughter strayed. That would be about it. Whatever the full manner of revelations and blame he’d elicit from David would be done in court, most likely in chambers. It would be terrible and jarring and, however the word got about of what had been said, it would not be heard directly but passed mouth to ear and onward, both diminishing and growing as the story circulated. And almost as quickly would not be spoken of: There’s little lasting satisfaction spreading stories about the dead who not only can’t rebut but also can’t further act to feed the stories anew. August almost admired the man, his skills, as problematic as they were. But this truth also: August had been good as gone from active life within the formal structure of Meeting and he’d continue on so, living in close faith with his immediate neighbors and family. To his mind, what The Friend had always intended. Meeting had served for The Friend to preach, to articulate the simple basic tenets of Christian life only as Christ had spoken, of holding the Light of Christ within. The Friend had made no formal church beyond the charter from the state and, as importantly, no provisions for succession, which was to say none were intended by that rare personage. Three and four generations had gained the insight of the light of life, the shortness of Time, the simple laws of His teachings; those generations and the ones to come would falter or endure solely by abiding by those teachings so basic a mother could impart them to a child, upheld by the living examples surrounding those children.
So it had been for August and Narcissa. So it was for many, he believed. Perhaps, he corrected himself, only some. For it was clear Stone was wanted, if not fully in the capacity he sought at least in a capacity others assigned to him from their own needs. Who among us knows, he wondered, but a hundred years hence there will either be no Meeting at all but only those of us quietly practicing, or there will be a Church but a shadow of The Friend’s intention. There was nothing he could do about that, less so since he was childless, with no one to instruct, no one to carry down his own beliefs. All he owned was quiet example, to be witnessed and emulated or not.
Thus tempered he came off the road into the yard and was pulled up by the wagon shed, unhitching the horse from the gig, when Harlan Davis stepped out from the house, wiping his mouth with his hand before walking down toward him. Harlan came to the far side of the gig and loosened the tug from the evener and went along like that, as they worked together wordless to free the horse and lower the shaves to the ground. The horse stepped out, the lines looped up over a hame and the men trailed it toward the barn.
“How was your day?” August said.
“Long. I only got back for chores. Yours?”
“Long also. How did you find Malcolm Hopeton?”
“Not good.”
August nodded. “You spent the day with him?”
“I did not. And the Schofields? How are they holding?”
“Not good,” August echoed. “Did you have dinner?”
“Not to speak of. You?”
“I had sustenance but no food. You sister has supper ready?”
“Of a sort. Cold. But hot coffee. She waxed the hearth bricks.”
August paused and looked at him. “She did?”
“Said she couldn’t think of anything else and it needed doing.”
The horse ducked into the stable-end of the barn and stood waiting. Its mate was in a straight stall, head turned back, watching. August and Harlan stripped the harness and hung it upon its pegs and August went to the bin and carried a wooden measure of oats to the empty stall and spread them in the manger, turned and clucked and the horse came up in and bent its head and neck to eat. August came alongside the horse and stood beside Harlan, waiting for the horse to finish his oats, a token ration against the rich summer pasture.
“Your sister, she’s a wonder.”
“She’s pesky, is what she is.”
August cracked the least grin. “After you to tell her about your day?”
“She pestered me on it.”
“And you did not share with her?”
Harlan paused and glanced away. He said, “I’m still trying to work it all out in my head.”
August held steady a moment and then said, “You don’t have to tell anyone anything at all. But if and when you’re of a mind to share, you might think of talking to me. I saw and heard things today that troubled me and it’s come to me there’s men in this on most all sides of the issue and I don’t yet trust any of them. Which is the reason you might share with me. I’ll not lie to you or allow you to think one thing when I think another, which some of those men might. Otherwise, you don’t have to say a thing, to me or any of em, at least until the law compels you to. And, Harlan Davis, you know that day is coming. When it does, you share or be silent, I want you to know I’m standing strong right behind you. I want you to know it. That’s all.”
The horse had finished his oats and, halterless, began to back out of his stall, intent now on pasture and water, a good roll to rub the sweat-grime and road-dust from his hide. The other horse, haltered and tied, began to rock side to side and thump his hind feet. Harlan caught the loose horse by placing a hand under his jaw while August stepped forward and freed the mate and then together all four walked out into the glowing twilight toward the horse pasture. The men halted and the horses went through the pen gate and August stepped to lift the rails into place. Then he said, “Let’s walk up and see what your sister has laid out. Of a sudden I’m famished.”
A dozen yards on Harlan came to a stop. He said, “He don’t want to fight it. He don’t want Stone or none of that. He wants to die, wants the state to hang him for what he done. All he sees is what he done, that one day. Killed his wife. He wants to die.”
August laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder but peered off to the green sky above the black orchard trees, the swifts and swallows and bats out cutting the evening air. Quietly he said, “I guess I can understand how he’d feel that way.”
“But he’s forgot all the rest!”
August waited so long that Harlan turned and was looking up at him, the boy’s face a torment of ravage. August breathed deep and said, “Think on this, Harlan Davis: Perhaps there comes a time, such as this, when all the rest doesn’t matter. When a man sees all the rest truly is only details and details don’t change a thing about what was actually done. How details only become empty excuses and nothing more. And how a man would hate himself for standing behind such falsehoods.”
“But they weren’t! False, I mean. They were real, real as anything I ever witnessed.”
“I know.” August lifted his hand from shoulder and ruffed the boy’s hair. “I know. But there are times in the world where a stack of truth can be undone by one shining nugget of harder truth. I’m not saying it makes sense to us outside those holding that nugget, only that when it’s in your hand you hold it and know it for what it is. The hardest, strongest truth ever in the world. Maybe if you’re lucky, or unlucky, I can’t tell which, delivered to a man once in his life.”
Harlan stood silent, looking down and toeing gravel.
“Now let’s get onto the house. I don’t care if it’s blue-molded cheese and a stale loaf but I’m hungry for food. And coffee, you said? That too. I had a mighty headache this afternoon and feel it tipping back round my mind, set to bloom. All I want is to eat and get some sleep and wake to a new day. Truth is, boy, I’m about done in.”
End of day, night creeping in. He sat on the floor. The crusted high windows flooded crippled light ever so briefly, flies swarmed. A man came down the steps and pushed through a plate of food, a tin can of tepid water, and went away without speaking, without looking at him. After the deputies had beaten him, his appetite had returned; with his determination to die had come the knowledge that he must die as the state dictated and not by his own hand. Or inaction. He pulled the plate close and took up the spoon and ate the beans, all of them, then the piece of hard cornbread, all of it, then took up the boiled sections of oxtail and chewed the meat from them, sucked out the marrow. He drank half the water and wiped his mouth and cleaned his whiskers with his hands, sucked his fingers clean and dried them on his trousers. Then in the graying light he pushed the plate through the opening so he’d not step on it as he paced in the night hours ahead and slid the cup behind the front post of his bunk, where he could find it easily if he wanted but would not kick it over by accident. He did all these things slowly, with methodical and measured motions, almost ceremonial but of a ceremony empty of meaning beyond spare economy, thoughtless. As if it meant little to him.
Then he rose off the floor and sat upon his bunk. Darkness falls. He did not dread night; neither day nor the dreams of sleep or wakefulness for throughout all the ghost was present, an image, a flicker over his shoulder, a sudden glimpse or bold before him. No specter but that of his mind, the sight of her once again lifeless upon the ground, the blood from her mouth and nose. Life cast out of her by his own swift and certain hands.
Throughout the years of the war he’d feared his own death, perhaps even more so after he’d been wounded and then found his work as a teamster, work that by its nature placed him at a remove from the density of death; but he’d seen enough, known enough to know that death in war, in battle of all sorts, was often arbitrary and unpredictable: The Reb sharpshooter up a tree in the woods across an otherwise placid meadow while the train was wending down a valley track, that sharpshooter knowing one well-placed shot could gum the whole train for hours; the sudden ambuscade of a small cavalry unit boiling up out of a hidden ravine; the mortar or cannon batteries turned upon the wagons. He’d seen all these occur. And so knew that as a teamster he held a long straw against the infantryman he’d been, or the cavalry, the messengers, even the bulk of officers; he also knew a long straw was slender defense before the onslaught of daily deadly chaos, for such was the fashion and nature of the war.
But then also, this: He’d not feared death as such for he’d come to understand death as oblivion. He’d feared death for what it would steal from him, his return to the remainder of his life, his span of years and she who’d walk beside him. Who awaited him, as he, in the mud and cold and bake of southern long summer blood spoor, awaited her.
Blood black as night from her nose, her mouth. Eyes open never to light upon him or any of the glory of life ever again.
Now he sat in blackest night, only waiting oblivion. Patient as he knew he must be but yearning toward the dark maw. To be done with all of this. There came time and then a slight pang at the thought of stepping off the earth that he loved so deeply, the work of the land and the beasts that made that work but also the small daily beauties of life, a summer shower on a hot day, snow whirling over the land in a flail of wind, the long spreads of geese across equinox skies, the workings of his own mind within but also around all such things as he made sense of his own works and questions and doubts.
But such moments came and flittered off. Much the way he dismissed the fantastic premise of the lawyer Stone, the notion of begging clemency for him. Another wild fantasy of a God-besotted man perhaps but also this: Say it was to happen. Say the court would agree to whatever wild claims and terms Stone trotted forth. What then, a life in a cage such as this with his constant ghost? Or, even worse, a step farther, that he was someway freed, turned loose, expected to resume his old life? How to live such a life? Empty and bereft of all he truly held dear within his deepest heart and such emptiness the product of his own hands? No more dreadful torment was possible, imaginable. Endless days and nights of plodding one step after the other, stripped not only of joy and beauty but of hope, of any meaning whatsoever. Shorn of God and well glad of it, this outcome was the closest to hell he could imagine but hell for what purpose? None.
If no purging is possible, why struggle toward pointlessness? More wretched, far more so, than death. For all this would provide would be a death prolonged.
He yearned for the gallows. The sudden drop, perhaps some moments of pain but had he not earned those moments? He could see the gathered crowd but in truth those people, all people save the one lost, knew nothing of him and so let them watch, let them take joy or heave with disgust over him; for how might that touch him? Not one whit. Let him drop and twist. Let him piss himself and stain his trousers. Even, and he’d considered this, let him cry out. He’d cry her name if he could. If some other sound scrawled from his throat he could not help that; he’d seen and heard all manner of last-throes babbles and screams to know all was possible. But that drop. And then all would be gone. Not some peaceful rest, but simply gone. Oblivion. Not only that he knew he’d earned but that it came to all of life.
As his ghost surely knew. She who lived now only within his eyelids, his fluttered mind. Some few other minds as well but that was all, a small lamp growing dimmer until memory wicked the flame out forever.
But this also. He would be buried next to his grandfather in the small plot fenced with peeled rails in the higher ground under a pair of elms in the larger pasture where both lakes could be seen. Where his body would rot and his pine coffin would likewise and he’d turn back to soil and commingle and join the soil his grandfather had made and the two of them would become slow host to roots and then seeds to send forth new life: grasses, flowers, perhaps sprout an elm. Perhaps be hay for cattle in winter. Torn stems to line a bird’s nest. Perhaps only a stem that rose and died and rotted back into the earth to one way rise again.
And that would be enough. That would be miracle enough. Indeed.
Yet there remained discontent. Bethany was not in that ground. Stone had told him she’d been buried in Jerusalem. Where, Stone had not said but was clear it was a hidden place, a place of shame. Perhaps such a place was in
need of her but he wished her close, close upon him for eternity. As he would be with his grandfather. And he thought, I am making too much of this; it matters not where we return to the earth. We return, that is the only truth.
He reached down in the dark and slid his hand around the leg of his bunk and lifted the tin cup and swallowed. Once. The war had taught him to conserve everything since had taught him to not care. Still, he conserved.
Stone had made passing reference to Bethany’s father. Speaking for mercy. Ask me, he thought. Grant me a single day to do as I please. To stalk that man down as the rabid fox he is and clear him from our midst. To eliminate his foul and wrong memory of his daughter forever. As she needed but could not speak as much. So she talked circles about and then lived those circles.
He bent his head down and held it in his hands. Once more he would sleep so. Most dawns would find him so and he’d rise up cramped and stiff and deserving nothing less. Some few he’d have fallen to the floor and been prodded awake by a nervous boot. Or scant hours onward he’d bolt upright to pace the dark known walls.
His eyes ached. He lifted his head and rubbed knuckles against his eyes. Hours later, roused from sleep. His face hurt and he lifted his hands and worked his fingers against the stiffened muscles over his cheekbones. Prying gently to free something held.
The boy troubled him. So eager for life, so certain. How he had once been.
The boy troubled him.
Nine
He’d arrived early on a summer morning made foggy from the night’s passing rain and found her waiting before the store, watching him and then greeting him.
He stepped down from the wagon, looked her boldly in the eye, and said, “The peach man, am I?”
Then turned and lifted the first basket out and set it on the boardwalk before Harold Pinnieo’s store, where the bins were otherwise full. He lifted another basket from the wagon bed but when he turned she’d stepped close, filling the space where he would place the basket. He held it against his chest. He could smell her, a fringe of lye soap, the bruised petals of roses, her breath of chewed licorice root.