A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  She nodded. “A course he was. Telling me once he’d wiped Hopeton out best he could he was going to cast off that bitch and come for me and we was going to head out on a new life together. He’d laugh about it, saying how he’d leave her nothing but ruined for her husband, and him lost everything but her. If he ever did return—and Amos doubted he would. I weren’t so sure but kept my mouth shut.”

  “So you didn’t trust Amos either.”

  “Do I strike you as a fool? Then the war ended and word come that Malcolm Hopeton was on his way home. And Amos and that bitch run. I was some stung, I can tell you.”

  “I can’t say how you strike me.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “That don’t matter, does it?’

  She was quiet then a time. She reached and finished the beer and pondered on. The fire was a cooling heap of small spits of red and black, the lantern throwing a wider circle of light, night air now wafting in through the open door and a small cyclone of moths and night insects swirling about the chimney of the lamp.

  Finally she spoke again. “There’s more you don’t know.”

  “How so?”

  “That caught your ear, didn’t it? See, Amos come down here often as he could all those years, even when he had Hopeton’s wife in a lather, but there was also times we both knew he couldn’t get away and I’d drift on up to the barn and wait in the loft above the horse barn; he’d most always come even if I had to wait a hour or more into the evening. You know it: A man can always make a excuse to get out of the house to the barn for a spell. And he’d come to meet me there. Because even when he had her wrapped like a present he still wanted me. And most times found me waiting. I was good at waiting; it was that grand plan of his. Me only wrapped in a old blanket, my clothes piled in a heap atop the hay. Say, the night’s cooling pleasant but you’re looking mighty hot, Harlan. You ought to take a swallow of that beer.”

  He took up the bottle, studied it, and set it back on the table. He said, “I do believe you’re crazy.”

  “Let me tell you a couple things, Harlan Davis. I was the one lured Amos and Bethany back here and got em killed, which was one more thing went a way I didn’t intend. But also, one night in March a year ago, it was a warm night, raining, I was up in the hayloft waiting for Amos when the both of you come in and I seen what Amos done to you, what he made you do—”

  Harlan erupted from his chair as a cry blew out of his mouth and he was caught, thickened motion trying to make for the door as she thrust out of her chair and tackled him down to the ground, he already undone and she, quickly expert, pummeling his shoulders and chest as she sat upon him, pressing him hard against the rugs over the dirt floor. His escape ruptured, his charge of agency against harming a woman, his drain of all this day and week and the years spreading back endless, brought him to a slow moaning roll beneath her, his eyes refusing to meet hers, that final cessation that left him helpless and defeated as the beaten dust of the rug rose and filled his nose and eyes and tears broke in small beads to track trails down his face. His eyes pressed tight to shut the world and then open again as his brain churned a bright red black and orange lace behind those lids.

  As Alice Ann Labidee leaned close and in urgent voice deep from her throat whispered, “It ain’t good, Harlan. None of it’s good. You come here to hide out and what did you find? Me. You interrupted my plans but that don’t matter. Not for the moment. But you ain’t going nowhere. Not just yet.”

  Then her hands came up and turned his jaw upright and she leaned close, her eyes wide, strands of hair brushing his face and her lips came against his.

  Malcolm Hopeton stood that very moment in full darkness, his hands lightly placed on the crossbars of his cell. He looked out, however, not upon darkness but upon the curious darkness of an otherwise light day lodged in his mind.

  Married only weeks and all but the shell corn dried on the stalks for winter feed had been harvested—that work to be done in the cool or cold of November. It was a bright day of clear skies and no wind so the weakening sun held soft warmth and the trees about still held patches of bright color, even those leaves turned brown or copper but still holding to their limbs—the oaks, the beeches—in that light seemed to glow. He’d declared a holiday over breakfast and suggested that while he finished his morning chores, she pack a noon dinner that they might carry out and eat beside the pond.

  Those hours later lying on the frost-stung grass beside the pond where no air moved to break the dark surface of the water, reflecting the few high round clouds that drifted with a seeming purpose across the sky above, also the southward beating vees of geese, high at midday, none yet seeking fields for their nightly rest and he was lying back, sated all ways and wondering how it was that some of those geese came to earth each night while others remained aloft, as any given night he might wake and hear the faint cries as they beat on overhead in the dark. Did each flock operate by some schedule peculiar to themselves and so some might rest while others worked on to make their time? He did not know: there was no one to ask and in his present mood he felt a great peace with the notion that the world contained mysteries uncountable and that it was good and right that it should be this way.

  From where he lay he could just see her seated upon the same quilt that was under him, a strange skewed image almost behind his line of sight and covered over her shoulders with a second quilt. Their dinner basket out of sight but the faint smell of oat bread, the tang of pickled cabbage and the slabs of fried pork. The sweet rise from apples cooked with sugar not two days ago, larded with raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon. His belly rumbled and his mind turned to what he guessed to be many pleasures held suspended and waiting in the afternoon just come upon them.

  “You’ve told me,” she said, “of your grandfather. How you came to leave the rest of your family, to make new lives together, just the two of you.”

  “I have.”

  “But don’t you ever miss them? Don’t you sometimes wish it could’ve been different?”

  He rolled over on his stomach to face her, to also cover his own nakedness, which of a sudden felt wrong for the direction of her query.

  “Miss them? No. I have to say I don’t. Maybe once I did but I’ve come to accept that they made a choice and it was not a choice I could live with. Sometimes, families are not what you’d like or think them to be.”

  Both quiet then a long pause. Other than his grandfather, she’d asked him little of his family and he considered this opening, aware of her distance not measurable by miles from her own parents and he waited.

  “Your father,” she said. “Was he a just man?”

  He propped himself on his elbows and smiled.

  “Until the fervor of William Miller overcame him, I’d say he was a just man.”

  “And when you were bad, got up to mischief, did he punish you?”

  “Oh, but I was a good boy.” And got the smile he’d hoped for even as he plumbed his mind to seek what she was after.

  Then the smile was gone. “Delightful as I find you, no child is always good, at least as parents determine the meaning. Surely there’s some incident you recall when you misbehaved and he punished you.”

  “Of course.”

  “There.” And she braved another smile upon him. “And,” she added, “knowing you even this short time, I’d hazard there was more than once you were caught out one way or another. So tell me: Surely, as a godly man, he did not spare the rod. Yes?”

  He rose to crab upright and sat facing her, also cross-legged and reached both hands behind him to tug the quilt not over her shoulders as she had but around his lap. He looked off toward the pond, a pair of swallows there darting over the water after insects no man could see and watched them a time moving back and forth in sudden swift streaks.

  Finally he looked back to her and reached a hand to brush a damp swath of curls from the center of her forehead and then ran a finger down her cheek to her chin, which he lifted and held a beat before he took
his hand away and spoke.

  “Once, I was but a boy of six or seven, I stole a cone of sugar from the mercantile at Poultney Market and ate it all as I walked home. I’d been sent to trade eggs for flour and stole the sugar when I thought no one could see me. The next day my father found me working my sums at the school and waited until I left my desk and joined him outside. He did not speak to me but walked off toward home and I followed him, no choice but to do so. And I’d not forgot the sugar, of course, and halfway home he stopped and did not speak but pulled the crumpled paper of the cone from his pocket and handed it to me. Then he resumed walking and, miserable as I could ever hope to be, I followed. When we arrived at the farm my mother was standing on the porch watching until she saw both of us and then went into the house, closing the door. Oh! When I saw her I’d felt great hope she’d intervene and that closed door was a slap to my heart. Father looked down at me and shook his head and walked on to the woodshed attached to the house.

  “He shut the door but I can still see him clearly as he sat upon the chopping block, then reached and stripped the belt from his trousers and folded it in half, passed it back and forth in his hands. He asked me if I understood why we were there. I was crying but I told him, ‘Yes sir.’ Then he looked away from me, still working the belt, until suddenly he stood and passed the belt back through his loops and told me to come along with him. I followed him out of the woodshed and then out of the yard and we walked on up the road toward the village. Halfway there he stopped and told me I was the issue of God’s love between my mother and himself and he would not bruise me any way he could help, any way given to him to not do so.

  “Of a sudden I realized we were making direct way to Harrington’s Mercantile, where the day before I’d stolen the sugar. And I began to hang back, which was when he turned and squatted down and told me how it would be. That I was to go in with him and it was my job to sit alone with the storekeep and explain again why I was there and apologize for what I’d done and also to tell Mr. Harrington he was to determine what my punishment would be.

  “I tell you, I froze solid as January. I couldn’t imagine a worse thing. And Father was patient with me but only just. He explained it once more and when I still hung back he took me up in his arms and carried me inside. He set me down in a chair beside the block held a wheel of cheese and the bin of crackers and stepped to the counter and told Mr. Harrington I had something to tell him and that he’d be waiting outside and out he went. Left me there with the awfulness of what I’d done plumped down in my lap and nothing but the eyes of the storekeep upon me.

  “I wouldn’t talk. Couldn’t talk. Most of an hour passed and Harrington kept up with his trade but time to time came to ask me was I ready to talk to him but I only shook my head. I was crying most all through this.

  “Then Harrington had a slow spell again and came and knelt down by where I sat and told me it wasn’t the sugar. He’d seen me swipe it. It was he’d always seen me as a boy he could trust and wanted to be able to do that again. That most all people do wrong things in their lives but it was the ones had the strength to admit to doing so that others would trust. There wasn’t a perfect person ever born and never would be. That the whole business of life depended on each of us not only knowing that but being able to speak so about our own selves, when we did wrong. He told me he’d done such mischief himself when he was a boy and was still here today to say so. Then asked me again if I had anything I wanted to tell him.

  “He was barely up and moving away when I choked out his name and he turned back and I broke out crying and talking all at once and he knelt again and held my shoulders and let me blubber and talk until he saw it was enough and then he pulled me in close and told me it was all right. That I was a good boy and had done the right thing. He raised me up and shook my hand, said my father was waiting outside and did I want him to tell Father all was good and I looked up at that kind face and told him there wasn’t a need. He clapped a hand to my shoulder and together we walked toward the door and then he told me, ‘You do the right thing, however hard. Otherwise, it turns back upon you. Always.’

  “I went out that door and down onto the street and caught up with Father and he took my hand and we walked on toward home.”

  And Malcolm saw that she was crying, silent but tears tracking down her cheeks, and he sat silent a moment and then leaned and held her. As she cried hard against him, freed from silence.

  He’d forgotten this. Or perhaps he’d come to believe he’d lifted her, allowed her to lift herself—that together their life had informed her of another way. So much so that when she’d begged him not to leave her for the war he’d seen only any worried wife. And now wondered if she’d seen in Amos what he’d missed, even then, in those now long-ago days.

  What the doctor had told him.He stood silent. A man filled with question.

  For, after all, there was only one.

  He was the vessel that held her. He’d failed her. How best to not do that again?

  Other words: What to do? To do and be true? For was that not his job?

  His last job. The work of life.

  Twelve

  It was evening of the day following the judge’s going to the farm to take Harlan away; two days remained until the hearing in the judge’s chambers to determine Malcolm Hopeton’s fate and unless Harlan reappeared before that time, August had every intention of being within those chambers with his own questions. Questions he understood might slow down if not derail the entire affair; but he was of a rare mind—the boy had been used in a way August couldn’t clearly determine and if disturbing the proceedings was the only way to gain a clear answer, then disturb he would.

  Marsh and his sons had gone home, leaving August to his evening chores, heat-stunned, grimed with chaff and field dust, muscle-weary right down to sore bones, moving slowly as he milked, settled the cattle back to pasture, fed the hogs, watered the draft team a second time just before retiring in the gathering dusk to the house and supper.

  Late the previous afternoon he’d entered the barns to milk, tired and out of sorts, worried about the boy, angry he hadn’t been stronger with the judge, though search his mind through he couldn’t see what he might’ve said or done; and there, waiting inside the tie-up of the barn with her arms crossed over her breast, her face all grim determination, stood Becca Davis.

  “Was that Harlan arrested and you kept on working?

  “It’s my understanding the judge only wanted to talk with him. I’d expect him back soon.”

  “And if he’s not? What do you intend to do about it?”

  “I think he’d find a way to send word, he needs to.”

  “You do, do you? That’s it? Perhaps you should alert Brother Stone—”

  He interrupted, “Becca Davis, have you forgot I’ve been cutting oats all day and have cattle and other livestock to attend to? Perhaps you also forget that Brother Stone, as you so grandly term him, greatly upset your brother the last time he was here? I told Harlan I’d look after him and I intend to do so. On my terms and by my best judgment. Now I suggest you see to your work and allow me to see to mine.”

  Heat rose in her face, her hazel eyes flared then hooded as the bow of her mouth clamped tight. Then each word sharp as if cut from tin by shears said, “That’s right. I forgot I’m only the hired girl.” And turned in a swirl of skirts and fled the barn, stumbling up the wide door sill worn smooth as soap from years of weather and cattle passing over. He stood blinking before her onslaught and felt a tender lurch within him match her own. Then she was off across the yard. Out of sight. He balled his fists into the small of his back and pressed himself into a stretching arch. Heard the half-door slap shut as she entered the kitchen and felt the slump of fatigue come even greater over him. He was close to believing what he’d told her but saw no other course forward. He went on to his waiting cows and hogs. The tired team and just-now useless mules.

  Now, twenty-four hours later, he’d led the fractious bored mules out
to the night pasture and stood within the canopies of apple trees, drops rolling under his boots, tired not only from the long day of work but also the conversation with Becca the night before that left him uncertain. He was standing in the still air drained of any taint of breeze and holding the heat as a caul down over him when he heard the faint footfalls of a failing beast and the asymmetric squeal and grind of an axle within greaseless hubs, the spokes rattling dry and with each turn of the wheels almost falling free before refitting themselves within the felloes. He walked out from under the apples into the taller grass and passed among his cattle spotted with flies to where he could see past the house and what was coming down the road, knowing someway it was bound for his driveway. And felt a surge of anger born of fatigue, thinking such an ill rig could only be a tinker or peddler disturbing honest folks late on a day of endless days. He strode toward the intrusion, stepping through the rails of the orchard fence, then realized it could be no peddler, their seasons invariably spring and fall when people were lean-pressed from the winter for new goods or laying in stores before the snows came.

  At the same time Becca came out on the stoop and also stood peering toward the road and heard him, glanced and looked away, unsettled from the night but her curiosity high. So he crossed the yard and looked her way and nodded a greeting, knowing she was yet uncertain of her future. Then went on toward the road.

  Where came a small cart with high canted wheels and an ancient pony between the shaves, clambering best he could along the road with his feet not only free of shoes but untrimmed, his hooves grown out and curling upward before him so he walked with a mincing hurtful pace, head lowered, ropes of green mucus billowing from his nose, his body lathered soapy about the straps of his dry-cracked harness, the bony escarpments of his ribcage either side of him heaving as driven by a frayed but determined bellows. His head was tilted sideways, one blinder missing from his bridle, so his near shoulder over and again rubbed against the end of the near shaft.