17
WHEN I remembered it afterward and the thought had grown more accustomed through necessity, and the need to keep a hard layer of calmness between me and the dark that kept coming up like a tide, I was glad this had happened when it did, and I knew after all that her death was the one good thing God did. There was no place for her. If we had had money, we might have sent her away. She never belonged with us, and maybe there is no place on earth for people like her. I was glad she had died. I could not feel any other way about it. Something had hardened and dried up in me in those last few months. Something that had been hardening before, all through the rest of our pinched and scrawling life.
It was the way we found her and the awful completeness of death that came as a shock. It was the first time I had ever seen Kerrin quiet. Even in sleep she used to move and twist like a restless snake, and when awake her hands and eyes were never still. Twitching and moving back and forth. But now she was absolutely quiet. . . . We found her back of the sheep barn and near the water-trough. It was after a long time of searching, and sometimes Grant called her but there was no answer, and we began to think she had gone off in the woods when suddenly we came on her lying against the barn wall, with one arm fallen across the trough, and the blood from her wrist staining the shallow water.
Grant knelt down by her and then looked up. She was dead already, and her skin drawn tight as paper over her cheeks. So thin it was almost like finding the hard bones of her, and the rest gone to dust already. I could not cry; but Grant’s face was less hard, and when he picked her up there was no disgust or shrinking in it, and he carried her as he would have carried a child or a little hound.
Dad took it hard. More for the swift, spectacular way she had done it, outraging decency and precedent, than because of any belated love. If he saw this as a last desperate taunt or felt himself at all to blame, he did not show it. He was out in the barn again when we came back, milking with a dogged steadiness. He had eaten nothing and washed only his hands, huge and red like gloves on the end of his blackened arms. “Get out,” he mumbled at Grant, then saw what it was he carried. “Who did this, Marget?” he kept asking. “What happened to her?” He could not believe she had killed herself. A raw, unnatural thing. A thing no girl had a right to do. Then he turned toward Grant and accused him of betraying her. Worked himself up in a terrible rage. But Grant was quiet, listened to him as to a furious child, and when he was through asked if he thought that Mrs. Haldmarne should know or if we could keep it from her.
“Don’t tell her,” I said. “Not unless she asks.”
“What d’ya mean?” Father said, loud but not shouting any more. “Ain’t she a right to know about her own children? Ain’t she a right to know what’s been going on?” Then suddenly he changed and sat down. “Go on—do what you want. Lie to her. I don’t care. Get me some food, Marget; I ain’t coming in to eat.”
Merle cried, but was not afraid to touch her. She combed Kerrin’s messy red hair and covered her wrists with a towel. We did not tell Mother. She was too blind and sick to come see her anyway, and had not even noticed the doctor’s coming.
Late in the day the coroner had come, but she did not notice him either.
“Kerrin was sick,” I told the man, “—sick in her head. She’d been that way a long time. It was the fire and Mother’s being burned and her thinking that Mother was going to die that made her do it.”
Father didn’t say anything much, but sat and looked at the man, sullenly and defying him to find out more. Grant sat near Merle and watched him writing the paper out: Kerrin Haldmarne . . . dead of her own hand. . . . Admitted suicide. Once Grant turned and looked at Merle sitting there serious and unconscious of him as though he were not there, intent only on seeing the paper signed, all of us exonerated and free of scandal or law. Grant looked at her, and then down at his hands; and I heard his voice again in my mind, the sound of it pushed unexpectedly from him in despair one night.—“Marget, isn’t there anything I can do? It’s like being half-crucified sometimes!” How could I tell him who knew one answer only?
Outside was the hot windless air, the dead elm branch against the sky, and the point of a buzzard drifting. Even then out of old habit my eyes went searching for clouds. And here in the hot still room—all of us sitting embarrassed, hating this man who neither believed us nor was able to prove a lie. Then at last he got up and stuffed his papers away, and Merle asked him if he would have anything to eat, hating him but knowing what Mother would have done. He said yes,—if it made no trouble. “No trouble,” Merle said. “It’s already made.” She pulled the coffee-pot off the stove and cut him some cake. It was dark and crumbling, and she ate a sliver herself, absently, licking the crumbs from her palm, then handed some over to Grant, looking at him, her eyes impersonal and yet with a kind of pity. Grant took a thin piece but only rubbed it together in his hand. There was something ghastly and unreal about it all, like a funeral supper or a wake. I wished to God that the man would get out and go.
He ate two pieces, and I could not help thinking of how the molasses was nearly gone already, and only a little sugar left, and I hated him for eating our food. “Thanks,” he said to Merle, got up and wiped his mouth. We made him nervous, sitting around this way. Nobody said anything much but Merle, and once Father asked him if corn might be going up. “Don’t know, that’s not my line,” he answered. “It’s high enough now for the ones that have to buy. You farmers have got stuff to eat anyway. That’s something, ent it?”
He left at last, and by the time he was gone there was the milking to start again, and supper still to be gotten; and there was relief in doing these stale and familiar things.
18
KERRIN was buried up in the old Haldmarne lot. There was no funeral, thank God.
The night after she was buried, Grant came down while I was watering the sheep. He stood there watching and seemed a little at peace. It was quiet and getting dark. Then he spoke suddenly and with anger, watching the small dust under their feet. “Remember what Merle said about Max once?—that he liked to be with the sheep and hogs because they were things that were even more stupid than himself? That’s why I like it, I guess. There’s a mild irony in being wiser than sheep, at least.”
“There’s more than that to it, Grant,” I said. “More for you, anyway—” It seemed an empty and obvious thing to say. Of no help. But I had never seen him like this before. Grant had never been arrogant, but had never before been so bitter at himself. It made me afraid, because he seemed to make of himself another and lesser man. And I wanted to believe in his strength, to feel that somewhere things were all right. I didn’t want to believe what I knew.
“They trust you; there’s a healing in that,” I told him.
“They’d trust anything,” Grant said. “Anything that’s human.”
I wished he would go and get out of sight. Stop being there, so near that I almost stumbled against him with the bucket, but all of a life away.
Then he told me he was leaving for good next week.
“On account of Dad?” I asked him.
“More on account of Merle,” he said.
I asked him where he would go. I can hear the words now,—quiet, standing off by themselves, having nothing to do with my hot, sick heart. “Where will you go, Grant? What will Dad do?”
“I’ll go back up-state,” he said. “Find a place somewhere. Max’ll come back and help you. He’s out of a job again.”
“Max made a good worker sometimes,” I said. I dribbled out the last bucket and hung it on the nail. I could not say “God keep you!” It kept getting darker there near the stalls, and something in me cracking and straining, wanting to do what Kerrin had done, forget everything else and do just that, touch him and get what sour comfort there’d be in this;—and there was the awful love, the desire shut back, sick in the throat. . . . Let me go—let me out!—O God please! . . . and the mind sitting there cold and hard and yet fearful: You can’t do this . . . you
can’t do it . . . you can’t.—It’s a lie that the body is a prison! It’s the mind, I tell you!—always the cold, strong mind that’s jailer. I felt something hammering in my throat, and my hands were shaking together like old leaves. I ran out through the shed and left him. I don’t know what he thought. I was crying, and it hurt to cry. I was sick and hating because I loved him.
19
THE day that Grant left was like all the rest. Dust and heat and the ugliness of dying maples. I told myself I was glad he was going. That there was a dignity in death. This half-life was too much to bear, the shame of betrayal too much to fear. I would rather have died than have them find out how much I loved him. . . . This was a foolish pride. Who was I, after all, that it made any difference what I thought? What had I to hold inviolate? . . . Now there’ll be peace, I told myself. I can learn to accept, feel free to begin again and rebuild life on something else, on something more than the sight of him, which had been a bitter sufficiency until then. I must have been dried with drouth. I couldn’t feel any more those days. I’d see things and do them and see sometimes the look on Grant’s face when he talked to Merle. I’d think—he’s going next week; but it was as if I was thinking of someone else, known by name only and no concern of mine. Father said he was glad Grant was going, and that he could manage well enough by himself. He knew that this was a lie, but pretended it for the sake of some dignity, and in himself dreaded being alone with us again.
Grant did the milking that night, and came on the porch to say goodbye while Father was out in the dairy.—There were things, I suppose, I could have said. But I felt like a stranger suddenly, and as though Grant had never spoken to me of his loving Merle or any of all the things we had talked about.
“Where’s Merle, Marget?” he asked; and then, “Never mind, don’t call her.” He put out his hand in an awkward, formal way, but laughed. “Goodbye, Marget,” he said. “I hope to God your mother is better soon!”
“She’ll be,” I said. “I don’t ever doubt it, Grant.” I thought that I said, “Come back when you can,” but must only have felt the words. Grant stood there looking down at me with his old kindly smile, supposing I had started to speak but never finished. Then, when I only stood there, he put out his hand again.
“No farmer’s ever going to have a soft time,” he said, “but I wish it would come out easier for you.”
“We’ll get along,” I told him. “It’s a pleasanter way of losing money than most.”
He laughed and went out, but stopped by the gate where Merle was. She turned and went down the fence-row with him toward the road, and he waved his hat once before they got out of sight.
I went inside and stared at the jelly-glasses and around the room, and picked up a ball of dust near the table-leg, seeing them plainly and not at all. Then I went back to Mother’s room when I heard her speak.
PART THREEYEAR’S END
1
HE WAS gone and I had to accept this, take it hard to myself and stop suffering. One doesn’t die of loss. Only a part dies.
The fifth month of the drouth began with nothing but clouds and the taunt of an hour’s drizzle. Nothing to soak the ground below an inch deep. September now and the fields more barren than in winter. The pastures where mules and hogs had been not even covered with dying grass. They were eaten to earth and looked like the hide of a mangy hound. Even the ironweed was withered. For a mile around there was nothing but ragweed in the fields, dust-green and heavy-pollened. Locust trees in the south woods died together. Small gold leaves sifted down and were covered with dust. A weird sick acre full of the dying twisted trees, and underneath them the dying ironweed-stalks. The dead elm leaves hung like folded bats.
Mother got neither better nor worse. She just went on suffering. I do not think the doctor knew very much. When her skin turned black in one place, he began to look worried. “If she’s healed,” Merle said, “it’ll come more of her own will than out of this stuff he uses.” We hadn’t the money to pay anyone else even if there had been anyone else to come. I used to sit up at night beside her, and at first it was almost too hard. It was awful—the pain she suffered. Hours and days of agony enough to turn her mind, and yet she seldom said anything aloud. I thought sometimes I should scream out myself, suffering for her and half-crazy with pity and helplessness. But there is a merciful blind skin that comes over the heart at times. You can endure this much, and after that there come intervals of hardness. She would get well. I could believe nothing else, nor let myself pity or fear for her. Somehow I trusted that her death was a thing that could never come to us. The doctor said there was hope, and there were days when we thought she looked better and the burns seemed to cause less pain. There was no doubt, no fear in her own mind. She talked about what we would do this winter when there was less of the work outside.
Our life seemed only a long waiting for her to get well—a vacuum in which we moved and did things, but nothing was the same. I felt lost and Merle seemed suddenly grown older, as if waked from a living sleep. Not Grant’s love or Kerrin’s death had changed her as much as this. She missed Grant, but only as someone to tilt against. Missed his dry and gritty humor. She knew why he’d gone and had never been quite so placid and easy after that night of the fire. But she did too much else to brood over this, and her mind was too full of Mother to leave any room for the thought of him. I say this, not knowing, but only as it seemed.—One night she walked for hours over the place and came back angry and restless still, which was strange for her who had only to smash up kindling and haul it in, to rid herself of these mind-swarmed gnats. “It’s the dust—the damn dust—It gets in your marrow almost,” she said. “There’s nothing left even to look at now!”
Father was pitiful in a way. He asked, “How is she?” each morning, and almost demanded with his eyes that we say she was well—entirely recovered. I think he expected it every morning. “No better” or “Just the same,” Merle would say, and he’d go out looking as though we’d betrayed him in some way.
The days were quiet with Kerrin and Grant gone. Only by getting away from the house and off in the fields sometimes could I keep sane and find life bearable. It was not a healing;—neither from earth nor love nor from any one thing alone comes healing,—but without this I should have died. If I’d screamed and shrieked out that I couldn’t bear it, they would have thought I’d gone mad; but it’s the silence that’s really madness, the holding quiet, holding still, going on as if everything were the same. There was no one to talk to. I could not add my own fear to Merle’s, nor could we talk about Grant.
2
I WENT one night up to the pond in the north pasture. It was hot again even in the nights. The warm air was tired and dull, and it took a long time for the south wind to bring any coolness. It was a moon night and the stars pale. Even the constellations dim. I could see the dust on the leaves and feel it deep around my feet in the road. The corn-stalks looked like white skeletons. I remembered in a wasteful and sentimental way the nights I had come along this road and up through the drying pawpaw thicket with Grant. There was no touch of his to remember,—only his words; and words are cold, tomb-like things, lasting longer perhaps than even the strongest and most fierce touch, but stony things. There was little that Grant hadn’t seen or heard, and he used to talk a great deal because I was hungry to learn and know. I could remember these things, and the sound, heavy and blurring, of his voice, but they were no consolation now. The awful loneliness was worse than even in the first days when he was gone. . . . I went up and stood and stared at the water, black and moon-webbed, and the frog eyes coming out like sparks near the edge. It was shrunken, and slime over part.
. . . There ought to be some way of putting yourself beyond pain. The days did it mostly, but it crept back and crawled up in darkness, thrust in hard when light was gone. I could sleep, and in the morning wake up and think “Tonight I can sleep again”—but this was no way to live!—the days only deserts crossed between night and night. I sat o
n the pond-edge and tried to think it out clearly but couldn’t, and only wondered if Dad would remember the stalls tomorrow or if I would have to tell him again, and if the pole-beans were too dry, and if we killed one of Merle’s geese how long it would last. I argued a long time with the doctor in my mind. I gave him five geese and the promise of a calf if it ever came. He kept refusing, and I carried on the long stupid conversation, staring at the pond and knowing all the time I would pay him in money anyway and never mention even potatoes for exchange. Then I remembered the night I had come up here in April, six months ago. I could have laughed almost, thinking of my mild and foolish excitement then. “This year will be better . . . different!”—I took a wry pleasure in the irony of it.
But after a while the whiteness and the night wind had made me feel more still. Almost at peace. Almost as though all these things were behind me.—Big poisoned shadows in a dream now finished.
I came back late and saw the light still in the window of Mother’s room, and came near and heard that sharp, awful sound she made sometimes, like a needle thrust out from her throat. And everything was the same. Real and unfinished and still to be lived on through.
3
THE assessor came in October on a day when Dad was out ploughing an acre down near the creek-bottom where ground was something beside rock-dust. He had too much to do now that Grant was gone, but had asked no one else to help. “I can manage,” he told me. “Everything’s dead anyway. Only the cows to do.” The truck-garden looked like a graveyard with all the things still unburied, but there was still more than enough of work. He didn’t seem able to concentrate or decide what he wanted to do. Things took him twice as long. “I got to whitewash,” he’d said that morning, spent half an hour getting his stuff together, then left it to plough this acre.
Now in November Page 13