by Diane Munier
So every night when we were settled, Addie’s beautiful voice read us Melville’s Moby Dick and Johnny sucked some horehound and talked into my face with his horehound breath as he showed me his pictures. Made me hang on to my smile for days. We were taken to the high seas, into Ahab’s tortured mind. It was a convoluted journey and I enjoyed it immensely. Then Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. We wondered for Johnny’s sake, but he did not pay this one so much mind as he had Moby Dick.
For Christmas he had drawn a family picture of me and Addie, him and Janey. He had also worked a crude frame held at the corners with twine. Rosie had helped him tack the picture into place. The back was covered with muslin.
The picture was on the wall where all could see it. It was me, biggest, half again as tall as the rest and a bit apart, holding my rifle. He was next to me, his hand on the Enfield’s stock. Next to him Addie holding Janey. Janey was saved from being a bundle of rags by a large face that appeared top of the swaddling clothes. That face had the brown eyes and the serious mouth.
It looked some like us. I don’t think a piece of art was ever so revered. It was famous in our family.
Addie made me a shirt. Well, she had no idea the things I would give her come spring, a sewing machine being one. But this soft shirt, and flowers stitched on the pockets, and me proud to wear them. They were bright and thick and the stitches so tight they looked like satin. My fingers went to them and I rubbed over them when I wore it on Sundays, just the way I’d hoped her fingers would trace the hearts on her spoon. And she loved her spoon. It had earned me many a gentle look, if such needed to be earned when given so freely and often.
I felt like we were forever, that nothing could end us. That was the thing. I had me a bible and I read it sometimes, out loud, to them. I didn’t like to read out, I did not like any kind of sound forced from me, and at school, that’s what reading was. But here, I got different on it. So sometimes, especially on Sunday I read them some and it brought us something, like the blanket was spread for the picnic that was our lives, and so we would dine upon its softness. It was that way.
I was studying David. I saw myself in him. No, I was not a king…but Rosie was right for here I had a kingdom and it was responsibility first. So for them to know I reached bigger still in my thoughts in my understanding of myself, that I answered to more than my own ideas, it gave them hope for themselves I think.
For my knee was bowed.
My girl, my supreme happiness. I held her at night, always held her and I did know her soft flesh against me. I peeled down sleeves fore I got into bed, so I could feel my skin on hers. I had told her so many of my stories. And they held her, she wanted the littlest thought, she wanted to know how things made me feel. It was one long confession seemed like to me, and she gave me glimpses back, and we took one another’s burdens and led each other to the great chasm of acceptance and helped each other send them off.
So it was that way one night, and there was knocking at the door, and I was up, my revolver in hand, my chest bare, in my long johns, the top hanging back of me. I looked out the window and saw William’s horse. “It’s William,” I called out so they wouldn’t be afraid. Well, my first thought was Pa, that something took him, for that was a dread in me went way back, but there was my pard, and I did not know how much I missed him until then. And he came in and I laid my gun on the table and pulled up my suit and buttoned her down.
“Had me a baby,” he said. “She come last week.”
“Well,” I said clapping his arm. He pulled me against the coldness and hugged me. That alone…miracle.
“What is her name?” Addie asked coming around the curtain tying her dressing gown.
“Susan,” he said. And we laughed. That was Lenora and Mose for sure, not him.
“Did you come all this way in the snow to tell me?”
“No. I…needed to do something…Mose…so I hauled your stove. I started this morning. But…it’s been stuck mile back. It’s sinking. You need to come help.”
I was already going for my pants and my boots. I tiptoed around Janey and collected, just like I did every morning, only this was midnight. “How in tarnal?” I said, my mind going like a bang-tailed horse.
“Got it on my sled. Crossed the river, but they been cutting ice so it was thin near the bank, and it went through but it’s shallow. Need your team.”
Already I was thinking how I’d rig it in here for her. Oh, we’d get it out. I loved me a challenge, and I wasn’t losing it. I’d hitch ever horse Pa had before I’d lose it. There was no back-up in me, especially when it had to do with her.
She was worried I’d fall through and she’d never see me again. “A stove will do me no good if something happens to you,” she said.
I smiled big, then I kissed her. “Don’t ever worry about me,” I said. She had no need to. I planned on living long as God would give me.
She filled William with coffee, and food. He ate, and I ate some, but my appetite was not yet awake. I still felt the repast called supper.
Johnny was up too, roused at the sight of William. Well they were pards from our time on the road. He went right to William, still boy enough to hug him and lean against him and pump him with a million questions. He wanted to go, but I had to say no. I couldn’t watch him close and it was bitter. I knew how he felt, but on this he would have to stay with the girls. But I said him doing chores was how he helped us all. He agreed with some reluctance.
So off we went, and I knew Gaylin would love such a doings as a stove in the river. I wished he could show with a team. When we got there we found the sled under and the stove freezing in. I had brought a sledgehammer on my sled. William had unhitched his team and sheltered them in the trees. He had them well-covered, now he brought them out and hitched them again, and I unhitched mine and put them on the lead. So we busted ice and got wet and helped pull, and it was high sunrise for we got that stove home.
We were frozen, but it felt so good to work like that. Well, I had that bottle from Jimmy, and I cracked it now and laced our coffee good and Addie fed us and Johnny hopped all over as excited as he got and the room grew small as usual. And once she was done serving, Addie sat on my lap for that is how she warmed me. I could eat with one arm around her, the other shoveling. I had gotten good at this.
Johnny had done chores and I was so proud for William to see the young man he was becoming and how blessed I was to have this son.
Addie asked about Lenora and the baby and William said she had the doctor in town, but it was the midwife Sally she preferred since I was stuck here, he said, and we smiled.
“He is retired from midwifery,” Addie said.
“We’ll see,” I said back, and she knew what I meant. I was hers alone, ready for duty, any part of baby, the planting, the pulling just let me know. That’s what we said to each other by the way we were looking.
Well, William was smirking as he went back to eating.
I don’t know why it was on me so strong to put a baby in her. God knows we had enough. But I was greedy, I guess.
Well, after we ate I talked it over with him, and we got to work on running a flue for that stove into the chimney. It took damn near all-day. Johnny helped all he could. We did not send him to school in this weather, but Addie worked with him everyday at table. When we set that stove right near the hearth and run it out the chimney, the room grew smaller still, but it looked fairly good there, too good for the room all shiny and new, and we arranged her workspace next to it, pretty much where it had always been. We had to have some distance between the two so the hot stove wouldn’t burn that cupboard to cinders. Well, the stove had the deep reservoir on back for hot water and we would still have to fill it by hand for it had no water source like it would have in the new house, the “I” house that was going to rise up this summer. And I told Johnny we had to keep it filled so Addie would always have hot water.
She sighed at the thought. “I will be so spoiled,” she said. Well, it made me so happy
to think of spoiling her. She had no idea how I’d work at it.
It had been good to see William and do the work. It fired me up and gave me the knowledge that spring was coming for real. We’d seen the geese flying home. We’d seen a robin. He looked lost, like he’d shown up too early, but there he was flitting on the snow looking for the new green.
There was no spring give in the ice yet, but it would come in when it was ready and winter couldn’t fight it, but would have to run.
That first night she put kindling beneath the burner and cooked us sausage. All winter we’d been feasting from Pa’s fat hogs. Now smelling this sausage, this felt like home, and she could cook standing straight.
Tonight we were reading Thoreau. Tonight I was sketching along with Johnny. I was tired, but too excited to give over. So I showed her how the kitchen would be from every angle. We talked it down then and she got fired.
In our bed that night, after lovemaking, we drifted like on a raft on the water, the warm sun on us. That’s how it felt as new snow poured down outside. “Life is so sweet,” she said. “I am holding on so tight…scares me sometimes too feel so strong.”
“We should hold tight,” I said. For I had known a time when I let go. Like Rosie on that swing. I had been empty. And I thought of William, how he’d reached for Lenora, Mose breathing fire on him, and he kept reaching. Well, no one knew how stubborn he was. Him and Mose. But Lenora broke them both. And now a baby. It would change him. It already had. He did not yet know…but in that quiet cave that was himself, he had found the thing been hibernating all along, deeper in.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Twenty-Three
Here’s what Pa would say about farming…and he spoke the Irish when he said it, “The farm starts with the love of a man and woman. He says, “Will you?” and she says, “I will.” And after that it grows and grows, a city on the hill, a monument to the family that works it.”
He said there was never a good farm that did not grow this way, not to his knowledge. What spilled from it, fed the world. But it was more than bounty, it was folks doing what God intended. That’s what Pa said. He said farmers built a nation. Not wars, not power and might…but farmers.
Ma always laughed when he said this. It’s a family’s sweat meeting God’s blessing, that’s all, she would say. Same theory, in German.
Well, we had the uncles…but even their efforts came to bless ours…and build the city. And with my brothers each carrying a name for the uncle who passed on, Ma thought the family roots redeemed. Obviously she had been the missing ingredient, the yeast in the bread, if you will. Where Pa’s brothers were sinners, we boys, according to Ma, were saints, even though we could be pretty damn awful and were time and again.
Me named for Pa, I had no burden to overcome, just to live up to. For my pa was the best man I knew.
When the weather shifted it was subtle at first, but we felt it right off. First thing, I did not use the hickory. Johnny went back to school. Then the roads softened and were barely passable. And you could smell it, the fecundity, the wake-up call. You always could. Soon one thing would be chasing another, the drive to plant, the drive to build, the drive to live, the farm.
And over the winter Johnny grew. His pants were high water. His sleeves, too. He showed us two or three times and we went on. He stood on a chair so he could be taller than me. He said he couldn’t wait to see things from that height. Someday, he said, we’d be eye to eye. Then he stared at me a bit, and I knew it was about the Enfield. Hard telling where his imagination took him. But it was usually the Enfield. But he did reach out and touch my whiskers, mine thick the way they came in now I was a man. I knew he wondered if he’d be able, but it would come. He compared our hands then, and not for the first time. He didn’t line up the heels, but the bottoms of our fingers. “Look at that,” he said as though we were nearly the same. Well there were so many things ahead for him.
The roads were often barely passable. Johnny rode my horse to school and over the summer I would see he had one of his own. And mayhap, a rifle, too. I asked my pa what age, and he did say…depends on the boy. Some days I thought he might be ready. Surely when we would hunt together. But other days a slingshot seemed too much.
The ground needed to dry out before I could think of digging on my cellar. I would stare at that mud hole wet with snow, and I’d think of how I’d build the bins and shelves so we could sit over our bounty. Well, we would have the root crops in there, and the kraut, apples, the jars of pickles and truck of all kinds, the crocks.
I had told Johnny to pick him a crop. This was a way he could make his own cash money. I knew he had the gold mine sitting in the bank in St. Louis, but Addie and me decided not to tell him more than he needed to know. We didn’t want the idea of that money getting in his mind like a bee. We didn’t want him to skim the river when he needed to learn how to swim.
So for now, what he needed to understand was how to make hard work…work. So a cash crop was the best way for one so young. He had it narrowed to potatoes or watermelon and it made a difference. Taters went in come March which meant soon. Watermelons in May. He went over the arithmetic. Money didn’t mean a whole lot before now. Working in May sounded more appealing than working in March. But he did do some numbers on his slate and reckoned the melons would make him rich if he sold two for a nickel.
“What will you do with your money?” I said.
“Buy me a calf,” he said right off. Now that did make me smile. The boy was a farmer ever was one.
Well, that Saturday me and Johnny loaded up to go to Greenup. I wanted Addie to go, but the roads were rough and with Janey she did not wish to try. Gaylin was bringing Rosie over and he was going with us. That suited Addie fine. Then I wondered if she was looking forward to getting rid of me. When I asked her such between several kisses, she laughed and said, it didn’t hurt if we parted knowing I was coming home before nightfall. “One of us doesn’t go to town we’ll never have that house you’re so all-fired about,” she said. Well, I reared back a bit.
“You sick of me?” I said.
She assured me she wasn’t, but I didn’t really believe. We had been together morning and noon, and while I couldn’t get enough, mayhap she viewed me like another Jane and Johnny.
She put her hands on my face and told me I best not look at any other girl while I was away. Now this did throw me.
“What are you sayin’?” I asked. I did not take kindly to such a notion from her. “My eyes are on you only,” I said and I gave her a kiss that sizzled like bacon, I hoped.
Well, she was a little breathless and she said, “Alright.”
Rosie would sit with Jane and Addie would be free to do the many things pulled at her. I figured it was this made her eager. Least I hoped it was not her full up of me.
I had such a list of things to order it would take more than I’d have hours. Addie sent butter and eggs for Jimmy and Allie and some baby things she’d sewed for William and Lenora’s daughter. I packed this all in the bed where Johnny would sit.
So off the three of us went. Gaylin rode his horse and I drove a team. It was risky taking the wagon, but I knew every bump in the road to Greenup and I needed to be able to make every trip count now.
Gaylin and I kept Johnny regaled with stories all along the way. We had an adventure, or knew of one here and there for we had run these woods, Lord we had. Once we got our work done, Ma and Pa were liberal in what they allowed. Long as we were respectful and well behaved in church on Sunday, well they stayed out of our way pretty much as we grew, mind you there were seasons on the farm, weeks on end and months where free time meant you could take a piss mayhap then get back to it. But there were times during winter and summer when we ran and ran good. We lived out all night and night after, running home to milk, mucking stalls and back out, living off the land, exploring everything God gave us. Pa said free time built the soul. Ma said we’d go wild and every summer at least, we did, until harvest and then school pull
ed us back.
So our souls were built in wildness between the work. That tree, that dip, that holler, that creek, it all meant something. And we spoke of Michael then, first time, for he took the dare like none other. And Gaylin grew some quiet. But thinking of him, you had to laugh a little. “If he’d a kept his mouth shut,” Gaylin said, the anger always better than the sadness.
In town it was good to see Jimmy. He looked fit and rested from the long winter. He stripped enough to show me his scars whether or not I was agreeable. Allie made a difference in him, his appearance less scraggly, he seemed calmer, rooted. Well he was running for mayor come fall. He was already campaigning. He was the defender of law and order, and Monroe’s demise made him legend. Add to that the outlaws from Springfield who shot and killed one of our sons. Well Michael was the hero there, killed the three according to the deputy, but it was Sheriff Jimmy discovered it…how I don’t recall…but William laid it at another’s door same as me. And Jimmy’s door was always wide for glory.
Jimmy was supposed to be the hero. That’s how it went. In these small towns, there were things expected and celebrated and if you pushed another way, well you’d have a war, so make sure you wanted it. William didn’t. But there he was, working a job wasn’t possible one generation back. And there he was. That was the war. He’d pick each skirmish now with care.
I was happy to visit William and Lenora and see the baby. She was a pretty girl, and so small I realized how much Janey had grown. She was no longer an infant but a fat robust girl.
This one of William’s was a mite. She had dark hair and brown eyes, so in that she favored Janey. She was the color of honey. I laughed to think of how William would be, worse than Mose my guess, but no they did not come more protective than that one and yet that William getting under such a tight fence. Well, he would. He got in and held. That’s what I knew.