Let Me Die in His Footsteps

by Lori Roy

  If it were at all possible, though I know full well it isn’t, Abraham looks to have grown a head taller. His jaw looks to have squared off at a sharper angle, and his brow hangs heavier over his eyes. But it isn’t Abraham who’s grown; it’s Daddy who’s shrunk. He has a way of balling himself up when he’s drinking regular, almost like he’s wanting to altogether disappear.

  While Daddy is doing the talking, Abraham is doing the nodding, and every so often, he looks off in our direction. A few folks still linger. The fellows talk about the tobacco they’ll be cutting shortly. Not such a good crop as they were hoping for. Too damn dry. The whole country like to blow away. The ladies, the few who remain, talk about the potluck at church this Sunday. Mrs. Ripberger touches me on my forearm and asks would I care to bring something fresh-picked. It’s kind of her to act as if we’ll be at that potluck, kinder still to act as if we’d be welcome. Something fresh-picked would be easier for you, don’t you think? I tell her yes, much easier. I’ll be happy to. And as Daddy keeps talking and Abraham keeps nodding, the last of these folks go on home too. We’re left alone, just us five and two colored fellows who will cover Joseph Carl over once we’re gone.

  “I think this’ll be good,” I say to Juna. “This could be real nice. Daddy will be making amends, don’t you think? Inviting Abraham back. He’ll be a real fine daddy to your little one. And Abigail, she’ll be like an aunt, or a big sister maybe. They’ll be your family.”

  I say it like I mean it, but what I really mean is if Abraham takes Juna back, she’ll move into his house, she’ll be his wife, and she won’t live in my house ever again. I have yet to ask her if those things Ellis Baine said about her and him are true. I haven’t asked because I know they are. Her not saying it out loud makes it somehow easier to bear. I can think about a new baby coming into our lives instead of imagining Ellis Baine with Juna. I can dream about the way a new baby will smell and feel and rinsing her soft hair clean and patting her dry and dressing her in pinks and yellows the likes our house has never seen. As long as Juna doesn’t say it and I don’t have to hear it, I can go on. Abraham Pace taking her away will make it easier still.

  When Juna doesn’t answer me, I lean forward and look up into her face. She’s still staring at Daddy and Abraham like if she stares hard enough, she’ll hear what’s being said. As if feeling my eyes on her, she turns to me, and there is a look about her I’ve never seen before. Her eyes, wide and black as they are, have somehow changed. They’re looking not quite at me but instead over my shoulder somewhere, not entirely able to focus. It’s fear. I’m seeing fear in Juna’s eyes.

  Daddy gives Abraham one last pat on the shoulder, nearly falling to the ground as he does it. Next to me, Juna’s body, always hard and lean, stiffens as if she’s bracing for something. I try to move her along, but she won’t move. As Daddy passes us by on his way up the hill toward home, he says Abraham will have her. He’ll have Juna but not until he gets a look at the baby. If it’s to his liking, he’ll have her.

  “That’s good,” I say. “It’s behind you now. Behind us all. You and Abraham, you’ll be a fine family. He’ll be a fine father. Abraham will be a very fine father.”

  “Yes,” Juna says, her eyes following Abraham and Abigail as they walk toward town.

  Because of the way she draws a deep breath in through her nose and lets it out long and slow through her mouth, and because of the way she shakes her head ever so slightly, I might say she looked to be feeling sorry for Abraham.

  “He would have been,” Juna says. “I’m guessing Abraham would have made a real fine father.”

  • • •

  MY EYES ARE open. The ceiling above me is black. The air has turned from crisp and cool to dry and cold. The shutter is closed. No light seeps around its edges, which means it’s still dark outside. But the sound of the wind seeps in just fine. There was a time, probably before my mother died, that it was a comforting sound to hear the wind outside and to be safe and warm inside. The fire crackled and sparked. The flue worked as it should. We added blankets on the coldest nights. But the wind is louder now, closer. There are more holes, I suppose, more cracks and crevices.

  This time of year, the wind rolls in from the north. It rushes down the hill, wraps around our house, whips us from side to side. Daddy isn’t so handy, and because John Holleran still doesn’t come around, that wind makes a whistling sound when it blows in through the holes in the roof that haven’t been fixed. If something woke me, it was something loud enough to rise above the noise of all of this. I still myself, try not to breathe so I’m sure to hear it, whatever thing woke me.

  Juna doesn’t sleep in here anymore. She’s grown too large and says it’s easier to sleep sitting up. Every night, we pull the cushioned chair up to the fire and she props her feet on a wooden box Abraham Pace made for her but wouldn’t deliver himself. He says he can’t see her until there’s a baby too. Like me, he’s caught between wondering if Juna is as evil as folks say or as ordinary as the rest of us. He figures the baby will tell him which to believe.

  There it is. An animal maybe, suffering something. Or a moan of some sort, a whimper. I sit up. It’s louder, or I’m hearing it better for having righted myself. It’s a moan, and there’s crying too, and the way the sound is growing louder, the cry will soon become a sob. It’s a strange sound, and crying isn’t altogether strange to me. But that’s the cry of a man.

  Ellis Baine is gone. Juna made Cora Baine send him away. Soon the other brothers will go too. Cora Baine came to the house two weeks ago and stood on our porch, a gray scarf covering her hair. When Juna stepped into the doorway, Mrs. Baine stared at the swell in Juna’s stomach. Keeping one hand tucked under the shawl wrapped around her slender shoulders, she reached out with the other as if to lay it on Juna’s stomach.

  “She’s my grandbaby,” Mrs. Baine said. “You said so yourself.”

  Juna swatted Mrs. Baine’s hand away. “Your boys will kill me,” she said, “and this child too.”

  The floor is cold on my feet, even through my wool socks, and the floorboards rattle because the wind crawls through the hollowed-out space under our house. I lift onto my toes as if someone or something might hear my footsteps. The door’s latch is cold in my bare hands, almost too cold. Using a single finger, I push, and the draft rushing through the house is enough to open the door.

  Mrs. Baine thinks it was her idea to make her boys go. She must have loved them once. When they were boys, not men. They would have been like Dale. Not so tender and sweet as Dale, but they would have had soft cheeks and slender, smooth lips. They would have hung from her neck like Dale used to hang from mine. Maybe they’ve turned out too much like Cora Baine’s husband, and somewhere during those years of growing up, they stopped being her boys and started being reminders.

  Juna’s baby was a way of starting over, and if there was one boy Mrs. Baine still loved, it had been Joseph Carl. She said she’d level a gun at her sons before letting them near Juna or that sweet child. Folks say Ellis was the first to leave. They say he wanted to go, couldn’t stay here knowing he was crossing over his own brother every time he made his way into town. Like Joseph Carl, he took a train. He went away so far, he had to take a train.

  “You didn’t really love him anyways,” Juna said to me after Mrs. Baine left that day.

  The front room is as dark as my bedroom. The fire has gone out. Since Juna sleeps there now and since she’s all the time up and down throughout the night, it’s her job to tend it. My job is to fill the wood box every night, taking over for Dale.

  I still find bits of him around the house. Under his bed, I found a stray sock, the one with a hole in it he was supposed to mend. I told him even a man should know how to do a bit of mending, at least enough to get by. There was also the core of an apple, dried up and left to rot because he never liked the core even though Daddy said that was the best part and would have whipped Dale for throwing it away. I boxed up the most of him—his shirts and britche
s, boots and coveralls. But the bits of him keep popping up.

  The sobbing is steady now but muted as if by a hand over a mouth. I hold the door open so the same draft that pulled at it doesn’t push it closed. There is another sound. Quiet words, loving words. A mother talking to a child. A whisper.

  “I’m here.” It’s Juna. “Right here, Daddy. Calm yourself. Can’t you see?”

  And then I notice the thing I should have noticed straightaway. Daddy’s light is out. The lantern we keep burning, all night, every night, is dark.

  I listen for Daddy’s answer but hear only more muffled sobs. And then a single cry rises up. It’s nearly a scream, and I slap a hand over my own mouth.

  “Daddy, stop,” Juna says. “I’m right here. Clear as day. You can see me. You can see, Daddy. I’m looking right at you.”

  “But I can’t.” Yes, that’s Daddy. “I can’t see you. I can’t see nothing.”

  Juna’s voice lowers. I can hear she’s still talking but can’t make out what she’s saying. It’s a murmur, almost a hum. I’d like to think she’s speaking sweet words, but I know she’s not. Something always simmers just beneath everything Juna does and says, something that tickles the back of a person’s neck or makes the heart pound quicker. Some part of Juna always lies in wait.

  Daddy’s sobs slow. Juna continues to whisper. She wants Daddy to promise her. Promise he’ll do as she asks. Promise he’ll take care of her. Promise her. He can make it all good again. Just promise me. Promise me, is all. The sobs turn into words, Daddy saying yes to Juna. Yes, Juna. Yes.

  A tiny speck of yellow floats in the dark room.

  “You have to promise me, Daddy,” Juna says. “Promise you’ll make things good again.”

  Daddy has been drinking ever since Joseph Carl was lowered into the ground. Every day, from the moment he opens his eyes to the moment he closes them. Other men cut our tobacco, hung it to dry. They propped open the barn doors to keep the air moving. Closed them when the air turned damp. And when Daddy still didn’t come, they stripped the tobacco, sorted it, took it to town.

  One Sunday in early winter, Mrs. Ripberger, who had asked that I bring something fresh-picked to the potluck, delivered the money our tobacco brought at auction. Mr. Ripberger drove her in his black truck and waited outside, the engine running. She came with canned asparagus and cloth bags filled with seeds for next year’s garden.

  “We missed you,” she said, remembering we never came that Sunday afternoon. “It ain’t much, but it’ll see you through.”

  From the truck came a quick blast of the horn, but before Mrs. Ripberger turned to go, she handed me a box, cradling the bottom that had nearly given way.

  “Clothes for the little one,” she said, drawing out a thin cotton undershirt that looked as if meant for a doll. “Some is for boys; some, girls.”

  As Juna sat at the kitchen table, her hands hanging at her sides so they didn’t happen upon her bulging stomach, I sorted those clothes. We should wash them, I told her. We’ll wait for a sunny day so we can dry them on the line. Some for boys. Some for girls. But I think she’ll be a girl, don’t you? I’m certain of it.

  There was plenty of mending to be done among all those tiny clothes—loose bits of lace dangling from a collar, buttons that drooped and needed a stitch or two to tighten them up, snaps that were missing their other half. And as I sorted and folded and stacked the clothes on the kitchen table, I found myself hoping Abraham Pace would see something in Juna’s baby he didn’t like or that worried or frightened him because I wanted Juna’s baby here with me.

  Every dream I ever had was gone. Ellis Baine was gone for good. He would never tire of his cavorting and see me and want me. We would never ride off in a train like Joseph Carl once did and live where wheat grew taller than a man. Every dream was gone except for this new dream of mine, the dream of a baby girl living in this house, filling it up with all the sweetness I imagined a little girl brings with her when she comes into the world. We would clean this house and fix this house like we’d never bothered for just ourselves.

  We’d break open the walls, put in a window or two. Maybe John Holleran would come back if I asked nice and pretended I never knew a man named Ellis Baine. And the baby would sweeten up Juna. She was softer and rounder and plump in all those places a man does love. She’d keep her sweetness even after the baby came and the softness melted away. The baby girl, who would wear these clothes so tiny they looked to be meant for a doll, would soften up every one of us. She’d soften up our lives, and so I had a new dream for myself.

  In the front room, the speck of yellow swells. The glow trembles and grows larger. That’s Juna’s hair falling over one shoulder. She’s leaned over Daddy’s bed. The circle of light grows larger. That’s the curve of Daddy’s back. He has drawn himself up into a ball, his knees bent and pulled up to his chest, his arms probably wrapped around them. Still stroking Daddy’s forehead with one hand, Juna reaches the other toward the lantern. I can’t make out what she’s doing, but because the light keeps growing and its glow keeps spreading, I know she’s turning up the flame. And I know she’s fooling Daddy.

  “Now?” Juna says. “Can you see me now?”

  A few more sobs turn into a bout of coughing. Juna keeps whispering and stroking Daddy’s head. She’s telling him to quiet himself. She will make things better now. She has bound him to a promise in exchange for his sight.

  Every day, before the last drink takes him, Daddy tells us don’t forget my light. Don’t you forget. He’s feared it all his life, waking up in the dark and never seeing light again. The whiskey, it’ll do that to a man. He’s feared it all his life.

  Daddy’s coughing and crying and carrying on slow and fade until he’s altogether quiet. The lantern throws as big a light as it’ll throw. Juna keeps stroking Daddy’s head, and in no more than a few minutes’ time, his breathing turns deep and slow. He’s gone on back to sleep. I take my hand off the door and step back in the bedroom, lift up on my toes again, and without once taking my eyes off the closed door, I crawl into bed.

  Daddy says it’s because we’re nothing more than animals that we find ourselves shying away from a thing and not wanting to turn our backs on it without knowing why. He’s always saying this is the thing that’ll save God-fearing folks. Instinct, he’s all the time saying. Nothing more than animals. And I think Daddy is right because something in my animal nature is warning me not to turn my back.

  20

  1952—ANNIE

  WRAPPING HER TWO hands around the deck of cards so Mama won’t see it, Annie walks back to the car, leaving Ellis Baine alone to fill the hole. Mama slips into the front seat and is staring straight ahead at the folks in the café when Annie opens the back door and climbs in. Mama waits until Annie has pulled her door closed and Caroline has rolled up her window before saying anything.

  “What was that?” Mama says.

  “Being kind,” Annie says.

  Mama swings around in such a fashion that Annie pulls back like she might get slapped even though Mama has never, not once in her life, slapped either of her girls.

  “Do not talk smart to me.”

  “Wasn’t doing nothing, Mama,” Annie says. She rests both hands in her lap much the way Caroline is all the time doing, except Annie isn’t thinking of fine manners. She’s hiding the cards in her lap.

  Grandma said there would be days Annie’s insides would near to spill over. She said yearning and wondering and yearning again would fill her up so full she might want to scream out. But don’t scream, Grandma had said. Take it all in until it reaches the very top of you, and you’ll make room for more.

  “I thought I’d help him,” Annie says, not able to still the quiver in her voice. “Asked could I help cover his brother over. He said it was kind. Said I was kind like my mama, kind like you.”

  Mama stares at Annie, stares her straight in the eyes. Annie’s black eyes don’t ever give Mama pause. After a long moment, she reaches out as if to
touch Annie on the cheek, but she can’t reach, so she drops her hand and pats Annie’s knee instead. Then she turns to Caroline and says, “Let’s get on home.”

  As they pass Ellis Baine, he props his shovel at his side. Mama gives him the same polite bow of her head she might give the preacher. They drive home the rest of the way in silence, and whatever is keeping Mama closemouthed, it’s keeping her thoughts otherwise occupied and she doesn’t think to wonder why Caroline, who usually chats nonstop no matter how long the trip, has not said a single word.

  It started the day Mrs. Baine was found dead. Something settled on Mama’s shoulders, and it’s been weighing her down ever since. The arrival of Ellis Baine made that load all the heavier. Normally Daddy would be the one to hug Mama, kiss her, stroke her face. He’d insist she let him fix whatever troubled her. Mama would do the same for Daddy. She’d do the same by letting Daddy do the fixing. It makes him happy to be the fixer of things. But Daddy isn’t inclined to fix whatever this is, and without Daddy to help, it is getting the better of Mama. When she pulls into the drive and the sheriff’s car is parked outside their front door, the weight on Mama grows so heavy she can’t, won’t, get out of the car.

  “Annie,” Mama says, staring at the back door leading into the kitchen.

  She’s going to ask Annie to go inside. Mama’s afraid of what’s in there, and she’s going to send Annie instead. Not Caroline. She knows Caroline would never, could never, do it. But Mama is mistaken. Annie can’t go either. She’s no stronger than Caroline. Mama is mistaken.

  The back door opens before Annie can tell Mama no. Grandma walks onto the porch and begins pacing back and forth. Her hair has pulled loose, and strands of it hang down alongside her face. Her apron, normally tied carefully at her waist, is draped over her shoulder, and when it slips off, Grandma takes no notice.

  Mama crosses her arms over the steering wheel and buries her face there. Caroline glances back at Annie, having forgotten for the moment that she’s angry.