In the Fall

by Jeffrey Lent

  “Nobody’s saying lie in bed. Not me. Not Connie.”

  “Course not. Some white woman tending me.”

  “All it is, is to help out. And she’s not some white woman.”

  “You think I can’t do it, don’t you? You think I can’t make us a baby, don’t you? Think there’s something wrong with me inside, something messed up or maybe just missing. Maybe you think it’s from when those boys done me I was a little girl. Just not right. Not a whole woman. Maybe you beginning to regret me even.”

  “Doctor said you’re fine. I don’t think none of all the rest of that.”

  “What that doctor know? Old drunk man.”

  “Knows enough to tell you and me both you’re a fine healthy young woman and nothing wrong but bad luck. You made me promise you a promise I’m doing my by Jesus best to keep. And the first thing I thought of was to get somebody in here so it wasn’t all on you. And I did that.”

  “I don’t want no help.”

  “She’s not help. She’s my sister.”

  “I don’t want anybody Norman. I want it just you and me.” Her hands clenched tight around his. As if her hands would convey all that her soul might not send otherwise. “I don’t want no one tiptoeing round the house thinking I can’t maybe do it. I don’t want no one feeling sorry for me.” Her eyes brilliant with panic and hatred. Of just what Norman was not sure. Something much greater than his sister in the house. He felt himself stretched out as a thin hot wire. He remembered his mother telling him the younger Potter girl throughout the war each time they met would ask after him. He wondered if it might have been different with her. He suspected it would’ve been. And not. Like remorse for he knew not what he longed for the fields, the woods, the barn. Some task to take to hand. Work, tinker, trial, work some more. There. His head ached with not knowing what to do. And so was tender, not because he felt tender but with a desperate calm he prayed to convey.

  “Right now, seems to me, there’s nothing to regret. Nothing to feel sorry about, you or anyone else. Far as I’m concerned you’re going to have a baby. Way I understand it, plenty of women have a hard time the first time around. There’s nothing to know. It’s something greater than what we can understand. It’s providential.” He took a breath. His hands had moved out of hers and rested loose around her breasts, knowing she liked this soft touch, knowing the swelling of her breasts was magnified to her by his touch. He went on, suddenly deeply sad. “It’s all we can do. It’s all we have.”

  Her voice a whisper he felt more than heard. “It is providential. I can feel that. It’s a punishment on me.”

  “Leah.”

  “It’s true”.

  “Leah.”

  Her voice up now she said, “Don’t you try and pacify me Norman Pelham.”

  He stood silent, his hands ridiculous on her body: great lumpen scabbed things. He took his hands from her and didn’t know what to do with them. He reached and traced an invisible line on a shelf edge. Then pushed both hands in his trouser pockets and felt this action someway defiant and so pulled them out and hooked his thumbs low in his suspenders, the fingers curled in loose fists. As if guarding his own belly. He gave up. He said, “You start into that business and it never stops. Trying to pin one event to another. Look at me. I killed men. I killed as many as I could, without trying to be a hero or some such. Now maybe, according to your notion, the Lord was angry with me for doing that and so it was Him caused my father to fumble that dime right smack behind that old mare what was always ready to kick. Maybe the Lord made her born that way so she could wait all those years just to be in the right place in time to kick Father in the head. Or maybe it wasn’t me at all. Maybe Father did some wrong none of us knows about. And so it was all lined up because of that. Or maybe not. Maybe he just dropped the dime. Maybe that’s all it was.”

  Her face was turned a quarter sideways. As a murmur she said, “An eye for an eye.”

  “I always took that to mean to fear the Lord’s retribution. The wrath of Him. If He was to spend all His time meting judgment and punishment and reward during this short lifetime what would be the point of face-to-face judgment? Seems to me it’d all be a jumbled-up thing nobody could sort out.”

  Her smile broke small and crooked across her cheeks. Unable to stop it, she said, “You oughtn’t make jokes about that.”

  “Goodness,” he said. Now was able to shove his hands in his pockets. “I’m serious as forty below.”

  “You know I always liked Connie. She always been kind to me.” She paused and Norman was also thinking of others less kind. Leah went on. “I just have to get used to the idea. I always just wanted it to be you and me.”

  “I know it.”

  “Might could help,” she relented.

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Here she come now.” Both listened to the double-step fast slap of bare feet down the stairs and his sister came into the kitchen. Both turned from the pantry to her. Out of her traveling clothes, wearing a simple white summer dress with her hair loose and grown out to her shoulders, she said, “Here it is almost September and my feet tender as June. Some things, you go without and you forget all about until you get it back again and wonder how you ever managed. Little things like going barefoot in summertime.” And she gently hitched her dress and skipped a quick toe-and-heel about the table, coming to a stop before them, laughing. Norman felt Leah’s hand flat against his back, stroking. Connie said, “Now you tell me what to do. I’m not going to raise a hand unless I’m told to. Otherwise I’m just going to go out and shuffle my feet in the dooryard dust like one of those old hens.”

  “I guess there’s plenty to do,” said Norman.

  “Go on,” said Leah. “Go shuffle your feet. We’ll let you know, we can use help.”

  It turned into a brutish wet fall of cold streaming rains that mired the farmyard like April and made pools in the poultry runs. The old cow paths up the meadows ran as brooks through the last lush uncropped growth of grass. The leaf change was brilliant in the wet: watercolors through the streaked windowglass. They picked apples in the rain and pressed four barrels of cider on the hayloft floor, the sheep crying from the sheepshed at the smell of the pomace. They wrapped the best of the apples in newsprint and packed them loosely in crates in the cellar. Norman dug the last of the potatoes in the rain and spread them on the barn floor to dry. The giant Hubbards were left in a storage room in the barn. At the end of the month there was a single placid day of feeble Indian summer and that night the cold returned. Three days later it snowed to cover the ground and by mid-November there were two feet of snow over everything and the winter pattern set. Paths to the barn and sheds were dug and redug. Norman used the stone boat to pack a track down to the road, which the ox teams were already packing with the giant rollers. The sleigh trip to the village was in brutish cold, the heated soapstones under the horsehide robes little more than a pale offering. He rose twice each night to fill the stoves in the brooder house and henhouse, the long snakes of stovepipe suspended by wires two thirds of the way to the ceiling before venting outside; this the most central feature of the modern plan. On dark storm days he lit great kerosene lamps in the laying pens, the lamps with wide skirts of metal about their tops to reflect the light down. The hens continued laying. It was a miracle of sorts; as a boy he’d not eaten a fresh egg from November until the spring.

  The sleigh went out odd weekdays when there were enough eggs to ship and always on Sunday, with Connie alone behind the bays, hard upright and driving the team with taut reins and tight-curled hands as her father’d taught her. Bundled against the cold, she wore the one black velvet-ribboned hat she’d brought back from Manchester, going to the congregational church service and most Sundays afterward returning to Breedlove’s with her mother to take Sunday dinner there from the old widowed Breedlove woman. Mrs. Pelham continued to board there, renting an extra room as well for the mending and hemming and occasional fancywork she took in. Mrs. Pelham did not visit
the farm; Norman and Leah did not attend church.

  When Connie quizzed her mother she replied that she held no ill will to the Negro girl but could not forgive her son. Asked what there was to forgive she chalked with anger and said nothing. Connie told her, “You’ll change your tune soon’s there’s a grandbaby.” Her mother turned to Mrs. Breedlove and asked for another cup of the tea the old woman brewed from white pine needles against the winter’s agues. She took up a molasses cookie and nibbled it, putting her daughter in mind of a mouse before a cheese wheel. Mrs. Breedlove spoke.

  “I found the Reverend Potwin pallid this morning. Perhaps I was distracted.”

  “It was cold to the church,” Mrs. Pelham responded.

  “Some might’ve used the chance to bestir us.”

  “He is no fancy speaker.”

  “Plain speech is best. If it has a destination.”

  “Perhaps you were distracted. I enjoyed the homily.”

  “I believe he was extemporizing. I’m seventy-four years old and sound as a post. He was at sixes and sevens if you ask me.”

  Connie said, “We all have our off days.”

  Both women looked at her, blinking, as if to learn who she was and why she was at their table. Connie took up her cup of awful tea and imitated sipping. The old women continued their vague dissection of the morning. Connie yearned for the warm farmhouse kitchen. The mantel clock read one fifteen. She might leave by two. The old women would only note her departure if it was early. Life with Norman and Leah might be temporary, might not be her own life—the one coming she was sure—but it was pleasant, oddly soothing. Even the winter day-to-day was vivid, each action etched. Visiting her mother was like being submerged in a neutral heavy liquid, the old women like salamanders resting in warm pond water.

  From behind she did not look pregnant but her belly grew high and round and she seemed to walk around it, as if moving her belly through the space before her. Nights she would wake to find Norman’s hand over it and she would cover his with her own. She felt a true calm, not from certainty that she would bear this child to life but as if her body had someway stilled her mind and all else was simply passage, the small collapse of time that each nightfall and daybreak brought. Her unease over Connie’s arrival had less to do with any intrusion than her own nervousness in the company of women; she had never known another woman as confidant, companion or friend. She did not realize this about herself until Connie had been there some weeks and proved clever about taking over no one’s work, simply waiting until there was a job to be done and no one but herself to do it.

  By the time of that first beginning snow cover the three had settled into easy routines. The women were alone much in the house; Norman save in the worst weather spent free time up in the woodlot felling and skidding trees out to the sawpit for the next winter’s sixteen cords. Connie and Leah worked together, candling and packing the day’s eggs, cooking and baking, cleaning house, three times daily touring the laying pens and brooder house for problems, once a week boiling the big kettle on the stove for laundry, often just sitting in the parlor mending or making clothes, and it was weeks after it began that Leah realized she no longer lifted anything or carried anything, that without obvious effort or awkward excuse her sister-in-law was there before she thought to move and the work was done. They spoke only of the present, as if both had no desire to unwrap their pasts before the other. It was so easy as to seem natural. Leah was secure within this and believed herself happy. Then one afternoon they sat sewing in the parlor, Leah mending a tear from the sawteeth in Norman’s woolen pants before cutting a patch to sew over it, when she looked over at Connie on the horsehide sofa, a great ball of homespun wool from the unsold attic fleece lying beside her as her hands flew in crisscross with needles flashing, a small thing in her lap taking form as she lifted and turned it. Leah stopped her work and watched and then her voice betraying her said, “What’s that you’re working on?”

  “A set of little suits for your baby. The cap’s finished. It’s small and so I’ll make another larger.” She turned the piece over in her lap, the needles never stopping. “I think this’ll be more useful than a blanket wrap since I’ve put arms on it. Easier for you I should guess. And I’ll make a larger one to go with the other cap. Should get you through that first year, cold days like this.”

  Leah continued sewing up the tear, watching the speed of the woman across from her, watching the soft thing in her lap take a shape and form, her own fingers working the needle and thread in and out of the pantleg at a pace not meant to try and match her sister-in-law but faster than she ever worked and she not watching. The needle ran deep into her left forefinger. The tears came from her in torn sobs that bent her double, her face down now close upon her stalled work. Bent over her swollen belly as if to hide or cover or save it from anything outside of her. As if it was all of her and she betrayed it with her tears. Then felt Connie’s hands on her knees. Not pressing, just there upon her. Leah slowly recovered, felt her breath coming back. Lifted her head slowly just enough to face Connie, her face hushed and serious, waiting. Kind. Leah said, “Look at me. Must be the baby makes me act like this.”

  Connie didn’t take her hands away. She said, “Norman treats you good, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. Oh yes.”

  “And others?”

  Leah paused, letting what was asked settle. “Nobody’s mean. I don’t believe no one intends any meanness.”

  “Well, shit on a stick,” Connie said. Leah choked: laughing, still crying. Connie stood and pulled the Boston rocker close and sat leaning forward and asked, “What happened? Was it Mother?”

  Like a child sprinting homeward of a hot summer afternoon and sidestepping the basking blacksnake Leah said, “No. No, no.” Connie’s eyes appraised this and let it go. Leah went on, unable, unwilling to check, as if in rupture. “No,” she said again. “I’m not what she wanted or expected and I can understand that. I can even understand that she don’t have any idea how to deal with me. She can’t set across from me and just carry on a conversation but gets all fluttery and curt, as if her mouth opens and her brain chomps the words off before they get out. I can understand that. I don’t mean this like maybe it sounds but I forgive her that. Because I couldn’t tell you how I’d be if I was her. It’s awful easy to think you know how somebody else should be but you ain’t them, never. Maybe I could’ve done different with her too. But I don’t know how and clearly she doesn’t either. So I understand that.”

  “Most times, I think, it’s hard between a woman and the mother of the man she marries.” Connie’s eyes off a little distance. Then, “And Norman her only boy. With Father gone I wonder if he could’ve married any right girl. Just so you know.”

  Leah nodded. “Mother-in-law’s the price every girl pays. I heard that said.”

  Connie smiled. “You don’t have any friends here though.”

  “Norman’s my best friend.”

  “You’re lucky there perhaps. But—”

  “I never had friends even when I was a child. My mama kept me away from the other colored children. Kept me separate. And the white children, they the white children. Didn’t have the time of day for me. At least until I was old enough to be something they wanted to have time for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean four white boys, big boys, sixteen, seventeen years old, got ahold of me one day. I was twelve years old.”

  “Good Jesus.”

  “I think that’s maybe why I’ve had such a hard time keeping a baby.”

  “Oh good Jesus, Leah. Did you tell Doctor about that?” She shook her head hard.

  “Why ever not?” Connie slid back in the rocker and crossed her legs.

  “Why not? Why not? He’s a white man and he seen me most naked. It’s not something I wanted to put in his head.”

  Connie was quiet with anger. “The bastards. All of them. It’s not just you, you know. Whoever the man, there’s that horn of evil upon hi
m.”

  “Now you’re not talking about any man that’s been coming round here to see you. Must be that Manchester man.”

  Connie not moving, abrupt, alert. “What Manchester man?”

  “One Norman told me about.”

  “Norman didn’t tell you a thing. He doesn’t know a thing. There’s nothing to know.”

  “Said there was a man behind why you were so willing to come back up here.”

  Connie snorted. “I was ready I expect. Sick of that town. Sick of that old mill.”

  “No man then? No Manchester man?”

  Her legs still crossed, her hands cupped over the upper knee. Eyebrows raised. “Not worth the telling.”

  “You fall in love?”

  “I thought.”

  “So?”

  Connie stood from the chair and went back to the sofa and took up her knitting. Leah sat watching her. The needles flared and cracked against each other. Leah sat with her mending loose in her lap. A short time passed. The long blue and purple winter dusk was gaining. Other-times, Leah would have risen and lighted the lamps. Now she only sat, letting the pale window light suffice. Connie worked until she came to a pause, counted out stitches and then began to finger out loops, backing up. Finished with that she held her needles flat in her lap atop the infant blanket and said, “First day in that mill was the most terrifying thing you can imagine. The racket of it. The size. The machines. All the people. I was determined not to be the country girl I was. I worked so hard at it. I think it was three months before I took a breath I didn’t think about. I worked so hard at not being a country girl that I didn’t even see him coming. I believe he had my number before I even knew he existed. Jack. Jack Lavin. He was a lovely man. I should’ve noticed that. He took me out. The opera house. Sunday picnics. Such a gentleman. Found out where I was from and got me talking all about it. Began talking about coming back here and opening a shop of our own. As if each one of us doing the same thing over and over a thousand times a day made us experts about clothing, dry goods. Brought me a cup of ice cream one afternoon and I got all the way to the bottom when I found the ring in it and Jack up against me breathing in my ear about how there would be a better one as soon as he could afford, how this was just a token thing against what he intended. Well it had me in a swoon I tell you. June evening. We walked out through the town to the old cemetery and by then it was dark but oh so warm. We lay out there among the dead until the dew came down and he brought me back to my boardinghouse wrapped up in his coat. And we did that for three-four weeks. I got so worried but he assured me everything was all right. Nothing to worry about. Well, I don’t know why but I was fortunate. After five days of his not showing up I skipped my lunch, so sick already to my stomach, and walked down through the lengths of the mill buildings until I got to the rooms of the looms where he worked and found a foreman. Oh, Jack, he said. Jack married that Quebec girl and went off with her to the Gaspé where her people had a bakery. Said Jack told him he’d grown up in a bakery and knew bread like the back of his hand. Foreman said to me, You was lucky dearie, them Frenchies aren’t gonna know what hit em when Jack Lavin breezes in and out of the old Gaspé. Might likely leave some flour behind but whatever cash and coin they stuffed in cans under the hearth will grow feet like that. And he snapped his fingers. I said I was just asking for a friend. He put his hand on my shoulder and said to tell my friend she was a lucky girl. So I went back to work with the sweat pouring off me and sweat like that two weeks until my monthly came. Just another dumb-cluck girl I guess. Like I said, Not worth the telling.”