by Deb Spera
The hole in the roof is at the frame line along the front of the house by the road. The wood beam lies exposed. It held steady and don’t show signs of weakening, but the house around me is in ruin. Shingles and wood lie along the parlor floor. Three brown lizards run across them as I make my way through the rubble. The furniture’s wet and the couch has already got mold growing. You can see the sky from where I stand in the parlor, blue with white clouds that look like cotton. The windows along the east wall toward town are broken. This part of the house needs to be cleared out and burned. There’s nothing to save. The bedrooms ain’t no better. I lean against the door frame of the room I slept in. I’m tired just looking at this mess. The stench of mold and mildew get caught in my throat, and I’m doubled over with a fit of coughing. The rooster pecks at my heels.
“Get off me,” I say and brush him away with my foot. He backs away but don’t leave my side. Queerest thing I ever did see. The board that Mrs. Walker used to cover her hiding place is swollen and upended, sitting crossways atop the other boards. I move it with my foot to peer below at Mrs. Walker’s wood box, then get down on my hands and knees and lift it from the hiding place. Within is what is left of the money I took and the letter Mrs. Walker left behind. I fold the dollars and letter one on top the other and tuck them in my dress alongside my bosom, then lean against the wood rail of the bed frame and sit looking at the sky above me. A line of pelicans, thirteen in all, fly low overhead toward the east. More clouds roll behind, and I lie down on the floor next to the hole and watch them go from left to right in a lazy line. The outside breeze is a blessing to my senses.
I wake to a light rain falling on my face and the rooster crowing above me on the bed like it’s morning. The day has grown and begun to fade. I’ve stayed past my time. Alma will be worried. I push myself from the floor and go into the girls’ bedroom to look for my shotgun. The bird follows like a dog. The closet in this bedroom is intact. Everything within is salvageable. Blankets, sheets, an extra ticking for a mattress we never used sit stacked in a pile on the floor. Way back in the corner standing upright is my shotgun and, behind it, a paper bag filled with blue yarn being turned into something more. Mary’s present for me? The rooster comes to peck at my heels. He flies up when I shove him away and sits on the girls’ bed and crows. I reach back inside and grasp the shotgun by the barrel. An automobile pulls into the yard and stops near the kitchen door. The engine shuts off, and the gun slips from my fingers and falls sideways behind the blankets. The rooster moves up beside me and lifts his head and crows again. Outside, the automobile door slams, and a man hollers, “Hello?”
I left the back door wide open. I slide into the closet and close the door softly behind me. The gap at the bottom is big enough to put my toes through—big enough to see what or who is coming. The man’s heavy footfall is at once on the porch outside. He gives three sharp knocks on the open door.
“Anybody home?”
I know that voice. The rooster pecks along the bottom of the closet door looking for me.
“St. George Sheriff’s Department,” the man says.
In the dark I feel something slide out from between the blankets then over and across my feet. I’ve wakened a snake of considerable size. It curls ’round my right foot, and I watch its tongue flick in the light from beneath the door. I killed enough snakes in cotton fields to know a copperhead when I see one. I grasp it quick by the back of the neck. Its body writhes and squeezes. I lift the heel of my shoe and place its head beneath, then push until the head is crushed and life is gone.
“Hello?” the sheriff calls again.
He walks into the parlor and stops. To listen or look, I don’t know. He walks through to my bedroom and kicks the floorboard that I forgot to put back in place. The box is laid open. He will know someone was here. He turns the knob of the closet door. It creaks open and shuts.
“Jiminy,” he mutters, likely at the smell. “Whewee.”
The shadow of him falls through the light and across the bottom of the door as he enters this room. The rooster is what saves me. Though I can’t see, it’s clear by the rustle of feathers and loud squawks he’s gone after the sheriff.
“Shit,” the man hollers.
He backs in a rush out to the parlor. There’s a loud thump and everything goes quiet. The man catches his breath and finally leaves, shutting the kitchen door behind him. When I come out I find the rooster lying on the parlor floor, still breathing. He looks at me wall-eyed so I reach down and take him by the neck. With one wring he is dead and gone.
Dark has fallen by the time I make it back to Retta’s house. I carry my shame in the night, gun in one hand, rooster and bag of yarn in the other, the scratch of what I stole against my bosom. Alma runs, almost knocking me over where I stand in the road. Retta comes to the porch and looks me over.
“I had to kill your rooster,” I tell her. “Couldn’t be helped.”
“I expect he had it coming,” Retta says. “Get him cleaned up. He’ll be supper.”
31
Annie
My husband wears his gun late into the evening. I’ve heard his explanations echo through the house and outside my window. He’s stirred enough fear of post-hurricane horrors to create a small, armed militia. It’s a show of force, a boy’s game of soldiers. Last night he came into my room and stood for a long while watching from the foot of my bed.
“What are you trying to prove, Mother?”
I kept my eyes closed but he persisted.
“You must eat,” he said. “I’m worried for you.”
When I remained unresponsive he took a different tack. It was as if he was talking to himself really, speaking aloud a tale to believe.
“We’re going to be fine, Mother. We will go to Camp and see if we can salvage our finances. There are ways.”
Of course this is all about our finances.
“If the boys are to be taken care of in their old age I need you by my side. Do you understand?”
I wondered when he would bring the children into this.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. “No, I’m finished with Camp.”
Then I turned to watch the night sky out the bedroom window—the Milky Way so clear I could seemingly reach out and touch it. My husband rocked back and forth on his feet, heel to toe, like he does when he is impatient, and finally came to stand before the window blocking my view.
“Goddammit, Annie, you’re going to Camp if I have to carry you there myself.”
Edwin is always so self-assured he borders on audacity, but I am no better than my husband. I believed what I wanted to believe. What I took for quiet intent and focus all these years of our marriage was, in actuality, duplicity. I simply chose to believe the wrong narrative. A person’s character should be plainly seen. My papa, despite his wealth, was plain enough for the world to see. A city boy, he could fight and drink as well as the next man, but he was educated and kind. He had his idiosyncrasies. He was nervous in the country. He found the quiet impossible to gauge and slept best with noise. After I married he said, “You live in a fantasy, Annie. Don’t be fooled by appearances. A quiet place can still hold chaos.” None of this is what my father wanted for me.
Retta told me this morning, Edwin has decided against having the telephone repaired and has sent word to the doctor that I’m not eating. He must prove to be the concerned husband. Otherwise what will people say? Edwin Coles’s Yankee wife has lost her mind, poor man, but my mind is quite clear. I’ve taken to my bed and have no intention of rising. Retta’s paraded all of my favorite foods through the door, but I’ve no stomach for anything now. Living without food isn’t as difficult as I imagined. The mind grows sharp once the headaches diminish. Grief is a mountain that rises in the throat, blocking all else.
“Miss Annie, you got to eat,” Retta says. “You can’t let him win.”
“He isn’t winning, Ret
ta. There are no winners. He can achieve nothing without my consent.”
“It would just kill your children, Miss Annie. Just kill them to see you starving yourself like this.”
“No. It will release them of at least one burden.”
I wait now. Every day I wait, sitting in my bed propped against goose down pillows, a sparrow on her nest. The windows in my room give a bird’s-eye view of the comings and goings of daily life. There now in the field is the largest osprey I’ve ever seen. He sits in plain sight where men are working, his head swiveling, owl-like, with a watchful pensive gaze. For some time he remains unseen by workers, but when one laborer draws too close, the osprey attempts to take flight, and it’s then I see what the bird has been guarding. The kill in his talons is too big for him to carry. He must stay with the animal if he means to claim it for himself.
One of the Norris boys runs toward it with raised arms and the bird is forced to abandon his prey. He circles as the boy reaches the kill and holds it by the tail for the rest of the men to see. It’s a raccoon already stiff with death—such an oddity. The boy swings the animal by the tail and flings it as far and high as he can. The osprey swoops in, catches it in his claws and is dragged by the weight to the tall grasses beyond the field. The men whoop with glee at the sight. They’ve been given a show. The sound of laughter drifts lazily through the open window in my room and is overtaken by the sound of knocking at the front door. Retta’s sure footsteps click across the floor. The door is opened, and the doctor ushered inside. He waits in the foyer while Retta goes to fetch my husband.
“John,” I call from my bed.
“Ann?”
“Up here.”
He hesitates at the bottom of the steps, then climbs slowly toward me. He crosses the wide hallway and is all at once through my door wearing the same tattered brown suit he wore the night of his visit. I wonder at the last time he considered new clothing. I smell him. It’s not a repugnant scent—to the contrary—but I know when a man forgoes his own hygiene it means one of two things: a heavy workload or poor mental state.
“Come in,” I say.
I reach to the night table for the water glass there, and he comes forward in a small rush to help me.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. “How’s the hand?”
I raise it for him to see. “Better.”
“Shall we remove the stitches?”
“Yes, that’ll be fine.”
He lays his bag on the bed alongside my legs and sets to work pulling the black thread from my hand. He recognizes the repair and looks at me quizzically.
“I tore it open. Retta re-stitched it.”
“You should have sent for me.”
“I suspect between the sickness and hurricane you’ve been busy enough. Were there many injuries?”
“Could’ve been worse.”
“I’ve heard you are no longer charging the poor for your services.”
He grimaces, embarrassed to have his humanity on display. I’ve forgotten what humility looks like.
He dodges the question. “I’ve heard you aren’t eating.”
“Touché,” I say.
His hands are cold to the touch, and my skin has grown into the threads, so he must tug hard to remove them. We sit in quiet as he works.
“Edwin sent for you, not me,” I finally say.
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Are you ill?”
I shake my head no, overcome by my own emotion.
“What is it then, Ann?” he asks softly.
Downstairs Edwin has come charging into the foyer.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, sir. He was just here,” Retta says.
John looks to see if I will respond, but I turn away.
“Up here, Edwin,” he calls out.
My husband climbs the staircase with the same deliberation he’s done for fifty-four years. When he comes through the room, he’s filled with a young man’s energy. His hand is outstretched and welcoming. John rises, takes Edwin’s hand in his own and shakes—the respect of two men who’ve known each other a long time.
“Thank you for coming, Doctor.”
“Of course.”
“May I speak with you outside?” Edwin asks.
“If it’s regarding Ann, I’d rather talk here, in front of her, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Edwin replies.
This is a wrinkle in Edwin’s plan.
“She won’t even look at food,” Edwin says. “Hasn’t eaten a bite since I returned. I’m unsure of how long before that.”
John sits in the chair by my side and lays his hand on the bed.
“A week, over a week? How long, Ann?”
Since our dinner is what he is asking. He’s done the calculations. Both men look at me. Edwin stands quietly just beyond John in the center of the room, holding his hat. I raise my shoulders and feign ignorance.
Edwin says, “She rarely speaks, and when she does it’s often nonsensical.”
John ignores him and pulls the blankets back and presses on my abdomen.
“Do you know what day it is?” he asks.
“Wednesday,” I tell him.
He removes his stethoscope and listens to my chest.
“That’s right,” he says, “and you know who I am?”
“You are our doctor.”
“Do you know who he is?” John asks and looks back to my husband.
“No,” I say.
Edwin says, “See what I mean?”
John places a thermometer in my mouth, then takes a small magnifying glass and looks into my eyes, holding open each lid to see if there is anything lurking within my brain. When he finishes and before he pulls away, I whisper, “I thought I knew him. I was wrong.”
“What did she say?” Edwin asks.
John holds a finger up to Edwin, then reads the thermometer and looks in my ears and down my throat. When he is finished he pulls the blankets back over me and packs his bag.
“I’d like to take you to the hospital for some tests, Ann.”
Edwin comes to the foot of the bed and says, “She doesn’t trust hospitals. Her father died in one.”
I look out the window while they discuss my fate. Retta stands beyond the clothesline inspecting Spanish moss the yard boys have brought to her. She shows them something amid the moss, unsatisfied. They drop it at her feet and run back through the fields to the woods. There will be no moss to be found in trees after such a storm. She’ll have to stuff the ticking for Camp with corn husks.
“Ann,” John calls, bringing me back into the room, “you won’t last much longer without sustenance.”
I look at them, first Edwin, then John.
“Can’t you give her something to make her eat?”
“We can’t force her to eat, Edwin. She has to decide that for herself.”
“No hospital,” I whisper.
“You understand if you don’t eat, you will die?” John asks me.
He’s kind, and I am sorry I didn’t see just how kind much sooner. Words are pointless now, but I say them anyway, loud enough for both men to hear.
“I understand.”
There’s nothing more to say.
32
Retta
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” Mr. Coles says when I tell him I fear Miss Annie ain’t up to Camp this year.
“No, sir,” I say to the man. “I know that, but she needs a nurse. I can’t see to her and make the food for Camp if I aim to feed all them people.” I know half the politicians in the state count on an invitation to eat my food. We hold the best tent in Camp for eatin’, and Mr. Coles knows that as much as I do.
What’s this man thinking, that Miss Annie’s going to
get out of that bed and sit upright in an automobile next to him for the long drive there? I am behind in my work. We got to go up and down the stairs to Miss Annie at least five times a day; whether she eats the food or not, it’s got to be brought, and she needs her toilet. I can’t be stopping if I aim to get everything done. The peanuts boiling on the stove should’ve been done a week ago.
“Hire one, then,” he says.
“You want me to do the hiring?”
“I’ve got more pressing things to worry about.”
I want to ask, More pressing than a sick wife who’s starving herself in the bed upstairs? But I keep my mouth shut.
“Hire a white woman,” he tells me as he comes through the kitchen and grabs his hat from the peg by the back door. He runs straight into Edna, who is coming through the door like a rush of wind. He backs up to let her through, and she ducks her head and squeezes by as he slams the door behind him. Edna jumps at the noise. She’s scared to death of the man. Already she’s dropped a bowl and broke it in front of him. He went on about his business, but I can’t trust her to serve the meals alone. She gets dropsy when she’s nervous and sets Mr. Coles on edge. I can’t take no chance on her getting fired before Camp. He’s ready for a fight these days, and we got to be careful not to give him one.
“I stirred the pudding good,” Edna says. “It’s boiling. Want me to take it off the flame?”
“No, leave it. Got a couple hours yet.”
“You want me to take a tray to Miss Annie while you look?”
