“I’ll hitch up the float,” he said, “and drive the milk across myself. You stay here and watch the ewes. When I get back, you can tell me which ones you think are ready to lamb.”
Beulah nodded. Then she turned her face up toward the sun and stood for a moment, eyes closed, accepting the warmth of the season like a kiss on her brow. She held the barley sprig up to the sky. Her fingers opened and wind took the barley, the ever-present wind. The dry scrap tumbled out into the prairie, gone from sight in the blink of an eye, lost among all that was green and new. Then she turned away without another word, without a glance at Clyde, and left him to see to his work.
11
THE FROGS BEGAN TO SING
I can’t rightly say that I have a favorite season, for each brings unique beauty and each bears a lesson for the human heart, for anyone who cares to watch the turning of the seasons closely. But spring has always held a special magic in my estimation, and that spring, when I was just on the verge of my fourteenth year, seemed brighter and more brilliant than most. After our long and arduous winter, the warmth of a strengthening sun felt as close to a blessing as anything I’d ever known. The pasture was rich with the smell of growing things, a warm, rounded spice of scent that blew in from beyond the hedge—the damp of the river, the coolness of its run, the fragrant shade beneath the cottonwood trees that trapped and held the day’s hours so their memory lingered there till long after sunset. Insect life wakened and filled the air with glittering light as the sun refracted from countless veined wings. Every night, when I brought the milk cows in from the pasture, the frogs chorused up and down the length of Tensleep Creek, so the violet dusk rattled with song.
Substance had been long buried by the time spring arrived. The memory of his rule was fading from our land, from all whom his fist had struck. The lambs were born in their due course, and the flock was culled once more. This time, Clyde made the cull himself. I sat on the stone wall, warming my back in the sun, and watched as he made his way among the sheep. They never followed Clyde with the same ease they showed me; there ain’t many people can claim my knack with animals. But Clyde handled every sheep with gentle care. He looked into the broad dark gaze of each member of his flock—eye to eye, life to life—and saw in them all the wonder and ecstasy of living. He hadn’t my sense for knowing where a creature stood on the great, unseen spiral—how near or far death might be. Clyde only knew that his sheep felt, in their particular way, the same hopes and fears and loves and agonies that stirred in his own heart. And so he touched them with respect, and asked for their forgiveness, with no care for what his father might think if his father could see. And when he led them to the killing pen—those lambs who would die so that we might live—I saw the morning light fall bright and golden on his tears.
I came into my womanhood that spring. I was neither surprised nor dismayed when the change came upon me. During rare moments of quiet that winter, while I worked at my patchwork samplers or stirred porridge over the fire, I had felt girlhood receding, yielding to a new identity that was my own and yet unknown to me, a welcome stranger. When the change came, I found myself looking at Clyde through new eyes. He had always been my workmate, a strong back on which I could depend, and I had found some inkling before of a greater fascination, a curiosity about our differences and a certainty of the ways we were the same. Now, though, I noticed him much more—his keenness to do right, his patience and determination. I saw all the small ways he made me smile or laugh, and when we couldn’t work side by side, I felt as if half the joy had drained from the world. I longed to be near him again—scrambled for any excuse—just so I could watch him smile or see the way the muscles tensed in his arms when he dug post holes or brushed his horse’s coat.
My family had returned to our little gray farmhouse by the time April arrived with its blustery days and frost-hard nights. But though we no longer lived under one roof, Clyde and I still spent as much time in one another’s company as we could contrive. Now each of us saw the whole of the land—that is to say, all the land our two families owned—as ours, belonging to us both. We shared responsibility for the animals and the fields. With great pride in our strength and our hard-earned knowledge, we toiled side by side, paying no heed to the boundary posts, for all that was mine belonged to Clyde, and all that was his became mine. More often than not, we worked in contented silence. There was seldom any cause to speak. Even without words, we could feel—in the tireless bending of our backs, in the rhythm of our days—the satisfaction of knowing that we could manage so much land between us.
Both farms seemed to respond eagerly to our collective stewardship. Substance’s time had come to a close; all eras must end. I knew it, and Substance knew it, too, for he seldom spoke to me anymore when I carried my treasures to his grave. Our parents’ hold over the earth was weakening, their grip falling loose. A new world unfolded around us, welcoming our youth, our quiet and subtle power—ushering us to our rightful place as the stewards of our land. Though the ground was still afflicted by frost, and only the hardiest peas and springtime greens could yet grow, still I sensed a readiness in the earth. The soil was waking, like the frogs from their secretive burrows. Soon the land would open wide its green throat and sing.
Nettie Mae was still rather cagey that spring, if truth be told. I think she didn’t know what to make of her own confusion, and not knowing made her feel cross. She was glad to see her home returned to her, but she missed the children, too. She made it a point to come calling every few days, bringing my ma a loaf of bread when she had baked one too many, or giving the boys and Miranda sweet molasses cookies. She and my ma would stand on the porch and chat for a few minutes till Nettie Mae grew flustered by her own conflicted heart and went away again. She kept to herself for days at a stretch, but sooner or later she came calling again, and I began to wonder if she ever would allow herself to be entirely friendly with my mother—real friends, without reservation. I supposed it must take an awful long time to let go of one’s old habits.
At least I could be certain that a peace had fallen between them, my ma and Nettie Mae, a truce unimpeded by anger. If either woman still felt bitterness or shame, she kept her feelings hidden. I couldn’t swear that Nettie Mae especially liked my ma—nor, come to that, could I be certain my ma actually liked Nettie Mae. But they had come to an understanding, struck a balance that kept their two families working in harmony with the land.
Together with my brothers, Clyde and I reclaimed the garden outside the gray farmhouse and planted it well with cold-season crops. It was difficult work, for Nettie Mae’s edict still stood, and we were never trusted far beyond her sight. The only days when Clyde and I could work that garden together were on Nettie Mae’s wash days. As we planted and tended the peas, Clyde and I could feel her hard eyes upon us, even across the great distance of the pasture. Now and then I would straighten in my row and gaze down the length of the greening, sun-struck pasture. There I would see Nettie Mae, as still as carved marble beside her lines of flapping white sheets. She stared back at me, forever alert and watching.
Try as she might, though, Nettie Mae couldn’t watch us all the time. Now and then, Clyde and I took our chances and slipped away together for a few minutes when we thought we wouldn’t be missed. We came to learn one another’s routines and set off alone from our separate houses at sunrise or at dusk, only to feign surprise at finding one another at the far edge of the pasture or along the river trail. Some evenings, after we’d finished our chores but before we heard the twin ringing of our two homes’ supper bells, we roved up the slope of the foothills. From that vantage we looked down on the thing we had made together: one great expanse of thriving beauty with no boundary to cleave it. And sometimes, in the soft purple stillness, with bats flitting and wheeling among the lilacs—with the scent of opening flowers sweetening the air—Clyde would hold my hand.
That was the way April passed; before I knew it, spring had almost gone. But the tail end of the season held som
ething more for me, one last bright spot of color in the most brilliant of all my springtimes.
On the first night of May, just as I shut my bedroom door to make myself ready for bed, I paused and held my breath, for I heard a powerful voice calling—a voice I didn’t understand. I shut my eyes in the dim confines of my room and tried to listen with greater care, but all I could hear was a thrum and a murmur, a quiet, compelling summons whose purpose I couldn’t discern.
I waited till my ma was occupied with dressing the little ones for bed. Then I slipped out of my room and through the quiet house, moving on my toes so no one would hear me go. I followed the voice outside, down from the sheltered porch into the thriving garden, out into a vibrant, welcoming night. An unexpected light threw itself sideways across the fields, slanting, hard and sharp as ice even though the night was mild—the first night of the year that held any claim to warmth. That stark light seemed to make every blade of grass and every leaf of sage stand out clearly, numberless individuals among the teeming multitude.
I made my way through the rows of knee-high crops to the garden fence, where I leaned, gazing toward the river. A great silvery moon, full and white, hung low behind the cottonwoods. It was fat as the bud of a flower. The sight awed me to perfect stillness, and I smiled as I stared—an open-mouthed grin with dazed eyes, like the milk-drunk smile of a baby worshipping its mother. I had never seen the moon come so close before, had never seen it so large, so present. The cottonwoods were black sentinels arrayed before the moon’s greatness; it shone so brightly between the trunks that the light seemed to bleed around the trees, softening their edges like dye running from patterned cloth.
I was drawn to that moon; it called me. I didn’t think to tell my mother where I was going; I just went, stumbling out the garden gate and through the brush, faster with every step, never taking my eyes off that impossibly grand sight. The spectacle was so rare, it seemed like fairy magic—like the old Welsh tales Nettie Mae had told the children in winter, while they were gathered around the hearth. I didn’t dare lower my eyes for a second, for I convinced myself that if I looked down to find my path, or if I even blinked, the moon and its intoxicating light would vanish, and I would never see such beauty again.
I wanted to see the moon over the river, to watch its reflection stirring and breaking and forming again in the endless flow of the current. I thought, That will be a kind of magic, too; something rare enough that I’ll remember the moment and think of it all my life. So I headed toward the river trail—more or less, drifting as I was with my face turned up toward the sky. But by the time I reached the edge of the pasture, I found another magic entirely.
Hullo, Beulah.
Clyde stole my attention from the moon; he was likely the only force that could have done it. It seemed he had heard that strange voice calling, too, for though he knew it was rude not to look a lady in the eye when you made conversation, still he was half turned away, transfixed by the grand presence that hung so low in our night sky.
You came out to see it, too, I said. You want to get as close as you can.
Staring through the cottonwoods, Clyde nodded. He said, I know it’s foolish to go running out into the night, for you can’t get no closer to the moon as long as you’re still bound to the earth. But somehow it didn’t seem like it was enough, just to see it from my bedroom window. A sight like this demands a fella’s full attention.
I’m headed to the river, I said. I want to see the moonlight on the water.
He said, That sounds real nice. Then he swallowed hard and glanced at me, then looked away again just as quickly. In a wary kind of voice, he added, I guess moonlight on water can’t be no prettier than moonlight on your hair, though.
I smiled at him. Then I laughed. Clyde didn’t laugh back; didn’t even grin. He wasn’t teasing, wasn’t making any sort of joke. A fearfully sober expression came over him, and for one moment—suspended forever in my thoughts, a memory I’ve carried all these years—I saw his face isolated by moonlight. A slight frown, an expression of grateful suffering as he bore the singular pain of love.
Then Clyde stepped closer to me, and closer still.
When he kissed me, all the frogs on the riverbank began to sing.
NETTIE MAE
The frogs had begun to sing, but Clyde still hadn’t returned to the house. Nettie Mae set aside her sewing, checked to be certain her candle was secure in its holder, and went to the back steps. The evening felt flushed, tinted by a promise of summer warmth to come, and cicadas called in eager chorus from the pasture. The lilacs by the outhouse had clamored into bloom. The air was heady with their fragrance, and bats darted among great drooping bracts of purple flowers, chasing after insects that had been drawn to the sweet scent. But the yard was empty and the paddock still. Clyde was nowhere to be seen.
He’s a grown man now, she told herself, or close enough to it.
There was no real cause for alarm. She knew Clyde was strong enough now to protect himself from wild beasts and sensible enough to avoid danger. Yet he was still her son. She couldn’t help dwelling on the dangers of night—the animals that might come down from the foothills and mountains, still hungry after that impossible winter. Wolves, mountain lions, bears wakened from hibernation. True, the bears would have rolled from their mysterious slumber weeks ago; their hunger would have abated by now. But her arms still trembled with the need to hold her child close, to shield Clyde from whatever might try to take him away.
Nettie Mae scolded her fears to silence, willing herself to proceed with rational calm. She eyed the outhouse carefully, but the diamonds cut high into the shack’s wall were black—no flicker of lantern light within. The horses were settled in their pen, not pacing and whinnying as they did in the presence of wild animals. Nor did the sheep complain in their fold. Wherever Clyde had disappeared to, he had gone of his own accord—not taken by some marauding beast come down from the untamed mountains. That, at least, was some relief.
The night sky hung in a peaceful wash of violet dark, burnished by a huge, low-riding moon—one of the largest and most forcefully present Nettie Mae had ever seen. She had always enjoyed moonlight, but tonight, somehow the moon made her feel ill at ease. It was no longer the familiar white body that kept predictably to its velvet courses. Now it seemed a force unto itself, a startling new presence, a thing Nettie Mae couldn’t choose to ignore.
Huddling into her shawl, her shoulders hunched under the moon’s all-seeing eye, she circled the house in search of any sign of her son. A hundred potential terrors ran unchecked through her head, though she could name none of her fears. They trailed in her wake, faceless and formless, but no less menacing for that. She considered taking a lantern and crossing the field to Cora’s house. Certainly, there was no need on a night so brightly lit, but the idea of holding her own light—illumination within her control—struck Nettie Mae as a comfort.
As she returned to the rear yard and climbed the kitchen steps again, Nettie Mae glanced toward the pasture once more. Clyde was clearly visible, cutting across the field toward the river trail. Nettie Mae sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, releasing that dizzy sensation of unease. The barn had merely blocked him from Nettie Mae’s view a few minutes before. He was well beyond the barn now, striding through knee-deep grass, intent on some errand of his own.
Nettie Mae’s relief was to be short lived. Comfort shifted at once to a wave of cold anxiety. Beulah appeared at that moment, too. The girl was walking from the direction of the Bemis house—thank God for that, for at least she hadn’t been with Clyde. But from her distance and the vantage of the porch steps, Nettie Mae could see that their paths would intersect. There was no doubt the two would soon meet. By design? Had they plotted together to slip away in defiance of Nettie Mae’s command? Beulah moved with her face turned up toward the sky; it was a wonder the girl hadn’t tripped and fallen, for she paid more heed to the moon than to where she set her feet.
Nettie Mae swallowed hard and
stared, willing Beulah to turn aside, demanding in her heart that Clyde ignore the girl and let her continue on her reckless way. But the wish was for naught. Beulah stopped near the edge of the pasture, as did Clyde, exactly where Nettie Mae had predicted their paths would cross. They were speaking, Nettie Mae realized—and standing much too close together for her liking.
Flaunting my only request. Disregarding my authority.
Her stomach twisted as she watched them together. They didn’t touch, yet still there was something horribly intimate about the encounter, something irrevocable. Even across the field, Nettie Mae could read the longing in their frozen postures—a tension, a giddy wavering, as if they tipped toward some precipice—still and uncertain, anxious, yet with all the fateful momentum of a seedling rising from the soil. The sight flooded Nettie Mae with a sick dread she couldn’t restrain.
I must shout, Nettie Mae thought frantically. Tell them to stop. Demand that Clyde come home. The next moment, she discarded the idea. There was no use shouting, no sense in raging. Clyde and the girl had grown so familiar that they would only sneak away again, endlessly defying the rules, until sin caught up with them at last.
She might go to them, Nettie Mae reasoned—cross the fields as silently as a shadow and startle them into better obedience by emerging suddenly from the purple night to bluster over their behavior. But no, they would see her coming long before she reached them. That fae child Beulah would only melt away into the moonlit grass, to work her enchantments another night.
As Nettie Mae stood transfixed by indecision—made helpless by the current of time—Clyde stepped closer to the girl. Then he bent his neck. Their lips met.
Nettie Mae clutched at her throat, uncertain whether she tried to hold back a cry of despair or whether she tried to summon one from wordless shock. Her legs quivered; she sagged against the kitchen door, staring wide eyed and weak till the kiss ended and the girl moved away.
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel Page 41
