After Eli

by Terry Kay

  Sarah was not suspicious. She was in awe of Michael. To her, there was nothing mysterious about his silence. He had grown accustomed to them and to his surroundings and had settled comfortably into an involuntary rhythm, like breathing. Michael belonged. He belonged there, among them. And he was not always quiet. Not with her. He was different when she brought him water in the glass jar and they sat together in the canopy of trees. Then he was relaxed and joyful. He laughed with her and told her colorful stories of his travels and he always kissed her on her forehead and pledged her to secrecy. Michael treated her like a woman, looked at her as a woman, spoke to her as a woman. It was man to woman, not man to girl. Even in his gentle teasing, his eyes were telling her of urges that swam between them like dreams. And Sarah began to feel their privacy growing inside her, like an internal fitting of a joyful expectation. To Sarah, Michael belonged and he belonged especially to her. It made her angry when she heard her mother or Dora speak of the change that had infected Michael like a disease. She said nothing, but she began to grow apart from her mother and aunt, and at night she sat in her bed and thought of being alone with Michael in another place.

  * * *

  And then Michael’s somberness vanished as suddenly as it had fallen on him.

  “I’ve been long enough in a fit of sorrow,” he announced one morning. “That good lady’s dyin’—Mama Ada—was a hurt-in’ thing. Kept takin’ me back to my own mother’s death, back across to Ireland. Was why I couldn’t go to the wake or the funeral. There’s them that can take dyin’ and understand it and there’s them that draw up like a sleep, but they don’t sleep. I’m that kind. But it’s been long enough. I’m back to thinkin’ about the livin’, not dyin’, and tonight I’ll be takin’ the good doctor up on his invitation for the café.”

  His burst of exuberance startled Rachel. She looked automatically to Dora, as though seeking approval of the man sitting across from her.

  “Gettin’ away from the work’ll do you good,” she said. “You’ve put in a lot of days.”

  “I have, Rachel,” he replied. “But it’s been good for me. Good for my thinkin’. A man needs to leave somethin’ to be proud of and that fence is mine.” He laughed easily and drew butter across a biscuit with his knife. “Not much for a man to brag about leavin’, a fence, but it’s more’n most men I’ve known around the circus. Only thing they leave is sawdust and some broken-hearted ladies wonderin’ whatever happened to all the promises they’ve been told.”

  “When’s the cows goin’ in?” Dora asked curtly.

  Michael bit from the biscuit and chewed slowly. His eyes danced over Dora with amusement.

  “Why, Miss Dora,” he said, teasing. “Sometimes a tiny little bird voice tells me you’ve got your doubts about the finishin’ of that fence.”

  She dropped her eyes.

  “Ah, now, Miss Dora. Am I right? Could that be a bit of the truth? Why, I don’t blame you. Not in the least. Here’s this braggart of a fellow, always boastin’ about somethin’ or the other, tellin’ stories that’d shame the lies of a sailor, and he’s fussin’ around with a barbed-wire fence that another man could’ve put up in a week. Huh, Miss Dora? Am I right?”

  Dora’s lips twitched. Her face reddened in anger.

  “Why sure and it’s the truth,” Michael continued lightly. “I’ve done it bit by bit, turtle-slow, so’s I could sit at this fine table and in the company of three handsome ladies, and not have to be roamin’ about the world, steppin’ over elephant droppin’s in some canvas tent.”

  Dora’s eyes snapped up.

  “Don’t nobody know the truth better’n them that says it,” she said hatefully. “It’s not my house and not my business.”

  Michael leaned forward, toward her. The smile was still on his face.

  “Miss Dora,” he said softly, “I told you not long ago, it’d be soon. And it will be and then I’ll be off, but when I go I’ll be leavin’ somethin’ that’ll make me remember havin’ been here. That’s the whole of it.”

  An awkwardness crowded the room and the table. Sarah slumped in her chair and her eyes darted from Dora to Michael. She saw the intense war between them and for the first time she disliked her aunt.

  “Dora don’t mean nothin’,” Rachel said quietly. “Havin’ you around’s been good for us. And it’s not just the fence. It’s all the other things you’ve done to help out. I guess we needed it more’n we think.”

  Michael looked at her, into her, and she was with him again in the barn, with the storm driving them into a fusion of touches.

  “It’s a fine thing you’ve said, Rachel,” he replied. “A fine thing. And it does away with whatever gloom I’ve been in.” He turned to Dora. “Miss Dora,” he said, his voice soft and low, “could we be friends? Just for the short time left on the fence? Could we do that?”

  Dora had not felt his voice before; she did now. It spread through her and over her. She could sense it rising in her throat and covering her face. There was no portent of danger in him, no reason for suspicion.

  “I didn’t mean nothin’,” she whispered.

  “I know it, Miss Dora,” he said. “I know it.”

  There was a pause. Rachel interrupted it. She said, “That’s better. Much better. And it’ll be good for you to go to town tonight. We all feel that way. Don’t we, Sarah?”

  Sarah pushed away from the table and stood. She dropped her face to the dishes before her.

  “I guess,” she mumbled. Then she added, “I don’t know about them things.” She turned away from the table.

  * * *

  He walked in a strong, even stride along the road leading into Yale. It was good to be away from the farm. He had too long played his drama, with its laborsome, foreboding nuances of mood—which he wore like drab costumes—and the role had tired him. He needed another setting, another audience. He needed the company of men and the relief of their loosened imaginations. The doctor had said that Pullen’s was a café by day and a tavern by night, and a tavern was not only a place to drink, but a place to become known, a place where recognition floated around the room, as nondiscriminating as a whore selling attention. It was a place where men could be proud of being men and where there were none of the encumbrances of etiquette, with its feather touch and hammer heaviness. Michael was at home in taverns, even taverns such as Pullen’s. He was a master of taverns.

  It was a gray-light hour, in the first damp scent of night when the sounds and colors of day segued quietly into evening. The hour was clean and Michael was clean. He wore a shirt that had belonged to Eli. It had been washed and starched and pressed neatly by Rachel. Or Dora. He did not know which. It could have been Dora. He had broken her like an animal and he had been amused by her daylong, clumsy attempts to apologize for her suspicions. Dora would no longer trouble him, he thought confidently. Dora could become an ally, if he wished, if he used her properly. He worried only about Sarah. Sarah had been sullen all day, as though betrayed. He would have to be careful with Sarah.

  He thought of the shirt he wore and of Lester Caufield’s drunken remark about being arrested in Yale for being like Eli. He wondered what Eli had been like—outside the legend. Were they alike? Or had people forgotten Eli and remembered only the stories about him?

  Michael was certain of one thing: Lester Caufield’s easy gossip about Eli Pettit’s hidden treasure was true. It had to be. Rachel had very privately given him two wrinkled one-dollar bills before he left for Yale. For his evening, she had said. Because he deserved it. He knew Rachel did not have money for such gifts; it had to come from Eli’s cache.

  It was a gray-light hour and Michael stood at the outskirts of Yale and felt intensely alive.

  * * *

  The township of Yale had been built on a crown of black land that rose like a ripple across the Naheela Valley. It was a small town with exactly one dozen buildings fitting into two even lines—six and six—on opposite sides of the road. The Naheela River ran narrow and deep at the b
ack of one line of buildings and Yale Mountain rose like a billowed shirt behind the others across the street. The street through the middle of town had been paved less than a year and it gave the town a look of importance.

  Michael had no trouble finding Pullen’s Café. He saw Garnett Cannon’s Ford parked out front, beside a truck with dented fenders. He walked past the truck and looked at it curiously. He had seen it before, but where?

  Then he remembered: It was the same truck that had taken Lester Caufield into the mountains each morning and returned him home each evening.

  The café was crowded when Michael entered. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, smiling broadly, and surveyed the room. Two uncovered electric light bulbs hung from cords in the center of the room, casting severe streaks of light and shadow across the men hunched over their beer or whiskey. The sound of the room was the bass of many voices, and Michael felt immediately at home.

  “Irishman!” The voice came from across the room. It was Garnett Cannon.

  “Doctor,” Michael answered cheerfully, waving a hand. “Let me get my eyes about me and I’ll find you, wherever you’re hidin’.”

  The room fell silent. None of the men had met Michael O’Rear, but he was not a stranger to them. They knew of him, knew of the fence and the snakebite and Mama Ada’s healing and his kinship to Eli Pettit. What they did not know—could not know—was that they had been waiting for him.

  The doctor’s voice boomed from his corner table.

  “Well, by God,” he said. “Let a man with some refinement in his voice come in and say a word or two and it strikes the whole place dumb as a stroke.” He shoved his way among the tables and walked to Michael.

  “Good to finally make it in, Doctor,” Michael told him. “I think I’ve been needin’ it.” He accepted Garnett’s extended hand.

  The doctor pulled Michael beside him and turned him to the staring faces.

  “Gentlemen—and I use the term in jest—this fine fellow from the Shamrock Isle is Michael O’Rear,” he announced. “You’ve heard of him, no doubt, the way you gossip like women. He’s a cousin to Eli Pettit, a former citizen of our fair community and the only person I know of who could drink for a week and never pick up a tab.”

  A murmur of laughter rolled across the room. Michael knew the men were accustomed to Garnett Cannon’s condescending manner. He knew also the men enjoyed it.

  “Mr. O’Rear here is the mystery behind that fence going up around Eli’s field,” Garnett continued loudly. “Which means something will, at last, happen to that patch of land. If I remember correctly, Eli planted exactly one corn crop there and as Job Franklin would say, he didn’t make enough crop to wipe his ass on the cobs.”

  More laughter. Freer and fuller.

  The doctor caught Michael by his left biceps and squeezed hard with his fingers, feeling for the pulse of the artery. It was his own detection system, his test of a man’s nerve.

  “Of course, you know me, gentlemen,” he continued humorously. “I think Mr. O’Rear is a liar.” He moved his fingers on Michael’s arm, like fretting a guitar neck. “He’s a liar, out and out,” he added. “A man living in the company of three women would claim he’s cousin to the Devil himself, or even worse, to old Job Franklin over there. Job, where are you?”

  A hand lifted from a table against the wall.

  “Here’s Job,” someone shouted.

  “It is, indeed,” Garnett replied with dignity. “Not that I can see him without my glasses, but I can tell by the smell that it’s Job.”

  The room exploded in laughter.

  “Aw, shit, Doc,” Job said easily.

  “There’s a better word for it, Job,” Garnett called back. “It’s known as defecation. Now, I know that’s high-sounding but it’s the mark of an educated man to say ‘defecation’ instead of ‘shit.’ You’ll not understand this, of course, but that’s the difference between a man from Yale and a man from Harvard. I am a man from Harvard, educated in the finer things of life. You are from Yale, which is a condemnation unto itself.” He turned to Michael and looked seriously into his face. Michael could tell the doctor had been drinking heavily.

  “Mr. O’Rear,” Garnett said, “look about you. What do you see?” He swiveled his neck and peered into the audience of the room. “Well, I’ll tell you. What you see is the notorious and highly suspect missing link in man’s intellectual evolution. Before your very eyes, that’s what you see. And hard as I try, I find it impossible to elevate them one iota. I have dedicated my life to that task, and nothing happens. I have read Shakespeare to these men, recited Latin, given lectures on how to hold a teacup the way they do in Boston, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. But I try, don’t I, boys? I try.”

  “You try, Doc. Damned if you don’t,” a man answered from a front table.

  “And I’ll keep trying,” the doctor cried with evangelistic fervor. “Now that I’ve got another educated man with me, I may even succeed. What do you think, Mr. O’Rear?”

  Michael took one step forward and studied the men before him in mock seriousness. He said, “Why, I’d say you’re bein’ a bit harsh with it all. I take some pride in spottin’ good men and these seem like good men, all.”

  Garnett stumbled backward in comical surprise.

  “What?” he remarked in horror. “What? You’re saying they’re capable of learning? Is that what I hear you say, Mr. O’Rear?”

  Michael laughed and rocked on his feet. He liked the game.

  “That I do,” he shouted. “It’s a bright lot, unless I’ve missed my guess.”

  The doctor bowed graciously.

  “Teach them to say ‘defecation’ and I’ll buy you the finest glass of whiskey this condemnable place can offer, Mr. O’Rear,” he said.

  “Shit, Doc,” Job Franklin chortled from his table.

  “Job, you will never learn,” Garnett replied. “And it’s a pity, but, then, you’re a pity. Still, there may be others. Are you game for it, Mr. O’Rear?”

  “That I am.”

  Garnett stepped aside and waved his permission for the lesson to begin.

  “Now, men, it’s easy,” Michael said in his rich accent. “The word’s ‘defecation.’ Day-fee-cay-shun. Say it with me, men. Day-fee-cay-shun.”

  The men answered in unison.

  “Day-fee-cay-shun.”

  “Now, put it together, men,” urged Michael. “Day-fee-cay-shun. Defecation.”

  “Day-fee-cay-shun. Defecation.”

  Michael turned to the doctor and bowed from the waist.

  “I rest my case, Doctor,” he said proudly.

  The room vibrated with a wave of celebration. Michael watched the men intensely, studying them. They were like children and the doctor had consented to be their clown, their brilliant jester. It was, thought Michael, the only way Garnett could reach them.

  The doctor raised his hands and the room quietened. He paced before them with his head bowed and his arms behind his back. His face was furrowed in serious thought.

  “Gentlemen, I am truly pleased with you,” he said humbly. He stopped his pacing and turned to them. “When Roosevelt puts us into a fighting war with Adolf Hitler,” he continued, “you can march across Germany shouting, ‘Watch out Nazi, we’re gonna kick the defecation out of you.’ Except, in that case it wouldn’t be ‘defecation,’ but ‘feces,’ but that’s another lesson. Still, you will be the smartest soldiers in the entire world and before you return to a hero’s welcome and a ticker tape parade down the streets of Yale, you will be speaking five languages and you will be able to waltz like queers and you will know French wine from French whores. Most important, gentlemen, you will be capable of defecating like true continentals. You will defecate only on slop jars with ivory seats. You will insist on perfumed tissues for cleaning yourselves, and you will say ‘Excuse me, I must defecate,’ when the urge of the bowels hits you. Just knowing you makes me want to weep with pride. But do you really want to know what I think about that
demonstration of language you just gave?”

  “What, Doc?” Job Franklin asked, choking with laughter.

  “In a word, Job, it was shit.”

  8

  THE TABLES HAD been shoved into a tight V, fanning out from the corner of the room where Garnett had been sitting since early evening. Michael was at the table with him in a seat of honor at the point of the V. The doctor sat at Michael’s right, leaning in his ladderback chair away from the table. His hands were across his lap and he wore his felt hat forward, with the brim over his eyes. Michael could not see the doctor’s eyes beneath the lip of the hat, but he knew the doctor was watching him closely as he told his stories.

  “Now, lads, that’s the truth of it,” Michael declared dramatically. “Me and the lady caught in the same doorway, me pushin’ and the lady pullin’. It was a sight. A sight, indeed. And this gentleman of the law happens along and shouts out, ‘What’s the meanin’ of this?’ And I answers, ‘If we go to movin’ one way or the other, officer, we’re bound to end up bein’ engaged to be married.’”

  The room was dark with smoke, like a night within a night, and there was the smell of beer and whiskey and men sweating in heavy shirts. The laughter of the men listening to Michael ran up and around him like playful puppies lapping at his feet.

  “Well, hell, what happened then?” a man asked eagerly.

  “Why, then the lady makes to smack me and when she does, she goes tumblin’ out through the door and lands square on the policeman, she does. Bless the man. He was bowled over by her, her bein’ as wide as the Mississippi, and she came to rest astraddle him, like Moby Dick beached.”

  The men roared at the image and slapped the tops of their tables with their hands. Michael stood and waved for attention.

  “So, I go over to him,” he cried, “and I say—sweetly, mind you—I say, ‘Ah, Officer, could I be helpin’ you, now?’ And he says—the breath bein’ squeezed from him—he says, ‘Call the fire department, mon. There’s a fifty-pound tit a-crushin’ my skull.’”