After Eli

by Terry Kay

  “I’m wantin’ to stay home,” he told Rachel.

  Home. In a single word he had announced his intention. Rachel understood, and she did not object.

  She stood at Dora’s window and watched him work, setting a row of posts that he had cut and split from the blackgum trees near Deepstep Creek. She smiled at a playful exchange between him and Dora as he sighted the straightness of a post against the fence line. It was an exaggerated mime of hand signals that Dora could not read, and Michael threw back his head in laughter and dropped comically to his knees. Rachel thought about Dora. She now followed Michael like a servant mesmerized by his commands. Michael had disarmed her with his voice and his gestures and manliness, and the suspicions that had soured in her for years had turned into a giddiness that was very often embarrassing. Rachel knew Dora was infatuated. She could see it in Dora’s eyes and in her innocent attentions, which could be easily defended as friendliness. Dora was like Sarah around Michael, and Sarah had become almost possessive in her jealousy if Michael’s attention wandered from her. Rachel wondered if Dora had dreams of making love to Michael. Her mind saw them together, embracing, and a quickening pulse of anger ran through her. She turned in the room and her eyes searched the furnishings for the ghost in her imagination. It was uncomfortable being in Dora’s room, she thought. Dora had always demanded privacy. She looked at the high bed, which had belonged to their mother and father. It was covered by a sunflower quilt she and Dora had made earlier in the summer. She stepped to the bed and touched it and she could see a shallow indentation in the mattress, the curled outline of Dora’s body in sleep. Her eyes wandered to the night table beside the bed, covered with a daintily embroidered cloth. Dora’s Bible was on the table, and a kerosene lamp. Rachel picked up the Bible and opened it and turned the pages slowly, scanning the passages of hope, or truth, that Dora had underlined in order to fix God’s mighty voice in her memory. Dora had always been afraid of God. God would roar fiercely over the slightest error, and his vengeance would be awesome. It was odd, Rachel thought: Dora did not talk of God, yet the specter of his presence hovered over her like an unblinking eye. Her anger was God’s anger; her suspicions, God’s suspicions; her bitterness, God’s bitterness.

  In the center of the Bible, Rachel found a yellowing photograph of her parents staring into the barrel of the camera in a stiff, formal pose. She smiled gently. She had forgotten about the photograph. She placed it back in the Bible and turned another page. Then she saw it: the paper shamrock Michael had given them. Her hands trembled and she quickly closed the Bible and replaced it on the table. She had found her ghost. She fought the biting anger that rose in her and she whirled contemptuously from the table and looked again out the window. She saw Dora holding a post that Michael packed solidly into the ground with the handle of a shovel. Suddenly, Rachel was ashamed of her anger and jealousy. It was such a small thing, she thought. Yet it was all that Dora had. And as great as her secret desires might be, it was all that Dora would ever permit. She was too afraid to take the man in the field. Dora needed only the illusion of being loved. The illusion could not hurt Dora.

  Rachel walked from the room and returned to her work on the quilting frame. She picked up a square of material and placed it over the linings that had been stretched across the frame and stuffed with cotton. Then she began to stitch. Her fingers moved expertly, bowed at the joints, darting nimbly at the material with the needle. She thought of Michael at work in the field. She remembered what he had said about staying at home, and the sound of it was good in its echo. She wondered if Dora’s God would be upset for the stirring that moved restlessly in her. Probably. If Dora asked him. She wished suddenly that she could feel guilty, that some outside force would condemn her with the same threat as Dora’s God.

  She finished the stitching of the square and looked for another. There was none. She pushed back the quilt divider separating her bed from the quilting frame and walked to the chifforobe and opened it and removed a bundle of squares that she had cut and sorted into a pattern. She looked at the quilts folded and stacked in the foot of the chifforobe. They were the first quilts she had made to sell in Fred Deal’s store and Eli had bought them from Fred Deal and given them back to her as a present. For Sarah, he had explained. Because it was right that Sarah should have them when she married. Rachel knelt before the quilts and touched them, and then she realized they had been moved. They were not stacked as she had left them and she had turned them only the evening before. She could feel her heart leap. She stood and looked at the quilts. How could it have happened? she wondered. She had been in the garden all morning with Dora and Sarah, gathering beans for canning. Michael had slept late and then left to walk into Yale. How could it have happened? Only Michael could have done it, but Michael was asleep. And why would he do it? There was no reason.

  She closed the door to the chifforobe and walked across the room, past the quilt curtain to the doorway leading into the living room. She looked at the bed where Michael had slept. Why would he do it? she asked herself again. Or was she wrong? Was something happening to her? No, she thought. There had been other things. Small disorders. A piece of furniture moved inches. Canned goods awkwardly stacked in the storeroom. All of it so insignificant, so unnoticeable, that it had never mattered. If the house, the farm, had not been part of her as her arms were part of her body, she would never have realized it. And it had happened since Michael had arrived. It had begun in the barn. Michael had changed everything in the barn—to clean it, he had explained. But the barn had been in order. Was she right? Or had his being there made her forget how things had been? Had his presence changed things without anyone recognizing it? The weight of his step as he moved through the house like a parade, could it not jar things out of place? She was suddenly confused. Perhaps it was only her imagination that the quilts were not stacked as she remembered them. She often turned them to fluff the wool stuffing she had used in making them. And the patterns were similar. Yes, she decided, that had to be it. She was mistaken. Michael had not bothered the quilts. He had slept. She was sure of it.

  20

  CURTIS HILL ARRIVED at the farm after supper, in the purple light of evening. He spoke politely to Rachel and Dora and Sarah and then asked to see Michael privately.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes, ladies,” Michael said. “But you’re not to be worryin’. I’ve made my promise: no more wanderin’ off to Yale, even if this good man doubles my wages.” He laughed cheerfully and followed Curtis outside, away from the house.

  “What’s the trouble?” Michael asked quietly. “Is it the Benton man? Is he swearin’ vengeance?”

  Curtis shook his head and began a deliberate roll of a cigarette.

  “No trouble,” he replied. “I was talkin’ to the doctor. He said you’d been to town.”

  “I have,” Michael admitted. “Came in today. I’ve been bothered about the boy. Just needed to talk it out.”

  Curtis offered his pouch of tobacco to Michael.

  “Smoke?” he asked.

  “Got my pipe,” Michael replied. He pulled his pipe from his pocket and began to pack the tobacco in the bowl.

  “Doc says you’ve seen Tolly up at the edge of the woods,” Curtis said. “Thought I’d see about it.”

  Michael held a match over the bowl of the pipe and drew fire into it. He sighed thoughtfully and his face wrinkled into a frown.

  “Well, I have,” he confessed. “But I said it didn’t bother me. I was just curious, that’s all.”

  “Where was he?”

  Michael motioned with his pipe.

  “Over there, across the road,” he explained. “Up near the tip of those pines. Just standin’ there, lookin’.”

  Curtis did not answer. He pulled from his cigarette and let the smoke seep from his lips.

  “No reason to worry about it,” Michael added. “I think he took offense when I suggested that maybe Owen didn’t stay in the Caufield house, like he thought. It could’ve bee
n a wanderer, you know, not knowin’ about the house, and findin’ it empty.”

  “Could’ve been,” Curtis agreed.

  “Anyway, I didn’t see Tolly today. Maybe he got tired and went home.”

  “Hard to know what Tolly’s doin’ most of the time,” Curtis observed slowly. “God knows, it’s whatever he wants to. Don’t guess there’s ever been anybody follows his own mind as much as Tolly. Anyway, I’ll ask him about it.”

  “No reason, like I said,” Michael replied.

  Curtis looked evenly into Michael’s eyes.

  “I know that,” he said quietly. “It’s for me, not for you. Just thought I’d stop in on my way by here and ask about it.”

  Michael smiled brightly and nodded and drew on his pipe in short, quick puffs.

  “Well, I’m glad you did,” he said. “Helps to look things over. While you’re here, come on in and have some coffee. We’d like the company.”

  Curtis dropped his cigarette and stepped on it.

  “Maybe next time,” he replied. “Gettin’ late. I better be goin’ on in.” He walked to his car and opened the door and slipped beneath the steering wheel. Michael could see a question in his face, but Curtis did not ask it. He started the motor and nodded and drove away.

  Michael watched the car as it turned left into the road leading to Yale. An alert signaled in his mind and he fidgeted nervously with his pipe. The instinct to run shot through him like a scream. He looked at the black line of trees where Tolly had stood and he remembered his own surveillance of the Pettit house and the house where Lester and Mary Caufield had lived. He pulled hard on his pipe and the hot tobacco seared his tongue and the pain calmed him. He began to hum softly, then turned and strolled back into the house.

  * * *

  Curtis guided the car to the side of the road by the bridge at Deepstep Creek and stopped the motor. He opened the door and stepped out and stretched and realized he was still bruised from the shove Tolly had given him. He smiled to himself. He was bruised, but not lame, like George. He saw the sudden attack again in his mind. God, he admired Tolly. Tolly did not give a damn that he was in the county jail when he moved against George. Tolly simply did not care.

  Curtis looked at the woods around him. He said, “Come on out, Tolly. I’m by myself.”

  Tolly stepped from the ink shadows of a tree. Curtis did not hear him move.

  “You find out anythin’?” Tolly asked.

  “Nothin’,” Curtis answered. “Didn’t expect to. You got him nervous, I could tell that.”

  Tolly walked to the bridge and stood on the heavy boards and looked into the creek swirling in silver pools below him.

  “What d’you think?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Curtis replied. “If I didn’t put so much trust in you, I ain’t sure I’d be out here right now.”

  Tolly kicked a pebble off the bridge into the water. It splashed with a thud.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” he admitted. He paused, then added, “Maybe.”

  “He’s moved into the house, all right,” Curtis said. “I saw the bed put up. Talks like he’s taken over, like it was his house.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure about that hole in the ground?”

  Tolly nodded.

  “Don’t know why I didn’t see it right off,” he said bitterly. “It was plain as day. The same hole that I found down by the Caufield house, and there it was in the woods and he was the one who made it.”

  “A walkin’ stick,” Curtis muttered.

  “What it was. I couldn’t figure it out before and wouldn’t’ve now, if I hadn’t seen him with it.”

  Curtis remembered the single step in the clay bank of the stream that ran beside the Caufield house, and the sharp, strange hole beside it. He stood beside Tolly on the bridge and folded his arms and stared into the water. The sound of the water was like a rushing wind and the creek banks squealed with the shrill violin cry of crickets.

  “How long we been knowin’ one another, Tolly?” Curtis said at last.

  “Long time.”

  “That’s right, and there’s somethin’ else botherin’ you that you ain’t said. What is it?”

  Tolly did not move. His face did not change expression. When he spoke, his voice was angry, but tired: “The man lied.”

  “How, Tolly?”

  “If the boy come at him, moved on him, with a knife, the Irishman couldn’t’ve stabbed him to the door with a pitchfork. The boy’d have to be standing against the door.”

  “I don’t know, Tolly.”

  “Did you see that pitchfork? Wadn’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

  Curtis looked up at Tolly. He was surprised at the age in Tolly’s face.

  “Nothin’?” he asked. “It wadn’t broke?”

  “Never had been,” Tolly said.

  “Goddamnit.”

  “The man lied,” Tolly said again.

  “Maybe. We better tell the doctor.”

  “Up to you,” Tolly replied. “I’m goin’ home.”

  * * *

  Michael denied there was any trouble with the sheriff—“Wanted to know if I was feelin’ all right,” he explained—but Rachel could sense his worry. She led him into a story of the circus and he stretched across his bed in the living room as the three women sat around him in chairs and listened attentively. It was a rambling story about a midget who wooed and married a woman with a trained dog act and then learned the woman always slept with the dogs in bed with her. And when he finished the story, he tucked his hands behind his head and fell asleep fully clothed while Dora was describing a dog she had had as a child.

  “He’s asleep,” Rachel whispered. “Leave him be.”

  “I told him to slow down some today,” Dora said. “Told him he’d be wore out.” She motioned for Sarah and the two left for their rooms through the kitchen.

  Rachel pulled a blanket over Michael. Even in sleep, his face was clouded with worry. She wondered why he was bothered, and if the sheriff had said something about Owen that had made the terror of Owen’s death return.

  She blew out the light in the kerosene lamp on the side table and crossed the room quietly to the doorway leading into her bedroom. She stood for a moment looking at Michael and then pulled the door closed behind her. She paused with her hand on the doorknob and then opened the door slightly. She knew it was a foolish thing, but the opened door made her feel closer to the sleeping man, and the opened door was an admission that no longer shamed her.

  She undressed in the dark and pulled the cotton nightgown over her and buttoned it to the throat. She stepped to the quilt divider that separated her sleeping from her work and parted it and pushed a chair against it. From her bed she could see the narrow slit of the opened door. She listened to the heavy, even stroke of Michael’s breathing and the need for him touched her with a feather lightness. She thought of Sarah and Dora. They were infatuated with him. They would not understand her need. She had had Eli. But Eli had been gone so long, so very long. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine Eli close to her, but she could not. It was Michael’s face that she saw. She pressed the palm of her hand over her abdomen and could feel the fluttering inside her.

  * * *

  Her body awoke suddenly, fully, with each of her senses tautly aware. Her eyes flew open and focused on the face above her, staring at her with a steel gaze. It was Michael. She moved instinctively, pulling the cover to her, her eyes flitting over him. Then she saw the knife in his right hand, its cold blade turned up. A short gasp caught in her chest and died in her throat.

  Michael signaled to her with the palm of his left hand. She watched horrified as he turned slowly in the room, peering into the darkened corners. She realized her hands were frozen in a frantic grip on the bedcovers over her.

  Michael stood for a moment, looking into the room and listening. Then he slipped his knife into its sheath on his leg. He eased onto the edge of the bed and leaned close to her.

  “I th
ought I heard a noise,” he whispered.

  “What—what time is it?” she asked quietly.

  “Three, I suppose,” he answered. Then: “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ve been a bit touchy since—” He let the sentence drop. He looked at her, then began to pull away.

  “Wait,” she said.

  She reached for him and touched him on his neck. He rolled his face to her hand and kissed it gently across the tips of her fingers. Her palm opened in a fan and her fingers danced slowly over his lips. She pushed her head back into the pillow and lifted her breasts high and toward him. He pulled away the covers and slipped his arms beneath her back, cradling her. He thought of Sarah and how he had held her exactly that way. His face dropped to her breasts and he began to nuzzle gently against her. She swallowed the sound that cried with its own voice and her hands moved to the buttons across the front of her gown. She picked awkwardly at the buttons, opening the gown to his face, and then she caught his neck with her hands and moved her face to kiss him, and her kiss was hungry and blind and she did not know that Sarah stood beside the quilt divider and watched.

  Sarah did not cry out. She said, very timidly, “Mama.”

  The thin voice of her daughter exploded in Rachel’s mind. She pushed hard against Michael, rolling him from the bed.

  “Mama?”

  Sarah reached for the quilt curtain and tried to balance against it. The curtain pulled loose from the ceiling and she sank to the floor on her knees. Her eyes were fixed in a paralytic stare on Rachel’s opened gown. She tried to speak again, but she could not breathe. A shallow, gagging whimper sputtered in her throat and she could feel the blood draining from her face. She fought to sit upright on her knees. A hot pain, like a blow, knotted in her stomach. She felt her mouth fill with a cold secretion. She wrapped her arms tight around her stomach and breathed deeply, quickly, swallowing the horror that screamed inside her like a piercing whistle.