Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  Tears rushed forth and spilled from Ada’s eyes. It hurt to try to stop them, so she let them fall. She was crying for so many reasons—because she was moved by the help and concern of people all around her, because she missed her parents desperately, because she was tired of being weak and hurt, and for reasons she feared to examine. Her heart hurt almost as keenly as her head.

  “There, there.” The doctor patted her hand again. “You’re healin’, Ada. You’ll get home soon enough. Let’s get these last stitches out. I’ll be gentle as I can.”

  He was gentle, and the hurt he made was bearable. When he was done, he packed up his medical bag. “I want you to keep on tryin’ to eat and drink. You’re too thin. I want you to move around a little every day, get outside on fine days and sit on the porch like you’ve been, or in the yard a spell—but don’t move about alone, and go slow. If there is a fine fracture in your skull, you don’t want to jar your head at all. Try to do a little, but not too much. You hear?”

  “Yes. I’ll be careful.”

  He rewarded her with a smile. “Good girl. Now, with the wounds closed up and the stitches out, you can have a bath, so long’s you get help gettin’ in and out of it.”

  That was the first good news Ada had heard in a while, and it broke apart the shell of her self-pity. “That would be wonderful. May I wash my hair, too?” She hadn’t washed her hair since she was last home to do it. Jonah had tried to wipe it clean, but the mass still bore traces of blood and mud, and it hung heavy from her scalp.

  It had only been the past few days that she’d taken on the task of cleaning her body with a bowl and a cloth. Jonah had washed her before that, until she was strong enough to sit up unsupported.

  Doc Dollens took off his glasses and slipped them into the pocket of his shirt. “I don’t know about that. Too much moving your head around. But if you can figure out a way, and be careful, the wound’s not a reason to stop you.”

  “Alright. Thank you.”

  “I’ll be up again next week, and we’ll see how you’re doin’.” Once he felt confident that she would recover, the doctor had stopped coming up every other day. That was a long, hard journey to make so often. He gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze, went to the door, and opened it.

  Jonah stood right outside. His arms were crossed, but when the light from the bedroom slanted into the dim hallway, he relaxed and let them fall.

  “She doin’ alright, Doc?”

  “She is,” Ada heard the doctor answer. “She needs to take it easy awhile longer, and be careful about her head. I told her to get out and move around, but not go anywhere without help. If the vertigo makes her dizzy and she falls, she might go poorly again.”

  While the men taking care of her talked about her health, Ada rested back on the pillows and closed her eyes.

  “Hey.” Jonah’s voice was at her ear, and his hand covered hers.

  Ada opened her eyes. She must have dozed off. “Is the doctor gone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “They’s playin’ outside. You want to go sit on the porch for a spell? I’ll bring Henrietta up.”

  Each day seemed to bring a little more blue to Ada’s mood. She was grateful for all the help and care, and she enjoyed being here with Jonah and his children, but she was ever so tired of feeling badly, and ever so confused about Jonah.

  He cared for her as if he loved her, but he held himself off as well. Even those nights that he’d slept with his arms around her, he’d held something of himself away.

  Ada felt it, too—the powerful draw to him, and the potent fear of that pull. Like they stood together at the edge of a cliff, holding hands, their toes hanging out over nothing but air. They were on the precipice of something, but neither of them would step their foot out and go over.

  Of course they hadn’t spoken of it. Ada could only interpret Jonah’s actions, and make conjectures about what feelings might propel them. For her part, every flutter of feeling for Jonah came with a pang of shame. George had been dead for only about two and a half years. Not so long ago, she would have been able to name the exact count of year, month, week, and day since he’d passed, but now she knew it only as ‘about two and a half years.’ Somewhere along the line she’d stopped keeping such close count, and she didn’t even know when. Was he fading from her? Was she erasing him? To make room for Jonah?

  That thought had jagged edges. She felt unfaithful, and she recoiled from the precipice. But every time she thought of Jonah, every moment she was near him, the pull forward, to him, grew.

  Lost in confusion, frustrated in her heart and with her body, impatient to get back to her life and reluctant to leave this cabin and its family, Ada felt heavy shadows creeping over her mood.

  Jonah brushed a fingertip over her cheek. Tiny sparks of guilty pleasure lit up beneath her skin. “Ada?”

  She realized he’d asked a question and reached back in her memory to find it. “Sitting on the porch would be nice, thank you.”

  He smiled—oh, how handsome he was when he smiled. “I’ll help you get dressed.”

  She had no clothing of her own here, except what she’d been wearing that day she’d been hurt, and she didn’t know where those were. Jonah had offered her his dead wife’s wardrobe.

  “I can manage on my own.”

  His beautiful smile faded, and Ada felt the pang of its loss. “The doc said ...”

  “I’ll be very careful, I promise. You can bring the clothes to the bed, and I’ll dress from here. I’d just like ... I’d like some privacy, if I can.” Some privacy, and some relief from the fretful fantasies that filled her mind when his hands touched her bare skin.

  “’Course. ‘Course you do. I’m sorry. I’ll get you a dress.”

  A week later, the vertigo had receded considerably. Quick turns of her head or body still made it flare and sent the world tilting like a carnival ride, but the constant, low roll of nausea had passed. Ada was able to walk on her own for short distances and keep a straight line. Jonah fussed as if she’d been unconscious only days earlier and not three weeks, but she was firm, and he gave her a bit of room to improve her strength.

  The end to the nausea allowed her to eat better as well, and she was doing what she could in that way to regain her strength. Jonah was a good cook, and they’d had more than his cooking besides.

  In the three weeks of her recuperation, they’d had two visits from Red Fern Holler, bringing up prepared foods from the people there and small handmade tokens from the children as well. The men had used the opportunity to cut in a fresh trail. On the second visit, Mr. Cummings had handed Ada the McDaniel family Bible—sent up by her parents. That Bible had done more to lift Ada’s spirits than nearly any other thing. She’d been so worried for her parents and so lonely for them. They were old, too old to be left on their own, too old to be burdened with worry for her. That Bible, the most special book from her father who’d never learned to read and her mother who’d lost the ability, said that they were well and waiting for her.

  She wanted to go home to them. The farm itself, she didn’t care for one way or the other; home had never been a building or a piece of land to her. If it was a place, her home was bigger than the little plot her parents owned. If her home was a place at all, it was this whole mountain range, from its peaks to the long tendrils of its foothills.

  But her home was not a place. Home was people. Her people.

  Ada sat on a rough timber bench behind the Walkers’ house. Jonah was chopping wood, off somewhere nearby but out of sight, and the rhythm of his work made her feel calm and a little sleepy. She watched Elijah and Bluebird playing with the baby goats in the small goat yard. The little kids bounced and bleated, and Bluebird’s joyful giggles joined them in a chorus. Elijah played, too, running so the kids would chase him, falling down so they’d climb him and nibble his hair. She was glad to see him so light and happy.

  He was usually a somber boy—loving and frien
dly, but serious and keenly aware of his responsibilities and of their weight. He was very like his father in that way. But unlike his father, he burned with the desire for more in his life than this mountain. He’d never said it out loud in such clear words, but every book he chose was about the world beyond, and the ways to get there. He wanted to know about trains and airplanes. He wanted to know about the ocean, and cities, and other countries. He wanted to read stories from faraway places—adventure stories and mysteries, and things even stranger. Ada had once brought up a pulpy magazine called Amazing Stories, full of bizarre tales about Martians and other alien creatures, and Elijah had nearly wept when it was time to return it.

  She’d intended to bring him up more like it, but Mrs. Pitts took that one out of circulation and forbade any others. She thought they were perverse.

  Elijah wanted away from this mountain. Ada wondered if he would ever make the effort, or find the courage to tell his father of his dreams—or recognize them himself.

  Bluebird, on the other hand, at least at this sunny age, was happy just as she was. She loved happy stories and silly stories and stories about princesses. In the humble, tattered world of her home, she was a princess; her father and brother—and Ada, too—treated her like their most precious treasure. She did her chores happily because she didn’t like being left out. But she didn’t feel them as responsibilities. Ada envied her a little, to be so joyful and carefree, so indulged and yet unspoiled, to feel so pampered despite how little this family had.

  Easing herself from the bench, Ada walked carefully to the goat yard fence. Henrietta, who spent her days wandering loose around the house but never going out of sight, shuffled lazily to her. She was fully recovered and had been heartily enjoying her respite from the hard and nearly constant work of carrying Ada all over the mountain.

  “Hey, girl,” Ada crooned, and her horse nickered and nudged her shoulder. Ada grabbed a fence post to be sure to keep her footing. She stroked Henrietta’s soft nose, and they watched the children playing tirelessly while the adult goats clustered in a corner, munching weeds and staring at the little ones with weary tolerance.

  After a time, Henrietta ducked her head and stuck it in a pail that one of the children had hung on the fence post. It was empty, but when Henrietta raised her head again, her nose was wet. She huffed and tried again, snuffling around the bottom of the pail.

  “Thirsty, girl?” Ada still wasn’t supposed to walk around without someone with her, especially not outside where the ground wasn’t smooth, but she felt strong and stable enough to go—slowly—to the well and fill the pail. “C’mon. Let’s get you some water.”

  She left the children to their shenanigans and strolled to the house. Trailing one hand along its weathered boards as an extra caution against dizziness, she followed the house to its corner, where the well and the pump were located.

  Most of the Walkers’ land had heavy tree cover, and the sun dappled over the house. But at this end, the clearing that served as the center of the holler left a wide slant of unobstructed sunlight. The garden patch had been placed to make the most of it, and of proximity to the well. The woodshed was on this side of the house, too.

  Ada arrived at the corner of the house and squinted into the suddenly bright sun. She lifted her free hand, the one that had brushed along the house, and shielded her eyes. And then her breath and heart and mind stopped.

  She hadn’t noticed an end to the rhythm of his work, but Jonah was no longer chopping wood. He was at the well, shining in bright sun. His suspenders were loose at his hips, and his shirt—a worn cotton with long sleeves and a frayed hem; he’d cut the top off a union suit that had given out at the knees—was draped over the stone side of the well.

  He was bare to his waist.

  Many nights since she’d been hurt, he’d held her closely. Many times, he’d supported her body with his, when she needed to sit up and couldn’t, or when she’d been able to get up but couldn’t walk steadily. She’d felt his strong chest many times in these last weeks. His underclothes were worn and snug, too, and left, she thought, little to the imagination. She thought she’d known what his body would look like.

  She had not.

  Now she stood, stunned to a stupor, with Henrietta just behind her, and watched as Jonah dunked his head in a bucket. He pulled back, tossing his head so his wet hair flew back, arcing droplets over his body. He combed his fingers through the dark mass and then scooped his hands into the bucket, filling them with water to splash his face and scrub over his chest, his belly, his shoulders, under his arms.

  She’d known he was strong—lean and sharp-jointed but well muscled. But she’d been too naïve to conjure the true image of it in her mind. His muscles rippled. Each movement he made shifted planes and ridges through his torso, his arms.

  In these weeks, she’d been deeply confused by her feelings for this man. Desire and guilt braided together into a rope that might choke her to death. What she wanted, what he wanted, it was all too snarled to make sense of. But not right now.

  Right now, Ada wasn’t the least bit confused by her feelings. She knew exactly what she wanted, and when she wanted it. This feeling had been gone from her for about two and a half years, but it was as familiar as the beat of her own heart, and so powerful she quite honestly ached. From her hips to her knees, she ached, so hard she moaned and crossed her arms over her throbbing belly.

  She’d forgotten she was carrying a bucket, and it crashed to the ground.

  Jonah flinched and looked over. Seeing her, he froze.

  They stood like that, locked in place, staring at each other. The water droplets over Jonah’s beautiful body dazzled in the sunlight as if he were crusted in diamonds. They spiraled and sparkled.

  Ada was dizzy, more each second. She couldn’t fall, or she might hurt herself badly again. She threw out an arm and grabbed the corner of the house, but it offered a poor handhold, and the whole world was beginning to twist and tilt. She slumped toward the wall, hoping it would break her fall.

  But then Jonah was there. He swept her into his arms. Bare arms, bare chest. Sun-warm and water-cool.

  The world went end over end.

  She was in bed again when she woke, lying on the coverlet. Still dressed in one of his wife’s dresses—she’d been a bit bigger than Ada, taller and bustier. The room was bright with sunshine, and Jonah’s hair was still thoroughly wet. She hadn’t been out for long.

  He was still shirtless, too, and water dripped from his hair to his shoulder and down his bare chest, snaking slowly through the dark hair there.

  “Ada,” he said when he saw her open eyes. He crouched beside her. “How you feelin’?”

  “Silly. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. But you’re pushin’ yourself too hard, darlin’. Don’t be in such a rush.”

  Another drop of water left his hair and began a journey down his body. Without thinking, Ada reached out and drew a fingertip along its trail.

  Jonah drew in a sharp, short breath. She met his eyes, and again found herself trapped in their dark depths.

  “Jonah,” she whispered. That intense need was still on her, smothering guilt with desire and bringing clarity to her thinking. She wanted to feel his body on hers. If there would be guilt, if there should be shame, she was willing to feel it all later, if she could feel his body on hers right now.

  Still trapped in her eyes, he leaned closer. He licked his lips. Ada licked hers. Anxious hope fluttered through her head like vertigo, but she was lying down and wouldn’t fall.

  He got so close she felt his breath over her lips. His hand came to her hair, and his eyes slid that direction. “Your hair’s so pretty,” he murmured. “Like fire.”

  Hair like fire, eyes like water.

  Ada gasped and shrank into the pillow as the sound of George’s voice filled her head.

  Jonah jerked back like he’d been grabbed from behind. For a moment he froze again, blinking. Then he stood. “I gotta check on
the children.”

  And he left the room so quickly he might as well have run.

  All the confusion, the shame and loss and guilt, that had been tamped down by her need rushed back. Ada closed her eyes and let it all besiege her.

  That evening, after the routine that had developed of supper, and then reading time with Ada and the children, and then bedtime for the children with their father—they slept in their own beds now, on the second floor—Ada went to the bedroom she was still sharing with Jonah. He didn’t always hold her at night now, but they always slept together. He wanted her on the bed, because she was still recovering, and she didn’t want to displace him from his own bed. Sleeping with him was yet another muddle of feelings: the warm safety and comfort, the burgeoning desire, the guilt of moving on, and the uncertainty that they were moving on at all.

  She washed up and finger-combed her hair—she’d washed it twice since Doc Dollens had said she could, but she hadn’t done much of a job of it; washing one’s hair was difficult when moving one’s head made one dizzy—then slipped into the nightgown she’d worn the past few nights. Maybe because she’d started wearing his wife’s clothes before she’d been conscious to know it, Ada hadn’t felt any qualm about wearing them at all. They were not hers, but they were all she had, and Jonah had offered them readily.

  No qualms, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel Grace Walker’s presence in every room of this house, particularly this bedroom. She set the hand mirror down—Grace’s, no doubt—and looked up at the samplers hanging side by side on the wall. The faded wallpaper curled down so that its corner nearly touched one of the frames. Candlelight flickered and made strange shadows of the loose paper.

  One was a wedding sampler, with the names Jonah and Grace stitched inside two linked rings with a cross above them, and a date eleven years ago stitched beneath it. The other marked Elijah’s birth, in April nine years past. A little blue baby basket adorned the center of that one, with the name Elijah Moses stitched beneath it.