During the Reign of the Queen of Persia

by Joan Chase

  Next to Rossie was Aunt Rachel’s door, closed; all the doors would be closed until late morning if no one disturbed the sleepers: Aunt Libby, Celia and Jenny’s mother, asleep in another room, soon to be alone because Uncle Dan would leave for the store. Gram in her room, alone, because she and Grandad had two separate rooms at opposite ends of the hall. And then Aunt Grace, Anne and Katie’s mother, alone too because her husband, Neil, was at their home in Illinois. She had come back to the farm for some reason we didn’t know. All the sleeping around us: we were aware of the peacefulness like a transforming mist, the waiting house rapt.

  Down the drive we hurried after Grandad, still fastening our pants, pulling on a sweater. We could see him in his black barn boots taking great strides, which Katie mocked. When we moved alongside him he didn’t say anything and we didn’t either. Grandad did not talk to girls or women. Unless he was fighting with Gram—then he yelled. That was one of the reasons we weren’t allowed to fight. “We’ve seen too much of that,” our mothers said.

  Grandad picked up his hickory stick from the lean-to shed and opened the wide-boarded gate, letting it swing for us to come through, showing us that he knew we were there. We fastened it with the tied sock. He was watching for that. Once we’d forgotten and the pigs got loose; for a long time after, Grandad wouldn’t let us near the barn. “Damned little hellions,” he’d snarl at us. Now we went behind him into the pasture although we couldn’t keep up and he never waited. We heard his voice calling out, “Sucky, sucky,” suppliant on the morning’s silence, seeming to originate from the wooded hollow; but already the waiting cows heard him and were coming toward us out of the faint dawn light, answering back to Grandad’s call, coming like his love-tamed creatures out of the mist. Other times we were afraid of the cows and ran from them, climbed high up into trees, shivering at their wild rolling eyes, but with Grandad we stayed close, letting them come all around us, and then we turned with him and started up the incline of pasture, going back to the barn that was still dark, with the lighter sky banking it.

  “Ho now,” Grandad would say every little bit, talking easy so as not to disturb them. His breath lifted into the air with the cows’ steamy breath, with ours, veils drawing from the earth, its sleeping solitude removed. “Blow away the morning dew,” we could remember Aunt Elinor singing.

  “Sweet Sal, Daisy, Belle, Matty,” they were Grandad’s gals; we could hear it as he urged them along, although they were going forward, as anxious as he. Golden brown or spotted black and white, they all looked pretty much alike to us. Gradually, as it lightened up, he said more to them and it was peculiar at first, always hard for us to know he was the same man who was otherwise so silent—sitting in his window corner up at the big house, listening to the radio and playing endless rounds of solitaire.

  “Git on over there,” he snarled to the heifers in the barnyard, who hadn’t learned yet; sometimes he’d strike them across their foolish gentle-looking faces and they’d leap up and scatter out of his way. “Now you just stand still here,” he’d murmur to the cow he was fixing to milk, and he’d draw up the old backless chair to sit on and settle the pail into the straw. “You always got to fight me,” he’d say, and soothe the beast with his huge knowing hands before drawing downward for the milk to come. “Now, now . . . you want old Jake to help ya, don’t ya? Ya little cross-eyed daughter of a whore,” his hands and voice stroking. Then we would hear the milk spraying, making the zinc pail sound. By then it was almost bright day outside the windows. Where the glass was broken we could see clearly through the broken webs and feel the cool fresh morning. Around us we could hear the exultation of waking creatures, so distant from the house full of sleeping women. “Stingy dried-down bitch,” Grandad cooed. When the calico cat slinked past he squirted milk right into her expectant mouth.

  Now Grandad was really talking. He had forgotten we were there. He talked to himself. Up at the house our mothers laughed about it, not for him to hear. To us it came natural enough from him, seemed another of the low brute voices, more felt or sensed than heard—the animals nudging their boxes, chewing, mouthing the grain Grandad handed around. “Yepee,” he said. “Snavely won’t git this one here. Not for free. He’ll have to pay the piper, all righty. Ninety myself, oughta bring at least double that, maybe he’ll take to your looks, though—string-bean yeller gal.” He’d slap the cow on her flank for emphasis and she glanced around as if she was ready to skedaddle. But Grandad was already her familiar and she only hitched her feet around on the straw and flicked her tail. Grandad was bigger than the cows, it seemed, bigger than all the other men we saw who came around the farm, except maybe Tom Buck, who’d played tackle in college. It was a bigness of bone, as though he were solid calcium with only skin stretched over him. Sitting on the manger ledge across from him, we half listened. “Now, Miss Betsy, I’m going to braid up this here nothing of a tail with a silky piece of ribbon and put ye on the block. I reckon the day will come when you’ll wish yourself back with ol’ Jake.” More than the milking business, Grandad was in speculation: buying and selling cattle for profit, wheeling and dealing. We’d seen him at an auction, taller, darker than anyone else, gypsy dark and silent, a man to be reckoned with. Until he got to drinking. Then, Gram told us, he’d lock in on some notion and outbid for pure stubbornness, more than once ending up in terrible fights. Or coming home with the most dearly bought, driest cow in the county.

  After a while of watching the milk foam to the top of the pails, Katie would lean over to Anne, pointing to the soft pink teat with Grandad’s hand on it, and say, “Someday somebody’s going to do that to you.” Anne was eleven, developing breasts already and ashamed of it, hiding when she dressed, so that Aunt Rachel would tease, “What do you think you’ve got there that we haven’t seen a million of?” Anne with her red hair and most of the time her face red, because she was what Gram called a wild hyena, forever excited, talking all the time, flashing with anger. Or ashamed. Katie said those things to rile her—she knew that, we knew that. Sometimes two of us or three would watch each other, watching the differences, feeling the differences working. We could watch Anne burning. She was big like Grandad, big-boned, way bigger than she should have been at eight, nine and ten. Katie was younger and quiet but in a sly way was mean sometimes, like Grandad too in her way, bad on purpose like an outlaw, and would sometimes say anything, do anything, pull her pants down for anybody to see—she had done that once for the colored boys who lived over the hill. No one had moved or laughed, them or us, all of us shocked. She drank out of the creek where the sewage drained. Once, on a dare, she took a barn spike and whacked Jenny with it, the wound requiring five stitches. Gram said it was Anne and Katie’s father, Neil, who made them act so wild.

  Now Anne was steaming, holding back but poised, so that we thought one more thing and she would leap on her sister and strangle her to death. It was like watching Gram and Grandad get ready to fight.

  But the moment passed without death. Anne flew up the ladder to the loft, running from her hate and shame, and we followed. From the distant rafters we heard the soft call of the doves. We forgot what had happened, running over the upper floor, making the cows edgy so that Grandad snarled out, poking with his pitchfork on the ceiling boards, “You goddamn kids. I’ll hide ye,” which made us go faster away from him. Into the hay. With all our scraping and scrambling we set the rafter birds into flight, wraithlike through the half dark with their sad and dreamy cries, the darkness glowing like a picture of night with the light starred through a million chinks. We lay on the hay, resting, suspended. We strained toward that deep night as if we might lift into unfathomable reaches of delight. “Hi,” we heard Grandad down below, “hold up there sweet little bitch-gal,” calming the beasts. Katie said, “Grandad loves Daisy,” and giggled so that we all started to laugh.

  We went up farther into the barn, to the top level, where the little slatted windows blazed in a luminous stillness. The sun was full up. We began flinging our
selves off into the darkness below the loft; faster and farther, spinning in the dust clouds we raised out of the hay, and then Anne began to bounce off the bales onto the second level and then to the wagon and the floor. We all did it. We would never fall. “Watch out,” we cried, and left the world behind.

  It was the city dummies who came to visit us sometimes who made mistakes. They’d try to outshow us, just because they were boys; we who lived there, who belonged there, knew where all the posts stood, the holes, and could have jumped out the windows into the valley of Lost Creek, far below, and never been hurt. Once a distant cousin came and Rossie sneered right off that he wouldn’t be able to make the leaps, even to the first level. We all showed our style, calling out how easy it was. But the cousin was more daring than we expected and he followed everything we did. Finally he swung himself on the grappling fork rope, higher than any of us, then let go. At the second-story beam he grazed against the side of the stacked bales, lost his balance and fell all the way, lying still and white with a thread of scarlet seeping from his mouth.

  “He’s died,” Katie said, as if we were just waiting for somebody to be dead.

  For a while after that we were forbidden to play there, but the cousin recovered and as Gram said, “All’s well that ends well. Damn fool younguns.” Soon they forgot us again, forgot to notice where we played or what we did, as long as we were together. We went back to the haymow and learned to ride the grappling fork better than anybody.

  We kept our deck of cards hidden on the rafter ledge, which we could reach only when the barn was full of hay, as sometimes it was for years, because Grandad was regularly selling off his stock and then changing his mind and starting over. Gram said she didn’t care what he did as long as he left her out of it. Katie started to talk a little dirty; she said there were poo-poos on the floor. And with that we were climbing up to the level where we stashed the cards, reaching up quickly into the dark rafters where the rats clawed their swift way. The limp sour deck of cards was Grandad’s and they smelled the way he did, as did the corner of the living room where he sat to play solitaire and nod off to sleep, spitting from time to time into a Maxwell House coffee tin. It was rusty and stank, Gram said, made her living room a filthy pisspot. Once when they fought over the can, Gram picked it up and headed out to the kitchen. She said she was not having it anymore; she said it was enough to put up with him. Grandad just kept sitting in the green plush chair, chewing. Then he aimed, spat directly where the can should have been. We heard the splat of it when it hit the wall and watched it dribble down onto the carpet.

  Aunt Grace was crying while she scrubbed at the carpet, but she didn’t make any noise; you could hear just the rag moving. Gram was still standing in the back doorway, screaming down the drive toward the barn, where Grandad had vanished as if swallowed up, his fist still raised after he’d snarled “Jezebel!” back at her. “Horse-piss, shit-face,” Gram repeated until finally she choked into silence and hurled the tin can after him onto the dirt.

  Our mothers wouldn’t allow us to talk like Gram though they did themselves when they were mad enough. When we were alone we did it for fun. It made us feel bold and powerful. In the same way we played strip poker; it was just something that came over us, the wanting to play, the knowing we were going to, only putting it off for a little, so we could feel the excitement working in us. We were breathing hard, trembling even, when Katie threw the crumpled deck among us. Jenny might say, “Maybe we shouldn’t.” But there was no stopping us.

  Katie started to deal the hands. Because the cards had been through so much already, it took a long time. “You’re slower’n shit,” Anne barked, tough as nails, grabbing the cards. Taking over. Whenever we acted movie scenes she had to be the cowgirl or the streetwalker or she wouldn’t play. Now she pretended she knew how to play poker, but she didn’t. None of us did. We just made up rules as we went along, proprietary and quarrelsome about them. We called the game five-card draw and used kernels of corn for chips, only we didn’t know what to do about them. None of that mattered, because all we wanted to do was undress in front of each other. First our barrettes and shirts went into the center, except Anne’s, for she was winning every hand. Then Celia called “Double or nothing” and Anne lost, which meant we could get dressed again, while she had to get naked in front of us.

  The smartness ran out of her face. She looked at us. Nobody could help her. We didn’t move even for our shirts, while the slants of light glinted off the silver hair clasps.

  Anne stood up. “I know what you’re thinking, about me.” Even though Celia was the oldest, Anne was more developed than the rest of us, who had hardly started. When she went into the bathroom she shut the door, would have locked it if she could. Rolfe Barker, a boy from down the highway, had taken her into a back room once and put his hands on her; had made her bleed. It was wildness in her that had made her sneak off with him into that far back room. Then he’d forced her. We were thinking of that now and the rats, swollen big as cats, that swam in the grain bins, maybe blood trickling in their fur, human blood, like on the posters tacked up at the fairgrounds.

  “Fraidy cat,” Katie whispered. She snickered.

  The blood made a splash over Anne’s face then and she leaned over to unfasten her sandals, when Katie, with that ornery streak aroused, scrawny as broom straw, snatched the cards out of the center, crying, “Fifty-two pickup.” They went sailing and spinning into the air, setting the birds in their restless circles overhead while the cards settled somewhere in the dark; last of all the six of spades fluttered back into the midst of us as though it bore a significant numerology. But we were having to tear Anne off Katie, who was on her back with her arms and legs flailing, blurred so that it seemed she’d grown extras, Anne holding her down with one arm and socking into her stomach. “You spoiled it,” she was yelling. Anne never knew what she wanted. Katie was moaning, “Doesn’t hurt, can’t hurt, won’t hurt.” We yanked Anne’s hair.

  “Caught ya,” Rossie said, and we nearly fell off the edge of the high platform, because we hadn’t put our shirts on yet and his face was grinning up over the shelf—he was getting his eyeful. “I’ll tell if you don’t,” his eyes were saying, coaxing us to do more; Rossie, even bigger than Anne and after us for peep shows all the time. “I’ll tell,” he said, knowing our fighting was forbidden. We laughed right out, the fight between Anne and Katie stopped for that time at least, although we knew it could start up again quicker than fire. We knew he’d never tell. Ha! He’d be the lucky one if we didn’t. And right then he started to roll a cigarette as he leaned up against the bales, every little while spitting off into the hay, clear spit, white like sea foam. But if Grandad caught him smoking in the barn we knew it would be something awful; something like the time we’d heard of when he’d rammed Uncle Gabe up into the radiator and banged his head time and again against it while Aunt Elinor clawed at his back and some of the others ran to the neighbors for help. We didn’t dare tell. When Rossie struck up the match the smoke was spiraling on the air. It smelled strong, streaming blue toward the high slatted window. He sat and stretched out his legs and then folded one over the other; he looked like a man himself, already taller than his mother, Aunt Rachel, and solidly built. It was scary to smell smoke in the barn. And we were afraid to tell.

  “Grandad’ll tan you,” Katie said.

  Rossie narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you.” That was the most powerful thing a man could say. When Rossie said it, it was like something he’d stabbed right into the center of us. In the quiet now, listening for him, we could hear Grandad discussing matters with his cows.

  “I’m telling,” that renegade Katie said, the impudent gleam in her eyes that made “tattletale” no abuse at all once she got going, that made no amount of punishment too much. Katie was the youngest of us all and we were supposed to watch out for her, take care of her. But we couldn’t do any more with her than we could with the weather or time.

  Rossie sat and began to pull
on each of his fingers so they made a popping noise. He smoked and spit. Then we heard Grandad’s talking coming nearer, toward the ladder, and Rossie looked as if he was going to swallow the cigarette and we left him, went flying down the levels and across the scarred planking and leaped out over the two-foot-high doorsill, transformed by the freshness, the immaculateness, whirled into the forgetfulness of each new moment.

  We went around the side of the barn. Inside, Grandad was telling himself, “By spring it’ll fetch a dollar.” Trying his best to outsmart the world, Gram said. She usually added that he’d never been smart enough nor had the foresight to bring in anything before it rained. Still Grandad had bought a pair of glasses at the five-and-dime store and there were evenings when he mumbled to himself over the farm journals, making notes with the stub of a pencil. Gram said it was typical of a man that now he was on easy street, where she’d put him, he figured to improve himself.

  Behind the barn was Grandad’s personal graveyard, boneyard really. Whatever he slaughtered or when one of the animals just fell dead, like Sally did when she got the blind staggers, still in the traces, Grandad would haul the part that was left to the back and leave it, and soon enough the buzzards and weather took care of it.

  “The smell is terrible,” his daughters said. “It’s disgraceful.” Their faces showed it, screwed up against him.