Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  He stood there looking at it and sighed a drifting cloud of a sigh. When he answered me his voice was funny. “Most perfect things are doomed,” he said.

  There were some stumps around, I think he might have cleared out around that tree to give it room to grow. And all of a sudden he flung the axe down and turned around and yanked me up and stood me on one of those stobs. There I perched like a bird, leaning on him bosom to bosom, with my arms around his neck, looking him fatally in the eye.

  When I kissed him, as I was obliged to do, he kissed back decidedly, and at length. And over, and over. He pushed back my hair and kissed me on the forehead and on down to my neck. Silent and slow-motion, like a dream, all foggy with our breath. Snowy woods had never been so warm. Anything he started then and there he could have finished, with all the help he needed.

  The whole matter was in that moment made absolutely clear. I had never loved any creature like I loved Ben Aaron Steele.

  “This is a mess, Ben Aaron,” I said finally, feebly.

  “I know it,” he said, and sighed, and kissed me long and hard again. And then he just jerked around and left me to hop off that stump myself, and he grabbed up the axe and went to flailing away at the trunk of a little hemlock.

  It didn’t matter a whit at that point what we trailed home with. It could have as well been a bare gum, or a dog hobble. Nothing was said, all the way home. We just trudged along, pulling the tree between us. When we got to the house he took it around to the back porch and made it a cross-piece stand. I was in the kitchen fixing dinner and I heard him out there sawing and hammering, singing, like he was almost unaware, to himself, “Come, pretty maid, don’t be afraid of the chill of the foggy dew…”

  He didn’t stay, he put the tree up in the sitting room and said he’d sworn to take dinner with Nam and would have to make swift tracks for the Forks. He went out, just hollering a casual goodbye, and rode off up the road.

  So I thought well, that’s it, till after Christmas. He will leave out for up north tonight. I had a sinking, let-down feeling, a little bit forsaken. The lights had gone out.

  And I knew that was ungrateful and wrong; nobody had more to be thankful for that Christmas than I; nobody was ever so blessed. There sat my baby child that I had given up for dead, cutting out pictures of toys from a catalogue to hang on the Christmas tree. There was Pet, in the kitchen, rolling out gingerbread dough, with not one protest passing her lips. I had this home; I had a family; I was, to an end good or ill, so much in love.

  We popped a lot of corn and made a lot of cookies and did up our tree, and if it looked odd, we thought it was still quite fine. That night we ate our supper by the fire, and read from a little Bible I had found in a dresser. The binding was all tattered; it had stamped on it in gilt, SAVANNAH MCALLISTER, CHRISTMAS 1860. I said I could imagine Daisy, and whatever other kids there were, getting a Bible apiece and an orange and a little box of ribbon candy at the Christmas program at Pisgah Presbyterian Church.

  She had brought that Bible down to The Birches, to live out the war; otherwise it would have burned. I wondered, did it go with her and Nam in that wagon to Virginia? It had a yellowed crocheted marker in it, marking a place in the Psalms. I opened it and the first line that jumped out at my eye was, “My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land…”

  I cringed at my depravity and turned as fast as I could to Luke and read firm and aloud about the Virgin Mary birthing in the shed. I put the kids to sleep, reading with such conviction as to purify my spirit. But when the firelight flickered on their eyelids, and their heads drooped, I laid the Bible aside and fell headlong into the sin of coveting.

  When I crawled into the featherbed, and the quilts warmed around me, I looked out the window for so long a time at the patterns that bare limbs made against the sky. And in that spell between sleep and waking, those things I’d dare not do in the flesh danced a jig with my imagination. I felt that weight and warmth in my arms and traced that perfect mouth, in my mind, with the tip of my finger. I undid imaginary buttons and rested my face on that broad hard make-believe chest and pressed my ear against the heart. And I heard it racing; it startled me awake. It was my own, in my ear, against the pillow. And I closed my eyes again, and studied that face that would fade in and away, and that mouth, before I kissed him, and slipped into forbidden places in my sleep.

  Ben Aaron, oh, Ben Aaron. It was only once to anyone, and surely not to everyone that such a thing was given. Who had been so much in love?

  It was Christmas Eve, the next day. We fed the mule and chickens such a bait as to last while we were gone, and Nam came down with the buggy and bundled us off to her house to spend the night. “Aaron’s supposed to have gone today,” she volunteered on the way. “But when Jasper brought our goose this mornin’ he said he saw smoke comin’ out of Sophier’s chimney. I don’t know what’s goin’ on with Aaron. She’ll cook HIS goose for a fact if he don’t get gone.”

  Nam sounded a little bit troubled about it. I was glad she couldn’t hear my pulse pick up. But when we passed by the palace, it looked cold and deserted. And then I felt the same. Till I saw Cy standing out in front of Tatum’s, with his head down, forlorn. Waiting. There were a bunch of wagons and mules out there while people shopped for Christmas and no one noticed Cy there but me. I kept it to myself.

  When we got in the house Nam put the wood to the stove and popped the goose back in, to get hot, and flew into the rest of the dinner. “Put some candles out,” she said. I lit one in the bay window, and just as I looked out I saw an old gray horse coming up the road. Well, I lost what little reason I had left and ran like a wild colt through the house to the back door. “Here here—is the devil got you by the tail?” Nam said. It was too near the truth to answer. “Ben Aaron’s come,” I said.

  He came on the back porch with an armload of bundles and I let him in the door. He was just beaming. I could feel the pink start at my collarbones and flow up to the roots of my hair. We stood there with our mouths open, looking at one another.

  “I thought you were gone,” I finally said, squeaking like a mouse. “I thought so too,” Nam said flatly, not taking her eye off her pots.

  “I’ll go directly,” he said.

  “You don’t get there and your name’s hog shit,” she said. She glanced at him sidewise, made a tight line of her mouth, and slammed her biscuit pan into the stove.

  He slumped and laid his burdens in a chair. “Just plunder for the kids,” he said. I went and put my arms around him. His jacket was cold. He still had snow on his boots. “There’s a shay comin’ in, in a little bit, over on the spur,” he said. “I’ve done told ’em I need to go up to Miller’s Creek Siding. Train’ll come along on the mainline there about 8:30 tonight.”

  “You’ll not make Boston by dinnertime,” Nam said.

  “I’ll make it by evenin’,” he said. “I’ll make my peace.” He bent down then and kissed me on the head. “Merry Christmas, sunshine,” he said.

  “It is the best I ever knew,” I said. And it was. It was one shining hour of happiness that we spent that night, all of us around that table, even with Nam in a sull. I couldn’t figure why she was worrying so about pleasing Sophia. That had not been, so I could tell, her usual priority. But in a little bit she brightened, “If I had just one Christmas left,” she said, “I’d thank the Lord for makin’ it like this.” I looked at Ben Aaron across the candles. His eyes were brimming. He turned his head politely and blew his nose. Nam reached and took his hand and held it between hers, and bit her upper lip. Down by the sawmill, a long sad whistle blew.

  “I’ve got to run,” he said. He motioned with his head, so slightly, for me to come outside.

  Out on the porch he hugged me to him just an instant. His arms were shaking. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and something glittered in his hand. It was a long gold chain with a sapphire on it the size of a plum.

  “I found this rock in Wolf Creek,” he sai
d. “The minute I saw that star, I thought about your eyes.”

  Quickly, he slipped it into the pocket of my apron and loped down the steps and out the gate. I watched him go off into the dark. Did your heart ever feel so empty, and still so full it could explode? That was me, in the happiest sad moment of my life.

  When he was out of sight I went back in to help Nam clear the table. She didn’t look at me and that was kind. I felt flushed and breathless.

  “Children, take all that stuff Ben Aaron brought you and go in yonder by the fire, why don’t you, and look what’s in it?” she said. I could tell she wanted them out of the way. And merrily they went.

  “Sen,” she said then, “stop it now. Stop it,” she said real low, ’most under her breath.

  “I can’t Nam,” I said. “I’d easier stop my breath. Or the blood in my veins. That man is more to me than life.”

  “Then in the Lord’s name stop right now. Go back down yonder to where your mammy lives, if that’s the only way. Only don’t let this go on. The direction it’s a-headin’, none of us can afford the price we’ll have to pay.”

  23.

  A QUARE THING HAPPENED TO DAISY

  NAM BROUGHT THE MATTER UP NO MORE, I GUESS NOT WANTING TO put a damper on our Christmas. The “plunder” that so occupied the children turned out to be not only theirs, as they got around to telling us. There was a package of deep wine silk dress goods, marked for Nam.

  “Aw, foot,” she said, plainly tickled. “That rascal knows I don’t wear nothing RED. The bare idee.” She sat there smoothing it over her lap with her knobby little hand, thinking what pattern she would make it up by, while the kids undid bundles of wool socks and caps and mittens and cartons of hard candies with roses in the centers and a flashlight apiece, which of course they commenced to shine around till Nam got after them for wasting all the juice. There was a baby doll with eyes that closed, and a wind-up cowboy on a bucking horse and then there was a book. Pet opened it and handed it to me.

  On the fly-leaf the giver had written, “Sen, when I saw this I thought at once of you—Your loving cousin B.”

  It was a book of fairy tales, with the most beautiful illustrations, pale-lit woods and translucent, fairy-creatures with drifts of scroll-like curls and filmy gauze dresses that floated on the wind. I had the excuse to sit and look down at it, for quite some while. I put my hand on the treasure in my pocket that I could never show to anyone.

  I did not know how many country roads there were to cross, between the Forks and Miller’s Creek Siding. But I imagined that I heard the whistle blow at every one, and on north, into the night.

  We went back to The Birches on Christmas day and started to set ourselves in order. It had been weeks that very little got done besides tending the sick. Hugh was still frail but at least he could feed and dress himself. Pet and I raked out the house and did a huge washing and cleaned out the ashes and the chicken house and the stable. When the children fell asleep on New Year’s Eve, waiting by the fire for the old clock to strike midnight, I sat and marveled at where that year had brought us, and where the next might lead.

  Nam had said if we felt up to it to come on back to her house New Year’s Day. My motives were not quite pure, of course; I was not drawn so much by the bright lights of Caney Forks, nor the ceremony of hopping john and greens, as I was by the reckoning that the traveler was likely to return. Though surely not alone.

  So we did our chores and early New Year’s afternoon, we borrowed a team from Coy Ray and went up for the night. I felt a sort of a splinter of wonder that Nam didn’t come down for us, I expected all the way to meet her coming. It finally entered my mind that she might be sick, though that never happened I was sure. When we got within sight of her house a pall of doom seemed to hang over it, sure enough. I thought Oh, Lord, what if she’s dead?

  Well, we didn’t even knock or holler, we just walked in. And lo and behold: What did we see but Ben Aaron and Sophia Steele and their daughter Celestine, sitting at the table while Nam fixed their supper. Now, talk about suspended animation, there it was. Six people in a room, and five of ’em with their eyes popped and their mouths open. Only Celestine did not freeze. At once she began bouncing on her chair, grunting, with her arms flung wide.

  I went around the table to her, and returned that crushing hug. Her father was sitting next to her. He arose, solemn as an undertaker, in his fine gray worsted suit with a gold watch chain dangling on the vest, and nodded. “Good evening, Seneca,” he said. “Happy New Year, sir,” I said, over Celestine’s head. She held me fast.

  Hugh and Pet were still standing stiff as pokers in the door. Hugh’s thin little face was all eyes. “Is that Sofa?” he said, into the void. I winced. I thought Pet would hit him, but he was too puny. She put her arm around him and pulled him to her.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Lamb, was it?” said Sophia, ignoring them.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Steele,” I said.

  “Well, well,” said Nam, in the kitchen door. “I’d done give you up.”

  “We weren’t sure you expected us,” I said. “I didn’t know you were expecting the, uh, travelers back.”

  “Seddown, seddown, I’m a-fixin’ to bring our supper on right now,” she said.

  So we sat, though like the chairs were porcupines. I stationed myself beside Sophia, and politely introduced the children, and prompted them to thank our cousin for the Christmas packages, which they did, by some wiser instinct rather guardedly, for facing Sophia they could see the curious lift to her eyebrows more clearly than I. Ben Aaron nodded and studied the table cloth intently.

  I hollered to Nam did she want some help and she said no, and Sophia proceeded to explain what brought them as supper guests. I never thought it was kinship.

  “Mr. Steele neglected to leave instructions for Françoise to expect us home this evening and that she should prepare dinner,” said Mistress Steele. “I assume he neglected also to tell her to come to work today.” Françoise, I was figuring, was the latest cook-of-the-month. Tomorrow or next day she would pack up her duffle—if she hadn’t already—and most gratefully go back to where she was Frances.

  Well, Nam brought on the bowls and platters of peas and rice and ham in red gravy, and stewed cabbage and all the stuff abody must consume for good luck in the new year, and her version of a fruitcake, it was layers and layers of thin cake with a filling of cooked dried apples. And then as an afterthought she wanted to know did anybody want some pea soup; she had saved back the soup from the peas before she put the rice with ’em, for hoppin’ john. She always loved the soup, the pot-likker, of anything the best.

  Sophia of course disdained the soup with a shake of her head. The sun came out on Ben Aaron’s face, for just a second. And then he said inaudibly, to the tablecloth, he didn’t care for any. So it was only Nam that had soup. Which she commenced to eat, slip, slip, from her spoon. Not slurp; more ladylike. Slip, slip.

  Ben Aaron had helped Celestine’s plate and was cutting her meat. Celestine was chewing on a piece of cornbread.

  “Celestine,” said Sophia earnestly, “please don’t make that noise with your soup.”

  All eyes involuntarily focused on the cornbread in the poor girl’s hand. Hugh opened his mouth and I glared at him. Nam took another spoon of soup. Slip.

  Now, I must think back here on how Sophia was arrayed, not that it applies to anything, but just to share the picture. I remember that she had on a white petaled cloche, to go with her white wool shift and redingote, her traveling costume. A regular snowbank. Or as I could hear Nam thinking, a walking bale of cotton. Anyway, Soph cocked her head and puckered her mouth into a knowing smile, and she said, “You know, I am thankful for my wonderful parents, God rest them. My mother was a regular LIONESS about manners. My most cherished memory of her is of the way she ate soup…”

  “Ahem,” said Ben Aaron. It was the most daring opinion he offered that evening.

  “My most cherished memory of my mother,” Nam sai
d brightly, “was that she knew how to make a pot o’ soup. Startin’ with the hog, if she had to. And thank the Lord she made her gals all learn.”

  It was a conversation headed for the shoals. Ben Aaron looked positively pasty. “Did you have a nice visit with your people?” I said to Sophia, steering toward (I thought) calmer waters.

  “Delightful!” Sophia said. “My sister and I are very devoted, you know. We have many common interests…” Before she could detail them, alas, Celestine turned over her tea. Nam bobbed up to get a towel but Ben Aaron said no, no, he’d do it, and he quietly cleaned it up, most of it was down the front of him anyway. Celestine’s eyes clouded; she was upset, but he squeezed her hand and calmed her and Sophia took up her recitation of holiday delights.

  “I’m sure Mr. Steele enjoyed visiting with my Uncle Melrose,” she said. “My uncle, you know, owns fifteen—is it fifteen, Mr. Steele?”

  “Um,” said Ben Aaron, surveying the wet splotches on his gray worsted belly.

  “Fifteen of the businesses that our lumber company here serves. Uncle Melrose was a partner of my father’s, you know. My father was quite big in furniture.”

  It’s in the genes, I thought real unkindly. “That’s fascinating!” I said, real sincerely. It certainly was. I was beginning to thoroughly enjoy our visit. But we had passed few more remarks when Ben Aaron got up and said, “Well, Madam, I don’t know about you but I need to go on to the house.”

  “Yes, we must go,” Sophia said. She heisted herself up and looked sidewise at me, and then coyly at him. “It’s been so long since we’ve been alone together. Even with my family, we missed our privacy.”

  Oh, good God, I thought. I kissed Celestine goodnight and got a deep, grave nod from Ben Aaron. He had the saddest eyes I ever saw.

  “‘Enjoyed my Uncle Melrose’ her old foot!” Nam said, when the door had closed behind ’em. “If Aaron didn’t run up there ever’ breath and tell that old poot what t’do, they’d be in the road, the whole mess of ’em. I couldn’t abide her of daddy, but he did have business sense, that I’ll say. He’d gyp the socks plumb off yer feet. ‘My Uncle Melrose’ can’t use the chamberpot without he calls up Aaron to come tell ’im how. My God, that boy, yoked to that dratted heifer!”