by Diane Munier
I let him cry it out some. I bitterly thought of how Addie let me cry it out that morning, before she put the knife to me.
He quieted pretty soon, sniffing and such. I pushed him back and went to my box for the clean handkerchief Ma kept there. I gave him such and he blew it out. Then I took it and commenced to wipe his sweaty face. We sat on the bed side by side, a fine pair. “Feel better?” I said.
“No sir,” he said, every now and again shaking through.
“You know you’ve got to go with your ma. You got this one chance to see your grandma.”
“Why do I want to? She’ll just die. I want to go with you, Tom.”
“And I say you can’t.”
“Don’t you want me to?”
“Of course…I want you to. I don’t want to say good-bye, but that’s how this life is sometimes. You have to be a man about it. If you aren’t, you’ll just be a crybaby all the time, and you won’t be helping your ma.”
“I’m not a crybaby,” he said strongly.
“Then stop crying. It ain’t easy to part ways. But look here,” I went to the table and got the pouch. “This is marked with our company,” I said. “I want you to take it.”
He took it in his small hands, still sniffing. “Thanks.” Then he looked at me in earnest, “Can I have the bayonet, too? You said it was useless.”
I had a flashing picture of what he did with the stick at the church that day. “No. You’ve no need of such.”
“How many did you kill with it again?”
“None,” I said. “I used it to roast my chow.”
He laughed. “Nah!”
I laughed too, though it was no laughing matter for a few other pictures flashed in my mind, faces looking surprised and stuck. I didn’t want to think on it.
“Never mind about it. Maybe we could write sometimes.”
“Where would I send it?”
“Give it to Ma. When I’m fixed I’ll let her know.”
“Then when I’m big, I’m coming west to live with you, Mr. Tom. Ma says she don’t know you’ll ever visit.”
She had me packed up and gone already. What a fine kettle she made, banishing me from everything. It wasn’t my confession, she did this before I ever told her the worst thing a man could do. But in the good book, even Cain had him a wife. “Go on home now, Son.”
He threw himself on me again, crying. Lord have mercy couldn’t she know what she was doing to us? I walked and carried him like a baby monkey, though he had some girth to him from over the summer and Ma’s good table.
Then it hit me, I wouldn’t see her again. I had not held Janey one more time. I had stalked off, needing the three miles to bleed off my foul anger. And it was hard to just send Johnny off and know he’d forget me soon enough. “Come on,” said I. “I’ll see you home.”
And on the walk back to Addie’s farm, I had me a thought or two. I would see some regret in her at least. Not that pity of this morning, but regret. Whatever she said, we had shared something. She admitted it was real and true. Her husband never fought, but she was something to stand against, I tell you. But I was a fighter. Cussed stubborn when engaged. Had I retreated too soon? Was I just going to hand over to this fella Quinton Varn? I had not even said my piece to this dowager. This put some spine in my step. Johnny ran most the way to keep up. Leastways he wasn’t crying anymore.
At Addie’s farm I got my knives, strapped the short one to my boot and took the big one in hand, and I went straight to the field. She was out there, her hair wrapped in a bandana. We did not take our women to the fields, though many did. Women kept many of the farms going in the war. But Pa did not believe a woman should take on the curse of Adam along with her own. He bore this for Ma out of love, he would say. So we did not allow such as Addie was doing now. But I was not sorry she was near.
She had brought water. Lord I loved her, plain and true. But she made me mad, so mad. “I’ll have some of that,” I told her, marching up, Johnny behind sulking cause I wouldn’t let him have a knife for the corn. We’d been through that and the stitched finger.
I took the dipper and drank it down, my eyes on her the whole time, and her just a little uncertain, and surprised to see me. I wished I could see a little joy at my return, but not her. Don’t give a man hope or nothing. Just bed him in the field and send him packing, that was her. Seth and Quinton were chopping, though Quinton did not arm his boot so he could only use his hands.
“Missus,” I said, eying her over like I’d had no raising. I wanted to shame her I reckon. I wanted her to know that I was seeing beneath that little thin dress. I had knowledge. I handed her the dipper, letting my hand touch her, go to her breast and graze her there.
Now I did get something, a spark in those dark eyes, to match the one in my hand, for it was that way when I touched her. Then a quick lick of her red lips.
I could be unpredictable too. Lord, she had no idea. She turned from me then. I huffed a sound, so she’d know it didn’t hurt me none she’d turned away. But it did make me mad.
I looked around. Old Cousin was a fool. I’d had her in the night, and there he was chopping away, just trying to live through it. I could a took her and he wouldn’t have noticed so locked in his own battle was he.
I eyed where I would begin. I didn’t want some greenhorn taking my hand off with the knife, so I kept a piece away from him. And I left her regretfully. My anger was rising like a spring flood.
Once she set the crock of water in the wagon, she was back, making sheaves. She and Johnny chattered about it as they worked. I heard my name from Johnny’s lips, but I could not make out his words as I was leaving them behind. And even this hurt. Even this distance bothered me. I wanted them. I wanted her in my arms. I had yet to crawl from the feel of her on the ground this very day, this very day damn it. Did she shake it off already? Shake me off like some bug? I had her taste. Still her smell. And her feel. She had stood and shown me all she was. Did she think I would share? Would she make him the same offer? Had she?
I hacked at those stalks, I kicked at them, too. There was no keeping up with me. There never was when I got going and now I had the anger. I worked some that way, all fury. And I thought again of what I’d told her, heard myself saying it, about Garrett, about the bullet. Long time passed. Sun lifted high.
I knew what I would do, I left off. I threw down the knife. I walked with heavy purposeful steps to where she was. She was a good ways off, bending over gathering stalks. She straightened and her arms were full. Her eyes grew wide when she saw me, and she stood there still, watching me get closer. I knocked those stalks out of her arms, and I looked at her. Then I put my hands on her. She didn’t fight. So I pulled her to me, but it was not what I thought.
I kissed her gentle. It was all right there, all the feelings, and her mouth so sweet. I pulled back then, and she was still staring, confused, but paying attention for sure.
I let her go then. I took a few steps back, grinning at her, but it wasn’t in fun, but something more, and painful as a meat-hook in my chest. And I went back to my knife. Back to the corn. And I started in.
We went to the house for dinner. Lavinia had set it under a tree. So we gathered there and ate quick. I was standing. I shoveled, cause that’s how we ate when there was work or war.
But this one, he was sitting at the base of the tree, leaning there, being served by Lavinia who, I noticed, hung on everything he said like it was sunshine coming out of his mouth and not his ass.
And he liked that she liked it so much. “Adeline,” he called, “remember that one old gentleman from Boston.” Well, on he went and it was quilting bee talk for all the sense it made. I kept my eyes on Addie when Johnny wasn’t pummeling me with talk.
“What if I just wore me a knife on my shoe?” he asked. “I need some boots like yours, Mr. Tom. Reckon I could get me some, Ma?”
Cousin interjected something about how they carried boots at the store and he would be able to pick him out some when they a
ll went home. I was proud when Johnny said, “No thank-you.”
I knew it was a mite disrespectful, and Addie did say, ‘shame on you Johnny,’ or some-such, but he looked at me then as if to offer his aid in this battle, and I gave him the eye, for I was not drafting troops.
It grew quieter then, as if battle lines were being drawn, or trying to be drawn. I was not reasonable. I had given her no chance to say if she wanted a killer like me forcing affection while she toiled like a field hand. I knew I was toeing over. I knew it. And I cared not a pig’s fart.
Cousin was not better than me. I was not much good, on the inside, but I could work hard and I knew how to protect what was mine, if it would just give over and be mine, that is. Yet I had failed to protect. I had become the menace in the end. What if I did that here? I had wanted to kill her only that morning. But if I had, I would die from grief. Not that it wasn’t in me. I was a blackard, I knew that, but to do in another, and this one a mother, an angel, my angel…then Lord take me. Why did you let me live anyway when so many more deserving didn’t. And before I’d hurt her…I’d eat my Enfield for dinner. I would.
Then I knew something. I remembered a time, not long ago, when I planned to go west and disappear one way or another. If I couldn’t find some spark out there, some reason, I figured I could go off and no one would know, they’d just wonder sometimes mayhap, what become of me, but they wouldn’t know. They could imagine something good.
That’s what going west had meant. Then after her, it went away. She was my west and all other directions, she was my look-see. And now I was rejected. Lord she made me furious.
She came near me, her holding the tea, asking me if I wanted more. I would always want more, is what I wanted to say, but Johnny was near, so I held out my cup and she filled it. There was grime on her neck, and a finger of sweat clearing a path as it went toward that valley over her collar-bone. She was too red, and it made me angry that he hadn’t stopped her from the field. I blamed him. He was blocking my path like a bovine in the road, one that stood there calling out for what was mine.
“You’re burning,” I said. They all looked then.
“I always do. Can’t take the sun like…like you.”
“Then stay in the house,” said I about as friendly as dysentery.
I could feel Cousin on high alert, ready to try…and I mean try…to put me in my place.
“I…there’s so much to do,” she said.
“And most will be done in the barn. Once those sheaves are gathered, there’s days work to be done, but it can be done sensible in the barn. No need you getting burned like some hand. You are a woman with a baby to care for, and all the many things.” I could feel myself letting go then, and I turned to Cousin, “What makes you think you got the right to come in here, just show up with no invite, no nothing, and throw your money around like some kind of savior? Where were you when they were struggling during the war? There ain’t a piece of machinery on this place. It’s the poorest excuse for a farm in this county. So where were you all that time? Working the old man for this woman’s money? Stepping in to be the good son, same as you’re doing now? Stepping in front of a man standing there like he ain’t there? You think you’re better than me? Don’t matter what you think. You ever bring a baby into this world? You got the sand to make one I’ll bet, but you sure wouldn’t be around to bring it in. And how about this woman ain’t even got a stove of her own, but has to break her back cooking over a hearth, and that chimney ain’t even proper, or high enough to pull, and Johnny needs a space of his own, and she didn’t even have a proper shotgun to defend the family with. Lord knows you been sitting on what’s hers back east and now you got the pluck, the…..” She’d been pulling on my arm, and telling me to stop but I was just now realizing. Not that I would of. Stopped.
He had gotten on his feet.
“Let’s have it out, you and me. I ain’t going to let her go with a man I don’t even know can stand his ground. Let’s see what you’re made of Cousin when you don’t have the women fawning over you and shining you up and when you don’t have another man’s shoes to fill.”
He was red in the face. So red. “Pistols,” he told me. “Fifty paces.”
I laughed. “What? Fists! One pace off.”
“Swords!” he said.
“Knives and skins!” I yelled. But I didn’t need anything to kill him with but my bare hands.
Johnny stood and he was yelling. Not good yelling, just kind of yelling like a loon. He stood in front of me, his mouth open wide at Cousin, just screaming.
Addie was trying to stop him, but she looked at me frantic. I turned him to me, but he couldn’t see me, he was just yelling. “Johnny,” I said shaking him.
He stopped then, looking strangely at me, recognition coming slowly. “Tom!” he cried, throwing his arms around me.
He cried and cried and I picked him up for frankly I was wearing him like a shirt. Saints alive, he’d also peed his pants.
“You see where this took us?” Addie said, to me, not Cousin, but me!
I walked away with Johnny. I took him to the poor excuse of a barn, and walked him around in there.
In time he went to sleep, and I laid him in the hay then. Time was wasting in the field, but I didn’t have the peace to leave him. Someone came, but it was Cousin. I had hoped it would be Addie and we could have it out, but it was him.
“May I have a word with you?” Cousin said all grave in the face.
I looked at Johnny, but he was out, so I walked right outside the door. Cousin stood there. We were the same height, though he was thinner. I folded my arms over my chest waiting.
“I…I want to thank you for all you’ve done for this family. I realize I’ve been remiss in doing that. The night I thanked your family…you were hurt and you weren’t present. I have neglected my duties, as well as my manners. I hope you can forgive me.” He stuck out his hand, and I admit, it was a mess, cut and blisters open and reopened. It gave me some small satisfaction to see it. This was the life he’d left them to. Now how did he like it?
When he saw I wasn’t going to shake it, he let it drop.
“You’re right to question me. It’s fair,” he said, as if I needed his blessing or something. I just let him go on.
“I don’t agree with the way things have transpired either. We’re more in agreement than you might think. That’s why I’ve come. When we saw the story in the paper you can imagine how harsh it was for Mother to find out about Richard’s murder. I can’t blame Adeline.”
“You’d best not. Not to me or within my hearing. And her name round here is Addie. Or Missus.”
He nodded quickly. “I have never blamed her for anything. Not even when she stood up to Charles. I understood. I only wish….”
“You had a willy as big?” I said.
He flumed red at that. I wished he’d come at me. We were not so in agreement.
“Her husband didn’t. He was in the doldrums that one.” She had compared me to him. I would never heal from that.
“Richard was given to bouts of melancholia. But Adeline…Addie, was so good for him, such an obvious change came over him.”
But it didn’t last, she had said. That’s what she feared.
“He was no prize, not nearly. Not good enough for her,” I said. “Best part of him is in Johnny.”
“He was a good man. You didn’t know him. I don’t believe you did…correct?”
“I know enough. I got eyes.” I looked around the place.
“You’re a hard man to get to know. What I’ve seen is…lots of temper. That worries me. I wonder if Johnny will be alright.”
“He protects me,” I said. “He knows I’ll keep him safe. He saw the killings. He called and I came running. In a fight, he knows I’ll stand.”
He didn’t like that so much, and he shifted his fancy boots around. Then I remembered he would offer Johnny a store, and that made me madder than hellfire again.
“Exactly what are
you putting on the table for this family?” I asked. “You came in here with you fancy clothes and big talk of money. So what is the offer?” I moved my hands to my hips.
“You’re in love with her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Does she return your sentiments?”
“You’d have to ask her. But be sure you do.”
“I see. And I showed up…and you resent me.”
“Hate you. I hate you.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see nothing. You have offered her money. And then you hope love will show up. Well love is the one thing you don’t have. But it’s all I have. The rest comes and goes, but I’ve got the love.”
“Then…you must hate me.”
I nodded and refolded my arms.
“But she must choose. It’s only fair.”
“To whom?”
“To her, of course. She must choose. I’ve laid out my terms. Have you?”
“Just this morning in fact.”
“Oh. I see. Well then, we shall wait on her. She is going home with me in two weeks.
“So I hear,” I said. “You corner her with guilt over the mother and the scant hope you’ll give her some crumb from the cake rightfully belonged to her husband and two years ago at that when his pa died. For two years we have not seen the likes of you and don’t say you didn’t know they were here because your uncle sent them missives at least once to let his boy know he’d bought his way out of the war.”
“I shall be frank…I did know, but I was torn. I didn’t want to hurt Richard further with news of the will.”
“Then why didn’t you step away? You’re a thief. Fancy and legal and all…but a thief.”
“You are the most difficult…I’ll try to win her. Here I am…inept at best. There…I am comfortable. And I will stop at nothing to marry her. Perhaps guilt can be more powerful than love.”
If I killed him now he wouldn’t be going anywhere. And I wouldn’t be guilty about it. “Give her what is hers…and stand back like a man.”
