Crossing Tinker's Knob

by Cooper, Inglath

  “How could you go all these years without seeing him?”

  Martha glanced down at the pages of her Bible, trying to focus on the words, but finding their edges blurred and barely readable. “I never wanted things to be the way they’ve been.”

  “Jacob loved us, Mama. But he loved her, too.”

  “And he made his choice.” Martha could hear the waver in her declaration, and it startled her, made her wonder where her conviction had gone.

  “That’s the part I don’t understand,” Becca said. “Why it had to be a choice.”

  Martha started to say something, then pressed her lips together, her thoughts a sudden mass of confusion. For so long she had carried the strength of her beliefs inside her like a staff of righteousness, solid as the old oaks that sheltered the farm. Whenever she yearned to see Jacob, when the ache seized her so that it seemed possible she might actually die from it, that staff of truth was all that kept her going.

  Now, she felt hollow at her very core.

  Becca pushed back her chair, leaving her steaming coffee on the table and walking out the back door.

  “Becca,” Martha called out. But the door closed, and the kitchen was silent again except for the steady click of the clock on the stove. She started to get up and go after her, but what was there to say?

  Her eldest daughter could see no right in anything she had done. And Martha felt suddenly exhausted by the thought of defending herself.

  A wrenching sense of loss swept over her, and she got up from the table and walked to the living room. A pine table with a wide drawer sat in front of the upholstered sofa. Martha sat down on the edge of the couch and raised the lid.

  Inside were the scrapbooks in which she’d saved the childrens’ school art and other things she hadn’t been able to bear parting with. She lifted out the top one, opening the cover to see Jacob’s childish scribbling across the front page. He’d begun drawing early, around four or five, his eye for reproducing the likeness of the chickens scratching out lunch by the barn or a cow grazing in the field, amazingly good.

  She wondered if he’d ever done anything with the talent or if he’d simply put it away and never used it.

  She turned the pages of the book, smiling at a watercolor he’d done of their family in a familiar pose of getting ready for church on a Sunday morning. There was Daniel, his easy nature reflected in the smile on his face. And she herself beside him, stern-faced in a way that contradicted her husband’s take-life-as-it-comes stance. Becca and Emmy were next to her, pretty and happy in their Sunday dresses, the two of them standing straight as sticks and holding hands, the remains of a giggle on their faces.

  Martha turned the page. Glued to the orange construction paper was a letter Jacob had written her in the second grade. The occasion had been Mother’s Day, and even now, so many years beyond the first time she’d read the words, her heart lifted with the memory of their sweet sincerity.

  Dear Mama,

  You are a good mama. I like yur cooking and the close you make for us. When I grow up, I want to mary a woman just like you. I love you.

  Your son,

  Jacob

  Martha ran her hand across the words. She supposed no son could give their mama a greater compliment than this.

  She thought about the polite young woman who had introduced her to her own grandson and admitted to herself that she had never given Linda a chance. She had failed to trust her son’s judgment, relying on her own, instead, and as a result, alienating the son she loved dearly.

  She put the scrapbook away and went back into the kitchen where her Bible lay open on the table. She sat back down in the chair and glanced at the open book, the words on the page now clear and focused, as if someone had turned a lens and allowed her to see them again.

  For the whole of her life, Martha had read from this book each and every morning. As a child, her mother had taught her to start the day this way, and she had never veered from it, her intent to show the Lord what she put first in her life. For years, she had read from beginning to end, starting over again each time she finished the book in its entirety. But lately, she’d begun reading as her own mother had in her later years. Opening the book at random and reading whatever lay before her. Her mother had once told her that if she would leave the choice to Him, God would show her the words that would apply to that day’s struggles.

  This morning, Martha had opened to the book of Psalms, immediately focusing on a single verse. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

  Martha read the verse a second time, then sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. Just minutes ago, she’d been ready to defend her choices, to remind her daughter that it had been Jacob who had rejected his family, not the other way around. But Martha’s thoughts turned to Michael, the grandchild she did not know. Michael. And with his name, the flatness of her own argument. All these years, she’d told herself she was standing up for what was right, for all that she had been taught to believe.

  Her eyes were drawn to the verse again. A clean heart. A right spirit. She leaned forward then, propped her elbows on the table, and bowing her head, began to pray.

  35

  Even When

  “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

  ― Mother Teresa

  Now

  Becca spent the remaining early hours of the morning in her potting shed where she anchored several dozen seedling plants into fertile, receptive soil. She put her hands to the task of outrunning her thoughts, but without success. She couldn’t quit thinking about what her mother had said about Aaron. She wanted to deny the accuracy of it, but in truth, she couldn’t.

  Aaron was all the things her mother had declared him to be, and this was the part that made her grieve inside. The fact that Aaron had done nothing more wrong than love her. And she had tried to return that love in the same way it had been given, had convinced herself for a very long time that her feelings for him had grown into something resembling what they should be.

  Until Matt came back. All the old wounds inside her were as fresh as yesterday, and now she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  When the sun began to peep over the crest of Tinker’s Knob, Becca left the shed and climbed into the truck.

  She drove the twenty minutes to Jacob’s house with the window rolled down, the fresh morning air cool on her face. Like her own, Jacob’s body clock was set for farmer’s hours, and sleeping past the sunrise rarely happened for either of them. She found him in the barn, feeding a half-dozen of the goats he and Linda raised. Linda was a vegetarian, and their agreement had been that none of the animals they raised would be used for meat. At first, Jacob had been clearly skeptical about the prospects of Linda’s ideas, but they had gone on to make a nice living from the sale of organic chicken eggs, goat’s milk and cheese. Becca loved visiting their farm because the animals here felt like an extended part of the family. She also loved that despite being raised to understand that cows went to slaughter on a regular basis, Jacob respected Linda’s beliefs and had fine-tuned his own to complement them.

  A quiet bleat from one of the goats announced Becca’s arrival. Jacob turned and spotted her in the doorway of the barn, a smile cracking his handsome face wide. “Hey, stranger,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, walking over to give him a hug and then pulling back to let herself take him in. He had changed amazingly little over the years, a few lines in his face, very little grey in his dark hair. She wondered, not for the first time, if happiness was its own fountain of youth. At least for her brother, it appeared to be true.

  Jacob touched the back of his hand to her face, and said, “You haven’t been over in a while. What are you doing out with the chickens this morning?”

  Becca shrugged. “I just wanted to see you.”

  “Hm,” he said, skeptical, and then with real interest behind the question, “And how are you?”

  “Okay,�
� she said.

  He gave her a long look. “Translation, not okay.”

  “So who made you an expert on female tone?” she said with a half-smile.

  “Actually, I believe you yourself were a primary contributor to my gender-bias education.”

  She bent over to rub the neck of one of the female goats, loving its silky texture and its short bleat of greeting. “Mama said she ran into Linda in Wal-mart the other night.”

  Jacob went still, silent for a moment before nodding, “Yeah. Linda said she was nice.”

  Becca straightened, unable to keep the bitter edge from her voice when she said, “High praise for a grandmother who’d never met her own grandson.”

  Jacob reached out and squeezed her shoulder with one hand. “Hey, sis. Water under the bridge.”

  She looked him in the eyes, shaking her head. “How do you do it, Jacob?”

  “What?”

  “Accept what she’s done?”

  “Ah, Becca,” he said, taking her hand and leading her over to a long wooden bench. They sat down, and he clasped her right hand between his own two, squeezing hard. “There’s living. And there’s living in the past. I just really want to live. What good would it do for me to spend my time dwelling on something I can’t change?”

  “Even when she can’t see—”

  “Even when,” he interrupted softly.

  She tipped her head and looked at him. “How’d you get so levelheaded?”

  “The aid of a good woman,” he said.

  “Apparently.” And then, “Linda’s lucky to have you.”

  “And I’m lucky to have her.”

  They sat for a while, the silence easy in the way of two people genuinely fond of each other. Becca visited her brother and his family as often as she could, insistent on maintaining her own relationship with them.

  When Jacob finally spoke, his voice held an edge of concern. “I saw in the paper where Mrs. Griffith died. Matt came back for the funeral, I guess?”

  Becca nodded, not adding anything further.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes,” she said, the word barely audible.

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “And you’re driving out to see me at the crack of dawn. Must be something.”

  She shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think so. Y’all left a lot of stuff unfinished, Becca,” he said.

  Just hearing it now made her eyes fill with unexpected tears. With anyone else, she managed to keep her composure, but with Jacob, it was different. He’d somehow always managed to know what she was feeling. “He’s married. I’m married. End of story.” The words were flat, leeched of emotion.

  “You’re not happy. Is he?”

  Becca glanced up. “I’m not unhappy, Jacob.”

  “Becca. You might have the rest of the world fooled. But you haven’t fooled me.”

  She sighed, leaned her head against the wall. “Jacob, I really didn’t come here to talk about me.”

  Jacob took her hand, rubbed the back of it with his thumb. “You did an honorable thing all those years ago, Becca. But honorable things aren’t that easy to pull off. I know what it’s cost you.”

  “I have a good life.”

  “You married a man you don’t love. And lost the one you did. I suppose it could be argued that you’ve made good of it. But don’t tell me you’re happy.”

  A knot of emotion rose in Becca’s throat, the tears in her eyes spilling over and slipping down her cheeks. She tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out.

  Jacob hooked an arm around her shoulders, tucked her against his chest. She started to cry in earnest then, as if someone had turned on a faucet inside her, and she had no way of shutting it off. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re debating whether to see him, aren’t you?”

  She nodded once, unable to answer out loud.

  “It might look bad from here, sis. But maybe life has to force us into a corner sometimes before we can take an honest look at where we are.”

  “Where I am is where I’ll stay,” she affirmed, even as she heard the weakness in her own voice.

  “Maybe so. But if you do, make sure this time that it’s because of what’s right for you. Right for you, Becca. And not anyone else.”

  ∞

  Then

  THEY STARTED TO date.

  The two of them meeting at the county library in town where they would make out behind the Nancy Drew shelves. The recreation park off 919 where they would linger for hours, talking and kissing, sometimes not seeing another person the whole time they were there.

  They did all this in secret. Not so much by any open declaration on their part, but instead with an unspoken understanding that once others knew, it would no longer be about just the two of them.

  And on some level, Becca didn’t want to share it. She felt the fragility of it, and she wanted to protect it. Nurture it. Give it a chance to grow like the Heirloom seeds her grandmother had taught her to start in tiny black pots each spring.

  Becca had been working in the garden for a couple of hours, sweat making the back of her dress stick to her shoulder blades. Her hair was damp beneath the straw hat she wore to protect her face from the sun.

  She was considering going to the house for a drink of water when she looked up from the row of beans she’d been weeding to find Matt walking toward her, his face set and serious.

  He didn’t say anything when he reached the spot where she’d been working. He took her hand, pulled her up, not letting go as he walked faster, and then began to run, jumping the rows of vegetables and following the edge of the field at the back of the garden to where the apple trees started.

  “Is something wrong?” she called out, worried now.

  He didn’t answer, but led her deep into the orchard before he finally stopped and gathered her up in his arms, leaning in to kiss her deep and hard, as if he had been thinking about nothing else the entire day.

  Becca tipped her head and returned the kiss, her hands clasped at the back of his neck, her hat falling to the ground.

  They sank to their knees, and he kissed her again, before easing her down against the shady grass beneath the apple tree. There, they curled into one another, pressing as close as they could manage with a barrier of clothes between them. His hands locked at the base of her spine, and he kissed her forehead, each eye, the tip of her chin, then finally her mouth again.

  “Becca,” he said.

  “What?” she said, smiling and running the back of her hand across his jawline.

  “You’re killing me. Your dad thinks I’m addle-brained. Half the time when he tells me something to do I have no idea what he said because I’m wondering where you are and exactly how long it will be before I can see you again.”

  She laughed softly. “I’ll tell him you’re really smart. That you’re just trying to figure out ways to get me alone. And that you’re actually pretty good at it.”

  “Oh, you’ll tell him that, will you?” He began to tickle her then, finding the spots that most tormented her until she was breathless with laughter.

  “Stop!” she pleaded, trying to wriggle free.

  He did finally, and she lay there, breathing hard and staring up at his beautiful face. She did find him beautiful, like some near perfect specimen of youth and strength.

  Her dress was halfway to her waist, and Matt’s eyes took in the length of her bare legs. “I love looking at you,” he said, reaching out to touch the inside of her knee with one finger.

  “I love looking at you,” she repeated with utter sincerity.

  They stared at one another. When Matt spoke, his voice was low and serious. “Is this going somewhere, Becca?”

  She could have made light of the question, but she didn’t. She felt his confusion, knew the chaos of it in her own heart. In the beginning, she’d assumed she would be the vulnerable one. Matt was the star baseball player, the guy
who dated the school’s most popular girls, a guy who ran with a crowd she barely knew how to talk to. She had grown up in a family that shunned the world and its excesses.

  But lying here with him, she realized they were both vulnerable. And in that moment, the bond that had begun to form between them deepened to a new level. “I don’t know,” she said, tracing a finger across the hollow at the base of his throat. “Sometimes, I think we’ll both end up getting hurt.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “I don’t think you would mean to.” She sat up, hugged her knees to her chest and stared out across the rows of apple trees with their nearly-grown fruit. “But I don’t think we should kid ourselves, either.”

  “About what?”

  She considered her words, not wanting to say the wrong thing, not wanting him to think she was trying to make him feel guilty. “About where this can go.”

  He was quiet for a bit and then said, “Can’t it go where we want it to?”

  She looked at him, a needle of sadness piercing her chest. “I know we haven’t been acting this way, but it’s more than just the two of us. You have plans. College. Playing baseball. And that’s good.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Do those things mean I can’t see you?”

  “How could that ever work? You there. And me, here.”

  He wound a finger through her hair, lifted up to kiss her once. “It could work.”

  She shook her head. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s people who complicate things.”

  Behind them, an apple dropped to the ground. They both turned at the sound. A crow swooped down and immediately began to peck at the red-green skin.

  “Becca!”

  At the sound of her mother’s voice calling from the house, Becca straightened her dress and brushed the grass from its skirt. “I have to go,” she said.

  “Meet me at the lake tomorrow afternoon. It’s Sunday. I don’t have to work.”

  “Matt—”

  Her mother called out again, her voice closer this time. Becca backed up, torn between wanting to say yes and knowing she shouldn’t. “I’ll try,” she said and ran for the house.