by Carolyn Wall
Will’m grew tall, with a soul as straight and as right as any I’d seen. He had his mama’s yellow hair and great round eyes. He didn’t fear work, and in the absence of a gun, which I would not let him have, he devised clever traps in which he caught rabbits and possum, the latter being stringy and tough in the stewpot—but I was grateful for the meat. He didn’t bring home a single thing we couldn’t eat. He loved to read, and he read aloud nights until I had heard all of Mark Twain and William Faulkner, while I sat at the table embroidering squares.
Most of all, although I tried to steer him away from it, Will’m had an infinite capacity to care for hurt things. I suspect that, no matter how I worked at it, he could not separate them from himself. He was a quiet, generous child with a stubborn streak that I guess he got from me.
I was glad he never got a bee in his bonnet about the locked cellar door.
25
Now, however, Ida has gone and killed the wolf. While it’s still early, Will’m and I bury the gray on the north side of a boulder—the only place on the hill with earth soft enough to take her. Then I fire up the stove in the corner of the kitchen, and we find a piece of old plywood to block the cold that pours in through the open window. We sit at the table and drink tea and eat bread with the jam I’ve put back. In the corner stands Pap’s rifle that I ripped from Ida’s hands. I took her no breakfast.
“I guess there’s no use to go looking for the pups,” Will’m says, looking into his cup.
“None at all.”
I’ve never made bones about telling Will’m anything—about how poor we are, although he doesn’t seem to get the idea. He walks around like he owns something fine and is the richest man in these parts.
“We’re near down to our last dollar,” I say, turning away from the cubs.
He licks jam from his top lip. “I could take another job,” he says. “Work Dooby’s fountain once in a while, more than just sweeping up—or hire on at Ruse’s for Sunday dinner. Maybe Wing could use a hand at the hotel.”
At the mention of Wing, my thoughts break like pearls and run all over the table. “You got school—by the time you get off the bus, it’s near five o’clock, and you help out in the store. Then you got homework.”
Will’m runs his finger inside the neck of the jam jar.
I slap his hand.
He grins. “If Wing’s missus would go on and die, you and him could get married, and then we’d own half of the hotel.”
“Will’m!” By now I have figured out how to keep from reddening when he talks this way, but it bothers me mightily.
“Then we could go down there and live.”
“And do what with Ida? And what about the store?”
He rolls his eyes, drinks up the last of his tea, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He studies his second piece of bread, folds it in half, and stuffs most of it in his mouth. Then he gets up, and puts on his coat and cap and winds the scarf about his neck. “It smells like wolf in here,” he says, reaching for my tea to help get the bread down. “If we had those pups, I’d take care of them. I’d feed them, and be their regular ma’am.”
And without waiting for an answer, he goes to stand out front with his lunch pail and his rucksack. I watch him from the window. In a few minutes, the school bus sluices up on the ice. Will’m goes down the long front steps, climbs aboard, and the bus pulls away, taking him over to Buelton, to the new school there. He’s not happy; he’d rather be on the mountain, looking for cubs.
I’m not yet ready to put the Open sign on the grocery door. I wash up the few dishes, smooth my bed and the boy’s, study my face in the kitchen looking glass, wondering whether it’s the mirror or me that’s mottled and rusty. I brush out my hair and re-braid it down my back, and with a sigh so loud I’m sure Ruse can hear it at the cafe, put on my cape and hat, and fold over my arm the blanket the gray slept on. Then without even a glance at Ida’s cabin, I set out for the mountain and the place we found the wolf.
It’s late in the morning, and the sun is high and weak. Both the silvers that’d been shot are gone, their carcasses dragged off by scavengers. Perhaps, I think, the meat has saved some other thing. In the daylight, the gray’s den is not hard to uncover. She’d settled on a small cave, about a hundred feet from where she lay wounded, and birthed her babies there. I imagine her, yesterday, leaving her hiding place, maybe drawing the hunters away from her children—six of them.
Their mewling is weak, and they barely stir. When I sort out the small bodies, three are dead, and the others whimper like field mice. They’re miserable and ribby with hunger. I dig a hole in the snow with my hands and bury the ones that are gone, for I can’t bear to think about vultures and hawks. Then I fold the others into the wool blanket that smells like their ma. They each weigh less than a silver spoon.
26
Love Alice hikes over to our place because today is Tuesday, and while I make tea with ginger and cloves, she looks around. She does this every week, like she’s never been in my kitchen before, and all the while, she’s humming—“Amazing Grace,” and “Come Down Lord.” Then her eyes settle on some piece of bric-a-brac, or a book, or the quilt I’m working on, and she tells me its truth. That’s what she’s always called it. Truth.
And that’s what she calls the wolf cubs. She loves them, each no bigger than her hand, and she sits on the floor and strokes them and says in her voice that sounds like birdsong, “Would you jus’ looky at these sweetie thangs.”
I stir milk in a pan and add a bit of corn syrup, twist a corner of a kitchen towel, and dip in the end. I lift a pup and pry open his mouth, but my fingers are big and coarse, and I feel awkward. The pup sucks. “I never in my life knew how to take care of a small thing,” I say.
“O-livvy, you doin’ fine, uh-huh. They love that sugar teat, and they love you, too.”
I look at her.
Before he is full, the pup gives out, and I put him down and begin on the second.
“This will never work,” I say. “I got to think of a way to force food into ’em.”
“You will,” she says. Then she sits at the table to wait for her tea.
The truth is I can’t afford milk for the cubs and the boy and Ida, too. Ida will have to give hers up—I’ll take her a cup of tea with her supper and add a drop of honey. The second pup won’t suckle at all, and I wring the rag with my fingers and hold him every which way, trying to get the milk down his throat. But his eyes are closed, and his body works with the labor of breathing. The third one swallows some and goes to sleep. They’re going to die, and I hope they hurry up before Will’m comes home. When the pups are tucked back in their box, I pour the tea, sit down, and take up my embroidery cotton.
Then the bell rings over the grocery door, and I go through the curtain and wait while Mr. Haversham chooses a couple of russets and a can of creamed corn. I ring him up on the clangy register we’ve had for eons, and put his things in a paper sack.
In the kitchen, Love Alice is fingering the quilt I’ve worked on so long my fingers bleed around the calluses. “Ain’t this quiltie a prize thang,” she coos.
I take up the thread, and my hands fly with the tying of knots.
She sits across from me in her stockinged feet. Her eyes are opaque. “You know—” she says.
A prediction is coming.
“—A fat ol’ rich man gonna sleep under dis quiltie. He love his mama. Meaner’n a snake with his wife, but he do love his mama. He keep a dog—no, two dogs, an’ he scared of the dark.”
And on and on it goes until I raise my eyes. I’ve known Love Alice a long time. Before she tells me what she sees in my own eyes, she makes sure I want to know.
She gets up from her chair and wanders about the kitchen in her shapeless black dress, laying hands on things—cups on the drainboard, a pot holder, the cellar doorknob. “What in here, O-livvy, you don’t mind me askin’.”
“Stairs. To the basement.”
She tips her head over like
spring’s first robin, listening for worms.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “This door need to be unlocked.”
“That’s just my pap’s old work room.”
“It need to be,” she says, shrugging.
I pour tea into cups. “I was down there yesterday.”
“Go agin.”
“Why?”
“’Cause what you thinkin’ ain’t so. But it a place to start.”
“Let’s talk about something else. How’s Junk?”
“He fine.” She comes to the table and spoons sugar in her second cup of tea. “How Miss Ida? Actin’ the fool, like always?”
She makes me laugh, Love Alice does, and I get up to fetch her a slice of dried apple turnover and a fork. “Just like always.”
She reaches across, lays her hand on mine. “You take this quiltie down to Mistah Wing’s place. He puttin’ in a shop, buyin’ brooms and candles and such. He can sell your quilties, too. An’ anyway, Mistah Harris a sweet thang—his wife’s gon’ leave us real soon.”
I look at her. “How do you know that, Love Alice? How can you be sure?”
She smiles. I’ve always marveled at how big her teeth are. “Don’t matter how I know, she crossin’ over. What you really askin’ is—what happen then? He comin’ after you in a fine white carriage, flower in his hand?”
I prick myself with the needle and swear and suck at the blood.
“It all right,” she says, forking up apple. “It ain’t no secret. You want to know, I tell you. He askin’ Jesus to take her soul to heaven.” Love Alice leans across. “O-livvy, what you an’ Mistah Harris did weren’t wrong.”
“That was a long, long time ago.”
“You love him like earth and water.” She put a bit of crust in her mouth. “If I’m lyin’, you take back this pastie—but I speak the truth.”
I put down my needle and look at her. “I was through with all that twenty years ago. It wears a body out to go on day and night in that single-minded way. Never thinking about anything else.”
“Don’t it, though?” she says, nodding. “That’s a truth.”
We sit without speaking, and then she runs her finger over her plate to pick up the crumbs. “Well, I got to pull on my boots and git along. Thank you kindly for the tea.”
I reach in my apron pocket and lay a nickel on the table. “Thank you for your company.” It’s the price of a reading, or maybe just a gift for a friend, and I always leave the taking to her. Every time, she opens her pocketbook and drops in the coin.
“Love Alice—” I say. “Sometimes, when you’re in town, you go to the drugstore, the post office, the hotel—”
“Say what you want to, O-livvy.”
“Do you—do you ever look in Wing Harris’s eyes? Do you see—his truths?”
Her smile is like the sun coming up. “Oh, I do. I see thangs there. He drownin’ in the hurt.”
I want to ask if I’m a part of the pain, or if I can help somehow. But it seems like too much to ask, and way too much to know.
27
I listen for the tinkle of the grocery store bell. In between, I scatter feed for the chickens and milk the nanny goat, chop the ice on their pans, shovel snow, and heat water for washing, which I do on the back porch. Steam rises from the tub, burning my fingers and clouding the windows. I hang sheets and underwear on the line out back, and they freeze before I have the last pin in place. After that, it begins to snow, darkening the sky and coming down so hard that I put the stew on early, potatoes and onion and a joint of rabbit Junk left on the porch. I take Ida hers with bread crumbled in it, setting it on a box inside the door, and I back out before she can utter one Dutch-ugly word.
When the boy comes home, he makes over the cubs.
“I knew you’d get them,” he says, grinning all over himself.
I go off to wait on customers, and at six o’clock I turn over the Closed sign on the door. “They’re a lot of work,” I say, putting stew in two bowls and setting them on the table.
I tell him how I’ve stirred up their milk and tried to feed them, that it’s an endless job. “Don’t set your heart on them living, Will’m. They’re not meant to be without their ma’am.” I slice bread and fetch butter from the bin on the porch.
“I’ll be responsible for them, Gran. I’ll do everything.” He puts the cubs in the box and comes to the table.
I want to tell him responsibility’s fine, but it doesn’t guarantee. Things live, and they die. Instead, I scoop up the last of the turnover for him. Pour cups of hot tea with milk from the nanny. I sit down to my supper, and clear my throat. “Will’m, I hear Alton Phelps is lookin’ for a donkey.”
Will’m looks up from his bowl. His eyes grow round as platters. “You’re not thinkin’ about Sanderson Two! He’s older’n earth, all sway-backed and broke down, and mean as a snake—”
“What I hear, he just wants something to keep the coyotes away from the lambs on the south quarter.” Something about that picture makes me want to laugh. If he wasn’t damned near dead, that donkey’d have those lambs for lunch. Still, I think I’ll scrape the ice off the truck in the morning, and load ol’ Sanderson Two up. It’s a long time since I’ve been out to the Phelps’ place. I try not to remember.
Will’m mops his bowl with the heel of the bread. Looks around to see if there’s more.
“Go on then,” I say. “Eat up the last.”
“You’re not even gonna ask Ida? He’s her donkey.” Will’m grins. He loves the old stories my pap told me—of Ida riding the preaching circuit. Says he can’t picture her loping along on her donkey.
“Ida shot the wolf,” I say. “And anyway, Sanderson One was hers. That old donkey’ll bring a few dollars, and it’ll give me a chance to confront Phelps about the wolves.”
“Oh, Gran.”
“I’ll go in the morning. Then I’ll stop at Dooby’s and ask if there’s anything to be done for the cubs. While I’m in town, I’m goin’ to take a couple of quilts over to Wing’s hotel—see if he’ll sell them in his new gift shop.”
Will’m clears his throat. “All right, then.” He lowers his face to his bowl, thinking I won’t see him smile.
28
The next morning, I put on my cape and my hat. With the flapjack turner I scrape the ice from the windows of the truck. Because no new snow fell in the shadow of the barn, the wolf’s blood still colors the snow, and I kick and stomp till it’s mostly gone. I start up the old truck, letting it rattle in idle. It reminds me of the one Pap had when I was a kid—the one he was driving the night he died. Except this one has two good door handles. The tailgate’s been ripped off, and rust has spread where most of the paint used to be.
I drive it over into Ida’s yard, lay some lumber down, and lead Sanderson Two into the bed of the truck. He’s as bony as a chicken wing. I tie him tight to the four corners with the rope. Ida doesn’t come out, and it’s a damned good thing. We’re a sight, that old donkey riding with his head up, braying like he needs the attention.
West of town, the roads are scraped clean by men who live to do Phelps’ bidding. In summer they become his gardeners, gatekeepers, and private assistants. Will’m calls them his bodyguards.
The land, here, is bound by white slatted rails, and snow clings to a couple hundred magnificent Scotch pines. This private forest makes it hard to see the house. I recall that he fancies himself a master hunter, and have heard that he displays his trophies for the world to see. I wonder how his missus can stand to have all those dead things in her house.
I drive up the long curved drive, past the front door where a man is standing guard, and around to the back—with Sanderson Two braying and kicking in the back of the truck. I park in the same place my pap parked the wagon on that afternoon when I stowed away in back. I rap on the door.
Miz Phelps is in her kitchen, which surprises me, for her husband has money enough to hire three or four cooks. She’s flushed and pretty in her yellow dress, taking peach pies from
the oven—and I stand in the doorway with my hat in my hands, just like my pap must have.
“Baking. It’s how I keep busy, Olivia,” Miz Phelps says, and her smile is warm. She pours me coffee even though I say no thanks, pours another mug for herself, and we sit at the table in her big enamel kitchen. I wish I could do business with her and not have to see the mister at all.
“I’m sure he’ll take the donkey,” she says kindly and reaches across to touch my hand. “You tell him you want a pretty penny for it, Olivia. Not a dime less than twenty—no, thirty dollars.”
I look at the dark coffee, the thick cream she’s added, and say, “He’s not worth that much.”
“You’re so like your daddy,” she says, sitting back. “You even look like him.”
I put a hand up, can’t help it, though the scars have faded.
She shakes her head. “Once—when I was a very small girl—and I lived in that house above Rowe Street—you know it, Olivia, big green thing, falling down even then—your father came to our house.”
She’s telling me she didn’t come from money, that we’re alike, she and I.
“We had this old yellow dog. I guess he was a hunter in his younger days, and my father loved him. We all did. He’d go after squirrels in the fall—couldn’t stop that in him. This one time he got ahold of something bad in the woods. Your daddy came to our house in his wagon. He took one look at that yellow dog and wrapped him in a blanket. You were there, Olivia, sitting up on that seat, proud as you please in your red overalls, and I envied you. Having a daddy who was so gentle-handed.”
I swallow a mouthful of sweet coffee and say nothing.
“When women marry, they look for men who are like their fathers—did you know that, Olivia?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I married a man just like mine.” Lines appear between her eyes. “Anyway, we came to your place to see about the dog—I’ve forgotten his name—and your daddy took us down to his basement. And there was that old hound, dining on boiled chicken meat. He sat in the pen, and looked at us with his head cocked over and his tongue hanging out, looking healthy as you please. Your daddy said he’d bring him home in a day or two, and he did, and never charged us a penny. When we all ran out to welcome that yellow dog home, he was laid out comfy on the wagon seat with his head in your daddy’s lap.” She laughs, like it’s a good memory she hasn’t recalled in a very long time.
