Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

  “Ma’am? You don’t care for electricity?”

  “No. But it would probably do the farm good to have it back.” Marie looked toward the stand of trees that stood between the main house and the Grices’ quarters. Moa was still over there, tending to her family, crippled as it was without its father.

  Marie had asked them to move into the big house—there was room enough—but Moa refused: “No, Miss Marie. No, no.”

  Marie wanted one of the boys to appear—Charles or Henry—so that she could tell the young man from Alabama Power that they were her land managers. She wanted to say that the decision was theirs. Whatever they decide is fine.

  She was tired of decisions. There’d been so many in the past two years. “All right. Install your meter.”

  Relief pushed its way through the man’s features. His ears were uneven on his head, and a slim, white scar ran its way across his chin. Marie noticed these pieces of him, letting herself stare. She was ­losing herself, she knew, sinking into something untenable, a deep well with madness at its bottom. The feel of it—slippery, cool, damp—hung on her like the wash she no longer helped Moa hang on the line, wrung to wrinkles and still dripping. Any previous version of herself would not stare so long at this young man’s face, taking in the enlarged pores on his nose, the clump of hairs between his brows, the near absence of lower eyelashes, the irises like clay, muddy red.

  She watched his lips say, “That’s wonderful news, ma’am.” The lips were chapped in places, dried to white. “We’ll have a crew out within the week, and we’ll send you rate details in the mail.”

  She recognized the words the man was saying, but she heard them for their sounds, not their meaning. Like birdcalls, she thought, a detectable pattern. She heard notes rise, pitches and drops. The combination equaled pleasure, contentment. She was sure she’d be able to identify this young man by his call alone, pin him as a company man, reaching completion on a difficult task. Hear that lilt? she would say. That’s self-satisfaction.

  The man stood. Marie could tell he wanted to go, get on with his other visits (were there other visits?). He wanted to be done with this strange woman who didn’t care for electricity. “Do you have any questions?”

  “No.”

  MARIE set to work in the kitchen. Peaches were ready for canning. Moa and Jenny would be over to help, and they would spend their day in orange-red flesh, steam, and heat. Though Jenny complained righteously, Marie didn’t mind the discomfort—the dampness of her skin, sweat-beaded forehead, sticking cotton, heavy hair. She had always enjoyed physical work, and she could well have forgone the university and stayed home and tended the farm. She could’ve married one of the sweet boys from Rockford, raised on neighboring land, and they could’ve run their joined properties with ease and simplicity. Electricity would’ve been something far off and foreign until the day a young man knocked on the door to ask if they’d like to run some poles in. Lovely, she would say. Let’s try it.

  Moa and Jenny arrived through the back door, their faces shiny and their hair woven back. They said their good-mornings, Moa resting a hand on Marie’s shoulder—weighty and kind.

  They worked around the butcher-block table in the center of the kitchen, a great expanse of wood that Marie’s father had made for her mother. Marie had grown up on that table, sitting on one of its edges to watch her mother build pies, chop meat, peel innumerable potatoes and carrots and turnips, tear greens, slice apples and peaches, crack pecans. She knew the table’s cuts and burns, the knife marks and stains. Marie gave the table a thorough scrubbing every couple months, and she oiled it heavily after Christmas.

  The women worked quietly, which had become their custom since Wilson and Roscoe went away.

  The stone of the peach had always pleased Marie, its wrinkles like furrows in a newly plowed pasture or the deeply creased forehead of an old woman—like things soft to the touch. The stone was rough, though, nearly to scratching, and hard. Only a sick peach showed a weak stone, splitting with the flesh when cut, exposing the soft, flat seed inside. The fruit of those peaches clung to the sides of their stones, forcing her to hack away at the flesh in sloppy chunks. When the farm had been at its most prosperous, she’d allowed herself to throw those peaches out.

  They filled huge bowls with slices, great heaping mounds of ­orange and pink and red, and then Marie added spices. She allowed only clove and cinnamon in her peaches—the sweet made subtly sharp in places, a small bite in the back of the throat—and she covered them with a light syrup mixture made from water and cane sugar.

  It was hard not to think of Roscoe when she canned. He’d loved her peaches, exclaiming over their unique taste.

  “What is that?” he’d asked the first time he tried one, forked from jar to mouth by Marie’s own hand.

  “Clove, and cinnamon. More cinnamon than clove.” She’d fed him another.

  He didn’t know spices at all—his mother didn’t use such things—and so she’d done something special for him the next Sunday. She’d baked shortbread, each flavored with one spice. They’d stood together in their small kitchen, there in the Lock 12 village, and she’d held a bottle to Roscoe’s nose: “Clove. It has a bit of bite. Now try the shortbread.” He’d grinned, that smile of his breaking his whole face into joy. “Now, compare it to nutmeg.” She’d held the spice jar and then offered the cookie. “Do you taste the difference?”

  He did, and there—after only two—he’d pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair, squeezing her back with his great hands. “Thank you.”

  “There are more.”

  “No. Not just this. It’s more than the cookie lesson.” He’d brought his hands to her face. “Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for living this life.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d said those words, offered the same general gratitude—it wouldn’t be the last either—but Marie conflated every moment into this one. At times he had gotten specific, and so Marie knew the weight his words held, the reach of their meaning. He was grateful for his own profession, his escape from his father’s mines, his chance to pursue electricity, grateful for their house and their conversations and their lovemaking. Roscoe attributed every positive aspect of his life to their marriage, even the ones that had come before. He attributed too much.

  But that was before Gerald was born. Afterward, their marriage accounted for little, if any, of his pleasure.

  Marie left Moa and Jenny to the slicing so that she could start on the syrup. She preferred to cold-pack her peaches, putting the fruit raw into the sterilized jars, rather than submerging the fruit in the boiling syrup first. The syrup went in once the jars were full, then the lids came, then the rings. The women all took turns during the boiling, spelling each other in exchange for moments outside in the sun, the summer heat cooler than the kitchen steam, drier, even though water held tight to the air, a great humid blanket wrapped round them all season. Marie took deep breaths during her turns on the back stoop, great lungfuls of the scent-tinged air—grass and cornstalks and peanut plants, mulch and dung and mule hide. She’d grown to prefer these smells to the chalk-and-paper scent of a classroom, the tidy cleanliness.

  Moa pushed out through the back screen door. She dabbed at her neck with the hem of her apron, light touches up to her jaw and then to her lips and cheeks and forehead: “Hot.”

  Marie smiled.

  “I’m worried about you, Miss Marie.”

  Marie looked up at her. Moa was taller by a good six inches.

  “Why?”

  “You’re quiet even for you, and what with this electricity coming back—I don’t know. I worry it’s too much. Might spark too great a memory in you. Too much of Mr. Roscoe.” Moa squinted when she said Roscoe’s name.

  Marie reached for Moa’s hand. “Don’t you worry about me, Miss Moa. Your boys will know what to do with that power when it comes.”

 
Moa squeezed. “All right. But you just tell me if there’s something you need.”

  Marie nodded. She knew her times of going to Moa with worries were done, as gone as Wilson in his mine somewhere, lost like his paperwork. She could ask nothing of this woman who’d raised her, Moa’s mother role yet one more thing Roscoe had taken.

  CHAPTER 18 / ROSCOE

  My shoulder has mended the best it can. There was nerve damage, the doctor explained, along with a break in the clavicle. When the doctor finally unbandaged my arm, we discovered that it wouldn’t move much. I can operate my hand, now, in clumsy motions, and I’ve convinced my arm to hang along the side of my body, but the elbow is always bent, and the whole limb no longer moves from the shoulder. The only life in it resides below the elbow, and that life is limited.

  In the mornings, I eat quietly in the mess, surrounded by men. They force their way into my silence, still talking about the incident.

  “Shit, Martin, I saw Beau take that club to you.”

  “And then a stint in the doghouse! Goddamn.”

  “I didn’t think the warden let that kind of thing happen to his pets.”

  “What’s it like in the infirmary? Got yourself a pretty nurse, didn’t you?”

  Dean is nearby, a regular in the library now that he’s reading on his own, exchanging books every week, and he edges his voice louder than the others. “Let him be. Man’s had enough for now.”

  Rash says Dean doesn’t come when I’m away, and I don’t know what to make of his loyalty. I help him locate books that fit his interests, but he doesn’t owe me this allegiance in the mess.

  “You become a pet without us knowing?” someone asks him, but Dean doesn’t take it up, and the rest of the table lets it alone. I know better than to acknowledge his help here, but I’ll thank him when I see him on Friday.

  I drop my tray at the dish line and request the bucket they keep for the dogs. “You back out there, Martin?” the man at the sink says, reaching below the basin to pull out a pail.

  I nod.

  This pail is more specific now—only meat goes in, raw or cooked—with other buckets for the chickens and the pigs. Ever since I read Taylor a passage about the dangers of rancid meat, the kitchen has been filling the dog pail with fresh scraps.

  I make my way to the east gate. The yard is less crowded, the previously leased men trickling away to their new prisons and camps. There is nothing to keep me hoping for Wilson’s life anymore—no papers, no sightings, no presence. I can only hope that his was a quick death in his mine, and that someone took note of his name so that Moa and the kids would stop their hoping, too.

  Yet another new guard is on the gate, and he lets me through with few words. The guard on the other side has been here as long as I have, and he is cordial enough.

  Taylor is staring off in the direction of a couple grackles, pathetic birds with their haunting insect noise. I wave to him and go directly to the barn to start on the dogs’ feeding. My shoulder doesn’t exempt me from the routine of this place.

  The smell of the dog room hits me strong and foul as soon as I cross inside. Taylor’s other boys don’t tend it quite the way I do, letting the meat linger until it’s fetid.

  I make my rounds to the pens, then set to filling the water buckets. Other than Taylor, I’m the only one out here, and I prefer it that way. Jackson and Jones have been gone for years. Stevens came on six months before me, and working with him is a punishment, everything that comes out of his mouth either an insult or an idiocy. He loves to be the one hitched to the dogs while I’m the one running, pride flushing him as if it were a real run, and he were a real deputy warden.

  Taylor’s other men aren’t much better. I imagine he agrees.

  Taylor is at the fence when I finish. “I’ve made a decision, Martin. I’m retiring Maggie to the whelping trade.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ve seen how bad some of them pups from other places turn out. Figure we can at least do better than that.” He’s still blaming the ruined off-lead experiment on the dog rather than his own misuse of information. “Plus, the dog’s not so quick as she once was. Falling behind. One of the best I’ve ever had, so I figure we might well get some good stock out of her.”

  Maggie is just on the other side of the fence, and I reach over to tug her ears. She’s my favorite of the dogs, and motherhood doesn’t seem a fitting retirement. Her eyes are reticent, as though she already knows.

  TAYLOR hires out the stud from another friend of his in the industry—not Atmore—and I’m forced to listen to Maggie’s cries while the male’s in residence. She is locked in the smallest pen with him, and she does everything she can to climb the wire walls.

  Soon enough, he is gone, though, and Maggie rounds larger by the day. This is Taylor’s first litter, and he’s jittery as any new pa. “Read, Martin,” he shouts. “You best swallow down every word you can on the subject of breeding.”

  I put requests in to Rash. “Dog breeding? You think I’m stocking that subject in here?”

  “You know it’s for Taylor.”

  Rash still likes to chide me, though, and the first periodical to arrive is an old copy of the Dog Fancier out of Battle Creek, Michigan. Rash chuckles as he hands it over.

  “Well?” Taylor asks, and I must tell him that Dr. O. P. Bennett recommends stewed sheep and calf heads once the pups are born, macaroni, spaghetti, and any other noodles.

  “Good Lord, Martin,” Taylor shouts. He’s taken to only shouting during Maggie’s pregnancy. “I don’t have any goddamned macaroni. What the hell do I do when the pups come?”

  “I haven’t found anything yet, sir.”

  Taylor rubs his belly and looks at Maggie. “I paid a chunk for that stud, Martin. I have expectations of these pups.”

  “I’ll keep looking.” I want Maggie’s pups to turn out as much as he does.

  I take care of Maggie—bringing food and occupying her time. Taylor lets me walk her around the outside perimeter of the wall, all those guards watching, and I often wish young Marie would join us, barefoot and blue-dressed, her hair lighter from the regular days in the sun.

  I see the excitement in you, she might say. You can’t wait for these puppies to come.

  I nod, thinking those same thoughts, my eyes on Maggie’s growing belly.

  DOGS don’t take too long to grow inside their mothers. Sixty-two days, according to The Complete Book of the Dog. Around day sixty, we need to give her sloppy food and some salad oil.

  Finally, I find a note about whelping for Taylor. “ ‘No help is necessary,’ ” I read to him, “ ‘and one may come down in the morning to find her with her litter comfortably nestling at her side.’ ”

  “That’s as unhelpful as the damn noodles,” Taylor shouts. “What in the hell are you talking about, Martin?”

  “It means Maggie’ll do just fine all on her own.”

  Taylor looks out over his pack of dogs. Maggie lies near the north edge of her pen, barely the animal she was. Her stomach is a giant protrusion, spiked with her dropping nipples, and she waggles the way Marie did with Gerald.

  “Is she close?” Taylor asks.

  “By my count.”

  “We best separate her, then.”

  Her new pen has a shed in the back, a small protection from rain when it falls, built up on rough beams atop stone squares.

  “She’ll go in there to have them,” Taylor says. “I’ll get us some old blankets from the laundry.”

  But Maggie isn’t answering her master’s orders, now. Two days later, she’s nowhere to be seen, and only the mewling gives her away. She’s burrowed under the shed on the back side where we couldn’t see her digging. When I squat low to peer in, I can see the rise of her head and back, bony shoulders and haunches. The rest of her lies deep in a curved bed, dirt and wood obscuring her body and the puppies she
must have birthed overnight. I can’t see even one of them, but they are noisy little things, bawling like kittens. Gerald sounded this way, only louder—bigger lungs and mouth.

  “Hey there, girl,” I say to Maggie.

  When I lie on my side on the ground, right up next to the rough wood, my good arm is just long enough to reach her head. There’s not room for my face under there, so I go by feel, trying to pet her, to give those dangling ears of hers a gentle tug. I’m wanting my hand to say, You’ve done good work, here. You are a good dog. I’m looking to comfort this new mother, to ease the terror she must be trembling under with all that need sucking at her belly.

  “Martin! What in the hell you doing on the ground back there?”

  My boots must be all Taylor can see, sticking out from the side of the shed, boots and ankles and dirty cuffs.

  I run my fingers over Maggie’s head once more and pull my hand out.

  “You hear that?” I ask, coming round.

  Taylor tips his ear to his shoulder and squints. His hands rest on the wooden rail of the fence, and I can see the blood sucking from his knuckles with the force of his squeezing. He is always pushing the red out of some part of him, gathering it back to his massive heart, extra reserves for the next run.

  “That the pups?” he asks, but he does not need an answer. His wide mouth pushes out into a smile I’ve never seen, and he releases the wooden rail in favor of a few flat-palmed slaps, a child’s joy in his hands and face. “How many are there? What’s the bitch-to-male count? What’s their color? All red like Maggie? Or some of that black and tan from the stud? They healthy? Any runts?”

  “I’ve no idea, sir. She’s dug herself under the shed there. I haven’t gotten a look at the pups at all.”

  The mirth leaves him quick as it came. “Now, why’d she do that, the damn dog? Those blankets are good enough for you men, and she’s turning her nose at ’em?” He lifts the sagging gate to get it clear of the dirt. The hinges are about done. I’m sure he’ll have me framing out a new one any day. “Where’s she at?”