Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

  The Grice children came in while the water was heating, all three of them falling over themselves to get at their father, all three of them letting out the same remorseful wail upon seeing the missing arm. “No,” they said, and “Papa.” Marie watched Wilson’s family encircle him, all of them pressing into him, their words split between joy and lamentation, excitement and anger.

  Gerald came to stand next to Marie by the stove. She wanted him to lean against her shoulder or press himself against her as he once had. She wanted him to take her hand or link his arm through hers. Anything. Any small touch to help her feel the presence of her own family, to let her think she had some semblance of the scene in front of her, some bit of that same devotion. But Gerald kept a foot’s distance between them, and when he spoke, his interest wasn’t in her.

  “Does this mean Pa’s coming, too?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He has a longer sentence.”

  “Wilson didn’t have to stay for his whole sentence.”

  The Grices continued their praising and cursing, their holding and squeezing. They had become one mass, the children and Moa fusing Wilson to them, guaranteeing his place.

  “Mama,” Gerald said, “I want to visit him.”

  Marie shook her head.

  “He’s my father.”

  Marie turned to the percolator behind her, bubbling at its lid.

  “I’m going to write to him,” Gerald continued, “and tell him you’re the reason I haven’t written before. And you’re going to let me read his letters.”

  Marie tried to find words, something to say to convince Gerald of his mistake. Her mouth was sticky, though, every word catching in the dry pull of her gums, the trap of her tongue. She couldn’t say anything. She could only pour coffee into mugs.

  “Mother,” Gerald insisted. He was closer to her than he’d been in more than a year, his mouth next to her cheek, his breath on her skin. He had a boy’s breath, still, a smell like autumn soil, dry and sweet, but he stood inches taller than her, his pants too short before they’d been broken in, his shirts too tight across his widening shoulders, his sleeves hanging silly inches above his wrists. He was nearly twelve.

  “No.” Look at Wilson, Marie wanted to say. Look at what’s left of his arm. Look at the scars on his one hand and the broken weight in his face. Your father did that. He is no one you want to know.

  Gerald brought his fists down on the countertop, rattling the mugs, sloshing coffee over their edges into shallow pools.

  “Gerald, honey,” Moa said. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, Miss Moa.” He ducked his head and went to the back door, stopping there to look at Wilson. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Thank you, son.”

  “Gerald,” Marie called. “Wait, love.”

  But Gerald was out the door.

  “He missin’ his father?” Wilson asked.

  Marie pressed her hand against her eyes and tucked her chin. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “How often have you been to visit?”

  Marie looked up to see Moa whispering in Wilson’s ear. She was brief, and Marie watched Wilson take in his wife’s words. What would he think of Marie’s decision to stay away? She wanted Wilson to see the solidarity in it, the defense of his side, the anger and pain and resentment she felt for Roscoe. But he could just as easily see her as an angry, self-indulgent woman, flaunting her privilege to make that choice. Moa had been left with nothing—no information, no location, no letters—while Marie had been given everything. She knew Roscoe’s employment at Kilby, his cellmates, his librarian and deputy warden and barn foreman. She knew how easy it would be to schedule a visit, and that they could even request an afternoon furlough because of Roscoe’s good behavior. She could come with a picnic and they could eat together in the oak grove Roscoe had described in his letters, just as Eddings had suggested that day he took Roscoe away.

  Would Wilson see her as petty and vindictive, worse, even, than the man who’d gotten them all there?

  “Boy’s missin’ his father,” Wilson said again. “How’re you doing, Miss Marie?”

  “I’m doing fine, Wilson, just fine.” She appreciated his turning the subject away from her own guilt. “But you, can you talk about your time?”

  Wilson brought his hand to the top of his head, rubbing the short bristles there, the black peppered with white. He’d always rubbed his head when confronted with a question he wasn’t sure of answering, and Marie smiled at the habit, something familiar and comforting.

  “What do you already know?” he asked, looking between Marie and Moa, asking them both.

  “Nothing,” they said together.

  Marie continued, “You disappeared after Kilby. Our lawyer couldn’t track down any records of where you went.”

  “Probably for the best. Visiting wasn’t allowed in our camp, and those lost papers were what set me loose.” Wilson kept his hand on his head, then he reached down for his cup of coffee, sipping at it delicately. “Ah. Missed that taste, sure enough.” He kept the mug near his mouth and talked over the steam. “Intake was fast, there at Kilby. They’re supposed to do this thorough study, they said, taking down our history and poking into our brains and getting at our deep thoughts, but for me, they just asked what it was I’d been doing for work, and then they said mining made the most sense. ‘Flat Top’s in need of men right now,’ the fellow said. ‘It’ll keep you out of prison, keep you fit.’

  “They shipped me out the next day. I got trained quick to be part of the crew that came in right after the first blast.” Wilson set his mug down and set to rubbing his head again. “Suppose that’s about it. I worked down in the tunnels until this happened”—he raised the stump of his left arm—“and then I spent time in the infirmary, and then they sent me home.”

  Moa had her hands on his shoulders while he talked, and Marie watched her fingers knead the muscle there. Their children flanked her. “That’s enough,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him on the head. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Marie was frustrated with Moa’s shushing. She wanted to know everything about Wilson’s time in those tunnels. She needed the specifics—the sounds and textures and tastes, coal-dusted air and explosion-shattered rock, the damp floors and kerosene lanterns, the black-edged sky and housing and meals. “Wilson, what was it like?”

  “He’s said enough,” Moa warned.

  Their children stared at Marie, their eyes lit by Moa’s same protection. He’s ours, their faces said, their lips held firm, their eyes open wide. You and yours have taken enough.

  Marie agreed.

  Wilson set his mug down and looked over at Marie. “It was awful, Miss Marie. If you need more than that, you’ll have to give me time.”

  Marie nodded, ashamed. “Of course.”

  Moa leaned her head down close to Wilson’s ear and said gently, “Let’s go on back to our place, dear.”

  Marie watched Jenny and Charles and Henry swarm their father, lifting him from his chair, floating him into standing. They moved as a unit, gliding across Marie’s floor with the ease of birds—a flock of them, or a wing; they were like plovers moving over the sand, their steps smooth and fluid. They drifted out the door and out across the grass, disappearing from Marie’s sight around the corner of the house. She imagined them taking flight just then, tucking their quick feet up against their soft stomachs, stretching their wings—Wilson’s left would be back, a broad, feathered limb to replace that half-held arm—arching their necks to the clouds. They would fly over the hot-hearted power lines and the thick stand of longleaf pines and holly, glancing out at the fields, the patched grid of their land, and then they would slow their speed, dropping down to the small meadow outside their small house—everything small—and they would gather together in their clutch, moving as one toward the do
or.

  Marie thought about her son, that small boy born into so much blood and wreckage, his own swaddling blanket more for mopping than for warmth. There he was, sticky with blood, passed over to Roscoe while the doctor focused on Marie, and Marie turned inward, a quiet taking over the room she shared with her husband. The quiet had been like fog, she remembered, creeping in at the edges of her hearing, muting it; the baby’s crying was buffered and blanketed by flannel and cotton, thick sounds settling over ­everything—the doctor’s hurried words, desperate and pleading, the metal-on-metal ringing of his instruments, the nurse he employed, her shoes on the floor, moving and clacking—all of it ­quieted down to a slow-drumming pulse, the like of river currents or tides, a rumbling, deeply tied rhythm.

  She’d awoken days later in a Birmingham hospital room. Roscoe was there, but not the baby.

  “Did we lose him?” she’d asked, reaching for her husband’s hand.

  “No, no. He’s fine. Nettie’s caring for him while you heal.”

  Marie had looked down her body then, the flattening of her waist. She felt the deep aching of her stomach, and her fingers went to the skin, tiptoeing their way under blanket and gown to spread over the great bandages there.

  “What’s happened?”

  Roscoe had looked pained, a clotted hurt hanging on to his cheeks. “I’ll get the doctor,” he’d said, and though she’d argued, reaching for him, calling him back, he’d left her. He’d passed the burden of that news to someone else, and she’d taken the abandonment deep inside her, a crackly burden like the plants of peanuts or stalks of corn left alone to dry and harden in the absence of their fruit. She could still feel that place, dusty and brittle. It had never refilled.

  Marie remembered the doctor’s sallow complexion and tawny hair, his amber eyes and yellowed teeth. He was troubling to look at, and Marie had found her eyes roving far from his face—to the ceiling and then to the window, back to his white coat, a glance to his chin, and then away again.

  “Mrs. Martin, your local doctor did great work. You were lucky to be in such qualified hands.”

  She’d looked at his chin, the bristles of his sun-dried beard.

  “You’re healing wonderfully.”

  “From what?”

  He’d put a sickly hand on her forearm. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Martin, but there were complications with your son’s birth—damage done to your uterus.” His fingers squeezed her. “We had to remove it.”

  Marie felt the pressure of his touch, but couldn’t register his words. Roscoe’s desertion fluttered in her stomach, cornstalks in a breeze, the crisped, itchy dance of dried leaves. It grew wider, more furrows, a great stretch of field.

  “What?”

  He pressed down, then took his hand away completely. “You won’t be able to have any more children. I’m very sorry. Would you like me to send your husband back in?”

  Marie had trained her eyes on the window, the bright sky bleached nearly to white by the sun. “No,” she’d whispered.

  The loss of their future children had set them apart, moved them into their respective corners, far from each other’s touch. They couldn’t move together as Wilson’s family did, even if they had tried. The brief years of ease when Roscoe had run his illegal electricity had been false. She had to have known they’d crumble in some way, their future torn from them again. She’d known, and she held this knowledge alongside her own part in it. Unlike Moa and Wilson, she was not innocent. They had taken pieces of each other—Marie and Roscoe—but now they had taken a piece of Wilson. They had taken a part of his family.

  Sitting in the silence of her empty kitchen, Marie wanted to talk to Roscoe. She wanted to show him all they owed—to the Grices, to the land, to each other, to their son.

  Here, she wanted to say to him, tell me how we repay this.

  CHAPTER 20 / ROSCOE

  I’m pacing the yard when the sirens start blazing, and I know to run to the pens. Taylor is there, and Stevens, and a fellow named Michaels.

  “Those two,” Taylor says, pointing to the far cage. Jack and Jesper.

  “Hey, Jack,” I say. “Hey, Jesper.” To Taylor I say, “Where’s the scent start?”

  “Corn. Northwest corner. You boys start with the dogs. I’m getting my horse.”

  We set off. Taylor catches up just before we reach the first rows of corn. He whips his mount forward, and we chase after them—man and horse—until we get to the field guard. He holds the man’s bushel bag, and those dogs settle their noses into the burlap, huffing their lips, flushing the scent, those big ears trapping it in their faces. My two lift their heads first and point toward the woods.

  The dogs are faster than me, and they buck against my weight. Their voices pitch. They pause to recharge the scent. Here, in this bunch of grasses. There, on that twig. Here, in this fresh footfall in the muddy mess of ground near Cobbs Creek. The dogs try to break from each other, and from me, moving up and down the small bank, but then Jesper splashes into the shallow water, and we follow. The scent is right there, another footprint, and then just ghosting smells. My calves burn. My lungs heave. My emaciated shoulder and arm whine. All of this is too familiar.

  We pass the possum oak, and a part of me wants to be chased again, to climb back into its branches, though I know I couldn’t do it now, that I will never again climb a tree.

  Stevens and his dogs are still with me.

  Taylor’s horse splashes through the water. “I’m following you two,” Taylor shouts. “Michaels’s dogs are heading a different way. Feels like we’re close on this one.”

  The dogs don’t tell me that, though. They change when they’re close, their muscles tighter, something steep and tense in their steps. We have a ways to go, their bodies tell me now. Taylor is loud behind us, and suddenly that young Marie falls in at my right. She darts along quickly, her breath calm and even.

  The dogs pause for new tastes, then run some more. The leather belt round my waist cuts into my back. The damp I feel could be sweat or blood, warm and cold.

  Stevens falls back a bit, but Taylor’s horse is in my ears, the soft felt of the thing’s muzzle drenched in froth flying from its lips, drawn back against the bit and the breath it heaves. “Hup,” Taylor shouts. “Hup, hup!” That breath goes sour, grasses rotting in its guts.

  I hear a whisper to watch out. Marie?

  “Hup!” Taylor shouts once more, before a great stumble of limbs crashes down, branches breaking under that fortress, sticks crumbling. The horse’s chest hits the ground, then its neck, jaw, lips, nose. The body plows up the dirt, mulch and rubble hitting me. I pull the dogs to a stop, watching as Taylor picks himself up. A gash in his arm drains blood. Another guard comes up behind him, and I’m surprised to see that it’s Beau. He’s gotten here so quickly.

  “Go,” Taylor shouts at both of us. “I’m behind you. Go.”

  The dogs start pulling. They are disappointed to have stopped at all.

  Beau runs next to me, and Marie is next to him, silent and intent. I can feel the nervousness in her, and I hope that Beau’s desire to catch this man who’s run trumps his desire to do me further harm.

  Then we are there. We are here. It’s nothing more than a shack, this structure, a forgotten still house, tired boards holding a rusty roof. The dogs are keen on the door. They’re sure. I see it in them, that deep-pressured force.

  There’s snuffling behind us, and then Stevens appears behind his dogs.

  “You!” Beau points to Stevens. “Give your dogs to Martin and go pound on that door.”

  Fear pales Stevens’s face, but he unhooks his dogs’ leads from his belt and helps fasten them to mine. I’m up to five beasts now, and it’s too many. They’ll kill me in their pursuit, I know.

  “Get up there, boy,” Beau hisses, slinking back toward the cover of the woods, his gun poised.

  Stevens walks u
p to the shack and raises his fist, pounding it hard against the doorframe, the door too weak to sustain such a blow. Around me, the woods shake. We’ve made our way from the oaks into this thicket of pine, tall and red-barked.

  “Boy!” Beau barks. “You best come on out without a stir.” He is all but invisible in the undergrowth.

  A scrambling comes from inside, a whine of metal, a scrape. Stevens is turning his head over his shoulder in Beau’s direction when the door pulls back. A man named Hughes stands in the doorway. He’s a regular in the library, like Dean, and he likes books about machines—the cotton gin, the engine, the letterpress. He’s tall, thick in the shoulder and waist, with eyes too big for his face—fearful eyes that put a man to apology or confession, eyes fit for a leader, not a runner. He has a shotgun in his hands, held low at his hip. Before there’s time enough to note its gauge, Stevens is on the ground, a great chunk gone from his right side.

  The sound from him comes from everywhere at once: the suck and yaw of his body, the moan of skin and bone, of hidden guts meeting air, of a body draining. The sound from his mouth is a quiet whisper, barely more than breath.

  Hughes looks down. “Shit. Didn’t mean that for you, brother.”

  Stevens keeps at his noise, and Hughes looks up at me. I’m waiting for Beau’s gun to fire.

  “I’m not looking to shoot you, Books.”

  “I’m not looking to get shot.”

  The dogs are quiet, their eyes fixed on the barrel. Metal is a convincing master.

  There’s no movement, no sound from Beau’s position.

  “Where’s the guard that’s with you?” Hughes asks.