Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

  “Next time.”

  “Good-bye, Pa.”

  He walked toward the trail, the back of him holding up greater than the front. His hair needed a trim, and there were sweat rings under his arms, but I could appreciate his stride—quick and long. Still, I admit to wanting his appearance to be like so many of my other imaginings, a shaky reality, untenable and flawed. I was afraid after Gerald left the clearing. My rake was at my feet. Maggie lay in the shade of the cottage. A bird let go a song, steep-noted, unique. I should have known what it was. I could name all the plants around me, the trees and shrubs, flowers and grasses. I could raise poles and wire an abandoned cottage. I could strip a roof and stand in the midst of years of rot, willing it dry enough to burn. But I didn’t know if I could be a father to a son.

  GERALD didn’t come that Saturday, but Jenny did, an envelope in her hands. I was outside the cottage, and she walked toward me slowly.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s come. Word from Kilby.”

  The look of my name on the paper scooped some great dormant need out of my stomach. I’d waited for my name in that location for nine years, Kilby Prison in the upper left, with its address there on Wetumpka–Montgomery Highway. I didn’t recognize the writing, a blocky print, a bit too big for the space. Someone had written my name on that envelope and put it in the mail, and a man had delivered it to the big house, where Marie had received the letters I sent. Her handwriting was much lovelier than the writing I held, but she didn’t once turn that writing into words and send those words to me. Few things go freely through the walls of Kilby, but letters are one of them. Just one letter, Marie. One envelope with my name in your hand. Roscoe T Martin. Only four weeks had passed before Kilby answered mine.

  “I don’t know that I can open this.” My fingers had already left brown smudges on the paper that I would have liked to wipe away. It was too perfect a thing, that envelope.

  “You best,” Jenny said. The mulch was thick at her feet, and her hands worked at the fabric of her skirt, wringing it to wrinkles just as she had when she’d first asked me to help with Charles.

  The flap gave way easy enough along the glue, the paper inside thin and folded into thirds.

  “What does it say?”

  The message was short, the writing even bigger and sloppier. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  And so I read the unfamiliar writing aloud: “ ‘Martin. You no beter an to ast me the foks past threw here. Hows that dog?’ ” After the question mark, the writing changed to form one new word: Taylor. It was practiced, that word, the only one he really needed. The rest of the letter must have been turned from Taylor’s speech into words on a page by one of his new trustees. This one didn’t look to be taking out books from the library or ordering up articles on whelping.

  The letter was short, but I could hear Taylor’s voice in it. Those few words were communication from him to me. I’d written a letter to Taylor, and he’d written one back. He even asked a question.

  Hows that dog?

  Maggie lay in the shade of the cottage, on the side farthest from the roof debris. She was deep in the thick grass, her head cradled in her front paws, her ears dribbling onto the ground. She’s good, I wanted to tell Taylor. The best dog. The best gift. She was a gift. I could see that then. I see it now.

  I never again wrote to Taylor, though.

  “What does that mean?” Jenny asked.

  I folded the letter along its creases and tucked it into its envelope. “It means he only notices the boys he has working for him or the ones he’s tracking down. It sounds like Charles isn’t one of them.”

  “Well, it’s disappointing.” She broke into a determined smile and pointed to the roof. “But that’s sure to take a while.”

  “No more than a week.” Then I would leave. There would be a dam near the ocean somewhere, lines to run, forces to capture and convert. I would go and work as I once had. Maggie and I could find ourselves a small house in a village, and I might even meet a nurse like my Hannah, maybe even have a child or two. I’d forget I owed Wilson the work he could no longer do, forget I’d seen my grown son, forget that all these people existed this many years after my memories of them stalled.

  “I’ll go get your dinner.” But Jenny didn’t move.

  “What is it?”

  “Just—” She didn’t look at me. “I don’t know why it feels so wrong, but I have—I have. They have. I mean, they—” Her eyes trained themselves on some high branch far off to the right of her vision. “It’s theirs to talk about. That’s what I mean. And they don’t want me saying anything, which is why they put me here in the first place. You asked that, and it was all I had in me not to answer truthfully. They wanted time to pass, you see, wanted everything to get settled, wanted—”

  “What are you saying?”

  When she spoke, the words were mousy and skittish. “They figured the bit about Charles would keep you occupied. They had all kinds of talks before your release, and you have to believe that this was only a backup in case it seemed like you weren’t going to stay at all.”

  “Where is Charles, Jenny?”

  She looked over her shoulder toward the big house.

  “Where?”

  “He’s in New York.”

  “And Henry?”

  “Oh, that’s true, Mr. Roscoe. Henry’s in New York, too. They’re all there. Mama and Papa are awful proud.”

  “Why did you choose Charles?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why’d you all decide to make Charles the criminal? Why not Henry? Hell, why not Gerald, my own son?”

  “Daddy remembered the times you’d seen him lose his temper out when he was helping you two with the thresher and the crops.”

  Of course. I had seen Charles slam his closed fist into the unforgiving wall of the shop, ripping his knuckles raw, and all because his count was off—not as many shucked ears in the bucket as he’d anticipated. I had seen him shout and kick, and I hadn’t thought to question a moment of violence that could send him to prison. They’d been smart in their planning.

  “The they”—I stepped closer to the girl who’d so blatantly deceived me—“the they who orchestrated this—I assume you’re talking about Marie?”

  She shook her head.

  My anger paused, confused. I was set to add this injustice to Marie’s register. She’d ignored my letters, forgotten our marriage, stolen my son, and then settled me into the help’s quarters. It made sense to blame her, and I wanted to. I wanted to loathe her charity and pity and condescension.

  “Who then?”

  “You need to talk to Mother and Father and Gerald. I know he’s visited, but there’s more he needs to tell you.”

  “He was supposed to come today.”

  “Yes, I know. But then the letter arrived.”

  “And your time was up?”

  “I suppose that’s it.”

  We stood staring at each other for what seemed a day, a week, nine years.

  Finally she said, “I’ll get your dinner, Mr. Roscoe.” She walked toward the trail, fading and fading until there were only woods and grass and the power line sloping from the third pole to the conduit on the house.

  THE next morning, the Grices found me on their porch when they returned from church. Maggie lay at my feet.

  Jenny and Wilson stood at the bottom of the steps, but Moa strode up next to me. “Least you can do is wish us good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  “That’s better. Now, come inside and have some lunch. Best invite that beast in, too.” Moa was trying to soften me, and I should’ve declined in order to keep my solemnity. No thank you, I should’ve said. Maggie’s comfortable out here.

  But I couldn’t deny Maggie a bowl of scraps inside that fine house, and Moa knew it. She�
�s still the smartest of us all.

  Jenny helped me up from the rocker I’d chosen hours earlier, and we walked into the house hand in hand behind her father. Maggie brushed by us, trotting toward the kitchen as though she’d been there innumerable times. She was spoiled, that dog. Still is.

  The squirrel wallpaper confronted me in the foyer, and I fought to keep my eyes trained away from that whimsy. Like the layers I’d seen on my son, those squirrels were products of ease and time. I’d have longed for extra pounds in Kilby—a few to fill in my face, raise my eyes, cover my ribs. I’d have longed for images that meant nothing, there only to see, to lighten the scene like Chaplain’s flowers. Instead, I’d grown used to efficiency and precision. What wasn’t necessary was relinquished. Whoever I’d been when I came to Kilby, I’d left condensed, only the core of me surviving, the part that worked, the part that ate and slept in order to continue.

  Wallpaper and fat had no place in that life.

  Moa was already at the stove in the kitchen, the kettle nearly boiling, the table laid with biscuits and spreads. “Sit down, Roscoe. Help yourself.”

  She fed Maggie by the back door, and the dog fell to the food quickly, wolfing it down as though those other prison dogs were still pushing at her sides, trying to get their piece—a dainty drinker and a ravenous eater.

  I was hungry, too, but I didn’t follow her lead. I’d been sitting on the porch for hours, hunger sharpening the words I planned to say. I didn’t want to feel full.

  “You’d like us to start, I imagine.” I looked to Wilson, who was pulling up a stool across from me. “You know about our deception, and I apologize for it. You have to know that we did it out of true concern for you. We needed you to stay, and we couldn’t think of another way to do that.”

  “Why did you need me to stay?”

  “We needed to get a sense of you,” Moa said.

  “And,” Wilson added, “we wanted you to have some time to figure out a place for yourself.”

  “I don’t think that’s happened.”

  Wilson shook his head. “You’re wrong about that. Look at all you’ve done—the power and the poles and wiring, the improvements to the cottage. It’s work you can do, Ross, work you’re good at.”

  “For better for worse,” Moa added.

  “Moa.”

  She looked at her husband. “I’m allowed my doubts, Wilson.”

  I still think about those words of hers.

  I ran through uncertainties of my own. I’d seen myself working, as Wilson had said—and with power, the electricity that had first awoken me to inquiry and pursuit and knowledge. It wasn’t dogs and it wasn’t musty books, not reading to men from a Bible. It wasn’t dairy cows, pails of milk, calves mewling. It was work I knew and loved, but it was here, on Marie’s land, with its memory—the haunted familiarity of the shop and the trail, the cornstalks and that line of fence where I’d first told Wilson the idea, the house I was sitting in, with its new wallpaper and residents, my family still gone.

  “How could I stay here?”

  I watched a look pass between Moa and Wilson, another between Jenny and Moa.

  “Will you excuse us, Jenny?” Moa asked.

  I was proud of the girl when she said, “No.” She’d grown brave in the short time I’d been there—courage building with every meal she brought, every lie she told.

  “Please excuse yourself,” Moa said. “I know we’ve put you in the midst of all this, but we need to talk to Roscoe alone for a moment.”

  “I know everything there is to say.”

  “Listen to your mother,” Wilson said. “Go on now.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  I remembered Moa’s words eliciting quick compliance in the past, her directives always followed. Wilson had been the softer of the two. But their roles had clearly swapped in my time away, and I resisted the envy that rose in me for two people together long enough to become each other.

  Jenny nodded at me out of support, I chose to think, and then she left the room. The stairs creaked under her feet as she climbed to the second story. We listened to her footsteps move down the hall, the doorknob turn, a few more steps, the firm latch of the door closing.

  “Seems she’s gone,” Wilson said, but Moa shushed him.

  After a few more steps, the scratch of a record floated down to us, one of Marie’s. The notes slid right into their slots in my memory.

  “Come here,” Marie had said. We’d been in our tiny sitting room—I’d just come home from a day topping poles—and she’d taken my hands. “Isn’t this the very best music you’ve ever heard?” We’d danced round that small room, to this very song, and she’d rested her head against my chest, just as she was supposed to.

  “It’s called ‘The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,’ ” she told me. “Can you hear the longing in it?”

  “Yes.”

  I can hear it.

  I imagine Jenny hearing it, too, listening to it right now.

  Maggie had long finished her food and lay chewing on a bone over by the stove. Moa poured our coffee. “Jenny’s right that she knows most everything we’re about to tell you. I just didn’t want her to see your reaction, which is me asking you to keep as calm as you’re capable of while we give you the news we’ve got to give. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Ross,” Wilson said.

  Trouble was growing in me.

  “Now, you’ll have to go through this whole thing again with Gerry when he visits next, but I suppose it’s best you hear it from our mouths so you have a chance to calm down before seeing him. He’s missed you, Roscoe, and he wants you in his life.”

  “All right.”

  Wilson took over. “Whether the blame of our hardships fell squarely on you or not, Marie put it there, and she did her best to get Gerry to put it there, too.”

  Moa was nodding. “Wilson tried to talk to her about it a couple times. Imagine you know as well as we do how stubborn Marie can be. There was no budging on this particular matter. But I bring this up only to assure you that none of this is Gerry’s doing.”

  “You’re making me nervous, Moa.”

  “Hell”—Wilson chuckled—“me, too.”

  Moa held tight to her mug with both hands. She took a breath that seemed to last minutes, the inhale draining all the air from the room, the exhale bringing it back. “Marie’s divorced you, Roscoe. It’s been years now.”

  I expected anger, a great circulating current. I waited for it, clenching my fingers round my mug, readying to throw it against that damn wallpaper, splattering those tiny people with their huge flowers, a great stain to mar that shiny room.

  Moa and Wilson watched me.

  But my hand couldn’t bring that mug high enough to throw it. Instead, I took a sip of the coffee Moa had brewed for us. Coffee was a treat still, having been gone for so long. I worry that I’ve grown too used to some comforts now, coffee just a part of my life like sleeping in a bed and waking in a room and working my own hours. All these things are privileges.

  “Ross?” Wilson asked.

  “Just taking it in.” Then I found a question. “How?”

  “She got your signature on the papers the one time she visited,” Wilson said. “You were injured. She told us you were fully conscious and in agreement, but I recognized the lie in that the day I picked you up—asking me about whether she’d visited at all.”

  “Why didn’t she just ask me when I was awake?”

  “We can’t answer that, Ross.”

  “But there are things we can tell you,” Moa assured. “It’s this next part that we wanted the time for—the time with you here.” The swiftness in her speech felt like panic. “Once Marie paid off the power company and we got back the electricity, the farm did well. We all did well. Six months after Wilson returned, Ma
rie chose to leave, though. She moved down to Mobile for a teaching position. She took Gerald, against his wishes, and she insisted we move in here to keep up the maintenance. A little over a year later she came back with a lawyer who’d drawn up a bill of sale for the house and property.”

  “She sold it to us for a hundred dollars,” Wilson said.

  “A hundred dollars we’d already given her—taken from wages. She wouldn’t let us argue.”

  I was thinking of the divorce, trying to see it, to place it within the time I’d known in Kilby. Marie had been absent, but she had played the role of wife in my mind, a silent wife, an absent wife, even at times a figment of a younger wife, but she was still—­always—the woman I had married, the woman I was married to still.

  “Ross?”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” Moa said.

  I traced the story they’d given me—from my furtive divorce to the lawyer’s visit. “This is yours? You own the land?”

  “Yes,” Wilson said.

  “And you chose to bring me back here?”

  They nodded, and I looked between them, a foreignness settling around me. Marie’s father’s land handed over to the people hired to till it, and those people my new custodians. I was in the cottage because of them, because of the mercy they’d shown.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” I told Wilson and Moa, a desperation stirring, a need for escape so fierce I couldn’t finish the thought. I couldn’t even say I was going before I was moving away. I paused only for a moment—there at the door, long enough to call Maggie to my side.

  I spent the next days burning the old roof mulch and laying tarpaper across the dry planks. Twice, I’d packed and then unpacked a bag. The second of those times, I’d left, making it to the original power line running along Old Hissup Road, belongings on my back, dog at my side. My transformers stopped me, all three of them there, rusted, quiet ghosts of the creations they’d been. The combination sent me back to the cottage, unsure of the part that was mine—the wires with their live currents or the broken-down transformers that’d long been replaced.

  Then Jenny arrived. “Will you come up to the house? Gerald’s here.”