by Joanna Scott
She knew what her parents would have said if she’d asked them for permission to take a ride with Daniel. So she didn’t ask them. She just snuck away from the picnic and met him on the dirt road behind the Jensons’ barn. She hiked up her skirt, swung her leg over the seat, mounting the bike as if she were mounting the Jensons’ paint pony, and grabbed Daniel around the waist as he gunned the engine.
It was great fun riding back behind the reservoir and along the road that crossed a lower ridge of Thistle Mountain. Daniel made that bike go so fast that Sally’s hat went flying, and when she screamed he just went faster.
Faster along the mountain’s southern slope, faster along the zigzagging road, their bodies leaning together one way and then the other, down along the dirt road behind the junkyard, down through Stockhams Woods, careening into a field Sally had never seen before, bumping up and over a grassy mound at such high speed that the front wheel actually left the dirt road and they seemed to float suspended in the air, then dropped abruptly, slowed, and finally rattled to a halt in the middle of nowhere.
Crazy, one-eyed Daniel — when did you get so wild? You who would only ever eat your potatoes mashed, never fried or boiled. And always adding sugar to lemonade that was already sweet. You were changed by the war, along with the rest of the world. Because of the war, people now knew what could happen. But as Father Ludwig of the Good Shepherd Calvary Church liked to say: knoving eez nawt veezdom.
Daniel, lacking in veezdom, urged, “Come on, Sally.”
“Where to?”
“Let’s just have a walk around.”
They walked for a while along the path that grew narrower toward the end of the meadow, the brambles scratching Sally’s legs, closing in, until the path faded to nothing, there was no dirt left to see, the sun was low in the sky, and it was time to get back home. But Daniel wasn’t ready to go home. Daniel had a confession to make: all this time —
“How long?”
“Forever.”
For forever, he’d guessed that Sally had special feelings for him. The way she looked at him. Her smile. Gee, when she smiled at him, it was all he could do not to —
What was he trying to tell her?
Though she should have known better, she couldn’t help but grin. That was her habit. Grinning Sally, who by then had a reputation for being able to charm all the youth of Tauntonville. As it turned out, she’d unintentionally charmed her cousin Daniel.
What a silly boy he was!
Such a darling girl — why, he absolutely had to kiss her!
He pressed so hard against her that she tripped and fell beneath him. She instinctively grabbed him as she went down, which he seemed to take as proof that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. And while he tickled her and made her shriek with laughter, she did want him enough to tickle him back. His good eye sparkled; his bad eye stared at a skewed angle and was veiled with a pearly film. What a strange and fascinating fellow! No matter that he was her cousin — that was part of the fun of it. It felt right and natural to be misbehaving. That’s all they were doing. Misbehaving in the way that can’t be helped when you’re young and full of life and out of your parents’ sight. Until Daniel went too far, and by the time Sally realized what was happening, she couldn’t stop him.
Doesn’t it feel good, Sally? Doesn’t it, doesn’t it? He loved her and he couldn’t help loving her.
It was over just like that — an action too quickly completed to be undone. And though she could see from the look in his good eye that her cousin was satisfied, all Sally could think to say in the cool bitterness that came with an understanding of having failed to protect herself was “Don’t you ever do that to me again, Daniel Werner. Now take me home.”
She worked for the Jensons six months more, until her swollen belly was showing too much to be hidden by sweaters. Daniel, eager to claim his cousin as his wife, made it known that he was the father, but Sally refused to have anything to do with him. She must marry him, her parents told her. She’d rather die, she said. Daniel wrote to Sally, describing the joyful life ahead for them together, in long, garbled letters, which she tore up without ever answering. At home, she worked as hard as she could, shucking, lifting, hauling, boiling berries into jam, and praying that exhaustion would put an early end to her trouble. She hissed at her mother’s admonitions and invited her father’s rage with her foul language, feeling with a secret satisfaction the sting of his powerful hand against her ear and then the ringing that she hoped signaled a deeper pain. They couldn’t make her marry Daniel Werner against her will. Oh, yes they could. Oh, no they couldn’t. Still her belly grew fatter as the snow turned to rain. And then the day came when there was nothing left to do but run away.
Running, running, running up the jagged slope behind the rows of new corn, over the stone wall, through the woods and meadows. Sting of nettles. Gray sky of dawn. Bark of a startled deer. Don’t be afraid, it’s only me. Running, running, running. Baby will have his bottle of warm milk by now and a clean soft diaper to replace the soiled one she’d left on him. Good-bye, baby. He’d been alive a whole forty-eight hours, and she hadn’t bothered to give him a name yet. She would let her parents name him. They’d name him Moses. No, they wouldn’t. They’d name him something shameful — Job or Ishmael or, worst of all, Sal — so he’d never forget his shameful mother.
Running, running, running, because that’s what a girl does who has left her baby in a basket on top of the kitchen table, like a pile of fresh-baked biscuits. And all the while listening for the sound of voices filling the empty air, calling her to come back.
Sally!
O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world.
Where’s Sally?
Has anyone seen our wretched Sally?
Look what she forgot to take along with her!
And who’s surprised?
Almighty and everlasting God, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift.
Laura, check the attic. Loden, check the cellar. Clem, ride over to the Jenson place, see what they know. Tru, watch Willy. And the baby.
Sally isn’t here.
Sally’s gone away.
Bad Sally. Doomed Sally. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
Give unto us an increase of faith, despite —
A mouth of cursing, deceit, and fraud. Tush, she said with vanity, I shall never be cast down. And look what happened.
Bad Sally will come to a bad end — that’s what they’d been saying ever since her cousin taught her about love. While other Tauntonville girls her age were finishing their schooling and looking forward to marriage, she was —
Running, running, running —
Where’s Sally?
Sally’s gone away.
Is that her name carried on the wind? Shhh, says the breeze moving through the meadow. Don’t speak. The world will watch in silence as she runs, the sky empty of consolation. No one is calling. They’ve already given up on her.
But still she runs. Running, running, running. How many lives start over this way, by putting one foot in front of the other?
In this corner of the world, hidden from prying eyes, in the grainy light of dusk, on a June evening in her sixteenth year, Sally knelt at the mossy edge of the spring, cupped her hand to hold the fresh water, and drank her fill. The water was as cold as ice. Colder. She ate those sour strawberries by the handful, and then, in the darkness, she made a soft bed from dry pine needles and slept. She slept for one hundred years. And she woke to a whole different life.
How was it different?
It was raining.
Oh.
A soft, soaking rain fell all day. It was the kind of rain that washed away caked mud from fingers, blood smears from a sanitary pad, and dirt from the soul. She sat beneath a rocky ledge beside the spring and waited for the rain to stop. Late in the afternoon, she was as bad a girl as ever.
Bad Sally.
That’s her.
; In ancient times the oracle would have predicted a bad end. But there are no oracles in the modern world. There are only fears and hopes.
And hunger. Dear Jesus, she was so damn hungry she was ready to eat her shoe.
But still she sat beside the dripping shale, feeling cold through to her bones and furious at everyone she could think of — God, her family, Miss Krumbaldorf, the Jensons, the men who started the war, the German soldier who threw the grenade that sent shrapnel into Daniel’s eye, and of course Daniel Werner himself, who couldn’t see straight enough to know that he would never convince his cousin to marry him.
Dripping, bubbling water. It was early in the month, not yet summer, and with the rain the temperature was dropping steadily. She’d freeze to death if she didn’t do something besides sit there watching raindrops melt into the spring, the bubbles pop, the foam swirl, and — why, look at that sneaky little worm slipping out from beneath a rock, sliding soundlessly into the water. Just a slimy gray newt with yellow spots. Yet in the tension of her loneliness, it was more than that.
She tried to catch sight of the creature as it swam away. At first she didn’t see it moving in the water. Then she saw the tiny snout sticking out above the surface, the black beads of its eyes staring, as though challenging her to imagine the potential for conversation.
What else was there to do but say hello?
At the sound of her voice, the newt pulled itself underwater with a jerk, leaving only a single circle where its snout had been. As the faint ripple widened, Sally caught sight of thready brown hair trailing below the surface, hardly more than a shadowy blur in the water. And were those arms stretched out, along with the flickering motion of tiny hands paddling through the water? There and gone, leaving enough of an impression for Sally to wonder about what she’d just seen.
But wonder doesn’t last long when a belly is rumbling its complaints. Sally had never heard the legend of the Tuskawali and didn’t want to have to figure out how to make sense of what she’d seen. Why, a newt was just a newt! Forget about it. More important, the spring was a vessel of stone and mud spilling water in a constant stream. The water moved through the narrow channel and toward the meadow as if on a single-minded mission, going on its way with a certainty that Sally envied. Where, she wondered, was it heading? Where would it lead?
She couldn’t begin to guess the answer. Her parents’ farm was at the bottom of the south side of Thistle Mountain. Here on a distant northern plateau, the stream meandered through the meadow and then bent toward the slope. She’d never been on the north slope of the mountain before. She’d never been farther than the field behind the junkyard where one Sunday afternoon she’d lain with her cousin Daniel.
As soon as the drizzle had lightened to a warm mist and before the sun had sunk behind the far ridge of pines, Sally Werner set out walking, following the bank of the meadow stream, descending through the forest as the stream widened into a creek and fell over mossy stone shelves. The flowing water was the next best thing to an arrow mounted on a sign with her name on it.
This way, Sally Werner.
A girl in a plaid sheath dress and saddle shoes just walking along, stepping over roots stretched across the ground like knobby fingers, hoping that she was heading in the right direction, with a destination that would include a hot turkey dinner, walking to the rhythm of the ballad she was making up to tell the story of her life.
Mother, daughter, sister, lover.
Wretched Sally Werner.
And then what?
Then she disappears down the mountainside.
Quick, come say good-bye to Sally.
Good-bye, Sally.
But she’s already gone.
June 4, 1947, five o’clock on a Wednesday. And what in God’s name did the two men see coming out of the bushes?
“D-d-don’t shoot, Swill. It’s a girl.”
“I can see it’s a girl.”
Grizzled old Swill, with narrow eyes shadowed by the brim of his cap. Everybody on the north side of the mountain knew Swill. And the man who knew him best was his stuttering brother, Mason, standing there in Italian army boots his nephew had sent back for him from the war, woolen kneesocks knitted by his nephew’s wife, a lumber shirt, and striped shorts belted above his waist.
“D-don’t you d-d-do anything crazy, Swill.”
“I wouldn’t ever shoot a doe.”
Together they watched her cross from one side of the creek to the other, stepping so lightly she might have thought those stones were eggshells.
“Hello, darling.”
The shock of them — “What in hell!”
“Well, listen to that mouth. Won’t you listen to that mouth!”
All she could think to do then was to stand there, stupid and helpless, the creek trickling merrily around the rock beneath her right foot.
Swill said he wouldn’t have ever thought such an ugly sound could come out of such a pretty mouth.
Ticktock of a dead tree’s branch knocking against the trunk of a tall elm. Gurgle of the stream. The rest of the world was silent as Swill took a step forward.
“Sw-Swill,” his brother murmured.
“Shut up, Mason.”
What should Sally do? After sixteen years in the Peterkin Valley, this situation was new to her. At least she’d known Daniel before he threw himself on her. She’d known him all her life. These men were strangers and seemed bent on causing harm. Should she turn and run and risk taking a load of shot in her back? Should she curse? Should she prepare to fight? Should she smile? She wasn’t finished considering these options when she felt a slimy substance hit her left leg, a cold, wet wormy thing that latched on just below the crease of her knee, causing her to lose her balance and shift extra weight to her right foot, which slipped out from under her. She landed with a splash in the icy water, catching herself with her hands so she didn’t fall too hard, though she got enough of a soaking to turn the butter-colored squares of her dress brown.
Now she was mad.
“You damn imbeciles,” she said, surprising herself with a choice of words she’d never before uttered as a trio. She decided to elaborate: “You goddamn imbeciles!”
“The little spitfire,” said Swill, laying his gun on the ground.
“P-p-poor girlie,” said Mason.
They straddled the creek, curled their rough fingers around her elbows, and lifted her onto dry land. With a quick motion she felt the back of her leg to confirm that it was bare again, free of the worm or leech that had latched itself there.
She warned the men that they’d better not lay a hand on her — this after they had already released her.
“We w-won’t,” said Mason, taking a step back.
“And you,” she snarled, turning to Swill. “Quit laughing.”
“Who’s laughing?”
“Tell him to quit laughing.”
“Quit l-laughing, Swill.”
“I’m not laughing. It’s a cough. Feather on the back of my tongue. Ha, hach.” He spit a gob into the creek, squared his shoulders, and announced, “That’s better.”
“Aw, Swill.”
“Swill,” Sally echoed. “It’s a good name. Swill. Like what’s in a pigsty.”
“Hey now, I haven’t done you any wrong.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever, missy. Not if you get on home where you belong.”
“I don’t have a home.”
“You sh-sure look like you have a home. That’s a homemade dress like wha-what Georgie would sew,” said Mason. He pointed at her, singling her out, accusing her of being who she was.
“You just appeared out of nowhere?” goaded Swill. “Like an angel, eh?”
“Like an angel, yep.”
“You an angel?”
“What if I am?”
“Prove it.”
“Angels don’t have to prove anything. Either you believe or you don’t. It’s your choice.”
“An angel wouldn’t curse like you do.”
>
“How do you know what an angel would say? Ever met one?”
“Swill, d-don’t g-go pretending you know anything about angels. You of all p-p-people.”
“Swill,” sneered Sally, filling her mouth with the bad taste of the name.
“Let’s go, Mason,” Swill said, hooking the strap of his gun back over his shoulder. “It’s suppertime.” And to urge his brother along, he added in a hush that was more than loud enough for Sally to hear, “Can’t you see she’s got a screw loose?”
She slapped a mosquito into a red smear on her arm and watched the two men as they headed down the path away from her. At first she felt triumphant and certain that she had a right to be indignant. Then she started to feel a rising anguish as she thought about that good word supper and realized she would go another night without it.
Wait!
Did she say that aloud?
They went on without turning, climbing carefully down the steep path, holding those twelve-gauge shotguns snug under their arms.
Please.
All she could see by then was Mason’s cap bobbing above a jutting rock. “Hey there,” she said in a whimper. “Hey, misters.” Now that they were out of sight completely, she realized how foolish she’d been. Like what’s in a pigsty, she’d said. Why had she said that? She sagged in a heap to the ground, taking up the space between a craggy boulder and the hard knuckle of a root, and hid her face in her arms. She held in her sobs in order to be able to hear their footsteps if they returned to help her. But they didn’t return. That was her fault. She wouldn’t last through the night. That, too, was her fault. She’d left her newborn son on the kitchen table. She’d made it impossible ever to return home. She had no home. She was born out of nothing and would become nothing. Like what’s in a pigsty, sure. Out of her own pretty mouth. Shit and filth and blood and any goddamn chance she had left — all in the pigsty. It was her fault. Mistaking ignorance for freedom. All the facts that she would never know. A phrase from her seventh-grade studies came to mind: failure of self-governance. Meaning what? She hadn’t understood then and she didn’t understand now. And another dislocated phrase: on the eve of. And a word she didn’t remember ever learning: blimey. Where did that come from? The unscrewed screw causing everything to lose its place. Crosshatch and according to. Bump, bump, bump. The world spinning like her mother’s lazy Susan on the table, beans and potatoes turning round, along with baby.
