The Quickening

by Michelle Hoover

  Even when we could hire hands, that was the way it was. The flies were thick about the kitchen. Mice ran the boards beneath our feet. Our house thinned and heaved in the late night winds. With the windows open, we grew used to the lack of stillness, a dusting of pollen on every last piece of wood. I was busy canning most days, a line of jars on my kitchen table. What tasted good and fresh in the early morning could turn my stomach by midafternoon. My fingers swelled with the juice, and the fruit bruised no matter how much care I took. I dropped the jars to boil in the kettle on the stove, tightened the lids once the fruit had set. All that effort and we wouldn’t see those jars again until the weather turned cold, the glass dark, stored away in the cave we’d built in our yard.

  The cave, that’s what you might call a cellar now, though it didn’t sit beneath the house. It was a hole we dug in the yard, deep and wide and lined with bricks. We covered it with a narrow wooden door and a mound of dirt as high as you are standing. It held those jars of fruit, vegetables, and meat as well as the cider and milk we hoped to keep for a time. My family had such a cave when I was young. It was a place the weather didn’t touch. A place where as children we would play king of the mountain, the soil black on our knees. But underneath that mound, I couldn’t tell it apart from a grave and I never went inside alone. Something in the cave was precious. For all we knew, time beneath that ground had stopped. My boy, sometimes I dream I’m down there still, what with the length of the days as I lie in this bed. At night the trees scratch the windowpanes. The air aches with so much silence, and it’s dark as rot in this room, as if my eyes weren’t open. I think I’ve already quit this place. But when a cow calls from a distant farm, as clear as if it fed on the grass outside, I know I’m just wishing. On the hottest nights, Frank swore he could sleep in the cave and keep just as well for the harvest in the fall. I slapped his hand to even kid as much.

  Now with your grandfather gone, I think about the way that cave seemed to hold all of us in its grip. Every bit of food that kept us through the winter we locked beneath its door. If it vanished all at once, what would have become of us? You would never know it, but in our yard that cave still sits, empty but for the jars I left behind when I closed up a good half of this house. And soon this house will be empty too. I hope you’re well, your mother wrote those eleven years ago, weeks before you were to be born. And that you know I’m sorry for the way we left, but I wanted my boy born in another place. Adaline never did give an address for writing back. I suppose she didn’t want to hear what her leaving did. The doctor says a month more, she wrote. But I know he’ll be early. I dropped a penny as you always said and it landed on the fifteenth of November. That’ll be the date, I swear. After I’m gone, I hope these pages mean something to you. I don’t have a hold on those years the way I once did, though they’re more real to me than any of the days since. I’ve asked the nurse they send from time to time to be sure to save this notebook. But she’s a stranger to me and I’m not so sure she will.

  It wasn’t until a year after the war that I knew Mary had troubles of her own. It was late in September. The cold weather had come. The season was only beginning but in the winter months the world beyond our door would be lost to us. I know. I’ve seen it. Loneliness can make you do terrible things.

  It was a time of dark mornings and fresh meat. Frank worked at the butchering without lifting his head, his arms high in front of him. The path of the knife in his hand was clean, unstopping. The fat he cut away fell in a mess at our feet. We were to butcher eight hogs that day and sell the meat of four of them, worth more after butchering than hogs brought in on foot. Frank swung about, his arms greasy to his elbows. The front of his shirt hung with hair and waste. I spoke of sausages, of real meat for supper. How I would prepare them that night in a skillet with a molasses gravy, a side of potato or beans if we were lucky enough. The gravy boiled up thick in front of us as he talked, the sausage skins puckering in the pan above the heat. We had started work in the morning, before we could quite see. The walls of our barn and washhouse colored while the sun rose.

  Mary stayed in our house while Jack shared the butchering with us, as their family would share the meat. “I have something for you,” she’d offered when first they came that morning. She looked nervous and faded, a bruise high on her cheek, and she pressed a sack of flour against her chest. My boy, I can’t say I knew how to feel about her then, so sharp was the loss of my child and her part in it, no matter how innocent. It had been four long years since, but I felt a pinch whenever we met. With a sweep of her hair, she kept that bruise of hers hidden. Still, as I led her in, she fingered her cheek until she saw me looking. Now with the butchering in my hands, I smelled the bread she would bake rising on the table, fat with yeast. I knew the warmth it promised. I kept an eye on our windows as we worked. Mary peered out at times but never joined us, my fingers full of filth.

  I’d raised a fire first and started a large barrel of water for scalding. It would be some time before the water was right. Before it was hot enough to clean the hogs, but never so hot it cooked the meat. Nothing gets them so clean. This is how you do it. You dip your finger in three times. You count out slow: one, two … and on three, if the water is ready, it will burn before you can take your finger out again. Frank shot the hogs in the dark, and the noise of the gun broke against us. It seemed too early in the season to begin this work. The ground was muddy from summer and the cold unsettled. But I’d started the water and we were hungry.

  Jack pulled the hogs up with the block and tackle and stuck them so they bled from the throat. Below him, Frank squatted with his face turned, holding the buckets that would catch the blood. He kept his eyes on the water as it warmed.

  “They bleed better in a warm fall,” Jack began. That knife was sure and powerful in his hands. We answered him by dropping our heads. The sun was rising and would soon grow bright.

  “It would be better with sons, I think.” Jack looked at me with this. The ground at my feet felt warm from the fire but damp with wet. My arms ached as he spoke. I remembered the stone marker for our firstborn. It stood beside our house. Kept as best I could from the weeds, it was well out of sight. “To help us, I mean,” he went on. He always went on. “They’re just boys, Mary thinks. Left them to sleep. And there she is, keeping herself in the house away from all this mess, or so she calls it. Shame to have this work and no one to see the way it’s done.”

  “Sons would be more …,” I started to answer, but left it at that. Sons would be more to feed, I’d thought.

  “You have to start with boys when they’re young,” Jack started again. “Before they get other curiosities. You have to set them right. Raise them to know the work.” Jack grew quiet. His arms settled at his waist. I thought of Mary, at work in her house and always cleaning. She kept her boys in line, tried to wrench the farmer out of them. The first time she stood in our fields, I believed she’d left some bad luck at our place. Now through the open windows, I could hear her singing, high and strained, as she baked in our kitchen. “She’s the only friend for you in miles,” Frank had said. “I bet you’re more alike than you think.” But her husband sure was different. Jack stared now at the belly of the hog before him, working his jaw while the animal bled out. “There isn’t much pleasure in it this way,” Jack said.

  Frank talked about supper where he crouched, about the steam in the kitchen, our table and his chair. “Did I ever tell you about Eddie’s father, Jack? His favorite dog took sick once, gone to skin and bones. Wouldn’t make a sound but to whine. I knew her dad would be upset about it. But what did he tell me when I asked? That his wife had made him a roast for supper. He listed what she cooked for him as if he was starved and could taste it right then, the side of pork, beans, and fried onions. It took a good fifteen minutes until he was done with it. And there I was, nodding my head. You knew he was talking about that dog the whole time, telling me how much he liked it, how much he’d miss it if it went. It was the way he said it, see
? That dog was a mangy mutt. It barely moved from the corner of their porch except to lift its head. But I think it heard how Dad went on and got good and hungry. Went right for the scraps they’d left him, first time it’d eaten in days. Would you believe it? That dog is still with them, fattest animal I’ve ever seen.”

  Jack laughed, the body of the hog turning in front of him. “That’s every man I’ve ever known,” he said.

  It was a fine sound to hear Frank go on, a fine way that water turned to steam beneath my hands. We tossed the hogs in one at a time, and the water jumped, wetting the ground around the barrel. They floated, turned on their backs, and we fetched them out again. Our hands grew red and wrinkled. Cooling our fingertips in our mouths, we could taste the hog and the muck it had lived in. Frank and I scraped the hides, the hair salting the ground a fine, white color, and he swept the back of his hand under his nose.

  It didn’t make Frank sick, this work, only restless and singing to himself. He tried to remember the words of a song and where the words were to rise and fall. It was strange to see a man so stained with grease sing this way. Strange how it lifted me from the work at my feet.

  Jack cut along the length of the belly, letting the innards spill from the wound. We shared in scooping out the rest with our hands. Beginning at the head, we ran our arms deep into the body, the stench rising from under our fingers as we loosened the stomach, the intestines, the weak fat around the liver. It all dropped to fill the barrels at our feet.

  Frank looked at the gutted skins where they hung and he stopped his singing. It was high in the day by then. The sun was sharp against the hides, turning them pink, limp. The sweat on his skin made Frank nearly transparent. He felt bloodless, he said, and swung on his feet. I saw this in him even before he spoke, his face hollowed out by the end of the summer months. He said he was hungry. It had been two long seasons since he’d tasted the like.

  We had raised this meat, seen it birthed, give birth, seen it eat our feed and whine when it was hungry. Had watched it walk, fatten, warm itself in filth. We had raised it to be used. We took it to the feeding trough and forced it to eat, forced the mother to feed her young as they lined up against her belly. They sucked at her while she slept.

  We spoke always of eating when we butchered, listing the foods that came to us with the seasons. We could remember the flavors of every meal, the last time we had known a pear, apples, or jelly. The changing textures of our gravies. We whispered our favorites to one another, speaking all in a rush … Fried potatoes, sausages, hot noodles, corn bread, and eggs. Green beans cooked in onion, laid beneath a slab of bacon, creamed corn, and peas my mother made, served high on a plate. Warmed in the pot all day so you couldn’t see what it was. Run together in a stew, in a juice, sauces and all of it dripping. It tasted like the only food you should ever want to have. My mother too, it’s a wonder. It’s a wonder what some women know …

  It was late in the morning by the time Mary came out from our kitchen, carrying her biscuits and glasses of lemonade on a tray. She wore my apron, a dull rag white with flour and tied about her twice. She looked right pleased with herself. As she made her way across the yard, the tray trembled in her hands. The air was chilly. The grass wet her shoes. She was close enough to us by then that I could see a sudden strain in her face, her eyes flickering.

  It was the stench that struck her first. The smell of butchering is thick and bitter, strangely sweet. It clings to the skin. We smelled the same, the stink of our sweat as we worked. With the heat of the sun against us, our clothes steamed. Mary set the tray on the ground and cupped her nose. When she opened her eyes again, she saw us drenched in grease and blood over our fronts and arms up to our shoulders.

  “Oh now.” Jack grinned, rocking on his feet where he crouched. “It’s not as bad as that.”

  Mary took a step back, wiping her eyes. “I baked these biscuits,” she started.

  “Oh now.” Jack grinned at her. The early morning had been quiet. Close to stillness. The work had been easy with three of us at hand. Now Jack seemed to liven at the sight of his wife and the filth she hated, and he caught her against his chest. “Jack,” Frank said. Mary cried out herself, trying to wrench away. Jack wouldn’t let go, drawing her face against his neck and spinning her about, as if dancing. I remembered how he’d clutched his knife earlier in the morning, how swiftly he’d cut, his eyes on the hogs as they bled out. It went on too long, the way he held Mary with the same strength. She beat him with her fists.

  Finally Jack stepped away. Mary’s dress and hair were covered with waste. It clung to her wetly. She spit grease from her lips and straightened the apron over her skirt. “I brought these,” she sputtered. “They’re fresh.” I thought well of her for trying to take it as she did, her chin quivering. “Oh now,” Jack said. He rubbed his neck as we stared at him and then he turned away. I took one of the napkins Mary had brought, dunked it in our water bucket, and set to washing her face. Mary keened, bending at the waist and holding out her arms.

  “Hush,” I said. “We’ll get it off.” I found Jack out of the corner of my eye and he mumbled, stamping back to his place. Soon he was bent against the skins again and cleaning them with his knife. I licked my thumb and washed the most stubborn stains from Mary’s cheeks. Still she shuddered. Her bruise had darkened since the early morning, the size of a fist. I would not touch it. “Hush now,” I said again, tender this time. In my hands she felt as soft and frail as a child.

  “That wasn’t right of him. Not at all,” Frank said. Now in the evening, he had walked into the kitchen smelling of soap, his back sloped, eyeing the stove where I worked. I shut my eyes and tried to shake away the thought. Frank’s skin was red from scrubbing, the kitchen full with me and my work to feed him. My hands felt swollen and heavy, my figure too large in that place with the night coming in, the fire from the stove and a single lantern on the table. Frank kept his gaze on the frying pan where the sausages smoked.

  “What do you think causes a man to do such a thing?”

  “Meanness,” I said. “Plain meanness.”

  Frank hummed in agreement and drew a chair from the table, sitting hard. We shook our heads. It was so strange a deed we couldn’t think to say more. The heat from the sausages rose from the pan, the spicy scent turning through the room. For days that smell would be inside our clothes. Frank didn’t move. When I turned from the pan, he looked through me, hungry for the tender meat in my hands.

  I placed three large sausages on each of our plates and spooned gravy along their lengths. We sat with our heads bowed, the smoke warming our faces. Frank whispered to his breast. “Amen.”

  We ate quickly. Our jaws sore, our mouths rarely closing, licking our lips. We sat bowed over our plates across from each other with few words between us. I thought of Mary and that bruise on her cheek, the way she’d tried to quiet herself. She’d lifted her tray from the ground after I’d cleaned her, scowled at the lemonade that drifted with dirt and grass. Finally she pushed the tray into my arms and walked off home. When I came back into the house, I saw she’d scrubbed our kitchen clean, and I hadn’t had the time to thank her for it. The rest of the biscuits sat on my counter. None of us could eat them. Not yet. When Jack went after her, he walked clear of her swinging arms and didn’t say a word. I worried about her with that husband. I worried a great deal.

  “Finished?” I asked. We sat at the table with our plates empty between us. The windows looked solid with darkness and I felt I knew nothing beyond that door and never would. The weather that moved over us came from a distant place. We couldn’t expect much good from it. And the good man across from me, he was the only man I believed I’d truly known. Frank shook his head and stood to help himself to more sausages from the skillet and started on these before he sat, intent on his chewing. He stared at the table before him as his fork struck his plate, slipped into his mouth, and struck again. Shutting his eyes, he kept on, striking down, his hand tight in holding his fork and trembling. A
t last he scraped up the rest of the grease.

  Frank squeezed the tips of my fingers and sat back in his chair with a slow smile. In his tiredness, he walked to the bed and stretched himself out. I sank into the mattress beside him and listened, his arms quivering as he slept. After all those years I knew the look of him at least. Knew his smell. And I knew he would never do what Jack had done, not for the world. I rested but felt my fingers labor on as they turned against my stomach. That afternoon I’d worked for hours at the sausages while Frank delivered the meat to the butcher in the next town. Bent over near the barn, I sat on a small stool and lifted my eyes to see the quiet of our house. Far off, the trees broke the horizon, the fields gray and unplanted. It would rain soon, I’d thought, and the rain might turn to snow. The house sat between the fields and the coming weather, the place seeming distant from me and far, far from the living. Birds circled the sky above my head and begged for scraps. I couldn’t see the families who lived nearest us, not even the Morrows down the road.

  That night as I fell asleep, I worked at the sausages if only in my head and heard the rainstorm set in. The wind and rain settled me. My hands stretched the entrails again, tied one end of each length and held the skin open. The skins were frail and clear, sticking to my fingers. I pushed the ground meat through to make a stout sausage link, tied it swiftly at the end and put it aside. Another empty skin then, the mound of spiced meat lessening. My arms grew tired as they held the work up close to see. Pieces of meat fell and stained my lap. When finally my hands grew quiet, they rested on my stomach and I felt a fullness there. A quickening to accompany me.

  IV

  Mary

  (Winter 1919)

  Just a few weeks into winter, the afternoons grew heavy, my work faded to a list of chores, and I walked alone every day to the chapel through the snow. That fall the church had received a piano of its own—a gift from a wealthy family in town. When I opened the lid, the strings shuddered in the frame, the keys cool to the touch, but when I pressed my fingers down, they sang. What would my father have thought? He had been one for simple living, for the time of day when the sun had fallen, still hours before dusk, and he could note the difference. My father had left the board he carved for my first piano at the foot of my bed, a poor replica wrapped in brown paper and string. That summer in 1919, we had buried him on the south side of a hill facing a stand of trees, my mother clutching a blue handkerchief to her mouth. The stone held both his and my mother’s names, and this proved best as my mother would follow him within a year.