This Rock

by Robert Morgan

  One time when I was about fifteen I was passing through the orchard behind the Richards house on my way up the mountain to pick blackberries. Mama wanted blackberries for a cobbler for Sunday dinner, and the berries was gone in the pasture down by the branch. As I skirted between the apple trees and plum and pear trees I heard somebody singing. It was Annie’s voice. Even then she had the prettiest voice in church. I stepped closer to hear better.

  When I come to the Golden Delicious tree at the edge of the orchard, I seen Annie standing by the table beside the washpot. She was washing her hair in a pan, and she had only a slip over her bare shoulders. I stepped back behind a tree and then got behind a rose of Sharon bush before she seen me.

  I hadn’t meant to spy on Annie, but I knowed she’d be embarrassed if I walked up on her wearing nothing but a petticoat. I couldn’t help myself. I stood behind the rose of Sharon bush and watched her pour dippers of water over her hair to rinse it, and then start to comb it. In the sun her hair looked bright even though it was wet. Her shoulders was slender and perfect, and her arms was white as cream. Her new breasts was showing under the petticoat.

  I can still remember how Annie sung to herself an old song called “Gentle Annie.” It was a sweet tune and she sung it in a low voice. As she sung she rubbed the drops from her neck and shoulders and wiped the wetness from her arms down to the wrists. Then she spread her hair on her shoulders so it would dry fast in the sun. And she combed out each strand slow so it dried even quicker in the Saturday sun. The hair got brighter and brighter as she combed it out.

  Annie set down on a tub and shook her hair so it spread out again around her neck and shoulders. Her voice was pure as the ring of one glass on another. It was pure as the sound of springwater pouring into a pool.

  Annie was so beautiful it was hard for me to look at her. But I couldn’t look away. It seemed impossible she could ever love anybody like me. I knowed I would always love her, whether she loved me or not. I promised myself I would always love her.

  When her hair was dry she stood up and lifted a basket to gather clothes in. She walked to the clothesline and with her slim white arms unpinned sheets and pillowcases, shirts and underwear, from the line. She folded the clothes into the basket and started singing again. I breathed out and realized I’d held my breath for a long time.

  “FOR WE KNOW where the wicked shall go,” Preacher Liner said. “They are bound for the fiery pit. They’re doomed to the lake of fire. They are throwed into the everlasting darkness. If you think a match will burn you, if you think a hot stove will burn you, imagine a lake of fire hotter ten thousand times than burning gasoline. Imagine a lake of fire hotter than a furnace, hotter than a forge that melts steel.”

  Preacher Liner stopped and leaned over the pulpit. We waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He just looked at us, and everybody was froze, like their joints had turned to chalk, like they was bracing theirselves for a blow in the face. But Preacher Liner didn’t say nothing for a long time. He looked over the congregation like we was filth and he didn’t have no hope for us. Finally he motioned to the song leader to start the invitational hymn.

  As the choir sung “Just As I Am” I sung along too, but I looked down at my hands on the bench in front of me. And I tried to think about sunlight on the pine trees and the north side of the pasture hill where the frost stayed on the grass all day. I looked up but couldn’t see Annie because of big fat Ruthie Tillman in front of me. I wanted to see the sweet color of Annie’s hair.

  “Is there anybody here troubled in their heart?” Preacher Liner hollered above the singing. “Is there anybody here that feels the need to get right?”

  I was glad church would be over in a few minutes and I’d be out in the cool breeze and sunshine. I tried to think what I’d say to Annie when she come out of the church. I would stand at the steps and when she come out the door I’d take off my hat and speak to her.

  “Don’t listen to the devil whispering in your ear to hold back,” the preacher shouted. “Hell is full of procrastinators. Hell is packed with them that couldn’t make up their minds.”

  I’d have to get out of the church and stand close to the door, or one of the other boys would ask Annie first. Only walking with Annie would help me redeem myself. And if there was two asking at the same time, Annie would just ignore them both. I’d seen her do it. She’d walk right on by and not let nobody walk her home.

  “The Lord might bust through the eastern sky any minute,” the preacher yelled. “With his host of angels he’ll split the blue sky in two and call up his saints to heaven. Will you be left standing on this sorry earth? Will you gnash your teeth and cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall on you?”

  As Ruthie Tillman swayed with the song I caught a glimpse of Annie’s hair. It was the color an angel’s hair would be, so fine and glistening in the dusky church air. Her hair had sunlight in it.

  “If you end up in hell, don’t blame this church,” Preacher Liner hollered. “Don’t blame the members of this church and the deacons of this church. If you end up in hell you have sent yourself there, same as if you struck a match and set the fire yourself.”

  I could tell Preacher Liner was winding down. The service was about over. The song was in its last chorus and I joined in, singing louder than before. I was almost free of the dread and sadness of the church, but not of the dread and sadness inside me. In another minute or two I’d be outside. And I would speak to Annie.

  Soon as the hymn was over, Preacher Liner started praying. “May the Lord go with us as we return to our daily lives. May the Lord guide us as we go about our work to earn our daily bread. May the Lord look into our hearts and help us to avoid the sin of pride and the sin of lust. May the Lord forgive us our secret faults and our public hypocrisies. And may the Lord give us peace. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said a number of people around the congregation.

  When I stepped out into the open it was like the world exploded in my eyes. Light swelled so bright it made my eyeballs hurt, but the fresh air on my face was soothing. I blinked and shaded my eyes. And then I seen Moody standing right beside the steps. He was standing right where I had planned to plant myself. And he stood there like he’d just come out of church with everybody else. He was smiling at me when I seen him.

  “Howdy, Brother Muir,” Moody said and tipped his hat.

  “You ain’t got no business here,” I said.

  It was like Moody to think of what would rile me the most. He had drove off to get the liquor and take it to Wheeler. And then he’d come to church and waited till the service was over. I seen the Model T in the parking lot.

  “You get away from here,” I said.

  Moody tipped his hat and smiled at everybody coming out of the church. He smiled like he’d been at the service and heard the sermon. I looked around to see if there was any other boys waiting near the door. I saw Sam Willard standing back by the arborvitae, and Calvin Simpson on the other side of Moody. They was standing way back because Moody was there. Moody had too much of a reputation as a knife fighter for the other boys to want to argue with him.

  More people come out the door, and I figured it was time for Annie to come out. Mama and Fay stepped out into the sunlight. Mama seen both Moody and me standing on the steps. “Let’s go home,” Mama said to both of us.

  “Be home later,” Moody said.

  “Time to go now,” Mama said and smiled. Everybody in front of the church was listening. They was waiting to see what would happen between Moody and me. I thought I seen Annie in the doorway, and then she disappeared. Her mama come out, and I said, “Howdy, Mrs. Richards.” And Moody tipped his hat and said, “How do, Mrs. Richards.”

  But Annie was not behind her as I expected.

  Then I knowed where Annie had gone. I don’t know how I knowed it, but it come to me in a flicker. I stepped back and walked past Sam Willard. And when I got around the arborvitae and around the corner of the church, I run to the back. Annie had se
en both Moody and me standing by the church door, and Mama talking to us, and she’d turned around and gone to the back of the church. There wasn’t a door in the rear of the building, but there was a low window that as a boy I used to climb in and out of when Grandpa was mowing the churchyard. The back of the church lot joined the Richardses’ cornfield on the mountainside, and I knowed Annie was going to climb out the window and walk home across the field so she wouldn’t have to be bothered by Moody and me and the other boys either.

  Sure enough, as I run around to the back, there she was, crawling backward through the window. “Let me help you down,” I said and grabbed her under the arms.

  “Where did you come from?” Annie said. On the ground she pulled away from me and brushed the hair out of her eyes. Her cheeks was flushed a little.

  “I thought you might need some help,” I said.

  “Did it look like I needed help?” Annie said.

  “That ain’t the usual way to leave the church,” I said.

  “Better than being pestered by a bunch of fools,” Annie said. She straightened her sweater where it had got twisted. Her figure was slender and young and perfect.

  “Better let me walk you home,” I said.

  “Nobody’s stopping you,” Annie said. She stood like she was waiting for me to leave. She was embarrassed, I reckon. I knowed I had to say the right thing.

  “Let’s walk down to the spring and get a drink,” I said.

  “Ain’t thirsty,” Annie said.

  “All that talk of hell made me thirsty,” I said.

  “Then go yourself,” Annie said.

  “We can go through the pine trees and nobody’ll see us,” I said.

  WALKING DOWN TO the spring was what courting couples had always done after church. Mama and Daddy had walked down to the spring when they first met way back in the 1890s. It was maybe a quarter of a mile through the pine trees and along the edge of the pasture down to the hemlocks that shaded the spring. Late in the day, before evening services, boys and girls walked down to get a drink and they would stop to kiss in the shadows of the pines and hemlocks. Sometimes they took a bucket from the bench in the back of the church and filled it for the rest of the congregation to drink from. A lot of couples had got engaged walking down to the spring and back. A lot of marriages had their start when a boy and girl took the long way back from the spring.

  I wondered if I was going to kiss her. I’d never kissed Annie before. And I couldn’t tell if she was in the mood to be kissed. Her hair sparkled in the sunlight like it had crystals in it. The shade of the hemlocks was almost like night after the blinding sun. I took her hand as soon as we got into the shade. I had to say something because I had took hold of her hand.

  “How would you like to go to Mount Mitchell?” I said.

  “You ain’t been to Mount Mitchell,” Annie said.

  “But now that I have a Model T we could go,” I said.

  “I thought the Model T was Moody’s,” Annie said.

  “It’s half mine,” I said.

  “Then why does Moody drive it all the time?” Annie said.

  The trail was cushioned with spruce pine needles and wound down to the rocks in front of the spring. The spring basin was more than a yard across. White sand covered the bottom, and spring lizards shivered in the edges of the pool. Flecks of mica winked like stars.

  I took the gourd off the stick and dipped up a drink for Annie. She took the shell and sipped from it, then throwed the rest out. “Water tastes better from a poplar spring,” she said.

  “No better than a hemlock spring,” I said.

  I took the gourd and scooped up a drink for myself, rolling the cold water on my tongue the way I’d read wine tasters roll wine. “Hemlocks give the water a spicy taste,” I said.

  “I don’t taste no spice,” Annie said.

  With my lips wet I leaned over and kissed her. I brushed her lips so her lips got wet. “Don’t you taste that?” I said.

  She turned away. “I got to go home,” she said. “Papa will come looking for me, or he’ll send one of my brothers.” She started back up the trail. I hung the gourd on the stick and followed.

  Just as we come through the pines to the road, I heard the tut-tut-tut of a Model T. When we stepped out into the sunlight I seen it was Moody. He must have been waiting in the churchyard for us to come back. He swung the car out of the parking lot into the road in front of us and stopped. A big smile crawled on his face, like he was mighty pleased about something.

  “Want me to drive you home?” he hollered to Annie.

  “Annie is walking home with me,” I said.

  “Don’t look like you’ve been walking home,” Moody said.

  “We was just on our way,” I said. I put my foot on the running board and my hand on the window like I was going to push the Model T away.

  “You should let Annie speak for herself,” Moody said.

  “Nobody asked you to stop,” I said.

  “Now don’t get all bothered, little brother,” Moody said. “You ain’t walking so good yourself on that ankle, last time I noticed.”

  “I’m walking fine,” I said. “Go on, get away from here.” I slapped the side of the car.

  “Speak for yourself,” Moody said. “Come on, get in,” he said to Annie and opened the passenger door.

  Annie climbed into the car before I could say anything. I was going to tell Moody to get out of our way. But she got in and slammed the door. Moody revved up the motor, and as he pulled away, the wheels spun on the gravel and flung rocks back at me. A rock hit me in the knee, and the tires made two troughs of dust as he went down the road. I watched the Model T bounce on the ruts and washboard until it was out of sight around the bend.

  Ten

  Ginny

  AFTER YOU LOSE a husband you grieve for a few weeks or months, and then you tell yourself that it’s over, you will go ahead with your life with a new will and a new freedom. And you tell yourself loving is a habit you’ll get over and forget with your mourning. You have got beyond such things, in the dignity and wisdom of your widowhood.

  If you thought that, you will turn out to be wrong. For when you’re least expecting it, seven months later, or seven years later, the memory of your loved one will come to you and catch you in the throat. And it will be like he is with you again. After Tom died, months after he was buried, I would be turning a corner or milking a cow, and something would remind me of his voice, of the way he dug with a hoe or nodded by the fire. I would feel his touch, and the tears would come to my eyes. I might be ironing or even walking up to the mailbox and think of the first time I seen him, or the way he went to sleep trying to read the paper by the fire, or the way he broke wind in his sleep, and my throat would lock and feelings stir deep in my stomach.

  For I found that those we love never go away completely. They come back in the moments of our greatest sadness, and our greatest joy. And they always come unexpected. We are struggling to finish cutting hay, or watching a sunrise, and they are there with us. They are somewhere just behind us, and to the side of us. Sometimes they are watching through our eyes and listening through our ears. They are close to our ears, and close to the I that is behind the eyes.

  The loved dead are with us and walk with us, and come to us in our awful moments, and in our sleep and in our dreams. They come to us in our prayers and pray with us. They are in our work and in our sweat. The dead loved ones haunt the breeze under poplars in broad daylight, and the night wind in the hemlocks, and the murmur of sparkling water.

  When I was a girl I would have thought an old woman would have give up all thought of loving, but I was wrong. It’s true, loving night after night and week after week is a habit that can be give up, has to be give up when your lover is gone. But the need to be loved, the yearning to be loved, never goes away from you.

  After Tom died I would wake up in the night and feel the emptiness and coldness of the bed, and the emptiness of the house. We had quarreled and sl
ept separate often through the years of our marriage. Sometimes we slept apart for months. But always there had been a reunion. Always there had been the rapture of reconciliation. There was the promise that a quarrel would end and we would be one flesh again. Even apart I would know Tom was laying just above me on his pallet in the attic. And one night he would look at me long in the lamplight and be ready to join me in the bedroom like it was our first night and we was one flesh again.

  But after he was gone I would wake up in the middle of the night and imagine I had been touched. I’d lay there feeling a hand had been run over my skin, over my breasts and my belly. That’s how much I needed to be handled and pressed. There was too much in me that needed to be brought out by loving. I was not that old yet. My hair had some gray, but I was not too old to need love.

  You act your age, I said to myself. Act your age in front of your children and Pa and Florrie. Act your age in front of the preacher and the community, and in front of the Lord.

  The need for love filled me like the need for fellowship with the Holy Spirit. I needed to be loved so bad I walked along the river and up the hill to the top of the pasture. The wind whispered crazy things in my ear and I rubbed my hands together and put my hands on my hips.

  And I found out I talked to myself. I had talked to myself when I was young, but had got over it. A few months after Tom died I was scouring out milk pitchers with boiling water from the kettle and Florrie, who was helping me to dry them, said, “Ginny, what did you say?”

  “Didn’t say nothing,” I said.

  “You did,” Florrie said. Florrie always liked to be stubborn and critical. “You have been talking to yourself.”

  “I reckon I know when I’m talking and when I ain’t,” I said.

  “You said something about how a catfish wouldn’t eat what Lily fixes for Joe,” Florrie said and giggled.

  I guess my face turned red, for that was exactly what I had been thinking, how uncertain a cook and housekeeper my sister-in-law Lily was. I was embarrassed to have said my thoughts out loud. I wondered what else I had said, thinking I was only thinking it.