by Jeffrey Lent
While speaking, she kept her eyes upon his even as she continued shelling peas.
Gently August said, “I was not myself for some months after my wife died.” And never again what I was before, he thought but did not say.
Iris Schofield looked off across the yard to some indeterminate spot and in a sudden small voice said, “In most all ways Bethany left us years ago anyway. When she married that man. What he drove her to, I can’t say.” She looked back upon him.
“My understanding was they made a good match. The troubles began after he left for the war, and it’s not clear Bethany had much say in any of what happened.”
“You did not know Bethany, did you?”
“No, not beyond at Meeting years ago or saying hello in town.”
“That’s right. You did not. Bethany Schofield always had a say, even if it hurt her. That’s half of my grief or more, and all of hers, now. She always had fire in her, grit, I thought, when she was a girl. Strong-willed, free-spirited; I don’t know what to call it. She’d argue The Friend showed that a woman was more than a helpmate but didn’t have the courage to speak so. She had a quick tongue and would not hold it; after she was twelve or thereabout she and her father had got to the place where they’d not speak but for the necessaries of day-to-day living. Malcolm Hopeton was cut from the same cloth, best I could gather. Their only marriage was at the courthouse, you know, and after that I did not see her more than half a dozen times until I washed her body for her burial. If it’s David you want he’s likely about somewheres, you walk out around past the barns and call for him. He’ll show up or not I can’t help you there. Lawyer Stone found him easily enough the times he’s come by. It’s David you’re after, isn’t it?”
Midway through this she’d stopped shelling the peas but her hands were still working, breaking the pods in half and dropping both the loosed peas and casings into the bowl in her lap and he realized she thought she was working snap beans. And with a low dull headache blooming, realized he could not simply leave her now to look for David but must sit gently as possible and tease out what he could of her troubled mind. Even as he considered her comments about her husband and wondered what torments the man might be living within. And again his thoughts were turned to Enoch Stone.
“I called upon you both and if he doesn’t turn up I’ll amble out after a while and look for him. But for now I’d sit and keep company with you, Iris. I didn’t come to intrude or upset you, but I must confess there’s some in what you said I can’t make sense of, perhaps none but a mother could. May I help shell your peas?”
She looked down at the bowl in her lap with the handful of broken pods atop the mound of smooth green peas. “Oh dear, look at this.” She plucked out the pods and dropped them on the heap beside her. A red hen had come up on the porch and was stabbing at the empty pods. Iris said, “My mind seems all akilter with no more sense half the time than that hen. No, no, it’s my job to do but I’d welcome the company. Tell me how your life is, August. I know you’re rare to go to Meeting and don’t blame you for that.”
Again she stopped and looked off and continued, “David goes each week but it’s been difficult for me these last years and now not at all. I can’t face people, what they’re thinking if not saying. That’s small of me, I know.” She looked back to him.
“It’s understandable. Meeting is meant to succor and offer fellowship but if we don’t feel it within . . .” He let his voice trail.
Her fingers were back at proper work. “I feel little within. Anger, but toward whom or what I’m often at a loss. As tumultuous as my household was all those years it seemed nothing more than what we’re called for, to struggle as much as we must to understand how Christ moves in each of us, in those we love. Few souls come easily into Time and fewer dwell there in peace. That was always how I saw it.”
His thoughtfulness was deliberate. “And those that do shall be tested, it would seem.”
“Or we order our lives in hindsight to make it seem so. Perhaps peace never exists in this vale but only strife and meanness and we fool ourselves by painting it as the toil demanded of us toward that peace, a notion that blankets our eyes and hearts, that allows false peace only.”
He reached and touched her hand, took his away. “I once wondered much the same.”
Her chin lifted. “You’re a young man, even younger when you lost your wife and babies. Of course you found your way back to a sensible life.”
“I was guided. Not to the peace you speak of but to a purposeful life, one not without a measure of serenity and solace.”
She ignored this and simply said, “I can’t see how to live in any of the worlds before me. I want none of them.” And then as if it naturally followed, “Did Enoch Stone send you?”
“No,” he was able to truthfully answer. As swiftly he decided he didn’t want to discuss Stone with her and so said, “Iris, may I impose for a cup of water? There was much dust off the road this morning-”
“There!” she said, rising quickly but holding onto her bowl of peas. “You see how it is with me? All at sixes and sevens. There’s coffee still warm. Or I’d make tea?” And again he saw within her fluster the beauty faded but peeping forth, the bright rise in her cheeks, the bow of her lips; and a wrench turned within him, that she had come to the distress she inhabited.
He stood also. “Water would be the best. Cool water. Truly.”
While she was inside, he waited standing at the edge of the porch overlooking the barns and the stockaded hog pens and poultry runs, the earth between them torn and mired as a single sow and her brood of a dozen or more piglets worked their way snuffling alongside the turkey pens, tearing out dandelions and thin grass that lived in those slender sanctuaries. A plank fence hid the vegetable garden, although a hand cultivator lay on its side by the gate and beyond was a small scorched pasture where a pair of brown milk cows stood under the shade of a black walnut tree. Between the pasture and the barns was the skidway from the woodlot where several dozen logs lay bruised with mud, pairs of saw-jacks and several whittled and chipped rounds used as chopping blocks with high heaps of split cordwood looming behind. There was a grim economy within the scene, each piece separate from the others not so different from his own workings but, taken together, lacking in harmony of order, as if the assemblage was arbitrary and not making any whole. August wondered if it had always been so or if there had been a slow falling-apart the past years from some original greater command. He could imagine it both ways.
When Iris returned with a pewter pitcher and tumblers on a tray, he saw a new set to her features and guessed she’d gathered herself while in the kitchen, much as he also had done. They sat again and passed time in light conversation of the summer weather, the heat of the long days, the race against fall coming sooner than any would guess but all knew. There were a couple of pauses, silences that might’ve been awkward but both waited them out until one or the other picked up some thread from the previous remarks and they went along so. They talked of everything except all of what was most pressing and August, while listening to her litany of garden problems, realized his appearance this morning had jarred her, one already deep in a whirling maelstrom of grief, guilt, anger, sorrow and confusion, strands not clear and separate but jumping one to the next when she was alone. He recalled how it was to be beset so. For his part, when she asked of his life he spoke in detail of Becca Davis with only a small prompt to remind her of the orphan’s parents and did not hide Harlan from the conversation but allowed him entry as if it were only a natural occurrence, not altogether a misrepresentation, at which point Iris returned the conversation to the problem of corn-borers. For an hour or more they spoke and as they progressed August understood he was offering what she so deeply needed: a respite from the grinding self-abrasion the loss of her daughter had brought upon her. For a short moment she might live as others did and he was more than happy to collude in offering her that. Doing so, he gained a bit of it as well.
The sun rose high over the roof beams and tree crowns and shadows were pooled tight about their sources when David Schofield appeared as a wavering heat ghosting from the far barn, then gained slow substance and form and came into the yard. The sow and piglets ran to him and he leaned to scratch the sow’s ear as he studied the porch.
“Goodness, there’s David now,” Iris said.
August was already on his feet. “It’s all right. I’ll just walk out to greet him.”
David Schofield’s hands and trousers were speckled with drying blood and drips of black tar. “I’ve been cutting pigs,” he said. “I need to watch em and see the daubs hold or they’ll bleed out. Whatever your business is, you can pitch it to me there.” Without waiting he turned and walked back toward the barn. August simply nodded, not bothering to protest he’d come visiting and not upon business—for surely it was business of a sort—and so followed along.
The barn was a long, low structure of a single story and loft tight against the rafters, but inside belied the derelict appearance of the exterior. The pens of rough-sawn boards were tight and square, the bedding not straw but marsh hay, ample and fresh. The walkway was packed earth swept clean and though the windows were few they were open to the light and air and the large door at the south end was also open, where a wheelbarrow and fork stood and outside rose a manure pile. Beside the manure pile a small fire was dying to a thin coil of smoke, the crossbar holding the kettle of scalding water and the smaller pot of warmed tar. The final pen before the door was larger than most of the others and it was here David led them. Wordless, he stepped to the wall and took down a pair of old milking stools, handed one to August and settled himself outside the pen. August sat a couple of feet away and surveyed the pen and young piglets within. Who minced gingerly on a thin bed of fresh hay, stopping to twist about and sniff best they could between their hind legs at the plaster of tar drying where their testicles had hung.
A strop lay over the top plank alongside a razor. The razor was washed clean and glistened in the light from the open door but David took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped it down, then let the blade rest upon his knee. He said, “The least drop of water missed will be a rust-bloom tomorrow.”
When it was clear he’d say nothing more, August said, “The pigs look well cut and hardy.”
David did not take his eyes from his pigs. “You’re a young man yet. I can set here until dusk and leave thinking all’s well but it takes only one to bite through the tar to get blood flowing. Then the others will swarm so by daybreak I’d be lucky to have any not chewed half to death.”
“There’s risk to everything, certainly. It’s true: I’ll get up more times of a night when I’ve got a first-calf heifer due than any time thereafter. I’ve also gone to the barn to find a fine cow trying to birth a posterior calf and exhausted by the effort. It was a job to dig that big a hole but it had to done.” He stopped then, angry he’d reacted so easily to the comment about being a young man and wondering if he’d just proved it true.
But David only said, “It’s a great burden lifted from me.”
August waited and then said, “What would that be, David?”
The man perched up off his stool to peer into the pen, eyes tracking swiftly a young pig, perhaps two, then settled back and said, “Brother Stone has pierced the torment that wrapped me for so many years. It’s a terrible thing, knowing your own flesh and blood is besmirched. For I saw it in the girl from a young age. Mother did not, but mothers will not see such a thing in their daughters. They will believe the best even when the worst possible is right before them. It’s this blindness I faced, not only from Mother but my own trial as well. The girl never saw herself so but the unnatural is designed this way. Gathered it upon herself as a rightful pleasure. I don’t know to what extent Brother Stone has informed you of this, but it will be in the public revelations of details that I’ll finally shed this cloak of darkness. I know some will see it as a public shaming, but I care nothing for that; long since I ceased caring what others think of me. What lifts my heart in these dark hours is the humble truth that another man snared by her foulness may be exonerated, shall at least be understood as being not an instrument of destruction, but of his own salvation. For, you must know, his final helpless acts were born of the desperation of sudden comprehension. And those actions will be seen truthfully as the grace of the Lord and how His Spirit may infuse not only a man but a community of souls, as well as those who witness such compassion. Comfort for me, finally, yes, but small against the greater good. Yes, I shall lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. You have heard the accounts, Brother Swartout, I know. And so must understand a measure of how this is for me. Nothing more than a measure; no man save myself can fully know the torments of the years behind me, and the release awaiting me. But it will be seen, for those who look. And who will not?”
August was silent but digging in his trouser pocket for the match safe and a cheroot. He struck fire and plumed smoke and pretended to study the young pigs. Finally he said, “It’s only the last couple of weeks I’ve known anything about all of this, and then only bits. I never knew Bethany, beyond her name and face. The rest remains much of a mystery to me.”
“There’s no great mystery to it. The girl was born lacking, and inhabited.”
August smoked. For no obvious reason the numeral eight came to mind, as if he were traversing at once both the inner and outer edges of those double rings that looped back upon themselves. “Lacking?” he asked. “What is a child born lacking?”
David Schofield was quick. “She had no sense of the world beyond her physical being. It’s not that Mother and I did not strive to lift her into the fullness of life, but that she refused it. I’ll tell you. As a little girl in her bath she’d employ her fingers for sensual effect. I only glimpsed that once; Mother was quick to gather her up and wrap her in sacking, making as if to dry her. She’d crawl from her cradle middle of the night to come to my marriage bed where she’d insert herself between Mother and myself but favoring Mother, as if she’d take her from me. And look at me without love. Yet she’d chase behind me around the barns and I thought it was myself she was learning from but came to understand it was the beasts she was watching. The boar mounting the sows. Roosters in their flurry topping hens. One wet afternoon I sent her to fetch the milk cows from the pasture and the time passed when they should’ve made the barn, so I set out looking for them. The rain was drumming down with fog all around and I spied the three cows ambling slow, pausing and looking behind, then moving on. I pulled my hat low to keep the rain from my eyes and walked wide around the cows through the high grass and came up behind from a distance and there she was: Her dress pulled up as she writhed belly-down in the mud of the cow path, pressing herself up and down against the wet earth. When I saw this I sat down flat on the ground, shocked dumb by the sight. I was frighted by it, soaked through with rain, and commenced shaking, a great roaring in my ears and my vision gone all red. I’d seen pure evil and Satan was close by, nigh upon me. Perhaps seeking to enter me as well. I clenched my eyes and prayed and felt the wrath of the Lord wash over me. I rose up then and walked straight to where she and the cows was upon the barn. She was upright walking then, her dress smeared with mud, her hair and arms and legs also. I sent her to the house and Mother, and milked cold shivering. Even as I felt the heat of rage fill me and seep out again. She was an unnatural child but she was mine and I had a duty to her. That night I told Mother what I’d seen in as few words as I could and took the child to the shed. I told her, The flesh is the source of all great pain and you shall know that. And I strapped her until she did.”
There was more. A great deal more and August sat, listening, offering no comment. None was wanted. It was easier to watch the young pigs than the fevered man beside him. And a headache bloomed behind his temples.
Driving away after turning down an offer of dinner by saying he was expected home, he recalled what Iris had told him
: Those years Bethany and her father were not speaking, a truce of sorts had been made, or David retreated into silence against what he could not change. Also dating from that time was her vehement and absolute refusal to attend Meeting, further proof to David that she was in the grip of Satan. Best August could determine from all Iris had said, the girl and her mother remained friendly, Iris forcefully making clear to her husband a line she would not pass, a point she would not meet with him upon. Iris had said, “I would not turn her out.” Then spoke of cabbages and brine. Nothing more was said about Malcolm Hopeton and the business Enoch Stone and David were concocting until at the very end, still in the hog barn, when David finally ran out of words and both men sat silent, August struggling to find a way to take his leave, David intent upon some far-distant vision beyond the open door and the heat of the gathering day.
David said, his voice one of great fatigue, the slip of sorrow encasing his words, “You see, then, why I welcome the proceedings ahead of me.”
Driving not toward home but taking lanes and roads east toward the valley, but also north and dropping down toward the crossroads of Friend and the Public Friend’s manse, and in particular the burying ground there, August turned his mind upon the second question prompted by the conversations. For as David described his daughter’s sensual engagement with the world, with herself, August was of two minds, the first being to what extent did David only see his daughter in these episodes and not else-wise. The second and most pressing was one of memory: Except that she was alone, how different was Bethany from himself as a child? And Narcissa? She of the black raspberry brake’s hidden first kiss, on through all their exploits and efforts from the time they were children until finally old enough to declare themselves and join their community. All of the ways they had found with each other, the yearning swift pleasure of their young bodies, then and still justified by their spoken love, by their minds enjoined and bent upon the shared intent of ultimate and eternal union, all those years and all the years since that love seen as sacred and sanctified by intent. But now, the cart and horse down upon the valley floor jogging fleet the last mile, he turned over and again the question: If each of them had not had the other, what might they have done, alone?
