A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  Beside the manse there was a pump and trough as well as a tin cup on a string from the pump handle. He brought fresh water up into the trough for the horse and drank several cups himself, the first only against the heat of the day but that cup prompted a severe thirst and so he drank again and again. His headache grown larger, the pulsing putting him in mind of a steaming liver brought out of a slaughtered beef in November, as if the color and texture of the pain behind his eyes.

  He walked back into the burying ground. No fence separated this land from any other, only the stones inscribed with the name and dates showed the place to be what it was and even this was almost obliterated, the grass grown high and spotted with daisies, butterfly-weed, Queen Anne’s lace. The place needed mowing. But settled down in the grass with his legs stretched before him, his head propped on a hand as he looked upon Narcissa’s stone, he welcomed the tall growth. He was hidden and as alone in this place as he wanted to be.

  Then he slept and dreamed. When he settled upon the ground he had no sense of pending sleep and when he woke the dream was vividly strong, then drained, falling away in moments. His head still ached, subsided to a dull ceaseless thrum that would not quit. When he stood he saw the long shadows cast by the cedars uphill of the manse and returned to the horse, where he pumped more water and drank again, then made his way home.

  August had given Becca Davis no instructions for the day. As she washed up the breakfast dishes and then swept the kitchen she realized he’d never given her directions. There had been times, those first few months almost five years earlier, when he’d tell her where to find a certain thing, or that she might want to look to this or that; but these had not been instructions so much as suggestions offered when he noticed her uncertainty or hesitation. Otherwise she’d entered the house and easily known most all that needed to be done, from keeping house for Harlan and Albert Ruddle after her mother had died. Tasks or jobs particular to the farm had become obvious. She believed, though she’d never have voiced the thought, that she had a keen eye and intuitive nature that married together into an easy efficiency. Certainly this: August had not once in those years had reason to make complaint. If she’d misstepped upon occasion, most times she’d caught the error herself before it was noticed, and otherwise had realized it not by anything August said but from her own sense that something was off, and then her seeking eye had found and rectified the lapse.

  And so she’d found herself this morning, with her brother and August gone off on their separate missions, with no purpose directly before her. She’d baked bread the night before, the laundry was done, the garden mostly stripped clear for the moment after the two days of pickling and canning. There was not even noon dinner to prepare, though it was in her mind to have something ready should either of them return in the afternoon hours. So she pulled the crane with the kettle from the dying fire and made a pot of tea and sat at the table and sipped slow the cup of dark smoky leaf that August had long ago suggested she seek out from the Italian merchant in town. It had been Narcissa’s tea of choice and had taken Becca a bit to get used to, but now she could imagine nothing finer.

  And sitting there, the work of the day came to her. The fire was dying and she’d let it go out, for a cold hearth was what she needed; but the weeping hard heat of the day would make the usual winter task all the easier.

  When the fire was down to ash she got the scuttle and shovel and carried the ash to the new pile beside the garden, where it would grow over the months until next spring when it would be a grand porous conical pile that would then be spread and turned in as the garden was dug for the new season. She carried the empty scuttle to the pump in the yard and poured a slow drizzle over the pile against live coals and was rewarded with quick sizzles and jets of steam and then back to the house. She swept clean the hearth and fireplace of fine ash, then used a stiff brush and the last of the warm water from the kettle to scrub the grease and dirt free of the bricks, these bricks not the usual red building bricks but wider oblongs of a dark yellow, almost brown, shade. Letting the bristles of the brush work not only the surface of the bricks but also shifting the angle of the brush against the channels of mortar.

  Her arm ached and her hands were rubbed raw where they struck against the bricks as she brushed; also strands of hair had worked free and fell downward and ran wet with the same sweat that beaded and dropped from her nose, but she scoured on, knowing she was only just begun. Finally she was satisfied and splashed a bit of fresh water over the hearth and sopped it with sacking rags and then went out to sit on the stoop and allow the bricks to fully dry.

  She stood blinking, blinded by the light of day after the dim of the kitchen, the sweat in her eyes. Specks floated over her vision and for a moment she did not know the world before her.

  There had never been a daguerreotype made of her, or her mother, father, or brother, but she’d seen others in the window of the narrow storefront in town that held the studio of the man: Twice she’d glimpsed him with his wagon and set-up shrouded device that people stood before wavering. She’d studied the images in the window and hadn’t known a one of them but had recognized souls. As if this business were conducted in the partial dark between this life and another.

  Which summed her mind: Her brother and herself both together now under August’s roof—temporary, perhaps, but she savored it ever more greatly for the tentative nature of the arrangement. And thought August did as well, some part of his mind at least, one he did not even realize. The house was not empty save for himself and his ghosts but filled up with life. Nightimes she lay under a single sheet in her summer nightgown, aware of the both of them just up and down the hall from her room. Seemed she could hear August this past night as he tossed and coughed and then slept with deep, rasping, uneven snoring as if his very soul were troubled but she took comfort thinking this was not due to her presence but instead perhaps to somewhat of what had brought Harlan here. But August was a fair and tender man, she told herself, and so could make division between what worried him and Harlan’s small role in that worry. Even if Harlan had made that worry more vivid by being brought here. And she reminded herself that that had been August’s doing also—his insistence, in fact. He well might’ve left Harlan in the care of the doctor or for the authorities to deal with. And he’d chosen not to.

  But his house was no longer empty and she no longer sweltered in the cheap thin-plastered walls in the room above Malin’s store. She knew it was nothing more than this, and knew this was a mighty and wondrous thing for them all. With the faint tinge of fearsomeness to it, a taint she was determined to keep tamped down. There was no need of it. Idle thoughts. Though she would seek hard to hold this harmony best she could. If it was to fall apart it would not be her lack, not of her doing. Or of her not paying attention. She made this a solemn vow and offered up a soundless heartfelt prayer. All of it, for now, the best she could do.

  She rose and went inside and paused in the kitchen and passed on through and up the stairs to her room, where she swiftly changed out of her clothes to her summer nightgown, pausing naked to let what air came through her open windows pass over her, and her skin prickled. Then pulled the thin cloth over her head and tied the hem up on one side so it rode above her knees and went back down the stairs. Certain if any person happened to turn into the farm they’d do so not on foot and so she’d hear the warning of hooves and wheels.

  In the pantry she took down the black and red tin and pried off the top. A crusted balled rag lay atop the contours of the hard wax. And so she went to the hearth and began to wax the bricks—a matter of spreading the stiff paste upon small sections and then using the friction and heat of her hand with the weight of her body applying upon the rag to soften the wax and work it deep into the bricks and then buff over and over to bring the wax to a coating with a high and hard sheen. And then on to the adjoining section. As she slowly built the first new coat of wax. Long ago in a different house an old man had taught her how to do this job and told her
, “Three coats will look nice once you got em down, but it’s five, even six you need to make it worth doing, to have it hold as long as you’d want it to.” She’d learned this was true, more ways than waxing a hearth.

  Finally she was done, the wax buffed as hard and shining. It would be several hours before the summer heat hardened the wax all the way. She could build a fire to speed the job but saw no reason to. She sank back on her heels and felt the muscles of her back and thighs and arms pull hard and sore. Her nightgown was soaked through and stuck clammy, rubbing harsh in the heat against her skin. She thought of walking to the woodlot and the ravine there, where a stream ran, and finding the pool August had spoken of in passing but the tramp across the hot fields and dressed so was more than she could consider.

  Without letting herself think greatly, she grabbed up a couple of pieces of clean sacking from the shelves and ran out to the yard, where she used a foot to turn over the wooden washtub that lay beside the yard pump and worked the handle until the tub was overflowing and mud was forming downhill from where she stood. Then filled the bucket that hung on the backside of the pump, glanced quickly around, and pulled the nightgown over her head. Still sodden, it caught about her neck and arms and she wrenched it free and balled it and threw it upon the ground. Then leaned and pumped water over her head and down through her thick long brown hair and stood upright to lift bucket after bucket and poured them over herself, finally standing in the washtub and cleaning her legs up to her thighs. She pumped more water into the tub as she stood there and looked down at herself, skin prickled and pink, cool and clean even as she felt the sun drying her shoulders. She was gasping and turned her face up to the sun and as she did saw the sway of her up-tilted breasts and stopped mid-motion.

  She fled to the house. Up to her room, where she hugged herself and then tiptoed quiet as a thief to her window, where she looked out upon the yard, onward to where the road made a thin slice in its passing. She saw no one, had no reason to expect anyone. And fell then back upon her bed, the drawn-up sheet and light coverlet warm against her still-cool body. And she began to laugh, aloud and strong, her belly rising and falling, her eyes turned upward to the plaster ceiling, the whorls of horsehair thin curls of faint darkness within the dense cream above her.

  A bit of breeze passed through the open windows, played upon her.

  She woke with a sheen of sweat over her some hours later and lay languorous for some time until she heard the eight-day clock downstairs chime the half-hour between four and five and jerked upright. She quickly dressed in clean clothes, braided her tousled hair and on fleet barefeet went down the stairs. She laid a new fire in the hearth but didn’t light it yet and prepared a cold supper of smoked hard sausage, radishes, scallions, sliced cucumbers, bread and cheese and then went out into the yard, thinking perhaps one of the men had returned home and not bothered to come to the house, or at least not beyond the kitchen where they saw it empty. And her face ran hot at that thought. But there was nothing to be seen beyond the cows bunched at the gate of the day pasture, ready for milking.

  She crossed to the barn and heard the rustle of the penned calves, snorts far down the length of the barn from the hog-pen, also from the lofts high overhead the alarm of the pigeons nesting in the eaves above the haymows, then the flurry of wings as they beat out the slatted vents just below the pitch of the eaves, and she wondered if they’d heard the door or if the stirring of the calves and swine alerted them. Or some other sense she couldn’t penetrate. Most all of her life Becca had known to take nothing for granted, because there’s nothing that can’t be stripped away in a single beat of an urgent and otherwise oblivious heart, but also if that is so, there must also be the unexpected, what sweeps in as you’re looking another way.

  The workings of the barn this time of evening were nearly as unknown to her as the boats under sail upon the lake she’d watched for stolen moments all of her life. This was the place of August, recently also, of her brother. Whatever the work of the day had been, she’d now be in the kitchen setting up supper; but that didn’t mean she hadn’t paid attention these five years. She’d listened and she’d watched. Mostly listened as, over supper, August was often in the habit of talking about the events transpiring in the barn, the changing course as the year turned and in time she’d caught a sense of the rhythms in play for each season.

  She walked the length of the barn and went through a door, where she tossed a day-old bucket of scraps to the hogs, and from the bin a handful of last year’s dried cob-corn, on into the chicken shed, low and musty with old hay and hens already on the roosts, where she lowered the ropes that closed the doors to the outside fenced runs. A few hens stood about the wooden hopper of shell corn but as she shut the doors, they, too, flapped up toward their roosts, save for a couple of broody hens snugged tight in the nesting boxes.

  Back into the big barn and evening light streaming through the windows, the wooden stanchions along the tie-up worn smooth by the tough necks of cows, heads rising and falling as they ate from the troughs before them, the troughs swabbed smooth from thick tongues. Old wood made older by the creatures that jostled, moved, pressed and scrubbed, lived against it each day. The warm still air held the deep stamp of life, of sweat and milk, of manure and hay, of shed hair and urine, of bright straw bedding, the sour and sweet ferment of chewed oats and corn. A place of deep and ancient habitation, bright and ongoing as the ending day.

  She thought, I’ll get the cows in. It was only the five summer milkers and the dry cows and bred heifers. She’d watched countless times as they’d filed up the lane and into the barn. She knew to spread forkfuls of fresh hay, to gather the washed buckets from the buttery. She knew how to milk; Albert Ruddle had kept a cow.

  She slid open the tie-up door and walked down the short lane to the pasture, paused and pushed back the gate rails and, standing in the opening, called the words she’d heard many afternoons.

  “Come boss. Come boss.”

  And they came. Three or four, the first ones, streamed around her and made their way into the barn and then she was surrounded by a milling bunch of the red and white cows, some balking at her in the opening, others pressing through and then wandering off one way or another, outside the fence but not barnward. Three snorted and trotted with the ungainly gait of pregnant cows back into the pasture. Several were headed toward the house, the flower gardens. It was a great mess, a chaos of milling, uncertain, half-wild cows. Eating the bright clover alongside the barn, the geraniums and nasturtiums in the flowerbeds alongside the house, one knee-deep in the kitchen-herb garden, tearing thyme and lovage, sage and dill, elderberry. Trampling and squirting shit.

  The lonely work horse stood at the gate of his own pasture, alert and patient.

  The left-behind mule, forgotten in the mayhem by Becca, also heard the gate open and trotted down toward the newly accustomed pen in the stable and his evening ration of oats. Busy with the cows, she didn’t even see it coming until it flared with the uncertainty and fear spilling from the cattle and circled back into the pasture where it stood trembling, then its head came up and ears blinked forward and it brayed. The sound seemed to trumpet the last few of the cows to a panic but they’d not come past where Becca stood, their way clogged when they expected it to be open—no matter, as the mule proved he could fly by rising high, leaping clear over the back of a cow, an imagined fence or somesuch shadow, rushing not through so much as over and on into the yard beyond. Becca Davis didn’t see a mule—just a sudden blot of red darkness against an evening already gone wrong. Quicker than he’d come he was gone and she was still contending with loose cattle.

  But behind her she did hear the clatter of hooves in the gravel and then the loud greeting squalls of mules. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Harlan striding toward her, leaving behind him the two mules in a mule communion, a reunion of a team greater than its parts.

  His voice both tired and patient, Harlan said, “If we leave the gate down and go to the b
arn, the rest will follow us. It’s where they want to be. There might be one or two we’ll have to chase out of the flowers, but we’ll see. August Swartout is not yet home?”

  “Would it seem so?” She darted fire-eyes at him. “I expected his errand would take a goodly time. And you? Gallivanting the countryside from the dust on your trousers and lather on the mule.”

  Harlan shrugged. He said, “Let me get my mules in and I’ll milk. Why don’t you get supper ready. I’d guess August’ll be here shortly, and hungry too. I know I am.”

  “Where’d you go? You couldn’t have spent all day with Malcolm Hopeton. And supper’s spread on the table, the time comes. I’ll help with chores.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said and swung away to catch up the trailing mules. Already the renegade cattle were ambling their ways to the waiting barn door. He called over his shoulder.

  “You could fetch the buckets from the buttery.”

  “Aren’t I the one that scalds them? I guess I know where they are. Harlan?”

  He heard her tone and turned and waited. A mule, the one left behind, slobbered against the dust-caked shoulder of his shirt. He reached and rubbed the mule’s distended affectionate lips.