A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  She nodded and said, “What would it cost me? To eat a peach?”

  He almost told her he sold by the bushel and Pinnieo by the each when she reached into the basket still clutched to his chest, lifted a peach and tore out a bite, chewing as juice dripped down her chin, her lips wet, teeth white and shining, the flesh of the fruit working yellow and red atop her bright pink tongue, her eyes never leaving his.

  He lowered the basket from his chest, not to the planks but to cover his midsection, where he’d sprung tight against his trousers. He said, “I think it shall cost you dearly.”

  “Indeed? I’m breathless to learn how.” She lifted the peach back to her mouth and tore free another chunk. Her eyes full and wide upon his, both gone into the other, both knowing this.

  “You’ll learn soon enough. Go eat your boughten peach while I conduct my business. Meanwhile I’ll ponder the price.”

  She didn’t move but to eat the peach down to the stone. Her chin moist with juice. Then she tossed the stone into the mire of the street and said, “What peach?”

  “All right. That was clever.”

  She said, “I had one man over me all my life. I don’t intend another.” Then she reached and plucked up another peach. “Go to your business,” she said. “I’ll be about. Unless I change my mind.”

  He watched her walk away. Surely she knew he was watching; but did not look back, striding tightly forward, no sashay about her, no warble or tilt of hips, nothing of the tease. He’d seen plenty of that. But nothing, he knew, of someone like this, a woman like this. In short moments his entire idea of what a woman was changed even as a goodly part of his thinking urged toward her in the way there’d be no return from. For either of them.

  At the same time he felt it would be enough to hear her voice again. Her last words rang their threat in his ears. Perhaps not even a threat but a bald fact: Whatever had caused her to seek him out had been ruptured in their first few moments of meeting. She’d looked and found him lacking. This seemed not only entirely possible but reasonable the more he considered his clumsy responses to her sharp wit, as if she were testing him even as she greeted him.

  Harold Pinnieo was methodical, a quality Malcolm appreciated, but this day the merchant was maddeningly slow, each peach, it seemed, lifted and studied carefully.

  Malcolm said, “I had most of a meadow of dry hay I couldn’t get in before dark last evening and those showers passed through the night with no warning. I’d get home and turn the hay soon’s I can to try and save it. Just put aside any that don’t meet your eye and we’ll settle accounts next time I come to town.”

  Harold was using both hands to move peaches basket to basket and didn’t look up. “I’ve worked hard to earn trust in this town, the papist Eyetalian. Your good neighbors might like what I sell but that don’t mean they like my being here. So I work over and above to make certain all is fair and square. Fifteen years, always someone wanting to catch me skinning them, my thumb on the scale. I’m about done here.” At this he glanced up and smiled. “Counting your peaches. You must be a sound sleeper, anyway.”

  Malcolm was listening but kept turning his head toward the point where the girl had disappeared down a side alley. So he only responded by saying, “What do you talk about, sound sleep?”

  Pinnieo had lifted down the last basket from the wagon bed and was working through it. He said, “A downpour for a solid hour, just after midnight. It’s wet all over; look at you, your shirt and trousers are still damp from when you picked your peaches this morning.” He looked up. “The peaches are good, as always. Wait a moment.”

  “I got to get going.”

  “I know you do. Wait.”

  Pinnieo ducked inside his store and shortly came back out with two parcels tied in paper. Malcolm was up on his wagon seat, peering one way, then another, not sure why he was waiting except for the idea he was afraid of what he might not find once he set out. Pinnieo reached and set the parcels behind the seat.

  He said, “A morsel or two you can eat without having to cook. Might come in handy. Don’t thank me yet. But try to remember I’ll want more peaches day after tomorrow. You know what day that is?”

  Malcolm looked at him. “You think there’s something wrong with me? Today’s Tuesday.”

  Pinnieo smiled. “But will you know Thursday when it comes?”

  He had no idea where to look for her and was feeling foolish and drove off from Pinnieo’s store toward the road out of town and home, stooped on the seat, faded, when she stepped out from the shade of a storefront and stood looking at him. Wordless he halted his team with the reins and waited. She reached a hand to the whip socket, her other hand lifted her skirts and swung up into the wagon and settled herself on the seat beside him.

  “Did you doubt me?” she asked.

  “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “How so?”

  “You seem to know me, at least something of me. I know nothing of you.”

  “My name’s Bethany Schofield. I hail from Jerusalem, where my parents and theirs were adherents of the Public Friend. I, myself, don’t declare such allegiance, at least not as commonly understood. I’ve been told your own family suffered by a prophet proved false.”

  He was a bit thunderstruck by this news—he’d thought his past forgotten even to the small extent it’d ever been known—but said nothing as she went on.

  “That perked my ears, I thought perhaps a kindred soul might be found. Then, further I learned your reputation as a single-minded man not easily turned by a pretty form or easy farm girl, intent upon building your world according to your own design. I decided this might be a man I should meet.”

  Because it was true, he said, “Such remarkable candor rolling off your tongue. I suppose you know my name, then?”

  She said, “I also know you arrived here with your grandfather and word is there was a true affection between the two of you until his passing. To one such as me, that means a great deal. May we address each other easily? Even should this come to naught, dropping formality will allow us clarity sooner, rather than later. Wouldn’t you say that was a worthy goal?”

  “You’ve come courting me?”

  “If you choose such words, Malcolm Hopeton.”

  “And me in my democrat wagon with the bed full of empty peach baskets?”

  “Drawn by a pair of mules. Those are mules, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed, they are.”

  “I like a fast buggy as much as the next girl but if that’s all I was after I wouldn’t be here, would I?” She then looked around her and back to him and said, “I don’t mind, but is sitting in the middle of town what you want? Why not cluck up your team and go along?”

  “You have a destination in mind?”

  “I assumed that would be part of getting to know one another.”

  “I’ve a field of hay got wet in the storm last night.” He tautened the reins and the mules stepped out and with the motion she came against him on the seat, then righted herself but only slightly.

  “How much of a field?”

  “A handful of windrows I couldn’t get to before dark and thought would only suffer the dew overnight. I had no sense of the storm that struck and went.”

  “I’m a hand with a fork if turning that bit of hay is how you wish to spend the morning.”

  He almost said, Of course it is. The mules were trotting the light democrat up the grade leading from town to the broad long tongue of land between the Crooked Lake behind them and Seneca Lake four or five miles east, up toward his farm. The fog had burned to ragged thin clouds, wisps like fleece pulled from sheep. The land steamed as the heat of day came fully on.

  Then he thought, Tonight or tomorrow I can roll that hay up and let it ferment, and either the hogs will love the steaming mass this winter or, if it rots, spread it on my winter wheat plowing this fall and turn it in.

  “I’d rather show you my farm.”

  “You let something go to waste on account o
f me, once, you’ll do it again. And not forgive me either time.”

  “Bethany,” he tried out her name. He said it again. “Bethany, there’s always two or three uses for anything once you put your mind to it. As I said, I’d rather show you my farm.”

  She toed the packages Harold Pinnieo had set down in the front of the wagon, against the dash. “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know. The storekeep put em there. So, you’re content to see my farm?”

  She said, “I want you to start by showing me what you think is the very best part. After that I want you to show me the secret place that you love the most, Malcolm.” Then she paused and added, “If that makes a lick of sense to you.”

  In hearing that waver he lost all worry that until he did he hadn’t known was within him, hadn’t known he was voicing. He’d thought he was only being cautious on an ordinary day that had burst open but was tilted to fool him. He heard his grandfather tell again how it was to find a wife and wondered what that man would say to the woman finding him. He guessed old Cyrus Hopeton would be delighted and almost laughed aloud at the thought, hearing much else the man might say as well about this bright and comely girl beside him.

  Instead he said, “I know just the spot.”

  She said, “My, it’s pretty up here, so wide and open, such a sky. Those mules trot sprightly, don’t they?”

  “I’d show you the house first. Then we can walk about a bit.” He was unhitching the mules from the wagon in the shed. He felt like a man on an April day where one moment the sun is hot and nigh upon summer, the next a cloud scuds over the sun, the wind is chill and spring still feels a distant dream—his mind chittering between keen delight in her presence, then sluggish, awkward with uncertainty about what to do or say or what she expected of him.

  “I like that plan,” she said. She plucked up the two bundles Harold Pinnieo had set in the wagon. “Perhaps we can find a few bites to add to these and carry along in a basket so we might settle wherever we wish and make a meal together?”

  He’d stripped the harnesses from the mules and set them with a slap on a rump toward their own meadow, from which long since he’d removed the gate. The mules stayed where they were supposed to be until they weren’t, and then they went on to the pen in the barn, and no gate either place would make a difference to them. He said, “I’ve eaten many a meal in the fields when the chance to eat came. I’m happy to do so today. But those packages?”

  She smiled, then was quickly serious. “Yes?”

  “Pinnieo knew you were awaiting me? Is he the one told you about me?”

  “Some bits. Most what I know I gathered from others, only in passing that you sold peaches to Mr. Pinnieo every year in July. And since I already knew him, that seemed a way to find you, without too many questions.”

  “Somehow, your answer doesn’t set me at the ease I’d hoped for.” But he smiled as he said as much and then said, “So why should he slip these packages into my wagon?”

  “Because he knows what I like and he’s not a fool. You’re nervous, Malcolm. Please. Imagine how I must feel.”

  They walked the lanes between his fields and he pointed out his crops, the hay fields and meadows, the grain fields, noting their degrees of ripeness, holding silent on praising their beauty. Most of the lanes were edged by hedgerows and here and again trees for clumps of shade, the lanes following the contours of the land and as they walked he relaxed, from his pride in showing her his land but also from her admission of her own nervousness, and he wondered what it had cost her to work up the spunk to seek him out as she had. She’d said enough to convey an unhappy home life, but also a grit in her not to endure some similar version of it, to strive beyond. And on little more than rumor and story she’d sought him out. The tingle of nerves remained within him, a smidgen of caution also, but largely delight in her easy presence. For once out upon the land she grew quiet but her eyes were active, flitting and settling all about her; also her ears, as she listened intently.

  He carried a wooden bucket holding the last of the dropped biscuits he’d baked the day before, a slab of ham cut fresh from his smokehouse, boiled eggs, a sweating tin cream can of cold water, a handful of ripe peaches from his orchard. Along with the packages from Harold Pinnieo.

  When they entered the first farm lane, his herd of Jerseys, dun as deer or the darker tannin of autumn-dried oak leaves, stood in their pasture to one side, a mowed and already greening meadow to the other. She paused, placed a hand on his arm, and said, “Will we pass back this way?”

  “We certainly can.”

  She glanced about, then backed up to the rail fence and perched against it, crossed one foot over the other knee, pulled a button hook from her apron pocket and swiftly opened her boot, tugged it off along with her short woolen stocking, stuffed the socking into the boot, shifted her haunches, and repeated the effort with her other boot. She stood and set the boots beside the trunk of a small wild plum and said, “Always, since I was a child, much as I can I like to feel the earth under my feet.”

  “Summertime, into the early fall, I do most of my fieldwork barefooted,” he offered. “It does save on shoe leather.” He’d already gained the sense that whatever farm she came off, was a poor one. He thought to set her at ease.

  “It has nothing to do with saving anything,” she said. “But setting my feet free.”

  She slapped one foot against the remnant of a puddle from the night’s rain, sloughing her foot down into a skin of mud, then kicked it before her and planted the foot firmly in the dust at the edge of the lane and walked forward.

  They paused at a rise where the land rolled gently toward the east, where the oat and wheat and barley fields ended against a ribbon of woodlot and beyond that a sliver of Seneca Lake and the smudge of the rise of land beyond the lake. After his commentary upon his passing fields and crops, they’d walked a quarter hour or more in silence. So they stood upon the rise, the pause lengthening. He was waiting, now.

  After a bit she sighed and said, “This is a beautiful land. I can’t help but wonder.” She stopped.

  He waited, then said, “What? What do you wonder?”

  “Never mind,” she said quickly. Then, “Tell me. How do you manage to work it all yourself?”

  “The usual way. Dawn to dusk and often earlier and later as needs be. Share with my neighbors on the larger jobs. And I have a hired man, of sorts.”

  “Well,” she said. “However, you do it well. What now?”

  “Have you forgot so quick?”

  She looked at him. And in her face he saw that whatever boldness had propelled her toward him this morning had been lost before the actual man, or his place, both, these last hours. Her face was flushed and he understood that for the moment at least she was younger than she wished to appear. And he was old enough to know this sudden surge of youth was born more of fear than of her earlier boldness.

  He reached and took her hand and said, “This is passing strange for us both, Bethany Schofield. But I’d not be able to tell you a better way I’d wish to spend my day. As for right now, I’d take you to the place you asked about, the favorite one, although I fear it’s no great spectacle but for how it lies within me. Also, seems to me we would be wise to eat soon. Strength through sustenance, yes?”

  She kept hold of his hand but bent and lifted the hems of her skirt to dab her forehead, straightened up, and said, “I forget nothing. Ever. Remember that, if nothing else, Malcolm. And I’m not one of those wilting girls who only eat a smidgen. My appetite is real as the rest of me. So lead me on.”

  Hand in hand they went a short distance down the lane, came to the end of an oat field, and he lifted out the top rail for her to step over and walked downhill toward a small bowl of hidden meadow. At first all they saw was the crown of a willow, then the tree entire and the upward gentle sweep of the meadow, the grass tall and undulating to the rhythms of breezes. His young heifers had been here in early spring, after which the meadow was held in rese
rve, waiting until the scorch of August burned back the dry pastures. The willow gave away the secret, if one knew how to look.

  They walked through the tall grass that swished about them, parting as if they walked through water in some solid form made by heat and light, a notion that came to Malcolm and that he knew was a true one. Orioles and red-wings rose from the grass around them, a pair of bluebirds above, the cloudless sky sharpened and vivid, air-washed from the passed rain.

  The willow stood at the bottom of the bowl of grasses, an ancient tree with bark furrowed and wrinkled as if plowed by age, the high crown with the feathered fronds of branches swooping elegantly low next to a small pond of dark clear water, the surface broken by bubbles from the springs below. On the farthest side of the pond from the willow was a bed of cattails, otherwise the grass grew right to the water’s edge. Under the willow the grass was short, choked by the shade; and it was here Malcolm Hopeton led Bethany Schofield. He freed her hand and set the bucket down, then turned and looked at her.

  Close to the trunk the canopy was wide about them, as if within a curtain of greenery, and she lifted a hand and let her fingers slide down those fronds of leaves at the other edge, for a moment caught in pure delight of the place and forgetting him altogether. And again he felt the jolt within, that this woman had found him, that he’d somehow also found her, finally, for both of them. She was lovely where she stood, and also complicated and earnest and true.

  She turned and said, “So different, what we expect and what comes. Don’t you find that so, Malcolm?”

  He knelt by the bucket and pulled free the sacking, spread it over the short grass and began to lay out the food. He said, “This morning when I left early in the fog all I thought I was doing was delivering peaches to the man who buys them. Less than a quarter of a day later, look where I am. And I don’t pretend to know all or even much of why we’re here, but so far I couldn’t have asked for a finer day. Should we eat?”