A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  Harlan reached out and snagged a long stalk of timothy and stuck the stem into one corner of his mouth as was his want when he was parsing hard upon a matter. August recognized the impulse, which he answered with cheroots, again marveling at this boy so much like himself in ways he’d never give voice to. Feeling as if he was performing those duties of a father that just days before had bothered him, doubting his ability.

  “I’m not the only one living who saw what went on there at that farm those years. There’s another was a close witness, who seen and heard much, also heard and seen things I didn’t. Who could, she wanted, stand and tell the judge much the same as I would. And if she did, the judge would have to listen much harder than if it was just me. But I got doubts she’d do it. I can’t understand why; she was stung bad by that mess. But that’s how it stands, just now.”

  There was a pause between them both and August patted both his trouser pockets, hoping to feel the stub of a cheroot, wanting that moment of distraction, the clarifying smoke in his lungs. But his pockets were empty, not even his match safe. Finally he said, “I told you I’d ask nothing less you asked my thoughts, but there’s a question—”

  “I think I already said too much. What is it?”

  August halted in anxious pause and then jumped. “That day. When Enoch Stone come by the house and talked to you—”

  “I know the day you speak of. What about it?”

  “He mentioned a woman from Utica. Is that the one you’re talking about?”

  “She ain’t much more than a girl.” Then Harlan stopped. A ragged line of three low-swooping crows crossed over the lane and on into the pasture beyond, barking and agitated, and he turned and watched them go until they passed into the woodlot now a green smudge in the heat of the day. Yet he looked after them, as if to spy if they might reappear. Only when they did not after some moments did he look back at August.

  “That’s what’s on my mind. I think I said enough about it for now. Let’s get back to work.” He turned toward the ditch.

  August said, “You hold on, there.”

  Harlan stopped but held himself a moment before he slowly turned back from where he studied the dock and chamomile growing at the edge of the lane above the ditch and raised his face slow and dark-cast.

  “What is it?”

  “Not so much as you think,” August said. “What I see now is a high sun. Your sister will have dinner ready about any time we walk to the house. Which is what we should do. You hungry?”

  “I’m hungry enough.”

  “You’re always hungry, Harlan Davis.”

  “You tuck right in, yourself.”

  “I wasn’t making a complaint, only noting what should be expected. Shall we walk up?”

  “We could cut a bit more ditch.”

  “I think we should walk up.”

  “All right.” Harlan lifted the scythe by the grips and turned the blade backward, over his shoulder, rested the snath so the blade hung behind but didn’t otherwise move.

  August caught the snath by his hand at the balance point and walked with the tool gliding alongside, sweat-burnished wood and hard keen metal bobbing even with his stride. He passed Harlan and spoke and kept going.

  “For what it’s worth, my experience is a woman will do the right thing, given time to think upon it. More so than many a man.”

  Becca stood watching them come. She’d pulled a beef tongue from brine the previous morning and soaked it throughout the day, changing the water whenever she thought to. In the evening she’d set it to boil, then as the fire died left it in the pot overnight, the coals enough to keep a low simmer. This morning she’d lifted it from the still-warm water and placed it on a length of plank in the buttery to cool. After hanging the wash, she’d cut up tomatoes and cucumbers, stewed a pot of yellow wax beans with butter, dug horseradish and grated it into clotted cream, then fetched the cool tongue and sliced it onto the platter. Set out crabapple jelly. All of which now waited on the table.

  They paused at the barn to rest their scythes against the stable door, then crossed the barnyard, feet kicking dust. Harlan looked tired, his clothing dark with sweat and grime, his face turned down. She looked at August. He walked loose-limbed but upright and alert, as if his body were tired but he gave it little mind, a man intent upon his day. Becca studied him and thought she’d never seen him before, which wasn’t possible as she’d spent every day for the past four years in his household, working and moving around him, somewhat the way the Moon circles with the Earth around the Sun and the wonder came into her head if the Moon even knew the Earth was there. As quick as the thought came into her mind it was gone and she’d lost all sense of it but for an echo she couldn’t quite recall. August Swartout walked on toward her, close enough now so she could see the movement of his eyes, over her, yes, but also about the place, the orchard with the attentive horses and disdainful mules, the pasture where the young heifers were in with the borrowed bull, even a toss of his chin over his shoulder toward the back of the house and the laundry there. His eyes upon her again. And like a jar smashed or a bell cracked, it came to her that she was home and always had been.

  Giddy of nerves, she sang out, “There’s my men.”

  Harlan looked at her as if about to weep.

  August nodded and said, “Yes. Here we are.” His mouth was full and moist within his beard, his eyes crinkled at the corners as if he might be understanding all she was saying. And again she had no idea what she was saying, what message was within her, let alone sent out toward him.

  Then he echoed her. “Your men.” His eyes full and deep with a concern she could not name. Her face grew hot and she looked down.

  She looked back up as August said, “You might’ve wished for better but your brother and me seem to be what you get. At least for now.” The snap and flutter about his eyes now seemed to be laughter, not at her but something shared. He said, “It’s another long day of a summer. Shall we follow you in?”

  Becca Davis was never so glad to turn her back, to lead the way into the kitchen and the plentiful board she’d laid.

  During daytime, the windows revealed the hour, however dim. Not that he needed such; even in pitch dark his mind knew the quarter hour within minutes, seemed it had always been this way—though he guessed it had been learned or otherwise gained as a boy. So when the door opened above and boot soles began a solemn downward tread, he knew it was somewhere just past two in the afternoon and therefore too early for his supper to be delivered, which meant whoever might be descending was no one he wished to speak with and so turned sideways upon his bunk, facing the rear wall, the stone courses cut so true and plumb as to need no mortar. Guessing by simple deduction or subtraction of possibilities the visitor was not the sheriff or one of his deputies—certainly no neighbor finally arrived to wish him well or ask if some help might be offered up, nonesuch existed and he knew this with gratitude, not regret. So deduced it must be Enoch Stone, who twice had made such visits and twice had been rebuked with silence. As he would be again.

  Boot steps light and quick across the floor: not a man he knew.

  The voice when it came was gentle, almost sad but upticked with an unmistakable concern. Of a sort he’d not heard here—holding some shadow of the boy’s anguished entreaties, although issued with a slender certainty of self.

  “Malcolm Hopeton? Mr. Hopeton, sir.”

  Came a pause. The voice again:

  “It’s no easy task I’m upon this afternoon. But one duty demands of me. Duty, as you must know, can be a damnable thing and yet, once charged with it, we must fulfill it. Did you not learn that in the war? If your manhood did not know it before, which I suspect to be so. Given what I know of you, given what I’ve learned.”

  There was one line in the course of stones that held a small fissure. Beads of water rimmed the crack and ants time to time could be seen working along the fracture, some of them carrying great loads of crumbs or egg sacs, he did not know which. Perhaps bot
h. The man speaking behind him seemed burdened likewise. He knew the voice but could not put a face to it, save it was not a lawyer, lawman or judge. Surely not the boy.

  “Malcolm? Would you not turn and look upon my face? For I’d be a better man if I met you eye-to-eye for what I have to say.”

  He rose off the bunk and turned and stopped.

  The doctor, Erasmus Ogden, stood in a finely tailored linen summer suit, his round-brimmed bowler held by both hands before him. As he spoke he slowly rotated the hat in his hands, an action metronomic to his words. His face held a sheen of sweat but he looked Malcolm Hopeton in the eye throughout.

  “I don’t believe I bring any comfort to you, only the truth. And I’ve wrestled with doing so but my conscience demands it of me. I’ve studied carefully upon the matter and for the life of me can’t tell if by coming to you, I violate my oath or uphold it.”

  There came a pause then as it dawned over the doctor that Malcolm would remain silent. Perhaps he’d been so warned. He glanced off once, diverting his eyes from the man before him and firmed his grip on his hat, arresting the revolutions and spoke, his eyes wide and clear.

  “Your silence is as famous as the remarkable, if wrong-headed, efforts being promulgated by the lawyer Enoch Stone and your father-in-law. But my purpose today is not legal but moral. Ethical and damned difficult. It brings me no ease to bear this news to you and I don’t believe this news will bring you any measure of peace, in fact I expect otherwise. Still, I would have you know and so here I stand.”

  After a moment he went on: “You may or may not know that it was my job to examine your wife’s body to ascertain cause of death. One determination I reached was that her death was likely the result of hard contusion caused by violent contact with her head upon the ground. There were bits of gravel embedded in her scalp and her neck was broken between the second and third vertebrae. My conclusion was this was the result of an accident: There was a small derringer pistol of the sort favored by women found upon the ground, both barrels discharged, and reasonable deduction would presume you grasped her and cast her roughly upon the ground for your own safety, perhaps hers as well.”

  Hopeton did not respond, did not move. Erasmus Ogden now looked down at his patent boots, the rough basement floor. He sighed and lifted his head and went on:

  “Beyond that, in observing her body it was clear that sometime within the past year or at most two, her right clavicle had been broken and healed without proper setting, as indicated by an irregular knot of calcification raised upon the surface of the bone. And finally, upon her body, at the time of her death, prior to her death, there were numerous bruisings of some age upon her torso, front, and back. Upon her thighs, also. In short, the body I examined was one of a woman who had suffered degrees of physical abuse over a period of time and the inference must be drawn that she held little control over her actions. I am pained to deliver this news to you, I’d say again.”

  Again he paused and again Malcolm did not take his eyes from the now sweat-drenched face of the doctor.

  Who nodded as if agreeing to something and said, “I thought it my duty to do so. Good evening, sir.” And nodded again and placed his bowler hat upon his head as he turned and with the oddly firm steps of a man with too much to drink or uncertainty of soul, went up the stairs.

  Malcolm Hopeton felt the air pull in the basement as the door was opened and closed.

  Hollow he felt, hollow he was.

  Seeing Bethany again and again in those few moments after so many years, vivid and living and all wild-eyed, then as a broken china doll upon the ground, the lines of blood from her nose and the corner of her mouth. He had no memory of feeling her against him as he’d grasped and then thrown her to the ground. And that damned little gun: Had she been so terrified of him? And the answer was, Of course she had been, regardless of Amos Wheeler, regardless of the truth of what Harlan had told him, of which, once told, Malcolm had known to be true. His head heavy with constant ache, his chest pained as if straining to contain what couldn’t be contained, he understood she was a woman who feared every man in her life, had come to fear the one man she had no reason to fear. But had, for what she’d done—if done by her or done to her, she, he knew, was less capable of knowing than he might be. Or others. How he ached, how sore his own bruised heart.

  A roaring blind idiot had destroyed the woman he loved. Had allowed her to be destroyed. Comes to the same thing, in the end. He had failed her, utterly, all ways. Had tossed off the trust she’d given him. And such a brave, terrible, and wonderful thing that gift had been. An idiot.

  He’d known and loved and celebrated the strength of her. And allowed himself in some vulgar obscenity of vanity to believe he’d lifted from her that warble of doubt and fear she owned. Doubt in herself. In all humanity. Perhaps even, finally and rightfully, doubt of him.

  For one long moment that could have been seconds or an hour, he saw himself locked in a room such as this, a room removed from time or sight or knowledge ever of anyone beyond the room, alone with Amos Wheeler, and there visited upon Wheeler every manner of horror the war had shown him and horrors also only out of his own mind, such tools that warfare can’t even conjure.

  Then he sat on the floor weeping with his face rubbed hard against the stones of the rear of the cell, rubbing as if to rid himself of the skin of his face, to remove his face, to abrade himself clear but never clean. He sat silent and unmoving upon his bunk for unknowable hours, gazing at nothing, his eyes and mind not able to own focus.

  His memory was failing—her voice already gone, her face only almost caught as if in a quick sideways glance, then gone. Yet, and yet: As pain or balm—he could not say—she remained within him large as life and known all ways, known as no other had known her, known as no other had known him. Ever would. Until he too was gone, departed this earth. And then nothing. Neither of them truly known to anyone left upon this earth.

  He wept again, soundless. Sitting on the bunk, throat raw but water running down his face, eyes burning. Salt upon his wet lips when his thickened tongue swabbed out. The hollow man. He did not weep for himself but only for her. For her alone.

  Bethany. Alone. Done ill by all men. In death as in life.

  Gray light of dawn paling the basement. The door above opened and the morning jailor came down carrying a tin plate and tin cup of coffee. As always he turned to face the rear wall, heard the cage door open and the grate of the plate pushed through upon the floor, the small thunk as the coffee was set down and then the harsh snap as the cage closed and locked again. The footsteps snapping and clacking as rough boots went away and up the stairs and again, the door. Again the suck as the air was pulled from the basement.

  He stood from the bunk and turned and looked down. The plate held the usual heap of corn mush and thick tag-ends of burned bacon. He stood wavering back and forth as if overnight his knees had decided to abandon him, to quit the job of allowing him to stand. He regarded the coffee. A summer morn, yet the subterranean room cool enough so faint steam rose and swam into his nostrils.

  All mornings he’d simply ignored both until they were collected when noon dinner was brought and his slop pail was also changed. He looked again at the dented tin plate and stepped back once without knowing he was doing so and swung his right foot hard against the plate, which lifted up and turned over as it spun forward and clanged hard against the bars of the cage and shivered downward, come to rest upon the floor, the food a spew upon the bars and beyond.

  He ignored this but bent and took up the coffee with both hands wrapped around the tin and sat again on his bunk. Again he studied the tight-laid stones of the back wall of his cage. Some man, some crew of men, had done a good job.

  He lifted the cup and drank. Thinking: He was the vessel that had held her.

  He’d failed her.

  The question was how best to not do that again.

  Eleven

  He sat at the table with his cousin Marsh, nephews Daniel and
Isaac, and Harlan Davis, drinking coffee, talking of which fields they’d cut this day of oats, which the next day and following. The talk was desultory, half-hearted. They were waiting for the heat to burn the dew off the grain so they could get to work. Mostly, they were taking a last pause, their bodies slack in the warm kitchen, before stepping out into the long days of harvest.

  Finally August stood, stretched as he looked about him, and said, “Let’s get to it, boys.”

  The reaper belonged to him and so he drove but only on his fields; when they moved to Marsh’s fields, Marsh drove. Each man knew his own land best. Daniel, Isaac, and Harlan took turns, one raking the cut stalks as they folded automatically from the platform, one gathering the stalks into sheaves and tying them with a straw selected from each bundle, the last loading the sheaves upon the wagon following, driven by the other older man. No shocks were built as the sheaves were hauled directly to the barn and stacked alongside the threshing floor. The clatter of the cutting bar and the constant snick of the knives slicing oat stalks, the tramp of the horses’ hooves, the rumble of the iron wheels of the reaper and following wagon made it hard to speak beyond a sudden shout; and if the noise weren’t enough to quiet jabber, the work was. By the time the first swath around the field was cut all were soaked with sweat and by the time the first load was trundled off to the barn, the raker now replacing the loader to ride to the barn and unload, the loader now making sheaves and the sheave-maker now raking, all were black with chaff and dust. The first load made and the first field only a quarter cut and it not yet noon of the first day. This work would’ve taken two days, perhaps even three, without the reaper. And it allowed for far more grain to be planted. The work had not grown less, only the yield grown greater.

  Noontime they all sat in the shade of a tall elm in the southwest corner of the field. Two loads along. So they looked out upon a wide swath of short stubble with a thick band of high oats in the center, awaiting them. The uncut oats seemed dense and dull in color, while the stubble almost sparkled. Shadows passed through the stubble, mice and moles and other small displaced creatures, darting for the still-standing oats or those farthest from that false refuge, daring the unknown toward the hedgerow. Overhead the pair of resident red-tail hawks drifted low, time to time sweeping down fast and up again. Feasting, harvesting.