by Diane Munier
So to the house I went, the wind picking up brisk, just the chill wind of a fall night. Stars like diamonds on a velvet sky, lightning flickering in the east. Wind rustling the grasses, smell of dug earth and manure, horse blowing her lips, coyote calling and a hen fussing. Then quiet.
I made it in the house, and saw the small light from what was our bedroom. It was still, but so alive. I rounded the corner and she was lying there. Janey was still awake in her cradle, but hopefully she’d drift off.
And in that bed, my beauty, her hair brushed like dark glossy ribbons over her shoulders, and just a chemise looked like, and when I pulled back the covers, such a sight I nearly sobbed. Yes. Just the chemise and her creamy self. Oh my God. “Sheesh,” I said, not knowing how such inspiration could make such a weak show in my speech.
But there was no good word for her. Men had tried, I read some. But I had a bible verse for her alright. “I got to say,” I said pealing off that long shirt and slipping in quick so I wouldn’t have my willy aiming straight at her. “I got to say…I never come to such a bed as this,” I whispered pulling her to me. How was I gonna not put a baby in her every year? My God my life stretched long before me. What a pleasant misery it was to think of all those times, me running off to shoot my seed away like it held the plague. What would we do with all of it?
That damn near made me laugh, but then she started to move against me and kissing too. I thought I would die of happiness and lust. I was seeking her the way a divining rod seeks water.
Her little hand found me then. Things were moving with rapidity. She got to moving, and much as it pained me, I showed great, great control and staid her hand. “Lass,” I panted like I’d just run up hill firing, “let me…let me.”
So I let my hands go all over her. I could not believe the delight of feeling her. Everything was so round, and I liked round…just so satisfying to feel it, all the softness. I stayed on that, and it was not hard to read her, the more I just riveted on it, and I could listen so deep, trained to. I heard, I felt the slightest quiver, the sounds she made…oh I was learning her. I knew just how, just so, and I moved my hand, my arm, and kissed the wild from her. I loved her.
“Oh…,” was all I got out. “Thank you.”
She laughed at that. I had to laugh, too. I was a goner.
So I held her, and I figured I should wash up before I gave her that ring which was in the pocket of the shirt I’d tossed when I got in here and saw her waiting without her drawers.
Now how was I gonna get any work done around here thinking about such? About her? I’d be back in here all the time and this place would go to ruin.
I stroked her hair, her back. Peace had come. Peace.
“Lass,” I said after a bit, and I eased her off and got my shirt. She was watching me, and I wasn’t shy, I wanted her to know me, to look. I was hers so look, girl. But I couldn’t find that damn ring. I could not find it in that pocket. I dropped to my knees then.
“What’s the matter?” she asked from the bed.
“Nothing,” said I, backside in the breeze as I looked beneath the bed. There was my box, but that ring, Lord my heart was thumping. Then I saw it in a crack between the floorboards, and there I sat naked as the day looking into that thin place. So I got my knife and worked it out and breathed a sigh I tell you. “Well, guess you know now,” I said holding it high.
She was smiling and nodding. She held her hand out.
“Now wait a minute,” I said getting under the sheets again. “I got to say this right. Um…second epistle of John. I don’t remember the verse.” I cleared my throat, “And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.”
She was staring at me. Her lips pumped a few times. But she didn’t smile or say a thing.
Well, mayhap it wasn’t very romantic being Scripture and all. But Allie had brought it up once and read it at table and said it was the most romantic thing and we had made fun and she had slammed the good book and left the table crying and Pa got very, very mad at us. But it had stuck.
So I slid that ring on her finger. And she did gasp and it looked so proper there, like it had always belonged. Like us. Just a right fit.
“I do love it,” she said to me. Then she turned and got a little box from under her pillow, and she opened it and took out a single gold band. “I do not know something as beautiful as what you gave me, but it is no less true in my heart….” She tried to slide the band on my finger, but my knuckles were still swollen from punching Cousin. Mayhap I did hit him harder than I meant. Mayhap.
“Sorry,” I said.
“This is from Quinton?” she said, her eyes wide.
“Do not bring him here,” I whined like Johnny might.
She breathed loudly for one in such health. She had to put the ring in the box again. “We’ll try again in the morning,” she said shoving it under the pillow marked ‘wife.’
I blew out the candle then and settled down with her. I had much to tell her. And I knew relief that her surprise was the ring I could not yet wear. “I am wearing it,” I whispered, holding her hand tight over my heart.
She moved our hands and kissed over my heart. “I know,” she said. And so we had peace.
Until five minutes later when Janey sent up a wail. And still in my skin I got up and gathered her in my arms and brought her to Addie. I put my shirt on then, for it was only a matter of time for the other one showed.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Thirteen
I didn’t want to notch my lovemaking on Richard’s bedpost. Come hard winter, me and Pa would be making “husband and wife,” a new bed. I tolerated Richard’s leavings for now, but not forever. The new ticks helped, the one Ma sent before and now the feathers, and me helping bring Janey in, that was a soft. And our lovemaking, Lord…she was my rose of Sharon. The lily in my valley. I could not be more contented.
The rooster was crowing. Ah, the call of duty. Time to leave this bed of love and lust. Beside me, Janey had beaten me to the breast again. I gave her my finger and her tiny perfect ones latched on. “Not as good as what Mama has,” I said in what I must admit was a kind of baby’s talk. I never understood how folks stooped to it. But now I did.
“Hello my bride,” I said to this beauty beside me who had been nursing with her eyes closed.
“Hello my husband,” she whispered back. Then she gave me such a smile, and in it was knowledge of all the things we’d done during the night. Janey got off that nipple, and wiggled her head frantically to get back on. It made me laugh.
I tried to stretch, but when I went to move my feet, they were asleep. Erased again. “Oh hell he did not….” I sat up quick. And there he was, his backside to me.
“You knew?” I said to Addie.
“I did not see him until Janey cried. We all slept so deeply.”
I used my hands again to pull my legs free, first one, then the other. “We should of brought him to the war and let him sleep on a fella ‘fore they took off his leg. He wouldn’t of felt a thing, I can tell you.” I had them hanging over the bed now. They were waking up painful and me not able to shout a curse. I heard her laugh a little. “It’s not funny,” I said, but I had a smile, and that made me mad at myself. I had to get some order round here. No one listened to a thing I said.
I looked at my knuckles then. They might be down some. “Let me try that ring,” I said.
“No,” she said.
I turned to look at her for surely I heard wrong. She was smiling, but those eyes held challenge.
“Why not?”
“You don’t just get to…demand it. It’s your foolishness got you in this.”
Even though I figured she may need a pa now and then, I didn’t ever, I mean ever want a mother. But I did not say this.
“Mind telling me something?” I said. “Were you ever gonna marry him?”
“No. I told you that.” She shuffled around and w
hen I looked over my shoulder she had on her dressing gown. Good thing with our little squatter situation.
“I’m not gonna fight about this,” I said to her retreating back.
“Well, if you do fight it will be with yourself,” she kind of sang to me as she went out of the room with Janey.
What just happened? I barely had the blood in my legs and I was stumbling after her. “You’re really not going to give me that ring?”
“Of course I will. When you ask nice,” she said measuring oats.
I had my hands on my hips. Well, I wasn’t going to crawl about it. “You best save that note in your voice for Johnny,” I said.
“What?” said she, turning quick. She still had the smile, but it was running out fast.
My stomach dropped. “Why are you being so cold?”
“I’m not being cold. You’re the one woke up all cantankerous.”
“All I did was ask for my ring.”
“You demanded it. When it’s your fault it’s not on your finger.”
“Is that what you’re so mad about?”
“I’m not mad,” she said, “you’re mad. You’re….”
She turned her back to me and put a hand on the cupboard.
“Whoa, whoa, girl…,” I turned her back to me and took her in my arms. She was crying. “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry, Sweetheart.”
“I just…I can’t take it away. You knew when we got married. I wish you were my first. I wish it,” she said.
I pulled back and looked at her, smoothing over her hair, my knees bent so I could see in her face. What in the world was this?
“But you are always going to have trouble with it,” she went on. “You’re not going to embrace it. I can’t change it. I have children. They are my treasure. Whatever I went through, they are the good of it. But do I wish they were yours? Yes,” she whispered, “with all of my heart. But you have to accept it or you are going to keep fighting.”
“I’m not….”
“You are. You were doing it the minute your eyes opened. Admit it. What was your first thought?”
“I don’t know what….” But I did know. It was how I was in Richard Varn’s bed. I didn’t like it. But how did she know that?
“I don’t read minds, so you can rest,” she said, still reading my mind apparently. “Quinton isn’t the one. He’s just someone who got caught up in another’s sins. He’s tried to make it right. Your hitting him isn’t going to change what happened. It’s too late. They’re all gone now. Anything around here…you can change that. But you can’t change what happened to me. So stop fighting everything. Cause what I feel is…you are being hurt…and you want to hurt. Maybe you want to fight me.”
I let out a breath. “Lord. Addie…I don’t want to fight you. If that’s what it seems like it’s not. I feel protective.”
She gripped my arm, “I know you do. And you are. You have come in from that first day and just been so loyal and true to me and the children. I love you so much. But Quinton…he’s done a similar thing. Not the same, and I don’t feel the same toward him, but he has entered in and tried to right things. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Here…give me the baby.” I took Janey. “You take care of yourself. I will rock her in the chair and try to grow smarter.”
She smiled at me as she wiped tears. “I have to get Johnny up,” she said.
“No…no you let that to me, darling. You do your ministrations. I can handle these two.”
She sniffed. “You’re just so good,” she said, and we kissed again.
“I know it,” I said, and she swatted me.
Well I got Mr. Johnny moving, and he went to the outhouse.
While she washed up I tried not to watch her, but I couldn’t help myself. How was it she even looked pretty cleaning her teeth. I just liked the way she moved. And the cut of her, the whole thing from her hair to her feet. She was a little thing, but so strong, and like I’d always said, voluptuous for one so skinny. I was drawn to her.
“You’re staring,” she said for the third time. She had told me I wasn’t allowed to watch her. I said I reckon she had stared at me a time or two, and us not married. Well she told me she peeked at me washing that day.
“I had to stare cause you wouldn’t love me back,” she said carrying her water out and flinging it over the porch.
The second she was in I said, “I did love you. Right off. Remember that home run? Remember me delivering…,” I held Janey up higher.
“Oh…I loved you first,” she said.
“You did not,” I said with conviction. “Remember that time at the church? I had just come home and Ma was so…happy. And sad. And she made us boys promise to be at the church come that Sunday. And we were there, lined up…,” I said, but she cut in.
“You were there lined up in back leaning against the wall. It was one of Richard’s good spells. He had come out of it a mite, and one of his reforms was us going back to church. Well, I had befriended your Mother and Allie. They came over as soon as we moved in, and brought me enough food for a week. And once a week they would come. I lived for it, I think. And they would speak of you boys, and we would knit for the war effort. They were so proud of you and Garrett and Captain Leidner and Mr. William. So proud. And then that day…I was big, but I could hide it with my shawl, though it was growing warm. But Richard wanted to try and I didn’t want to discourage. So in we went, and I turned to ask him where we should sit, and there you were, standing in the back,” she braided her long hair, and I loved every small move she made, her fingers, her arms. “You had your knee bent, foot against the wall, and you still wore your uniform. Your hair was long, and you held your hat against your bent leg.
“I just about forgot to breathe I guess. You looked at me…and…. This all happened so quickly. And I knew it was you…the oldest son. The one who came home. Tom Tanner. And I thought…I don’t know what I thought. My mind just went white. Richard poked me and I came to myself. It had only been a second. One second. And next thing I knew, I was seated in the pew and folks around me were singing. And I felt you back there, and I wanted to turn, just to make sure you were still there, and real. For I had never seen such a man as you, Tom Tanner. And more…in your eyes…I knew you.”
I had stopped rocking and Janey fussed, so I started up again. But I was staring at Addie.
“And after…I walked the road between the houses, every morning. That’s how I saw you in the north field that day. You stood on the wagon, a tool, a hoe or a rake behind your neck along your shoulders like a yoke, and your hands hanging over it, and you were watching the sunrise, just standing so still in the bed. And my heart…it twisted in me for…for what I would never know.” Tears were streaming now, but she stood there, that hair…her hands folded before her. Just the truth.
I stood slow. Janey had dozed off. I went to Johnny’s bed and laid her soft. Then I went back to Addie where she still stood at the table, her dressing gown open a deep vee, giving me a view of her throat and the tops of her breasts and the chemise. I could smell the soap and her sweetness.
“Let me tell you something,” I said coming close, one finger going along that vee. “I was standing in the back of that church with the boys there. They were like me pretty much, like animals brought into confinement and thinking maybe it was slaughter time. So they was standing there and you could feel the sweat. And a woman walked past me since I was on the end closest the door, the air moved, and I smelled something like…lemon and sunshine…just that and I looked, from the corner of my eye I’d seen her bonnet and this dark hair, the side of her face, and she said something soft and that sound, and her wrapped, a boy pulling on her hand. I saw him first, the face of him looking up at her, then he looked at me, and he got her to turn for he had said, “soldiers,” and my eyes caught hers and we just looked. And I felt something move in me, like my heart kicked out, tried to beat again. And just that quick her husband pushed her from behind, and down the aisle she went about half
way. And I heard someone say, Mrs. Varn. And I knew that name from Ma’s letters. But I had to know now. I stared then at the back of that bonnet and that thick woven hair, and it was there I kept looking and every now and then she turned, just enough that I knew she felt me, too. And they told everyone to stand, and when she did she turned to the side, and I knew she was with child not that it showed, and….
“I couldn’t stay until the end. Too many things in me. I left early. But days after…when I went to the field, I looked yonder toward that house and I thought how easy it would be to show and introduce myself just so I could see her one more time and tell myself to go to hell.”
Her eyes were filled with tears and we looked our fill of each other. It was out now.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. She went around me and hurried into our room, coming back with that ring. She grabbed my hand, then went slow, and it just fit over that finger.
She looked at me then, more tears, but these were the baptizing kind. “It was always meant. I don’t understand all of it…but we crossed paths and it got set.”
I licked my lips for they had gone dry over what we’d shared. “There was this healer…Lord I’ve so much to tell you. When we went after Monroe, there was this woman could see things. She told me…you stepped out of a light and I should stay with you. She said you would put a fence around me and we were tied. And I got to going too far, you would pull me back,” I said.
“Who was this woman?”
“Iris. She was old as Ma. She saved Jimmy’s life.”
She smiled then. I did not know what I’d done to finally get back to where I’d been before it all went south, but I was never so glad to see her smile.
“Come here.” I pulled her into my arms. “I love you and these children are mine. You didn’t know? Richard Varn was just holding my place while I had a war to fight. He was like a bookmark for me.”
“Tom,” she said, “I tried to love him. But…I have never had to try with you. It pours from me.”
