Let Me Die in His Footsteps

by Lori Roy

  The shadow on the west wall shifts. Two heavy boots rearrange themselves.

  “Push, Juna,” I say. “You have to push.”

  The women told me all that could go wrong. If it’s coming feet first, you’ll be without hope. If the girl won’t push, can’t push, you’ll be without hope. It’s a wicked time of year, they had said, to be giving birth. She was meant to come in the spring. It should take nine months, maybe ten, the ladies had said.

  Folks say Abraham has been planning for a spring wedding, just before the tobacco goes in the ground. He has forgotten what I cannot. He has forgotten the other men Juna laid with and that the baby is no more Abraham’s than a half a dozen other men’s. Abraham has seen Juna over the past months, a few times in town, and so he’s seen how Juna has grown soft and round. Each time we’ve seen him, he has walked with a straighter back, his head held high again, always leading with his chin.

  And while Juna is loved more and more every day, I have been forgotten. John Holleran no longer comes to the house. He doesn’t want me anymore, and Ellis Baine never did. Daddy always said I would be pleasing to a man, my softness something a man would want at the end of the day. He always said a man would want to rest his head on my chest, not Juna’s, and that he’d want me to stroke his forehead, tell him what a good man he was. Daddy always said I was pleasing, but now no man will have me.

  Juna cries out. First one shoulder appears and then another. It’s quick now. They said it would be, God willing, if all went as it should. And here she is. A little girl. Not so small as we feared she would be. She’s long and lean, her skin so thin I think I can see her insides.

  “I was right,” I say, standing from the stool and cradling the small body in my two hands. “A girl. Tiny as can be. A girl.”

  Juna lies back and closes her eyes as I wrap the baby. I wrap her one way and then the other and draw the end up around her feet. Keep her warm, the women told me. Clean her face and nose. She cries out like they said she would, like they said she should. I hold her to my chest, but she’s still tethered to Juna. We wait for the cord to stop pulsing, and then Daddy steps up and with his pocketknife saws at it until it falls away.

  “Give her to Daddy,” Juna says, her eyes still closed.

  I look from Juna to Daddy and back again. He stretches out his hands, but instead of passing her off, I cradle her in one arm and, with my free hand, rub Juna’s soft stomach and tell her to give another push. She does nothing, but still it comes.

  “That’s it. There we go.”

  The room is quiet; even the wind has calmed. Juna lets her legs fall flat, rests her arms at her sides.

  “Give her to Daddy.”

  • • •

  IT HAPPENS SOMETIMES, this time of year, that the weather takes a favorable turn. The sun shines strong enough to warm the ground, and slender blades of grass rise up. And then another turn. Rain and a cold snap, and in the morning, the young blades glisten with a layer of ice. Like slivers of crystal sprouting from the earth, if only for a few hours or maybe a few minutes. The fields shimmer until the icy coatings begin to thaw and melt away, and the slender young blades wilt.

  “Daddy will take her now,” Juna says, her eyes still closed, though somehow she knows I have yet to hand off the child.

  “I won’t let her go,” I say, swiping a finger through the baby’s mouth, wiping it on my apron.

  Daddy stands next to me. I can smell the whiskey and cigars and hear each breath he draws through his nose.

  “Take her, Daddy,” Juna says.

  Her eyes open. Here in the house where the light is faint and scattered, they are like two holes cut into her head. They are empty, hollowed out.

  “I won’t let him,” I say. “She’s your girl, Juna. Give her a name. Let Abraham give her a name. Daddy should go for him, let him see his girl.”

  Juna lifts onto her elbows.

  “Now, Daddy,” she says. Her voice is soft, sweet almost, and she tilts her head like she does. “Look how big she is after so short a time. She ain’t right.”

  I turn a shoulder so Daddy can’t see that the baby is as big as any mother would hope her baby to be and yet she’s been such a few months in coming. She’s wrapped up tight, the blanket wound around her and tucked under like the ladies told me to do. He grabs me first by one arm. He’s taken off his gloves, and his fingers pinch the soft skin above my elbow. He doesn’t throw me or push me but turns me enough that he can reach the child. He threads one hand around her small body, tucks her under like he might a load of wood.

  “That’s it,” Juna says.

  She’s sitting up, her legs hanging over the side of the bed. There’s blood, must be blood, but it’ll be dark, and in so little light, I can’t see it.

  “Take her, Daddy.”

  Her voice is louder and higher, and her eyes are stretched wide.

  “You take her or she’ll curse you.”

  I grab the back of Daddy’s jacket with both hands, squeeze until my knuckles ache.

  “Leave her to me,” I shout, hanging from Daddy, looking back at Juna.

  “Take her. Take her away.”

  Juna is screaming. Her kerchief has pulled loose, and her yellow hair hangs in her face. She tries to stand but stumbles backward and rests against the bed. Over and over she screams for Daddy to take the baby. She means for him to take the baby away and see to it she never returns.

  “She’ll curse you, Daddy. She’ll ruin us all.”

  We use the piece of wood in the spring to prop open the shutter John Holleran hung for Juna and me some years ago. He hung it on the inside of the house so we could open and close it as we liked. The board we use is three feet long, two inches thick, four inches wide. It’s sturdy, has to be to hold open the heavy slab of wood. That board is all I have, so I grab it. I don’t mean to hurt Juna but only to silence her. She frightens Daddy, always has. Since she was a little girl, all she had to do was look at him just so, brush up against him, linger too near, and he was afraid. He was afraid of what more pain would come into his life. He was afraid of more failed crops and dry springs and a life lived alone because no other woman would have him after Mama died. He was afraid to lose his sight and afraid to lose his only son. And then Dale died, and now Daddy is afraid of Juna, and because she tells him to take the baby, he’ll do it.

  I lift the board. Juna is screaming at Daddy to take it away, take it away so she never has to see it again. It, she begins to call the little girl. Over and over again, she calls this baby an it. I draw back the board, and I swing. It strikes the side of Juna’s face. Her black eyes are stretched wide. She falls to the side, slides off the bed. I lift the board again and strike her from above. One more time. One more time and she is gone.

  22

  1952—ANNIE

  ANNIE’S FIRST THOUGHT had been to return the cards to Ellis and tell him she didn’t know who they belonged to. She would make a big show of telling him all the folks she questioned—Mama, Daddy, Grandma, Caroline, even the sheriff. But Abraham took the cards so Annie has nothing to return and no way to explain what became of them unless she tells the truth.

  All her life, Annie has kept an eye out for the Baines. If it rattles, choose a different path. If it looks like a Baine, do the same. She’ll walk no closer than the fence. She’ll tell him she lost the cards and she doesn’t know where they came from. They’re just plain old cards. Faded and tattered and all bent up. Could have come from anywhere. From the drugstore, most likely. Or maybe the market where they sell playing cards near the batteries.

  He won’t see her coming until she’s reached the barn, especially if she hunches down as she walks uphill through the lavender. The fields will be perfect for Sunday. Daddy has a way of picking the most perfect day. He’ll get up early that morning, Annie and Caroline too, and they’ll cut all the bundles to be sold. Fresh-cut, Grandma says. That’s the secret. That’s the thing that keeps folks coming back.

  Daddy and Annie will reach dee
p into the bushes, grab a handful of the stems—Annie, not Caroline, because Annie’s hands are much larger—hack the bunch at its base with a rounded knife and snap a band around the whole of it. They’ll layer the bundles in a flatbed wagon Daddy will drag from row to row, and Caroline will tie off each bouquet with an eight-inch purple ribbon.

  The lavender oil from last year’s crop is already distilled, bottled, and stored in the lower kitchen cabinets, where it’ll stay cool and safe from light. There will be more baking to do as the week comes to a close, and this year, there will be a special cake—a wedding cake. Harvest on the morning of the fourth Sunday in June, or a Sunday thereabouts—when that flatbed wagon is piled high with lavender bundles, the purple blossoms dripping off one side, the satin ribbons dripping off the other—is the one time Daddy might say he likes lavender farming better than tobacco farming.

  But the real work will begin after the fourth Sunday. They’ll harvest the rest of the fields. They’ll cut and bundle, and Daddy will drive it to Louisville. They’ll next start to distill the oil and then prepare for next year’s crop and hope for a mild winter. Eventually, they’ll set up the trays to start new seedlings, and Daddy will stay awake all night to make sure the warmers don’t fail. The coming of the lavender will begin again.

  As Annie passes through the rows, trying not to let her skirt brush against the stems and stir up the odor any more than has already been stirred by the heat of the day, the truth starts pushing its way up and out. She feels an obligation to Ellis Baine for being so kind as to deny her being the daughter of Joseph Carl. It might bring some peace to all of them, to both families, if she were to offer up this truth. At the top of the hill, Grandpa’s tobacco barn stands to her left. The rock fence is straight ahead, and Ellis Baine is still leaning there against the well, waiting. Annie steps up to the fence that stretches to the road on one end and farther than she knows on the other, presses her hands flat on top, hoists herself over, and walks a few steps toward Ellis Baine.

  “Abraham Pace,” she says, knowing the moment she says it, she has made a mistake. This won’t bring peace of any kind. But she’s done it and she’s put something in motion, and now she can’t stop.

  “Abraham Pace,” she says in a louder voice, so Ellis will be certain to hear. “He saw me holding them and took them from me. Said he was sure glad I found them. Said they missed them when they sat down to play cards.”

  Ellis nods. She had expected her answer to matter to him, that it would mean something important, but he leans there, picking the bark off a twig, not making any show of being upset or carrying on in any way.

  “Why do you care about an old deck of cards?” Annie says. “What’s them belonging to Abraham Pace mean?”

  Besides driving stakes for Mrs. Baine’s tomatoes, Daddy has done other things for her over the years. Mama never liked him going up there, said a person never knew what might happen, but Daddy always said it was the least they could do. He said it like her being alone in that house without her boys to help her keep it up was largely Mama and Daddy’s fault. It’s the least I could do, he always said when he would come home from hammering a sheet of plywood on her roof or replacing a few rotted boards on her porch.

  “That boy down there hollering for you,” Ellis says, ignoring Annie’s question about the cards and Abraham Pace. “You see that boy in this well?”

  “No.”

  “Betting he wishes you did.”

  Might as well mow it all down, Daddy said the last time he went to Mrs. Baine’s place. He was there to fix a broken-out window and couldn’t hardly get a new window to fit because the house had so settled it was no longer anywhere close to square. But in the few short weeks Ellis Baine has been back, he’s stripped away the clutter. He’s toted off rusted, twisted scraps of metal and the bones of discarded furniture, all of it tossed out on the porch or along the side of the house. Ellis has mowed down the grass and turned under the weeds. Grandma says he’s cleaning up the place so it can begin again with new folks.

  “You got a family?” Annie asks.

  “Couple nieces. Bundle of nephews.”

  “None of your own?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Never married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is that because of my mama?” Annie asks. “Did you love her?”

  “Should have,” Ellis says, digging a thumbnail under a stubborn piece of bark. “If I hadn’t been such a damn fool, probably would have. Plenty of fellows are fools when they’re young.”

  “She loved you.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Then why does it make her so sad to see you?”

  “Not sadness.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s regret, I suppose.”

  “What’s she regretting?”

  He points his nearly bald stick at Annie. “Not telling you that. None of your damn business.” And while he’s pointing and cursing, he’s smiling too. Almost smiling. “Truth?” he asks.

  Annie nods.

  “As much as I’m a damn fool for not loving a woman like your mama, she’s probably figuring to be a damn fool for ever thinking she was in love with a man like me.”

  Annie says nothing, mostly because she doesn’t understand what Ellis has said. So instead of trying to talk, she works on remembering his exact words so she can keep on thinking about it later and maybe piece it together.

  “You ought get back home now,” Ellis says.

  Annie thought Ellis Baine had pulled out all the tomatoes, but walking toward the well, toward Ellis Baine, who has gone back to picking the last of the bark from that twig, she sees a few yet grow. He picked good ones to save. They’re waxy and green, smaller and newer than the tangled plants that had been here before, but soon enough, they’ll grow too top-heavy to stand on their own.

  “You still got those stakes you took out?” she asks.

  Ellis pushes off the well, cocks his brows at Annie because now he knows she’s been watching him in the days since he came back, and walks toward the house.

  “String too,” Annie shouts after him. “String of some kind.”

  She’s snapping off some of the top buds so the plants will stop growing up and start growing out when she hears Daddy.

  “Annie?”

  She looks to one side and then the other.

  “Annie, what are you doing?”

  She stands and turns. He’s there, just this side of the fence.

  “What are you doing over here?”

  But before Annie can answer, before she can tell about the cards belonging to Abraham Pace and the stakes Daddy drove for Mrs. Baine and tying up the last of the tomatoes so they fare better than the rest, Ellis Baine walks out from behind his house, a bundle of white twine slung over his shoulder and three of Daddy’s stakes in his left hand. He stops when he sees Daddy, stands looking at him for a time, and then walks closer.

  “What’s he done?” Daddy says.

  “Nothing, Daddy.”

  Daddy grabs Annie’s arm and yanks her toward him. She cries out from it hurting so bad. She stumbles and trips, falling at Daddy’s feet.

  “What’s he done to you?” he shouts down into her face.

  Ellis Baine lunges in Annie’s direction, but as quick as he makes that move, he backs off. Like he did in the Hollerans’ kitchen, he holds his hands out to the side.

  “Just staking tomatoes,” he says, backing away. “I’ll go. No need to haul the girl around like that.”

  Daddy yanks Annie back to her feet, and she can’t help but cry out again.

  “You get home.”

  Daddy pushes Annie behind him, and Abraham is there. He grabs on where Daddy let go. Big as his hands are, he doesn’t pinch her the way Daddy did.

  By the time Annie gets herself righted and has peeled Abraham’s hand off her arm, Ellis Baine has reached his porch. They stand watching him, all three of them, until Ellis disappears inside.

  “Don’t yo
u ever come here again,” Daddy says without looking back at Annie.

  “Take it easy, John,” Abraham says.

  “You understand me?”

  Still Daddy won’t look at Annie.

  “Asked you a question,” he says.

  There’s something in the way Daddy is talking to Annie, something in the tone of his voice, the way he looked at her, squatted down at the tomatoes, that shames Annie. He’s never shamed her before, never been afraid of her black eyes or treated her like she has bygones to be sorry for. But just now, Daddy is disgusted by her, and that’s a thing she never thought he would be.

  “I know you think Mama loves him,” Annie says.

  Daddy swings around. He doesn’t mean to, surely doesn’t mean to, but he reaches out with one hand and strikes Annie across the face. It’s like a whip cracking down on her cheek. The sting of it shoots up into her eye and down into her lower jaw. Abraham grabs at her again, yanks her backward, putting himself between her and Daddy, and presses one of his hands in the center of Daddy’s chest.

  The most frightening thing happens next. For the first time, Daddy doesn’t know what to do. He always knows what to do. He knows how to tighten the faucet so it doesn’t drip all night long and drive Grandma into a rage. He knows how to take a screwdriver to the top hinge so the bathroom door won’t stick and just when to head inside to avoid the rain. But bending to pick up the hat that flew off his head, dropping to his knees instead of standing, Daddy doesn’t know what to do next.

  “She didn’t love him,” Annie says, stepping from behind Abraham and not covering over the sting on her cheek with the palm of her hand even though she wants to. It would be like reminding Daddy he drank too much whiskey and wasn’t there at the well when they found Mrs. Baine.

  “Regret,” Annie says. “That’s what he said. Ellis Baine said it’s not love Mama’s feeling; it’s regret. What’s she regretting, Daddy?”

  “Ah, Jesus, Annie,” Daddy says. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  Annie stands in front of Daddy, not saying anything more. He’s kneeling on the ground, sitting back on his thighs. He’s catching his breath, that’s what Grandma would say. Sometimes a person needs to catch his breath. Annie takes Daddy’s hat from his hand and is brushing the dirt from its brim when a movement of some kind makes her lift her eyes. It’s Ellis Baine, and he’s coming this way again.