Delia extended her finger, but looked away when he approached holding a thin blade. With a quick flick, he sliced open the tip of her index finger, then squeezed and pressed until the pus-coated shard of pine oozed out. He could see the blush of her pain climbing up over her collarbones, then painting her thin neck, taking hold of her pretty face.
“Almost done,” he whispered.
At the counter, he mixed a poultice of old bread, a few drops of water, and patted it onto the wound. Then he wrapped her finger with clean rags, bound the hand tightly, layer upon layer, tucked the tail of the fabric close to her palm.
“You was doing such a grand job, I’s surprised you stopped at my wrist.”
“Your wrist is fine, though I was wishing I had enough to wrap your mouth.”
She smiled at him, then looked down at her hand.
“If it’s not on the mend by tomorrow,” he announced after several moments of silence, “I’m going after Dr. Barnes. Get him to take a look at it.”
“Oh no, Percy. I swear I’s his best patient. Come fall, we’ll have nar vegetable left, and his cellar’ll be overflowing.”
Percy’s coarse eyebrows knitted together.
“I’ll be fine, Percy. Honest.”
You’ll have to be.
“Now who’s being dramatic?”
“I never said a word.”
“Didn’t have to.”
He gazed about the room, focused on the rabbit, imagined the legs and body reunited, innards once again tucked neatly inside, thimble-sized organ pumping, head slipping through the neck of its furry sweater. Springing away. Too late now, he thought. Once you’re overtaken, once someone has got hold of all of you, there’s no way to ask for nothing back.
Uncle waited on the stoop while Miss Cooke was deep inside his home. Along with his wife, she was now witnessing a woman, splayed, stray child emerging from the bloodied flesh between her legs. Images of the crinkled female arrangement crept upwards, tap-tapped on his consciousness, but he pressed them down the back of his neck. He would be first to admit he struggled with that sort of thing. Whenever he heard a shrill cluck from a hen, he couldn’t help but visualize a glistening egg emerging from a hidden mouth stretched beyond. And once, when he had to reach into a mare, grip the greasy legs of a breech foal, he came close to fainting when the wet animal was finally standing beside him on rubbery legs.
As he grew older, even relations with his wife became increasingly difficult. The morning afterwards, he always found his skin sensitive to any lick of wind, the brightness of the sun a terrible distraction. As he worked the field, a spicy scent would leach through the fabric of his clothes, be carried off on the breeze, and he was bothered by the notion that it might meet someone else’s nose. This discomfort intensified to the point where he abandoned that nighttime struggle altogether, and was more settled because of it.
Behind him on the stoop, Eldred had taken a seat in a patch of certain shade, whittling a branch of a cherry tree with a small curved knife. Every now and again, a shaving would flick off, land on Uncle, and Eldred would leap up from his seat, dash out into the sunlight, pluck it from Uncle’s sweater, saying, “Sorry, sir. Sorry.” But Uncle was barely aware of the words, like bubbles within hardening resin, going nowhere.
Uncle lowered his head. How had this happened? How had his life, his entire life become composed of a series of unyielding lines? The edges of a grain of sand, the cliff that jutted out before him, the roof of his own home, the coastline on the map of where he lived. All lines. Complex, jagged sometimes, but still straight, steadfast. And no matter how hard he squinted his eyes, no matter how hard he clenched his jaw, he could identify no curve, no honest bend, where he might pause, reflect, and jaunt back to years gone by.
Uncle remembered their very last conversation. Between himself and Miss Cooke. Stilted, and unfinished. It was the day his mother died, a day very much like today – sticky, hot. The sort of weather when salt left trails on dry skin, and a foul mould would grow on any morsel left to linger on a plate.
Problems started when his mother complained of a tickle in her throat. The tickle turned to a rattle in her lungs, and the rattle to a hack. For three weeks, she languished in the bed, and the whole house smelled of her, faintly, like composted peelings. On the morning that she left him, she was consumed by fever, and Uncle had cursed the weather, called out for snow and ice, something to cool her body. But the heat in the house did not relent, and it sunk her eyes, hollowed out her cheeks, pulled back her withered lips. Early that evening, when damp day gave away to misty twilight, his mother turned from person to corpse. And in that moment, she was staring straight at Uncle, and he knew she wasn’t ready to leave.
At the funeral, his father made him wear an oversized black wool suit, and his skin itched as sweat dripped down the sides of his trunk, down his spine and into the crevice of his backside. He hated his father that day, even though his father was a decent man, shaking hands with his neighbours, a grimace smile, displaying a stoic sort of grief.
Afterwards, Uncle had sat in the corner of the hot kitchen. His feet bounced underneath his chair, and he waited while funeral-goers milled about, chomped on cold sliced meat and raisin tarts. At one point, two neighbours stood directly in front of Uncle, and he listened as their conversation steered quickly away from the virtues of his dead mother, onto the subject of colicky horses. Uncle arose, feigned unsteadiness, jostling one man. He swiftly tore a loose button from the back of the man’s good trousers, and a moment later, Uncle dropped it, crushed it to powder with the heel of his shoe.
When he heard the clack of dishes, the ladies scraping uneaten food into a pile for the dogs, Uncle left his home, went down to the beach, and sat on the stones. Gulls were squawking, the noise like a knife to his head. Almost unaware, he felt his fingers move over the smooth stones, until they found the perfectly sized one. He plucked it up, gripped it, let the trapped warmth of the sun seep into his palm. With a high arc, he flung it out over the water, closed his eyes when he heard the dull thud, the watery plop.
“What have you done?”
A shriek from the cliff behind him. Oh God. Annabelle. “Willard! Willard May! What have you done?”
She was coming towards him now, making her way along the edge of the rock until she found the slender path that led down to the beach.
“Did you do that on purpose?”
“No.”
“Yes, you did. I saw you take aim as clear as day.”
“Then why’d you ask me for?”
She drove her hands into her hips. Lifted her feet, and turned to glance at her heels.
“God, you’re heartless, Willard. Heartless and cold.”
Another gull circled above, dove down towards the feathery white mass in the water. Then, as if stunned, it recoiled. Memory slipping moments later, it dove down to check again.
“Oh, look. What a sin. That must be his friend.”
She was a slight woman, all neatly packaged, dress, shoes, pinned hair. She reminded him of his mother.
“For Christ’s sake. It’s only a dumb bird.”
“A dumb bird, you says. And what gives you the right to take its life?”
Head to his knees, a cry from deep inside quivered at the edge of his dry throat. Making him gasp. He focused on the image between his legs, the tide sneaking in, moistening the gaps among the stones. When he glanced up, through the tangle of his wiry eyebrows, he could see the splayed gull, gliding from wave to wave towards him. Dead. Why had that happened? Why had the bird hovered just so, the wind lifting it, his own arm angled in just the right position.
Nearly impossible, the design of it all.
Annabelle crouched down beside him, pulled her ash-coloured dress over her knees. Rubbing his back, she whispered, “Oh Willard, today of all days, and listen to me.”
He hadn’t meant to knock her over when he jumped to his feet. But he had to get away from her. She understood his ways, balanced him evenly. An
d this agitated Uncle, as right now, he craved that unbearable lightness, wanted her side of the scale to crash down to the table below.
He turned only once to look at her as he stumbled away, and she was just standing there, plain face sad now, her questioning palms towards him. “I love you. Forever, Willard May. I promise I will.” And his heart shriveled against his chest when he recognized an inkling of doubt had settled there. Could he do the same? Today, this moment, he wasn’t sure.
Taking long strides up the lane, he had no idea where he was going. Away was the only direction he could grasp. He was rounding the bend that passed by Farmer Gill’s when he heard that whistling. Stopped him in his tracks.
Plump, she was, with a mess of curls that the wind lifted and whipped about her face. Her legs were widely parted, and she was bent over at the waist in the garden. Grasping turnip tops with both hands, she tugged promptly, grunting now, and smirked as the earth renounced its treasure. When she stood, shook clumps of dirt from the root, the whistling resumed. He waited for her to notice him staring, and when she did, she smiled at him, and swiped a muddy hand across her forehead. “Afternoon,” she sang, oblivious to the day he’d had. When her lips relaxed, they reminded him of the flaring mouth of a pitcher plant, sensual. A watery place where he might want to place his finger. “Yes,” he’d replied. “It is.” She’s seamless, his mind announced, and he was almost crushed by a desire to take her up behind the rotting barn, lay her down on the knobby earth, and own her. She looked so damned happy.
When he heard Miss Cooke’s shoes on the stoop, a neat clip of the heel, he was released from his stream of speculation. Her smell surrounded him, sun-warmed linedried clothes, lilies, a hint of rancidity from old animal fat in lye soap.
“It’s okay, Eldred,” Uncle heard her say. “You can go on in now. She’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
He had expected her to walk past him, but she didn’t. She stood beside him on the step and scanned the water. A burst of sunlight skidded over the swells, and the radiance nearly blinded him. Please, not now, he thought, not at this moment. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, silently begged for another veil of clouds. An obliging south wind granted his wish.
In his peripheral vision he was able to admire her. His mind’s eye peeling away the wrinkles, plucking out the errant whiskers, softening that silvery coarse hair back to bittersweet chocolate. With little effort, Annabelle was the same as she ever was.
“Who painted them?” Annabelle said abruptly, waving her hand towards the coloured beach stones that lined his walkway. Lemon yellow, green, sky blue. “Or, dare I ask?”
“What, those rocks?”
“Yes.”
He cleared his throat. “She did. She. My wife. With leftover paint.”
“Even so. Seems a bit of a waste to me. Perfectly good paint and all.”
After a moment, he nodded, replied swiftly, “Yes. Yes. You might be right.” He closed his eyes when he said this – an out-loud betrayal.
“Hm.”
Uncle turned slightly, reached up and, with a tentative finger, touched the billow of skin at the back of her elbow. Felt a coolness there.
“Miss Cooke. Annabelle. Please.”
“Please what, Willard?” Both elbows snapped inwards as though on elastic strings. Her next words were barely audible. “I’m an old woman now. But, I still remember.”
How he had wished for pure anger or resentment, but there was no disguising the sadness in her voice, and that made it all the worse. Disgrace prickled his skin, and he felt pain rinse across his chest, then down towards his thighs. If cowards were supposed to be sickly yellow, then why was his old body currently glowing in hidden places?
“I am, I’m sorry,” he somehow managed.
She leaned towards him ever so slightly, and her slender hand darted up, plucked a curl of bark from his straggly hair. Then her lips parted, and Uncle halted his wheezy breath so as not to miss a word. But instead of speaking, she took a deep step away from him, moved around the back of his home, floated up through the field, and disappeared. Immediately, his knowing hand moved to the spot where she had touched him.
“Don’t tell me you’re still standing around, Uncle. How can that be? How in God’s name is that possible?”
His wife was watching him from behind the screen door and he could not turn to face her.
“Well, I’m beat,” she continued. “Suppose you can pull yourself together and take the child over to the Abbotts’? Or do I got to do that too?”
Uncle waited until his shoulders sensed her absence, and then he brought his earth-stained hands to his face. Right now, all he wanted was to be somewhere where he could see no part of himself. Where no reflection or reminder existed. Uncle pressed his fingers into the deep wrinkles around his eyes, rubbed until he saw dancing stars beneath his lids. And while he waited for the mist in his eyes to recede, he considered that perhaps he understood Eldred a little better – not quite the fear that lived within him, but something of the sentiment.
Percy was on the way up from the dank basement, an onion in either hand, when he heard a tapping at the back door. He knew who it was before he even answered. Every other member of Bended Knee Bay would have pulled open the door, strolled in, and gotten on with the visit. But not Uncle. There was nothing casual about that man, nothing informal or intimate.
“Good to see you, Uncle,” Percy said, as he pushed open the screen door with his foot. “Come on in. Never mind the boots.”
Uncle glanced at the onions, then at Delia seated in the rocker, and Percy noticed his face droop with a look of displeasure. His shoulders drooped too, large stomach jutting. Over a soiled beige shirt, his suspenders, decorated with jumping clovers, seemed almost whimsical. Percy stared at those suspenders, wondering what was out of place, when he realized Uncle was carrying a tiny bundle in the crook of his elbow, a cupful of pure white against the dull fabrics of his clothes.
Delia saw the child at the same time. “Oh, oh my. Oh my.”
Percy dropped the onions onto a chair; they rolled down the incline, tan skins coming loose. Getting as close as he’d ever been to Uncle, Percy eased the warm knitted parcel into his own arms. Placing a hand underneath the pug nose, Percy sensed a warm breeze, smiled, and passed the baby to Delia.
“We’d have taken it on ourselves, if we wasn’t so old. ’Twas our mess. No two ways about it.”
“Oh, no mess, Uncle. ’Tis an honest joy for us. Idn’t that right, Percy.”
“We’s right blessed. You’ve gone and blessed us this day.” Percy went to clap Uncle on his back, but his hand stopped just short. “Take a load off, for God’s sakes. What can I offer you? A drop of something. The best of whatever we has.”
Uncle seemed to ignore the proposal, said firmly, “A bit earlier than expected, but if you’re not ready, Berta can handle it for a day or two. Though she says it would be awful hard on the girl.”
“We’re ready.”
“Yes, Uncle,” Delia replied. “We’ve been ready since the day you told us the child was coming.”
“Grand, then. Bert is wonderful tired, and I don’t know nothing about tending to young’uns.”
Delia leaned down to smell the child’s head, and Uncle clenched his jaw, scowled.
“What is it? Boy or girl?”
“I don’t rightly know now, missus.”
Delia slid to the edge of her chair. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Is there something wrong?”
“No. Just I didn’t take the time to ask is all.”
“Well, now.”
“’Tis not my business what it is.”
“I sees.”Percy piped up when he detected a slight sharpness in his wife’s tone. “Of course you’re going to stay for a drink. What can I get you?”
“No. Bert’s got dinner on the table, and she’s in no mood to wait. A long day we’ve had.”
“As we can well imagine.”
“So I’ll be on my way.”
/> “That’s it, then?”
“Far as I sees.”
“Well, thank you. Thank you kindly, Uncle. Hardly seems enough, though, don’t it?”
Old Uncle moved his mouth as though he were a cow chewing its cud. Then, he tipped his hat and walked out into the porch. As he pushed the screen door open, he turned back, leaned in through the doorway.
“No guarantees, missus,” he said, shaking his head. “No guarantees.”
Delia met his tired eyes, then replied with conviction, “Is there ever?”
“Can you believe that man?” Delia said just after the door knocked against the frame.
“What do you mean?”
“Got neither soul at all. Handed this over as though ’twas a scrap of lost mail. Like driftwood, he is.”
Percy swiped the damp hair on the back of his neck. “Who’s to know what goes on inside another man’s head?”
God. You can’t say a poor word about no one.
Really, Del. Come now.
“You’re right,” she snorted. “That old man should be the last thing on my mind.”
Delia’s good hand hovered just over the baby, and she cried, “Oh Percy, I don’t even know what to do with it.”
He chuckled lightly. “Well, how about we figure out whether it is a he or a she.”
Delia inspected the room from her chair. “Close the back door. Check the windows. Put another junk on the fire.”
“It’s plenty warm in here,” he replied, but did as he was told.
“For us, it is. But I don’t want no drafts. I idn’t taking a single chance on this one.”
She pulled away the soft flannel, ran a finger over the scrunched up face, the sparse strands of hair, and paused when she touched the indentation on the top of the skull, life beating beneath. She unwound the blanket, and the baby was dressed in a full-length cotton sleeper, secured at the shoulder and underneath the arms. Tucked inside, near the child’s hip, was an impossibly small pair of shoes, soft leather, sewn around the edges.
The Seary Line Page 2
