After Eli (32 page)

“Long time.”

“That’s right, and there’s somethin’ else botherin’ you that you ain’t said. What is it?”

Tolly did not move. His face did not change expression. When he spoke, his voice was angry, but tired: “The man lied.”

“How, Tolly?”

“If the boy come at him, moved on him, with a knife, the Irishman couldn’t’ve stabbed him to the door with a pitchfork. The boy’d have to be standing against the door.”

“I don’t know, Tolly.”

“Did you see that pitchfork? Wadn’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

Curtis looked up at Tolly. He was surprised at the age in Tolly’s face.

“Nothin’?” he asked. “It wadn’t broke?”

“Never had been,” Tolly said.

“Goddamnit.”

“The man lied,” Tolly said again.

“Maybe. We better tell the doctor.”

“Up to you,” Tolly replied. “I’m goin’ home.”

* * *

Michael denied there was any trouble with the sheriff—“Wanted to know if I was feelin’ all right,” he explained—but Rachel could sense his worry. She led him into a story of the circus and he stretched across his bed in the living room as the three women sat around him in chairs and listened attentively. It was a rambling story about a midget who wooed and married a woman with a trained dog act and then learned the woman always slept with the dogs in bed with her. And when he finished the story, he tucked his hands behind his head and fell asleep fully clothed while Dora was describing a dog she had had as a child.

“He’s asleep,” Rachel whispered. “Leave him be.”

“I told him to slow down some today,” Dora said. “Told him he’d be wore out.” She motioned for Sarah and the two left for their rooms through the kitchen.

Rachel pulled a blanket over Michael. Even in sleep, his face was clouded with worry. She wondered why he was bothered, and if the sheriff had said something about Owen that had made the terror of Owen’s death return.

She blew out the light in the kerosene lamp on the side table and crossed the room quietly to the doorway leading into her bedroom. She stood for a moment looking at Michael and then pulled the door closed behind her. She paused with her hand on the doorknob and then opened the door slightly. She knew it was a foolish thing, but the opened door made her feel closer to the sleeping man, and the opened door was an admission that no longer shamed her.

She undressed in the dark and pulled the cotton nightgown over her and buttoned it to the throat. She stepped to the quilt divider that separated her sleeping from her work and parted
it and pushed a chair against it. From her bed she could see the narrow slit of the opened door. She listened to the heavy, even stroke of Michael’s breathing and the need for him touched her with a feather lightness. She thought of Sarah and Dora. They were infatuated with him. They would not understand her need. She had had Eli. But Eli had been gone so long, so very long. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine Eli close to her, but she could not. It was Michael’s face that she saw. She pressed the palm of her hand over her abdomen and could feel the fluttering inside her.

* * *

Her body awoke suddenly, fully, with each of her senses tautly aware. Her eyes flew open and focused on the face above her, staring at her with a steel gaze. It was Michael. She moved instinctively, pulling the cover to her, her eyes flitting over him. Then she saw the knife in his right hand, its cold blade turned up. A short gasp caught in her chest and died in her throat.

Michael signaled to her with the palm of his left hand. She watched horrified as he turned slowly in the room, peering into the darkened corners. She realized her hands were frozen in a frantic grip on the bedcovers over her.

Michael stood for a moment, looking into the room and listening. Then he slipped his knife into its sheath on his leg. He eased onto the edge of the bed and leaned close to her.

“I thought I heard a noise,” he whispered.

“What—what time is it?” she asked quietly.

“Three, I suppose,” he answered. Then: “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ve been a bit touchy since—” He let the sentence drop. He looked at her, then began to pull away.

“Wait,” she said.

She reached for him and touched him on his neck. He rolled his face to her hand and kissed it gently across the tips of her fingers. Her palm opened in a fan and her fingers danced slowly
over his lips. She pushed her head back into the pillow and lifted her breasts high and toward him. He pulled away the covers and slipped his arms beneath her back, cradling her. He thought of Sarah and how he had held her exactly that way. His face dropped to her breasts and he began to nuzzle gently against her. She swallowed the sound that cried with its own voice and her hands moved to the buttons across the front of her gown. She picked awkwardly at the buttons, opening the gown to his face, and then she caught his neck with her hands and moved her face to kiss him, and her kiss was hungry and blind and she did not know that Sarah stood beside the quilt divider and watched.

Sarah did not cry out. She said, very timidly, “Mama.”

The thin voice of her daughter exploded in Rachel’s mind. She pushed hard against Michael, rolling him from the bed.

“Mama?”

Sarah reached for the quilt curtain and tried to balance against it. The curtain pulled loose from the ceiling and she sank to the floor on her knees. Her eyes were fixed in a paralytic stare on Rachel’s opened gown. She tried to speak again, but she could not breathe. A shallow, gagging whimper sputtered in her throat and she could feel the blood draining from her face. She fought to sit upright on her knees. A hot pain, like a blow, knotted in her stomach. She felt her mouth fill with a cold secretion. She wrapped her arms tight around her stomach and breathed deeply, quickly, swallowing the horror that screamed inside her like a piercing whistle.

Rachel scrambled from the bed. She pushed Michael, shoving him, and stumbled to Sarah, gathering her in her arms. Sarah’s body shuddered. Her arms squeezed around her waist. She began to swing her shoulders angrily, pounding against her mother. Rachel held her, burying her face.

Then, suddenly, Sarah relaxed. She let her face rock against the pillow of Rachel’s shoulder and she began to sob quietly.

“Baby,” Rachel whispered gently. “Baby—”

Michael watched the scene intently, nervously. He had made the mistake that he feared—a single blunder of eagerness. His mind flashed to the visit of the sheriff and the phantom voice urging him to run. Now he had no other choice. He could not kill them. Killing them would be his blood signature to guilt. He wondered what would be said between mother and daughter. He needed to think.

“Rachel,” he said softly.

“No,” Rachel answered. “Just—just go on. Leave me with her.”

“Yes,” he said. He walked past them into the living room and lifted his coat from the wall peg and opened the door and left the house.

* * *

Her face was warm against her mother’s shoulder and Sarah rested with her eyes closed. She breathed evenly as Rachel stroked her hair and rocked her like a baby who had had a frightening dream.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Rachel whispered. “You know that, don’t you? I—you know your mama’s sorry, don’t you? I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Nothin’. Sometimes I—I don’t know how to say it; sometimes I feel like givin’ in. That’s what I was doin’. Givin’ in. I’ve missed your daddy. For a long time I’ve missed him. I was givin’ in.”

Sarah snuggled closer to her mother. She nodded into Rachel’s shoulder.

“Mama,” she said quietly, “I been with him, too. Did you know that, Mama?”

Rachel’s body stiffened. Her hand trembled on Sarah’s neck. She remembered the birthday party, and the jealousy that had been only partly hidden in Sarah’s eyes.

“He—he said it was me, Mama,” Sarah continued. “He said it was me he wanted.” She paused, then added, “But I knew it was you. I—I could tell, the way he’d be lookin’ at you. I knew
it. I don’t know why I knew it, I just did. Sometimes, when we was workin’ out in the field and I’d carry him water, he’d talk about how good you was. He said you was a friend, somebody who understood who he was.”

“Shhhhhhh,” Rachel said gently. “Hush, baby. You have to know there’s them kind of men, Sarah. He’s a—a hurter. I guess I always knew he was. I guess I knew it from the first, the day he was bit by the snake.”

“Why, Mama? Why? Why’d he have to do it?”

“It’s his way,” Rachel answered. “He’s one of them people that hurt you, and you let him hurt you because—because you can’t help it. It’s like—it’s like a gift with him.”

“What’s he want, Mama?” Sarah asked innocently.

“I don’t know. Maybe just to prove somethin’. Maybe it’s because of the money people keep sayin’ your daddy hid. He talked about that some, after the Benton boy ran away.”

Sarah pulled from her mother’s shoulder and looked at Rachel. Her eyes were swollen and moist.

“He used to tease me about diggin’ for buried treasure, puttin’ in the fence,” she said. “I never thought about them stories, about Daddy.”

Rachel brushed away the hair from Sarah’s forehead with her fingers.

“Don’t be thinkin’ about them things,” she whispered.

“Mama?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any money? Did Daddy leave some here, and you been keepin’ it?”

Rachel smiled. She caught Sarah’s face in her hands.

“If there was any money, baby, it’d be yours, for when you need it,” she said. “Just think of it as somethin’ your daddy made up.”

A door closed in the house and Rachel lifted her head to the sound. She instinctively pulled Sarah close to her.

“Michael?” she said. “Is that you?”

She heard footsteps cross the living room. She knew it was not Michael; it was Dora.

“Dora,” she mumbled to Sarah.

“Mama—”

Dora stepped into the room and looked at Rachel and Sarah on the floor, huddled beside the fallen quilt curtain.

“Sarah?” Dora said. “What’s goin’ on?” She stepped closer.

“Nothin’, Dora,” Rachel replied curtly.

“Nothin’?” Dora asked. “Where’s Michael? What happened, child? Tell me.”

“Nothin’ happened, Dora,” Rachel said firmly. “Leave us alone.”

Dora stepped closer and stood above them. Her face turned suspiciously to look at the room. She saw the bedcovering thrown aside. Her eyes drifted back to Rachel and she glared at her opened gown.

“You let him at you,” Dora said coldly. “You let him lay with you, ain’t that it?”

“Dora, leave,” Rachel commanded.

“Get away from her, Sarah,” Dora shouted angrily. “She’s been whorin’ with him. She’s been whorin’.” She caught Sarah and dragged her away from Rachel.

Rachel twisted on the floor and jumped to her feet. She grabbed Dora by the shoulder and turned her forcibly, pulling her away from Sarah.

“Get out! Get out of here,” she snapped. “She’s my child. You been tryin’ to take her away from me for years, but she’s mine, damn you.”

Dora stood, staring, her face ashen in the dim light of the room. Her lips curled into a sneer and her chin quivered.

“The child found you layin’ with that man,” she said quietly. “Ain’t that it?” Her voice rose. “Ain’t it? You been layin’ with that man, and she found you. I know it.”

Rachel’s hand lashed out, slapping Dora across the face.

“We both been layin’ with him,” she shouted. “You hear
that? We both been layin’ with him. That’s what you want to know, damn you. And don’t tell me you ain’t been wantin’ the same. I’ve seen you lookin’ at him, wishin’. Wishin’ he’d touch you.”

Dora’s face changed. It aged in a sad hurt. She placed her arms across the front of her gown, in an X, as though covering her breasts. She looked at Sarah and her mouth opened and closed. Tears began to well in her eyes. She turned and ran from the room.

“Dora,” Sarah called. “Aunt Dora.”

Dora did not answer. She stumbled blindly through the living room to the door leading into the kitchen. She pushed with her shoulder against the door and it opened quickly and she fell through it. She looked around as if lost. The room was hazy. It swam in her head like an uncontrolled dream. She could feel tears sliding over her face and she put out her hands and began to follow the corridor leading from the kitchen. Her fingers walked the wall until she touched the door to her room. It was open and she turned inside the room and slammed the door behind her. The sound echoed throughout the house like the crack of a gunshot. She leaned heavily against the door with her back. Her hands dropped to her sides and spread open against the door paneling. She threw her head back and her mouth opened and her face twisted into a contortion of great pain. Then she pushed away from the door and fell across the room to her bed. She crawled over the bed until she reached the nightstand beside the headboard. She lifted her Bible and turned onto her back, holding the Bible close to her chest and staring into the ceiling. Then she opened the pages and carefully removed the paper shamrock. She dropped the Bible and it slipped from the bed to the floor. She held the shamrock above her and looked at it, and then she pulled it to her and rubbed it tenderly across her face, over the ridges of her lips. She breathed on it softly. The tears streamed from her face and down her temples and into the pillow. Then she again held the
shamrock above her and began to tear it apart—deliberately, carefully. And the tiny paper bits fell from her fingers onto her face.

* * *

Rachel sat on the floor with Sarah, holding her in a blanket. It was nearing sunrise. Outside a rooster crowed arrogantly, and Sarah moved against her mother.