The Best American Short Stories 2013 (41 page)

Sunday 19 February

Sleet, and ice, and a gloom so pervasive, all our lamps had to remain lit at midday. Both of us much borne down of mind all morning, and for the past five days. Dyer able to get to the mill.

Sunday 26 February

Bright sun. Biscuit and dried mackerel for breakfast. Tallie visiting her father in Oneonta. A lonesome and tedious week.

The Cobbs lost their son to pneumonia a few days ago. I think last week. Their only child. Dyer was loath to tell me, but the memories of Nellie came on only slowly after he had done so.

I never showed our daughter a face free of fatigue; the night I bore her I had just finished dipping twenty-four dozen candles, and she never seemed to lose her head colds and we had many hard nights. I never felt blessed with enough time for her when she was well and it was that much harder watching over her during her illnesses. I spent my days beyond distress, fearing the consequences of her sickliness, until when she was two years and five months on, she suffered an attack of the bilious fever, pleurisy, bowel problems, and croup. She was treated with bayberry and marsh rosemary to scour the stomach and bowels, and a tea of valerian and lady’s slipper for the fever, and though she rallied for a day or two, when she gazed at me, she seemed to know that even if her condition were to be coaxed into a little clemency, it wouldn’t spare her. The night came when she asked, “Mommy, take me up,” and I lifted her from her bed while Dyer slept. She asked for my comb, and when I gave it to her she combed my hair and then smoothed it with her palm on my head and then asked me to lie down with her and put her arms around my neck and did not rise again.

Since the norms of polite society require that private woe be concealed from public view, I was allowed to sequester myself away for some months following. There I remained speechless. I was surrounded by objects that, if silent everywhere else, here had a voice that rang out with her presence. And I never forgot her face that final night, because there was something so affecting about mute and motionless grief in a child so young.

Sunday 4 March

Windy and very bright. Dined with the Hill family last evening. On our way there we saw hunters with ducks over their shoulders and boys skating on the river. A most excellent dinner of seven dishes of meat, four of vegetables, pickles and a pie, tarts and cheese, and wine and cider. This morning a breakfast of only oatmeal, jam, and coffee. Mr. Tarbell came and hung the bacon. Dyer is augmenting the padding in the cow stables with his hoardings of leaves and old straw, which he believes to increase the manure output.

It seemed Tallie would never appear, but time and the needle wear through the longest morning. When she arrived my heart was like a leaf borne over a rock by rapidly moving water. She said that a few days earlier their hired hand had pulled down a box of eggs and broke nearly two dozen, and that Finney had announced to him that he was unlucky to eggs and was no longer allowed to approach them. Her husband believed that he suffered a great deal from the carelessness of hired hands, she said. She claimed that old Mr. Holt was said to have swum his horse over the canal despite the cold, and that the widow Weldon’s son had been contracted to carry the mail on skis, but that otherwise there was no news. She was much better in her health. She was overjoyed to see me.

She said she’d spent the previous two days rendering the lard from the hogs and making soap. She said her husband was even more out of sorts than usual, and that he had mentioned again the idea of migrating west. I told her that I considered migrating west a bad idea, since my uncle had moved to Ohio and had come to a desperate end. She asked if that wasn’t where my sister had settled, and I said no, that my sister was out near Lackawanna, and that her husband was a manufacturer of horse cultivators. She asked me to tell her more about my sister and I told her how Rebecca had always loved legends of Indians and Quakers and county witches, and how our church had frowned on dancing but had allowed kissing games, and how she had been a champion at Copenhagen and Needle’s Eye. She had met her future husband at an agricultural society fair in which she had been named Queen of the Livery. Tallie remarked with some wryness that it sounded very grand, and I wanted to embrace her for that kindness alone.

I asked about her brothers and she answered only about the one who had survived. She said that once he was old enough to stand, he’d gone round with a sling that he claimed was identical to the weapon with which David had slain Goliath. He never killed anyone but he did give his family some anxious moments. She said that when he was fourteen she’d caught him skinning baby rabbits alive and he’d told her that the rabbits were used to it. She said that a year later he’d knotted a rope on his wrist and their steer’s horn, and had been dragged cross-country. When their mother had asked what made him do such a thing, he had said he hadn’t gone a half-mile before he could see his mistake.

We talked of parents. I told her of remembering my father telling my mother that she shouldn’t feel bad about me because sometimes the plain grew up to be enormously wise. She told me that only once in her life did her father say an encouraging word, though he said plenty of the other kind. She said that she refused to offer an excuse for her constant disobedience to him, but that she did believe now that her father had done her a far greater wrong. I said that I was sure she’d been as good as gold and she answered that she had been the kind of willful child that no frown would deny nor words restrain, and that because of that her father had often taken her in one hand and a strap in the other, and brought the two together until she had had enough.

By then we were in late afternoon light and Dyer had again returned to shed his outer clothing in the mudroom with maximum fidget and fuss. She stood and composed herself, and touched a finger to my shoulder. I felt, looking at her expression, as if she were in full sail on a flood tide while I bobbed along down backwaters. And yet I never saw on her countenance the indifference of the fortunate toward the less fortunate. At the mudroom door my husband greeted us before passing inside, and Tallie put her cheek to mine before leaving. I watched her ascend the snowy path toward her land, her dog running to greet her. While Dyer rubbed his lower extremities for warmth, I added to our hearth fire, contrary to my usual custom. It cheered the room a little but everything still looked desolate. That is me, I thought, taking my chair. One emotion succeeds another.

Sunday 11 March

A sloppy day. The wind chilly but with hints of a warmth. Up early. Ham and potatoes and coffee for breakfast. Scalded my wrist with boiling fat. Applied flour and hamamelis, since we have no plaster.

A bad week for burns. Dyer and Finney were summoned on Thursday to tend to Mrs. Manning’s little girl, who had just been severely burned. They reported that they accomplished all that they could for the little sufferer until the doctor arrived. It’s thought she didn’t die of the burn but of pneumonia from taking a chill from the water thrown upon her. She complained of being cold from that moment until she died.

A cardinal pair has adopted the house. I’ve been laying out seed to sustain them, and sometimes when I forget they fly to the kitchen window to remind me. The female is the prettiest muted green.

The week spent sowing clover. What’s needed are still mornings, ideally after frost heaves, when the sun has thawed the soil’s surface just enough to fasten the seed in the mud. We sow with a Cahoon, which hangs on a pair of suspenders and throws out a continuous stream with a handle-crank. On Friday we had to finish in a headwind, which was hard on the eyes. I look as if I’ve been on a spree.

My mother’s mother was born in 1780 in a log house right here in Schoharie County. I wonder now at the courage and the resourcefulness of those women who fared forth, not knowing where they were being led, to begin to chip into the wilderness the foundations of a civilization. Maybe they found love and kisses in their loved ones’ regard, and a certain high hopefulness that we do not possess.

Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy. I write with only the small hand lamp burning, as late as it is.

Dyer asked after breakfast apropos of nothing if my friend Tallie intended to visit us again today and when I informed him that I expected she would, he gave no further sign of having heard me, but went about the business of gathering his outer garments and eventually left the house.

Tallie arrived some minutes later with a handkerchief to her nose. When she heard I was well she claimed to be disappointed and said she’d hoped to compare colds. I showed her my burn.

When she had completed quizzing me on the various remedies I had applied, we talked of our admiration for each other. She said she had from her earliest childhood an instinct that shrank from selfishness or icy regard, and that she cherished the safety she felt when in my presence. She said she’d composed a poem titled “O Sick and Miserable Heart Be Still.”

I told her how as a little girl I’d always imagined cultivating my intellect and doing something for the world, and she gazed at me as though I’d said the absolute perfect thing, and I thrilled at the possibility of having done so. And when I said nothing more she wrung both of my hands with hers, and said that that moment in which we were carried in triumph somewhere for having done something great and good, or we were received at home in a shower of tears of joy: was it really possible that such a moment had not yet come, for either of us? When I regained my voice, I said I thought that it had. Or it could. She asked what I imagined. And I said, astonishing myself with my own dauntlessness, that I loved how our encircling feelings left nothing out for us to miss or seek.

When her expression remained as it had been, I added that perhaps I presumed too much. The pyre in the hearth collapsed with a little show of sparks. We both gazed upon the flaming logs. Finally she murmured, so that I could just hear, that it was not those who showed the least who felt the least.

Her pacing dog’s toenails were audible on the ice on the porch. She leaned forward and offered me her lips to kiss and then turned her cheek, which I then kissed instead. I asked why she hadn’t done as she was going to do, and she had no reply. So I took her hands, and then her shoulders, and with our eyes fully open brought my mouth to hers.

She smelled of rosewater and an herb I couldn’t identify. Her taste was suffusing and sweet and entirely full. Her mouth was at first diffident, and then feathery and tender, and then welcoming and immersive.

She worried I would catch her cold. She took in her breath at the passion of my response. We skidded our chairs closer and had no thought of peril nor satiety, listening to the wind’s increase outside like an index of our exhilaration and starting up at every sound of her dog on the porch. There was a sweet biscuity smell to her hairline. Eventually she pulled free and bade me open my eyes and said she was leaving.

Dyer when he returned noted all that I still had not yet accomplished when it came to my evening’s responsibilities, and asked with some irritation as I stood over the pump and sink if I required assistance. I came very near answering that I did, I felt so undone by my Tallie’s departure. The moment she had left I was like a skiff pushed out to sea with neither hand nor helm to guide it.

Sunday 18 March

Falling weather soon, whether rain or snow. For three straight days my bowels have remained unmoved. A spell of dizziness and shortness of breath this morning, and no appetite, so Dyer made his own breakfast. He says that old Mr. Holt while returning from a sale in town was badly beaten by two strangers, so that he had to be hauled the rest of the way to his home in his own cart. Their intention had been to kill him but they were mistaken as to who he was.

Dyer also claims to have had many unpleasant dreams, owing to his mind. Otherwise he has been notably silent all day. I am happy to be left to my solitude. Thankful to my Maker for such blessings &c.

When still just a little girl I used to hope that God with a voice as loud as thunder would proclaim that all of my sins were forgiven. Now I know that I can wait until doomsday and I still will not hear any such thing. And yet the repentant sinner must actively seek God’s forgiveness instead of waiting for Him to act.

Hard labor all week, sunup to sundown, helping Dyer in the outer fields with the smoothing harrow and the roller. Old Bill our horse has the heaves. Both of us fit to drop by Saturday eve. Both of us mournful this morning. Both of us seemed to have spent the day listening for footfalls on the porch. And yet when my thoughts turn to her I think with special heat,
Why
are we to be divided? Merciful Father turn the channel of events.

Still feeling poorly by nightfall, and so unable to cook. A dinner of tea, bread and butter, and cold ham.

Sunday 25 March

A wild mixture of wind and rain and clouds and sunshine. Muddy March has dragged on like a log through a wet field.

Downhearted and woebegone. A poor night. Fried corncakes and ham for breakfast. Poor Dyer suffering from a painful cough.

Opened the mudroom door this afternoon to Dyer having returned from the fields, and he said with some asperity that it was pleasant to be greeted by the smile one values above all others, only to see that smile vanish because it’s been met by one’s own presence, instead of someone else’s.

He sat with me a while, then, still in his boots. I asked if he wanted more of the ham and he said no. I told him that when he next went to town we needed calico and muslin and buttons and shoe thread. He asked if he was troubling me, sitting with me like this, and when I assured him he was not, he remarked that he had learned consideration of others. And that he had learned the need of human sympathy by the unfulfilled want of it. I told him that I felt as though I had provided him with much sympathy throughout our years together, and he allowed as to how that had been so. We then waited again, sitting facing each other, and I thought with some pity how his life seems equal parts furious work and resignation. When Tallie arrived he greeted her and seemed in no hurry to take his leave. He remained sunk in his chair for nearly a half an hour while we exchanged pleasantries and news before he finally rose to his feet and left without announcing his business.