The Quickening (14 page)

I have pictures of the twins in those years, from the time they were born until they turned eleven. In one of the last, Adaline has a hand over her brother’s shoulders. Even as a child, your mother had a prettiness about her, with her father’s black hair and thinness but my own almond-colored eyes. She kept enough of me, at least, to give her some weight in front of that camera. Looking off into the darkness, Donny stands next to her as if he grew out of his sister’s skirts. He was the bigger of the two, sun-blackened and sturdy, but beneath Adaline’s arm, he folds himself square against his sister’s ribs. Like a proud old dog he looks, keeping to his owner’s side.

Since they were born, I’d brought the twins with me to call the cows in from pasture late in the afternoons, just in time for the evening milking. A month before the rains came, I heard them on the back porch getting ready alone. When I looked for them out the window, they had already headed off, a good twenty-minute walk. Cows may seem dull and slow, but they are powerful creatures. They can rush a person if they get fidgety, and back then, the twins stood only as high as the animals’ flanks. Now in early spring, it would be dark before the cows might come back home. But the twins knew the path by heart. Since fall, they’d been walking it themselves to school more than two miles out, the pasture a shortcut that led to the county road. I went along this time in case they had trouble but followed far enough behind so I couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t unusual for
a farm child to take on such work. But like me and my own brothers, I knew they wanted to do it alone.

Adaline and Donny walked side by side down the scarred path, leveled by the cows’ passing. The light had dimmed, that colored, sideways kind of sun. The air smelled of metal from an early rain. When finally they could see the pasture, the twins sang at the cows from a distance. The herd crowded together by the slough where they drank the last of the snowmelt, bumping flanks. The twins came at them with their hands over their heads, their shoulders high, making themselves bigger. They circled wide around the herd on either side and drew together at the back. The cows stirred, turning their heads. They tore a last few bites of grass and then moved all at once, the lead in front, loping along. Every once in a while one of the animals startled. There would be a rush. But behind the herd the twins called out, as small as the youngest calves themselves, and the cows slowed.

I went back to the house to start dinner. Adaline and Donny would haul wood for me when they returned. They would gather peas and tomatoes in buckets from the garden and go to the well to clean them and bring them back. It was a while I was waiting for them. Finally, the two came striding in. They already had the wood in their arms and a dozen or so corncobs to keep the fire going.

“I’ve been expecting you,” I said.

“We got the wood ourselves,” Adaline answered.

“Adaline wanted to,” Donny said, and he grabbed a bucket for the vegetables. Adaline jerked her head at him and he grabbed her a bucket as well.

“Looks like you’re doing plenty yourselves.”

“Sure,” Donny answered. “We’re almost done.”

Adaline gave him a cross-eyed look. “Almost,” she said.

They went out together then, buckets clanging. Beyond the kitchen window, they crouched in the garden, digging through the dirt. They set the tomatoes in one bucket so as not to bruise them, the peas in another. When they set off to the well, Donny carried both buckets by himself. Only eight years old and those two already seemed grown. But no matter how far they went, they would be all right. As long as one had the other, I believed they always would.

During those weeks of rain, Adaline and Donny grew closer still. They walked the miles to school together with tin pails for their sandwiches and came back early to finish their chores. Being so far out, they were often alone with each other, though at times Kyle joined a half-mile along. Even after he’d finished his eighth year, Kyle went, though he hurried home soon after to help his father. There were only twelve children in that schoolhouse, most far younger and living closer in, so those three grew as dear as cousins.

The hogs stayed in the barn and the weather let them sleep. In this keeping of them, we never doubted ourselves. When we heard the animals stirring, we fed them early and well and kept all that was important in our world as close as we were able. It was a powerful time and we believed a bit in what was coming. The drought to the south and west and the trouble it would bring. But it was hard to be certain of anything outside our own hundred and eighty acres of land.
Where he sat with us on our porch, Frank would sing, his voice deeper than I’d heard from him.
Bring me a little water, Sylvie
, he sang.
Bring me a little water now
.

Adaline puckered, blowing a curl from her eyes. Donny cocked his head and frowned. They sat at our feet, drawing a picture between them with a piece of charcoal. In only days it would wash off.

“That’s right,” I said. “Your father’s asking for trouble. That Sylvie has already come.”

Frank sat forward in his chair, singing, and Adaline slapped his arm.

“Aren’t you the smart one?” he laughed. He bent down and lifted them heavily to his knees. When Adaline dropped her head against Frank’s shoulder, Donny did the same.
Getting mighty thirsty, Sylvie
, he sang louder.
Getting mighty thirsty now
.

Small rivers broke the soil, the grass gone to mud. The sky hovered over us as if we should kneel under what it sent down. We were safe under that porch, wrapped in blankets and drifting, near to sleep as Frank grew quiet. Under our breath, we prayed for the rain to hold off or to stop altogether, watching for what would come.

I suppose a person should never wish for things too hard. Something bad often turns up. Sometimes when I squint at that nurse, I think Adaline is home. I can smell the same cream on her skin, like blackberries. The way she tilts her head on her thin neck. My boy, in the last few months I’ve
found myself wishing for your mother so often I feared I would lose myself to it. Now Adaline is almost here again, looking sharper than herself and a bit like someone else. When the nurse brings those buckets for my bath, I try to behave as any mother might.

“That’s it,” the nurse says. “I always knew we could get along.”

I turn over for her. “I’ve made a wreck of it,” I say, but the nurse doesn’t seem to hear. The water is prickly against my back and I think I might choke. She squeezes the sponge and claps her hands when she’s finished. I wonder if she’ll ever tell me who she is. She’s nearly my age, I think, with her white hair pinned back, her square black shoes. But she’s much too thin, too quick on her feet. With me in this bed, there must be more than twenty years between us. When she dusts Kyle’s picture, she presses her face so close her breath fogs the glass.

“That’s my daughter there,” I say, reaching for the bureau. The nurse picks up the photograph behind Kyle’s, and Adaline peers out, all curly hair and drive.

“She writes me,” I say. “Sometimes she does.”

“You know where she is?”

“Not for months, now.”

“But she writes.”

“Now and then.”

The nurse looks away. “You must have an address,” she says. “When you write back?”

I lift the bed skirt, though it leaves me panting. Underneath are all your mother’s letters in a box, the ones she’s
sent in envelopes and the others I’ve tried to write myself. Some are only half finished. I got tired of writing pages I couldn’t send. The nurse sorts through the box, studying the envelopes before throwing them aside. With her face so close, something about her flickers in my head, but just as soon goes out. “That girl, she’s the mother to my only grandchild.”

The nurse pauses.

“Donny,” I say and close my eyes. I feel the nurse watching me and she goes back to rustling through the box. The light turns. The front door creaks on its hinges. When I open my eyes again, the nurse is gone and I know I’ve been asleep for some time. In the dimness I can smell those blackberries, but the smell drifts. The box is under the bed, this notebook covered in dust. The photographs are back as they were, with Kyle in front. Sometimes I wonder if anyone has been here at all.

We were sitting on that porch when we first saw Jack on our road, and we knew he’d come to see us about our hogs. His hat was low on his head, spilling rain to his lips. His jacket blew from his sides as if it ran along with him. Frank sat forward in his chair, knuckles folded under his chin. “It’s him,” he said. The children grew quiet, even Jack’s youngest. Back then, that boy often escaped his father’s house and stayed at our own. I never minded keeping Kyle from Jack’s hand, not with the way he watched over the twins. Now with Jack like a stranger rising out of the weather, I hurried the children inside.

Jack took the porch steps in a single stride and threw himself into the chair I’d left. “How’re the boys?” I asked from behind the screen door. “How’s Mary?”

He took off his hat and shook it, his face pinched. The children played at the table behind me, spilling soup. Kyle shouted a dare to the twins, and they tried to drink their bowls in one swallow, losing most of it down their fronts. If not for our neighbor’s presence, I might have joined them. But Jack was stewing, scratching his thumb against a knot of wood on the porch rail.

“That’s enough, Kyle,” I called out.

“Do I have to ask?” Jack started. “You haven’t done it, have you? You’ve got to change your mind. Go in with all of us.”

“I don’t see why,” Frank said.

“We’ve already agreed, that’s why. It wouldn’t be right if one of us held out. Nobody will have his hands clean when this is done. And if you don’t come along, you’ll just ruin it for the rest of us. Make us all look bad, and you so high and mighty.”

I laughed. “You haven’t done your own yet, have you? That’s what I expect.”

Jack turned to me behind the screen, his face hard.

“What is it, Jack? You want to be sure they’re no holdouts so you can stand it better? Here you are, pretending it means nothing. But I bet you think it means plenty.”

Jack looked at me and blinked. I’d hit home, but his face covered up quick.

“You know what they did to that judge up north, Frank?” he started again. “The one who got so happy foreclosing
farms? They shook a rope at him. They dragged him out of that chair in his courtroom and tarred and feathered him. Left him like that in the town square. And what they did, they did it together. Some people thought it was crazy, but it took planning. It made things happen. Now Roosevelt is listening. The president is. Not like Hoover. He only made shacks. But Roosevelt is trying to help. It’s what they’ve been fighting for, and it’s good money they pay, almost five dollars a head.”

“You’re the only one here that cares about that money,” Frank said. “That five dollars is for seventy-five percent of the herd. Only seventy-five. And it wouldn’t matter if it were a hundred. It’s a waste and you know it. You work and all you make is used. Not a bit thrown away because there’s no extra from nowhere. It’s who you are.” Frank took a hard wipe at his chin. “Once they’re gone, there’s no going back. It’ll ruin the farm selling them like that. They’re not even grown.”

Jack wasn’t looking at him. With his head down, his hat closed off most of his face. “This isn’t something you can sit around and think about, Frank.” Jack took to his feet and swept past me at the door. “Your mother wants you home,” he shouted, pulling Kyle from the table.

“Don’t you dare,” I started at him. “That boy hasn’t done anything.”

But Jack had already pushed past me again, knocking me against the wall. He was out the door then and the boy had to run to keep from being dragged. Still, Kyle did his best to keep up, almost as if he had wanted his father to fetch him. As if he craved any kind of attention from the man. The two
went off together across the yard and Jack yelled back to Frank, loud as if he wanted the house, the road leading in, and the whole countryside to hear him. “You do it, Frank.”

In the days that followed, Frank crossed to the barn and back again, carrying slop. He kept a good watch over the hogs, his shoes muddy and stuck with chaff, his shirt wet, clinging to his ribs. He was slow to step into the house, covered as he was with the barn stink. My fingers grew strong with washing and his overalls ribboned. I patched them with burlap and thread.

Days and nights of this and we never could rid him of the smell of those animals. He stood in the rain and let it run from him, keeping an eye out for anyone on the road. If Jack wanted to raise a fuss, he could have sent the association to pay a visit. Every man in the association could have come on his own. But we didn’t hear a word. Only the tramps came, carrying their bread now under the front of their shirts. That mark they’d left on our path had long washed off, but I found the same circle and cross carved on our tree out front. To them, we were still good folks.

When Jack came again, it was a meeting Frank was ready for. I could tell he hadn’t slept with thinking about it, the way he bowed his head when he saw that man on our road.

“Where are they?” Jack yelled before he’d quite reached us. “I just wanted to be sure. I didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”

Frank crossed the yard to meet him, the toe of his boot knocking Jack’s own. “I’m keeping them,” Frank said.

“No, you’re not.”

“In the barn.” Frank looked at the barn, his head cocked as if listening to it. The sun broke through and Frank turned his face up and squinted, his mouth open. Weeks of rain it had been. So constant we felt drenched to our bones, our teeth swimming. Like wood, we’d swollen inside our clothes. And there it was, the bald and drying heat.

Jack was past him then, knocking Frank on the shoulder as he headed for the barn. This was what he’d meant to do from the beginning. Frank had challenged him to it. His steps were no different from the way he had walked up our road, his stare low and his hand tight against his leg. He drew out a knife and I rushed off the porch to follow him, calling out to Frank.