Brave Enemies (14 page)

He touched his lips to my lips and rubbed slowly back and forth. When our lips met I could feel his touch go all over me. I closed my eyes and felt I was rising and beginning to float. So this is what a kiss is, I thought as he put his tongue between my lips.

Suddenly John pulled away. He stepped back and I opened my eyes. The look on his face was confused, and I thought he might cry. “No,” he said, and shook his head. “No, we can't do this.”

I reached out to take his hand but he turned away.

“Do you want me to leave?” I said.

“No!” John shouted and turned back to the fire.

I tried to think what to say to him. I thought about telling him everything that had happened to me, about Mr. Griffin and Mama, about Mr. Griffin locking me in the corncrib and the patriots coming to beat Mr. Griffin, about Mama's helplessness and confusion, about the spiders, and about Mr. Griffin chasing me through the woods and attacking me
behind the hogpen. But I couldn't tell John about my shame, about Mama clawing my face and accusing me, about waiting for Mr. Griffin in the dark with the ax and chopping his head open, then stealing his clothes and running away into the night.

“I do not know why you deceived me,” John said.

I told him the patriots had come to our house and beaten my stepfather. I told him my mama's mind was afflicted and that I had to leave home. Dressing as a man was my only chance of escape. My only safety and my only hope had been finding him in the lighted church at Zion Hill.

John said the Lord had tried me and the devil had had his chance with me. I reached out again to take his hand by the fire but he pulled away. I saw the struggle in him, in the way he looked at me and then back at the fire. He was angry with himself, and wrestling with his doubts and his affection. There was nothing for me to do but wait. I saw you could not make a man love you when he was not ready to.

I
T WAS THREE DAYS LATER,
after we had been to services at Briar Fork and Solomon's Branch. We had eaten supper and John played his flute by the fireplace. As I washed the dishes I saw the look on his face. It seemed to me he'd made a decision, but I had to wait to find out what it was. He kept staring at me as I finished drying the dishes and placed them on the shelf. His eyes were on me as I stepped closer to the fire and hung the towel on a nail.

“Come to me, Josie,” he said, and took my hand. He drew me to his lap and put his arms around me. It was the best thing, to be held that way.

John's hand was around my back. I moved his hand so it was on my breast. I expected him to pull his hand away, but he didn't. He kept his hand on my breast like he didn't know it was there. It was the best feeling. I pressed his hand harder and he didn't take it away.

My breath got close and short. He looked away toward the wall and
I looked away toward the fireplace. He moved his hand and rubbed my nipple and the sweetness soaked all through me. When Mr. Griffin had fondled me I had been scared, but when John touched me I wasn't scared at all.

We sat like that a long time, and I was afraid he would take his hand away. I was afraid he would say the Lord was watching us. But he didn't say anything. He reached his other hand and put it on my other breast, and then he hugged me closer to him.

It was the first time I really knew what a touch could mean. A touch connects you and makes you feel a part of everything. A touch makes you feel at the center of something. I leaned back against him, for that was what I wanted to do, to touch him more and deeper. I had to press myself against him and rest myself against him.

He was breathing sharp and hard then. I felt his heart jumping against my back. He moved his hand down my belly and stroked lower, so I felt itches and sparks around my thighs and groin. The itch was so bad the skin stretched sideways and prickled.

“Hold me tighter,” I said.

I felt something soft on the back of my neck, something hot and damp and knew it was his lips. He ran his lips from the edge of my hair to the top of my shoulder. And he pressed his lips to the back of my neck. I didn't know what I was going to do next, but I leaned harder against him.

“I don't care,” I said.

What happened then is hard for me to say, for it was as if a colored smoke covered everything. There was no light in the cabin but the dying fire. I think he took off my shirt and then took off his shirt and trousers, and we got under the blankets in his bed. I remember how I giggled when he put his hand between my legs. The soreness was all gone there, but the itch and tickle were worse. It was the itch of swelling I felt.

“Where have you come from?” John said before he kissed me. He ran his lips along my upper lip and then along my lower lip. He moved his
lips across my cheek. I kissed him back. I kissed the short whiskers on his upper lip and around the ends of his mouth. When he shaved he had missed some whiskers there at the corner. I kissed the dimple of his chin.

John moved his mouth down my chin and neck. His kissed my breast and I felt his tongue on my nipple. Is this what love is all about? I thought. I'd always wondered what it was about. What will happen next? I wondered.

When John got on top of me I could feel his weight. He was slim and tall, so much bigger than me. I remembered Mr. Griffin's weight, and the hog shite smell on the ground, and for an instant I was scared. I almost screamed and started to push John away. But he was too big and strong to push away. And after a second I remembered I didn't want to push him away.

When John pushed me open and put himself inside it hurt a little, but not like it had when Mr. Griffin attacked me. It hurt a little, but mostly it felt numb, hot and itchy and numb at once. And then it was like I was being stretched, and the stretching hurt but felt good too.

“I don't care,” I said out of breath.

But John didn't answer. In the dark he moved up like he was crawling over me, and then backed away and crawled again. I closed my eyes because I couldn't see anyway, and felt through my skin. It was as if I could see with my skin where he touched me, where he brushed my shoulder and my breasts. In the dark I could see with every part of me. And what I saw was everything stretched out and swelled up and sparkling. Everything was soft and washing in waves. I was turning to syrup and melting all through me. My legs were trembling and my belly was washing around.

And it felt like my bones were turning into June apple jelly. I saw I had to push myself against John down there. I had to aim myself and push myself. I was soft as jelly and sweet as jelly, but I had to aim myself and press firm.

“Where are you going?” I said out of breath. For it seemed to me John was traveling somewhere. He was about to go somewhere far away.

I smelled the blankets around my head, and they smelled like him. They smelled like the powder he put on his face after he shaved, and they smelled of his breath. The bed smelled of wood smoke and powder and coffee, and a little bit of sweat. And I smelled my own hair and sweat too. I smelled my own breath.

John rose higher above me and fell. This is what I have wanted, I thought. Even when I didn't know it, this is what I always wanted. I aimed myself at him and pushed myself. My skin all over had turned to honey. I was yellow honey and red honey with the sun on it.

And then I saw my skin was light and clean, faint as sourwood honey. I think I hollered out, and there came a buzzing in my ears. The buzzing got louder and I knew something was going to hurt. Something was so sweet it was going to sting.

John spoke to me right in my ear, but it was like he was a long way off too. For he was big as a mountain above me, and he reached out long as the farthest ridge. His shoulders were bigger than the oak trees, bigger than houses. His shoulders reared up like mountaintops.

“You have come to me,” he said in a whisper. “You have been sent to me.” But the whisper could have been a shout that filled the sky. The buzz I heard rose, like wind on a mountainside, or a waterfall during a flood. And it sounded like heavy rain was falling. And I thought water would rub away the sweetness from my skin and from my belly.

But it was too late to stop, for John was pushing. He was driving something that reached a secret place, and when he hollered out it felt like something touched my heart and licked my heart with a hot tongue.

We lay breathing in the blankets as if we were frozen in our sweat. We lay in the dark too weak to move a finger. I didn't want to say anything because there was nothing to say. Whatever there was to say had already been said.

N
EXT MORNING
J
OHN
was already up when I woke. He had started a fire and was boiling water for coffee, and he was crushing coffee beans between two rocks. I got up and put my hands on his shoulders, but he didn't look at me. He just kept on crushing the beans between the stones.

“Good morning,” I said, trying to sound like a wife greeting her husband. I got dressed and combed my hair. I felt sore as something that has been stretched, but I felt wonderful too. John made porridge, and when we sat down to eat hot porridge and drink coffee he finally spoke.

“What we did last night was wrong,” he said.

I knew if I said it didn't feel wrong to me, he would just argue and quote Scripture. So I didn't argue.

John looked at the fire and he looked at his mug of coffee. He nodded his head and looked at me. He was the most eloquent preacher I'd ever heard, and yet he found it hard to say what he was feeling.

“The Lord has sent you to me,” he finally said.

“And the Lord has sent you to me,” I said.

“The Lord has sent me a helpmeet and a partner,” he said. “But we must be married.”

I was thrilled and scared, for after what Mr. Griffin did to me, and me to him, I was unworthy.

“We can be married,” I said.

“We can't be married,” John said, and shook his head. I saw he'd thought it through already. During the night he had waked up and studied on it while I was sleeping.

“Why can't you marry me?” I said, and swallowed.

“All my flocks think you're a boy,” he said, and looked hard at me.

He'd thought it through and figured it all out. I'd been so excited the night before I'd forgotten that everybody thought I was a boy named Joseph. Everybody thought I was John's assistant.

We talked about John's letter after breakfast. We talked about moving farther west into the mountains, and about moving down to South Carolina.
We talked about me leaving to go to South Carolina, and John said he wouldn't let me go. I asked him why not, since we were in such a pickle.

“Because we are married in the sight of God,” he said. And then I saw a light in his face like he had gotten an idea.

“We must perform the ceremony ourselves,” he said. “Our wedding must be kept secret for a season.”

He said he would perform the ceremony now, but that I should continue to wear boy's clothes. There was no other way for us to be together. At some time in the future, it would all have to come out. I didn't argue with him, for it was the best plan I could think of too. I was happier than I ever thought I could be.

John got out the little prayer book that he carried in his coat pocket. He had me stand beside him facing the fireplace as he read from the little book.

“Dearly beloved: We are gathered together here in the sight, and in the face of this community, to join together this Man and this Woman in Holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted by God in the time of man's innocency, signifying to us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church: which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee, and is commended of Saint Paul to be honorable among all men.”

John read from the book a long time. I'd been to a wedding of a cousin once, but I didn't remember so many words and such a sermon at that ceremony. I looked at John as he read.

“Josie,” he said, looking at me, “will you have this man to thy wedded husband; to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” I said.

And then John read the same thing to himself and answered himself. He read some more. We didn't have any rings to exchange, but he read that passage too. He read the whole sermon in the little prayer book. It was such a pretty ceremony I had tears in my eyes.

“Send thy blessing upon these thy servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy Name; that, as Isaac and Rebecca lived faithfully together, so these persons may perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made . . . Amen.”

John said the words like they were coming from the heart, as if he was thinking of them for the first time. When it was over he leaned down and took my cheeks between his hands. He looked into my eyes and kissed me. As his lips touched mine he closed his eyes and I closed mine too. His lips were firm and soft at the same time. He ran his tongue over my lips.

I was wearing Mr. Griffin's clothes and my old shoes, but I felt happy as a bride wearing white lace and satin. If I had been standing in a great church, at the altar, with perfume and incense and two hundred people watching, I could not have been more thrilled. John's kiss made me feel I was whirling around, that I was dancing, even though I was standing still. His kiss made the air lavender and pink. I was sixteen years old, and I was married to a tall preacher man, and we were standing in our own cabin in the woods of Pine Knot Branch.

There was no wine to drink, no infare party, no fiddle music for dancing. But we did sing a song by the fireplace, that cold morning, as we held hands and looked into each other's eyes. We sang “Joy to the World” because it was the song that came to mind, and it seemed to fit the way we felt and what had happened between us.