I Shall Be Near to You (4 page)

‘Now let me see your fist,’ he said.

I balled up my hands, making him shake his head.

‘Not like that. You’ll break a thumb that way. See, it’s sticking out?’

He curled his fingers into a fist and showed me his thumb, going across the front of his first three fingers.

‘That’s better,’ he said. Then his hands burned into my shoulders, shoving me.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘C’mon! Punch me! Anywhere you want. Punch hard.’

He meant it. My arm drew back and flew for his shoulder, but he dodged left and brought a light fist into my waist, aiming for one of those weak spots.

‘When you punch,’ he said between quick breaths, ‘you’ve got to be ready to get punched. You’ve got to move.’

I saw my advantage while he was talking and tried for his stomach but he was fast and blocked me, his forearm pounding down on mine before he threw his fists up again. He aimed to spar so I tried again, my wrist throbbing. My fist glanced off his shoulder and then we were dancing and throwing punches and circling like dogs meeting until his breath and mine were heavy.

My hands were up for blocking when he threw me down to the scrawny grass, still wet from the last rain. The damp went through my dress, Jeremiah pressing me into the ground, his body stretching more than the length of me, trapping my hands against his chest.

‘Can we practice again tomorrow?’ I asked between breaths that made me feel how my bodice didn’t fit right no more.

‘Sure,’ he said smiling with everything, his eyes so focused I thought he saw through me, ‘I’ll practice with you.’

He’s looking at me like that now as he takes my elbow. ‘Here,’ he says, his hands moving to my lower back. ‘Here.’ He brushes my lip with the tip of his finger, moving down to my chin, tracing my throat on his way to my chest.

‘What have we got to practice? I already know how to fight,’ I tease, turning back to breathe onto the tinder nest and kindling. It has barely caught fire, the flames licking at the dry wood.

‘Oh there’s plenty for us to do, just you and me,’ Jeremiah says, his arms coming round my waist.

‘You mean like getting this stove burning hotter?’ I wriggle away from him, moving to get another log out of the box. ‘Ain’t you hungry?’ I ask.

Jeremiah looks at me, his eyebrows raised, his cheeks still pink from the cold, his hair sleek, and rubs his hands together. ‘I ain’t talking about cooking,’ he says. ‘We already had cake.’

He is a fine-looking man with his bright blue eyes and clean-lined face and maybe it is too much, having him even for the two weeks before he is gone to enlist. I swallow past the lump in my throat.

‘What is it?’ Jeremiah asks, coming to put his hands on my shoulders.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing except I like being here with you.’

‘I like being here with you,’ he says, and I have to bite my tongue not to ruin the thing.

‘I ought to get supper started,’ I say, but his arms tighten.

‘You know, I’ve never seen your hair loose,’ Jeremiah says, and then his fingers are teasing gently at Mama’s tortoiseshell combs, my hair falling in waves. ‘I have always wanted to do that,’ he murmurs, sweeping it back away from my face and turning me to look at him. He runs his hands down my arms and leads me across the hall to that big bed. When he crushes himself against me I feel everything and when his hands go under my skirt I let him touch there, I want to feel more. When he asks if I am cold, if that is why I am shivering, I shake my head no and that is the truth.

CHAPTER
3

WAKEFIELD FARM: FEBRUARY 1862

When Jeremiah is but a few days from leaving, we go for family supper at the Big House. I wear my wedding dress because that is the best I’ve got, and my thoughts are of butterflies new out of their cocoons. But sitting at their big table laid out in its own room, I don’t care how fine the Wakefields’ spread is with all their matching dishes the color of cream right before it turns to butter. I see how Jeremiah’s Ma and Pa don’t sit next to each other, how they put their children between them, their sons on one side and their daughters-in-law on the other, the grandchildren in the kitchen.

When everyone has sat, Jeremiah across from me and his brothers’ wives on either side, Jeremiah’s Pa says grace. For years I have seen him silent in the church pew, never even singing the hymns, but his voice is loud now.

Then the table is so quiet, quieter even than at home when Mama and Papa are fighting. There is the sound of bowls passing from hand to hand, of knives scraping across plates, of Jeremiah’s Pa chewing loud. It feels like
holding my breath, serving myself at this table. I put a lamb chop and potatoes and a biscuit on my plate. It is a feast, even without the canned peaches that Jeremiah’s Ma says Alice brought special. I look down so no one will catch me wanting more, so no one will think how I have brought nothing for this meal.

Every time I look up from my plate, Jeremiah is quick to smile, his eyes shining. Alice and James don’t look at each other once, and her hands shake when she passes a plate to me. Sarah clears her throat but says nothing, and I try to keep myself small. When James finally speaks, there is a hardness in his voice.

‘I don’t know how Jeremiah came to break the brush harrow’s tines,’ James sighs, and looks at Jeremiah. ‘It can’t be mended.’

‘We’ve got to have one,’ Jesse says, like he has eaten something sour.

‘Of course we do,’ James answers quick. ‘I ain’t saying we’ll do without, but who knows with the war where we’ll be able to find a new one.’

‘This is not the time or place to speak of this,’ Jeremiah’s Ma says, her voice sharp and her back straight, and the table goes quiet again. Jeremiah keeps eating, his eyes on his plate. When the bowls of food are passed again, his Ma watches and only the men take more food.

The ladies all stand and so I do too. We take our plates to the kitchen, and even the children get quieter when we come in. I wonder where it is that Jeremiah has learned to talk, has learned to smile. Jeremiah’s Ma sets Sarah and Alice to washing and me to drying while she clears more plates. When she comes back, she stands next to me and it don’t matter that she is short and thin, I fold myself inward.

‘I know what your father would say, but what is it you do best, Rosetta?’ Jeremiah’s Ma asks, her voice quiet but firm.

I have not said a word since we came through the door of this house, I have only nodded my head and smiled. I look at this woman, at Jeremiah’s Ma, and clear my throat.

‘I can do most anything needs doing,’ I say, my voice too loud. ‘I can tend animals, milk cows, help with slaughtering. I can work a kitchen garden if you have one. I like to help my Papa with harvesting, mending fences.’

‘Our menfolk do most those things. What of household tasks?’ she asks.
‘I don’t recall you at any of the church quilting bees, not since you were a child.’

I think on Jeremiah, how he promised our own farm, and then steel myself and say, ‘My Mama taught me to sew a fair seam. I can make soap and do the wash.’

‘I see,’ she says, because she has heard and seen things about me. Because I am a disappointment already.

I
LAY WITH
my head resting on Jeremiah’s shoulder, breathing his smell, nicer than anything I ever dreamed back in the bed I shared with Betsy. But even with his hand petting down my hair, I can’t stop from wishing Jeremiah ain’t ever brought news of this war to us. My heart nearly stopped that Saturday in April when Jeremiah came banging on our door, shouting, ‘They’ve gone and done it! They’ve fired on Fort Sumter!’

Papa dropped the ear of seed corn he was husking, all the blood drained from his face, but before he could even go to Mama, she was already crying, ‘No, it can’t be true! It just can’t! Oh my poor sister, down there in the thick of it!’

I reach a hand to Jeremiah’s cheek, turning him toward me in bed. ‘Why you want to fight for the Union so bad, anyway?’

‘I don’t know … Don’t you think loyalty ought to mean something?’

‘But what about Nebraska? Don’t you want a farm no more? You said—’

‘It’s all to get that farm, Rosetta! It’s the best way—’

‘You could do that right here—you could hire yourself out. There’s no good farmhands left—’

‘That ain’t it—my brothers—my Ma would never let me—Besides, I’ve got a hankering to see something different than the haunches of a plow horse. It’s only for this little bit—’

‘Can’t I go with you?’

‘No,’ he says, but he pulls me tighter against him.

‘Sure I can,’ I tell him, my voice small.

‘What would you do?’

‘What would I do here?’ I ask. ‘Can’t I do the same anywhere?’

‘You can’t,’ he says, running his fingers down my back.

‘Why not?’ I ask. ‘What if I want to see something more of this world too?’

‘A wife’s got to stay home,’ he says, his voice getting louder.

‘I don’t want to stay here without you,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be all alone.’

‘You won’t be all alone.’

I wrap my arms around him. ‘What if I just up and follow you?’

He laughs and kisses the top of my head. ‘Stone Lady,’ he says, teasing me. ‘So stubborn.’ He turns on his side, his head propped on his hand, his fingers sliding down my cheek to jaw to bosom. ‘You ain’t really serious about coming.’

‘Why can’t I be?’

‘A wife stays, Rosetta,’ he says, his mouth set. ‘It ain’t a nice life. You’ve got a life here.’

‘And you don’t?’ I ask. ‘Your folks don’t want me here.’

‘That ain’t true,’ he says.

‘It is. Your Ma don’t like me. You can’t go off so soon and us only fresh married.’

‘You knew about this,’ he says. ‘This was the plan.’

‘But it ain’t a good plan! I don’t like you being gone.’

‘It’s the fastest way to get enough money for our farm,’ he says.

‘I could earn money maybe,’ I say, ‘get us our farm sooner. Work as a laundress. Or a nurse.’

‘I ain’t having my wife washing other men’s underthings. Or worse.’

‘When the fighting starts you can send me home.’

Jeremiah looks at me and that is when I think maybe I win, if doing laundry can be called winning.

‘It’d be nice, having you there. But not once the fighting starts,’ Jeremiah says.

‘I promise I’d leave,’ I say.

‘Rosetta,’ he sighs, ‘don’t make it worse than it already is.’

I say, ‘A man should cleave to his wife. I am cleaving to you. You can’t leave me.’

‘You always try to drive such a bargain, Mrs. Stone?’ he whispers, and I nod, my head rubbing against his cheek, my hair catching in the stubble there.

‘That ain’t my name,’ I say.

‘Ought to be. Everything about you is ornery and rock hard. ’Cept for a few places—’ he says, his mouth brushing mine as his fingers circle across my chest. ‘You don’t ever take things easy.’ He smiles, his cheeks apple blossom pink.

‘Easy ain’t always good,’ I say.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I visit Mama and Betsy. Mama smiles to see me, saying, ‘I’ve been saving something for you,’ and goes into the kitchen workroom, gathering canning jars from the shelves, still dreaming of me in my own kitchen like she taught me.

‘We don’t need all these, and I know how you like canning,’ she says. ‘This way when it’s the season, you’ll be ready.’

I don’t remind her how it ain’t the canning I like but the being outside picking fruit. Still, I take those jars and say, ‘I’ll make you some preserves in the Fall, when it’s time.’

Mama shoos Betsy off into the kitchen, sending her to check on the stew. Then she says, ‘Rosetta, I never told you some things,’ and turns to straighten the shelves. There is a long pause and then, while her back is still turned, she starts talking.

‘Now you’re a married woman, there’s things you ought to know.’

I don’t say a word. All I want is to be banging out the door and running down the steps. Mama keeps her back turned and sets herself to dusting each jar on that shelf.

‘There’s a time for everything,’ she says. ‘There’s a time for a wife to lie with her husband if she wants a baby, and a time to lie with him if she doesn’t. You understand what I’m saying?’

I’ve been living on a farm my whole life. Of course I know what she is saying, but I just say, ‘Yes,’ and let her keep talking. I get to wondering why she ain’t told me this before I got myself married.

‘The time before and after your courses, that’s when it’s safe if you don’t want to be having a baby quite yet, if you don’t want to be raising your child alone while Jeremiah’s gone.’ Mama turns to me, holding out another empty jar. ‘I’m not saying what you should do,’ she says.

I take the jar and open my mouth to ask her if she ever took her own advice, or if she is still trying for Papa’s son, but then she says she’d better check on supper, even though she sent Betsy to do it already.

When I say I’m going to go visit Papa out in the barn, Betsy follows me back into the workroom. Once the door is closed and I reach for my coat, she looks at me, all serious. ‘You and Jeremiah going to have a baby before he goes?’

I think of Mama lying in bed, the curtains and the door shut tight so I could only get my eyes inside that room a sliver at a time. Or seeing Mama sick and Mrs. Lewis in this kitchen workroom washing the blood out of Mama’s bedclothes and cooking us up one supper and then leaving me and Papa waiting in the parlor while that baby cried. The whole night.

Papa didn’t smile for four days after Mrs. Lewis left and we didn’t name the baby for near to a week. Not ’til we knew it might live and Mama too. Papa didn’t say so, but I knew if Mama didn’t live what the baby’s name would be. When Mama was feeling better, Papa was back to smiling even though she was all mean asking, ‘What’s wrong with you and you don’t give the child a proper name?’

Papa said, ‘Since we done the easy part of having a baby I don’t think we should be the ones to name it, but if you don’t have no ideas I was thinking of Hepzebah.’

She laughed until she cried and when she could breathe again she asked me, ‘What were you thinking, Rosetta?’