One Foot in Eden (13 page)

It was good for the both of us to hold onto something real, something we hadn’t to be afraid of, because Billy was Billy again, not the man who’d killed Holland or the man who’d talked scowlful at me. We went on inside and sat down to supper but neither of us had any hunger though we’d had not a crumb since breakfast.

‘I had to shoot Sam,’ he said. ‘If anybody asks, tell them broke his leg.’

Billy’s eyes wandered out the window, then come back to mine.

‘Sheriff Alexander gave me a little visit.’

When Billy said that I got weak and trembly again for I hadn’t figured that part of it would be on us so hasty.

‘He’ll be back and he’ll certain sure have some words with you,’ Billy said. ‘If he asks about Holland, you or me didn’t see him at all today and he ain’t been over here the last few months. We’re going to go about it like nothing happened.’

Billy gentled his words, but there was iron in his eyes. ‘You understand?’

I nodded.

‘And you ain’t never going to tell me what you did with Holland?’

‘It’s one less thing you have to act out not to know,’ Billy said.

There was no doubting the smarts behind Billy’s words, for there’d be plenty enough else for me to lie about. l looked at Billy and wondered how after all that had happened this day we could sit down to supper and act like things was no different than any another evening. But the how of that was easy enough answered. A time such as this was when you most had to do such a thing, for it was the most common things that might could get you through.

I recollected what Momma did when my Uncle Roy got killed in the World War. She’d been on the porch that morning with a peck basket of pole beans and a big gray-metal wash tub when my Uncle Wade came to the farm to tell her. Momma had laid her chin on her chest. You could see the tears dripping into that big wash tub but all the while she kept stringing and snapping beans. She hadn’t quit till everyone of those pole beans was inside a mason jar.

As I thought of that morning years ago I reckoned how shameful it was to argue me and Momma being the same. Momma did no wrong to profit that kind of misery but I did plenty to bring about mine.

‘I’ll start on a baby crib tomorrow,’ Billy said, getting us both back out of ourselves. ‘You best lay down for a while,’ he said. ‘You and that baby need some rest.’

‘I reckon I will,’ I said and got up, leaving the dishes and pots where they laid for it hit me of a sudden how wore out I was, like I’d had so much worrying up to that moment I hadn’t had a chance to take notice.

I laid down without a hope of sleep for my mind was busy as a bee hive. I kept seeing that smoke coming out of Holland’s chest. I kept hearing what Holland said to me on the porch.

The sun dipped behind Sassafras Mountain after a while. The last light drained from the window but all that meant was I didn’t no longer need shut my eyes to see Holland there on the ground dead.

When Billy came to bed he nuzzled up close for the first time in ever a long while. He laid his hand flat on my belly and there was comfort in knowing he wanted to feel the baby stir. It was a way of telling me that whatever happened we’d all three be a family.

Good a husband as he’s been to you, how could you have ever had feelings for another, I said to myself. I wanted us to hold each other so I turned, not sure of what he might do.

But his wanting was strong as mine. We rubbed our bodies together in the dark and it was better than any time other. It was like all that had happened in the last few months, all that had happened today, had got us to where nothing could ever more be hidden between us. I held him tight and pushed his body against mine and soon me and Billy was moving together in a way we never had before.

‘Just lay there and let him have his way,’ Momma had told me the day before I married, like it was a shameful thing for a woman to show a man how to pleasure her body. I was beyond such as that now.

‘Keep doing it, Billy,’ I said. ‘It feels so good when you’re in me.’

We did other things, things I’d never have reckoned to have done with Billy even in the dark. It was like I was opening up more and more to him, showing him everything there was of me, our bodies swirled together like two creeks becoming one. But all the while I kept my eyes wide open, let the moonlight that spilled on the bed show me Billy’s body, Billy’s face. I was afraid to shut my eyes, afraid if I did it would be Holland’s body tangled with mine, Holland’s breath hot against my ear.

Soon enough we was breathing fast, touching and kissing in a heavy-fevered sort of way. Then it was like as if my body was nothing but water spreading out into the dark, each ripple taking me farther and farther away from all that burdened me. I came back to myself slow, slow enough for to fall asleep.

After the day Holland got shot, that baby was persistent in letting me know it was inside of me. It fussed and kicked most any hour like it was afraid I’d forget it was there. The more real that baby was inside me the more everything else seemed trifles. Even the law searching every nook and cranny of the farm didn’t heavy my mind much as it ought have. September came. Things I would have made much notice of any other fall—how beech trees turned shiny bright like they was filled with goldfinches, or how maple leaves favored red stars, hardly caught my eye.

At church Mrs. Winchester spoke not a word to me or Billy but her eyes was steady on us. The other people in church couldn’t help but notice. They knew what Mrs. Winchester claimed about me and Billy.

‘Don’t pay her no mind,’ Momma said. ‘That no-account son of hers has run off and left her all alone. She’s addled with grief.’

‘She’s a sour old woman who’d blame any but her own self for her troubles,’ Ginny said. ‘And I’ve a mind to tell her so.’

It was in October Momma and Ginny had my baby shower one Sunday after church.

‘Here,’ Momma said, handing me the first cup of cider she poured. ‘This will keep that young one warm.’

The other women soon gathered round me.

‘You be sure to carry a bloodstone in your left pocket these next few months,’ Edna Rodgers said.

‘And don’t look at no cross-eyed woman or eat strawberries,’ Martha Whitmire added.

A half-dozen others had their say before Sue Burrell took me by the arm.

‘You don’t need to be standing long either,’ she said, making me set down on the front pew.

Most of what the older women was telling me was just so much silliness but I made a show of listening. I knew it was their way of letting me know I shared something ever so wondrous with them, something you couldn’t make words for so you talked around it with advice and old wives’ tales.

We passed a good hour talking and sipping the cider. Ginny cut the pound cake she’d made and reached me a piece like I couldn’t stand up and get it myself.

‘Do you need some more cider, honey? Maybe some more cake?’ someone would ask every few minutes, making a fuss over me.

It wasn’t till I started unwrapping my gifts that the church got sudden quiet.

‘I didn’t invite her,’ Momma said softly.

I followed Momma’s eyes to the back of the church. Mrs. Winchester closed the door and walked down the aisle. She had a gift in her hands. The other women stepped aside and let her stand in front of me.

She locked those dark eyes steady on me. I reckoned she knew some things, things she hadn’t told Sheriff Alexander.

‘For the baby,’ she finally said and laid the box on my lap. Then she went on out the door without never another word to any of us. I looked at the gift, the white tissue paper that covered the box, the blue bow tied around it. That box was light as a moth but I felt so sudden weak I was afraid to try and lift it.

‘Leave me have that,’ Momma said, raising it off my lap. She laid it at the far end of the pew.

‘Here,’ Ginny said, reaching me a smaller package. ‘Open this one. It’s from Laura Alexander.’

I didn’t open Mrs. Winchester’s gift till I got back to the house. I sat down in front of the fire, my hands all trembly as I tore off the bow and paper. I opened the box and there was Holland’s face staring at me. He was seventeen, maybe eighteen, and dressed in a dark suit, a suit a man might wear to his wedding or be buried in. I pondered that picture longer than I ought have, knowing how easy a thing it would be to squirrel it away somewheres Billy would have no leave to look. But I didn’t do that. I laid the picture in the fire and watched it curl up and turn black.

As I watched that picture turn to ash, I recollected my promise to Widow Glendower and my thoughts of Holland whittled away most to nothing for there was a fear now in my mind that hadn’t been even when Sheriff Alexander and his men was thick as gnats all over the farm. Whatever else the law might do to me and Billy, they wasn’t going to hurt my baby. But Widow Glendower could.

My mind turned back to a story Grandma had told around the fire, a story about a witch over in Long Creek that burned a newborn for power the doing of such a thing gave her. The witch had raked up the baby’s ashes and bones to make charms and potions. That witch had caught that baby, pulled it right out of its momma and cut the biblical cord. Soon as that was done the witch let that momma bleed to death in the birth-bed while she toted the young one into the woods and built a fire. I could no more shake that story out of my mind than a hound could shake off a tick.

‘I figure Widow Glendower to be your granny-woman,’ Ginny said the next week, like there wasn’t a doubt in the matter.

‘No, I asked Ella Addis,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t if it was me,’ Ginny said. ‘The Widow has saw it all. There ain’t many a fix she couldn’t find the way out of to save a momma and her baby. Besides, she’s near two miles closer than Ella Addis. What if that baby comes of a sudden?’

‘I made up my mind, Ginny,’ I said. ‘You. might as well be talking to a fence post for the hope of changing it.’

Little as Widow Glendower gets out of that hollow, she won’t know, I told myself most every waking hour. That’s how I tried to soothe myself but in my heart I reckoned sure as the sun rising Widow Glendower would know when my baby came. She’d know the very second and there’d be plenty a price to pay for not keeping my part of the bargain.

For the first time since the night after Holland had been killed, I had trouble sleeping. I dreamed constant of babies and fire.

The birth pains came on me at the end of January. Nature makes you lose the memory of the bad hurt it is to have a young one, the old women claimed, else you’d never have but one baby. I soon enough understood the so-true of that. Billy had been ailing since November, sniffling and coughing. He was only the least better off than me but he got in the truck and drove to get Momma and Ella Addis.

It seemed more than forever before he got back. The pains got worse and the floor swagged under me each time they came. I found my way to the bed and laid down. My insides felt to be seizing up a giant hand had me round my middle.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasant things, like purple rhododendron blossoming on Colt Ridge in June, of how comforting it felt when Billy laid his hand on my stomach while we slept. I tried to think how by tomorrow I’d be holding the young one in arms and this would all be just a remembering. Thinking such helped some in the between but when the pains came they flooded everything out of my mind but the hurting.

When I finally heard the truck I liked to have cried I was so eased. Ella Addis came bustling through the door wearing her white apron and bonnet, the black doctoring bag in her hand. Momma was a step behind, looking fretful when she saw me laid out on the bed. Ella pressed her hand on my pooched-out belly like she was feeling a pumpkin to certain it was ripe. She poked me a little then seemed satisfied.

‘It hurts,’ I said.

‘Of course it does, honey,’ Ella said. ‘Nothing that’s born is born without suffering. That’s a big boy baby you’re carrying and you’re a smallish woman.’

She patted my hand.

‘You’ll be all right. It’s turned the right way. It’s getting ready for old Ella to catch it.’

Ella spread a clean white cloth on the table by the bed. She got out her scissors and needle and thread, then her salves and eye drops for the baby’s eyes. .