Love and Lament Page 13

  The hole was ready, the fill-dirt piled high beside it, a shovel stuck in the ground at the edge. She stood George on the upper lip. He backed up a few steps and she had to haul him forward into place again. She imagined herself as Siler—he would only want to do the job right and quickly. He would think, “The horse doesn’t know, it’s just impatient.” She levered one cartridge into place and slid another behind it, though she was sure it wouldn’t be needed. It was strange how calm she felt. She dug her feet in, studying the ground behind in case the kick should knock her back.

  “Good George,” she said quietly, stroking across his cheek down to his throatlatch, picking out the spot beside his eye where she would rest the muzzle of the gun. She stood on a rise just higher than the horse so that there was not much angle to the barrel as she brought it into place. She clicked off the safety. At the last moment she closed her eyes.

  She heard the echoing report as though it had come from somewhere deeper in the woods. The horse was gone. She leaned over and saw a crumpled mass of spindly legs. She squatted and reached the gun barrel into the pit and pushed it against George’s side. He was stone dead. When she realized she was not going to cry, she stood and unchambered the other cartridge. Then she shoveled some dirt over the carcass so her father wouldn’t have to see it.

  Other than her father, the only person whom she told was Joe Dorsett. They were out in their coppice on the western edge of town, sitting on pine needles, their backs against a towering pine. Mary Bet had lifted off her sun hat and was smoothing her skirt over her pressed-together knees. She had taken to wearing blouses with low collars like the other girls—it was much cooler in the summer. She had decided she wanted to be as unlike her aunt Cattie Jordan as she could, so she did not wear jewelry except on special occasions, nor did she pluck her thick eyebrows. The only cosmetics she used were lipstick when her lips were dry and a little powder on her cheeks and nose, and on days like today she sprinkled a few drops of rose perfume on her wrists and rubbed them against her neck.

  “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” she said. Joe studied her face, waiting for her to go on. “Is that bad of me? That I killed a horse and didn’t even cry?”

  “Weren’t you just a teeny bit sorry for it?”

  “Of course I was, Joe. What kind of question is that? But I was more sorry for my father.”

  “That’s all right, then.” Joe took hold of her hand. Then he tried to put his arm around her, but she took it off. She wished that Siler could be here so she could explain it to him—he was the only one who would understand and there would be no need for words, or signs either. Just his presence, and his deep, knowing eyes, looking for something long gone.

  “I just want to sit today and watch for jackrabbits,” she said. Joe sat quietly, his hands in his lap, and she knew he would soon be bored of this and want to kiss her. She wondered if she would ever be able to marry and have children—maybe she would stay an old maid, living by herself or with some old-maid companion. She had practically told God she would, hadn’t she? She tried to remember the exact wording of her vow. Anyway, if God meant for her to marry, he would give her a sign.

  A large rabbit loped from the woods to the edge of a meadow, put its ears up, then began nibbling at the grass and clover. “If I had my gun,” Joe said, “I could shoot that thing.”

  “I don’t want to talk about shooting,” Mary Bet replied.

  He took her hand and she let him hold it. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” he asked.

  Mary Bet thought about her uncle Cincinnatus and his wife, Nancy, and all their children that they had to take care of and worry over. Then there was Aunt Mary, who had died giving birth. And Aunt Emily, who had married young and moved to Indiana—she hardly ever wrote. And Cattie Jordan. “I want to be like my sister Myrt. I want to have lots of friends around me all the time.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I reckon I’d like to see the mountains where Myrt was, and the seashore.”

  “I’ve seen the mountains. They’re right nice. What else?”

  Mary Bet thought about the new houses going up in town. One of them, owned by the chair factory manager, was going to be a mansion—a castle with turrets and bay windows and who knew what else. It would be nice to have a brougham carriage like they had. Clara’s family had a tall-case clock with a stained-glass panel. “I’d like a new sewing machine. The bobbin on mine’s loose and it’s hard to keep the stitching straight, but it still works. It’d be wasteful to get a new one. I could use some more dress patterns, though,” she said.

  She suddenly stopped. She found that she couldn’t help the tears from coming, and she turned away. Joe put his arm around her and asked her what was the matter. She shook her head. “I was thinking of Myrt and how she used to tell me that I was sensitive, and she always took my part for me when O’Nora was pestering me.”

  They listened to the birds lamenting the end of day, and after a while Joe said, “I’ll buy you a sewing machine. I’m going to own a factory someday and a big house and an automobile.”

  Mary Bet laughed so loud she covered her mouth in embarrassment. “Whoever heard of such a thing,” she said.

  Joe stood up and spread his arms out as though to grab the entire forest. “I’m going to work in a factory, just like my daddy. I’m going to become assistant manager like him, then manager, then owner.”

  “Then you can give me all the yarn I need.”

  “Of course I will,” Joe said, almost shouting now. Mary Bet was moved by the power in his voice—she wanted to believe him, but there was something crazy about him, a gleam of the fantastical in his eye, as though he were telling a story and it was all make-believe, not something he would really do. “But I might not make just yarn,” Joe went on, “I might make other things.”

  “Like what?” Mary Bet asked, because she genuinely wanted to know if he had anything in mind at all.

  He thought a moment, then opened his hands like a preacher. “I might make steel like Andrew Carnegie, and trains. And I might make guns. And bicycles. And I’d have a telephone in my house. I’d have one in every room, just like Vanderbilt.”

  “You would, huh?”

  “Yes, I’ll own this tree right here,” he said, slapping the bole of the pine. “I’ll buy this farm out from under the Yankee who moved in here, and I’ll chop this tree down if I want to. I’ll chop it into little pieces and have matches made out of ’em. And I’ll use the matches to light my cigars.”

  Mary Bet just shook her head, delighted but at the same time afraid of his giddiness. “I don’t care for cigars,” she told him. He leaned against the tree, still standing, and they were quiet for a while, watching the dark of evening steal in among the naked trunks of the trees, as though clothing them. It was so quiet there was no sound at all, not even a breeze overhead.

  Then from far away came the seven o’clock bell of the Methodist church. “I have to go,” she said.

  She took his hand as she stood, and when he bent his head to hers she kissed him on the lips. He kissed her face, then down to her neck, and she pulled back. “That’s enough, Joe, for now,” she said.

  “Will you marry me someday?” he asked. He was holding her by the shoulders the way he liked to do, and looking down into her face, trying to see her eyes in the fading light.

  She nodded. “I’ll think on it. You sure you want to take on the Hartsoe curse?” She’d only wanted to see what it sounded like to say it to a friend, and now she realized she was serious.

  “I don’t think you’re under a curse. If you were, you wouldn’t be here now with me on this evening. You’re going to live a long and happy life.”

  She felt warmed by his words and smiled up at him, but she could not see his eyes because he had pulled her tight to himself and was stroking the strand of hair that she’d let down the back of her neck the way he liked.

  CHAPTER 11

  1902

  SILER WAS STRANGELY
quiet when he came home that summer. He was moody in ways that Mary Bet had never seen before. He would stand in front of the parlor window, smoking and staring out across the yard in a thick, concentrated way, and if Mary Bet came up in a gay humor and tapped him on the shoulder he would turn suddenly with a scowl that made her shrink away.

  They went walking one evening and he told her in a sudden burst of his hands that he had a new girlfriend, Rebecca Savage from Raleigh. She was Jewish and he was afraid to tell their father about her, but he was even more afraid that she could not tell her parents about him. Mary Bet asked about the girl from Wilmington, but Siler dismissed the thought with a quick wave, as though backhanding a fly. Rebecca was all he could think of, how beautiful and sweet she was and how they wanted to run off together, but they didn’t know where. While he talked, Mary Bet wondered whether marrying a Jewess (in his language, a bearded girl) would be the same as giving up his own religion. The thought made her almost queasy—he might be buried in a Jewish cemetery, he might even spend eternity in some different heaven, if the Jews had a heaven. “What about Jesus?” she asked. “Does this mean you don’t believe in Jesus anymore?”

  “Of course not,” he vocalized, snapping his fingers. “She doesn’t care what I believe.”

  Mary Bet pulled back, afraid to ask what he meant. Her brother scanned the tobacco field they had wandered to the edge of, its leafy green plants thigh-high and ready for picking. He appeared to be seeing nothing but what was in his mind, far away.

  “She has straight black hair, like yours,” he told her, “but shorter. And she types faster than anybody in class. She calls me Silo.” He made the sign. “Because of my name and because I’m tall and thin.”

  “What about her family?”

  “She has a sister and two brothers, and she’s the youngest.” He started to go on, then stopped. “Her father works in a brickyard. She goes to a synagogue. I went with her once.”

  “Was it strange?”

  “Yes, but not much stranger than church. I didn’t understand anything. She explained it later.” The road now passed between two long fields of corn, the stalks so high they were like walls of green and yellow; overhead, birds perched on the telegraph wire that ran from one pole to the next.

  “What do you think Daddy would say about it?” he asked.

  She was going to say “About what?” to give herself time to think, but she knew what he meant and she wanted him to feel connected to her in their old way, so she said, “He will say fine, if she is pretty and will have pretty children.”

  “But he wouldn’t like it. Mama wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  “That’s the only reason he wouldn’t like it,” she said, and was immediately sorry she’d agreed with him. “But he’s different from her.” She decided to change the subject. “Clara told me her aunt heard of a white woman in Lumberton that married a black man.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Siler said. “It’s against the law. How black was he?”

  “I don’t know. Clara’s aunt said it was the most horrible thing she’d ever heard of.” Then, realizing this was not the kind of gossip that would help her brother, she said, “I don’t see what would be wrong about marrying a Jewish girl, if you loved her and it wasn’t against the law.” But she did think that it would be better if she weren’t Jewish—why couldn’t Rebecca Savage be Episcopalian, or at least Catholic? She might as well be black—it would be better if she were, then Siler wouldn’t think of marrying her.

  They crossed the road over toward Love’s Creek Church. They walked along the edge of the cemetery picking daisies and touch-me-nots and whatever else they could find to decorate the graves of their family. No one had come out the past few weeks and the flowers on the stones were wilted and sad. Mary Bet liked putting fresh flowers on all the stones—so many of them now—though she didn’t think that her dead brothers and sisters minded if the flowers got old.

  She saved the largest and prettiest bunch for Myrt. It was a small arched stone with her name and dates and the inscription, “Weep not for me. I am waiting in glory for thee.” An engraved olive branch curled along the top. Mary Bet got on her knees and placed the flowers on the grass at the foot of the stone. She closed her eyes and tried to recall Myrt’s voice when she was telling a funny story, but she couldn’t bring her voice to mind at all. It had only been a year—in another year what would she have forgotten? She would never forget the feel of Myrt’s hand on her forehead, or the warm scent of her hair, or the way her cheek dimpled when she smiled, tucking the corners of her mouth back just so, or how her fingers looked like spiders on the keyboard, or a million other things. How could they just disappear and never come back?

  She came over and stood beside her brother. She shook his arm to make him watch her signing. “I had to shoot George,” she said.

  “I know,” he cut in. He pointed down to the river, past the confluence with Love’s Creek, where the water glinted in the last rays of sunlight. There were no signs of life but a vine of smoke from an outdoor fireplace across the river and the barking of a dog.

  “Siler,” she said, “you know I killed that crow.” And now she was crying and trying to catch her breath.

  “What crow?” he asked. He gave her a puzzled look, tilting his head, biting his lower lip the way he did when he was thinking hard. There was not enough light left to the day now for her to see into his deep-set eyes—we’re all just skulls with skin, she thought. Across the river she could no longer make out the smoke, or the chimney, and the opposite bank was indistinguishable from the darkening water.

  “You know that crow that belonged to Willie and I was supposed to take care of it, and I forgot to give it water—well, I didn’t give it water because I was afraid of it, and then I thought it was going to die and I prayed for it to die quickly, but it didn’t. And when it did die I thought I was going to be taken by the Devil that very night, and I tried to stay awake all night. And in the morning when I wasn’t gone, I thought he was coming for me, and was going to surprise me. I don’t know but he’s not coming someday.” She wanted to tell him more, but she just couldn’t.

  Siler shook his head at all this. It was becoming hard to see, and her signing was imperfect anyway. What she was trying to tell him seemed crazy, but she was upset.

  “And you knew about it, didn’t you?” she asked. “I thought you knew. Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t remember. Let’s go home.” He took her hand and walked with her back up to the cemetery. Now the dusk had faded to night and the evening star was out in the western sky.

  “I’ve done worse things,” she whispered. But he had not seen her lips. “I killed a living thing, on purpose.” She thought, I don’t believe in the Devil anymore, but I saw him there with Daddy, I know I saw him in the broken glass.

  At supper that evening, she was again left to start the conservation, if there was to be any at all. “Daddy,” she said, “who was that down at the store today, the old man with his dogcart?”

  “Nobody,” he said, shoveling his peas toward a piece of cornbread. “Just a Jew peddler named Gubbs that comes by every now and again, selling goose grease and string and such. Got a sway-back pony so he doesn’t have to haul the cart himself.”

  She glanced at Siler to see if he was attending to the talk, but he was paying no attention and she didn’t bother to translate. She told Cicero that Siler had a new girl named Rebecca, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth Siler glared at her. He shook his head curtly and she signed, “What’s wrong with telling him that?”

  “I told you in confidence,” he said, squeezing his fists. He pushed back from the table and cleared his plate.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Cicero asked.

  Mary Bet shook her head, tears coming to her eyes. “He can’t talk about it.”

  “I know that,” Cicero humphed, “but why—”

  “Daddy, he’s just eaten up from the inside, he doe
sn’t know why, and I think he suffers worse than any of us, because he’s more sensitive. He always has been.”

  “I didn’t say anything—”

  “No, it’s not your fault. It’s just—he’s going with a Jewish girl. There, I shouldn’t have told you, but I did. Please don’t say a word to Siler about this.” She studied her father, but he betrayed nothing, just continued to mop up the molasses on his plate with his last bite of cornbread. What was he thinking, and why would he not say a word? “Well, Daddy?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Why don’t you say anything?”

  “You told me not to.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. He’s a grown man, he can do as he pleases. I don’t know what they do out there at that school. I know they go to church, and the Jewish people have their own church, or synagogue, or what have you. I don’t know what your mother would say.”

  “It doesn’t matter what mother would say. What do you say, Daddy? Why don’t you go out there and talk to him, he’s eaten up inside about it because he’s afraid you won’t approve.” The front door opened, then closed again. “All right, just go after him, I don’t know what he’s liable to do in this state.”

  “What do you think he’ll do? I’m just sitting here a-wondering what the girl’s parents are thinking. You know, Jewish folk don’t cotton to marrying gentiles anymore than the other way around.”

  “That’s good that you’re seeing things from that angle, Daddy, but who’s talking about marriage?”