Love and Lament Page 7

  It was a sweltering, hazy July day, but Mary Bet had not brought her bathing costume because she wasn’t sure the bleeding was finished. She might wade in up to her knees, but that would be enough cooling off. They went around the barn and down to the mill house. The wheel was turning, while behind it in the pond ducks dabbled among the lilies and cattails. The miller waved to them from the window of the two-story whitewashed building. He was a new man, Samuel going through a miller every couple of years because he always thought he was being taken advantage of.

  Jacob and his sister took off their shoes and went to dip their feet in the pond, and Jacob found rocks to throw at the ducks. Mary Bet and Siler stayed up under the shade of a willow and helped Myrt and Sallie spread out the picnic.

  They had laid everything out, when they heard, from the direction of the main house, a man speaking. It was Zeke, saying something incomprehensible. Then they saw him, his nearly bald head glistening in the sun, walking alongside Grandpa Samuel, fanning him with his straw hat, and it was hard to say who was supporting whom. Samuel wore a gleaming white suit and a boater with a baby-blue ribbon. “The vheel,” he said, pointing it out with his long beak of a nose, “it never stops. It just goes around and around and around.” He refused a cane because Captain Billie had used one. He stood there seeming to teeter forward, then backward, Zeke catching him as best he could.

  Myrt sprang up and went to her grandfather. “Grandpa Samuel,” she said. “We were going to come in and say hello. How are you?”

  He nodded, looking at her through filmy, rheum-swollen eyes. “Just fine, dear,” he said. “And how is your mother?”

  Myrt glanced at the others. “It’s me, Myrtle Emma, Grandpa. Cicero’s daughter. Mama died three years ago.”

  “That’s right, she did. I’m sorry to hear it.” He looked away from the group to the mill wheel, its paddles appearing to endlessly channel water down the race. “I’ve finally done it,” he said.

  “Done what?” asked Myrt.

  “Achieved perpetual motion. You see, it vas the vay the Archimedes’ screw ran through the gear that vas the trouble. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you.”

  They got up and moved slowly along with him to the mill house, the smell of ground corn hitting them as soon as they entered. The building hummed and throbbed, the heavy stones churning away upstairs and conveyor belts carrying the meal to the sifting platform. A floury dust covered everything. “I’ve had Roberts build the model, according to my diagrams,” Samuel said. He pointed a bony finger to the upper level. “I’ve already sent the papers off to the patent office in Vashington. Now they vant to see a vorking model, vhich suggests to me that they like vhat they’ve seen. Roberts can’t claim it as his, yah, because I’m one step ahead.” On a workbench along the wall of the stone-floored room stood a model mill wheel. Around it and on the floor beneath were odd pieces of wood, bits of metal tubing (some still wedged in a vise), screws, nails, hammers, tin snips, levels, rulers, and a blowpipe.

  Samuel took a ceramic pitcher of water and emptied it into the miniature millrace. The water trickled through the sluice, then down into a twelve-inch-diameter wheel mounted into a vertical framework. The wheel turned, splashing water into a tin basin. A long wooden shaft with spiraled metal piping rose at an angle from the basin and ran up to the end of the millrace where the water had first entered. Samuel gave the shaft a twist. He banged his elbow into Siler, who had been leaning over studying the device with fascination. Only then did Samuel take notice of his grandson, but it was just a vague recognition of a person, like the others there, connected to him in some way.

  He stood back and glared at his invention, daring it not to work. The gears cranked and the water began pouring out the top of the Archimedes’ screw into a little collecting pan, then flowing back down the millrace, through the wheel again, into the basin, and up the screw. “It vorks!” Samuel shouted. “It vorks better than ever! I knew it just needed to settle in.”

  “Cose it did,” said Zeke.

  Samuel stood admiring it, Zeke steadying him. “Now it’s turning nothing but an arm, but ve’ll attach a gear here, and some millstones. And I’ll tell you a secret.” Here he quieted down and looked all around, the others leaning in to hear him over the incessant noise. “I’m not going to send them the model. Vhat if somebody should steal it on the vay? I’m going to build the whole thing here, full-size, and invite the director of the patent office down to see it for himself.”

  The wheel stopped turning, the gears creaked over and were silent. Samuel gave another twist to the shaft, but nothing more happened. He shook his head. “Thass alright, Mr. Sam’l,” Ezekiel said, “we looks to it after while. It’s time for dinnah now.”

  “No,” Samuel said, “it has to be the tubing. I knew I needed copper! And the coils should be looser. Roberts knew it all along. If he thinks he can get a jump on me, he’s dead wrong. Roberts!” he yelled. “Get down here this instant.”

  It took some time for Roberts to come downstairs—he’d lost much of his hearing over his years as a miller. He was a burly, sad-looking man of middle years with a soft face; he wiped his floury hands on his apron and looked around at everybody. He listened to Samuel’s accusations. “Well, vhat can you say for yourself?” Samuel demanded, then spat on the floor.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, sir. I don’t know a thing about perpetual motion. I told you I don’t think it works.”

  “Haaagh,” Samuel raged, spitting again. “I should fire you for impudence, you young rascal. I’d better not find out you’ve been stealing my idea. I’ll sue. Vatch and see if I don’t. You can go, Mr. Roberts, ‘fore those stones up yonder catch fire.”

  Myrtle Emma said, “I think we’d better go back to our picnic, before the ants get it.” She took her friend’s hand and led the way. Mary Bet started to follow, then grabbed Siler’s arm and pulled. He shook his head. Myrtle Emma’s translation of their grandfather’s scheme had been inadequate—he wanted more details.

  Myrtle Emma and Sallie were already out the door. Siler was trying to say something to both Samuel and Mary Bet, desperate that one of them would understand. “Baamb hah,” he said, spelling furiously with his right hand. He went over and touched the Archimedes’ screw portion of the model, then pointed out a place above the collecting pan.

  “He’s the one that’s deaf, ain’t he?” Samuel said, to nobody in particular. “Vhat is it you’re saying, boy? I can’t understand that gibberish.” Then louder, “Vhat are you trying to tell me?”

  “I think,” said Mary Bet, “he’s saying something about the pump being too high, or not high enough.”

  Now Siler wrote with his hands so fast that he seemed to be conducting a band at a runaway tempo. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes going back to their deep, mystifying look, as though he’d either given up trying to explain to idiots, or he’d reconsidered. It was a look he often put on in public when he wanted to act as though he didn’t understand. He shrugged, then knocked his fist against his forehead: “Dumb.” Only Mary Bet knew that he was saying both I’m dumb and You’re dumb.

  “Vhy would he say it was too high?” Samuel asked.

  Mary Bet smiled, wishing she were anywhere but here, under the fierce stare of her grandfather, in this building that hummed and shook as though it would fall apart. His white eyebrows twitched and fluttered at her, demanding she behave herself and say the right thing. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “He’s the one that makes things?”

  “Sir?”

  “Makes things vith his hands!” Samuel thundered. “Who’s the deaf one here?”

  Mary Bet froze. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. She nodded.

  Samuel looked suspiciously at his grandson, but Siler only shrugged again and so Samuel returned his attention to the miniature water mill. He uttered a low grumbling noise. “Thinks he knows more than Archimedes,” he said to himself. “Ve’ll just have to see about that. Ve’ll j
ust have to see.”

  Now it was Siler who led the way, pushing past the heavy door and leaving Mary Bet to follow. Zeke called after them to mind that they didn’t go in the water over their heads. “Mr. Sam’l don’t ’low no drowndin’ ’round heah.”

  When they got outside, Siler signed to Mary Bet, “Grandfather crazy,” his finger swirling around his temple. She liked that he raised his eyebrows, wanting to know if she agreed. She shrugged her shoulders, lifted her palms. They went over to the picnic blanket and joined Myrt and Sallie. There were deviled eggs wrapped in waxed paper, roast beef sandwiches with mayonnaise and pickled cucumbers, ham sandwiches with thick slices of cheese, an apple pie Myrt had made the night before, mason jars of sweetened ice tea, and a small watermelon. They sat and ate and watched the mill-wheel turn, and Jacob said he’d heard of such a wheel that could carry people around and around. Mary Bet didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but when she translated for her brother he said that it was true. “What’s it for?” she asked.

  “For fun,” Jacob answered.

  “Looks like you’d get mighty wet,” she observed.

  “There’s no water to it.”

  “Then what makes it turn?” Myrt asked, as skeptical as her sister.

  “I don’t know,” Jacob replied. “Mules, I guess.”

  Siler shook his head and signed. “An engine,” he said, “powered by steam, or gasoline.”

  Since nobody could debate that, they went back to their eating. But it was too hot to eat much, and Jacob got up and announced that he was tired of sitting and doing nothing. He took off his shirt and shoes and went over to the pond, but then he just stood there, not willing to be the first in. Siler pointed at him and laughed. Jacob’s little sister poked her lips out at Siler when she thought no one was looking, but Mary Bet saw. She couldn’t help admiring the girl for siding with her brother, yet she felt sure that the girl didn’t like Siler because he was deaf and smart. The girl went running toward the pond, her pigtails flopping along her back. Her brother reached up and pulled her in with him, and she splashed and squealed, her white pinafore clinging to her chubby body.

  “Your shoes!” Sallie called out.

  After a while, Siler got up and headed the ten rods or so down toward the river, a branch of the Rocky that had, in addition to a generous supply of shin-barking boulders, a few holes deep enough for bathing. Mary Bet saw that Jacob and his sister were getting out, as though trying to decide whether to follow Siler. She went on and caught up with her brother and took his hand.

  They walked down to the edge of the river, where the ground was veined with the roots of tall sycamores and locust trees. Crickets rasped loud in the midday heat, and overhead the sky was the faded blue of old china. The river swashed around boulders that were slung at random up and down the streambed. In the air, the smell of growth and decay hung heavy in the bracken just off the river, and as Mary Bet stood there with her brother looking at the river she felt its downward pull as something elemental in life, a force that had to be struggled against. She squeezed Siler’s hand and looked up to his face, but he was intent on watching something beneath the surface—he freed his hand and pointed to a fish, but Mary Bet couldn’t see it.

  He took off his shirt and shoes and began wading in, beckoning for her to follow. She didn’t like the idea of shivering in cold wet clothes that would have to dry while she wore them. No, that wasn’t it—she was just afraid. Siler, up to his waist, sucked in his pale flat abdomen until his ribs jutted out and his suspenders hung loose, and signed that she was a weak sister. He splashed water toward her and made a cradling motion with his arms.

  She bent and unlaced her shoes and then stepped carefully over the mossy stones at the water’s edge. The rocks underwater were slick to her feet, but she found a place on the muddy bottom to stand, and she lifted the hem of her skirt and began wading out into the current, toward her brother. She wished she’d brought her bathing costume—a navy knee-length dress and pantaloons.

  When she was up to her knees, she twisted her hem so that she could hold it with one hand, lifting it as high as she dared, and wading in a little farther. By now the other children, boisterous from being already soaking wet, were picking their way over the stones at the river’s edge. Jacob plunged in on his belly, splashing Mary Bet so that she leaned away and lost her footing. She came up with her hair dripping, hanging like weeds about her face and neck. Jacob took up a mouthful of water and fountained it out toward her. Siler was floating up to his neck, staring at Jacob with the same intense expression he had when he was standing at bat, or hunting.

  Mary Bet didn’t want to be the cause of any ill will, so she began laughing and paddling over to her brother. She looked back and saw that Jacob’s sister was still sitting at the edge, elbows on knees, hands cupping her chin, with a bored expression. I can swim! Mary Bet thought, treading so that her toes would not have to touch the slimy bottom, and I’m not afraid of the river. She caught hold of her brother’s shoulders and clung to him like a possum baby. His wet skin smelled like cold slabs of bacon. He rose up and shook her off and swam to the other side, and he sat there with just the top half of his head above the tea-colored water, surveying her like some ancient reptile. She laughed out loud and splashed, until finally he broke into a smile. She admired how lithe and handsome her brother was; she thought him about as handsome as any young man she knew, and she imagined that if he were not her brother she might have feelings for him. It was wrong to even have such a thought in her head, she knew, and she took her eyes away from him and stared at the ripples around her wrists. Could he possibly think of her in the same way?

  Siler stood, preparing to dive into a pool. She tried not to look at his bare chest, his strong arms and legs. He was better formed than she would ever be, she thought—it wasn’t fair that a boy would be so good-looking. Half afraid he could read her mind, she turned away and headed back to the stream bank, then hurried through the bracken, her wet skirt dragging over gap-toothed cogwheel daisies and maidenhair ferns. She wanted to ask Myrt if she thought calico would work for a bonnet—a sturdy slat bonnet for colder weather.

  In the weeks before Siler was to leave for Morganton, he and Mary Bet took long walks together, sometimes out to the cemetery at Love’s Creek to put fresh flowers on the graves of their brothers and sisters and grandparents and their mother—ten in all. An epidemic of diphtheria swept through the eastern part of the state, and there was fear of it spreading their way. It never came, but Mary Bet began writing a diary, thinking to hand something of her life down to posterity. She also started a keepsake book, with things that O’Nora had liked—pressed fall leaves, jack-in-the-pulpits and other wildflowers, a tiny wreath made of Myrt’s and O’Nora’s hair twisted together, photographs, bits of poetry O’Nora had liked, letters she’d received.

  One Sunday afternoon Cicero went down to the mill for the afternoon, having received word that his father was ailing. Myrtle Emma was at Sallie Wood’s. It was a balmy afternoon, the open windows drawing a faint breeze through the house. Mary Bet was half-reclining on the sofa, adding a photograph of herself to the scrapbook—a picture of her sitting horseback in a sidesaddle, the flounces of her petticoat showing above the tops of her boots. Siler came in from the backyard and hung over her shoulder looking at what she was doing. His warm breath made her neck tingle, and the sound of him moistening his mouth was oddly comforting—soon all his strange little noises would be gone. He pointed at the picture and signed, “O’Nora laughs in heaven.” Yes, Mary Bet thought, O’Nora would think her funny looking, perched on the sidesaddle.

  Siler came around and sat beside her, the dried rivulets of sweat on his ropy arms and the close smell of him making her heart beat a little quicker. He had such a familiar, comforting smell—like the outdoor hearth, fresh-cut logs, home. She had a headache, not a terrible sick one, and there was no one to ask whether it was from her monthly and whether she should take willow tea or aspirin powder.
She took his hand and placed it on her forehead—it was like a warm animal covering her face. Now he gave her a funny, sad, longing look that made her feel weak, low in the pit of her body, and he put his arm around her and smelled her hair. He held her close like that and murmured something she could not understand, and yet she knew what he meant. He kissed her cheek, and she kissed him back on the lips. And then he held her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. She could see herself mirrored in his black irises, and she knew that he could see himself in hers. She waited for him to kiss her again, to do anything, anything at all—they could burn in hell together and never, ever be alone. His hands trembled on her face as his eyes moved down her bare neck to her shoulders and her chest. Then he kissed her forehead and stood abruptly and went back out.

  It’s not incest, she told herself. Forgive me, Lord, and forgive Siler too. I will never let it happen again. She pictured coming to him in his bed some night and giving herself to him, letting him do whatever he wanted with her. She shook her head and mumbled, No, I won’t. She found herself wishing that Myrtle Emma had her own room so that Siler could come to her if he wanted to, and immediately she thought how lucky it was that she and Myrt shared a room.

  For what seemed hours, she lay there, the windows open to the noise of Siler sawing and the songs of birds and, behind everything, the chirr of cicadas, as incessant as the heat itself. She felt as though she could not move. When would God choose to strike her dead? Siler was still alive and able to work—the sizz whoo sizz whoo of his saw like breathing. And here she was lying on the sofa as if she were unable to move because of a little headache. She jumped up and went over to the bookshelf behind the piano and took down her Bible with the family tree in the front pages. She studied the limbs of the tree, the strange German and Irish names going back a hundred years and more, and then saw how the branches led out to her own family, and her very name, inscribed by her mother. She flipped over to Proverbs and read, “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.” She nodded and closed the book, I will depart from evil, she thought, I will I will I will. I must.