Bittersweet (4 page)

The curtain that separated the master bedroom from the rest of the house was drawn aside. “Davie? Davie, are you all right?” From where Mam stood, across the width of the kitchen, only her son was visible through the doorway—a dim profile on the dark porch.

David turned his face away from his father’s. Margaret hovered anxiously in the bedroom doorway, the curtain crushed in one hand, the other clutching a grayish robe around her throat. “I’m all right, Mam, go back to bed.” His voice was hoarse and thick with drink.

“You get some sleep now. It’s awful late.” She paused a moment more, then dropped the curtain.

“I will, Ma.” David lowered his father gently to the floor and, turning, ran from the house. Emmanuel caught the door before it slammed behind him.

“You’re dead!” he screamed after the running figure of his son. “Dead, and I’ll see you buried in this house!” His voice shook, and his hand trembled so violently that the screen rattled in the door.

“Emmanuel, what’s wrong?” Shrill with worry, Mam started through the kitchen. The two older girls peeked from behind their bedroom door.

“Go to bed, Margaret!”

“Manny?” Mam’s voice quavered.

“Now!” He was scarcely in control of himself, and Margaret retreated behind the curtain. Dark-faced and speechless, he pointed a rigid finger at his daughters. They closed the door quickly and raced back to the bed, diving under the blankets and pulling them over their heads. They could hear their father crashing around the kitchen for a while and then the house was still. Sarah lay sleepless, listening to the deep, even breathing of her sisters.

Near dawn there was a scratching at the window, the sound Sarah had been waiting for. She slipped quietly out of bed and padded across the cold planks. David scratched again. She unhooked the latch and pushed the window open. It was hinged at the top and opened out like a trapdoor; two small chains tethered it to the sill to keep it from opening more than eight or ten inches. “You okay, Davie?” Sarah whispered. His face, drawn and bloodless, showed wan in the night and he smelled of vomit.

“I’m okay, Sare. Been getting rid of some bad drink is all.” He reached up behind the glass and took hold of her hand. “Sare, I got to go. You understand that?”

She started to cry.

“Don’t, please. Oh Jesus.” He squeezed her hand. “Sare, listen to me. I can’t be too long; it’s pretty near daylight.” She sucked in her upper lip, biting it, and fought down her tears. “That’s girl.” David smiled at her through the glass. “Can you get me something to eat?” She nodded and tiptoed out of the room. She was back in seconds.

“Pa’s asleep on the kitchen table.” She thrust her hands out through the window and clung to her brother’s arm. “Please don’t go, David. Mam’ll talk to him. Please say you won’t go!” Tears coursed down her cheeks and she held on to him with all her strength.

David gently pried her fingers loose and patted her. “I got to, Sare. You tell Mam good-bye for me. And the little girls when they wake up.” Sarah clutched at him, trying to catch his clothes and his hands, her forearms scraping splinters from the windowsill. David caught her wrists and held them still. “Good-bye. You’ll see me again, Sarah. I promise. I promise.”

Her hands clawed at the empty air; tears blinded her. Desperately she scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve and pressed her face to the glass.

David loped across the barnyard and disappeared into the inky
shadow of the cowshed. A moment later he reappeared, leading his father’s prize stallion. When he was out of earshot, he pulled himself into the saddle, waved once, and cantered out of sight into the trees.

Sarah crept back to the bed. Lizbeth pushed close to her. “I’m cold, Sare.” Sarah put her arm around the little girl, tucking the covers snug.

“Me too, Lizbeth.”

THOUGH THE TREE BRANCHES WERE BARE IN NOVEMBER, THE FOREST
floor was still fired with color. The dirt wagon track between the Tolstonadge place and Sam Ebbitt’s farm was bordered closely with trees and occasionally a field hacked out of the forest and put to the plow. The narrow track dipped and turned around outcroppings of rock and stands of trees that had proven too formidable for pick and ax. The road was littered with bright scraps of autumn; leaves, bitten red and gold, picked up the sunlight until each leaf seemed to glow of itself.

Sarah held her hands out from her sides as she walked, watching their shadows flicker over the ground. Gracie, skipping beside her, scuffed her feet through the fallen leaves.

“You’re going to wear your shoes out before they’re too little,” Sarah said mildly. The air smelled of winter; she pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and tied it. She laughed, spinning herself forward in great leaps. “Look, Gracie, I’m a gypsy dancer!” Gracie tied her shawl at her thick middle, following her sister’s lead. They twirled until they couldn’t stand up, then threw themselves onto the bank by the roadside.

“I wish there was more Saturdays. I hate school,” Gracie said.

“You do not.”

“I do so. You’re the only one doesn’t. You like it ’cause Miss Grelznik is all the time letting you draw your pictures.”

“Only if I finish my work early. You could draw too, if you’d stop messing and finish.”

“I don’t mess.”

Sarah rolled her eyes.

“You got a crush on the teacher,” Grace said spitefully.

“I do not.”

“Do so. I see you sneaking looks at her when you’re supposed to be at your lesson. I’ve seen you sneaking peeks at her in church. That’s a sin. You got a crush,” Gracie chanted.

“You don’t know what’s what, maybe I’m making her likeness,” Sarah retorted. “Ever think of that, Miss Smartypants?”

“Let me see it.”

Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Leave it go, Gracie. It’s getting late. You’re stuck up with leaves. Come on, I’ll dust you.”

“Show me or I’ll tell Mam you’re making pictures in church. It’s a sin.”

Sarah grabbed her sister’s pigtail. “I’ll tell Mr. Ebbitt you like to look at his belly when he laughs.”

“Sare! You wouldn’t dare.”

“Quits?”

“Badger face,” Gracie muttered. “Quits.”

“You ready to go?” Sarah pulled her to her feet and picked the leaves out of her hair.

“I don’t mess.”

“Okay.” Sarah tugged a brown plait.

The road widened out, and a split-rail fence replaced the trees to the north. Beyond the fence lay a field, harvested and plowed under, looking rich with its jeweling of colored leaves. They climbed over the rails and struck out across the plowed ground toward the Ebbitt house and barn, a quarter-mile distant.

Gracie stumbled and caught her sister’s skirt to steady herself. “Mr. Ebbitt don’t like us walking through the field,” she said peevishly as the clods broke under her small boots, turning her ankles and tripping her. “Mr. Ebbitt says we’re to go around on the road like people, ’stead of traipsing through the field like rabbits.”

Sarah raised her skirts a little and picked her way daintily over the uneven ground. “Road’s the long way ’round, Gracie.”

Gracie gave her sister a baleful stare.

Beyond the barn, Sam, his shirtsleeves rolled down and his collar buttoned to his throat, stood with his back to them. Lifting his
powerful arms over his head, he squeezed the wooden legs of a post-hole digger together before plunging it into the ground.

“Hey, Mr. Ebbitt,” Gracie called. She waved as he put his beard over his shoulder to see who was hailing him.

“Afternoon, Gracie, Sarah.” He set the post-hole digger against the rails and mopped the sweat from his eyes with a grayish handkerchief. “How’s your ma and pa?”

“They’re fine, Mr. Ebbitt; we come to ask you to dinner before the hayride, is all.” Sarah chewed on her underlip. She stopped when she realized he was noticing.

“Sarah,” Gracie piped, “Mam said I could ask, and now you went and did it!”

“You ask me too, punkin, and I’ll come sure. How’s that?” Sam leaned down, putting his hands on his knees; his torso was big for a short man.

“Come on, Gracie, we’d better be getting back.” Sarah squinted at the sun. “It must be after two.”

“Whyn’t we ride back with Mr. Ebbitt?” Gracie jumped onto the fence and sat on the top rail with her feet curled behind the lower one to steady herself.

“We ain’t been asked. Besides, we’d best be helping Mam with dinner.” Sarah took her sister’s hand and tugged, but the little girl clung like a monkey.

Sam pulled his watch out of his pocket and flipped it over in his palm. “It’s near three. You may as well stay put and I’ll run you home when I go over. No sense walking all that way.” Sarah started to protest, but Sam had turned back to his work. “I’ll square it with your ma.” Gracie shot Sarah a triumphant glance before bestowing all of her attention on Sam Ebbitt.

Sarah leaned against the fence, her face tilted back to catch the sun. The regular
chuff-chunk
of the post-hole digger biting into the earth was hypnotic and the day was still and dreamy. Sam worked on, lifting and plunging mechanically, a pile of dark earth growing beside the neat round hole. Gracie chattered, sometimes eliciting a grunt in return, but not seeming to mind when she didn’t.

Bored, Sarah walked along the fenceline back toward the farm buildings. The doors of the barn stood open and a block of sun fell on the mountain of chopped hay stored against the winter. On the back wall, up under the rafters, were row on row of mud-and-straw bubbles the size of a man’s two fists. The swallows had deserted
them for the south but, protected from the rain, the nests stayed on. Sarah threw her arms back and, chin high, ran through the wide doors to fling herself into the hay.

There was a clanking as a length of chain was let out and Sam’s dog careened around the corner of the house, teeth bared, growling. Sarah sat up abruptly and started to scratch her way up onto the piled hay. The chain ran out when the dog was still twenty yards from the barn, and jerked him off his feet. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and watched the yellow-eyed dog strain against his collar.

“
Meow. Meeeow
.” She cupped her hands over her mouth to make the sound carry. The dog went into a frenzy of barking, hurling himself against his collar until the tendons in his neck stood out against his hide and his eyes bulged. Laughing, Sarah crawled farther up into the hay.

A rope hung from the center beam, a half-dozen mud nests having been destroyed to make room for its thick coils. Taking hold of the rope, she yanked on it. It held, and lifting her feet from the haystack, she clamped it tight between her legs and shinnied up. She reached the beam and grasped it with both hands, but still moved against the rope as though she were climbing, enjoying the warm, tingling sensation between her thighs.

“Sar-ee.” The high voice ricocheted through the rafters. Sarah looked over her shoulder so abruptly that she nearly lost her grip on the beam, her face burning with embarrassment. Gracie stood in the retreating square of sunshine on the barn floor, peering up into the gloom, her little round fists planted importantly where her hips would one day be. “What’re you doing up there?”

“How long have you been here, you little sneak?” Sarah snapped. She slid down the rope so fast that she burned her hands. “Why don’t you just go away and leave me be? You’re always creeping around.”

“Am not!”

Sam stepped into the light beside the small defiant figure of sister Grace. “Here now. What’s the row about?”

“Nothing, Mr. Ebbitt.” Sarah blew gently on her hands.

“Sarah was climbing the rope and messing with the swallows’ nests.” Gracie pointed an accusing finger at the broken teeth of mud.

Sam turned his eyes on Sarah. “Don’t you be climbing that
anymore. You could fall and hurt yourself. Come on down off of there. Wagon’s hitched, it’s time we were going.” Sarah slid off the haystack and shook out her skirts. Sam eyed her ankles. “That dress’s a mite shorter than’s proper. How old’re you, Sarah Mary?”

“Fifteen.”

“Shorter than’s proper. Get your mam to let it out.”

Sarah looked at the ground, crouching a bit to make the skirt reach the top of her boots. “Hem’s down,” she murmured.

“Speak up now. I can’t hear you.”

“Hem is down!” she burst out.

Sam nodded slowly and worked his jaws. “Well,” he said finally, “day’s not getting any longer.” He led the way to the wagon.

It was huge, with a bed seventeen feet long and hemmed in on three sides with one-by-twelve-inch planks; a team of six draft horses stood stolidly in the traces. Each year Sam donated it for the hayride. He had pitched a great mound of loose hay into the shallow box, piling it higher than the driver’s seat. Wisps poked out between the planks and scattered over a heavy fur lap robe that took up half the seat. Gracie pulled herself onto the wagon and settled in the remaining space.

“Punkin, why don’t you ride back there in the hay and let your sister ride up front with me?” Sam climbed up beside her and unwound the reins from the post, stringing the leads deftly through his thick fingers.

“I want to ride with you,” Gracie pleaded. “Why can’t Sare ride in the hay? She’s all over straw already.”

“Sarah’s older’n you, that’s why,” Sam said. Gracie threw herself sullenly into the hay inches behind the wagon seat. “Don’t lay there right on top of us, move on back and let us talk a bit.” He jerked his thumb toward the far end of the wagon bed. Grace moved back another eighteen inches.

Sam handed the older girl up. Uncomfortable with the attention, Sarah sat hunched against the robe on the far side of the seat. He shook the reins and the wagon lumbered away from the farm, back down the track toward the Tolstonadges’ and the town.

The sun was partway down the western sky, burning the edges of Sam’s beard and throwing long shadows over the road. November’s fragile warmth had gone and the smell of frost was in the air. “You can bundle that old robe around you if you’re feeling cold,” Sam said. “That’s what it’s there for.” Sarah pulled the fur over
her shoulders. “You been running off and on that farm of mine since before you can remember, ain’t that right?” He waited for an answer.

“That’s right, Mr. Ebbitt.” She peeked warily at him from the corner of her eye.

He nodded shortly, satisfied. “You like that farm?” He waited for a reply.

“Sure, Mr. Ebbitt,” she said at last, and hid deeper in the stiff robe. There was a flouncing in the straw behind them.

“I’m cold, too,” came an interfering little voice. “A body might happen to think maybe other people get cold, too.” Sarah looked back; Gracie glowered out from a mound of straw she’d heaped over herself, her pudgy face pursed and indignant.

“Come up here with me,” Sarah said too quickly. “I’ll make room in the robe.” Gracie scrambled over the seatback and snuggled under her older sister’s arm, pointedly ignoring Mr. Ebbitt.

Sam spat over the side of the wagon and turned his attention to the road.

The table was set and dinner was hot and good-smelling on the stove when Sam’s haywagon rolled into the yard. Sarah and Grace raced for the house. The stove chuckled in the kitchen, flames flickering behind the door of the trash burner. They crowded close, holding their hands out.

“Careful. It’s awful hot. I’ve had it going all day.” Mam caught up a dishcloth, deftly wrapped it around her hand with a flick of her wrist, and opened the iron door of the warming shelf. There were plates of fresh doughnuts, brown and brushed with butter. She hooked two, one on each of two fingers, and held them out to her daughters. “The rest are for the doings, so eat ’em up quick before your pa and Sam see them.”

“They’ll smell ’em, Ma,” Sarah said with her mouth full. “The house smells like Christmas.”

“But they daren’t ask.” Mam winked. “Show there was something they didn’t already know.” The porch door banged and the girls shoved the doughnuts into their mouths. Keeping their backs turned, they munched surreptitiously.

It was still light out when they finished supper. Sarah scraped her chair back, poised on its edge for flight. “Can I be excused, Mam? There’s enough light so I can finish with Myrtle.”

“Are you making still another picture of that poor old cow?”
Mam patted her arm. “Well go ahead, but don’t be forever about it. I won’t be having the dishes left till morning.”

“That was a fine meal, Margaret.” Sam nodded a benediction in her direction. “Emmanuel, I need to have a word with you; let’s walk off some of that stew.”

Mam snorted. “You two can talk here, nobody’d pay you any mind.” As they left the house, Margaret harrumphed to herself.

Out in the cowshed, Sarah sat on the three-legged milking stool, her head bent over a scrap of paper. Holding her braids out of the way with one hand, she sketched with the tip of a burned stick. “Just a minute more, Myrtle, then you can move.” Myrtle lowed softly, her jaw grinding. Sarah nudged the door open for light. The first star of evening was caught in the crack of daylight, burning close and clear in the autumn air.