Morning Glory (17 page)

He stuffed his hands into his back pockets, gripping his buttocks. A pair of creases appeared between his eyebrows. “Damn right I’m scared. And it doesn’t make a bit of sense, not when there’s a qualified doctor down there in town who can do it.”

“I told you once, the town’s got no use for me, I got no use for it.”

“But that’s cr—” He stopped himself short.

“Crazy?” She finished for him.

“I didn’t mean to say that.” Damn his thoughtless tongue. “It’s risky. All kinds of things could happen. Why, it could be born with the cord wrapped around its neck, or breech—what if that happened?”

“It won’t. I had two that come out with no trouble at all. All you’d have to do—”

“No!”
He put six feet of space between them before facing her again, scowling. “I’m no midwife, goddammit!”

It was the first time Elly had seen him truly angry and she wasn’t sure how to handle him. They faced off, as motionless as chess pieces, their color high and their mouths set while Eleanor felt uncertainty creeping in. She needed him, but he didn’t seem to understand that. She was afraid, but couldn’t let it show. And if what she was about to say backfired, she’d be the sorriest woman in Gordon County.

“Well, then, maybe you’d better collect your things and move on.”

A shaft of dread speared through him. So much for love. How many times in his life had he been through this?
Sorry, boy, but we won’t be needin’ you anymore. Wish we could keep you on, boy, but
— No matter how hard he worked to prove himself, the end was always inevitable. He should have grown used to it by now. But it hurt, goddammit. It hurt! And she was being unreasonable to expect this of him.

He pulled in a deep, shaky breath and felt his stomach quiver. “Can’t we talk about this, Elly?”

She loved the sound of her name rolling off his tongue. But she wasn’t keeping him around as an ornament. If he was going to stay he had to understand why. Obstinately she knelt and returned to her scrubbing. “I can do it alone. I don’t need you.”

No, nobody ever had. He’d thought this once maybe it’d turn out different. But he was as dispensable to Eleanor Dinsmore as he’d been to everyone from his mother on down to the state of Texas. He could give up and simply walk away from this place, away from her, but whether she loved him or not, he was happy here, happier than he ever remembered being, happy and comfortable and busy and achieving. And that was worth fighting for.

He swallowed his pride, crossed the half-scrubbed floor and squatted beside her, resting both elbows on his knees. “I don’t want to go... but I didn’t hire on here to deliver babies,”
he argued quietly, reasonably. “I mean, it’s”—he swallowed—“it’s a little personal, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess that would bother you,” she returned tightly, continuing to scrub, moving to a new patch of floor to avoid his eyes.

He considered long and hard, fixing his attention on the top of her head. “Yes... yes it would.”

“Glendon did it... twice.”

“That was different. He was your husband.”

Still scrubbing, she said, “You could be, too.”

A shaft of hot surprise sizzled through his veins. But what if he’d misunderstood? Weighing her words, he balanced on the balls of his feet, watching her rock above the scrub rag as the wet spot spread. Her cheeks grew flushed as she clarified, “I mean, I’ve been thinking, and it’s okay with me if we went ahead and got married now. I think we’d get along all right, and the boys like you a lot and you’re real good with them, and... and I really don’t throw eggs very often.” Still she wouldn’t look up.

He contained a smile while his heartbeat clattered. “Is that what you want?”

“I guess.”

Then look at me. Let me see it in your eyes.

But when she finally glanced up he saw only embarrassment at having asked. So... she was not in love, only in a bind... and he was convenient. But, after all, he’d known that from the first time he’d walked in here, hadn’t he?

The silence remained tense. He stretched to his feet and crossed to a window, looked out at the backyard he’d cleaned, the clothespoles he’d sturdied, thinking of how much more he wanted to do for her. “You know, Eleanor, it’s silly for us to do this just because you put up some ad in the sawmill and just because I answered it. That isn’t reason enough for two people to tie up for life, is it?”

“Don’t you want to?”

He glanced over his shoulder to find her watching him with face ablaze.

“Do you?”

I’m pregnant and unbright and unpretty,
she thought.

I’m an ex-con woman-killer,
he thought.

And neither of them spoke what was in their hearts.

At length, he glanced out at the yard again. “It seems to me there should be some... some feeling between people or something.” It was his turn to flush, but he kept it hidden from her.

“I like you fine, Will. Don’t you like me?”

She might have been discussing which new rake to select, so emotionless was her tone.

“Yeah,” he said throatily, after a moment. “I like you fine.”

“Then I think we ought to do it.”

Just like that—no harp music swelling out of the heavens, no kissing beneath the stars. Only Elly, seven months pregnant, struggling to her feet and drying her hands on her apron. And Will standing six feet clear of her, staring in the opposite direction. The way they’d laid it out made it sound as exciting as President Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Program. Well, enough was enough. Before Will agreed, he was going to know exactly what he was getting into here. Resolutely he turned to face her.

“You mind my asking something?”

“Ask.”

“Where would I sleep?”

“Where would you want to sleep?”

He really wasn’t sure. Sleeping with her would be tough, lying beside her pregnant body and not touching it. But sleeping in the barn was mighty lonely. He decided to give away no more or less than necessary. “The nights are getting pretty cool out in that barn.”

“The only place in here is where Glendon slept, you know.”

“I know.” After an extended silence, “So?”

“You’d be my husband.”

“Yeah,” he said expressionlessly, realizing she wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect.

“I... I sleep with the light on.”

“I know.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You do?”

“I’ve been up at night and seen it.”

“It’d probably keep you awake.”

What was she doing arguing against it when the idea made her have to fight for breath?

He thought long and hard before trusting her enough to reveal a crack in his defenses. “In prison it was never completely dark either.”

He noted a softening in her expression and wondered if someday he could trust her with the rest of his vulnerabilities.

“Well, in that case...” The silence welled around them while they tried to think of what to say or do next. Had this been a regular proposal with the expected emotions on both sides, the moment would undoubtedly have been intimate. Because it wasn’t, the strain multiplied.

“Well...” He rubbed his nose and chuckled nervously.

“Yes... well.” She spread her hands, then linked them beneath her swollen belly.

“I don’t know how a person goes about getting married.”

“We do it at the courthouse in Calhoun. We can get the license right there, too.”

“You want to drive in tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow’d be fine.”

“What time?”

“We’d better start early. We’ll have to take a wagon, ‘cause the boys’ll be with us. And as you know, Madam’s pretty slow.”

“Nine o’clock then?”

“Nine should be fine.”

For a moment they studied each other, realizing to what they’d just agreed. How awkward. How incredible. Self-consciousness struck them simultaneously. He reached up to pull his hat brim down, only to discover he’d left his hat hanging on the fencepost. So he hooked a thumb in his hind pocket and backed up a step.

“Well... I got work to finish.” His thumb jabbed the air above his shoulder.

“So do I.”

He backed up two more steps, wondering what she’d do if he switched directions and kissed her. But in the end he followed his own advice and left without trying.

Falling into bed that night, Eleanor lay wide-awake, thinking of the day past, the day to come, the years ahead. Would she and Will live peaceably or fight often? Fighting was something new to her. In the years she’d been married to Glendon, they’d never fought—perhaps because Glendon was just too lazy.

In the place where she’d grown up there was no fighting either. And no laughter. Instead, there had been tension, never-ending tension. From her earliest memories it was there, always hovering like a monster threatening to swoop down and scoop her up with its black wings. It was there in the way Grandmother carried herself, as if to let her shoulders wilt would displease the Lord. It was there in her mother’s careful attempts to walk quietly, carry out orders without complaint, and never meet Grandmother’s eyes. But it was greatest when Grandfather came home. Then the praying would intensify. Then the “purifying” would begin.

Eleanor would kneel on the hard parlor floor, as ordered, while Grandfather raised his hands toward the ceiling and, with his scraggly gray beard trembling and his eyes rolled back in his head, would call down forgiveness from God. Beside her, Grandmother would moan and carry on like a dog having fits, then start talking gibberish as her body trembled.
And Mother—the sinner—would squeeze her eyes shut and interlace her fingers so tightly the knuckles turned white, and rock pitifully on her knees while her lips moved silently. And she, Eleanor—the child of shame—would lower her forehead to her folded hands and peek out with one eye at the spectacle, wondering what it was she and her mother had done.

It seemed impossible that Mother could have done anything bad. Mother was meek as a violet, hardly ever spoke at all, except when Grandfather demanded that she pray aloud and ask forgiveness for her depravity. What was depravity? the child, Eleanor, wondered. And why was she a child of shame?

While Eleanor was small Mother sometimes talked to her, quietly, in the privacy of the bedroom they shared. But as time went on, Mother grew more tacit and withdrawn. She worked hard— Grandmother saw to that. She did all the gardening, while Grandmother pulled back the edge of the shade and stood sentinel. If anyone passed on the road, Grandmother would hasten to the back door and hiss through a crack, “Ssst! Get in here, Chloe!” until in time, Chloe no longer waited for the order, but scuttled inside at the first glimpse of anyone approaching.

Three were allowed near, only three, and these out of necessity: the milkman, who left his bottles on the back step; the Raleigh man from whom they bought their pantry stock; and an old man named Dinsmore who delivered ice for their icebox until his son, Glendon, took over. If anyone else knocked on their door—the school principal, an occasional tramp looking for a free meal, the census taker—they saw no more than a front shade being bent stealthily from inside.

Eventually the truant officer began coming, pounding on the door authoritatively, demanding that it be opened. Did they have a child in there? If so, she had to attend school: it was the law.

Grandmother would stand well away from the drawn shades, her face a deadly mask, and whisper, “Silence, Eleanor, don’t say a word!”

Then one time the truant officer came when Grandfather
was home. This time he shouted, “Albert See? We know you have a child in there who’s school age. If you don’t open this door I’ll get a court order that’ll give me the right to break it down and take her! You want me to do that, See?”

And so Eleanor’s schooldays began. But they were painful for the colorless child already a year older and a head taller than the others in her first grade class. The other children treated her like the oddity she was—a gawky, silent eccentric who was ignorant of the most basic games, didn’t know how to function in a group, and stared at everything and everybody with big green eyes. She was hesitant at everything and when she occasionally showed moments of glee, jumping and clapping at some amusement, she did so with disquieting abruptness, then fell still as if someone had turned off her switch. When teachers tried to be kind, she backed away as if threatened. When children snickered, she stuck out her tongue at them. And the children snickered with cruel regularity.

School, to Eleanor, seemed like exchanging one prison for another. So she began playing hooky. The first time she did it she feared God would find out and tell Grandmother. But when He didn’t, she tried it again, spending the day in the woods and fields, discovering the wonder of true freedom at last. She knew well how to sit still and silent—in that house behind the green shades she did a lot of that—and for the first time, it reaped rewards. The creatures learned to trust her, to go about their daily routine as if she were one of them— snakes and spiders and squirrels and birds. Most of all the birds. To Eleanor, those wonderful creatures, the only ones not restrained to earth, had the greatest freedom of all.

She began studying them. When Miss Buttry’s fifth grade class went to the library Eleanor found an Audubon book with colored plates and descriptions of birds’ habitats, nests, eggs and voices. In the wilds, she began identifying them: the ruby-crowned kinglet, a spirited bundle of elfin music; the cedar waxwings, who appeared in flocks, seemed always affectionate and sometimes got drunk on overripe fruit; the blue jay, pompous and arrogant, but even more beautiful than the meek cardinals and tanagers.

She brought crumbs in her pockets and laid them in a circle around her, then sat as still as her friend, the barred owl, until a purple finch came and perched in a nearby pine bough, serenading with its mellifluous warble. In time it descended to a lower branch where it cocked its head to study her. She outwaited the finch until eventually he advanced and ate her bread. She found the finch a second day—she was convinced it was the same bird—and yet a third, and when she’d learned to imitate its call, summoned it as effortlessly as other children whistled up their dog. Then one day she stood like the Statue of Liberty, the crumbs in her palm, and the finch perched on her hand to eat.