Gap Creek (17 page)

The longer I stood by the fire the less I warmed up. The sound of the wind made me shudder, and the cold was deep inside me, in my bowels and in my bones. If I stood any longer and waited for Hank to come back in I was going to freeze to death. I dreaded to go back into the kitchen, where Hank had slapped me, but there was nowhere else to go, in the whirl of feelings and the twisting around of everything.

Most of the supper was still on the table, the cornbread and ribs, the collard greens and the glasses of sweet milk. Everything had got cold, except the milk, which had got warm. The plates had half-eat stuff on them, and the lamp on the table throwed a yellow light on the clutter.

I got a handful of kindling and tossed it into the stove, and took the kettle out to the back porch. In the dark of the backyard I couldn’t see Hank anywhere. I wondered if he was out in the barn or maybe beyond the woodshed. Was he standing out there watching me? I poured the kettle full of water and carried it back into the kitchen. Was my marriage over before it had hardly started?

While the water was heating up, I scraped the plates into the slop bucket for the chickens. And I put the cornbread and collards and ribs into the bread safe. I wiped the table off and throwed the crumbs out the back door. With a wet cloth I washed the table and put the dirty dishes and spoons and forks into the dishpan. When the kettle was hot I poured the pan about half full of water.

The hot soapy water felt good on my hands and wrists. I buried my arms up to the elbows in the steaming pan and put my face close to the dishpan to feel the warmth on my chin and neck. I wished I could sink my whole body into a tub of hot, soapy water. I needed to soak myself and cleanse myself. I needed to melt away the stain of shame. I scrubbed each knife and fork, each glass and dish and bowl. I rinsed them in a pan of fresh water and dried them with a clean towel. I was finished and ready to throw the dirty water out the back door when Hank appeared in the door.

“What did that lawyer look like?” he said.

I had thought of a thousand things to say to Hank. I had thought of everything from apologizing to trying to shame him for smacking me. I had thought of telling him I would get a gun and shoot him if he ever hit me again. And I had thought of getting on my knees and begging forgiveness for the stupid thing I had done. But now that Hank had finally come back into the house I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I wrung out the dishrag in the pan of dirty water.

“Can’t you remember what he looked like?” Hank said.

“He was just a man,” I said. None of the things I had thought of to say would come to my tongue.

“Is that all you can say?” Hank said.

“He was a man wearing a suit, and driving a buggy,” I said. I tried to recall what Mr. James’s face had looked like, but I couldn’t remember a single detail. What was the color of his hair? The color of his eyes? Did he have whiskers or not? It had all slipped out of my mind.

“Was he tall or short?” Hank said.

“He wasn’t as tall as you,” I said. “And he was a little stoop shouldered.”

“That don’t tell us much,” Hank said.

“He said his name was Jerrold James,” I said.

“He could be anybody,” Hank said.

“I wasn’t studying him to remember him,” I said. “I was worrying about saving Mr. Pendergast’s house.”

“You didn’t worry enough,” Hank said.

This was the first bad quarrel Hank and me had, and I didn’t know how it was going to turn out. I didn’t know if it was the end of us, or not. Mama and Papa had had tiffs, but Papa had never struck Mama as far as I knowed. Papa had never struck anybody as far as I was aware.

I didn’t say anything to Hank that I didn’t have to say. For I was still ashamed of what he had done, and what I had done. I was ashamed that I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say. So I just kept quiet while he fussed and fumed about the money.

“Can’t you remember nothing?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Could you recognize him again?” Hank said.

“I might.”

“And you might not,” he said. Hank was worried and he was nervous. It confused him and consternated him that I didn’t say much. He was used to a woman carrying on like Ma Richards. He was used to tongue-lashing and insults. By keeping quiet I was throwing him off balance. It was the first time I seen what power I had over his blustering bad temper. If I just waited, he would get worked up and keep butting his head against my quietness. I seen I didn’t have to say much at all, could just let him fret and worry. He would use his rage against hisself.

“Would you recognize his horse?” Hank said.

“I might,” I said.

He talked that way in the kitchen, and then followed me into the living room, thinking up one question after another. But I didn’t tell him much. I couldn’t tell him nothing that would help. I let him fuss
and fret and wear hisself out. When it was time to go to bed I didn’t say nothing. I took the combs out of my hair and put them on the mantel, and then I got a lamp from the bureau to carry up the stairs.

I DON’T KNOW what it is about a quarrel that stirs a body so. But when I got under the covers in the cold bedroom it felt like my flesh was going wild and glowing. The work had burned the chill away, and as I listened to Hank rage I had got warmer and warmer. The fuss and the shame had spirited something inside me. As I got in bed by myself I could feel the heat give off by my skin warming up the covers and mattress under my back. I listened to the wind in the eaves and in the chimney and waited for Hank to climb the stairs and come into the room.

I guess waiting stirs the flesh also. There is nothing like waiting to whip up the pulse and make the blood sing in your ears. I could feel the blood in my neck and chest, and even in my arms, so warm it was purring. I laid in the dark feeling the covers touch the tips of my breasts and my belly and my knees. You was a fool, I said to myself. You are nothing but an idiot. But the thought was not entirely painful. For if I knowed I was a fool and admitted it, at least I was standing on firm ground and could see clear where I was going. If I knowed I was a fool I might learn to be better and to do better.

Wind brushed against the roof and I shivered, not because I was cold but because I was so warm sparks flashed off my body. There was electric currents in the covers and in the air, and every bit of my body had a charge and sting, like soda water on a tongue. You are a pure fool, I said to myself.

BUT HANK DIDN’T come on up to bed. I laid in the dark waiting minute after minute. After maybe an hour I heard the front door slam, like
he had gone out. And after that I must have dropped off to sleep, for I never did hear him come in. But in the wee hours I was woke by the sound of steps on the stairs.

Hank climbed up the stairs and opened the door. He was carrying another lamp and he set the light on the little bureau. He had to stoop a little under the slope of the ceiling. He’d left his shoes downstairs by the fireplace like he usually did, and he padded around in his socks. First he unbuckled one gallus of his overalls, and then he unbuckled the other. To take off overalls you have to unbutton the sides at the waist, but before he done that he blowed out the lamp. I listened to him slide off his overalls and hang them on the bedpost. I heard something rattle in the corner and couldn’t think what it was. And then I remembered the tin can where Hank sometimes spit out his tobacco. Next I heard something creak and felt a draft of cold air. He had cracked the window just a hair, as he always did before going to bed.

When Hank set down on the bed to take off his socks, it shook the mattress and springs like they was jelly. I quivered with the bed and tilted as he laid down and pulled the covers over him. He was so much heavier than me that the bed shifted and I felt I was laying on a hillside. I had to prop myself with one hand and elbow to keep from sliding over.

Would Hank touch me? Would he get over his anger enough to forgive me? Had the quarrel stirred him up and spirited him up the way it had me? Would he roll over and put his hand on my breast the way he did when he felt loving? Would he whisper something in the dark that would send sparks through me down to my groin? He shifted his shoulders and pushed up against the pillow. His weight made the bed sway. Every inch of my skin stung with the itch to be touched and the need to be touched. Every place on my body itched.

I wanted to reach out to him, but I knowed that wouldn’t do. I had never reached out to him before. I was sure he didn’t want me
to do that. He wanted to be the one to reach out. If he was ready to love me he would reach out. There was nothing for me to do but wait for him to make up his mind. I had seen him do it so many times, just make up his mind all of a sudden that he wanted to be loving.

I listened to the little clock ticking in the dark on the night-stand. It was the alarm clock we used to wake up at five-thirty or six. Its tick was fast as my heartbeat. Its tick made my ears itch. The tick tickled and prickled my skin.

Hank turned over and put his hand on my hip. But what he said was not love words. He didn’t whisper that I was his honey or his sugar pudding. He didn’t whisper that he was sorry and that I was his sweetheart love. At first I didn’t even hear what he said, it was so different from what I expected, what I wanted to hear. You know how words can seem strange if they’re not what you’re waiting for.

“I got fired today,” he said.

He said it like he was almost too tired to say it. And he said it like he was explaining why he had got so mad about the jar of money too. I knowed that instantly. He was saying in his own way he was sorry he had hit me.

“How come?” I said.

“Cause all the bricks is made,” he said. “They’ve got bricks enough to build the cotton mill and they don’t need me for anything else.”

I reached out and put a hand on his leg. I put my hand on his hip and raised my leg and put it on his. I could feel his sadness, in his words and in the loose way his body laid. He was heavy with sadness. He was slow and hot with sadness.

I run my hand down his hip and his leg. I smoothed the hairs around his crotch and felt him get bigger. My excitement and his sadness made me bolder than I had ever been before. I stroked him
until he was long and hard as iron. I heard his breath getting deeper. “You will get another job,” I said. But it seemed to me that didn’t matter. In the dark what mattered was we was together and naked. Wind shoved the side of the house, way down on Gap Creek in South Carolina. We would always find a way to live, a way to get back, as long as we could love. I was going to have a baby, and that was what mattered.

I run my hand through the hair on Hank’s chest and pinched one of his nipples. I had not done that before. It was like everything I did was the right thing. When Hank pressed against me I felt the sparkle in my skin where he touched. The glow had centered in my belly where the baby was. It was a coal of fire. Mama had told me you shouldn’t love in the later months of a pregnancy, but it was too early to need to worry. I was free to do whatever I wanted, and what I wanted was to love Hank in our own bed in our own way. Our quarrel and the uncertainty of things made it even more important to love.

As Hank rolled on top of me, it was like time slowed down and every second stretched out and strained to its limit. The dark got bigger, and everything in the dark got bigger. Hank’s shoulders and elbows and hands got bigger. The seconds groaned with bigness. Every inch of flesh was large and hurt, it felt so tender. Hank worked like he was climbing a hill against me. He crawled like he was climbing up a tree. He crawled faster, and then he slowed down. He slowed down again, and then he climbed farther. He pushed like he was galloping. He climbed like he was going to the top of the tallest mountain, and he was bringing everything he had to me.

Now the strangest thing was I seen all kinds of things to eat in my mind. I must have been still hungry after not finishing supper. I seen bright strawberries, and carrots and tomatoes. I seen Red Delicious apples and shelled peas and boiled taters. I seen new potatoes
in butter and sweet milk. I seen ripe pears so big you couldn’t hardly take a bite out of them. I seen grapes so ripe and tight they would bust on your tongue.

“It’s going to be,” Hank said. But I didn’t know if he was talking about the baby or our love, or the wealth of love, which was more important than money.

Hank hollered out and climbed faster. And then it was like he busted out inside me. It felt time turned inside out on the hot tongue that flicked inside me. And I felt my bones melting and my legs melting in the color that roared through me. But it was not a red flame or an orange flame. It was a blue flame that started at the back of my head and burned down my spine to my belly and out to the tips of my toes, as the blue turned to purple.

When Hank rolled off me I was covered with sweat, and I was plumb wore out.

Seven

The day after I give away the jar of Mr. Pendergast’s money and the day after Hank lost his job at the cotton mill, it was like we had to start out all over again. The only reason we had come to Gap Creek, as far as I could tell, was the job building the mill at Eaton. Gap Creek wasn’t the kind of place you’d think of moving to unless you had a purpose or kinfolks there. And the fact that I had give away money that was not mine made me see how hard the world was, and how much I had to learn. And the fact that Hank had slapped me made me see how troubled our marriage and our lives was going to be.

I was stiff the next morning from the strain of our quarrel and from worry. But I felt cleaned out by the force of our loving, like I had been stretched, both in my body and in my mind, and that left me stiff and a little sore, the way you feel from working too hard and using new muscles.

Hank rose early but didn’t make a fire in the kitchen stove. By the time I got up the kitchen was still cold, and I had to start a fire and put on a pot to make coffee. The grass in the backyard was thick
with frost. Hank brought in a bucket of milk steaming in the cold air. “Set that on the porch,” I said. “I’ll strain it later.”