Let Me Die in His Footsteps (22 page)

As the men inch their way forward, the box tips and wobbles, first left and then right.

“Careful now,” Sheriff Irlene says. Her own children, the younger ones, stand with their grandmother under the same tree as the men from the newspapers. Sheriff Irlene waves at her mother to take the children on home. “Lower him with care,” she says.

One half of the men lean and pull while the other half give slack. The box levels, and they continue inching forward. When it hits ground, the men drop the straps of leather as if they were hot in their hands, and three of the four walk away. They straighten their jackets with a tug at their collars and shake their heads because that was a thing they damn sure never thought they’d be doing. The fourth fellow tugs at a strap. When one hand isn’t enough to yank the strap clean of the box, he grabs hold with two and again uses his weight. When it still doesn’t come free, he tosses the end into the hole. One by one, fellows step forward, grab an end, and toss it into the hole.

The same preacher who wouldn’t speak at Dale’s grave, the man who has preached to our family all our days, gives Joseph Carl his parting words. It’s a verse or two and no more. Folks bow their heads, fold their hands, draw their coats and blankets in tight around their shoulders even though the cool breeze that started the day has died off and the sun now shines full on the hole and the crowd gathered around it. Orange and gold leaves crackle overhead. Here and there, they flutter to the ground, spinning, floating, softly landing. When the preacher says amen, the word travels through the crowd and folks turn to make their way back home.

No one speaks to Juna like they did the morning of the hanging. I catch a few staring at her midsection, surely wondering if it’s true about the baby growing inside and wanting to tell their own one day that they saw the child in the beginning.

As the crowd thins and folks walk toward home, I drop Juna’s hands, though I squeeze them first and tell her I’ll be right back. The spot where John Holleran and his mama had been standing is empty. I turn toward the road I know they’ll travel to go on home, and I see the back of them, walking among a few others. I wouldn’t have thought myself a person who would hurt another so bad. Worse still, I wouldn’t have thought myself a person who would do that and still be thinking of Ellis Baine and hoping one day he’ll see me and want me. I have never thought myself such an unkind person.

I lay a hand on Juna’s arm, a signal it’s time to go, but she doesn’t move. She wore her hair down this morning even though I told her it would be best if she’d bind it and cover it over. Being as it was a solemn day, I thought there would be something almost obscene about the beauty of her hair when it catches the sun. Falling down to near about the center of her back, it glows. No other way to put it. Folks can’t help but stare, even though she’s not new to them, even though they don’t want to look. They’re afraid to look. They’re afraid of those black eyes. But she’s wrapped up in a kind of beauty most folks will only see once, maybe twice in their lives. They stare because they can’t resist.

“Time we go,” I whisper.

Still Juna doesn’t move, so I look where she’s looking.

Daddy has sobered enough to make it safely to the other side of Joseph Carl’s grave, and he is standing with Abraham Pace. Abigail Watson stands between the two men, and every so often, she dabs at her eyes with a kerchief. Daddy has stretched one hand up to rest on Abraham’s shoulder and is leaning into him, probably as much to steady himself as to have a private conversation.

If it were at all possible, though I know full well it isn’t, Abraham looks to have grown a head taller. His jaw looks to have squared off at a sharper angle, and his brow hangs heavier over his eyes. But it isn’t Abraham who’s grown; it’s Daddy who’s shrunk. He has a way of balling himself up when he’s drinking regular, almost like he’s wanting to altogether disappear.

While Daddy is doing the talking, Abraham is doing the nodding, and every so often, he looks off in our direction. A few folks still linger. The fellows talk about the tobacco they’ll be cutting shortly. Not such a good crop as they were hoping for. Too damn dry. The whole country like to blow away. The ladies, the few who remain, talk about the potluck at church this Sunday. Mrs. Ripberger touches me on my forearm and asks would I care to bring something fresh-picked. It’s kind of her to act as if we’ll be at that potluck, kinder still to act as if we’d be welcome. Something fresh-picked would be easier for you, don’t you think? I tell her yes, much easier. I’ll be happy to. And as Daddy keeps talking and Abraham keeps nodding, the last of these folks go on home too. We’re left alone, just us five and two colored fellows who will cover Joseph Carl over once we’re gone.

“I think this’ll be good,” I say to Juna. “This could be real nice. Daddy will be making amends, don’t you think? Inviting Abraham back. He’ll be a real fine daddy to your little one. And Abigail, she’ll be like an aunt, or a big sister maybe. They’ll be your family.”

I say it like I mean it, but what I really mean is if Abraham takes Juna back, she’ll move into his house, she’ll be his wife, and she won’t live in my house ever again. I have yet to ask her if those things Ellis Baine said about her and him are true. I haven’t asked because I know they are. Her not saying it out loud makes it somehow easier to bear. I can think about a new baby coming into our lives instead of imagining Ellis Baine with Juna. I can dream about the way a new baby will smell and feel and rinsing her soft hair clean and patting her dry and dressing her in pinks and yellows the likes our house has never seen. As long as Juna doesn’t say it and I don’t have to hear it, I can go on. Abraham Pace taking her away will make it easier still.

When Juna doesn’t answer me, I lean forward and look up into her face. She’s still staring at Daddy and Abraham like if she stares hard enough, she’ll hear what’s being said. As if feeling my eyes on her, she turns to me, and there is a look about her I’ve never seen before. Her eyes, wide and black as they are, have somehow changed. They’re looking not quite at me but instead over my shoulder somewhere, not entirely able to focus. It’s fear. I’m seeing fear in Juna’s eyes.

Daddy gives Abraham one last pat on the shoulder, nearly falling to the ground as he does it. Next to me, Juna’s body, always hard and lean, stiffens as if she’s bracing for something. I try to move her along, but she won’t move. As Daddy passes us by on his way up the hill toward home, he says Abraham will have her. He’ll have Juna but not until he gets a look at the baby. If it’s to his liking, he’ll have her.

“That’s good,” I say. “It’s behind you now. Behind us all. You and Abraham, you’ll be a fine family. He’ll be a fine father. Abraham will be a very fine father.”

“Yes,” Juna says, her eyes following Abraham and Abigail as they walk toward town.

Because of the way she draws a deep breath in through her nose and lets it out long and slow through her mouth, and because of the way she shakes her head ever so slightly, I might say she looked to be feeling sorry for Abraham.

“He would have been,” Juna says. “I’m guessing Abraham would have made a real fine father.”

•   •   •

MY EYES ARE
open. The ceiling above me is black. The air has turned from crisp and cool to dry and cold. The shutter is closed. No light seeps around its edges, which means it’s still dark outside. But the sound of the wind seeps in just fine. There was a time, probably before my mother died, that it was a comforting sound to hear the wind outside and to be safe and warm inside. The fire crackled and sparked. The flue worked as it should. We added blankets on the coldest nights. But the wind is louder now, closer. There are more holes, I suppose, more cracks and crevices.

This time of year, the wind rolls in from the north. It rushes down the hill, wraps around our house, whips us from side to side. Daddy isn’t so handy, and because John Holleran still doesn’t come around, that wind makes a whistling sound when it blows in through the holes in the roof that haven’t been fixed. If something woke me, it was something loud enough to rise above the noise of all of this. I still myself, try not to breathe so I’m sure to hear it, whatever thing woke me.

Juna doesn’t sleep in here anymore. She’s grown too large and says it’s easier to sleep sitting up. Every night, we pull the cushioned chair up to the fire and she props her feet on a wooden box Abraham Pace made for her but wouldn’t deliver himself. He says he can’t see her until there’s a baby too. Like me, he’s caught between wondering if Juna is as evil as folks say or as ordinary as the rest of us. He figures the baby will tell him which to believe.

There it is. An animal maybe, suffering something. Or a moan of some sort, a whimper. I sit up. It’s louder, or I’m hearing it better for having righted myself. It’s a moan, and there’s crying too, and the way the sound is growing louder, the cry will soon become a sob. It’s a strange sound, and crying isn’t altogether strange to me. But that’s the cry of a man.

Ellis Baine is gone. Juna made Cora Baine send him away. Soon the other brothers will go too. Cora Baine came to the house two weeks ago and stood on our porch, a gray scarf covering her hair. When Juna stepped into the doorway, Mrs. Baine stared at the swell in Juna’s stomach. Keeping one hand tucked under the shawl wrapped around her slender shoulders, she reached out with the other as if to lay it on Juna’s stomach.

“She’s my grandbaby,” Mrs. Baine said. “You said so yourself.”

Juna swatted Mrs. Baine’s hand away. “Your boys will kill me,” she said, “and this child too.”

The floor is cold on my feet, even through my wool socks, and the floorboards rattle because the wind crawls through the hollowed-out space under our house. I lift onto my toes as if someone or something might hear my footsteps. The door’s latch is cold in my bare hands, almost too cold. Using a single finger, I push, and the draft rushing through the house is enough to open the door.

Mrs. Baine thinks it was her idea to make her boys go. She must have loved them once. When they were boys, not men. They would have been like Dale. Not so tender and sweet as Dale, but they would have had soft cheeks and slender, smooth lips. They would have hung from her neck like Dale used to hang from mine. Maybe they’ve turned out too much like Cora Baine’s husband, and somewhere during those years of growing up, they stopped being her boys and started being reminders.

Juna’s baby was a way of starting over, and if there was one boy Mrs. Baine still loved, it had been Joseph Carl. She said she’d level a gun at her sons before letting them near Juna or that sweet child. Folks say Ellis was the first to leave. They say he wanted to go, couldn’t stay here knowing he was crossing over his own brother every time he made his way into town. Like Joseph Carl, he took a train. He went away so far, he had to take a train.

“You didn’t really love him anyways,” Juna said to me after Mrs. Baine left that day.

The front room is as dark as my bedroom. The fire has gone out. Since Juna sleeps there now and since she’s all the time up and down throughout the night, it’s her job to tend it. My job is to fill the wood box every night, taking over for Dale.

I still find bits of him around the house. Under his bed, I found a stray sock, the one with a hole in it he was supposed to mend. I told him even a man should know how to do a bit of mending, at least enough to get by. There was also the core of an apple, dried up and left to rot because he never liked the core even though Daddy said that was the best part and would have whipped Dale for throwing it away. I boxed up the most of him—his shirts and britches, boots and coveralls. But the bits of him keep popping up.

The sobbing is steady now but muted as if by a hand over a mouth. I hold the door open so the same draft that pulled at it doesn’t push it closed. There is another sound. Quiet words, loving words. A mother talking to a child. A whisper.

“I’m here.” It’s Juna. “Right here, Daddy. Calm yourself. Can’t you see?”

And then I notice the thing I should have noticed straightaway. Daddy’s light is out. The lantern we keep burning, all night, every night, is dark.

I listen for Daddy’s answer but hear only more muffled sobs. And then a single cry rises up. It’s nearly a scream, and I slap a hand over my own mouth.

“Daddy, stop,” Juna says. “I’m right here. Clear as day. You can see me. You can see, Daddy. I’m looking right at you.”

“But I can’t.” Yes, that’s Daddy. “I can’t see you. I can’t see nothing.”

Juna’s voice lowers. I can hear she’s still talking but can’t make out what she’s saying. It’s a murmur, almost a hum. I’d like to think she’s speaking sweet words, but I know she’s not. Something always simmers just beneath everything Juna does and says, something that tickles the back of a person’s neck or makes the heart pound quicker. Some part of Juna always lies in wait.

Daddy’s sobs slow. Juna continues to whisper. She wants Daddy to promise her. Promise he’ll do as she asks. Promise he’ll take care of her. Promise her. He can make it all good again. Just promise me. Promise me, is all. The sobs turn into words, Daddy saying yes to Juna. Yes, Juna. Yes.

A tiny speck of yellow floats in the dark room.

“You have to promise me, Daddy,” Juna says. “Promise you’ll make things good again.”

Daddy has been drinking ever since Joseph Carl was lowered into the ground. Every day, from the moment he opens his eyes to the moment he closes them. Other men cut our tobacco, hung it to dry. They propped open the barn doors to keep the air moving. Closed them when the air turned damp. And when Daddy still didn’t come, they stripped the tobacco, sorted it, took it to town.

One Sunday in early winter, Mrs. Ripberger, who had asked that I bring something fresh-picked to the potluck, delivered the money our tobacco brought at auction. Mr. Ripberger drove her in his black truck and waited outside, the engine running. She came with canned asparagus and cloth bags filled with seeds for next year’s garden.

“We missed you,” she said, remembering we never came that Sunday afternoon. “It ain’t much, but it’ll see you through.”