The Best American Short Stories 2013 (40 page)

He has a severe cut through the thumbnail.

Sunday 15 January

Deep snow. Cold. A shovel and broom necessary on the porch before light. Tallie called here after breakfast. She and Dyer chatted a few minutes in the sitting room before he left to see to the cows. Her husband is spending the day killing his hogs with a hired hand. She said after Dyer left that she hoped she wasn’t intruding, and that it was the dullest of all things to have an ignorant neighbor come by and spoil an entire Sunday afternoon. I assured her that she was welcome and that I knew the feeling of which she spoke, and that during the widow Weldon’s visits I always imagine I’ve been plunged up to my eyes in a vat of the prosaic. She took my hand as she laughed. She said she’d gotten the widow going on the county levy and that the woman’s few ideas were like marbles on a level floor: they had no power to move themselves but rolled equally well in whichever direction you pushed them.

There seems to be something going on between us that I cannot unravel. Her manner is calm and mild and gracious, and yet her spirits seem to quicken at the prospect of further conversation with me. In the winter sun through the window, her skin had an underflush of rose and violet that disconcerted me until I looked away. I told her how pleasant it was finally to be getting to know her, and she responded that the first few times she had spied me she had kept to herself and thought, “Oh, I wish to get acquainted with her.” And then, she said, she’d wondered what she would do if we were introduced.

She asked if Dyer was as sober when it came to the cows as he sounded and I told her that he deemed cows needed not only a uniform and plentiful diet but also perfect quiet, and warm and dry stabling in the winter. He was continually exhorting our neighbors to either enlarge their barns or diminish their stock. I admitted that at times if a cow was provokingly slow to drink I might push its head down into the bucket, and he would tell me that anyone who couldn’t school herself to patience had no business with cows. Tallie said that her father had scolded her the same way, having assigned her work in the dairy barn at a very early age, which had become an ongoing vexation for him, since she had not been in favor of the idea. We compared childhood beds, mine in which the straw was always breaking up and matting together and hers that was as hard, she claimed, as the pharoah’s heart. She asked if Dyer had also been raised Free Will Baptist and I told her he liked to say that he was indeed a member of the church but that he didn’t work very hard at the trade. She said she felt the same.

She described how restlessness had been her lot for as far back as she could conceive, and I told her how when I was young I would think, “What a wasted day! I have accomplished nothing, and have neither learned anything nor grown in any way.” She said her mother had always assured her that having children would resolve that dilemma, and I told her my mother had made the same claim. A short silence followed. Eventually we heard Dyer tromping about with his boots in the mudroom, and she exclaimed about the time, and said she must be getting on. I thanked her for coming and told her that I’d missed her. She answered that it was pleasant to be missed.

Sunday 22 January

Frigid night. Wintry morning. Dyer’s third day with the fever. At sunup he had a spasm but he was restored by an enema of molasses, warm water, and lard. Also a drop of turpentine next to his nose. His feet are now soaking in a warm basin. After breakfast I was emptying the kitchen slops and heard, off by the canal, several discharges of guns or pistols.

Dyer brought me as his bride to his house five years after he had begun to farm. In the journal I kept for a few months back then, I noted the night to have been cloudy and cool. We had about thirty-six acres that was not muck swamp or bottomland. Of those thirty-six perhaps one-third was hillside covered with scattered timber from which all of the best woods had been culled. It was not the ideal situation, but we all wish we had land of none but the best quality and laid out just right in every respect for tillage.

My mother had married my father when she was very young, without much consideration and after a short acquaintance, and had had to learn in the bitter way of experience that there was no sympathy between them. She always felt that she had not the energy to avert an evil, but the fortitude to bear most that would be laid upon her. She always seemed possessed of a secret conviction that she had left much undone that she still ought to do.

Dyer, as the second son of my father’s closest neighbor, helped out with numberless tasks around our farm for many years. He admired what he viewed as my practical good sense, my efficient habits, and my handy ways. As a suitor he was generous but not just, and affectionate but not constant. I was appreciative of his virtues and unconvinced of his suitability, but reminded by my family that more improvement might be in the offing. Because, as they say, it’s a long lane that never turns. And so our hands were joined if our hearts not knitted together.

As a boy he made his own steam engines by fashioning boilers out of discarded tea kettles and sled shoes, and I have no doubt he would have been happier if allowed to follow the natural bent of his mind; but forces of circumstance compelled him to take up a business for which he had not the least love. He admitted this to me frankly during his courtship, but also maintained that with good health and push and a level head, there is always an excellent chance for a fellow willing to work. And if one’s head went wrong, one could always level it up in good time, particularly if one was fortunate in one’s choice of partner.

He believes that one should always live within one’s income, misfortune excepted. He believes every farmer should talk over business matters with his wife; and then when he preaches thrift, she will know its necessity as well as he. Or she will be able to demonstrate to him why he worries too excessively. He feels he can never fully rid himself of his load. And I’m certain that because his mind is in such a bad state, it affects his whole system. He said to me this morning that contentment was like a friend he never gets to see.

Sunday 29 January

The night once again bitter cold. Despite an amaranthine fatigue, I’m unable to sleep. No sounds outside but the cracking and popping of the porch joints. Up in the dark to lay the kitchen fire, and through the window in the moonlight I could see one lean hare and not a creature stirring to chase it.

Snowpudding and corncakes for breakfast. Dyer up and about. He is much improved and has been given a dose of calomel and rhubarb. He intends running panels of new fence later this afternoon. Yesterday the timber was so hard-frozen the wedges wouldn’t drive.

The previous night’s unhappiness hangs between us like a veil. My reluctance seems to have become his shame. His nightly pleasures, which were never numerous, I have curtailed even more. He has been patient for what he believed to be a reasonable interval when it came to my grieving but has begun to pursue with more persistence the subject of another child. And in our bed, when he asks only for what is his right, I take his hand and lay it aside and tell him it is too soon, too soon, too soon. And so the one on whom all happiness should depend is the one who causes the discontent.

I can see that when I am unhappy his mind is in all ways out of turn, and so throughout the morning I made a greater effort at cheer. I shook out and stropped his coat while with a good deal of fuss he prepared himself for the long walk to the timberline. Inside his boots he wears his heavy woolen socks greased with a thick mixture of beeswax and tallow. Before leaving he suggested once again that perhaps the time had come for us to have our sleigh. He’s laid aside in the barn’s workroom some oak planks and a borrowed compass saw, which can make a cut following a curved line. He seemed to want only a smile and yet I was unable to provide it.

My mother told me more than once that when she prayed, her first object was to thank God that we’d been spared from harm throughout the day; her second was to ask forgiveness for all of her sins of omission and commission; and her third was to thank Him for not having dealt with her in a manner commensurate to all of the offenses for which she was responsible.

Sunday 5 February

Not too cold, though the moon this morning indicated foul weather. On the porch after sunup I could hear the low chirping of the sparrows in the snow-buried hedgerows. Breakfast of hot biscuit, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and coffee. Dyer cutting timber for firewood.

A visit from Tallie yet again, and she came bearing gifts for my birthday! She arrayed on the table before us a horse chestnut, a pear—in February!—a needle case, and a pocket atlas. She brought as well for us to share a little pot of applesauce with an egg on top. While it was warming she reported that Mrs. Nottoway had had an accident; a horse fell on her, on the ice. Her leg by all accounts is crushed and Tallie is planning to pay a visit there later this afternoon. Tallie herself had an accident, she noted, on the way here, her foot having plunged into the brook through the thin ice in our field. I made her remove her boot and stocking and warmed her toes and ankle in my hands. For some few minutes we sat, just like that. The warmth of the stove and the smell of the applesauce filled our little room, and she closed her eyes and murmured as though speaking to herself how pleasant it was.

I asked after her health and she said she had generally been well, though she suffered chronically from painful tooth infections and the rash they call St. Anthony’s Fire. I asked after her husband’s health and she said that at times they seemed yoked in opposition to each other. I asked what had caused the latest disagreement and she said that he recorded the names of trespassers, whom he easily sighted across the open fields, in his journals, and that when she had asked what sort of retribution he planned, they had had an exchange that was so cheerless and unpleasant that they had agreed to shun the subject, since it was one on which they clearly had no common feeling. She had then resolved to come visit me, so that her day would not be given entirely over to such meanness.

I was still holding her foot and unsure how to express the fervor with which I wished her a greater share of happiness. I reminded myself: (1) Others first. (2) Correct and necessary speech only. And (3) don’t waste a moment. I told her that Dyer thought Finney had many estimable qualities. She responded that her husband had a separate ledger, as well, in which he kept an accounting of whom she visited and how long she stayed. When I asked why, she said she was sure she had no idea. When I in my surprise had nothing to add to her response, she fell silent for some minutes, and then finally removed her foot from my hands’ cradle and brought the subject to a close by remarking that she’d given up trying to fathom all the queer varieties of his little world. I was oddly moved, watching her try to wriggle her foot back into her stocking. We enjoyed the applesauce and I exclaimed again on the surprise of my gifts and we chatted for another three-quarters of an hour before she took her leave. As she stood on the porch, bundled against the cold, and stepped forward into the wind, I told her I thought she was quite the most pleasing and thoughtful person I knew. Because I remember how appreciation made me feel, when I was just a girl, and I had resolved way back then to praise those who took up important roles in my future life whenever they seemed worthy of it. Dyer returned with two wagonloads of timber minutes after she departed, and once it was fully unloaded and stacked and he was able to take his ease before the fire, he gave me his birthday gifts as well: a box of raisins, another needle case, and six tins of sardines.

Sunday 12 February

The blizzard that began this last Wednesday continues with a stupendous NE wind. The snow has drifted eight feet deep. The barn is holding up well and there is feed for the stock, but the henhouse has fallen in on one side. Half the chickens lost. We dug ice and snow from their dead open mouths in an attempt to revive them. I’m told the Friday newspaper reported a train of forty-two cars from the center of Vermont having arrived at the Albany depot with snow nearly two feet thick on its roofs. Of course there is no question of visiting or receiving anyone; we are in all ways weather-bound. I found myself vexed all afternoon by the realization that I might have taken a walk to Tallie’s farm during a clear spell on Friday, but milk spilled on dry ground can’t be gathered up. By the fire Dyer and I made ready to sketch out on some writing paper our plans for the sleigh, but soon laid them by, since as a project it was so ill-conceived and weakly begun. We retreated to separate corners, myself to darn and mend and my husband to his ledger books.

He finally looked so distraught that I asked how long the feed in the barn would sustain the stock, should the weather not improve. He estimated five days before he’d have to go to the mill, whatever the weather. He said the newspaper had quoted a prediction that the storm would let up by Tuesday, based on an expert’s consultation of a goose bone. I let that prognostication sit between us while I repaired the heel of a sock, and he took his hair in both his hands and said with surprising vehemence that we offered and offered our hard work and God refused it by delivering brutal weather.

I joined him on the settee and reminded him that the best management always succeeds best, but in a real crisis of Nature, we are all at Another’s mercy. He seemed unconsoled. We listened to the wind. We watched the fire. He recounted again the story of his poor mother’s ordeal when just a child.

She had been seven and had awoken before dawn and gone to her window, and she told him that a flash of light that had seemed to run along the ground had preceded the earthquake. Her dogs when they saw it had given a sudden bark. A far-off murmur had floated to her on the still night air, followed by a slight ruffling wind. And then came the rumbling, and a sudden shock under which the house and barn had tottered and reeled. Latches leaped up and doors flew open. Timbers shook from mortises, hearthstones grated apart, pan lids sprang up and clattered back down in the kitchen, and pewter and glass pitched from their shelves. Their chimney tumbled down. The oxen and cows bellowed. She told him that she’d heard her mother calling for her, but she’d been unable to tear herself from her window, where she could see the birds even in the dark fluttering in the air as if fearing to again alight, and she could hear the river writhe and roil. She’d had to follow her brothers as they’d jumped down the collapsed staircase, and then the sun had risen and greeted with its complacent face her disconsolate and fearful family. And as soon as it set again that night, their fright had returned, a fright, his mother had told him, she had never again fully dispelled. For what was safe if the solid earth could do this? Before he finished his account, I stopped his lips with my fingers and led him to our bed, undressing him as I might a boy. We shared any number of caresses and he seized my hair in his fists and held my head to his own and passionately declared his love. Early this evening I rose while he slept and made us some beef tea and cornbread for dinner. For dessert, I cooked a very unsatisfactory rice pudding.