“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.
CHAPTER
8
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 Grandfatherwas 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 bir
d—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.
At school shortly thereafter, a group of children were exchanging boasts. A little girl with black pigtails and an overbite said, “I can do thirty-seven cartwheels without getting dizzy.” Another, with the fattest belly in class, boasted, “I can eat fourteen pancakes at one time!” A third, the most notorious liar in class, claimed, “My daddy is going on a safari hunt to Africa next year and he’s taking me with him.”
Eleanor edged close to their exclusive circle and offered timidly, “I can call the birds and make them eat off my hand.”
They gaped at her as if she were a lunatic, then tittered and closed their ranks once again. After that the taunts were whispered loudly enough so they wouldn’t fail to reach her ears— Crazy Elly See, talks to birds and lives in that house with the shades pulled down, she and her batty mother and her battier grandma and grandpa.
It was during one of her truancies from school that she first spoke to Glendon Dinsmore. She was late heading home and came bursting from the woods, clattering down a steep embankment, sending rocks tumbling to the road below, startling a mule that brayed and sidestepped, nearly overturning Dinsmore’s wagon.
“Whoa!” he barked, while the animal nearly splintered the singletree with a powerful kick. When he’d gotten the beast under control, he took off his dusty felt hat and whacked it on the wagon seat in agitation. “Lord a-mighty, girl, what you mean by stormin’ outa the woods that way!”
“I’m in a hurry. Gotta get home before the schoolkids walk by.”
“Well, you scared poor Madam out of her last-year’s hair! You ought to be more careful around animals.”
“Sorry,” she replied, mollified.
“Aww...” He thumped his hat back on and seemed to mellow. “Guess you didn’t stop to think. But you be more careful next time, you hear?” He glanced speculatively at the woods, then back at her. “So you’re playin’ hooky, huh?” When she didn’t answer, his look grew shrewder and he thrust his head forward. “Hey, don’t I know you?”
She crossed her arms behind her back, rocked left to right twice. “You used to deliver ice to our house when I was little.”
“I did?” She nodded while he scratched his temple, pushing the hat askew. “What’s your name again?”
“Elly See.”
“Elly See...” He paused to recall. “Why, of course. I remember now. And mine’s Glendon Dinsmore.”
“I know.”
“You know?” He gave a crooked smile of surprise. “Well, how about that? Don’t come to your house no more, though.”
Elly scuffed the dirt with her toe. “I know. Grampa bought an electric refrigerator so we wouldn’t have to have ice delivered no more. They don’t like people comin’ in.”
“Oh... so... I wondered.” He motioned along the road with a thumb and offered, “I’m goin’ your way. Can I give you a lift?”
She shook her head, clasping her hands more tightly behind her back, making her dress front appear as if she’d tucked two acorns inside. He was a grown-up man by now, a good seventeen, eighteen years old, she figured. If Grandma saw her coming home in his wagon she’d end up doing hours on her knees.
“Well, why not? Madam don’t mind pullin’ two.”
“I’d get in trouble. I’m s’posed to come straight home from school and I ain’t supposed to talk to strangers.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. You come up this way often?”
She studied him warily. “Just... sometimes.”
“What you do up there in the woods?”
“I study birds.” As an afterthought, she added, “For school, you know?”
He raised his chin and nodded wisely, as if to say, Ah, I see.
“Birds is nice,” he offered, then picked up the reins. “Well, maybe I’ll run into you again someday, but I better not keep you now. So long, Elly.”
She watched him drive away, mystified. He was the first person in her twelve-year experience who’d ever treated her as if she weren’t either crazy or a child of shame. She thought about him during prayers after that, to take her mind off her aching knees. He was a rather scruffy-looking fellow, dressed in overalls and thick boots, with only enough beard to make him look prickly. But she didn’t care about his looks, only that he treated her as if she weren’t some oddity.
The next time she escaped to the woods she found a spot high above the rocky bank behind a juniper bush where she could watch the road and remain hidden. From her secret perch she waited for him to reappear. When he didn’t, she was surprised to find herself disappointed. She watched for three days before giving up, never fully understanding what she’d expected had he come along the road as before. Talk, she supposed. It had felt good to simply talk to someone.
Nearly a full year passed before she ran into him again. It was autumn but warm, a day of bright leaves and dusky sky. Elly was stalking bobwhites, the little lords of the fencerows whose voices she loved. Unable to flush any along the fenceline, she headed into the woods to search in heavier cover where they roosted in bevies on the ground, facing outward. She was calling in a clear whistle: quoi-lee, quoi-lee, when she flushed not a quail from the sumac bushes, but Glendon Dinsmore from over the next hill. She stopped in her tracks and watched him approach, cradling a gun in one arm. He raised the other, waved, and called, “Hey, Elly!”
She stood sober, awaiting his arrival. Stopping in front of her, he repeated, “Hey, Elly.”
“Hey, Glendon,” she returned.
“How you doin’?”
“Doin’ all right, I reckon.”
They stood for a moment in a void. She appraised him smilelessly, while he appeared pleased at having run into her. He looked exactly as he had last time: same overalls, same scruffy beard, same dusty hat. Finally he shifted his stance, rubbed his nose and inquired, “So, how’s them birds of yours?”
“What birds?” Her birds were her business, nobody else’s.
“You said you was studyin’ birds. What you learnin’?”
He’d remembered for a whole year that she studied birds? Elly softened. “I’m tryin’ to call the bobwhites outa hiding.”
“You can call ‘em? Golly.” He sounded impressed, unlike the girls at school.
“Sometimes. Sometimes it don’t work. What you doin’ with that there gun?”
“Huntin’.”
“Huntin’! You mean you shoot critters?”
“Deer, I do.”
“I couldn’t never shoot no critter.”
“My daddy and me, we eat the deer.”
“Well, I hope you don’t get one.”
He reared back and laughed, one brief hoot, then said, “Girlie, you’re somethin’. I ‘membered, you was somethin’. So, did you see any bobwhites?”
“Nope. Not yet. You see any deer?”
“Nope, not yet.”
“I seen one, but I won’t tell you where. I see him almost every day.”
“You come out here every day?”
“Pret’ near.”
“Me too, during huntin’ season.”
She pondered that momentarily, but any suggestion of meeting again seemed ludicrous. After all, she was only thirteen and he was five years older.
Frightened by the mere thought, she spun away abruptly. “I gotta go.” She trotted off.
“Hey, Elly, wait!”
“What?”
She halted twenty feet away, facing him.
“Maybe I’ll see y’ out here sometime. I mean, well, huntin’ season’s on a couple more weeks.”
“Maybe.” She studied him in silence, then repeated, “I gotta go. If I ain’t home by five after four they make me pray an extra half hour.”
Again she spun and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, amazed by his friendli
ness and the fact that he seemed to care not a whit about her craziness. After all, he’d been inside that house; he knew where she came from, knew her people. Yet he wanted to be her friend.
She went back to the same spot the next day but hid where he couldn’t see her. She watched him approach over the same hill, the gun again on one arm, a fat cloth sack in his other. He sat down beneath a tree, laid the gun across his lap and the sack at his hip. He pushed back his dusty hat, fished a corncob pipe from his bib, filled it from a drawstring sack and lit it with a wooden match. She thought she had never in her life seen anyone so content.
He smoked the entire pipe, his lumpy boots crossed, one arm resting over his stomach. When he knocked the dottle from his pipe and ground it dead with his boot, she grew panicky. In a minute he would leave!
She stepped out of hiding and stood still, waiting for him to spot her. When he did, his face lit in a smile.
“Well, howdy!”
“Howdy yourself.”
“Fine day, id’n’t it?”
One day was pretty much like the next to her. She squinted at the sky and remained silent.
“Brought you somethin’,” he said, getting to his feet.
“For me?” Her eyes grew suspicious. Where she came from nobody did anything nice for anybody.
“For your birds.” He leaned down and picked up the fat sack tied with twine.
She stared at it, speechless.
“How’s your bird studyin’ comin’?”
“Oh... fine. Just fine.”
“Last year you was studyin’ them for school. What you doin’ it for this year?”
“Just for fun. I like birds.”
“Me too.” He set the sack near her toes. “What grade you in?”
“Seventh.”
“You like it?”
“Not as much as last year. Last year I had Miss Natwick.”
“I had her, too. Didn’t care much for school, though. I dropped out after eighth. Took the ice route then and help my daddy around the place.” He gestured with his head. “Me and him, we live back there, up on Rock Creek Road.”