Seven
Flood
Within a few weeks, Momma returned to her shift at the mill. We urged her to retire, but she insisted she wanted to go back to work. She looked smaller and older. The dark circles remained under her eyes. The differences in her appearance seemed to me to be indications, not only of the change in her health, but signs of a new momma sprung from her revelation about my father.
With self-conscious discretion, I observed the faces of my brother and sisters for similarities to Momma and Daddy. Joe looked the most like Daddy, same dark hair, brown eyes, and receding hairline. The same lumbering gait. Bertie was stocky, like Daddy and Joe, but had Momma’s height and complexion. Rita was the most slender and graceful, with straight red hair and fair skin. With a hand mirror, I studied my own profile. I looked like my mother. The planes of my face from cheek to jaw might have been slightly different from hers, my face maybe longer, more oval. I had fewer freckles and my hands were bigger. Those things had always been true. Nothing had changed except what I now knew. My inspections always left me with emotional vertigo.
With the farm, four kids, and the bookkeeping for our horse business, I spent little time in Clarion, and always combined errands with visits to Momma’s. Since the funeral, I was less comfortable in town. I wanted to avoid every set of eyes there. And it seemed especially important to be home each day when the girls returned from school. But after Momma’s revelation, I made more frequent trips to town during the school day, looking for every opportunity to be alone with her. Always someone else seemed to be within earshot—Daddy, my brother, or one of sisters. My aunts and uncles came by more often, too.
One weekday evening, I drove into town to bring Momma some of my peach jam, her favorite. I found her alone in the kitchen washing the supper dishes. Daddy and Joe were in the yard, deep under the hood of Joe’s truck.
Her back looked more delicate than I was accustomed to, and it wasn’t like her to not notice when someone came into the room. She jumped in surprise, then smiled when I pulled a dish towel out of the kitchen drawer. “Sneaking up on me, huh?”
I began drying the dishes stacked in the drainer.
Before I could speak, she said, “If anything ever happens to me and your daddy, I want your sisters and Joe to have the furniture and the cars.” Her voice was soft and thoughtful. I’d obviously interrupted her reverie about these things.
“What?” I didn’t want our conversation to go there. I didn’t want to think about anything more happening to her.
“We gave you and Adam the farm. We don’t have anything comparable for them. It would only be fair.”
“And we’re very, very grateful for the farm, Momma. Because of the farm, we don’t need another car or more furniture.” To my own ears, my voice sounded stilted and thick.
She heard the change of direction in my tone. The platter she was handing me stopped above my hand.
I took the platter and continued, “Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”
Momma’s hands dropped into the soapy water. She shook her head. “I know I should have told you sooner. First, you were just too young. And there were times when you were a little girl, you already seemed to know. You were always wandering off by yourself as if you were looking for something or somebody. For years, I convinced myself you already did, somehow, know. Your daddy didn’t think it would do any good to tell you.”
“Daddy didn’t want me to know?” I fought the impulse to take her by the shoulders and shout, “How could you have kept it from me for so many years? How?” But something in her posture stopped me.
“Evelyn, I didn’t want you to feel you were different from Joe, Bertie, and Rita. I wanted you to feel you belonged to both of us—I owed that to him, if he was willing to take on the responsibility of raising you. Then you got older, I was afraid of what you would think of me.” I heard both a mild challenge and a plea in the firmness of her voice.
As I held her gaze, I heard Daddy and Joe laughing as their footsteps approached.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Momma whispered. As they walked into the kitchen, she turned back to the dishes, tears in her eyes.
Days later, I went into town with Adam one day and asked him to drive by Momma’s house on the way to the feed store. I knew Momma would be home from the mill by then and when I saw that Daddy’s car was gone and the back door open, I had Adam drop me off. I gave him the grocery list. “After the feed store, pick up these things, then come back for me,” I said as I slipped out of the truck.
I usually did the grocery shopping, but Adam took the list and nodded without comment.
I hoped to find Momma alone. The house was so quiet and still, for a moment I thought no one was home. Then I saw Bertie sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee. She’d recently dyed her auburn hair blond and the new color unsettled me. A magazine lay open in front of her, and her daughter, Susie, slept sprawled in her lap, legs and arms dangling.
Nothing in the house moved except her hand flipping the magazine pages and then stopping to bring the cup up to her lips.
Her head jerked up when I stepped from the back porch into the kitchen. I saw the pinched look on her face as she took in the surprise of me being there.
“What is it?” I asked. “Where’s Momma?”
Bertie nodded her head in the direction of the bedroom. “I checked on her a few minutes ago. She was still sleeping.” She went back to her magazine. The pages made a soft, rasping sound as she flicked through them. Otherwise, the room was so quiet I could hear myself swallow. The afternoon air brimmed, still and humid.
I tiptoed into Momma’s room. She lay on her side of the bed, facing the window. I walked around the bed. Her face hung slack and gray. A bucket sat on the floor next to her. I touched her forehead; it was cool and moist. I went back to the kitchen.
“How long has this been going on? I thought she was getting better.” I stood behind Bertie as I poured myself a cup of coffee.
She twisted around in her chair, scowling. Susie stirred on her lap. Despite the pleasure Bertie took in delivering news, she always seemed annoyed at others’ complementary ignorance. “At least a week. If you were around more, you’d know. Daddy says she didn’t want to worry us. I’ve been coming by every day this week and checking on her after her shift is over. She’s always lying down. She must come straight home from work and go to bed. Every day. Daddy’s been getting supper for them at Bun’s Café.”
I went back in and checked on Momma again. Her skin didn’t look right. Adam’s truck pulled up, and then the screen door squeaked.
“She’s in there,” I heard Bertie say. She’d hardly said a word to him since the funeral.
He appeared beside me, studied Momma’s face, and glanced at the bucket. Then he touched her forehead just as I had. Momma had always been a light sleeper, but she did not stir.
Adam looked at me then, ran his eyes over my features the way he used to, but his face was sad. “I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he whispered.
We walked arm in arm back into the kitchen. Susie was awake now, her head still hanging over her momma’s arm, and she grinned upside down at Adam and waved. “Hey, Uncle Adam.” She hadn’t been at the funeral.
Bertie pulled out a pack of Pall Malls and lit one. “I’ll bring a meat loaf and some potatoes over tonight and some of the field peas you canned for us.”
She looked at me expectantly while Susie climbed down from her lap. But I just stood there stupidly. I shivered with the sudden understanding that I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems that I hadn’t seen the obvious: the surgeons hadn’t gotten all the cancer.
Bertie got up, tapped her cigarette ash into the sink, and stared at me.
Adam rubbed Susie’s back as she hugged his leg. “We’ll bring something by tomorrow for their dinner. Anything in particular bothering her stomach?” he asked.
Bertie directed her answer at me as she beckoned Susie. “Not that I’ve heard. Maybe if she has some decent food, she’ll be able to keep it down. She needed more time to rest after the surgery. Y’all can go on. I’ll stay with her till Daddy gets back.” Her voice was thick and soft as she began braiding her daughter’s hair.
Somehow, I got out to the car. We rode home in silence.
It had begun.
Momma seemed to give up once we started taking care of her every day. A few days later, Daddy rushed her to the emergency room. The word “cancer” invaded our vocabulary. “Inoperable” remained the whispered obscenity. Each day, one of us went by to stay with her and make dinner for them.
I went to Momma’s almost every day. But we were never alone. Once the neighbors heard she was sick again, they began bringing dishes of food.
Finally, one sunny afternoon, she and I were alone. Daddy was at work. I didn’t expect Adam to pick me up for another hour. Rita would be by then to bathe Momma and make dinner.
Rail-thin now, Momma chilled easily and preferred hot tea instead of iced tea. I heard her restless moans as I waited in the kitchen for her tea to steep. I set a glass and fresh pitcher of water on the tray with her cup of tea and carried it to her room. The doctors had recently upped the dosage on her pain medication and she asked for it every four hours on the dot.
Swallowing pills had become difficult for her; she was on liquid morphine. She opened her mouth like a child as I held the full tablespoon out and she took it hungrily. She scowled patiently, waiting for the morphine’s effects. The unhealthy prominence of her cheekbones seemed like a rebuke to my list of questions about my father.
I waited for the drug’s effects. Lately, it seemed to make her less drowsy, as if the pain now sopped up the morphine’s peripheral effects. After a few moments, her body relaxed, but her eyes retained a vigilant brightness, as if she anticipated the pain’s immediate return.
For weeks, I had questions ready for her, polished and clear, but suddenly they seemed a jumble caught between two simple sentiments: How could she have kept my father’s name from me for so long? What else had she not told me?
I settled the blanket up around her chest and startled at the sound of footsteps on the back porch.
Momma turned her head slowly and smiled weakly at Adam as he paused in the bedroom doorway. I stifled a disappointed moan. My opportunity was gone. I had not told Adam Momma’s news.
“I’m early, but I thought I’d . . .” he apologized.
Momma patted the bedspread beside her and Adam sat on Daddy’s side of the bed.
My thwarted questions filled my throat. Everything I did not understand about both Momma and Adam seemed to congeal into one spot in my chest.
I fought my tears and swallowed. Then my frustration gave way, surrendering to his presence. “Adam, go back out and check to make sure no one else is in the house. Check the driveway. The front door, too. Make sure there’s no one on the way.”
He glanced quickly at Momma. Her shoulder moved slightly, suggesting a shrug.
“Go on,” I said. “Then come back in here with us.”
Momma held my gaze while we listened to Adam’s footsteps echo the length of the silent house.
When he came back into the bedroom, I offered him my chair next to Momma’s side of the bed. Still puzzled, he sat and looked up at me.
I leaned over Adam’s shoulder, picked up Momma’s hand, and put it in his. “Go ahead.” I tapped him on the chest. “Show her.”
His eyes searched my face, not understanding.
“All she’s known is the pain of your voice. And she’s in pain now.”
“Evelyn I can’t change that.”
“I know. But she should know you. Let her hear who you are. And it will soothe her.”
His face softened.
Momma frowned at me, confused, then looked to Adam as he placed her hand on his breastbone and covered it with both of his. His lips parted in a gentle “ahh.”
As I closed the bedroom door behind me, the first wave resonated sweetly across the room.
In the kitchen, I poured myself a cup of coffee. My hands shook slightly.
The distinct, sweet tonal waves of Adam’s voice rose and fell in the rhythms of a long, slow heartbeat. More complex than what he had done with the girls in the mountains, this song swelled with an optimistic sadness and receded in tender resignation.
Outside, early afternoon brilliance filled the empty streets and yards of the mill-village. All the children were in school, the same schools I had gone to. The mill hummed. All the night-shift mill workers were home sleeping. Beyond the mill lay downtown Clarion and the farm, more land, hills, then the mountains. So many different voices.
I paced the house with deliberate quietness, looking out the front door and then the back door, stopping once outside of Momma’s bedroom to place my hand on the door and feel the vibration of his voice through the wood.
Slowly, Adam’s song receded, as if gradually absorbed by the air. Stillness filled the house.
When I returned to the bedroom, Momma sat upright and they embraced chest to chest. Her arms circled Adam loosely. He supported Momma’s back and cupped her head as he lay her back down on the pillows. She seemed to fall asleep immediately, a small, relaxed smile on her lips. Tears streaked down Adam’s face. We tiptoed out.
Back in the kitchen, Adam wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “She is leaving soon.” A hard sorrow deepened his voice.
“Did she say anything?”
“Not a word. Neither of us.”
Rita’s car appeared in the driveway, sunlight flashing off the windshield.
“I’ll wait for you in the truck,” he said.
Rita shot a wary glance at Adam as they passed each other on the porch. Neither spoke.
“She’s had a good day,” I told Rita as I gathered up my purse.
Momma died quietly in her sleep five days later. She and I never had another moment alone when she was awake and coherent. We never discussed Ben Mullins again or the time she spent alone with Adam. Once, as she drifted off into a morphine drowse, she rolled her head on the pillow and looked over at me. “You’ve had your secrets, too.” That was the last clear statement she made to me.
What do we ever know of our mothers? I thought I knew her. But I’d seen her as a child sees a good mother—pure, transparent, incapable of deception.
She was the only person I ever really wanted to tell about Adam, the only one I felt ashamed of lying to. I never got to tell her I forgave her. I never got to ask for a map to help me through the terrain of my own secrets, my own marital bargains.
I tried to set aside what Momma had told me while we prepared for her funeral. But I felt the current of it run through me when I was near my father, brother, and sisters. My eyes kept wandering over their features, not just for the similarities and differences between us, but for what they knew. I gained nothing by my scrutiny. All I saw in their faces was a mirror of my own grief.
The speed of her death surprised us all. She’d never been sick before. We thought we’d have her for months longer. Rita, who had held on to the certainty that Momma would get better, collapsed in on herself, her face vague. Daddy fell into a constant stupor. Joe, Bertie, and I made arrangements for the viewing and the funeral. We kept it simple, the way Momma would have wanted it.
Then Bertie called. As I drove to Momma’s house, my anxiety centered on Adam. I also wondered if Momma had said anything to them. Maybe Daddy had told them I was their half-sister. Maybe they wanted to discuss that. At best, I hoped to hear about some disagreement between them, something that didn’t involve me at all. But Joe stood on her porch and held the door open for me when I got out of the car. The apology on his face ended my suspense. We were there to discuss Adam.
Bertie sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Joe poured two more cups and set them in the pool of yellow morning light on the checkered tablecloth. He turned a chair around and straddled its back. Neither of them met my eye.
When Joe took a deep breath to begin, I held up my hand to stop him and both of them looked at me, waiting. I gripped my coffee cup. “I think my family needs a private viewing before the funeral,” I said.
Joe nodded. Bertie lit a cigarette and leaned back, her jaw flexing.
I continued, “No surprises this time.” I shook my head and bit my lip. I thought of that force in Adam, that horrible cry. I knew no way to hold that at bay.
Joe patted my hand. “That would be good, sis.”
I began to cry.
“Damn good.” Bertie sucked on her cigarette and went to the stove to fill her cup again.
I wiped my face. “But I do want us to be able to say good-bye to Momma. All of us.”
Bertie turned at the stove and gave me her hard, quizzical look.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll talk to the funeral home and the preacher. Arrange for us to go to the church early in the morning and view the body. It’ll just be me and the girls at the funeral,” I said.
Joe rubbed my hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay, Evelyn.”
Bertie shook her head. “I don’t want Momma’s funeral ruined. I don’t want Adam—”
“Bertie! She’s agreeing!” Joe shushed her.
Silence followed. Bertie stood up and cleared the table, clattering our coffee cups into the sink.
I blew my nose. “One other thing. Something I want.” I waited for Bertie to finish with the dishes. I wanted to make sure I had her attention. “I don’t want to see Frank at the funeral. Just thinking about him . . .” And for a second I saw Frank, his blank animal stare as he looked down at Jennie on the ground.
Joe nodded several times. “Sure, sure.”
Bertie shrugged. “Keeping Frank out of a church will not be a problem.”
“Mary’s never liked him. Says he gives her the willies,” Joe added.
I dreaded telling Adam about my family’s plans to keep him away from the funeral of the only mother he’d ever known. I did so cowardly, in bed, in the darkness.
“That’s a good solution. I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again,” he responded.
“You don’t have to go at all, if you don’t want to, Adam.”
He lay beside me, taut.
Since Jennie’s death, he’d held himself back in everything, even with me. Days went by without intimacy. Then he would turn silently to me in the dark, not out of love but out of need, and there was a fierceness to his touch that overwhelmed me. We went at each other as if the hounds of hell were after us. Or we were the hounds themselves. The act was not lovemaking, but grief-making, a new beast manifest, without tenderness, raw and exhausting, throwing us into black, dreamless sleep. His sweet tones seemed to have died with Jennie. His climax came with a simple shuddering moan.
But that night, after I told him about the arrangements for Momma’s funeral, I turned him on his back and began to touch him with our former delicacy. He took my hand and moved it off of his chest.
“No,” I said, pinned his wrist to the bed, and began tracing his breastbone with my other hand. I touched every part of him, my hands open against his smoothness. He did not move again to stop me, but lay rigid before me.
I knew him well. And I took him. Eventually, he pressed up to meet me, and his voice rose as sharp and dark as it had been at Jennie’s funeral, though, thankfully, far less intense and much briefer. My breastbone and temples rang painfully. Afterward, we did not sleep but lay next to each other in the sudden cool of our sweat.
We decided that Adam and I would skip the wake and he would have his own private viewing of Momma’s body early on the morning of the funeral.
I woke in the middle of the night before the funeral, Adam alert beside me.
“We could go now. We don’t have to wait for daylight,” I said.
We began to dress. I went to the closet, but Adam reached for his dungarees. “She wouldn’t mind,” he said. “And no one else will be there.”
I hung my skirt back on the hanger and put on a pair of pants and an old sweater.
We drove to the church in silence. A train whistled in the distance. Mist slid over the fields near the church. The ground sparkled white under the streetlights with the first frost of the season.
All churches were left unlocked back then, refuges for sudden repenters. We walked in quietly, as if trying not to disturb anyone. Faint moonlight diffused through the yellow glass windows. Being in the church at such an odd hour felt both sinful and holy.
Momma’s coffin sat in front of the pulpit, the lid shut. I went to turn on the lights while Adam opened the coffin. The electric light brought the room back to its ordinary self.
I’d seen her the day before at the funeral home, but this was Adam’s first time seeing her. She didn’t look like herself. She had lost so much weight in the last weeks. Her face had a strained, unnatural look. Only her hands were unchanged. All my life, I had seen those hands moving, giving me the world. Now they lay stilled.
“Momma,” Adam said, touching her hands. “Good-bye, Momma.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. I was acutely aware of him beside me, his ragged breath, his sweat. I braced myself for his howl.
But he remained silent. After a while, he turned and faced the pews. He leaned over and gripped the back of the first pew. His shoulders tightened. He looked so alone, the dark rows of empty seats in front of him. I thought of the faces that would fill the church later in the day, the people we were avoiding. I pressed my hand between his shoulder blades and readied myself. He took a sharp, deep breath.
There was no horrid cry. Instead, he fell to his knees and wept like an ordinary man, his head on the hard wood of the pew. We held each other for a long time. Then we went home.
He did not go to bed, though it was still hours until dawn; instead he began to pack. “I’m going up into the mountains,” he announced.
I wanted to stop him, to insist he not go, but I saw the faraway look on his face. He was already gone.
While I packed some food for him, he went to say good-bye to the girls. Rosie’s voice rose in protest then fell again as he soothed her.
“Adam.” I took his arm as he passed.
“It’ll just be a couple of days. Call Wallace for me. Let him know he may need Cleatus’s help for the next few days.”
Then he left.
My anger at death splintered into a brittle rage toward those people in the congregation who had turned against Adam. I could not allow myself such brittleness. I could not afford to break: my daughters slept down the hall. I lay in bed, comforting myself with images of Adam in the forest, howling his strange songs to an audience of receptive wildlife. I remembered the radiance of his face when he’d told me about his mountain trips and how the mountain returned his calls. I hoped it did this time. I wished that solace for him.
I must have slept, for I woke to the gentle percolation of the coffeepot. Adam sat at the kitchen table, a cup in front of him.
“You haven’t left yet?”
“No, I’ll go after the funeral. The truck is packed. I got a few miles down the road then turned around . . . the girls . . . She was their grandmother. I should be there with them.”
“You want to come to the funeral?” I held the coffeepot over my empty cup.
“Yes, I should sit with them. I am their father.” He did not look at me.
“But . . .”
He shook his head. “You told me they’ll be singing at the funeral and I told them I’d always be there when they sang.”
I remembered his face in the barn after Jennie’s funeral, when I had silenced him with the girls. I did not press him further.
Cars packed the church parking lot. Momma had lived all of her life in Clarion. The bereaved family is always the focus of a funeral, but I felt the extra stir of attention as we entered the church, Adam first with Sarah holding his hand. I braced myself against the stares and kept my eyes steady on Adam’s shoulders above Gracie and Rosie’s. Lil clutched my hand.
The funeral home usher stopped Adam halfway down the aisle. My heart pounded so hard, I coughed. But the usher nodded and led us to the second pew. Daddy sat in the front pew between Rita and Joe. I pushed ahead to make sure I would be sitting beside Adam. Next to Joe, Bertie turned and glared, her face reddening as we filed in behind them. She grabbed Joe, who looked up, a question on his face. I touched his shoulder in a gentle plea as I passed behind him. Rita gave us a panicked, quick smile.
Behind us, footsteps sounded on the wood floor. Then the vestibule door creaked as it swung open and shut. Someone had left the church. Reverend Paul rose. The footsteps and muttering voices halted abruptly.
I cannot remember any of what the reverend said about Momma. Once again, Sarah sat on Adam’s lap and I lay my hand on his thigh, under her warm, thin leg. I concentrated on fighting the waves of nausea that kept rising to my throat.
When the reverend finished, he announced that the girls would be singing “Open My Eyes, That I May See,” Momma’s favorite hymn. Gracie rose first and motioned to the younger ones. They followed her to the pulpit single-file. The congregation shifted, a murmur swept through the room as Gracie pulled up a step for Sarah to stand on. Gracie and Rosie exchanged looks, squared their shoulders, and gazed out over the congregation. Lil and Sarah focused on me and Adam.
Gracie nodded to the pianist, who struck the introductory bars. Then Gracie’s pure, strong alto rang out, followed by the three younger sopranos. I wanted to shut my eyes and ride that sweetness, to rest mindlessly on the resonance of their voices. But I had told them to look at me if they got shy. They did not need that crutch. They sang full and steady without hesitation.
“Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit Divine.” Each time they hit the chorus, I thought I heard a fifth singer as their voices converged on those final notes. For a few moments, my heart ceased its hammering and the nausea left me. I squeezed Adam’s hand as the girls finished and returned to us.
Reverend Paul led another Scripture reading. Then it was time to view her body. Adam closed his eyes briefly as Lil scrambled past his knees. “Go on,” he whispered to Sarah, who held his hand and tried to pull him to his feet.
Seeing the dead helps the body understand what the mind does not want to grasp and the heart longs to deny. But I hated the ritual of the funeral at that moment. I wanted to send my girls running down the aisle out into the sun, out beyond this sorrow, past Clarion.
But we filed up to the coffin, Gracie and Rosie stately in their new poise. Lil looked once at her grandmother and then quickly away as she hugged my hip. Sarah just stared, her eyes glued to Momma’s face, as Gracie, who had been holding her up to see over the side of the coffin, lowered her back to the floor. I resisted the urge to keep looking back at Adam still seated behind us. I braced myself, but there were only the normal sounds of people moving in a quiet church.
Adam met us at the end of the pew and we walked out behind Daddy, who leaned on Rita’s arm. As we passed, everyone backed up or turned suddenly to speak to a neighbor. A little girl pivoted away from us to bury her head in her mother’s skirt.
We were naked. My skin was on fire.
The congregation came with us to the graveside service. I noticed a few sideways glances. Then we all gathered at Momma’s for the covered-dish supper. The house swelled with people, their perfumes and sweat mingling with the odor of coffee and fried chicken. The men had their whiskey and cigarettes on the back porch. They parted to let us through, but no one spoke. Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed painfully.
Uncle Otis, already drunk, hugged everyone and told them how much he loved his big sister. I did not see Daddy. I handed Sarah to Adam. With a child in his arms, maybe someone would find him approachable.
I found Daddy in the bedroom, lifting the lid off Momma’s little jewelry box and then setting it back in place. Then he rearranged her comb and brush and lifted the lid of the jewelry box again. His shoulders, suddenly frail, slumped forward. I peeled his fingers off the box lid and laid it down. I held his face, forcing him to look at me. His head felt fragile between my hands. He was not my father, but he was the man who raised me. “Daddy, we’re going to go into the kitchen and you will eat your supper. You have to eat now.”
His watery, bloodshot eyes focused, but he didn’t see me.
He let me take his arm and lead him into the kitchen. I sat him at the head of the table, the bowls of neighbors’ offerings crowded in front of him. Rita made him a plate.
“Thanks.” Joe tried to smile at me. “None of us could get him to come out of the bedroom. Not even Bertie.”
After Daddy began to eat, I joined Adam. Mavis Montgomery had cornered him and chatted excitedly, praising the girls’ singing. She had been in the hospital during Jennie’s funeral. Even in the crowded house, a small space remained around them.
I stayed by Adam’s side until I thought I glimpsed Frank’s face through the packed living room. All I could see was that familiar brow turning away from me, but I was certain it was him. The shock of seeing him lurched to the surface of my skin. “Let’s go. Now,” I whispered to Adam. In a glance, I saw that Adam had not spotted Frank yet. Quickly, I gathered up the girls and we left.
The next morning, Adam departed for his mountain trip. He returned two days later, not jovial and refreshed as he normally was after his retreats, but home and safe.
The days ached. The sky bruised my eyes. Every minor detail of daily life—the crumpled, folded brown bags the girls carried their apples and snacks to school in; the small scar on one of the horse’s flanks; Adam’s muddy chaps drying on the back porch—all seemed a knot of meaning, dense and indecipherable and simultaneously devoid of meaning. I hated the sorrow that seemed to be slowly unhinging my world.
The sparse, damaged fibers still holding me together were worn thinner by Momma’s revelation. In my sleep, I met her in the white space of dreams, where I asked my questions and she answered. She spoke reluctantly. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. I woke in a hot, futile rage.
My biological father’s ignorance seemed unjust, unnatural. Men have an alien, physical capacity for innocence: their bodies can bring forth life that they know nothing of. Only in complete insanity or a coma could a woman do such a thing.
A week after Momma’s funeral, I told Adam I was going grocery shopping, and while Daddy worked his shift at the mill, I went through Momma’s things, spending hours investigating every corner of her house. I pulled out drawers and turned them upside down. Sweeping her dresses aside, I searched the closet corners. I held each book by its spine and shook it. Nothing. Thirty-nine years had wiped out any trace there might have been of him. Every trace but me.
The Sunday after my private search, Bertie, Rita, Mary, and I met at Momma’s to go through her clothes and jewelry. I lingered after they left, straightening the kitchen, then followed Daddy’s pipe smoke through the house to the front porch. I found him in his usual spot, sitting in his rocker, puffing on his pipe. A large oak tree spread its branches over the yard and the land sloped so that the mill was a hundred feet from the porch. All my life he had sat in that same spot on the porch, facing the mill.
Now he was my only source of information. His gaze, locked on the mill, held the vague softness of a man looking out to sea, expecting nothing. He had regained his color since the funeral, but none of the weight he had lost during the last months of Momma’s life. He was suddenly an old man.
My determination to confront him wavered, and my direct, rehearsed questions vanished. “You and Momma took care of all of us kids the same. I never felt I was treated worse. But you two always let me wander off on my own. I had more freedom. Why was that, Daddy?”
His rocking continued uninterrupted for so long, I thought he might ignore my question. Then he stopped and took his pipe out of his mouth. “You didn’t need any more than what you were given. You kept to yourself and took care of yourself. Even when you were a bitty little thing and kept wandering off. We didn’t let you go. You went. And you found your way around. Never snake-bit. Never hurt. The others—especially Rita—needed more watching, needed more discipline. You just didn’t need it—Would’a been a waste on you.” He put his pipe back in his mouth and began rocking again.
“Why do you think I was different?” My heart banged in my chest.
“That’s just how it was. I’m sure your girls are the same, some needing more than others. That’s all there is to it.”
I was not prepared for him to draw parallels between his situation and mine, but I pressed on. “That’s all there is to it?”
“Yep, that’s it.” He returned his pipe to his lips, took a long drag. His rocking chair squeaked dismissively as he squinted at the mill.
That old longing swelled in my throat. I’d always wanted more from him. More affection, more discipline, more stories, more touch. But, lately, I also felt the press of gratitude. He’d kept Momma from the wrath of her stern father and the scorn of a whole town. He was still protecting her.
I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I patted the arm of his rocker. “Well, I thank you for all of it” was the best I could do. I did not have the will or energy to goad my father for more. And what good would it have done? Long ago, he had chosen his path. I let the sleeping dog of my mother’s secret lie.
I was, in my own way, a perverse echo of her.
Before the deaths, Adam had remained, in some essential way, innocent. He had, as far as I knew, never been a child. He hadn’t been bent, while very young and still supple, by the knowledge of mortality that the death of a pet or a distant relative brings.
An uncharacteristic quietness enveloped him. He’d always been capable of a kind of absorbed, open calm, especially when working with a damaged horse or trying to quiet the girls, but now his stillness seemed vacant, no longer a sign of will and effort, but an absence of both. When the girls went to him or the horses turned to Adam, he opened his hands, blind hands brushing lightly over the world, his body operating on rote memory. The only time he seemed at peace and fully present was when he listened to his daughters singing.
When Jennie died, the girls mourned, but the ostracism of their father, followed by their grandmother’s death, propelled them into another level of isolation. We’d always been somewhat removed from life in Clarion and the mill-village, but now the four of them were far less interested in going into town or visiting cousins. With Momma’s death, they seemed to retract into a greater reliance on each other while simultaneously surrendering to their individual passions and quirks. At some point, most evenings, they would gather at the kitchen table with their homework. On the evenings they had no homework, they would linger there after dinner.
Gracie focused on academics, particularly history. Her grades had always been high but they rose to straight As. She became the family manager, spending more time with her younger sisters, helping me get them ready for school, checking on their homework, singing them to sleep at night when they needed it. Rosie continued riding as much as possible. Formerly the most volatile of her sisters, she became the most quiet and cooperative, a change I could not read as wholly positive. Lil read voraciously, mostly fantasies in which good wizards and witches prevailed over evil. If she had no chores and nothing to read, she cleaned and cleaned the house. Each afternoon after school, she swept the front and back porches, jabbing at the boards of the floor until she banished every speck of dirt. Sarah, of course, continued to draw. Orange-haired girls, increasingly more detailed and realistically proportioned, crowded her drawings, their dresses blood-red. Their eyes wide circles. Their mouths open in an O of terror or song.
I still had not shared with Adam what Momma had told me. For the first time ever, I kept something from him. But Momma’s story of my father began to plague me. I grasped at it for some relief from the memories of Jennie on the ground, of Adam’s bloody hands on the steering wheel, and Momma’s gray face before she died. If I was imagining my biological father walking down a street, eating a sandwich, lying down next to his wife for an afternoon nap, or even buried on some faraway, strange hill, I was also less aware of Adam sleeping and unresponsive next to me.
My blood and bones, the tonality of my voice, the shape of my fingernails, my love of reading, even the roundness of my hips, might have been given to me by a man I’d never met. What else did I not know? The thought of my ignorance about my paternity made me shudder. I lived daily with the secret of having chosen a stranger to father my own children. How could I brush aside this news about my father? His blood ran in the veins of my daughters, mingling with Adam’s.
By 1965, the Piedmont Hotel, where my mother and Benjamin Mullins had been lovers, reeked of poverty and full ashtrays. An old, unshaven man slumped in an overstuffed chair in the lobby. The thin-necked clerk at the counter reluctantly put down his comic book to survey my plain dress and my lack of luggage.
“Is there still a stairway in the back?” I asked. “Can I see one of the second-floor rooms?”
He hesitated, then led me down a dank, uncarpeted hall and up a flight of narrow stairs, retracing my mother’s footsteps.
“Here, this one.” I stopped him at the first door.
He said nothing, just shrugged and unlocked the door.
The vertically striped wallpaper had faded to yellows and grays. A dark old bureau leaned in one corner, its missing leg replaced by a brick. Morning light, stark and unkind, shone through two dirty windows, illuminating a clot-colored bedspread. The curtains, a geometric patterned fabric from the fifties, were the one attempt at new décor.
Nothing of my young mother remained in the room. Nothing to explain how she could have let me grow up without such crucial knowledge.
“You want this room, lady?”
“No!” I ran from the room and out the back door.
I’d longed for some repercussion from Momma’s confession, some recognition from Daddy, some change in demeanor in Joe or my sisters. Anything that would convey that I was not alone in what I knew. But there was nothing, no difference.
What was an earthquake for me was undetectable in everyone around me. What I now knew estranged me, the very thing Momma in her secrecy had sought to protect me from. Leaning against the wall of the Piedmont Hotel, gulping the sharp, fresh air that seemed to splinter in my lungs, I saw again the anguish on her face as she’d admitted what she had kept from me. That shame, I suddenly realized, was the core of the matter for me, not the nature of the man who had fathered me, not any nuanced shifts in my relationships with my siblings.
My mother was ashamed of the circumstances of my conception. That was the stone I could not swallow or balance against all I knew of us, of what she had been to me.
And now she was gone. No longer accountable, she had surrendered me to my own resources.
That night, I made Adam accept my touch as I had the night before Momma’s funeral. Forcing intimacy on my husband was a strange cruelty on my part. A kind of fear filled his face and eyes as he lay stretched out under me. But that was the only time grief loosed its grip on him. It was exorcism, and we needed it; otherwise, we would have been lost to each other. Those were the only nights that he slept the whole night without waking. I knew I was taking unfair advantage of how well I knew his body and its responses, knowledge that he had given in trust. But I wanted the contact. I needed it. Tears—his and mine—were preferable to distance and silence.
In the months following Momma’s death, I was afraid for all of us. An unraveling had begun. Even the farm, my refuge since I was a girl, seemed dissonant, indifferent. The same mute slopes, the same red earth, and the same sky above the distant tree line. The apple tree bare now as it was every winter. The place where Frank ran over Jennie was visible from the back porch. I could have walked the exact trail of her blood across the field to the driveway. That part of the field and the top of the driveway, where the truck was stopped when I saw that last pulse in her neck, were my view from the kitchen window over the sink. These had been my two favorite places to look out over the farm.
Beyond the farm were the people I had grown up with—people who now shunned my husband. My anger at them seemed to backwash, flooding the very land I had so loved, leaving me helpless and poorer.
We had been approached several times about selling some of the land. There were no malls in Clarion then. Everyone still shopped downtown, but with the interstate on the northern boundary of the land and the state road on the east, we were sitting on prime commercial real estate. The first offer was so high we ignored it as a mistake.
A few months after Momma died, Clyde Brewer, the oldest brother in a family of local realtors came puffing up to the front door. He spread his map out on the front-porch table, pointed to the corner acre, and quoted us a price that was twice what we had been offered before—enough to support us for two years. His client, some company from out of town, wanted to open a new kind of store—a “convenience” store.
Even then we didn’t realize what the land would eventually be worth. We didn’t foresee the malls, movie theaters, and restaurants that would one day crowd the highway. We had no intention of selling the farm. We didn’t need the cash. We raised most of our own food, had no rent or mortgage. With that and what Adam earned, we were doing well. But Clyde Brewer wanted just an acre, as far from the house as it could be. Out of curiosity, we added ten percent to his offer and called him back. He took it in a heartbeat. Fate had taken with one hand and now gave with the other.
I was waiting. Waiting for Adam to come back to himself, for people to forget what he had done, for the land around us to take on new associations and cease being sorrow’s postcards.
Late that winter, a light, sticking snow fell one morning after the kids had left for school. I’d baked cookies for Sarah’s teacher’s birthday. The scents of cinnamon and ginger permeated the house as I packed the treats. On the way to the elementary school, I dropped by to see Daddy and leave him some of the beef stew we’d had for supper the night before. After I dropped off the cookies, I headed home.
As I turned off the road and up the driveway to the farm, Wallace leapt off the front porch, waving both arms. I pulled up behind the house. The stable door stood open. Inside the door, dark red blood puddled in a small oval on the floor. Nearby, a long smear of red and two bloody footprints.
“Adam?” I called. “Adam!”
Wallace jogged up behind me. “They took him to the hospital!” He tapped himself in the middle of his sternum. “He got kicked in the chest, then fell back and banged his head. He went down and I couldn’t get him to come to. He was bleeding bad. You know I don’t have my car with me. I called the ambulance. They took him to Mercy Hospital.” Wallace talked faster as we ran back to the truck, telling me how he’d been leading out one of the stallions when something spooked the horse. A single kick had knocked Adam up against a stall post.
I sped away. Adam had never been to a doctor or a hospital.
A pretty, stout nurse pushed a clipboard at me. “Here.” She handed me a pen. “These are just standard forms. They should have been signed when he was admitted, but he was unconscious.”
I stared at the forms, then signed.
She took the clipboard, then thrust another form at me. “This release, too,” she said as she dove for the telephone.
I hesitated, blinking at the words, but could not focus.
The nurse muttered impatiently into the phone, then put her palm over the receiver. “Honey, could you go ahead and sign? I’ve got to get this one and there’s a call light on.”
I signed the rest of the forms and pushed them toward her, hoping she would tell me where my husband was. Instead, she asked me to sit in an ugly, blue-gray waiting room until Adam was sent up from X-ray. Finally, another nurse appeared, smiling at me as if I were a celebrity, and announced Adam’s room number.
Adam slept propped up on pillows, his head back and his mouth open. A bandage circled his head above his eyebrows. Another covered him from his armpits almost down to his navel. His sickly pale color alarmed me. Was there a looseness about his features? I opened the curtains to let some natural light in. Except for a yellow tint to his color, he looked normal.
I lightly touched the bandage on his chest. A nurse charged in, jerked the curtains closed again, cranked his bed up a notch higher, and started to take his blood pressure. “Don’t put any pressure there, honey.” She pointed at my hand on his chest, muttered her approval at his blood pressure, and then marched out.
“Adam?” I touched his face. “Wake up. Please wake up!” Nothing. I squeezed his hand, then shook it a little. Nothing. I held his hand and watched his chest rise and fall. The walls were close. Slowly, a wave of panic rose from the base of my spine up through my stomach. What would they find out about him and what would they do with him? To him?
I could hardly breathe as I called Bertie and asked her to pick the girls up after school and take them to her house for supper.
Adam slept peacefully. I prayed, appealing to the God I doubted. Please don’t take Adam, too. Outside, the afternoon sun fell. The hospital lights shimmered on the thin snow below.
About six, I left and went back to the house to pick up clothes for the girls to wear to school the next day. I ate supper with them at Bertie’s. “Your dad’s fine. Just a little bang on the head,” I told them.
“When will he be home?” Rosie asked.
“Probably tomorrow,” I lied and tried to keep my face neutral, confident.
Neither she nor Gracie seemed convinced, but the dinner table crowded with the chaos of Bertie’s kids distracted them.
“Are they going to shoot the horse?” Lil asked.
“They shoot horses only when they hurt themselves, not when they hurt people,” Gracie told her.
Sarah’s face darkened and she began to cry. “That’s not fair.”
I assured her that Wallace was taking care of the horses and none of them were being shot.
After dinner, I returned to the hospital and stayed by Adam’s side all night, watching his face, hoping for change, fearing for the worst. “Wake up, wake up,” I prayed over and over.
Near dawn, they came in to take his blood pressure again. “Go home,” one of the nurses told me. “There’s nothing you can do. Go home and get breakfast. Get your mind off of it.”
As I left Adam’s room, the lack of sleep bitter in my mouth, a young doctor strode up to me. “Mrs. Hope, I’m glad I caught you. This accident may have been a blessing for your husband. His injuries don’t seem to be severe, but he is a very sick man. There’s an abnormal growth in his chest.” He waved a large white envelope, “The X-rays also show abnormalities in the brain, but we can’t be sure. It could be a tumor. No swelling from the head injury, but the lobe formation is unusual. Has your husband recently had problems breathing or speaking? Doing simple math? Walking or working with his hands? Has he been moody or erratic in his behavior?” He talked faster and more excitedly with each question.
I shook my head stupidly at everything he said, barely able to hear him for the pounding in my chest and ears.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. No impediments at all on his part? Nothing unusual?”
Again, I shook my head.
“Dr. Rumsted will be in soon. He’ll look at these immediately. I’ve already talked to him. Your husband is a priority for us, Mrs. Hope. A priority. The nurses need you to sign some paperwork. You need to go by the desk first.” He was a little boy with a new bug for his collection. He shook my hand, then walked away, disappearing into Adam’s room.
I ate breakfast alone, standing up in the kitchen, then hurried back to the hospital.
I found Adam’s bed empty, the sheets stripped. I ran to the nurses’ station and slapped my hand on the counter to get her attention. “Where’s my husband? Where is he? What have you done to him?”
She shoved more papers across the counter. One was a map. They had transferred him. The doctor would be right out if I would just calm down. I looked at the map: Duke University Research Hospital.
“They’re the best for rare cases like his. He regained consciousness for a little while, so that’s a good sign. They’ll be able to anesthetize him for the surgery. The surgery will be scheduled as soon as possible,” she assured me. “Just have a seat, Mrs. Hope, the doctors can explain more. Just wait here.”
“I have to go to the restroom,” I told her.
She pointed me down the hall and smiled. I dashed around the corner and ran to the car.
On the road, every light turned red at my approach, every driver took his time. I drove back to the house, threw up my breakfast, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, tossed a set of clothes and Adam’s hat into the station wagon. I had to calm myself, keep my voice even as I lied, assuring Wallace that Adam was okay.
The drive sharpened me and pulled me back into myself. The snow had melted and the day began to warm. I’d never been to Duke University. I passed farms and houses and towns. People drove to work. Children played in school yards. By the time I got to the hospital, a hard calm had come over me.
I parked the car and grabbed Adam’s clothes. When I asked for his room number, a nurse handed me more papers. I pretended to read them till the nurse turned her head, then dashed for Adam’s room. Two young men in hospital uniforms pushed an empty gurney out of the room as I reached the door. “My husband,” I volunteered, stretching a smile across my face. “Just want to see him for a minute.”
The taller one answered, “You won’t have much time. They’ve prepped him already. They’re in a hurry on this one. He’s pretty dopey.”
Adam slept propped up in bed, pale yellow against the white sheets. The bandages on his head were new and smaller, but no hair stuck out above them. He had been completely shaved. I took his hand, the one not attached to the IV bag, rubbed it, and called his name. His eyes half-opened. He looked drunk, drugged, his eyes bloodshot and glassy. He garbled my name.
“Ya here,” he said and closed his eyes. “Th’ X-ray me ’gain.”
“Are you okay?”
“Thin’ so. The’ don’t. Won’t let m’ sleep, eat, walk. Lots o’ doctors.” He stopped and looked at me, his eyes half-open. Then, slowly, his head drooped forward. He passed out again.
My heart raced. I balled my hands up and pressed them into my stomach to stop my trembling. I held Adam’s chin and gave him little slaps till he opened his eyes again. “Adam, I’m taking you home.”
He grinned sloppily, but did not open his eyes. “ ’Ood, ’m hungry.”
I peeked out into the hall. Then, quickly, I untaped Adam’s IV, slipped the needle out, and started dressing him. He mumbled incoherently. I got the gown off and his shirt on. Then his pants. He was almost too tall and heavy for me, a bigger, looser version of the being I’d dragged out of the mud years before.
I supported his head and shoulders as I slid him sideways into the wheelchair. Only once did he seem to be in pain—when he went down hard into the chair. The bandages would give him away. After belting him into the chair, I perched his hat gently on his head, then slipped his shoes on.
I surveyed the hall again quickly. A nurse strolled around a corner. We made it past the nurses’ station and to the elevator. Two orderlies maneuvered a gurney out past us. I tried to make it look like affection as I held Adam’s head up steady with one hand.
On the ground floor, I wheeled him across the lobby as fast as I could without being conspicuous. Adam slumped like a rag doll. I chattered away to him as if he could hear me.
No one grabbed my shoulder, no one shouted from behind us.
Outside, I wheeled him straight to the car. I got in the backseat and quickly, gently as I could, pulled him into the car and onto the seat. Then we took off.
As soon as we were out of sight of the hospital, I pulled over and checked Adam. He slept curled up on his side, seemingly oblivious. I stripped off my jacket and wedged it under his head.
I drove just under the speed limit all the way home with the rearview mirror angled so I could see most of Adam in the backseat. The nervous stink of my own sweat filled the front seat. The metallic taste of panic filled in my mouth. I wanted Momma. All the way home, I felt the memory of his limp weight in my arms.
The sky had dimmed to twilight by the time we pulled into the backyard. Wallace jogged out of the stable to help us. He and I carried Adam in, his feet dragging between us at each step up to the porch. Wallace glanced at me over Adam’s head. I saw the question on his face. He thought I was crazy to be bringing Adam home.
“It’s just the dope they gave him for the pain,” I said.
Wallace was no fool. I’m sure he smelled my fear. He shook his head, then bent over, gently picked Adam up, and carried him down the hall in his arms like a child. I followed close, supporting Adam’s head. Wallace paused in the kitchen. I pointed to the hall and told him which bedroom. Wallace eased sideways down the hall.
Adam came to consciousness on the way in, knew he was at home, and asked for food. But he was out again before we had him settled on the bed and rolled over on his side.
After Wallace left the bedroom, I took off Adam’s pants and put some shorts on him—I had not bothered with underwear in the hospital. He looked less yellow now. Was the sleepiness from the head injury or the drugs they gave him for surgery?
I brought fresh bandages and a basin of hot water into the bedroom. Carefully holding his head, I unwrapped the swaths of gauze. A smaller, square bandage centered on the back of his head. A faint blue line started at his crown, just past his hairline, and disappeared under the bandage. Slowly, I peeled the square bandage off. Centered in a blue-green bruise the width of a tablespoon was a cut about an inch and a half, a check mark with nine crude black stitches on the long part of it, five on the short end. I picked up the bedside lamp and held it over his head. The clean edges of the cut were pink, not red, already a scar as much as a wound. Very little swelling. His head remained smooth and rounded there, no dent in the bone.
I ran my hand gently over the back of his head. He moaned softly. His baldness and the intent behind the blue line that divided the crown of his head into a neat rectangle were as disturbing as the injury. I washed his head—the blue came off with a gentle scrubbing—and rebandaged the cut. I didn’t swathe his whole head, just wrapped it once in a clean white strip of sheet and tied it at the side.
I rolled two towels up into tubes and lay them on the bed behind him. Then I carefully rolled him onto them, one to support his neck and the other for the top of his head. The cut on his shaved chest, just to the left of his breastbone, formed the wide, shallow U-curve of a horseshoe. Fifteen stitches, and the same pink scarring, but the bruising around it gleamed darker and larger. The same blue line paralleled the length of his breastbone. Two perpendicular lines crossed it just above the U.
The cleanness and size of his injuries were a relief. The blue lines unnerved me. The map of someone else’s work on my husband’s body. Cuts to remove the essence of him. Washing the blue lines from his chest, I knew with an iron conviction he would be gone if they had operated on him. He didn’t need surgery.
But I wasn’t certain what he did need.
I left him there on his back, chest unbandaged, and dashed into the kitchen. I poured myself a whiskey, straight, and took it back to the bedroom. The burn in my throat and belly helped steady my hands. I rebandaged Adam’s chest, rolled him onto his side, and covered him up. He slept peacefully.
Bertie brought the girls home, sniffing on her way in so I knew she had caught the scent of the whiskey. I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, but felt completely transparent. Bertie, the girls, and I walked single-file down the hall and stood crammed in the doorway. I pressed my finger to my lips, as if it were possible to disturb him. Sarah grinned up at me, her happy-Cheshire-cat grin.
Gracie stood behind me, her chin digging into my shoulder. “He looks okay, Momma,” she said softly, but her voice sounded thick.
Rosie passed her hand over her own head, as if feeling for injuries.
“He doesn’t smell bad,” Lil said. She must have been remembering Momma’s last days.
“Oh, he’s not sick.” I pulled Lil farther into the room so she could see better. “They shaved his head so no hair would get in the stitches. About a dozen stitches here and fifteen here where the horse kicked him.” I touched Sarah on the back of the head and Lil on her chest. I kept my hand there a second, feeling the movement of her breath.
For a moment, we all watched Adam sleep. Then one of the girls farted. They turned accusing looks on each other. Lil hissed and soft-punched Sarah. Bertie wheezed a suppressed laugh.
“Enough. Dinnertime,” I whispered and shooed them out of the room.
“No beans though, Momma. Lil’s already tooting,” Rosie said.
“No, I’m not. That was Sarah.”
It is not possible to take four daughters quietly down a hall after one of them has farted. But for a moment they did not think of their bald father.
Later, I paid Wallace for his week’s work and took him down the hall to see Adam again. Looking bigger in the dimness of the bedroom, Wallace bent silently over Adam and touched him lightly on the wrist. “He went down so hard and so fast. I couldn’t bring him to. You think he’s gonna be all right?”
“Yes,” I replied and told him how good the wounds looked, then we tiptoed out of the room. Before that morning, Wallace had never been down the hall and into the bedrooms. He looked relieved when we were back in the kitchen. With Adam down, we would need extra help. He would work longer hours, he assured me.
Somehow I got through the evening. I prepared a light supper for the girls and checked to make sure they did their homework and chores. I held myself tight and kept myself in line. As soon as I got the girls in bed, I called old Dr. Raymond, the man who had been our family doctor when I was a girl. He had been retired for years. I called his home.
My hands shook when I dialed. He seemed surprised to hear from me at that hour but he was cordial. I told him what had happened to Adam, as if it had just occurred. I didn’t mention the hospital. He asked about the bleeding. The chest injury would be sore for a while, but if Adam’s pain did not increase when he took a breath, we could assume there were no broken ribs. He should be fine, Dr. Raymond said, just keep the wounds clean. He explained what to look for, the signs of concussion or brain injury—dizziness, nausea, different-size pupils. Then drowsiness. “If you can’t keep him awake, take him over to the hospital, Evelyn. You don’t want to mess with a head injury. I thought I’d already heard something about your Adam—that he was sent over to Duke for something pretty rare. That wasn’t him, huh? Wonder who it was.” I didn’t correct him, just thanked him and hung up. My sides felt sticky with sweat.
I went back to Adam. Rosie sat on the side of the bed, holding his hand. She put her finger up to her lips and whispered, “He’s asleep again.”
“He woke up? Did he say anything?”
“He was hungry and he wanted to know how we were. I told him we were fine. Then I think he asked for some corn bread. Something about a ‘damn horse,’ too.” She smiled and wrinkled her nose up at me. “His scalp feels weird. He’s going to be okay, Momma?”
I made myself smile back and led her to the door. “Of course he will be. But we’ll need your help, okay?”
She kissed me and went back to bed.
My last remnant of calm dissolved. I needed to move. I wanted to run, scream, cry, or fight. Instead, I paced the front porch outside our bedroom window. Each time I checked on Adam, he slept peacefully. Finally, I poured myself another whiskey and took it to bed. I cried, my face pressed into my pillow, until I fell asleep.
I woke in the morning still curled on my side next to him, clutching my pillow. Adam’s hand cupped my head.
“Adam?” I rubbed his hand and patted his cheek. “Wake up.”
He moaned and turned over on his side. “A little longer, Evelyn.” His regular sweet, sleepy voice!
Almost giddy with relief, I got the girls up and off to school. They waved happily as they left. They were halfway down the road to the bus stop when I saw a sheriff’s car clear the curve and start up our road. I waited on the corner of the back porch. Wallace’s voice carried from the barn, accompanied by the snort and impatient paw of the horses.
The car pulled deep into the driveway, almost up to the house. The local deputy, Harley Brown, stepped out, the leather on his policeman’s belt creaking loudly as he shut the car door and leaned against it. I’d gone to school with his younger brother, Clifton.
“Morning, Evelyn.”
I nodded. “It is a pretty one all right.”
“You don’t look like a woman who is missing her husband.”
“I’m not, Harley. He’s right in there, in our bed.” I pointed back toward the house but stepped down toward him. “They doped him up pretty good at the hospital, but he’s okay. He wanted me to make him some corn bread. But he’s sleeping now. It was a pretty good kick he got.”
“Well”—he consulted a piece of paper he pulled out of his pocket—“it seems Duke University Hospital and the CDC down in Atlanta didn’t know he was going home and they’re worried about him. Wanted to make sure that at least you know where he is.”
“I do, Harley. You want me to wake him up? You need to come in and see him?”
He got back in his car and shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m here. I should be out catching bad guys, but they wanted me to come by, said it was important. Wanted me to come by last night after supper. But Alice heard from Bertie that he was home and safe, so I waited until now. Adam is all right, you say?”
“Tired and banged up, but already cussing the horse that got him. You sure?” I pointed back toward the house again.
He laughed, shook his head, and started backing his car up. As soon as his car rolled out of sight, I ran and checked on Adam. I shook his shoulder.
“What?” he muttered.
“How do you feel?”
“My head hurts. Let me sleep.” His voice was still normal, his color good.
“Does it hurt bad?”
“No.” He rolled over to face the wall and went back to sleep.
Neither Addie nor Adam had ever really been sick. They both slept a lot if they did not feel well. Remembering that made me feel better. He was healing quickly, too. The bruising visible around the bandage on his chest had lightened overnight.
I’d chosen a path. They could not be allowed to take from him what they thought to be abnormal. I could not let them have him. If they discovered how different he was, would they want to examine the girls, too?
I was sorting clothes on the back porch, preparing to wash them, when I heard another car come up the drive. I looked around the corner of the house. A big car, one I had never seen before, shiny and black, had stopped midway up the drive where people parked when they were coming to the front door. I went back inside and paused at the hall mirror to smooth down my hair. I looked tired, but not half as crazy as I felt.
The sheriff and another man knocked and called my name at the screen door. I didn’t know the sheriff or any of his kin, but I recognized him from pictures I’d seen in the paper. He took his hat off but the sunglasses stayed on. The man beside him, a meat-faced older man, wore a dark suit. The one in the suit held a briefcase and a large white envelope. “Mrs. Hope?” the sheriff asked.
I nodded but did not open the screen door. Then the other man took a step closer. “I’m Dr. Crenshaw. I’m from Mercy Hospital, but I represent Duke University’s research hospital.” I opened the screen, put one foot out on the porch, but didn’t close the door behind me. He offered his hand, a thick, dry slab. “I understand that you took your husband out of the hospital yesterday without physician’s approval.”
“I did bring my husband home, yes.” I looked at the sheriff. He did not seem any more interested than his deputy had been earlier.
The doctor eyed me critically. “Mrs. Hope, your husband is a very sick man. He was ill before he came to the . . .”
“He was healthy and working horses before he went to the hospital.”
“I have X-rays I’d like to show you. There are multiple abnormalities. We scheduled the exploratory surgery for removal and biopsy. Your husband needs surgery badly.”
“I’ve heard about the X-rays, doctor. Something in his chest and something in his brain. The lobes are unusual.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Hope.” He smiled as if I were a well-trained dog. “But that’s not all. His blood work shows some abnormal cells. It could be a pathogen or a rare form of cancer. We need to test him further.”
I turned to the sheriff. “Have we broken a law?”
He pulled at his shirt and turned his blank face to me at the mention of law. “No, ma’am, none that I know of. But if your husband is sick, maybe you should bring him back to the hospital.”
The doctor pulled an X-ray out of the envelope and held it up. “You say your husband has no trouble breathing, Mrs. Hope. Well, that is miraculous. There is this region of the chest—” The X-ray showed a collarbone, rib cage, and a fainter, milky area vaguely shaped like a star in the center of his chest. A sudden desire surged through me. I wanted to touch that image. My hand shot out.
The doctor jerked the X-ray away. The sheriff shifted his weight.
I forced myself to look away from the pale, broad star to the doctor’s face and stepped back inside, putting my hand up near the screen-door latch.
“Whatever this lesion is, it may have something to do with his unusual blood cells. Mrs. Hope, if I came in and took a few more blood samples, then when you brought him back to the hospital, we would know more by the time you arrive. If this is a pathogen, it could be dangerous to you or your children.” Polite authority filled his voice as if he spoke to a stupid but obedient child.
“My husband is resting and should be left alone.”
“Mrs. Hope, you must bring your husband back to the hospital. The sample has been sent to the Centers for Disease Control. He may need to be quarantined. If I could just take a few more blood samples now . . .” He stepped closer to the door. I did not step back. I smelled the musk of my fear and felt it solid in my chest. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember what quarantine was.
“Sheriff, have I broken a law?”
A wrong move. The sheriff uncrossed his arms and took a step toward the door. “Ma’am, there is no law against leaving a hospital. But if, by refusing to return your husband to the hospital, you are endangering his life and possibly your children’s, then you could be held accountable should any of them suffer harm or die. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.” My face reddened. I slipped the latch down. My hand trembled and they heard the lock slide into place. “You can’t cut on him. You can’t take anything out. I won’t let you.” The doctor opened his mouth to interrupt but I kept on, lowering my voice to steady it. I didn’t trust myself to look at them. “I’ll have him there by noon tomorrow for your blood test, at Duke University Hospital. No sooner. You should go now.”
The doctor started again, his face redder, his voice rising, “Don’t be stupid! Your husband is very sick. You need to bring him in now. Today.”
But the sheriff turned and walked off the porch. Sputtering, the doctor followed. Halfway down the steps, he turned to glare back at me. “Your husband needs help. He needs surgery, Mrs. Hope. We can explain everything to you.”
“No, you can’t. He’s not like us, doctor. He’s not one of us. And he doesn’t need your help.” I had never said those words out loud before. My whole body shook.
After a long, puzzled squint, the doctor trudged off.
From the bedroom window, I watched as they got in the car. The doctor shook his head and said something about “goddamn hillbillies.”
I had a little less than twenty-four hours. I wasted the first hour pacing the house. We had to leave, that much was clear. But where could we go? Adam made frequent trips to Kentucky and Tennessee for his work. I or one of the girls had gone with him a few times. Lots of people we could stay with there, but the police would look in that direction first, where he had the most connections. The mountains were an option. Adam knew them well and could vanish there on his own. But the six of us roughing it? And for how long? My cousin Pauline was still in Florida, my only relation living more than a hundred miles away. Adam and I hadn’t been back to her house since our honeymoon, and she hadn’t been to Clarion in a couple of years though we exchanged Christmas cards. Every spring, I sent her the kids’ school pictures. I trusted her. She didn’t live on the lake anymore. But her little town south of Gainesville—Micanopy—was easy to find on the road map.
Under the watchful eye of a bank teller, I withdrew most of our money from the savings account. I doubled Wallace’s salary, paid him three weeks in advance, and threw in fifty dollars for him to hire extra help. I made him swear that he would not tell any police or doctors that we’d left, but would call Joe if there was an emergency or anyone came looking for us and would contact Cole if anything happened to the horses. He agreed, but I saw the doubt in his face. There was no time, nothing I could say to convince him, but I knew he would do as he’d promised.
With the six of us in the car, we wouldn’t be able to take much more than clothes. I filled the back of the station wagon, throwing in the dirty clothes I had been sorting when the doctor showed up. I packed all the things I could think of that the girls might want—small things that might make them feel at home—favorite pictures, cups, books, pillows, my best skillet, the paint set we had given them for Christmas.
Half an hour before the girls would be home from school, I was as ready as I could be. I stopped, suddenly exhausted, and walked slowly through the house. All I knew of my strange husband, marriage, birth, and death had come to me within those walls and on that land. I listened as hard as I could, hoping for wisdom. But I heard only the urgency of adrenaline and my own conviction. What the doctors wanted to cut away was vital. Getting him safely away was the important thing; everything else had to wait.
I put on a fresh dress and set biscuits and milk out for the girls. It would be their last fresh, home-grown milk.
As soon as they strolled into the backyard, Rosie, Lil, and Sarah circled the loaded-up car. Gracie took one quick look and dashed up the porch steps. “Momma, is Daddy okay?”
“Yes, he’s sleeping. Bring your sisters in. We’re taking a trip. A little vacation!”
Lil and Sarah clapped and jumped up and down, chanting, “A vacation! A vacation!” Rosie went straight to Adam’s side. Gracie followed me back out to the car. “Why are we going anywhere now? Daddy’s hurt!” She was not a child anymore.
“Gracie, I know this seems sudden, but I want it to be a surprise for your daddy. A little trip will be good for all of us. My nerves are shot—first Jennie, then Momma, now this with your daddy. I need your help now.”
Her tears started at Jennie’s name, but she did not cry. I needed to keep her moving and not thinking. I sent her in to collect the food I’d packed while Wallace and I checked the ropes holding the boxes and luggage on top of the car.
I went inside for more boxes and found Gracie dialing the phone. I took the receiver from her. “I don’t want anyone else to know for now. You can call your friends after we get there.”
She looked at me in amazement, then her face changed to confusion. “Momma, you’re scaring me.” Her chin quivered.
My own smile of reassurance felt like it would crack my face.
Rosie elbowed up beside us, one eyebrow pressed down in the consternation that would soon be sullen resistance if she thought she was being left out of anything.
I pulled them both out onto the porch and I held them by the shoulders. “Your daddy is a good man and he works very hard. But he hasn’t been himself lately, you both know that.” I took a deep breath. “Right now, we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t get kicked by any more horses. We need to help him and the best way to do that is to take him away for a little while.” The conviction in my voice surprised me. The truth of what I’d said calmed me.
They frowned, nodding. I didn’t have them yet, but I was uncertain how much I needed to say. I didn’t want to tell them where we were going, but I had to say more if I wanted their cooperation. “The doctors who saw your daddy want me to take him back to the hospital. They’ve come here twice already, looking for him. I don’t know if they can take him away and do things to him without his consent. But we can’t afford to wait here to find out.” Both of them stared in alarm. Rosie shook her head. I drew them closer. “I know he doesn’t need to be in a hospital, girls. He just needs a little rest and a little time away from all of this. This isn’t going to be just a vacation. It’s something we must do. Now. You shouldn’t tell anyone what I just told you—even Lil and Sarah. I don’t want to upset them. You understand? Can I count on you?”
They both nodded. They were with me.
“We’re on the lam,” Rosie announced.
Gracie laughed nervously and tried to blink her tears away.
“Yes, that’s one way to look at it,” I admitted. Then I lightened my voice. “But we’re not criminals and your daddy will be fine. We’re helping him. We’re on the lam from everything that’s happened to all of us in the last year. We all could use a little vacation, don’t you think? I know I need one. I’ll take you to a beautiful little lake where your daddy and I went swimming a long time ago when I was pregnant with you.” I pointed to Gracie.
She nodded again, solemnly, and wiped at her cheek.
“Okay then, girls, let’s get the food ready for the road.”
Rosie gave me a sharp, salutary nod.
Sarah opened the back door and popped her head out. “Y’all stop talking! Let’s go! Let’s get Daddy and go on vacation!” Behind her, Lil twirled through the kitchen. Then the two of them bolted away and down the hall.
Within an hour, we were ready. Gracie, Lil, and Sarah settled into the front seat while Rosie and I walked Adam out to the car. Groggy but cooperative, he carried most of his own weight and leaned on us for balance.
We waved to Wallace, then pulled away, I and three girls squeezed into the front seat to give Adam and Rosie as much room as possible in the back. With his head in her lap, he fell asleep again before we passed the city limits sign.
Clarion was its normal self, unchanged as it receded behind us. No one would miss us until tomorrow, when the girls didn’t show at school and I failed to bring Adam back to the hospital. Still, I expected to see the police behind us, or the shiny black car. I resisted the urge to speed.
We would be taking the old highways, not the new interstate. Florida was at least a twelve-hour drive away. Every nerve in my body seemed to vibrate. I didn’t know if I could last that long. We had been on the road for only a couple of hours when darkness fell. We passed around the sandwiches and jars of tea and kept going. Eating seemed to break the quiet. Even Adam woke up. I saw only part of his face in the rearview mirror. He looked okay, just sleepy.
“Where’re we going?” he asked.
“A little recuperation getaway. A second honeymoon.”
“Second honeymoon? Pauline’s?”
I nodded. “We’ll lie low for at least a few days first. See how things go, then visit her?”
“Good idea.” He tipped his head forward so the girls could reach it. They giggled as they ran their hands over the brown stubble. He drank some water and ate half of Rosie’s sandwich—his first food since the accident. Then he lay back down.
Gracie turned and asked, “Is he going back to sleep?”
“Uh-huh,” Rosie replied and began to sing “Hush Little Baby.” Sarah sang to him next. Then Lil took her turn singing her favorite song to him. We were silent a moment, then Gracie began her lullaby, “Amazing Grace,” and I joined her. I pushed on past the first verse on my own. By the time I came to the final verse, Sarah, Lil, and Rosie were asleep.
In the darkness beyond the yellow pool of our headlights, the ghostly shape of that X-ray kept appearing, unchanged by the miles we passed and the subtle shifts I sensed in the landscape around us. What, I wondered, did our daughters have of him? What had I silenced and what lay nestled under their breastbones? I reached over and patted Gracie’s arm.
Her face looked older, somber in the light of the dashboard. “Is Daddy going to be okay?”
Anxiety thickened in my throat. I was less certain than I wanted to be. I nodded, unable to lie out loud. I wanted to, needed to offer her something true. “Our honeymoon was the first trip we ever took with just the two of us. Our only trip to Florida. It’ll be good for him to go back. The change will help him.”
“That’s the pretty lake you said you’re taking us to?”
“Yes.”
She gave me a sly sideways glance. “Your honeymoon? And the place you swam when you were pregnant with me?”
“Oh, shit! Another thing you need to keep under your hat!”
She smiled at me, her first since we’d been on the road, and opened her mouth to speak.
I interrupted, “We didn’t have to get married. Once we were engaged . . . We loved each other so much we couldn’t wait.”
Gracie laughed. “Oh, Momma!”
“Our secret?”
“Of course.”
That accidental, inadvertent truth delighted me, lightening the hours of driving.
Gracie was still awake at about midnight when I pulled over at a motel. I checked in as Addie Nell Hardin and dished out more than we normally spent on a week’s groceries for a room with two double beds and an extra roll-away bed.
Adam slept beside me, having awakened enough to put his arms around me. Sarah slept in the little bed at our feet. The three other girls were safe in the next bed. My back ached from the hours of sitting cramped behind the wheel. Exhausted, I fell asleep listening to the five of them breathing. We were in Georgia, just outside of Jessup. I slept fitfully, dreaming of men in white coats armed with blue pens, who came to take Adam.