Full Dark, No Stars

Now I could see to the bottom, and what I saw was horrible. She had landed sitting up with her legs crushed beneath her. The pil ow-case was split open and lay in her lap. The quilt and counterpane

had come loose and were spread around her shoulders like a complicated ladies’ stole. The burlap bag, caught around her head and holding her hair back like a snood, completed the picture: she almost

looked as if she were dressed for a night on the town.

Yes! A night on the town! That’s why I’m so happy! That’s why I’m grinning from ear to ear! And do you notice how red my lipstick is, Wilf? I’d never wear this shade to church, would I? No, this is thekind of lipstick a woman puts on when she wants to do that nasty thing to her man. Come on down, Wilf, why don’t you? Don’t bother with the ladder, just jump! Show me how bad you want me! You did

a nasty thing to me, now let me do one to you!

“Poppa?” Henry was standing with his face toward the barn and his shoulders hunched, like a boy expecting to be beaten. “Is everything al right?”

“Yes.” I flung down the bundle of linen, hoping it would land on top of her and cover that awful upturned grin, but a whim of draft floated it into her lap, instead. Now she appeared to be sitting in some strange and bloodstained cloud.

“Is she covered? Is she covered up, Poppa?”

I grabbed the mattress and tupped it in. It landed on end in the mucky water and then fel against the circular stone-cobbled wal , making a little lean-to shelter over her, at last hiding her cocked-back head and bloody grin.

“Now she is.” I lowered the old wooden cap back into place, knowing there was more work ahead: the wel would have to be fil ed in. Ah, but that was long overdue, anyway. It was a danger, which was

why I had planted the circle of stakes around it. “Let’s go in the house and have breakfast.”

“I couldn’t eat a single bite!”

But he did. We both did. I fried eggs, bacon, and potatoes, and we ate every bite. Hard work makes a person hungry. Everyone knows that.

Henry slept until late afternoon. I stayed awake. Some of those hours I spent at the kitchen table, drinking cup after cup of black coffee. Some of them I spent walking in the corn, up one row and down another, listening to the swordlike leaves rattle in a light breeze. When it’s June and corn’s on the come, it seems almost to talk. This disquiets some people (and there are the foolish ones who say it’s the sound of the corn actual y growing), but I had always found that quiet rustling a comfort. It cleared my mind. Now, sitting in this city hotel room, I miss it. City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.

Confessing, I find, is also hard work.

I walked, I listened to the corn, I tried to plan, and at last I did plan. I had to, and not just for myself.

There had been a time not 20 years before, when a man in my position needn’t have worried; in those days, a man’s business was his own, especial y if he happened to be a respected farmer: a

fel ow who paid his taxes, went to church on Sundays, supported the Hemingford Stars basebal team, and voted the straight Republican ticket. I think that in those days, al sorts of things happened on farms out in what we cal ed “the middle.” Things that went unremarked, let alone reported. In those days, a man’s wife was considered a man’s business, and if she disappeared, there was an end to it.

But those days were gone, and even if they hadn’t been… there was the land. The 100 acres. The Farrington Company wanted those acres for their God damned hog butchery, and Arlette had led

them to believe they were going to get them. That meant danger, and danger meant that daydreams and half-plans would no longer suffice.

When I went back to the house at midafternoon, I was tired but clear-headed and calm at last. Our few cows were bel owing, their morning milking hours overdue. I did that chore, then put them to

pasture where I’d let them stay until sunset, instead of herding them back in for their second milking just after supper. They didn’t care; cows accept what is. If Arlette had been more like one of our bossies, I reflected, she would stil be alive and nagging me for a new washing machine out of the Monkey Ward catalogue. I probably would have bought it for her, too. She could always talk me around.

Except when it came to the land. About that she should have known better. Land is a man’s business.