The Best American Short Stories 2013

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

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

  Sunday 29 January

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

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

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

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

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

  Sunday 5 February

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

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

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

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

  Sunday 12 February

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

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

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

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

  Sunday 19 February

  Sleet, and ice, and a gloom so pervasive, all our lamps had to remain lit at midday. Both of us much borne down of mind all morning, and for the past five days. Dyer able to get to the mill.

  Sunday 26 February

  Bright sun. Biscuit and dried mackerel for breakfast. Tallie visiting her father in Oneonta. A lonesome and tedious week.

  The Cobbs lost their son to pneumonia a few days ago. I think last week. Their only child. Dyer was loath to tell me, but the memories of Nellie came on only slowly after he had done so.

  I never showed our daughter a face free of fatigue; the night I bore her I had just finished dipping twenty-four dozen candles, and she never seemed to lose her head colds and we had many hard nights. I never felt blessed with enough time for her when she was well and it was that much harder watching over her during her illnesses. I spent my days beyond distress, fearing the consequences of her sickliness, until when she was two years and five months on, she suffered an attack of the bilious fever, pleurisy, bowel problems, and croup. She was treated with bayberry and marsh rosemary to scour the stomach and bowels, and a tea of valerian and lady’s slipper for the fever, and though she rallied for a day or two, when she gazed at me, she seemed to know that even if her condition were to be coaxed into a little clemency, it wouldn’t spare her. The night came when she asked, “Mommy, take me up,” and I lifted her from her bed while Dyer slept. She asked for my comb, and when I gave it to her she combed my hair and then smoothed it with her palm on my head and then asked me to lie down with her and put her arms around my neck and did not rise again.

  Since the norms of polite society require that private woe be concealed from public view, I was allowed to sequester myself away for some months following. There I remained speechless. I was surrounded by objects that, if silent everywhere else, here had a voice that rang out with her presence. And I never forgot her face that final night, because there was something so affecting about mute and motionless grief in a child so young.

  Sunday 4 March

  Windy and very bright. Dined with the Hill family last evening. On our way there we saw hunters with ducks over their shoulders and boys skating on the river. A most excellent dinner of seven dishes of meat, four of vegetables, pickles and a pie, tarts and cheese, and wine and cider. This morning a breakfast of only oatmeal, jam, and coffee. Mr. Tarbell came and hung the bacon. Dyer is augmenting the padding in the cow stables with his hoardings of leaves and old straw, which he believes to increase the manure output.

  It seemed Tallie would never appear, but time and the needle wear through the longest morning. When she arrived my heart was like a leaf borne over a rock by rapidly moving water. She said that a few days earlier their hired hand had pulled down a box of eggs and broke nearly two dozen, and that Finney had announced to him that he was unlucky to eggs and was no longer allowed to approach them. Her husband believed that he suffered a great deal from the carelessness of hired hands, she said. She claimed that old Mr. Holt was said to have swum his horse over the canal despite the cold, and that the widow Weldon’s son had been contracted to carry the mail on skis, but that otherwise there was no news. She was much better in her health. She was overjoyed to see me.

  She said she’d spent the previous two days rendering the lard from the hogs and making soap. She said her husband was even more out of sorts than usual, and that he had mentioned again the idea of migrating west. I told her that I considered migrating west a bad idea, since my uncle had moved to Ohio and had come to a desperate end. She asked if that wasn’t where my sister had settled, and I said no, that my sister was out near Lackawanna, and that her husband was a manufacturer of horse cultivators. She asked me to tell her more about my sister and I told her how Rebecca had always loved legends of Indians and Quakers and county witches, and how our church had frowned on dancing but had allowed kissing games, and how she had been a champion at Copenhagen and Needle’s Eye. She had met her future husband at an agricultural society fair in which she had been named Queen of the Livery. Tallie remarked with some wryness that it sounded very grand, and I wanted to embrace her for that kindness alone.

  I asked about her brothers and she answered only about the one who had survived. She said that once he was old enough to stand, he’d gone round with a sling that he claimed was identical to the weapon with which David had slain Goliath. He never killed anyone but he did give his family some anxious moments. She said that when he was fourteen she’d caught him skinning baby rabbits alive and he’d told her that the rabbits were used to it. She said that a year later he’d knotted a rope on his wrist and their steer’s horn, and had been dragged cross-country. When their mother had asked what made him do such a thing, he had said he hadn’t gone a half-mile before he could see his mistake.

  We talked of parents. I told her of remembering my father telling my mother that she shouldn’t feel bad about me because sometimes the plain grew up to be enormously wise. She told me that only once in her life did her father say an encouraging word, though he said plenty of the other kind. She said that she refused to offer an excuse for her constant disobedience to him, but that she did believe now that her father had done her a far greater wrong. I said that I was sure she’d been as good as gold and she answered that she had been the kind of willful child that no frown would deny nor words restrain, and that because of that her father had often taken her in one hand and a strap in the other, and brought the two together until she had had enough.

  By then we were in late afternoon light and Dyer had again returned to shed his outer clothing in the mudroom with maximum fidget and fuss. She stood and composed herself, and touched a finger to my shoulder. I felt, looking at her expression, as if she were in full sail on a flood tide while I bobbed along down backwaters. And yet I never saw on her countenance the indifference of the fortunate toward the less fortunate. At the mudroom door my husband greeted us before passing inside, and Tallie put her cheek to mine before leaving. I watched her ascend the snowy path toward her land, her dog running to greet her. While Dyer rubbed his lower extremities for warmth, I added to our hearth fire, contrary to my usual custom. It chee
red the room a little but everything still looked desolate. That is me, I thought, taking my chair. One emotion succeeds another.

  Sunday 11 March

  A sloppy day. The wind chilly but with hints of a warmth. Up early. Ham and potatoes and coffee for breakfast. Scalded my wrist with boiling fat. Applied flour and hamamelis, since we have no plaster.

  A bad week for burns. Dyer and Finney were summoned on Thursday to tend to Mrs. Manning’s little girl, who had just been severely burned. They reported that they accomplished all that they could for the little sufferer until the doctor arrived. It’s thought she didn’t die of the burn but of pneumonia from taking a chill from the water thrown upon her. She complained of being cold from that moment until she died.

  A cardinal pair has adopted the house. I’ve been laying out seed to sustain them, and sometimes when I forget they fly to the kitchen window to remind me. The female is the prettiest muted green.

  The week spent sowing clover. What’s needed are still mornings, ideally after frost heaves, when the sun has thawed the soil’s surface just enough to fasten the seed in the mud. We sow with a Cahoon, which hangs on a pair of suspenders and throws out a continuous stream with a handle-crank. On Friday we had to finish in a headwind, which was hard on the eyes. I look as if I’ve been on a spree.