The Best American Short Stories 2013

  My mother’s mother was born in 1780 in a log house right here in Schoharie County. I wonder now at the courage and the resourcefulness of those women who fared forth, not knowing where they were being led, to begin to chip into the wilderness the foundations of a civilization. Maybe they found love and kisses in their loved ones’ regard, and a certain high hopefulness that we do not possess.

  Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy. I write with only the small hand lamp burning, as late as it is.

  Dyer asked after breakfast apropos of nothing if my friend Tallie intended to visit us again today and when I informed him that I expected she would, he gave no further sign of having heard me, but went about the business of gathering his outer garments and eventually left the house.

  Tallie arrived some minutes later with a handkerchief to her nose. When she heard I was well she claimed to be disappointed and said she’d hoped to compare colds. I showed her my burn.

  When she had completed quizzing me on the various remedies I had applied, we talked of our admiration for each other. She said she had from her earliest childhood an instinct that shrank from selfishness or icy regard, and that she cherished the safety she felt when in my presence. She said she’d composed a poem titled “O Sick and Miserable Heart Be Still.”

  I told her how as a little girl I’d always imagined cultivating my intellect and doing something for the world, and she gazed at me as though I’d said the absolute perfect thing, and I thrilled at the possibility of having done so. And when I said nothing more she wrung both of my hands with hers, and said that that moment in which we were carried in triumph somewhere for having done something great and good, or we were received at home in a shower of tears of joy: was it really possible that such a moment had not yet come, for either of us? When I regained my voice, I said I thought that it had. Or it could. She asked what I imagined. And I said, astonishing myself with my own dauntlessness, that I loved how our encircling feelings left nothing out for us to miss or seek.

  When her expression remained as it had been, I added that perhaps I presumed too much. The pyre in the hearth collapsed with a little show of sparks. We both gazed upon the flaming logs. Finally she murmured, so that I could just hear, that it was not those who showed the least who felt the least.

  Her pacing dog’s toenails were audible on the ice on the porch. She leaned forward and offered me her lips to kiss and then turned her cheek, which I then kissed instead. I asked why she hadn’t done as she was going to do, and she had no reply. So I took her hands, and then her shoulders, and with our eyes fully open brought my mouth to hers.

  She smelled of rosewater and an herb I couldn’t identify. Her taste was suffusing and sweet and entirely full. Her mouth was at first diffident, and then feathery and tender, and then welcoming and immersive.

  She worried I would catch her cold. She took in her breath at the passion of my response. We skidded our chairs closer and had no thought of peril nor satiety, listening to the wind’s increase outside like an index of our exhilaration and starting up at every sound of her dog on the porch. There was a sweet biscuity smell to her hairline. Eventually she pulled free and bade me open my eyes and said she was leaving.

  Dyer when he returned noted all that I still had not yet accomplished when it came to my evening’s responsibilities, and asked with some irritation as I stood over the pump and sink if I required assistance. I came very near answering that I did, I felt so undone by my Tallie’s departure. The moment she had left I was like a skiff pushed out to sea with neither hand nor helm to guide it.

  Sunday 18 March

  Falling weather soon, whether rain or snow. For three straight days my bowels have remained unmoved. A spell of dizziness and shortness of breath this morning, and no appetite, so Dyer made his own breakfast. He says that old Mr. Holt while returning from a sale in town was badly beaten by two strangers, so that he had to be hauled the rest of the way to his home in his own cart. Their intention had been to kill him but they were mistaken as to who he was.

  Dyer also claims to have had many unpleasant dreams, owing to his mind. Otherwise he has been notably silent all day. I am happy to be left to my solitude. Thankful to my Maker for such blessings &c.

  When still just a little girl I used to hope that God with a voice as loud as thunder would proclaim that all of my sins were forgiven. Now I know that I can wait until doomsday and I still will not hear any such thing. And yet the repentant sinner must actively seek God’s forgiveness instead of waiting for Him to act.

  Hard labor all week, sunup to sundown, helping Dyer in the outer fields with the smoothing harrow and the roller. Old Bill our horse has the heaves. Both of us fit to drop by Saturday eve. Both of us mournful this morning. Both of us seemed to have spent the day listening for footfalls on the porch. And yet when my thoughts turn to her I think with special heat, Why are we to be divided? Merciful Father turn the channel of events.

  Still feeling poorly by nightfall, and so unable to cook. A dinner of tea, bread and butter, and cold ham.

  Sunday 25 March

  A wild mixture of wind and rain and clouds and sunshine. Muddy March has dragged on like a log through a wet field.

  Downhearted and woebegone. A poor night. Fried corncakes and ham for breakfast. Poor Dyer suffering from a painful cough.

  Opened the mudroom door this afternoon to Dyer having returned from the fields, and he said with some asperity that it was pleasant to be greeted by the smile one values above all others, only to see that smile vanish because it’s been met by one’s own presence, instead of someone else’s.

  He sat with me a while, then, still in his boots. I asked if he wanted more of the ham and he said no. I told him that when he next went to town we needed calico and muslin and buttons and shoe thread. He asked if he was troubling me, sitting with me like this, and when I assured him he was not, he remarked that he had learned consideration of others. And that he had learned the need of human sympathy by the unfulfilled want of it. I told him that I felt as though I had provided him with much sympathy throughout our years together, and he allowed as to how that had been so. We then waited again, sitting facing each other, and I thought with some pity how his life seems equal parts furious work and resignation. When Tallie arrived he greeted her and seemed in no hurry to take his leave. He remained sunk in his chair for nearly a half an hour while we exchanged pleasantries and news before he finally rose to his feet and left without announcing his business.

  Once his figure was out of sight through the windows, I asked in a low voice after her spirits. She was content to repeat only that she was feeling doleful and unreasonable and unaware of what it was she wished. I asked what it was she then required of me, and she said, responding to my tone, that she wished me to be gentler. I asked again, chastened, what she desired, and she answered that she wanted to lay bare for me all of the hoardings of her imagination. I said nothing. Although I often speak before I think, I can keep still on occasion. She said our kisses had swept through her the way measles had the poor Indians, laying waste to everything. She said she had told herself to abolish all desire for comfort or any sort of happiness and then had immediately abandoned her resolution.

  She asked that I speak. I almost cried out, How should I have known what was happening to me? There were no instruction booklets of which I was aware. I told her I could feel something rising in me as she approached, like hair on the back of a dog. I told her the thought of her during the week was my shelter, the way the chickadees took to the depths of the evergreens to keep the snow and ice and wind at bay. I told her that I believed that we were now encountering that species of education that proceeds from being forced to confront what we never before acknowledged.

  She asked if we might share some tea and was silent until it was brewed. She said she believed that intimacy increased good will, and that if that were the case, then every moment we spent together would further tie happiness to utility. Wouldn’t our farm
s benefit from our more joyful labor? Wouldn’t our husbands’ burdens be lightened?

  We spent some additional interval thereafter consoling each other. We allowed ourselves some gentle excitement. And after she had departed I looked round the room and thought, “She’s gone and it’s as if she’d never been.”

  Sunday 1 April

  Warm and windy with the appearance of rain. First day this spring we could go all afternoon without a fire. Fried chicken and potatoes for breakfast. The morning spent manuring the onions.

  Dyer took the wagon after breakfast without explanation. My burn seems to be healing poorly. Tallie here earlier than her usual time, and we embraced in the mudroom as if rescued. She mentioned as if in passing that her dog would provide ample notice of arriving friends or strangers. Having done so she led me to our chairs and delivered herself over to our kissing as if it were the most urgent of errands. When I withdrew for breath she kept her face close, describing along my mouth delicate patterns with her tongue. During our longer kisses her breathing grew stronger.

  When we separated, we took each other in. Myself, overquiet. Tallie, flushed and on the lookout. Together we made for a distressing pair.

  I took her hands and she expressed pain at my sadness. She asked if I’d been to town during the week, and when I told her I hadn’t, she reported that they were cleaning out the drain under the streets along the fork and that several people were down with the fever.

  She added that her husband had told her that he didn’t consider that he had a wife, and that he would not lie with a woman if it required a contention. She said that she had informed him that he shouldn’t have anything to do with her; that she was opposed to it; that she was not willing. I was shocked and asked what his response had been. She said he had had no response. I asked if she believed he had given up on the notion of children. She said she had no insights to share on that question.

  We were silent for some time, then, out of respect for our predicament. I asked her husband’s age and she said he was nineteen years her senior and had been born in 1811, which would make him forty-five. I asked about his demeanor and she said that as mealtime conversation he had lately begun giving great credit to reports of men living far from town who had worked to poison and thereby kill their wives.

  I asked if she really believed he would acquiesce to the notion of no sons. I asked if she believed he resented her visits here with any special fervor, and she said she thought not. We worked ourselves nonetheless into a state of alarm, which was then only assuaged by more embraces and two or three extended kisses of great sobriety.

  She admitted to having been at work on another poem, which she had brought to show me, but she allowed me to see only the opening lines, which read: I love to have gardens, I love to have plants / I love to have air but I don’t love ants. I told her I could not support the rhyme, which saddened her. She held the poem between us and together we studied it as if it were the incomplete map of our escape route. Finally she said she felt that when she drew near, I would retreat, and when she kept still, I would return but remain at a fixed distance, like those sparrows that will stay in the farmyard but not enter the house. I responded that in her presence I felt perpetually as if I were ready to take her by the hand and lead her to my garden gate and to say: everything in here is yours; come and go and gather as you like.

  She also unwrapped from the same packet in which she had secreted the poem a sprig from her favorite cedar, which I told her I would plant where it would forever stay green.

  After she left I took myself outside into the sunshine and spread some feed for the surviving chickens. Upon Dyer’s return he found me taking my rest in the shade and kissed me, before withdrawing to refill the water buckets. After a dinner of duck and beets and sweet potatoes we enjoyed some little company together.

  Sunday 8 April

  Very damp, cloudy, and cool. Smoky. Perhaps the forest is somewhere on fire. A breakfast of hotcakes and custard and pickled peaches. Dyer seems now quite worn down at bedtime with grievance and care. We fear his cough is producing a decline. A syrup of old wine, flaxseed, and a medicinal called Balsom of Life seems to have helped. This morning he made me a trellis for the lima beans and shot a crow and filled it with salt to be hung in the shed over the corn to warn off others of its kind. The whole house seems both angry and repentant. God help us.

  No word from Tallie. At midday I stood off the back porch in the sun, my face turned in her direction. Above me a circling hawk used a single cloud as his parasol.

  Sunday 15 April

  Rain in torrents nearly all night. The lane is flooded and the ditches brim full. This morning only a slight shower.

  A breakfast of oatmeal alone. Prepared the pea sticks for the first crop of peas and drowned the barn cat’s kittens. The new wheat because of the holes in our fencing is still exposed to the hogs, which we have driven out several times already. We keep identifying new holes, which we cannot adequately repair for lack of time. Thus we find our enterprise sinking, level by level.

  A dispute with Dyer over the windows, open vs. shut. Unable to sit still afterward. Our quarrels always throw me out of harness. How many are there that have a happy fireside? Broad is the gate that leads to dissatisfaction and many wander through. Such is the effect of absence from what we love. But I have always been morose. My mother used to call me her rain crow, because she said time with me was like standing in an endless drizzle.

  After Dyer retired I took his spyglass and crossed the fields in the darkness to Tallie’s farm, approaching the front windows of her home as close as I dared and fixing through the kitchen glass, after some patient searching, her motionless figure in relief against the darkness within. Her features were still. By turning the lens-piece I drew her face nearer to mine and held it there until she turned away. Could I have been seen from the inside? I felt a giddiness like the violence of the impulse that sends a floating branch far out over a waterfall’s precipice before it plummets. Her dog’s barking drew her husband out onto the porch and I made my way back, plunging in over my boots in the mud.

  At sunset, earlier, a good three minutes of the honking of mallards, winging their way northward. By what faith do they arrive at their destination? I imagine them alighting at some marshy pond, where one by one their scattered kind arrives in safety, there to be together.

  A terribly bad spring so far but the clover has come up through it all and is all right.

  Sunday 22 April

  Finally a glimpse of her after three weeks of no word. She and her husband stopped their wagon outside our house to invite us to dinner this Saturday next. They were on their way again before Tallie and I could exchange much more than a look. The Nottoways report that our hogs have continued to stray into their fields, as well, and threaten increasingly harsh measures against them, including putting out their eyes and driving them into the river. The cardinals are enjoying the hornbeam and the catkins on the birches. The female seems to prefer feeding on the ground.

  Cool, but warm enough for no fire in the sitting room.

  Sunday 29 April

  Rain all week long, so heavy that it broke down the mill. All of our ditches are running to overflow. The lower clover field is swamped.

  Two of our hogs are still loose, since they are ailing and Dyer believes a hog is a good doctor and can cure himself if he can find the medicine he needs.

  For dinner Saturday night Tallie served us ham, beef, duck, potatoes, beets, pickled cucumbers, biscuits, and cornbread. We commended her on her labor and her husband said that he recalled a day when every family was fed, clothed, shod, sheltered, and warmed from the products a wife gathered from within her own fence line. I said that it must have been two full days that Tallie had spent on this feast, and she responded that her mother had always said that the week’s end was always the hardest part of the week.

  Her husband while we ate offered up what news had lately occurred. We were all uneasy to find him so voluble. He
mentioned that the Mannings’ third daughter was now one week old. He said that old Mr. Holt had apparently by some means pitched himself forward out of his cart, which had then passed over his back with its load of five hundred pounds, and that because of the mud the doctor says he is not severely hurt. He said that he had heard, when examining the damage at the mill, of news from Middleburgh: that a man down there had of last week been admitted to jail for shooting his wife in the face.

  There were silences. Tallie seemed to be keeping strict custody of her eyes. I remarked upon the duck and the men discussed for an interval the old shovel plow, which Dyer compared to dragging a cat by the tail. I marveled at the size and power of their hanging lamp, and Tallie answered that it was eighty candlepower and that she had induced her husband to purchase it so that everyone could read with equal ease all around the room. Finney said that he believed that even if he had been brought up not to read overmuch, he should give his children every chance to do so.

  The rain came under discussion. Finney said that no matter what misfortunes arrived at his doorstep, he would seek improvement of his lot with his own industry; he would study his options closely and attend to everything to which he’d believed he had already adequately attended, but with more vehemence. Dyer commended him and reminded the table that when success comes, someone is working hard. Finney said as an example that when he’d first begun farming he’d been so vexed by his inability to stop his dog’s barking one January that during a storm he’d held the animal around the corner of his barn in a gale until it had frozen to death.