Minutes later, Will turned to say, Let’s not worry about it until the time comes. But he found she had fallen asleep, flat on her back, lips parted, hands crossed demurely beneath her breasts. He watched her breathe, a strand of hair on her shoulder catching the light with each beat. His gaze drifted down to her stomach, back up to her breasts, soft and un-sculptured beneath her nightgown. He thought about how good it would feel to roll her onto her side, curl up behind her with his arms where hers were now and fall asleep with his face against her back. But what would she think if she awakened and found him that way? He would have to be on guard, even asleep.
His eyes wandered once more to her stomach.
It moved!
The quilts shifted as if a sleeping cat had changed positions underneath. But she slept soundly, as still as a mummy. The baby? Babies moved... that much? Cautiously, he braced up on one elbow until he sat over her, studying the movements at close range. Boy or girl? It shifted again and he smiled. Whatever it was, it was rambunctious; he couldn’t believe all that commotion didn’t wake her up. He resisted the urge to turn the quilts back for a better look, the even greater one to rest a hand on her and feel what he was watching. Either—of course—was out of the question.
He lay back down to worry that he’d agreed to deliver that baby. God, what had he been thinking? He’d kill it for sure with his big, clumsy hands.
Don’t think about it, Will.
He closed his eyes and concentrated instead on the goodnight kisses of Donald Wade and Baby Thomas. He recalled their childish voices wishing him goodnight, especially Thomas—” ‘Night, Wiw...” He tried to wipe his mind clean of all thought so sleep would come. But the light shone through his eyelids, urging them open once again.
Eleanor flipped onto her side, facing him. He studied her eyelashes lying like fans against her cheeks, the palm of her left hand resting near his chin with the friendship ring peeking through her relaxed fingers. He let his eyes roam over the button placket of her nightgown, the quilt that had slipped down to her waist, the white cloth covering her breasts. He reached out carefully—very carefully—and took the fabric of her sleeve in his fingers, rubbing it as a greedy man rubs two coins together. Then he withdrew his hand, flipped over in the opposite direction and tried to forget the light was on.
CHAPTER
11
In the morning Eleanor opened her eyes to the back of Will Parker’s head. His hair was flattened into a pinwheel, giving a clear view of his white skull underneath. She smiled. The intimacies of marriage. She watched each breath lift his shoulder blades, studied his back with its distinctive triangle of moles, the hindside of one ear, the pattern of the hairline at his nape, the ridges of his vertebrae disappearing beneath the covers just above his waist. His skin was so much darker than Glendon’s, so much barer; Glendon always slept in an undershirt. Will’s skin looked seasoned, whereas Glendon’s had been doughy.
The object of her study snuffled and rolled onto his back. His eyeballs moved behind closed lids, but he slept on, his face exposed to the sun. It turned him all gold and brown and put glints of color in his pale hair like those in a finch’s wing. His beard grew fast, much faster than Glendon’s, and there was more hair on his arms and chest. Studying it gave her an unexpected jolt of reaction, down low.
She slammed her eyes closed only to realize that he smelled different from Glendon. No smell she could name, only the distinctive one given him by Nature—warm male hide and hair and breath—as different from Glendon’s as that of an apple from an orange. Her eyes opened stealthily, halfway, as if such caution would prevent him from waking. Through nearly closed eyelids she admired him? letting the sunlight shatter on her lash tips and diffuse over his image as if he were sprinkled with sequins. A handsome, well-built man. The whores in La Grange probably fought over him.
Again the queer radiant disturbance intensified low in her belly as she lay with her knees only inches from his hip, his unfamiliar man-smell permeating her bedclothes, his warmth and bulk taking up half the sleeping space. It was a shock to find herself susceptible to fleshly thoughts when she’d thought pregnancy made her immune.
Another disturbing consideration struck. Suppose he had studied her as intimately as she now studied him? She tried to recall falling asleep but couldn’t. They’d been talking—that was the last she remembered. Had she been lying on her back? Facing him? She glanced at the table; the lantern still hissed. He had left it on, could have lain awake for hours after she’d dropped off, taking an up-close tally of her shortcomings. Studying his becoming face, she became all too aware of how she suffered by comparison. Her hair was dirt brown, plain, her eyelashes thin and stubby, her fingers wide-knuckled, her stomach popping, her breasts mammoth. Sometimes she snored. Had she snored last night while he watched and listened?
She rolled toward her edge of the bed, thinking, just forget he’s back there and go about dressing as if it were any other day.
At her first movement Will came awake as if she’d set off a firecracker. He glanced at her back, the alarm clock, then sat up and reached for his pants, all in one motion.
They dressed facing opposite walls, and only when the final buttons were closed did they peer over their shoulders at each other.
“Mornin’,” she offered self-consciously.
“Mornin’.”
“Sleep okay?”
“Fine. Did I crowd you?”
“Not that I remember. Did 1 crowd you?”
“No.”
“You always wake up that quick?”
“It’s nearly eight. Herbert’s gonna bust.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and yanked his boots on. A moment later he was stalking out the door, stuffing in his shirttails.
When he was gone, she dropped onto the bed and sighed with relief. They’d done it! Gone to bed, slept together, gotten up and dressed without once making physical contact, and without him seeing her ugly, bloated body.
She sat moments longer staring despondently at the mop-board.
Well, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?
Yes!
Then why are you sitting here moping?
I’m not moping!
Oh?
Well, I’m not!
But you’re thinking about when the judge ordered him to kiss you.
Well, what’s wrong with that?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Leave me alone.
Silence. For minutes and minutes only obedient silence hummed inside her head.
If you wanted him to kiss you goodnight, you should’ve just leaned over and done it yourself.
I didn’t want him to kiss me goodnight.
Oh, sorry. I thought that’s why you were moping.
I wasn’t moping.
But she was, and she knew it.
At midmorning that day, with breakfast eaten and his routine chores done, Will returned to the house to find the veiled hat, hive tool and smoker on the back-porch steps. He grinned. So... no more egg grenades. Going inside to thank her, he almost regretted the loss.
The house was empty, on the table, a note: Gone to pick pecans with the boys. He took the stub of a pencil, scrawled across the bottom, “Thanks for the wedding gift!” and hit for the mint patch.
Their first twenty-four hours as husband and wife seemed to set the tone for the days that followed. They lived together amicably if not intimately, helping one another in small ways, adapting, sharing a mutual enjoyment of the children and their uncomplicated family life. From the first they accommodated each other—as with the beekeeping gear—so there were no more bursts of anger. Life was peaceful.
Though the sudden appearance of the hive tool, hat and smoker was never mentioned between them, it signaled the true beginning of Will’s work with the bees. He sensed that Eleanor would rather not know when he was out in the orchard, so he kept the equipment in an outbuilding when it was not in use, and retrieved it without telling her. Only when he returned to the house with
the honeycomb frames did she know he’d been among the bees.
He learned to respect them. There was a calm about the orchard that seeped into him each time he passed there, a serenity not only among the insects, but within himself for the necessity of having to move slowly while among them. But as slowly as he moved, it was inevitable that he should eventually get stung. The first time it happened he jumped, swatted and yowled, “Ouch!” For his efforts he received three additional stings. He learned, in time, not to jump and most certainly not to swat, forcing the stinger farther into his skin. But more importantly, he learned to recognize the variations in the sounds of the bees—from the squeaky piping of the contented workers as they moved about their business on humming gauze wings to the altogether different “quacking” occasionally set up by a single provoked bee, warning him to anticipate the sting and be ready to fend it off. He came to recognize the feel of bee feet digging into his body hair for a good grip, and to pluck the insect away gently before the grip became a sting. He learned that bees are soothed by the sound of human whistling, that their least favorite color is red and their most favorite, blue.
So it was a happy man who walked among the peach trees, whistling, dressed all in blue, a veiled hat protecting his face. He could never get used to the clumsiness of gloves, so worked barehanded, scraping at the hard, varnishlike propolis with which the bees sealed every minute crack between the supers. Inside the smoker, which was little more than a spouted tin can with an attached bellows, he lit a smudge of oiled burlap. Several puffs into the open hive subdued the bees, enabling him to remove the comb cases without danger. These he transported back to the house, where he carefully scraped the wax caps off the comb with a knife heated above a kerosene lantern. The first time Eleanor saw him doing so she opened the porch door and stepped outside, shrugging into a sweater, carrying a knife. “You’ll need a little help with that,” she said flatly, without casting him a glance. But she sat down on the opposite side of the lantern and showed him that it wasn’t the first time she’d scraped wax. Nor was it the first time she’d extracted, nor rendered, when it came time to do those jobs.
The extracting—pulling the honey from the combs—was done in a fifty-gallon drum equipped with a crank that spun the combs and forced the honey out by centrifugal force. From a spigot at the bottom the honey was drained—littered with fragments of comb and wax—then heated and strained before the wax was allowed to separate to the top and be skimmed off. The two products were then packed separately for sale.
There was much Will didn’t know, particularly about the rendering process, knowledge that could be learned only by experience. Eleanor taught him—albeit grudgingly most of the time, but she taught him just the same.
“How do we clean up this mess?” Will inquired of the sticky drum with its honey-coated paddles and spigot.
“We don’t. The bees do,” she replied.
“The bees?”
“Bees eat honey. Just leave it outside in the sun and they’ll find it.”
Sure enough, any honey-coated tool left outside soon became cleaner than if it had been steamed.
Will knew perfectly well she saw the occasional welts on his skin, but she made no comments about them and soon his body built up a natural immunity until the bee stings scarcely reacted. When he came in with a load of comb, she tacitly went into the cellar for fruit jars, washed and scalded them, then lent a hand processing and bottling the honey.
Those honey days were a time of acquaintance for Will and Eleanor. As with their first night in bed when they’d lain so still, growing accustomed to lying side by side, working with the honey lent them proximity and time to adjust to the fact that they were bound for life. Sometimes, while scraping wax or holding a funnel, Will would look up and find himself being studied. The same was true for Eleanor. There would follow quick mutual smiles and a sense of growing acceptance, each for the other.
At night in bed, they talked. He, of the bees. She of the birds. Never of the birds and bees.
“Did you know a male worker bee has thirteen thousand eyes?”
“Did you know the flycatcher makes his nest out of discarded snakeskin?”
“There are nurses in a bee colony and all they do is take care of the nymphs.”
“Most birds sing, but the titmouse is the only one who can actually whisper.”
“Did you know the bees’ favorite color is blue?”
“And the hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards?”
These discussions sometimes led to insights into each other. One night Will spoke of the worker bees. “Did you know they work so hard during their lifetime that they actually work themselves to death?”
“No...” she replied disbelievingly.
“It’s true. They wear down their wings till they’re so frayed they can’t fly anymore. Then they just die.” His expression turned troubled. “That’s sad, isn’t it?”
Eleanor studied her husband in a new light and found she liked what she saw. He lay in the dim lanternlight, contemplating the ceiling, saddened by the plight of the worker bees. How could a woman remain aloof to a man who cared about such things? Moved, she reached out to console, grazing the underside of his upraised arm.
His glance shot down to her and their gazes caught for several interminable seconds, then her fingers withdrew.
On a night shortly thereafter Will came up with another amazing apian phenomenon. “Did you know the workers practice something called flower fidelity? It means each bee gathers nectar and pollen from only one species of flower.”
“Oh, you’re making that up!” Her head twisted to face his profile.
“I am not. I read about it in one of the books Miss Beasley gave me. Flower fidelity.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He lay as he did every night during their talks—on his back with his hands behind his head. Silent, she regarded him, digesting this new snippet of information. At length she squared her head on the pillow and fixed her attention on the pale glow overhead. “I guess that’s not so unusual. Some birds practice fidelity, too. To each other. The eagles, the Canadian geese—they mate for life.”
“Interesting.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ve never seen an eagle,” Will mused.
“Eagles are...” Eleanor gestured ceilingward— “Majestic.”—then let her hands settle to her stomach again. A smile tipped her lips. “When I was a girl I used to see a golden eagle in a huge dead tree down in the swamp near Cotton Creek. If I were a bird, I’d want to be an eagle.”
“Why?” Will turned to study her.
“Because of something I read once.”
“What?”
“Oh... nothing.” She twined her fingers and looked down her chest at them.
“Tell me.” He sensed her reluctance but kept his gaze steady, unrelenting. After some time she sent Will a quick peek.
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I promise.”
For several seconds she concentrated on aligning her thumbnails precisely, then finally quoted shyly.
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
“The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”
She paused before adding, “Somebody named Tennyson wrote that.”
In that moment Will saw a new facet of his wife. Fragile. Impressionable. Touched by poets’ words, articulate combinations of words such as she herself never used.
“It’s beautiful,” he said softly.
Her thumbnails clicked together as she vacillated between the wish to hide her feelings and reveal more. The latter won as she swallowed and added softly, “Nobody laughs at eagles.”
Oh, Elly, Elly, who hurt you so bad? And what would it take to make you forget it? Will rolle
d to face her and braced his jaw on a fist. But she wouldn’t turn, and her cheeks burned brightly.
“Did somebody laugh at you?” His voice was deep with caring. A tear plumped in the corner of her eye. Understanding her chagrin at its arrival, Will pretended not to notice. He waited motionlessly for her answer, studying the ridge of her nose, the outline of her compressed lips. When she spoke it was an evasion.
“For a long time I didn’t know what azure meant.”
He watched as her throat contracted and the florid spots in her cheeks stood out like pennies on an open palm. His hand burned to touch her—her chin maybe, turn it to face him so she would see that he cared and would never ridicule her. He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say, “Tell me... tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we’ll work at getting you over it.” But every time he considered touching her his insecurities reared up to confront and confine him. Woman killer, jailbird, she’ll jump and yelp if you touch her. On the first day you were warned to keep your distance.
So he stayed on his own side of the bed with one wrist riveted to his hip, the other folded beneath an ear. But what he couldn’t relay by touch he put into his expressive voice.
“Elly?” It came out softly, the abbreviated name falling from his lips as an endearment. Their gazes collided, her green eyes still luminous with unshed tears, his brown ones filled with understanding. “Nobody’s laughing now.”
Suddenly everything in her yearned toward him.
Touch me, she thought, like nobody ever did before, like I touch the boys when they feel bad. Make it not important that I’m plain and unpretty and more pregnant than I wish I was right now. You’re the man, Will—don’t you see? A man’s got to reach first.
But he couldn’t. Not first.
Touch me, he thought, my arm, my hand, a finger. Let me know it’s all right for me to have these feelings for you. Nobody’s cared enough to touch me for years and years. But you’ve got to reach first, don’t you see? Because of how you felt about him, and what I am, what I did, what we agreed to the first day I came here.