He didn’t reply because he knew why she hadn’t gone. She had told him all of this when they first met. The death of her parents, then her grandparents, Gabe too old to matter, so that it felt as if it were only the two of them in the world. Anneth and Easter.
She finished the last handful of beans and threw them carelessly into the bowl, then wadded up her newspaper full of strings and put it on the porch floor. “But if I had gone to college,” she said, “I never would have met you.”
“That wouldn’t have been good,” he said, and winked at her.
“El, do you love me less, because I can’t have a baby?”
He leaned forward quickly and put both his feet on the floor. He shook his head. “How could you think that, Easter? Can’t you see that I love you even more on account of that very thing?”
She ran her hands over her face, glad that no tears came, although his words caused a great release all through her body. She had been wanting the answer to this question for so long that his reply was a balm.
He looked at her for the first time in their conversation. “I went to that square dance hoping you’d be there,” he said.
“What?” A strand of her hair blew down between her eyes and she tucked it behind her ear. “You never told me that before.”
“I seen you in town,” he said, his voice distant and dreamy, a sound she had never heard coming from his mouth before. “About a week before that. You and Sophie out Christmas shopping. I liked the way you walked down the street with your arm in hers, laughing at something you saw in the window. I liked the way you carried yourself, the way you seemed so at ease with the world.”
Easter had never thought of herself as being confident before, but now she realized that she was. Confidence came from not caring what anyone in the world thought. Anneth bragged about not giving a damn what people thought about her, but Easter knew that her sister did. It was Anneth’s darkest secret.
“I asked this buddy of mine if he knowed who you were, and he did, but he said ‘She’s a church girl,’ like he knowed I wouldn’t want to fool with anybody that was Christian. But somehow I liked that even more. It was like you were the first woman my own age who I could respect, somehow.”
Easter felt as if she was only just beginning to know her husband after all these years together. After all they had been through together.
“And so from then on, you were the only girl I wanted. Something about you I just liked.”
“I wish you had told me this a long time ago,” she said, and only then did she notice that darkness had completely overtaken the backyard. The cornstalks scratched together out there in the blackness.
He plucked another beer from his cooler but didn’t open it right away. “I’m telling you now,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve loved you for a long time.”
She laughed. “Sometimes I don’t know why you’d love me.”
“Because you’re the only thing I ever really wanted,” he said. “I like my life. I like driving them loads of coal down the long highways, like eating in truck stops and listening to the radio while the land goes by. But I think what I love most about my job is that I know I’ll get to come back home, to this place. I think about that a lot. Parking my truck up there behind the church and then walking down the road to our house. Finding you in the kitchen or in the garden. That’s all I ever wanted.”
Finally she got up and sat down in his lap. She laid her head on his shoulder and looped her arms around his neck. “Will you do something for me, El?”
“Anything.” His word was a breath against the top of her head.
“Go to church with me in the morning. Just this once.”
“I will,” he said, and spread his big hand out on her back.
Seventeen
Dog Days
THEY CAME DOWN out of the shadows of the mountain and stepped into the white light of a Sunday morning. The crowd was large and they were all singing. Their voices drifted down the river and carried to people who lived near the water’s edge. Dozens of people singing, all of their voices lifted in the same harmony, forty mouths making their lips work around the same words. There was harmony in their voices, but also in the way they moved down onto the river’s bank, as if they had practiced so their legs would move in the same stride, so their arms would swing in rhythm.
This morning there were six people who were to be baptized. Amongst them were Easter and El. Easter had started crying as soon as the crowd started singing and walking down the worn path that led to the river’s edge. She was filled with such a pure joy that she cried from the effort of containing it within her chest. She let the tears fall freely from her face as she joined in with the others:
I’m going to live right now.
I said I’m going to live right now.
I woke up this morning,
Thinking ’bout that glory.
I’m going to live right now.
She ran her thumb over El’s hand as she held on to it. He walked along very stiffly, and watching him from the corner of her eye, Easter wondered if he was as moved as she was. When he became very still and straight-backed like this, Easter knew his heart was full up. She hoped that he felt this pressing of joy against his rib cage, the way she did. She wanted him to know how it felt to be at peace.
The people kept singing until the preacher waded out into the water and held his Bible high in the air. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and sunlight glinted off the little waves, making golden pock-marks on his face. He began to talk, but Easter did not really hear him. She was looking for Anneth. There was a great crowd of onlookers on the riverbank. Most of them were from the church, but there were lots of people who had come to see the baptism. She saw several people crying, moved by the sight of the first woman who walked slowly into the water. Easter leaned to this side and that, trying to catch sight of Anneth standing on the shore, but she couldn’t see her anywhere. Anneth had assured her that she would come.
One by one they made their way into the water, and finally it was El’s turn. Just before he went out, Easter stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear, and in that moment she loved him more than she ever had before. She had a sudden, startling thought: He is only doing this for me. She didn’t want that; she wanted him to serve the Lord because that was what he most wanted to do. But she would always keep this in the back of her mind, that he was only going to go to church because she’d asked him to. This was a good thing, to think he’d do something this large for her, but still it wouldn’t be right. She shook the thought from her mind, for fear of spoiling the beauty of this day. He had made the decision on his own, just as he had decided on his own last Sunday to get up and go to church with her. She had not prodded him to the altar, had not forced him to confess his sins and be saved. Now, all at once, she heaved with tears as El stood there in waist-deep water. He kept his head down and looked at the water while the preacher said a few words. Then the preacher put one hand over El’s mouth and the other at his back. Then they were dipping back, like dancers, until El was under. It seemed he stayed under forever, but when the preacher brought him back up, El lifted his arms high in the air and kept his eyes closed, and his mouth moved. He was praying; he was full of the spirit. Slowly he began to speak in tongues and the preacher was lifting his own arms high into the air, shouting, “Praise Glory!” The spirit drifted from El and hit the people on the bank. Some of them jerked back as the Holy Ghost descended upon them. Several people began to speak in tongues and cry and call out to the sky, but Easter was so overtaken by gladness that she could do nothing except put her hands over her mouth and laugh. She had never been so happy in her life.
ANNETH STOOD AMIDST the trees, watching. No one was aware of her, and she loved this feeling of spying, of not being known. There was a crowd of people on the bank, and when El was baptized, they all got into the spirit of things. They were shouting and waving their arms and hollering. She kn
ew this was because they all thought El had been a bad sinner. When church people saw a bad sinner be baptized, they got real happy, Anneth thought. She saw Easter standing down there, the next to be baptized, and it made Anneth want to cry. It filled her with a great sadness but she could not put her finger on its source. Easter just looked so pitiful there, her arms thin, the wisps of her hair flying out of the bobby pins, which caught sunlight. Anneth wanted nothing more than to run down the mountainside and wrap her sister up in her arms. She thought of all the kindness Easter had shown to her since she was born. She had been a sister and a mother both.
“I love you so much,” Anneth whispered. Only the leaves heard.
Anneth squatted down on her haunches and eyed the ground, looking for snakes. Now it was the dog days of August, when snakes went blind and struck at anything, when dogs went crazy or slept in the shade all day. Anneth wondered what dog days did to people, for she had felt different lately. She had always carried a stone of grief around, but these past few days it had grown heavier.
She lit a cigarette. The strike of her match was so loud that she looked up quickly, afraid it had drawn the attention of the people down on the shore. But there was much noise down there and of course nobody had noticed. She was wearing last night’s dress and it reeked of smoke and whiskey. She had been out all night with Lolie and Israel and Liam. She had nearly overslept but had awakened in Liam’s bed just in time to get into her car without so much as brushing her hair and speed along the winding road until she got to the baptizing place. She sat down on the mossy ground while Easter waded out into the water. She didn’t know if she could bear seeing Easter be put under. She didn’t know why. But when the preacher swooped Easter back, Anneth started, as if she were afraid Easter might drown, and she sat up very straight-backed, peering through the trees. It seemed as if Easter stayed under forever, as if she might never be brought back up. Anneth had a sudden thought that the preacher was holding her under, that he was drowning her. As her panic spread all the way up her back, the preacher brought Easter out of the water, and the whole crowd started singing again and all their hands went into the air, praising the Lord. Easter shook all over as she walked out of the river. She paused halfway out, standing in the water with her arms raised and her eyes closed. There was so much joy on her face. There was complete peace. And Anneth knew why she felt this terrible sadness: she feared that she would never know what that felt like, to know for certain that what she was doing was what she most wanted to do in her life. To have that look of assuredness and happiness upon her face. She was positive that such knowledge would never come to her.
THE CROWD MOVED back up the riverbank and climbed the steep path up the mountain to the road. They were singing again, “Meeting in the Air,” and their voices silenced those of the birds who sat watching in the trees lining the path. Something told Easter to look up, and when she did, she saw Anneth standing there amongst the trees. No one else had noticed her, for she stood within the shadows of the great hickories and sycamores leaning over the river. She started to let go of El’s hand and run through the woods to her sister, but then Anneth simply put one hand up as if she were about to wave but couldn’t force herself to do so. A big smile covered her face and she nodded. She kept her hand up, a palm frozen in the air, and Easter knew this meant to move on, to stay with the singing crowd as they made their way back up to the mile-long line of cars that sat on the side of the road.
Eighteen
Night Swimming
THERE WAS NO freedom like swimming, no feeling in the world. It was like flying.
Anneth came up from underwater, wiped out her eyes, and looked at the pitch darkness surrounding her. Liam was standing very close to her, and although she could barely see his face two feet in front of hers, she could tell that he was smiling. He took great gulps of air, and when he breathed out she could smell the beer on his lips. She could smell it on herself, too. The scent was so strong that it seemed to be seeping out of their very skin. Besides that, there was the smell of lake water and she noticed that the night had a smell all its own, too: the cool that drifted down over the valley drew up the aroma of the woods and the sand and the moon itself, it seemed. He put his big hands on her waist and then ran one of them down her thigh. She turned away from him and he held her from behind; she wanted to take in the world around her. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the mountains’ crooked forms across the lake. There was a scratch of moon, and the only stars were gathered close to it as if bits of the moon had chipped off and floated just within its orbit. From far across the water she heard a screech owl cry out, and then there was nothing to hear at all except the lap of the little waves around their bodies and Liam’s breathing against her neck.
She went under again, leaving him, and swam toward the shore. She loved the sound of being underwater. She thought this was probably how death sounded: a low, black rumbling in your ears. Nothing but roaring and darkness. The feel of rushing through the water was exhilarating. She kicked her feet and scooped the water away with her hands, building up speed, then let herself sail, like a bird drifting. She relaxed and imagined she was not surrounded by water, but by wind. I am flying, she thought. This is what it feels like.
She glided along like that until she felt her body rising to the top. Once there, she let her arms drift out to her sides and became completely still. She opened her eyes to the night sky and saw that a few more stars had come out. But they were tiny glints and probably no one else was seeing them. They were only visible because of the complete darkness here on the lake.
Then Liam was suddenly behind her. He had followed. “Ain’t you afraid to be swimming out here in the dark?” he said in a whisper.
“Hell, no,” she said aloud, and her voice seemed to break up some kind of wonderful silence that she had not really noticed before. “I’m not afraid of nothing.”
“Not a thing in the world?” he said. She put one arm around his neck and one hand on his face. She could feel that he was smiling. He had crow’s feet at the corners of his mouth, and she found them very appealing. Beads of water caught there.
She thought about it a minute. “Well, maybe the hydrogen bomb. That’s all I can think of.”
He picked her up in his arms. He carried her up on the bank and fell onto his knees with her spread across his lap, and she lay back, knowing what was going to happen. Here, out of the water, she was aware of her drunkenness again. When he kissed her, she became very dizzy and finally forced his lips away with a laugh. She didn’t know where this had come from, but she was so tickled that she kept laughing. He smiled above her. “What is it?”
“I’m just so drunk,” she said. In the whole year since Easter had lost the baby, she had only been out drinking a few times, always nervous that she might get a call from El, telling her she was needed. But now she could give herself up to the world and go back to the way she had been. She had been the strong one and she hadn’t liked it. Now it was time to go back to being Anneth. She ran her finger across Liam’s lips.
Liam put his hands under her bathing suit and peeled it away. The sand was gritty beneath her back, but it was a good feeling. She lay there and when he came down on her, she put her arms around his neck and arched her head back and watched the sky while he moved above her.
She kissed him and ran her hands over his back, moved beneath him in rhythm, but she didn’t feel as if she were there at all. She felt like she was part of that sky, drifting on outstretched wings, sailing back home, back to Free Creek. She imagined what she might see and hear there tonight. Nothing. Dark little houses, the sounds of the creek and katydids. All the windows were opened in their house. In her mind’s eye she hovered over the bed that Easter and El were now sharing again. She watched them sleep. Easter on her back, her hands folded on her chest like a woman lying in her coffin. Easter’s brow fretted, disturbed by a dream. Or maybe she sensed Anneth there, staring down with intensity. In the shadows of the room
she could see Easter’s eyes open, and then Easter rose from the bed. She sat up, looking about, knowing someone was in there with her. But never thinking to look up to the ceiling.
Anneth realized that she had not had a good night’s sleep since leaving that house, since the night she and Matthew Morgan had taken off to Tennessee to get married. She pictured that now, too, the surprise of being on the open road as Matthew pushed the gas to the floor and they sped over those winding roads toward Jellico, and then her taking over and driving them to Nashville. Sometimes it felt as if she had lived two or three lifetimes, for that seemed ages ago. It seemed as if it had all happened to another person.
Liam was lying on the sand next to her now, breathing hard, one arm beneath her neck and the other laid across his own stomach.
The world was spinning. She felt that she was in sync with the turning of the earth. Lying there, she could actually feel it moving round, getting nearer to daylight. She rose quickly—so quickly that it caused her to lose her balance for a moment, but then she righted herself and ran back down the beach and out into the water. When she had run far enough, she put her hands together in front of her and dove in, slicing through the water, free.
THEY DATED FOR two years, spending their entire summers on the lake, and one day, as the boat drifted out into the middle of the big water, Liam did exactly what Anneth had known he was going to do. He opened the glove compartment of his boat and withdrew a small box. He held it out to her on his palm, his other hand holding on to a beer.
“It’s been two whole years now,” he said. “I want to make an honest woman out of you.”
She looked at him, his brown eyes, his dark skin, which was strange only in that the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands were so white. He was a beautiful man. Slim and broad shouldered and long legged. She knew she didn’t love him. She would never love him, either. At least with Matthew she had thought she might. But with Liam, she knew the only attraction was that he liked to have a big time and that he had that nice car and this fine boat, which was the finest one to ever float upon Blackhawk Lake. Besides all that, she loved the way he looked at her. When his eyes were upon her, she knew that he was thinking she was beautiful. He told her that all the time. They might just be driving along silently and he would reach over, cup her chin in his hand, and say: “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”