I don’t know if help was ever offered, and my mother refused just because we were lucky that the house and yard were ours and we could scrape by, or because whatever help might come from my grandfather would be grudging and bitter. He had enough for himself, and what he had he kept. We had taken his son from him, and in his mind, we deserved no more after we lost what he valued most.
The day before it happened, February third, after days of hard snows, we left for school. There had been no new money for Alma and me to count that day, nor had been for weeks. We had dried off Patty as she was due to freshen in March and needed her strength. Mama told us not to worry, that after the calf came there would be plenty of milk, and money from the promised selling. The Mickelbys would buy the calf, if it was a heifer, or the butcher would buy it if it was a bull calf. Alma understood, and contented herself with counting over the same small stacks of coins, a tiny copper and silver fence that only a small child could believe was a guard against disaster. It was harder for me. I missed the early morning milking, when the air was cool even in summer, and the only warm thing was the cow’s body, heat rising from it as I leaned my face and shoulder against her side, and the milk pulsing through her teats warmed my hands.
John Garney shoved past us as we walked, making us stumble. He was muttering, to himself or to the wind, who knew, the words slurred and angry, and the smell of alcohol sharp on his breath. At the corner, where we would always stop and plan our way across with care, for the road sloped and besides the snow that had hardened there into slick ice there were manure piles in various stages of freezing, John — I can call him that, for I am more than twice the age he ever came to be — rushed across and into the path of Harrison’s wagon. Mr. Harrison pulled up his team, but John Garney swore at man and beast and raised his hand to the horses. Earl Harrison was off the wagon before I could blink, and he and John were flailing at each other, then fell and rolled, shouting, on the frozen ground. I pulled Alma back from the road and the men and the stamping, nervous animals. We huddled against the fence of the nearest yard as other men came to the fray and pulled Mr. Harrison off the bleeding and swearing John Garney. He turned over, managed to get onto his hands and knees, swaying, raised his head, and looked at those who had not hurried off, eyes averted. Alma and I were still there, stunned at the public violence between grown men. This was not the norm in our experience. The town was dry, and the hand of the church was heavy. John’s gaze slid over my sister and me and fixed on something behind us.
“You. Come here.” His voice was hard as ice, and the twins, who I guessed had seen near everything of their father’s defeat, went past us as silent as two small figures made of snow. They knew, as did we, what would happen once they helped their father back to their house. But even though they’d bear the brunt of their father’s anger for having witnessed his fall, I believed they would be in school, bruised but stubborn in their quiet staring attention if not to our teacher, at least to the fire dancing in the iron stove. They knew better, I realized later, and Stephen held Micah’s hand in his as they walked to their father. Stephen came alone and would not explain his twin’s, or Jessie’s, absence. Alma and I watched that day and said nothing. What was there to say? Who was there to tell? All we did was sit on the hard bench beside Stephen, silent except for our recitations of that day, the capitals and products of the Mid-Atlantic states, and the conjugations of the verb “to choose.”
I woke during the night, as I had every night since my father died, and turned over and set my hand close to Alma’s mouth to see that she still breathed. Then I walked to my mother’s room, the bare floor cold on my feet, and watched for the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. Satisfied that all was well — as well as it could be, within our house — I wrapped my mother’s green shawl over my nightgown and went to the back porch, slipped on my boots, and went out to check on Patty. The moon was no more than a thin line of light, the snow dull as unpolished silver, and our cow slept in the deep shadows of the shed. As I stood there, watching her breath make little clouds, I heard footfalls on the snow, someone passing through our yard. I looked out and saw a moving shadow, picked out by the light the small figure carried. I must have made some sound, though I meant not to, because he stopped and raised his lantern to see, though it did no more than brighten his face and blind him to me. I was quiet then, and after a few moments he moved on. I watched the light moving away, bobbing as Stephen leaned down to slip through the rails of our fence. So I was not the only one who woke, and walked, though I would not venture as far as he did.
The cries and alarm rose not long afterward. I had returned to bed, though not to sleep, when the shouts and sounds of running pounded in from out on the street. Alma had startled awake, and begun her noiseless crying when Mama came in and took us by the hands, and we went to the door together to see what trouble had come. The neighbor men were rushing past, down to where a glow rose behind the Harrisons’ small house. “Get dressed, girls, quickly,” Mother told us, “we’ll go to see if we can help.”
The fire was burning high when we got there, orange and yellow against the still-black sky, the men throwing buckets of water and shovelfuls of snow on the flames rising from the wagon and the two-stall barn. The snow hissed and melted and ran in ashy streams to where we stood with the other women and girls. The boys pushed in closer, and voices rose, loud and harsh as crows, crowded together in a babble of words and cries. “... happened... start... both horses out... saw anything...” Then a few words began to be repeated. “Lantern... broken... Garney... Garney... too much... no more...”
Finally the fire died down, and the men stood beside the collapsed wagon and the fallen beams and boards of the barn, warning off the boys who danced in near as they dared to the sparking embers. The elders of our ward gathered around Earl Harrison and what they talked of we could not hear. Earl Harrison walked into his unburned house and came out carrying a rifle. The elders turned as one and without regarding those of us who watched, set their buckets and shovels against the fence and walked, each man slow and weary-looking, down the street. Some younger men stayed to stand sentinel over the fire lest the wind rise and feed it, others saw to the horses, and several women went inside with Sarah Harrison to tend to those who had been burned on their hands or faces, but the rest of the crowd, and us with them, followed the elders. Men broke off from the group, went into their dark houses, and when they caught up, carried rifles of their own. I wondered how long it had been since any were fired. Since deer hunting months before, I thought.
They stood at the foot of the steps and looked up at the dark windows of the Garney house. “Brother Garney,” they called out, so he must have been a member of the church at some time, though I had never seen him inside its walls or following its teachings. They called again, voices roughened by smoke and exhaustion. These were men who worked fourteen hours or more most days, and to have lost half of what little rest they could claim each night lay heavy on them all. I wondered what they would do if no answer came, but the door opened and Sarah Garney stood there, the baby in her arms.
“We’ve come to speak with your husband, Sister Garney.”
She shook her head, said, “He’s asleep.”