“What I showed to your father when we stood out there in the woods that day you come up on us and hid behind a tree.”
“And what was that?”
“The way of the World, Mother. The way of the World, Miss Ginny,” he said.
I did not breakfast with my husband the following morning. Nor did I break my bread with him the morning after that nor any over the week to come. I sat or lay in that shed, and they did not come to get me to dig holes and fill holes or hug at the oak tree. They kept the door open during the long day, and when I was able, I leaned against the boards at the back of the shed and looked out at the well and the woods beyond. Now and again a pig would wander past. One rainy afternoon a sow came in out of the wet and curled up in the corner, and I passed some hours in contemplating the mud on her fat flank and the lift and fall of her midsection and the kick she would give when she hit some rough pasture in her dream. When she woke she walked over to me and gave me a sniff.
“Yes, I would like to kill you and grind you and eat you,” I said.
“Go on and try,” she said.
“I would get a big skillet and set the whole of you in it,” I said.
“Only I would get a big skillet and set the whole of you in it first, and then I would call in my youngins and let them set their sloppy mouths to you first,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
Then she flicked her tail and walked off.
Once or twice over that week I woke on my dirt to find a bowl of water and some dry cornbread next to me, but I never saw my benefactors. They had turned themselves into voices, and those voices would come and sit on the other side of the boards behind me and speak or sing. On the fourth day I lost track of what it was they would sing or say. On the fifth day I spoke and sang back, but each time I did the voices went away to the land where voices live in columns of wind and light. On the following day, they did not. They remained there on the other side of the boards. So I sang them “Glory, Hallelujah” and “The Old Wooden Cross.” I sang them “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a yuletime song I didn’t know the name of. There wasn’t much lung to my voice, but it came out.
When I didn’t have any song to sing I talked. I told them I’d seen Alcofibras dancing, and that he might be back to dance some more just any one of the nights to come. I told them that after he had come to dance for me he had come into one of my dreams and torn pieces of himself off to eat until all that was left was his mouth. I told them otherwise I’d been thinking about the stars in the sky and the cold proposition they presented, for I had. I told them I’d been thinking about the wind in the big trees and the animals clinging to their branches, for I had. I told them I’d scraped myself out a long, low pit to sleep my nights in and that I was grateful for the blanket they had given me and for the slops and the water, for I was. I told them I had been thinking about old Pharaoh and the Egyptians and the jasmine and brook flowers and amethysts he had worn against his breast, and how when I was a child I had often wished to lay my eyes on all the glories of Earth’s kingdom as well as heaven’s, for this was true.
I told them that when Linus Lancaster had come up to Indiana in the long ago, he had not come with it in his mind to fetch me, that he had come with another in mind. He had come up to fetch his second cousin, my mother. He had got word that my father had lost life along with limb in his battle and was in the hereafter with all the dearly departeds of the earth, and he came knowing that his second cousin, my mother, had always favored him. I told them I knew this because I had heard my father and my mother yelling over it. My father was for putting Linus Lancaster out into the yard on his ignorant ear. There were ways to confirm whether someone was deceased or just crippled before you came calling after what had or hadn’t been left behind.
I told my benefactors beyond the wall that after I had heard this fight and understood Linus Lancaster’s errand, I had twirled myself up in front of him, thinking in my foolishness that I wanted to be quit of my father’s house and my father’s cane, and had sat down on Linus Lancaster’s broad lap under an apple tree and made him look my way, and that I had said soft things about his dearly departed and had blown heat into his heart even though I knew nothing about heat nor about heart. That I had bought up in advance every crumb of the loaf that had been baked for me and now was eating it. For I had and I was.
I told them all of this and sat up against the board and shivered and wiped sweat from my brow and looked out the open door to the well and all the holes I had dug and filled to the big woods beyond, where what was left of Alcofibras lay buried under rocks in his bloody shawl.
“I’d like to come out now and walk to the woods,” I told them.
“Aren’t you out here with us already?” said one of the voices.
“Aren’t you out here with us right now?” said the other.
Yes, I thought. I am.
For I was.
I went floating past them where they sat on their bench. I floated across the yard and into the barn and out through one of its windows. I passed the sow I had previously parlayed with. I skittered along the surface of the creek. There were fish in its soft currents. I floated and floated. Then a wind came up and took me at my throat and flung me back into my dark.
7
YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that spring would be here by now, but I look out my window and there the snow still sits. They had me out to church again after several weeks this past Sunday, and after the singing and such the minister told us about Isaac and his son. I expect I was not the only one in the pews who thought, Here we go again with Isaac. It is one of the stories they like to tell. And as for that it is better than some. The burning bush is a choice touch. It is something you can see and believe in when they talk. It puts an image in the mind that will spit and scorch. After you leave the church and you have heard that story, it is hard not to look at every bush you pass a little crosswise. Even little spindly things all crushed up in the snow. Lucious Wilson and his people use sleighs to get to church when the snow is deep, and after church they loaded me into one of the sleighs and set off for home. I like a sleigh ride. That is one thing I never lost the pleasure of. I know I am not alone in it. The Draper Man made a remark to that effect on his second visit to my late husband’s piece of Kentucky paradise.
“I like a good sleigh ride, don’t you?” he said.
“Sliding and whooshing over the white world,” I said.
He came after they had pulled me out of that shed and stood me up in the basin and poured well water and soap bubbles over me until I was clean. They didn’t do it soft or rough. They just did it. When it was done they took me naked into the house, through the empty kitchen and into what had been my bedroom, and had me take down a dress and pull it over my head. Then they took me back to the kitchen and sat me down in my chair and worked the brush through my hair. They worked and worked and in other times I might have cried for it. Now I just waited and watched. When they were done and my wet hair was sitting on my back and shoulders like something come in from a wig shop, they put a wedge of salt pork in front of me and a cup of cider out of a barrel they’d found in the barn. The kitchen had been cleaned and they had on their old aprons, and there was a minute when I got to thinking that I’d blink and Linus Lancaster would walk in like it all never was through the door.