She lay awake late into the night, the candle finally guttering out in its holder, and in the dim light left in the room from a bit of moon she passed into sleep without even feeling it coming, and dreamed heavily, and though she couldn’t remember anything particular when she woke the next morning, she remembered that the dreams had been kind of heartbreaking, and thought that she may have wept in her sleep. The odd thing was that she didn’t feel sad in their aftermath. She felt something like a lightened joy. She felt the damp of her tears on the pillow, and turned it over so that her mother would not see.
SHE BEGAN TO HELP her mother out in the kitchen, preparing meals. She wasn’t allowed to cook anything yet but she was shown things, so that she would gradually learn that and be able to take over from Grace — and maybe even her mother — after Grace left home. No one knew when that would be, although when she was angry Grace was threatening to leave any minute. She made no secret of her desire to get off the farm.
As her mother and Grace began early preparations for supper, Jane helped shell peas and butterbeans, rinsing them and leaving them in water for their mother to boil all morning with salt pork while Jane sucked her thumb, which was sore from prying apart the butterbeans’ tough pods. If there was to be a chicken fried, her mother would walk calmly among the nervous yard birds, casual as if just strolling through, and then would snatch one by the head and give it a quick twirl to snap its neck. Then she would dip it in scalding water, pluck and gut it, chop off its feathered head and hard yellow feet.
Jane took the bucket in which her mother had tossed the head, feet, and guts down to the hog pen and tossed them straight onto the bare earth there, where after a momentary silence for comprehension the hogs, sows, and shoats set upon it, bawling, brawling, squealing from lust and the pain of swift and intense battle. Yet another, if negative, reason to dislike the eating of their meat.
Back at the house her mother had carried the plucked and headless hen back to the porch and pumped a little water to wash it, then carried it inside, cut it to frying pieces, dipped it in egg and milk, dredged it in flour, and dropped it piece by piece into the broad pan of hot lard on the stove, and set it piece by browned piece aside to drain on a sheet of newspaper on the counter.
Jane would be set to peeling potatoes to boil and mash for the meal, or washing greens in a small tub on the back porch. Looking out over the yard, she would recall the remarkably casual, vivid slaughter, each arcing flop of the hen’s unceremonious exit from this world, each rise and quick chopping blow of the little hatchet through its neck into the oak stump, and somehow feel apart or invisible, a strange presence locked in her own consciousness, like no one else’s in the world, apart from all others, her fingers tightening in recollection of this or that casually violent action, and it sent a current into her spine up into the base of her neck, the tingling of it coming out her eyes in invisible little needles of light indistinguishable from the light of the gathering day.
Grace in the Wilderness
Anyone could tell something was up with Grace, these days. It was her last year of school. She seemed distracted, more than usual, and even more silent. Jane spied on her when she wasn’t aware of it. She was distracted and strange, like one of the chickens when it got what her mother called “broody” and wouldn’t leave the roost or just wandered about if her mother shut it out of the pen and henhouse, like it didn’t know what to do with itself and was ornery.
Finally Jane said, “Grace, you have a secret,” and Grace surprised her by seeming to snap out of it: “Yes, I do, and that’s the reason it’s none of your business.”
That didn’t stop Jane from pestering her, whispering when they were alone, “Tell me.”
“I’m working on my ticket out of here, that’s all I’ll say.”
Several times, she’d been late coming home from school, and when their father and mother questioned her about it, she tried to ignore them. But one afternoon she came down their drive toward the house, a bit of a spring in her step, and found them waiting on her. Jane was spying from inside the screen door. Her parents, like two still and silent buzzards on a limb, watched Grace approach.
“Where you been, then?” her father said, his voice and eyes level.
“With friends,” she said.
“Which?”
“Just some of the dumb girls at school, is all.”
He looked at her long and steady and said, “Better be the truth, girl.” Then he said, “I want you here right after school’s out, every day, to help your mother and your little sister with chores around the house. Like you’re supposed to.” He got up and walked over toward the hog pen. Her mother sat in her chair and continued to give her the glare.
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” Grace said to her.
“That is one thing I know for sure,” her mother said before rising and going on inside. She saw Jane squatting there, in her spying position, and pulled up briefly, gave her a look, and went on.
At supper there was silence. Jane watched Grace furtively, and watched for any telling looks between her mother and father, or between one of them and Grace, till her mother told her to eat her supper and stop dawdling. In the quiet after that, a sound seemed to arise in a small but regular way with Grace’s movements, like occasional hard grains of rice dropped into an empty gourd. No one said anything. But when their father finished eating, ahead of the others, he stood up without a word, walked around the table, took out his pocketknife, and opened it. He lifted the thread from Grace’s neck, to which she had attached the rattlesnake rattle, held the rattle in his palm for a moment, then cut the thread and removed the rattle from it and took it into the other room. When Jane peered around through the doorway she saw him throw both thread and rattle into the coals there, and then stoke them with a small handful of kindling on top of which, after a moment, he placed a solid chunk of dry oak. And then he went out.
That Friday, Grace came home from school on time, helped her mother put on pots of greens and peas to slow-boil, scrubbed the kitchen floor, then quickly cleaned up after throwing out the scouring water at the edge of the yard. Jane followed her at a safe distance, pretending to work but mostly watching. Something was up. Grace put some lotion on her hands, arms, neck, and face, and, after wandering with Jane awhile to let the scent of it dissipate, told her mother she had forgotten her homework at school and needed to go back so she could do it over the weekend.
Her mother stopped cutting slices from the ham she’d taken from the smokehouse and looked at her, the carving knife in her hand.
“I’ll take Jane with me,” Grace said. “The walk will help her sleep tonight.”
“She sleeps fine,” their mother said. Then after a moment she nodded and said, “Don’t dawdle. We’ll eat in a couple of hours.”
They walked slowly, as Jane tended to dawdle. Grace grew impatient enough to grab her by the hand and pull her along faster.
“Why’re you in such a durn hurry?” Jane said.
Grace looked at her, then stopped. She leaned down to put her face at Jane’s level. The seriousness in her look made Jane back away.