The Quickening Read online

  “Aren’t you the smart one?” he laughed. He bent down and lifted them heavily to his knees. When Adaline dropped her head against Frank’s shoulder, Donny did the same. Getting mighty thirsty, Sylvie, he sang louder. Getting mighty thirsty now.

  Small rivers broke the soil, the grass gone to mud. The sky hovered over us as if we should kneel under what it sent down. We were safe under that porch, wrapped in blankets and drifting, near to sleep as Frank grew quiet. Under our breath, we prayed for the rain to hold off or to stop altogether, watching for what would come.

  I suppose a person should never wish for things too hard. Something bad often turns up. Sometimes when I squint at that nurse, I think Adaline is home. I can smell the same cream on her skin, like blackberries. The way she tilts her head on her thin neck. My boy, in the last few months I’ve found myself wishing for your mother so often I feared I would lose myself to it. Now Adaline is almost here again, looking sharper than herself and a bit like someone else. When the nurse brings those buckets for my bath, I try to behave as any mother might.

  “That’s it,” the nurse says. “I always knew we could get along.”

  I turn over for her. “I’ve made a wreck of it,” I say, but the nurse doesn’t seem to hear. The water is prickly against my back and I think I might choke. She squeezes the sponge and claps her hands when she’s finished. I wonder if she’ll ever tell me who she is. She’s nearly my age, I think, with her white hair pinned back, her square black shoes. But she’s much too thin, too quick on her feet. With me in this bed, there must be more than twenty years between us. When she dusts Kyle’s picture, she presses her face so close her breath fogs the glass.

  “That’s my daughter there,” I say, reaching for the bureau. The nurse picks up the photograph behind Kyle’s, and Adaline peers out, all curly hair and drive.

  “She writes me,” I say. “Sometimes she does.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “Not for months, now.”

  “But she writes.”

  “Now and then.”

  The nurse looks away. “You must have an address,” she says. “When you write back?”

  I lift the bed skirt, though it leaves me panting. Underneath are all your mother’s letters in a box, the ones she’s sent in envelopes and the others I’ve tried to write myself. Some are only half finished. I got tired of writing pages I couldn’t send. The nurse sorts through the box, studying the envelopes before throwing them aside. With her face so close, something about her flickers in my head, but just as soon goes out. “That girl, she’s the mother to my only grandchild.”

  The nurse pauses.

  “Donny,” I say and close my eyes. I feel the nurse watching me and she goes back to rustling through the box. The light turns. The front door creaks on its hinges. When I open my eyes again, the nurse is gone and I know I’ve been asleep for some time. In the dimness I can smell those blackberries, but the smell drifts. The box is under the bed, this notebook covered in dust. The photographs are back as they were, with Kyle in front. Sometimes I wonder if anyone has been here at all.

  We were sitting on that porch when we first saw Jack on our road, and we knew he’d come to see us about our hogs. His hat was low on his head, spilling rain to his lips. His jacket blew from his sides as if it ran along with him. Frank sat forward in his chair, knuckles folded under his chin. “It’s him,” he said. The children grew quiet, even Jack’s youngest. Back then, that boy often escaped his father’s house and stayed at our own. I never minded keeping Kyle from Jack’s hand, not with the way he watched over the twins. Now with Jack like a stranger rising out of the weather, I hurried the children inside.

  Jack took the porch steps in a single stride and threw himself into the chair I’d left. “How’re the boys?” I asked from behind the screen door. “How’s Mary?”

  He took off his hat and shook it, his face pinched. The children played at the table behind me, spilling soup. Kyle shouted a dare to the twins, and they tried to drink their bowls in one swallow, losing most of it down their fronts. If not for our neighbor’s presence, I might have joined them. But Jack was stewing, scratching his thumb against a knot of wood on the porch rail.

  “That’s enough, Kyle,” I called out.

  “Do I have to ask?” Jack started. “You haven’t done it, have you? You’ve got to change your mind. Go in with all of us.”

  “I don’t see why,” Frank said.

  “We’ve already agreed, that’s why. It wouldn’t be right if one of us held out. Nobody will have his hands clean when this is done. And if you don’t come along, you’ll just ruin it for the rest of us. Make us all look bad, and you so high and mighty.”

  I laughed. “You haven’t done your own yet, have you? That’s what I expect.”

  Jack turned to me behind the screen, his face hard.

  “What is it, Jack? You want to be sure they’re no holdouts so you can stand it better? Here you are, pretending it means nothing. But I bet you think it means plenty.”

  Jack looked at me and blinked. I’d hit home, but his face covered up quick.

  “You know what they did to that judge up north, Frank?” he started again. “The one who got so happy foreclosing farms? They shook a rope at him. They dragged him out of that chair in his courtroom and tarred and feathered him. Left him like that in the town square. And what they did, they did it together. Some people thought it was crazy, but it took planning. It made things happen. Now Roosevelt is listening. The president is. Not like Hoover. He only made shacks. But Roosevelt is trying to help. It’s what they’ve been fighting for, and it’s good money they pay, almost five dollars a head.”

  “You’re the only one here that cares about that money,” Frank said. “That five dollars is for seventy-five percent of the herd. Only seventy-five. And it wouldn’t matter if it were a hundred. It’s a waste and you know it. You work and all you make is used. Not a bit thrown away because there’s no extra from nowhere. It’s who you are.” Frank took a hard wipe at his chin. “Once they’re gone, there’s no going back. It’ll ruin the farm selling them like that. They’re not even grown.”

  Jack wasn’t looking at him. With his head down, his hat closed off most of his face. “This isn’t something you can sit around and think about, Frank.” Jack took to his feet and swept past me at the door. “Your mother wants you home,” he shouted, pulling Kyle from the table.

  “Don’t you dare,” I started at him. “That boy hasn’t done anything.”

  But Jack had already pushed past me again, knocking me against the wall. He was out the door then and the boy had to run to keep from being dragged. Still, Kyle did his best to keep up, almost as if he had wanted his father to fetch him. As if he craved any kind of attention from the man. The two went off together across the yard and Jack yelled back to Frank, loud as if he wanted the house, the road leading in, and the whole countryside to hear him. “You do it, Frank.”

  In the days that followed, Frank crossed to the barn and back again, carrying slop. He kept a good watch over the hogs, his shoes muddy and stuck with chaff, his shirt wet, clinging to his ribs. He was slow to step into the house, covered as he was with the barn stink. My fingers grew strong with washing and his overalls ribboned. I patched them with burlap and thread.

  Days and nights of this and we never could rid him of the smell of those animals. He stood in the rain and let it run from him, keeping an eye out for anyone on the road. If Jack wanted to raise a fuss, he could have sent the association to pay a visit. Every man in the association could have come on his own. But we didn’t hear a word. Only the tramps came, carrying their bread now under the front of their shirts. That mark they’d left on our path had long washed off, but I found the same circle and cross carved on our tree out front. To them, we were still good folks.

  When Jack came again, it was a meeting Frank was ready for. I could tell he hadn’t slept with thinking about it, the way he bowed his head when he saw that man on our road.


  “Where are they?” Jack yelled before he’d quite reached us. “I just wanted to be sure. I didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”

  Frank crossed the yard to meet him, the toe of his boot knocking Jack’s own. “I’m keeping them,” Frank said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “In the barn.” Frank looked at the barn, his head cocked as if listening to it. The sun broke through and Frank turned his face up and squinted, his mouth open. Weeks of rain it had been. So constant we felt drenched to our bones, our teeth swimming. Like wood, we’d swollen inside our clothes. And there it was, the bald and drying heat.

  Jack was past him then, knocking Frank on the shoulder as he headed for the barn. This was what he’d meant to do from the beginning. Frank had challenged him to it. His steps were no different from the way he had walked up our road, his stare low and his hand tight against his leg. He drew out a knife and I rushed off the porch to follow him, calling out to Frank.

  But Jack was quicker than me. He saw us coming. When he ducked into the barn, the hogs squealed and I knew he was at the little ones. Inside, the light was full of chaff and scurry. The horses threw their weight against the stall doors, their heads twisted to see the back wall. Jack crouched in the shadows, sweat-soaked and rising out of the pen. “Eddie,” he said, as if he’d never expected I might be the one to stop him. He held one of the babies squirming in his hands, red-faced as he was and trembling. So full of fury he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to do or how. I believed he’d always been that way, clenched against that tireless blood in him. He closed his eyes and cut into the animal, cutting his own fingers, and he threw the animal down. Then he was off again, his face streaming and a low howl in the back of his throat, ducking through the pen to get at another one. I grabbed him as he chased and he fell under me, cutting my arms with his knife. Behind us Frank yelled and the air cracked with gunshot.

  Jack stiffened and let go. For a moment I believed Frank had done it. He’d shot the man. Sitting up, I held my arms close and bleeding. Jack lay on his back, his eyes swollen and red, but there wasn’t a wound on him. The fight had left him empty, and he lifted his head to see us both.

  “I’m keeping them, Jack,” Frank shouted. He was breathing hard. The shotgun was heavy in his arms but he kept it aimed, ready to fire.

  “No you’re not,” Jack let out. His voice was little more than a whisper now. “Not any more.”

  Frank could hear the pigs before he opened the pen. He saw the dead one first and the rest, nine babies, cut up and whining. At the far end, the sow ran untouched, flies humming at her flanks. With his mouth set, Frank gave me the gun and grabbed Jack’s knife. One by one, Frank took up the babies and cut their throats to quiet them. The sow ran in circles against the wall, mad with grief and worry. Her quickness had saved her, but her shoulder was still bloody from bashing the wood, the gate shivering and about to crack as she hit it.

  Frank crouched in the dirt and swept his hands over his face, watching the sow. She was tiring and soon lay down. Jack slapped his hat against his knee and groaned, the rain coming off him. Frank caught him by the throat. “If you tell anybody about that sow,” he said.

  “What?”

  Frank pointed Jack’s knife at him. “Don’t tempt me. It doesn’t make a difference. Pigs or Morrows. It’s all a waste and it’s killing for no reason.”

  Jack hit at him and Frank let go. “What does it matter now?” Jack said. He was on his feet, wiping at his eyes and shaking. “I did what you couldn’t,” he said. “And you’ll always owe me for it. You best hurry now and take those pigs to town before they rot.”

  X

  Mary

  (Spring 1933)

  He was my husband, but I never thought I would see a man in such a fury, and see him with all that was good and constant drained out of him, and doubt him for that, be scared of him for that, and it was never his choosing, but what the government decided that led him to it, that made me love him less.

  “It’s done,” he said when he returned from the Currents’ farm. He held his hands at his sides, palms open, as if repentant.

  “What’s done?” I asked.

  “We’re ready now,” he said. “We can go ahead with our own.” He wiped his mouth against his sleeve, and I could not imagine what he had done, his coat ruined and such a stink. “God help you,” I said, taking his hands, but he wrenched them away. For days then, Jack’s eyes were red-rimmed and brimming, never letting go of how ready he had said he was, how much it would take out of him to finish it, but he did not touch those hogs of ours for weeks, for no better reason than he never could bring himself to waste so much.

  He would kill the hogs with a club—that was the first idea that burned through him, beating down on something. He never thought of a quick way of doing it. He never thought of knives, not now. Blades were for meat, but this was just killing—“Got to remember that,” he said, as if making it harder on himself, making it feel more like work, could somehow give that money we got more meaning in the end. He tested the strength of the club in his fist, and I saw how he would strike with it, and how I would lose him to it. The club’s weight took his whole being, his back, his shoulders, splinters in his hands.

  I went out to the Currents’ farm myself to see what it was all about. No matter how ugly the thing Jack might have done, what we had to do would be worse. Enidina was carrying empty feed buckets from their barn, but when she saw me on the road, she stopped and the buckets clanged against her thighs. She studied me, chewing the corner of her lip, but at last she nodded and invited me in.

  “Terrible,” I said to her, sitting in her kitchen.

  “Yes.” She nodded and tried to smile, her fingertips drumming the table between us. “It’s good to see you, Mary,” she offered after a time, though she seemed strained to say it. “I worried we might not, after all.” She swung out her arm as if to indicate the room, though the house was empty of anyone but us. Remorse, I thought—it was making her quiet, though something in her eyes hummed. “What with Kyle coming here before. With the trouble he’s got, and you being neighbors. It would be a shame, that’s all.”

  I cleared my throat. Trouble, she talked about, but Kyle had no trouble, not the kind a mother could not take care of. “I wouldn’t want you to think we hold a grudge,” I started and settled in my chair. This is a woman I have known for years, I reminded myself, a woman who gave birth in my own house, who ran through the rain and chose our door to knock on, scared and shivering and sick of herself—Kyle was not the one with trouble if he could help a woman like that. “Jack wouldn’t want you to think it either. You were just slow, that’s all.”

  Her fingers stopped. Fine red gashes crossed her forearms and I wondered about them. She saw me looking and sniffed, not bothering to cover the gashes with her sleeves. “Jack hasn’t done his own, has he?”

  “It’s a sacrifice,” I said. “But it’s a sacrifice we all have to make.”

  “That man, he couldn’t do it knowing ours were alive. And he pretends to be so hard. All his noble reasons. You should have seen him when he left.”

  “That’s what neighbors are for, for helping. That’s why he came here in the first place. Doing for a person what a person can’t.”

  “Help?” she said. Enidina’s fingers struck the table again, as if I was telling her something new. “And see here I thought you might be coming to say you were sorry.”

  “Jack’s upset about what happened,” I offered. “You know the way he gets.” I thought about those arms of hers still, ten or more gashes altogether and each of them as straight and thin as a blade. “I can only think there must be something I can tell him to calm him down, some words of thanks on your part, that might set things right.”

  Enidina sniffed again and stood. “You should talk to Jack about that,” she said, and she said it with the same look on her face I had seen from her years before in her field, studying me like a stranger without so much as a
glass of water to cool my throat. “I suppose Jack’s mad about something and it wasn’t any of our doing. I believe he’s been mad about something on that farm of yours for a long while.” That look of hers, how long ago was it?—when I was so tired from walking and could feel the cut of every stone under my shoes, and I almost lay down in that field as she worked, I almost did, that woman on her knees and wiping her hands while I closed my eyes to rest.

  “Enidina,” I said, though her name caught in my throat. Jack had been mad a long while before this. I was just about to explain again, get her to understand how easy it would be to ask for forgiveness, but already she held the door open to let me out—as if Jack and I were the ones to do her wrong. I sat for several minutes ignoring her, and at last the door fell shut.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “I’m not one for forcing. Not here we aren’t,” and she left me for her chores. Outside in the wet air, the twins ran from their work in the barn, covered in chaff and dung and looking little better than orphans, dressed as they were in patched denim and cotton undershirts, even the girl. They were good-sized children, already eight by then, but each could squat in the crook of one of their mother’s elbows, wrapping their arms around her neck. Enidina marched out into the fields like that, a large, lumbering beast with her brood, letting the mist cling to them as if it was no different than sunshine. As I watched Enidina go, that house of hers seemed full of wind, the door still banging and not another living soul to tighten the window screens—not even Frank. When I returned home, Jack was squatting in the dirt outside and kneading that club between his hands.

  The local man had said the packers had more meat than they knew what to do with, and keeping the meat ourselves would only turn the others against us. “Slaughter the pigs yourselves and bury them,” he said. “It’s your only choice now.”

  I stood over the sink at my kitchen window, watching my sons and their father make their way out to the barn. They looked like fierce gray animals, my husband marching through the mud and my sons running after him. The older boys, they were men now—large and plodding, almost indistinguishable from the young Jack as I had known him, though they lacked his warmth. They had stayed at the farm during those early Depression years, when there was nothing else to leave for, though by now they both should have had wives and farms of their own. Now all four of them crouched together as they went through the rain—Jack in a rage knowing he had waited too long. The barn was theirs, a place for men, as certainly as I had my own room in our house, where I could keep some semblance of tidiness and right-minded living, while the barn darkened and grew, as virile as the animals inside. But as I watched them go, I knew I would have to follow them, however much Jack would not like it. If it was happening, I would need to witness it, just as God would witness it, so I could fix it in my mind and understand it and know where best to lay the blame.