The days of her life on the farm took on a kind of regularity. After she rose in the morning with Orren and saw him off to the fields and cows, she continued to pick away at the house. She swept the floors and the crumbling back steps every day, mopped every other day, mostly because Orren left collects of crumbled mud as he came and went. She emptied all the kitchen cabinets, brushed out mouse droppings and set traps, looking first thing every morning for newly dead mice to toss out with the trash. When she found one, she carried it ceremonially to the can and let go the mouse so it fell to the bag’s bottom, its neck still pinched under the bow, its tiny lifeless paws curled gentle and loose as a sleeper’s hand.
One morning as she carried the trash to the bin on the side of the house, she found the withered remains of Emma’s crowkept garden. It had suffered in the weeks since Emma’s death. Black-ribboned worms clung to the remaining beans that drooped down off their short poles, and a great burst of zinnias withered into greige masses, their eyes turned groundward. Only a blue coned flower clung to its color, though the cone had dropped half its tiny petals and browned. Aloma bent down to it, but even as she stooped, a white-bellied bee alighted, its wings quivering madly, taking the last pollen from a miniature yellow heart. Then it flew away and the plant remained, it stood diminished but indifferent. Aloma thought briefly of rebuilding the garden, though she did not know how. But in the end she did not want to tend another woman’s garden, she did not want to tend any garden.
Once or twice when she was bored in the evening and supper was already prepared and waiting, she went with Orren to bring in the cows. She trailed after him as he wandered through the pasture, out around the hillock of trees with its purchase of shade to where they could no longer see the house and the ridge loomed high over them, a wooded limestone wall under a rack of clouds. There the cows—the few they had—collected around the pond, most times with their straight legs stock-still in the water like peculiar cumbrous waterbirds. Orren would circle around behind them, Aloma behind him, and up he would come alongside the oldest, with its aged world-weary face situated on its slim head. He touched her behind her shoulder blades, which winged out slightly below her neck, said, Sookcow, and went on walking in the direction of the house and the barn. The cow came along after him, her rump scissoring in measured paces. Aloma kept close to Orren as the others straggled in step behind. She was still wary of such big creatures and she glanced back frequently over the bodies of the cows to make sure they didn’t come too close. Sometimes she pressed Orren for information when she judged his face eased up enough to allow for it. She wanted to know how old a cow could get and how much grass it ate, whether it had a bunch of babies or just a few.
Once, after a few of these sessions, she said, And cows and steers are related how?
Walking beside her, Orren made a motion like falling asleep into his hand, tucking his chin and pressing his splayed fingertips to his forehead. But he said, Now a steer is a boy cow that’s cut.
Well sure, she said.
Then she said, But then what’s a bull?
He cleared his throat, looked up once at the sky. Them’s the ones that still fuck, Aloma.
Oh, she said, a grin. Where are they at?
We ain’t got one.
How come?
Sold it. I already got a calf coming. Too much trouble, it was Cash’s thing. I don’t want no more cattle but can eat up this grass. Just lawnmowers that shit. I ain’t got time for no cows right now.
Then she and the cows walked with Orren to the barn where he gestured Aloma to remain outside while he fetched hay—he did not want her to tangle with his rooster—and then he returned, padding the outside troughs with hay and dried corn and turning the spigot so the well water came up cold and splashing brilliant into the concrete trough. Then, finally, with the cows in the pen and the sun falling, he followed her with dragging footsteps up to the house so that he too could rest and eat.
One morning in July, as she mopped the kitchen floor, Aloma heard Orren’s truck start up and when its thrumming disappeared around the front of the house instead of dropping into the field, she flung aside her mop on a wild urge and tore out the front of the house waving her arms. Orren, catching her frantic motions in his rearview, floored his brakes and the truck skiddered hard in the gravel, flung up spitting stones and dust. He’d thrown open his door and had one foot on the ground before she ran up and said, Take me with you.
He tossed back his head. Goddammit, Aloma, he said. You like to scared me to death.
I want to go, she said, gripping his open door.
Sure, sure, he said. He shook his head.
He drove across the county line and into Hansonville directly to the bank and Aloma stared out the window, her eyes clutched at everything they passed as if it all could be possessed if stared at hard enough. She was silent beside him, her mouth open slightly, her hand held tight the handle of the door. She liked everything she saw.
Once Orren took care of business at the bank, they drove back down along the main street, and Aloma’s head swiveled from side to side, taking in the double-story buildings set so close to one another that some did not have even an inch of space between them, full glass windows, dates engraved above their doors that surprised her vaguely. A park with four empty swings, a mother and her two shoeless children walking there, the sun rinsed their hair with light as they moved, as the truck moved. Orren drove on past a glass storefront with the words The Restaurant written in curly hand on the glass. Aloma whipped back around.
Can’t we do some more errands? she said.
Orren cocked an eyebrow at her.
Like go to a restaurant or something? she blurted, abandoning guile.
No, Aloma, he said. No money.
Her face wrinkled up. But there’s so much I want to do and I never get to do any of it, she said and her eyes actually began to smart.
What, ain’t you ever ate in a restaurant before?
A couple times, she said.
They God, he said and he hit his brakes. Are you serious?
Well, she said.
Alright, he said. That’s shameful. Sometimes I forget you ain’t had a real life, and he turned the truck around in the middle of the block and gunned back to the restaurant. He counted the singles in his billfold before they went in.
The inside was draped with red and white and blue ribbons. Old men sat hunched at the front counter, all in a line. Old couples in the booths and two children, a girl and a boy, ran up and down a far aisle repeating a shrill word game over and over, their voices high like birdcalling. The girl’s face was inlit with an expression of almost frantic joy. Aloma watched her without moving until Orren tapped her on the wrist with one finger and pointed to the menu. She settled on pancakes. When they came, she ate them with a deliberate attention as if seeing them for the first time, lifting one to inspect the brown circled underside, using the spine of her fork to separate the two plats to peer at the holed batter.
You know, I could learn to make these, she said. Orren looked at her long and then he rolled his eyes. He ate in silence and Aloma sat opposite him with a silly growing grin on her face until a waitress walked by and Orren’s narrowed eyes followed her. Then it happened again. Aloma turned around to look at the tall girl with pretty skin almost the color of a pancake, Aloma thought, and who wore her apron up high and tight around the small of her waist, which made her breasts look bigger. With one bite left of her pancakes, Aloma returned her fork slowly to the ceramic plate.
What are you looking at that girl for? said Aloma.
What? His eyes focused blue on her.
I saw you looking at that girl.
He shook his head, his mouth twisted. No, he said. He looked down.
Shit, she said, her voice gearing up.
Aloma, he said. Quit.
She glared at the girl, she glared at him. Shit, she said again. Who is that?
Nobody, he said. Just somebody ahead of me in high school is all. Aloma watched, but the girl did not look over once and averted her head each time she passed. Then Aloma sat back in her booth hard so that the wood made a single hump sound on the floor, she crossed her arms over her chest.
Ain’t you hungry? said Orren, who began to eat again, hunched.
No, she said and she did not touch her food again, even flicked her finger so her nail hit the side of the plate with a ping.
You ready? he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
Do you wanna go, Aloma? he said slowly, weary-sounding.
Well, I guess I do.
Orren shoveled his last bites into his mouth, and her bite too, before he rose up and walked to the register, reaching for his billfold with Aloma at his unhurrying heels and then the figure of the girl appeared. Aloma peered hawkish around his shoulder and she saw it, she saw the girl try to slip into the back server station before Orren recognized her, but he looked up and their eyes met and the girl blushed red and hot even across the thin bridging of her nose.
Hi, Orren, she said.
He nodded and said nothing, but neither did he turn away but looked hard at her, waiting, one hand still on his back pocket touching the edge of his billfold so that half of him appeared ready to turn and go, the other to fight.
I—she said, and looked at Aloma, blinking as she saw her for the first time. I, uh, I’m real . . . I am so sorry about Cassius, Orren, and your mother too. Cash was just the nicest guy. He was so funny. Then she screwed up her pretty young mouth so that her red bottom lip protruded out in a display for Orren. Orren looked at the pity of that lip. But his own mouth did not give way in return, he only looked at her and a brevity of dislike passed through him like a shiver for the girl who would avoid him as though he were not even there, as though he were the one who had died.
The nicest guy, the girl said again into the silence and she smiled weakly at Aloma—a smile that turned down at the corners of her mouth—and turned away to free herself; she strode into the back where, because she could go no farther, they could still see her. She turned her back and looked down at her server pad.
Still behind him, Aloma reached out and edged Orren’s unmoving hand off his billfold and patted him on the rump and said, Let’s go, and he seemed to wake and dropped his dollars on the counter and they left through the propped-open door. The noon sun raged against the prone and passive day. In the truck, she sighed loud and said, watching him carefully, That was good food, huh?
Orren only stared at the wheel in his hands as he flipped the ignition and pushed it into reverse. Then he glanced back over his shoulder once and when he reached with his free hand for his pocketed cigarettes, Aloma grabbed them from his fingers.
Hey, he said, grasping after them.
Quit, I’m lighting one for you, she said and she worked at his lighter, her finger repeatedly rubbing raw against the roller, but it would not ignite. She snapped the thing until he reached over and sprung the lock and lit it. Looks like I’m lighting it for you, he said and she laughed and waited in vain for him to join her. She took an amateur drag, passed it to him.
We should come up here more often, she said. There’s a lot to see.
Like what, he said.
She turned soldierly to her right and looked for something.
A feed store, she said, but he didn’t laugh.
We’ll come back, she said into the silence.
Orren peeled out onto the sweltering line of the main street so the wind came in a hot roll, plastered her hair to her face. She had no hairband and she made one trial to collect her hair at her nape, but she gave up and leaned back with her eyes closed, her body jostled slightly by the stuttery articulations of the old shockworn truck.
You better drive careful, she said. I hate it when you drive fast. She sneaked a peek at him. He tapped his cigarette and the wind snatched the ash away. His eyes were half-lidded against the wind and sun so that the landscape scumbled before him.
She leaned back and closed her eyes again, saw the pretty girl’s fatted-out lip, her meaningless relation to Orren. And she saw too the frozen turn of Orren’s countenance, but now she also saw the face she carried in her, his face the way it came to her every so often. The sawn lines on either side of his mouth, blue eyes, the redly dark brows. Only this time as she conjured him, some memory came clear of him and she saw him driving shirtless on a hot summer evening. His little bit of belly hung over the buttoned edge of his blue jeans. He slouched against the seat, a cigarette rolling slightly between two fingers of his left hand. She was saying something to him and he was listening, looking out. She could not hear her words any longer and she thought how funny that the first thing you didn’t need was the words you said. But she did remember the slouch of Orren’s spine and the drape of his shoulder, the weight of his right forearm hung easily from the wheel. He kept looking over at her, stealing glances from the road. She pointed at something out the window and then, as her arm extended beyond him but still toward him really, he broke up. Without straightening from his slouch, he tossed his head back just an inch or so and laughed so that she could see his teeth, which were not straight but all fitted perfectly in his head. She saw the knobby ridgeline of his Adam’s apple and his hand stopped moving over his cigarette and was still until he had done laughing and turned his attention back to the road, but with that last little bit of smile still on his face.
When they returned from Hansonville, Orren idled for a moment by the side of the house so she could climb out before he went on down to the fields. She hesitated with her hand on the latch, considering his grave face and then the equally grave wall of the house tinted gray under a cloud. But she chose the house, it was her charge. She climbed out of the cab and went inside to chew that bitter in the privacy of her own mouth.
Inside, she wandered driftlessly, first to the front door where the land graded away under tall windbent grasses until it met the road. But the front of her world was so full of empty her eyes could find no place to rest so she walked to her perch at the back door. She watched as Orren’s truck disappeared around the hillock toward the pond, its axle clanked once as he turned and then nothing.
The clock in the living room churned out its little melody and banged on its bell the hour. Something in the sound snapped Aloma from her stillness and without a second thought, she walked out the back door into the yard away from the house. The willow stood down a ways off to her right, between her and the slope that led to the first skinny rows of tobacco. There was a kind of satisfaction in the smell of the summer air. She looked around her at her new life. Orren never asked her to do a thing. He took care of the fields, managed all the animals and the barn as well, and his refusal to ask for her help rubbed her against the grain. He even collected the eggs in the morning, the simplest task, something she could do. Aloma was stirred by a sudden desire to walk down there and hunt for eggs and see the cows, the ones that hadn’t wandered off into the fields. To maybe run her hands over their hides, which she’d found to be dense like a woolen rug, or to pat them on the broad space where the hair whorled in different directions between their wide settled eyes. She turned down toward the barn, walking fast, and she was light on her feet, pushing up on the balls of her feet with a new and goalless hope. She’d taken no more than twenty steps when she saw the rooster standing in front of her with his wings shouldered off his body. He stood a few meters out with his hateful bead eyes on her.
Oh, she said out loud, stopping abruptly. This rooster had gone after Orren only a week ago and torn into his right calf before Orren kicked him off and swung at him with the shovel he’d happened to be holding in his hand. The rooster had winged up off the ground a few times in spite, but finally let him be, the bird’s neck working convulsively, his wattles shaking like a battle standard. Orren limped into the house, deep spur punctures in his calf, swearing he was going to pop the head off the thing the first chance he got. Well, how are we gonna get chicks? Aloma asked. Bring in a dick that’s more congenial, Orren said.
But now here he was, standing before her, his head still very much attached to his body. Aloma turned around and ran with no thought in her mind but running. Behind her, the rustling wings of the rooster made a rushing sound like a woman giving chase in an old-timey dress with crinolines and hoops, rushing on. When she was almost to the steps, Aloma risked a rearward look and saw he had come too close, launched up with his wings spread and talons out, head reared, his wattle swung like a red ribbon to one side. She kicked out behind her with her right leg and caught him under one wing as he was rising, and the force of her kick scuffed him off to one side. But then she did a foolish thing and tried to jump up to the third step by skipping the first two, only it was too high so her foot tagged the edge of the crumbling step and she fell, her body riding down the height of the three steps on one leg, skin tearing away from her ankle to her thigh. She didn’t have time to cry out. Blood in a rush dotted and gathered in a sudden line down her leg and she leaped up the steps again and flung herself into the house. She slammed the door and a second later felt the lesser weight of the rooster striking the wood.
When Orren came in two hours later, she was still crying, sitting in the kitchen in her underpants, the deep scrapes ribboned with dried blood from her thigh down to her ankle bone. He took one look at her stricken face.
What happened to you? He had never seen her cry.
Your goddamned rooster chased me! she wailed.
Aw, he said, he does that. But when his mouth wrinkled up in an attempt at pity, it stopped somewhere short. She glowered, she was in no mood—and she hadn’t been all day—for any determination other than her own.
It’s not funny.
No, it ain’t funny, he said, flattening. You are right.
Don’t laugh at me then. Her voice was full of threat.
No. He shook his head.
Why are you laughing then?
Lord, calm down, Aloma.
Shit! she said and she leaned forward, staring up at him so that he could see the whites all around her eyes. I don’t calm down just cause you tell me to. I stay in here every day doing what all you want and all I ask you to do is kill one goddamned rooster. Why can’t you do that one thing for me, Orren?
He looked about to say something, but then eyed her and rerouted his tongue. He put his hands on his hips. I don’t know. I just ain’t got around to it.
But that’s all I ever asked for!
Well, it tore me up too, he said lamely. A bunch of times. God almighty, what do you want from me?
Her tongue spilled. I want to not be murdered by birds! I want somebody to show me how to cook something! And I want to play piano again! I want a piano that works, one that’s not ruined! The words came out so fast and so much louder than she’d intended, she looked even more surprised than he did.
Well, make up your mind, he said, his voice rising. You want a new piano or you want me to kill that goddamn rooster? I can’t make high nor low of you. Orren made a move to rake a hand through his hair, but then lost the will halfway through the motion so his hand remained at the top of his head like a spigot.
Aloma sat up straight again and her voice arched. I want a piano right now, and I want you to kill that rooster right now! If you loved me, you could just do one simple thing! Her voice was losing its balance and he heard it.
Woman, he said, as if it were a full sentence and not just the single-word warning it was, I will kill that fucking rooster on my own fucking time.
Aloma allowed herself to look more wounded than she really was, and deciding it was time to make her exit, she bolted up from her chair in a huff and started angrily for the door. Except she’d forgotten her shorts were still pooled around her ankles, so she stumbled and Orren had to reach out to steady her. She pushed at him impatiently, and for a second felt a furthering wild urge to beat at him, strike him across the face and chest for having brought her here to the sorry edge of the mountains, the one place in the world she wanted to leave behind her, where nothing worked, where every last thing wasted flesh into bone. She wanted to say all that with her fists, but she kept her head about her enough to just swat at his arm once without doing any real damage so that he stepped back with his hands raised and she kicked instead with extra fury at her shorts till they flew under the table like a bird under a tree and she stormed out of the room in her underpants, her bottom shaking behind her.
That night when Orren eased into bed, she expected him to treat her like something that had just come out of the fire, still too hot to touch. And he did, at first. He said nothing. He coughed quietly, as if to himself. She heard him scratch at the stubble on his cheeks and jaw. And then, when she had just begun to relax, he slid both his arms around her and began to forcibly turn her around in the bed. She would not go easy, scraping and grabbing at the sheet until the elasticized edge lifted with a snap off the corner of the mattress and she found herself flipped around and facing him, the sheet in her hand. She brought the heel of her other hand up against his forehead and pushed his head back until he had to let go of her with one hand to save his face. But then, instead of rolling back to her side of the bed where she could show him the cold of her shoulder, she struck at the meat of his arm once and in the hollow space under him reached for his neck with her mouth. For a moment he offered himself without moving. But he had brought his own anger to bed with him and they ended up scrabbling and tangling across the bed in a way that was not so much loving as mean. And sometime in the middle of it all, she became aware of the difference that had come over them and it seared her to know that it did nothing to damper the want. She did not want to like it, but she did. She had no idea what that said about them and would not look any closer as she held him. She sensed there were things that suffered from close inspection and in its bittered pleasure this was an easy mystery to accept.
Afterwards Orren said, I been thinking. Mama’s church is down in Hansonville and you might could go down there.
She waited for more and when it didn’t come, she said with a sigh, To do what?
See if you might could pick around a bit on their piano. During the day or something, I don’t know. If they need a piano player, maybe.
She made no reply so he would know she was still mad. But she stored it away in her mind where she could find it again later and then she fell asleep with her back to Orren and one cold hand tucked between her tired legs.
Late the next afternoon, with the light trooping west and the heat trailing after, Orren walked into the kitchen, bringing with him the smell of old cured tobacco and dirt. He looked pleased with himself, the way he leaned back against the door when he closed it and folded his arms over his chest and just waited. Quiet, watchful.
Aloma stood over a stove of soup beans and chicken. She glanced at him suspiciously over her shoulder, took in his hint of a grin and the way he patted at his breast pocket meaningfully with one hand like he had something there, then she looked away. I’m as mean as you, Orren Fenton, she thought.
Dammit, woman, just ask, he said.
Ask what? she said without looking up again.
Ask what I got in my pocket.
She sighed. What’s in your pocket, Orren?
Come here and close your eyes and give me your hand.
Hell’s bells, she said.
Come on now, he said. And it was the sound of his voice—the barest crooking of humor now straightened—that caused her to turn from her position at the stove and walk directly over to him with her hand held out.
Close your eyes, he said and she did. What he laid in her hand was sharp and cool, hollowed. She opened her eyes and looked down. For a long moment she could not comprehend what she was looking at and then she gasped and dropped them to the floor where they scattered, nacred and edged with gristle, across the faded linoleum.
What’d you do that for? Orren said.
What’d you bring me those for? she cried with her hands still open before her.
His face then was a tableau of confusion and irritation. I figured you’d want em for a kind of souvenir.
A souvenir of what? Of a dead bird?
He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Orren, my God, she said and then, in a heat, as if it explained something, My God, Orren, I’m a girl. Her words stilted out, sputtering in exasperation. Orren’s brow twisted and he looked down for a second as if he might stoop and pick up the spurs, but he didn’t move. And when she knew she should have stopped, she went on: Lord, just think a little bit next time. She heaved a sigh, not knowing how he could live with her and hear the words out of her mouth and lie with her every night and yet think she’d want keepsake spurs he’d ripped from a rooster’s feet. It didn’t suit and she didn’t know why he couldn’t see it, she would never know, she would never know him.
Orren leveled her with a look then, and she felt as if she’d swallowed an ice cube whole. Suddenly she wanted to scoop up the spurs off the floor and start all over again and she even made a move to bend down. She did sincerely want the moment back, but he didn’t give her the chance. He turned on his heel, tore open the kitchen door, said, Fuck you, and disappeared into the dark in a way that was becoming familiar.
She acted like she hadn’t given his suggestion about the church a second thought, but it stuck in her mind and it rattled there. She had worked as an accompanist in the school church from the time she was fourteen, charging through the hymns every Sunday morning and boring to sleep under the tepid sermons of the pastor who led the students away from the raucous ecstasies of their mountain churching. She’d been proud of the little money she earned while still a student pianist at the school, she’d saved it up, and though it wasn’t enough to send her to college when she graduated, it was enough to buy her a red truck with a spiderwebbed back window and a tailgate that wouldn’t latch. She’d bought it the day after she found out she would come to the farm. Now, grown increasingly weary of the shell of the big house, her hands always smelling like onions from supper or piney almond scent from cleaning and polishing, she began to study on Orren’s suggestion. If she could play on Sundays, she might have access to a piano during the week, maybe they would even give her a key. She could play again and, for once, be the one leaving the house. The least she could do was drive down and ask.
She’d seen many churches growing up in the mountains, often perched on hillsides with their graveyards falling slowly down the kudzued hills. Or in the cleavage between hills where they were washed out occasionally with rain, or slurry sometimes. Some of the nicer churches were built out of red brick, but the others were rarely steepled, their weatherboarded sides painted thick gummous white and yards kept up by the congregations so that no one passing by would ever think they didn’t love God enough to manicure his creation. The ones she liked the best—she hadn’t been in one since she was a child—were the holiness chapels, no bigger than a trailer, steepleless and worn, with a hand-painted unschooled sign announcing the preacher. But the church she found in Hansonville, straddling the county line and facing north, was not one of these. It was a larger, but common church—simple, unmonied, white. She parked her truck out front and eyed the batten-sided structure. Only one other car stood parked there, an old one, but shiny still, with long fins that flared high over its brake lights. She eyed it as she walked around it. The front door of the church was locked. She looked at her watch and, seeing that it was only ten, considered going home to come back another time, but it would rankle Orren to waste the gas. She walked around the side of the church, peering in through the eight-paned glass, none of it stained. The sanctuary was clean and tidy in a cheap country way. She tried the back door and it gave under her hand. She found herself in the church’s kitchen, where a man and a much older woman were speaking with each other over a tall butcher block. They both looked up in surprise when she opened the door, flooding the room with light. The woman held a hand up to her wrinkled face and screwed up her eyes. The man said, Can I help you, miss? His eyes were dark and plain and not unpleasant.
Oh, Aloma said, I was looking for the preacher.
That’s me, the man said and his voice was far deeper than she’d expected, it sounded like it came from his belly. He said, I’m Bell Johnson, as if she would take that as proof of something. He watched her expectantly.
Oh, she said. The older woman lowered her hand somewhat and Aloma could see the suspicion bloom in her face.
Well, I was wondering if you need a piano player for your Sunday services?
No, said the woman.
I’m real sorry, said the preacher. Do you go here? I don’t believe I know you.
No, said Aloma, backing out into the blinding light a half step so that she was framed there, made a silhouette.
Are you fixing to go to all the churches in town asking for work? The woman turned to Bell Johnson midway through her sentence as if she were asking him and not Aloma.
It’s alright, Mother, he said, placing his hand on her forearm.
I’m sorry, he said to Aloma, we have a piano player, a good one. I reckon she’s gonna hold up for a while.
I reckon, said his mother and snapped her eyelids like a turtle, only faster.
I play really good, said Aloma, with a little bit of a smile that was directed only at Bell Johnson and not his mother.
I reckon, said his mother again.
Okay, said Aloma. Thank you, and she turned to go, but then the preacher stopped her by saying, Well, if you made all the effort to come out here, I don’t care to take your phone number and name and I’ll give you a holler if we need anything.
Well, alright, said Aloma and she waited while he fingered around in the breast pocket of his button-up shirt for a piece of paper. Do you have a pencil? he asked.
No.
Well, set tight for half a second and I’ll fetch us one. Be back directly, he said and left the room. Aloma looked at the old woman, who seemed for a second about to smile, but it was just a twitch that went nowhere. When the preacher came back in the room, he handed her a pen and she wrote Aloma, piano player, very good. And then her phone number.
Well, thank you, she said, handing him the paper. He folded it carefully and put it back into his pocket. She took a few steps toward the door without turning and she waved her hand, an unnecessary motion wasted on the small space. That made him smile.
Bye now, he said.
See y’all later, said Aloma.
I reckon, said the old woman.
When she pulled back up to the big house, she parked and, looking for Orren, walked on around back without going inside. She sighted him amid the slow-growing but greening tobacco, down on his knees. She walked down the hill, her weight carrying her until she was almost jogging at the bottom. Here at the foot of the small field, she passed a wasting gaze at the plants, which looked even worse up close, not the sea of green they appeared from the kitchen. Beside her, grown tall as her hips, she could see the fragile tips of the leaves, the duskiness of the water-starved plants. She waded into one row so that she had to push them away with both hands.
Watch it, said Orren when he saw her and how she was palming the plants away from her on either side. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he had not yet forgiven her for the other night.
I am, she said. Then: Shouldn’t these be taller?
Yeah, he said and swiped his sweaty face with a sweaty hand, so that he smeared dirt along his cheek in fingerpainted marks. But they got a couple blooms, he said and she saw scattered along the plants the first pursing blossoms, white in their green upstanding sleeves.
When’s the last time it rained? she said, aiming hard for forgiveness.
Not so long, he said. But it’s too hot. I just don’t want these butts to fire up too fast, and he reached out one hand to swat at a few low leaves. Aloma saw the thick sticky hairs on their broadsides, they swayed when he grazed them with his fingertips. They reminded her of a living thing, an animal’s hide.
Are you worried? she said.
No, he lied. But I’d like to hear me some good news.
I have good news, she said, standing beside him now as he kneeled. Well, not good news really.
He looked up at her, he leaned back on his haunches, his hand down at the dirt to balance him. The sun figured behind her and he squinted and could not see her, his eyes teared up from the light so they gleamed an unnatural bright against his dark face.
I went down to that church—
What, Mama’s church?
—and asked if they needed someone to play piano.
That’s good news, he said.
But they didn’t need anybody.
Well, he said, and he wiped his hands now on his bleached and tattered Carhartts. You never know. They might.
At least I tried, she said. I might could make some money yet.
You better make a lot, he said, grimaced, and he stood then, looked at the plant right before him, which was grown past his waist.
I was thinking . . . Aloma said, still aiming.
He looked at her.
Maybe we could go do something sometime . . . away from here. She thought of Hansonville and the road that passed the church, the road that went north and kept on going.
Bad time, he said without hesitating.
Bad time . . . she repeated.
Bad time for a good while, he said again and reached out to the plant before him and topped its baby blossom between his thumb and forefinger.
Hey, she protested.
Got to, he said. You tear off the pretty parts to make it grow stronger. And the blossom fell to the ground where it peeked out lippish from its shell, its smooth young body against the dirt. Orren nudged it under the shade of the plant with the tip of his boot.
Aloma left Orren in the tobacco and returned back up the little hill to the house. She wasn’t foolish enough to expect to hear from the pastor again. She wouldn’t clinch a church job by walking in off the street, she knew that much, but she could think of no other option. Never mind that she’d forgotten to mention her relation to Emma, her only real connection to the church in the first place. But she’d tried and she felt better for the effort, though she’d not put her hands to a real piano. It was nearly good enough to know that she’d been in the same building as one that might have been recently tuned. That alone cheered her enough so that when she walked up from the fields, she forgot to be disappointed in the clean, ruined house and went right to the dining-room table, cleared the far end of Orren’s paperwork, and piled it on a chair. She brought her big box of scores down from upstairs where she’d kept it beside the bed like a hope chest and spread the scores out on the dining table—the Schubert and Beethoven, Ives, Schumann, Grieg. The names buzzed in her mind like a struck string. Flipping them open randomly, pressing them to lie flat so the table was papered in disjointed passages from a dozen pieces. She spread her hands over the pages and turned her face toward the ceiling, her eyes closed. It was an easy thing to do, recall them to mind, shape the structure of their phrasing into her fingers. She opened more scores and piled them on top of the ones already spread so they were inches deep before she stopped, dizzied by the black notes fighting for space. Her fingers shook, her hands were starved for it.
So then she found her motion in the house and it was the motion of playing. When she dragged the rugs out to the back lawn where the laundry cords were strung near the willow, she beat them in time with a broom. She beat them in 3/4, she beat them in 4/4, and then, because she amused herself this way, she switched between the two and then broomed a 5/4 and felt the forgotten pleasure of her own abilities. It was something she had not felt in a long time, the house misered out reluctant joys. And later, when she hung the laundry, the pins seemed like quarter-note tails against the white page of the sheets. She trailed her finger down the wet cotton and thought again of all the music waiting to be played. She was standing there, a silhouette portrait against the white sheets in the morning sun, when the phone rang. She considered not answering it, not because the dining room was far but because she was thinking of her music and she did not want to move, it was so pleasing, but then she relented and ran for it. She picked up the receiver and said, Hello, and a deep voice said hello back, its timbre black and warm. She did not recognize it.
Who is this? she said.
This is Bell Johnson, the voice said. When she made no immediate response, he said, I’m the preacher down at Falls Creek. You walked in the other week asking about a job.
Oh, she said and then again, brightly, Oh.
Well, he said, that was some kind of timing, because the lady who’s our piano player passed on last week.
Oh no, she said. That’s terrible.
Well, yeah, she was eighty-four, bless her heart. She played for a long time with us, longer than anyone could ask, I reckon. She was here with my daddy for forever, since I was little at least, and so that’s a good long time. So.
I see, she said.
So, I reckon we are looking for somebody now. She taught some gals here, but they’re pretty young and we’re looking to have somebody a while too. Leah never took no payment, but that’s not . . . What I’m saying is that we’ll pay. She never took it, but we can spare it, that’s the right thing to do. We can’t pay nobody much, but we have some extra. Nobody’s starving under this roof.
Oh, I’m not too worried. I just want to play, really, she said, but then she turned to look out toward the southern end of the farm visible out the window, out at Orren’s land, and she said, But a little bit would be good.
Alright, well, you reckon you might could come down here and maybe play some for me and whoever else is around? Just some churchy songs, just to see.
Like an audition, she said.
Well, like a audition, alright.
Sure, she said, I can come down today.
Oh, okay. That’s good of you.
That would be no problem. She smiled out into the room, the light from the window finding her face.
Thank you, Bill, she said.
It’s Bell.
Bell. Johnson. Sir, thank you.
Alright. Well, you come on down and we can set for a minute and maybe you can play.
I’ll be there directly, she said.
Fine, he said.
He was a bigly proportioned man. She had not remembered that. Or perhaps she’d not gotten a proper sense of it in the cramped and dark kitchen of the church where she’d met him that first day. He was waiting when she pulled into the small gravel lot, seated on the front steps with his elbows on his knees, keys cupped and catching sun in his hand. It was when he rose that she saw he was a good foot taller than her. He leaned into his hip in the modified stoop of tall men.
That was quick, he said. He crossed the gravel between them, but made no move to shake her hand, only pocketed his keys and left his hands in his pockets. She caught his smile—a warm but brief thing—and the formal way he had of bowing his head hello so that she saw the blackish curls there and the white scalp beneath like snowy ground peeking through brush.
Hello, I’m Aloma, she said. Pleased to meet you again. His mouth curved slightly, interrupted his reserve, and he seemed not to know where to look. He glanced over his shoulder then, made a curious full rotation once looking around and said, I was hunting around here for somebody to give a listen, but some boys who were just here had to go up to Rocky and they took my mother. She had some things to purchase up there, so she went too. I reckon it’s just us. I’m no expert, but I got a ear and I know a hymn when it’s rightly played.
Okay. She nodded and held her purse to her chest, remained standing with her rear to the driver’s door.
Is that your truck? he said.
Yeah, she said. She looked down at it and saw how dirty it was, streaked and spattered with the dirt of the farm. It had never crossed her mind to wash it, she hoped it didn’t speak to her employability.
I used to have one like that, he said and he smiled, at the truck, not her. I bought it from one of my cousins in Glenly and spent near everything I had fixing it up and then I went and I wrecked it the first week it was road ready.
He crossed his arms over his chest, and with his arms between her and him, his shoulders dropped slightly. You know that elbow bend when you come up around by the Tarson’s, and it goes like this—he snaked one hand so it took a sudden curve in front of him, his eye touched hers—and here’s the big canebrake on the one side and their house on the other, I spun it out there and wrapped it around a tree. I wrecked it good and proper. He sighed. Daddy said it was a good thing, that truck was pure vanity. And it was, he laughed. It was. He sighed and looked at her, then pursed his lips. She said nothing, only watched him and smiled. His eyes were very dark and they did not linger. He said, You live around here?
She nodded, but coughed once in lieu of words.
He nodded too, seemed on the verge of saying more, but changed his mind and said, Come inside and play a bit?
They went in through the front door. The church was white on the outside, white on the inside, with no stained glass so the high afternoon sun raged through the windows, colorless. The pews were old oak, dirty blond, their scurfy varnish flaking in the light, most with thin red cushions resting on their seats, but some not. Up front, the lectern was stationed uncentered on a landing atop three steps with a workaday upright at its foot to the right of the congregation and cockeyed so the pianist could eye both the preacher and the church. Aloma followed Bell down the central aisle on a strip of red carpet worn and darkened the color of charcoal along its middle. As if reading her thoughts, Bell said, We aim to replace this rug soon, but you know how it is. Yes, she said, as if she did. Leaning across the first pew, he plucked up a hymnal, its leaves shagged by years of use, and opened it, flipped a few pages. Aloma walked over to the piano and sat down. She pressed one key and it responded as it ought, the pitch held without wavering or bowing until it thinned and evanesced out of sound altogether. She inhaled on her pleasure and she could smell the well-used piano, its waxy wooded scent.
Bell laid the hymnal down on the scrolled rack before her. How about you just play this hymn for me, he said. If you don’t care to.
She had not played in well over a month, but she did not hesitate, she felt nothing but eagerness. She took one look at the printed page and said, Oh heavens, I can play that with my hands behind my back, and she closed the hymnal. But then she peeked up at him because she heard how sure, even vainglorious it sounded, though it was the truth. Then she played “The Old Rugged Cross” as simple and straight as she could, slowing down churchily at the end and throwing in a few dissonant suspensions for good measure. She tried not to look too pleased with herself as she played the last chord.
Well, wow, he said. You play it like you hear it.
She smiled up at him. Do you just need somebody for Sundays, or Wednesdays too?
Well, Wednesdays too, I believe, he said. But sometimes some of the boys here just pick on Wednesdays, no fiddle of course, we ain’t that far gone—he laughed—but we might could use you. If you’re free, that is.
I can be free.
Well, that’s good, that’s good. You don’t got obligations elsewhere or anything? he said, his eyes turned up to the window behind her that lighted her, burning the edges of her brown hair blond.
Nope, she said.
Okay, he said. Well, wow, that’s great. He looked around the sanctuary for a moment, his eyes searching out the front door that they had left open so that the July day penetrated the cool of the sanctuary. Aloma saw the small beads of sweat on his forehead, and when he put his large hands on his hips, she saw the sweat rings on his shirt.
As he gazed out over the empty pews, he seemed to think the better of his haste. You don’t just got that one memorized and that’s the only one you know, right? He smiled shakily at her.
She laughed, let the hymnal fall open where it would and she played one verse of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” He laughed too as he listened, and though he kept his arms crossed over his chest the whole time while they were speaking and laughing, she was pleased, and when he offered her fifteen dollars a week, she felt even better. And she thought, Orren will be happy, and she liked that.
When she stood up to go, her face was pink with pleasure and she looked more beautiful than she was. Bell unfolded his arms just long enough to grasp her hand finally with his own oversized hand.
Well, I’m pleased to offer you a job, he said.
I’m pleased to be playing piano again, she said. It’s been a little while.
Oh, how come is that?
Oh, she said and shook her hand in the air, conjuring. It’s just been a while is all. I’m rusty.
Well, you can play here as much as you need to, he said.
That’s about the best news I’ve had in a while, she said.
Good, she said and laughed again.
When she came home, Orren was walking up from the barn with something hanging from his right hand.
Guess what! she yelled from the back steps.
What? he yelled back.
I got a job playing piano at the church!
Paying you? he yelled.
Fifteen dollars a week, her voice a little softer now as he neared. He said nothing in response, only kept on, and that stole the slightest pleasure from her telling. As he topped the slope, she saw he was carrying a dead chicken, its head gone but its body still whole and feathered. She stepped out cautiously now to meet him on the grass.
What’s wrong with that chicken? she said.
It’s dead, he said. She glared at him.
It don’t lay no more, he said. It ain’t a meat chicken, but we can eat it. Fix it, he said and he held it out to her. There was fight in his eyes, and because it was there and because he hadn’t forgotten the other night and neither had she—especially the part where she wanted to take back her loose words—she reached out and grasped the chicken by its nubby legs and held it right up against her hip so her jeans got wet from its spillage. She didn’t know what to do with it, chicken from the grocery was one thing, but holding the deceased in her bare hands was another thing altogether.
Fifteen bucks, huh, he said.
That’s right, she said and smiled broadly. Then she turned and walked back to the house, swinging the chicken like she didn’t care.