1936—SARAH AND JUNA
ONE DAY AFTER I kissed John Holleran, Dale wakes, opens his one good eye, and smiles at Juna and me. As I did with Juna, I feed him cornbread dipped in cane syrup. I crumble the bread and press the small, sticky chunks to his swollen lips, make him drink water too and milk. He might never turn pink again, not like he was before, but the gray lifts.
Soon he complains of the hot room, and together, Juna and I lift the shutter and prop it open. His clothes, his skin, his hair, smell of Daddy’s cigars. We hold Dale’s slender arms and wash them clean with soap and water. He cries out when we work too quickly. We open the front door, try to get a cross breeze going to clear away the stale, smoky smell.
Dale’s skin, so cold before, is warm now. Maybe too warm. Before, he would have been happy to have us two do his washing for him, but once he wakes, he is somehow older and eager to be so. That’s likely why he waits to speak his first words until Daddy walks into the room.
“I know better,” Dale says. “Sure am sorry.”
We tell him to hush, both Juna and I. Save your strength. Nothing to be sorry about. The words catch in my throat as I speak them, can’t stop myself from thinking about the fellows who pass through this way and bring news. Don’t talk to those fellows, Daddy has always said. Dale is sorry for talking to a fellow like that. He’s sorry for talking to Joseph Carl.
Late into the night before Dale woke, Juna had whispered about the things a man would do to a boy like Dale if he were so inclined, and I barely slept for thinking about it. I hadn’t been able to believe, hadn’t wanted to believe, Joseph Carl had done those things to Juna and Dale. But he did, Juna said over and over all through the night. We have Dale back because Joseph Carl finally told. Praise the Lord, Dale is home and soon he’ll be well. Joseph Carl finally told. Why don’t you believe?
Visitors come throughout the day, all of them relieved because Dale’s waking means he’ll be well again. First, it’s Sheriff Irlene. She brings strawberry preserves, two jars.
“Didn’t intend on making a bad situation worse,” she says to Juna because Joseph Carl told and we all know he’s guilty now and the sheriff is feeling ashamed for having questioned Juna’s story.
“Are you girls well?” she says to me once Juna has settled in a seat at the kitchen table. “You have all you need for Dale? For yourselves and your daddy?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
“Your daddy,” she says, “he seem content to have Joseph Carl behind bars? He planning any sort of trouble?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, and I want to ask her if she’s sure. Is she so sure Joseph Carl did these things that she’ll let him die?
“And you girls?” she says, staring at me and only me. “You’re well here? You’re safe?”
It’s John Holleran who has told her the things Juna said, and as I thought, they’ll stick to me now all my days.
“Safe and sound, ma’am.”
John Holleran comes after supper. I knew he would. I meet him at his truck because it feels like the thing I should do, and I tell him Dale is awake. Juna too is better. She walks straight now, same as always. She had needed rest and water and a little something to eat. I want John to tell me the sheriff had been wrong about Joseph Carl, but instead, he removes his hat, glances over my shoulder to make sure Daddy isn’t watching, and he kisses me. Not like before, not with both hands and his tongue inside my mouth, but a quick soft kiss that catches the outer edge of my lips. I wish I wasn’t, but I’m angry at him for making Sheriff Irlene think terrible things were happening in this house. Like always, John was only trying to do what he thought was right.
“There’ll be a trial,” he says instead of telling me the sheriff was wrong. “He’ll be treated fair.”
It’s the best he can do and the best we can hope for. Daddy wanted Joseph Carl for himself, thought any decent man should be able to see to his own justice.
“He’ll stay in jail until then?”
John nods.
John’s mama comes next. Mary Holleran has quietly slipped in and out of the house several times over the past few days, always leaving food or ground coffee or fresh-picked tomatoes and such from her garden. People wonder now does she really have the know-how because she couldn’t tell where Dale would be found. But Juna couldn’t tell either, or wouldn’t tell.
Mary touches John’s sleeve as she walks into the kitchen. Her long hair, as always, has been twisted and rolled and pinned in a bundle on top of her head. She smiles until she sees Juna sitting at the table. Like so many others who come into our house, Mary walks a path that keeps her clear of Juna. Most folks are leery of those who have the gift. It’s not that they’re scared. Folks have a way of keeping a comfortable distance from things they don’t understand. But Mary understands the know-how, knows it better than most anyone, so it must be the evil Daddy has always thought took up in Juna’s eyes that frightens Mary.
“I want you to keep a sharp eye on that boy,” Mary says before leaving again. “On Dale. Keep a sharp eye.”
I nod. “Thank you for coming,” I say.
Again, she says, “You keep an eye. No one else. You.”
I sleep all that night at Dale’s side, sitting up in the chair next to his bed. The doctor said if he began to fuss about the pain, which he would eventually because God damn it all, that was quite a break, we should give him a teaspoon of Daddy’s whiskey. That’ll do the trick, he said, but Dale never complains. He sleeps through the night, restless and sometimes mumbling, and in the morning, Juna wakes me with a tap to my shoulder.
By herself, Juna has lifted the shutter. A sliver of sunlight, the most the house would see all day, lights up the room and collects in her hair. To look up at her from my seat at Dale’s side, I have to shade my eyes and squint. I forgot while I slept. I forgot the things Juna had done with Ellis Baine and all the others too. I forgot Joseph Carl would likely hang for what he did, and that Ellis Baine and I would never steal away to join Joseph Carl where the wheat grew taller than a man. I forgot Dale disappeared and that he was home again. I forgot I kissed John Holleran.
“Did he wake at all?” Juna asks, shaking me again. “Did he say anything more?”
But then I remember everything. I push aside Juna’s hand still resting on my shoulder, stand, and seeing that Dale is yet asleep, I walk from the room without giving Juna an answer.
I fix Daddy breakfast, same as always, and as he eats, I put out the lamp we kept burning through the night. Usually, I see to it the lamp never goes dry, but Juna must have done it last night, or maybe Daddy himself. Daddy says no to seconds on his coffee and no to seconds on his biscuits. He sits low in his chair, shirt buttoned up to the top button, one boot crossed over the other. He’ll be going to the fields. The other fellows will be helping him, just enough to get back on track. It’s what he’s always needed. A little help. Just a little Goddamn help. Mostly folks stay out of Daddy’s fields because they are cursed, but Dale coming home has softened them, at least for the day.
“Where did you find him, Daddy?” I ask, following him onto the porch.
He tells me I won’t know the spot.
“On up the hill. Farther south than you might have thought. Where the river widens. On up the hill.”
Straightaway, I know exactly where they found Dale. It was Juna and Abraham’s spot, or somewhere near there.
“Blackberries still waiting,” Juna says after Daddy disappears down the road. She is waiting for me in the kitchen, maybe waiting for Daddy to leave. “Won’t Dale like some blackberries?”
Juna isn’t up to it yet, she tells me as she braces herself by pressing one hand to the kitchen table and slowly, gingerly lowering herself into a chair. She tells me where they’ll grow. On the northern side of the hill, that’s where you ought find them. Touch the soil, rub it between your fingers. In the cool soil, where the water doesn’t rest, that’s where they’ll grow.
“Fetch some berries,” she says. “I’ll see to Dale.”
I go. Even knowing I shouldn’t, I leave Dale with Juna. I go because she took Ellis Baine and she took the whole of my future. I go, even knowing I shouldn’t, and I leave Dale to Juna.
• • •
OVER THE NEXT two weeks, Dale’s face and the scrapes on his knees, hands, and elbows heal, and Juna takes to standing a certain way. She clasps her hands just below her belly. The first time I noticed, as I recall, it was the night Dale came home. I thought she looked to be cradling a basket. And her gait changes. It slows, or maybe it doesn’t slow, but her steps are more measured, she takes greater care, all of it to remind me or Daddy or whoever might be near that she has been tarnished and damaged by Joseph Carl Baine.
And she takes to wearing my dresses, and each time Daddy hints at weeds that need dug or the worms that have been spotted on a neighbor’s tobacco and so have surely taken up on his, she tells him she’s not yet up to it. But isn’t she lucky, so lucky, to have a father who would care for her and fight for her and see to her well-being.
During the days, and most nights too, Juna cares for Dale, tending a fever we can’t rid him of. She rarely leaves his bedside, sitting with him even while he sleeps, and when he wakes, they whisper together, their heads pressed close, she patting his hand all the while. Abigail comes to the house most every day, but Juna sends her off because Dale isn’t strong enough yet. Juna says she and Dale share something now, something the rest of us can’t understand. He wants only to be with Juna. That’s what she tells us.
And while Juna busies herself with Dale, never does she talk of Abraham Pace or speak of missing him or wondering after him. She never asks Abigail how Abraham is getting on. Except for seeing Dale safely home, Abraham hasn’t been back since the night in the sheriff’s office when Ellis Baine said Juna had been ruined by plenty of men.
I think the doctor should come again and have a look at Dale, but Juna says no, he’s improving every day. He’s frightened of the doctor, and can’t you see his color is so nice and his breathing so easy? But still he isn’t right, not like he was before, and he sleeps, mostly he sleeps. Juna says he’s eating, but I don’t see because I’m too busy with the laundry and the tobacco and John Holleran.
While Juna tends to Dale, I take over her chores. The work is hard and my days are long. I spend them in the fields and do the things Juna once did. I snap the pink flowers from the tops of the tobacco that has survived the dry summer. I pull worms, learn to pop their heads off with a flick of my thumb and toss them on the ground. At night, every night, my knees and back ache. I clench and unclench my fingers to loosen the stiffness. I pat my face with a cool cloth to soothe my sunburned skin, peel the black grime from my hands, and my skin is raw from the lye soap I scrub with every night before supper. Juna tells me to eat and take care and not concern myself with Dale. She’s tending him and helping him to remember. By the time I come home each night, my fingers sometimes bleeding from the blisters that break open and my shins and forearms bruised and scabbed and my throat dry, Dale has eaten well and is resting. You really don’t want to disturb him, do you, Juna will say, and then she’ll pull out a chair and invite me to have a seat. Each night, I barely sit through supper before falling asleep.
John Holleran does what he can. Every evening and some mornings, he comes to help me because mostly these jobs are new to me and I’m not so handy with them. He lays in new firewood, and to keep the snakes from getting inside, the thing he knows I most hate, he cuts back the grass Daddy left to grow alongside the house. As we work, he talks about land and wanting his own and how he’ll one day have his daddy’s. It’s meant to pass on through the family from father to son, he tells me as we pour buckets of water on the garden to save the fall crop. John is easier with me now, talks more, smiles more. He’s happy, and as much as that’s my doing, it’s mine to undo as well.
When finally we send John for the doctor, Joseph Carl’s trial is two days away. Juna and I will not be making the trip. Daddy has already said no two daughters of his will be put in such a circumstance. Juna smiled to hear him say there are two of us.
It only took fifteen days for the grand jury—that’s what Daddy called it—to say Joseph Carl should be tried for his crimes. Ellis Baine showed the sheriff, showed anyone who would make the trip, the spot where Dale was discovered. The river where he was found is drying up, a little more each day. It swelled to its highest level in early spring, run off from the thaws up north, but every day, it’s lower and slower. The boy could have fallen, Ellis Baine said. Could have climbed a tree and fallen. But there was no broken branch and why would the boy climb so high. Particularly a boy such as Dale. He was soft, you know, softer than most. The boy was beaten. Beaten and left for dead.
Then make him talk, Ellis said next. The boy has yet to even name Joseph Carl. He won’t say a word. Make the boy talk. Make him say something. Get that girl, Juna, away from him and make him talk.
Doesn’t really matter, the sheriff had said. That man’s going to hang for what he done to the girl. Don’t much matter what really happened to the boy.
Times are tough, the sheriff is rumored to have said to Ellis and every other Baine brother. She promised those boys Joseph Carl would get himself a trial as fair as any man could expect. But she couldn’t promise nothing more. Folks want to see something evil, if only a single evil thing, get its comeuppance, she told them. Joseph Carl is that evil, and if seeing him pay will appease the one who might cause them more pain—and by that the sheriff meant Juna, though she didn’t dare say it—well, folks see it as justice worth serving. Folks just want a better life.
“I guess this’ll be the thing to haunt me all my days” is what folks say the sheriff last told Ellis Baine.
The doctor doesn’t wear his coat when he walks through the door this time because it’s late morning and the chill of the early hours has worn off, everywhere except at our house. He glances around when he steps inside, crosses his arms and rubs his hands from shoulder to elbow, up and down, warming himself. His heavy white brows nip together over his nose as if he’s wondering where that terrible draft has come from. I offer him coffee, an offer he declines, and because he already knows the way, he lets himself into Dale’s room.
“What in the name of our good Lord have you been doing here?” he asks, looking at me and not Juna.
I press my hand to Dale’s head. He was warm this morning, too warm, when I finally insisted we send for the doctor again. Juna had said it was the stuffy room and not enough fresh air. She said he’d finished a nice breakfast and was needing his sleep. Get on with your work, she had said, but still I insisted. He’s no longer warm; he’s hot. So hot I jerk my hand away.
“Juna said he was better,” I say, turning to Juna, who has taken to her corner. Her hands are clasped in that troublesome way. “I kept saying he didn’t look well. But he was sleeping, always sleeping. Juna said he was well.”
“Has he been eating?” the doctor says, again to me.
“Tell him, Juna,” I say. “Tell the doctor he’s been well and eating and sleeping.”
“It’ll be a poison in his blood,” the doctor says, not waiting for an answer from Juna. “A poison deep in his blood and on into his bones.”
I run to gather water straight from the well. And when I draw it up and it’s not so cool as I would like, I yell for John to go to the river.
“Go and bring it back quick. Bring enough we can bathe him.”
The doctor stays on through the day. Juna makes the biscuits, which turn out hard and blackened on the bottom. She tries to lace the greens but pours too much vinegar. I pick the tomatoes and have her slice an extra for the doctor, and while they gather at the table for an early supper, I sit with Dale.
In such a short time, he’s withered. I should have seen. I shouldn’t have been so tired as to fall asleep straightaway each night. I should have sat with him, tended him, seen that he wasn’t well. Mary Holleran told me to keep an eye, and now Dale’s nose is sharp and pointed, the plump, rounded tip gone. His forearms where I would grab hold if he tried to run from a washcloth have been whittled to bone. There is no softness left for my fingers to dig into. His eyes have settled deep into their sockets, and if he were to open them again, ever again, I’m sure I’d see they’ve turned a watery blue.
John Holleran’s mama comes again and this time brings rhubarb that grows in a thick cluster behind her house. It’ll be the last of her crop. Out in the kitchen, I hear her tell Juna to cut off the woody ends and that it’ll make a fine pie. She looks into Dale’s room, presses two fingers together, and taps them to her heart. She is shaking her head when she turns to go.
Daddy, John, and the doctor sit at the kitchen table, waiting. Juna sits with me, every so often fetching fresh, cool water. Someone strikes a match and lights the lanterns in the front room. John comes into the bedroom and lights the one at Dale’s bedside. The yellow glow throws deep shadows under Dale’s eyes and his chin, making him look all the more like Daddy.
“Come,” John says, taking my hand in his, rubbing the tips of my fingers. “Step outside. Get a bit of fresh air.”
I know John is happy, happier than ever in his life. Even with Dale lying here in this bed, burning with fever, John is happy and wants me to himself. He wants me to step outside so he can rub my arms, brush the hair from my face, kiss me when Daddy isn’t looking. I jerk my hand from him and push him away.
The hole is dug by morning. Daddy, jamming the shovel into the ground one last time and wiping the dirt from his hands, asks John if he won’t fetch the preacher.
Juna has never said it out loud, but I see it in the way she looks at me now. It’s in that odd way she has of tilting her head just off center. That day, that first day, she told me it wasn’t time for her to go to the fields. She had known because she has a way of knowing. She knows a thing will come before it has come. She told Daddy and me both it was the day for her to pick berries. She told us both, but I had an ache for Ellis Baine, and now Dale is dead.
I pull on a gray sweater and draw my hair up, bind it tightly at the base of my neck. Juna wraps her head in a dark scarf. And then we sit with Daddy and the doctor at the kitchen table as we wait. We all stand at the sound of tires on the gravel road. John’s engine shuts off; his door opens and slams closed. Footsteps, one set, cross the porch.
“Won’t come,” John says. “Says it’s best he not come.”
Some folks have always believed. I know because when Juna and I were children and would walk through town, there were those who would drift to the far side of the road. They wouldn’t look at us, and some would cover their mouths to keep Juna’s evil from snaking its way inside of them. And then there were folks who sure felt bad for Daddy and those three little ones with no mama. Nothing in this world went Daddy’s way, but life was like that for some. Some folks had a higher calling. Other folks had a harder calling.
But then times turned hard for everyone. The dirt started to blow. The crops wilted in every field and not just Daddy’s. Children cried for being hungry, and a man couldn’t find work. Strong men with good backs and skills in their hands took to standing in lines when never in their lives would they have thought to lower themselves to such a thing. Day by day, the curse that had once loomed only over the Crowleys’ place stretched itself out over the whole of the city and then the county, and by God, if it hadn’t taken over just about the whole of the country.
The doctor is the next holiest among us, so he speaks the final words as Daddy and John lower Dale into the ground. The doctor reads from the Bible, his words seeming to damn the soul instead of blessing it. Near the end of the drive, leaning against a lone fence post, is Abigail Watson. She wears her white cap tied off under her chin and her long-sleeved gray dress. Her head is bowed, and her hands pressed together as if in prayer, as if she can hear the doctor’s words, though I know she can’t.
As the doctor continues to read, John jams his shovel into the pile of dirt and tips it over the open hole, letting it dribble onto Dale. John takes his time with every shovelful, one after another as the doctor continues, verse after verse. Daddy stands on one side, Juna and I on the other, the doctor at the head of the grave. John digs and throws, digs and throws, and an hour passes as he fills the small hole until it’s no longer a hole but instead a mound of dirt that will slowly settle as Dale rots away beneath.
When John is done, Daddy kneels where the doctor had been standing and, with a hammer, pounds a small cross into the ground. The doctor must have brought it, probably has a crate full of them in his truck. John leaves quietly, without a good-bye or a kiss he sneaked when Daddy wasn’t looking. Juna walks slowly toward the house, and the doctor gathers his hat from the porch.
“That one’s with child, you know?” he says, nodding off toward the house.
Then he climbs inside his truck, slams closed the door, and fires up his engine before I can ask him to repeat himself please, because maybe I didn’t hear him quite right.