It doesn’t matter.
I woke up telling myself that, before I remembered what I was pushing away. I opened the cigar box and looked at their faces—hers so joyous, his weary, far-seeing. I looked at their hands.
They loved each other. It doesn’t matter when I was born.
I believed it with all my conscious might, but underneath I felt the wound. It was like the time I ripped the lace on my best dress. Mother tucked the mangled part out of sight, and people were forever complimenting me on the dress, but I never felt the same about it afterward.
I couldn’t seem to rock steadily that day. Churning took all morning, and in the afternoon I rested, as Aunt Sarah had wanted weeks ago.
Now she wouldn’t have minded if I worked myself to death. I felt the weight of her glance when I sat down after dishes. Uncle Clayton and Truman looked curious when I stayed there, while they went off to the hayfield. Aunt Sarah bunched her mouth, as if she knew exactly what was going on.
When they were gone, I went upstairs to my hot bedroom. I looked at the smiling face of my mother, the exhausted face of my father.
You did what only married people are supposed to do. That’s bad, not like killing people, but like—like keeping a dirty house. Like drinking too much. Like cheating.
Mother’s face looked brave and happy. Father’s looked …
What if she had trapped him? What if she’d said, “I’m going to have a baby. You have to marry me?”
What if she did ruin his life?
He didn’t have much life left when he met her. But he could have spent it at peace with Aunt Sarah, who raised him from a baby. He could have spent it in the house where he was born.
I put them away in the cigar box.
That afternoon the haying on Vinegar Hill was finished. They came in streaming sweat. The day had heated up beyond anything we’d seen yet this summer.
“It’s a weather breeder,” Uncle Clayton said. “I’ll wait for a change before I cut the homeplace.” Truman went home, expecting the haying to come to him in a few days.
But the heat increased, smothering us. A dress left on the floor formed wrinkles overnight, as sharp as if they’d been ironed into the fabric. Paper was limp. Milk soured quickly.
My attic bedroom was stifling, even after the thunder-storms that blew up each afternoon and cooled the air outside. Uncle Clayton waited for a big storm and wind to bring in fresh air. After each rain he listened, smelled, tasted the air, and shook his head.
Meanwhile we churned and washed and baked, weeded, shelled beans, canned vegetables. I presented myself for each task as it arose and was shown how to do it. We didn’t talk, Aunt Sarah and I, but I knew what she was thinking. I’d overheard her tell Uncle Clayton. I know she meant me to hear; I’d never once overheard her say anything about me before, and I’m sure she said plenty.
“I’m to house this child, but nobody believes I’m fit to raise her! That folderol about John Gale’s heirs! That was cooked up, so I’d have no say in what happened, and look at her now! Not a word to say to any of us. Thinks she’s too good, I suppose, with all that money laid out for her!”
A murmur from Uncle Clayton.
“I raised four children! I don’t think I made too bad a job of it! But the way Andy Vesper acts, you’d think I’d just gotten out of a home for the feebleminded!”
Murmur.
“Well, let her get herself down there then! Though I have yet to see an inch of progress with that horse that’s eating us out of house and home—”
“That horse’s too young,” Uncle Clayton said. “And she is, too. Y’ought to put a stop to that, Sairy, before she breaks her neck.”
“Oh, yes, and I can just see that Barrett crowd if I did! They’d probably have me in jail for cruelty!”
She was right. I was making little progress. The scenes repeated so often, they formed an eternal present. On the long rope, I tell the colt to walk. He keeps trotting. I yank the line.
Leading him, I say, “Whoa.” He bobbles toward me and steps on my foot. I push him with my elbow.
Passing the new pigpen gate, he stops and snorts and backs up fast. I put my hand up to soothe him, and he bites me. I slap him.
I ought to have begun riding him. At home I would have, in the little pasture by the river. Here I didn’t dare. The pigpen gate frightened him day after day, and what if I was on his back when that happened? What if we met a car, a rooster, a farm wagon, out on the road? Before that happened, I had to drill the commands into his head, so whoa meant “stop” every single time.
But it was hard to keep going. It was no fun for either of us, and why was I even doing it? He would fetch more money if he were trained, but did I believe I was going to sell him? Did I believe I’d run away to the city and vanish? Not really. I didn’t believe anything anymore.
The second hot Thursday I was in the pasture when Truman drove up. The colt had been evading me, slipping away with sour ears whenever I got close. Now he brightened and trotted to greet Jerry. I followed.
“Hello, Harry!” Truman’s beard looked limp and more tea stained than usual. Sweat trickled down his face and lost itself in the yellow-white fringe.
“Hello.”
“Been expectin’ you every day. I s’pose the weather’s kept you home.”
I nodded. My mouth felt tight and small. I snapped the rope into the colt’s halter. He flicked his ears back angrily, and I felt an inner flick of anger in response.
“Been workin’ him hard, Harry?”
“Not hard enough!” I pulled the colt’s head away from Jerry and led him through the gate.
“Looks like you could both use a day off,” Truman said when we caught up with him. “Why don’t you come visit me? Haven’t seen your bird in a spell.”
“Maybe.” Just what I need! I thought. One more person who thinks I can’t train this—
Thunk! on the top of my head. Roman candles shot off behind my eyes. “Ouch! Oh!” Clunk! again, from behind. I saw the colt’s head swinging.
“Darn you, cut it out!” I slapped his neck, as hard as I could. He flung up his head, mouth pinched tight.
“Harry!” Truman said. “He didn’t do that a-purpose! He was bitin’ a fly!”
“Well, it hurt!”
“The fly hurt him. Put him up for the day, Harry. You’re in no mood to handle a horse.”
“He has to learn!” Now my hand hurt, too. “I don’t care if a fly does bite him; he has to behave!”
Truman started to speak and stopped. He sat looking at me from under the shelf of his brows. “Well,” he said after a minute, “guess I’ll take my own advice and leave you be.” He flicked the reins at Jerry’s rump. Jerry walked faster, a bumpy gait that seemed stiff in some joints, too loose in others, and that left me ever so slightly behind.
I had to hurry now beside the colt, who urgently wanted to keep up with Jerry. Already I felt greasy with sweat and bad inside. I had been disrespectful to an old man who loved me. Mother would be ashamed.
I’m ashamed of you, too! I retorted in my mind.
Even as I brushed the colt, the deerflies bit, and the bright blood welled up. I couldn’t blame him for jumping and squirming.
It was the craziness I blamed him for, the frantic stamping at the lightest touch on his legs, even a housefly or a grass stem. It was the foolishness that made him jump and look resentful when I smacked and killed a fly on his flank. “You’ll just have to put up with it!” I said through clenched teeth. “Other horses manage.”
I clipped the long rope into the halter and unsnapped his tie rope. The colt ducked his head into my shoulder.
Automatically my hand came up to rub the glossy bulb of his ear. I hadn’t done that, or scratched his neck, or hugged him in a long time. All I’d done was boss him, smack him, yank on his halter.
Had I been too harsh? It wasn’t his fault he was only two. Maybe Truman was right. I would just work the colt briefly, and as soon as he did one good thing, I’d praise him and put him away.
I led him up to the flat hayfield above the barn. I could see Uncle Clayton and the team, small at the far end of the bean rows. Aunt Sarah and Truman were in the garden, Aunt Sarah like a big stump in her brown dress, Truman thin and angular as a heron. They were talking, about me, I thought. I turned to the colt.
“Walk.”
He didn’t budge. I waggled the buggy whip; he flattened his ears and obeyed, circling me at the end of the rope.
“Good— No!” He’d ducked his head, shaking it angrily, and now he started to trot. I pulled on the rope.
“You walk!” He kept trotting, the mincing jig Belle used to do when nervous, which had always given me a stitch in the side. I jerked the rope hard. “No! Walk!”
The colt stopped in his tracks.
“Walk!”
He lashed his tail, bit a fly just behind his elbow, and at last did walk. His mouth was pursed, and his eye narrow. “Good boy!” I said when he’d walked a complete circle. “Now trot!”
He shook his head heavily, on and on, trying to dislodge a fly. The deerflies favored the ears and didn’t shake off easily.
“Trot!” I said again.
He stopped, rubbed his head against his foreleg, snatched a bite of grass.
“Now darn you, trot!” I snapped the whip.
The colt let out a deep, angry squeal, plunged into a gallop, and lashed out with both hind feet, all at once. He began to race around me, his body slanted toward the center of the circle, his head carried high like a lance. The rope pulled hard against my hand. I dropped the whip—it seemed to cling to my fingers—and grabbed the rope in both hands.
“Whoa!”
But the colt saw the team down in the bean field. The circle became a straight line as he charged toward them, and my braced feet lifted off the ground.
For a moment I was flying. Then I hit the grass and was raked across it, across the bumps and stubble. The rope slid through my hands. I couldn’t seem to let go, until the knot in the end of it slid past my face, banged like a hammer at the base of my hands, and they opened.
I saw a bruised leaf of clover and a bare quarter inch of ground amid the stubble. The earth drummed, and slowly I knew that for the colt’s hoofbeats.
I didn’t want to move. The yellowed field spun and sank slowly, one quarter turn, another …
Something prickled my cheek. I lifted my head a fraction. Nothing moved on the broad grass horizon, but I heard voices.
The sun was hot on my back. I started to push myself upright. The ground burned my palms, and I fell flat.
I drew my hands toward me across the grass, palms up. I didn’t dare look at them. I propped myself on my forearms, rolled over, and sat.
Far away the colt raced across the bean field. The long rope flew behind him. Dirt and bean plants erupted in the air.
Uncle Clayton strained his reins tight. His hatbrim tilted as he looked uphill.
“Harry! Harry, are you all right?”
How could I be hearing him? He was so far away.
Not him. I turned my head, slowly. It felt huge and light, as if it were made of cork.
Aunt Sarah, running, almost here. Her face was mottled, red and white. Truman struggled far behind her, the stub of his arm jerking and flapping like a broken wing.
“Harriet!” She fell on her knees beside me. Her breath came in great gasps. “Say something!”
She looked so strange. I turned my eyes away from her. The colt had made a spiral of broken, trampled bean plants. Now he pranced around the team. He’d tangle them in the rope.…
“Where are you hurt?” Her big, hot hands pressed my head. I winced as she found the places where the colt’s jaw had whacked me. She passed one hand down my spine.
Truman collapsed on the grass beside us. He was pale, and his breath trembled, his hand trembled, as he gently reached for one of mine and turned it over.
It looked like raw meat.