Читать книгу Known By Heart - Ellen Prentiss Campbell - Страница 11

The Spring

She floated awake and remembered the note Jeff had left for her in the milk shed yesterday. Had he really asked her to come ride with him on the delivery run to the dairy? Jeff, a football star for the county high school, till he got hurt. She stared at the ceiling; Jeff smiled down at her, leaning out the window of his silver tank truck. Daddy surely wouldn’t let her work for Cora if he knew she waited by the milk shed each day at the time Jeff picked up the milk.

Dawn seeped into her dark bedroom, softening it like a black and white photograph slowly washed with color, like the tinted high school portrait of her mother on the mantel. It was the only picture; her father disapproved of cameras, images. She studied it sometimes, wondering what the true colors of her mother’s mouth, skin and eyes had been. Her own hair was the copper red of a scrub pad.

“Annie, you up?” Her father was at her door.

“Yes, I’m up.” She made it true, pushing off the quilt.

“I’m going out to the goats. Call me when you’ve got coffee ready.”

The stairs creaked, complaining under his weight. Annie sat up, swung her long legs over the edge of the bed, and tiptoed across the painfully cold wood floor to the bathroom. She studied herself in the mirror: light blue eyes, white skin, everything too pale except hair and freckles. She practiced flashing smiles for Jeff then hurried back to her room to put on her shirtwaist dress and sweater. Once at Cora’s, she would change into jeans but her father preferred modest garb. She refused to wear a hair net.

Downstairs she flicked on the light in the kitchen, wishing for a radio to keep her company and tell of the weather and world outside the county. But he didn’t countenance radios, even the Christian music station. Water boiled; she filled the drip pot. At least he still drank coffee. She watched little volcanoes erupt in the oatmeal cooking on the stove. Annie stepped onto the porch.

“Breakfast is ready,” she yelled.

Back inside, she spooned oatmeal into bowls and poured two cups of coffee. Impatient to be on her way, she began to eat as her father came in.

“Wait a minute. We haven’t asked the blessing,” he reprimanded.

She put her spoon down. He washed his hands and stood by his chair, head bowed.

“Almighty God, we thy unworthy servants thank thee for our creation, preservation, and above all redemption. Amen.”

“Amen,” she echoed, grabbing up her spoon.

“Annie, never be in such a hurry that you neglect your prayers.”

They began to eat in silence, his reproach twanging in the air above the table. He sugared his oatmeal heavily and added a big pat of butter.

“Cora called last night. Her basement flooded. Needs you to stay overnight and help clean up.”

Annie kept her eyes down, not to appear too eager.

“Should I?”

“Long as you’re back right after you do her chores tomorrow morning.”

She finished breakfast and shot up the stairs for her nightgown, back downstairs to the kitchen. Still at the table, he stared into his empty bowl, shoulders slumped.

“You’ll be alright here for dinner without me? There’s meatloaf.”

“Take a pie. She wanted apple. Make sure she pays for it, and for the extra time.”

He resented her working out, even for an old friend like Cora, but they needed the money. She selected a pie from the pantry, leaving half a dozen for him to take to the bake shop.

“I’ll be going now.”

She hesitated on the door sill. He would be alright without her, wouldn’t he?

He fixed her with his gray gaze as though taking aim. “Drive careful. God bless you.” He looked away, releasing her.

Annie slammed free out the door and jumped into the old sedan. She opened the glove compartment and reached deep in, touching Jeff’s note. Yes, it was real. She closed the glove compartment and turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught and she smiled, it had been unreliable these cool spring mornings. She hurtled down the rutted mud drive, past the rusty mailbox, flying up the ridge road to Cora’s.

Mist rose out of the valley like boiling steam. Annie rolled the car window as far down as it would go and breathed in the moist morning. Bare branches in the woods blurred with new leaves, the hillside was painted with streaks of soft green. Annie would ask Cora the name of the white tree that was blooming all through the woods. Cora knew every wildflower and tree as well as she knew every family up and down the ridge. Annie pressed down the accelerator, racing over the last rise. Cora’s big white barn stood strong and solid beside the road. The dogs barked as the car stopped; the setter bounded over as she climbed out. She knelt to tousle its ears. He’d been abandoned on Cora’s porch not long ago, not unusual since everyone knew Cora never turned a stray away, but a lucky break for the setter. Short, sturdy Cora came down the porch steps, pushing aside her dogs.

“Morning, Annie.” The warm smile stretched across her square-jawed, weathered face.

“Here’s your pie.”

“Take it on in. Meet you in the barn.”

Annie found room for the pie on the crowded kitchen counter and went upstairs to change. She considered the spare room hers and kept a stash of nail polish and cosmetics on the vanity. Tonight she’d give herself a manicure, stripping it off like always before going home. Maybe take a bubble bath. Downstairs on the sun porch she slipped on mud boots. The setter tagged behind her across the road, whining when she shut him out of the barn. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she breathed in the warm scent of cow and hay dust and listened to the soothing stir and murmur of cows shifting back and forth.

“Back here with the calf,” Cora called from the box stalls. She was on her knees beside the calf. Annie remembered the day it had been born, breech. The vet couldn’t get there in time. Cora, bloody, triumphant, saved calf and mother, too.

“Looking good,” Cora said as she slowly got to her feet. Annie helped her out of the stall. Back in the main barn they attached the milking machines.

“What’s the pretty white tree all over the woods?”

“Sarvis. They say when the sarvis blooms, it’s time to plant the oats. Another thing I won’t get to this year,” she sighed.

Annie hated her to talk like that. Cora was past sixty, older than Annie’s grandmother had been when she died three years ago.

“Wish I could help you more.”

“I get by.”

Somehow farm people didn’t, or couldn’t, get old the way town people like her grandparents had. Cora just kept getting up every morning and doing what needed to be done.

Milking finished, Cora leaned on the fence by the small cemetery plot.

“Keep meaning to get a marker for Frank. They cost. Little Cora’s pink peony is forty years old now, like she would have been.”

Cora let the setter inside the house, but the rest of the dogs had to stay in the yard. The kitchen radio crackled, tuned to the local police channel. She said hearing the police reports made her feel safer. Annie wouldn’t listen now to ambulance dispatches if she’d had a drunk husband die, like Cora’s Frank, flipping his car over on the ice slick road two winters ago coming back from his night job at the turnpike. Cora poured coffee. Annie reached for a slice of toast.

Cora fiddled with the knob on the toaster. “This came out too light. Want yours down again?”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t like mine too crunchy.”

Toast and coffee finished, Annie filled the sink with suds and washed the dishes.

“So, want me to start on the basement? Least it’s sunny today, dry the stuff out.” It was sure to be a mess. Cora’s cellar had a dirt floor and was always dank and cold. Annie had seen mushrooms growing there.

Cora smiled. “Well, I told your Daddy a little white lie. There wasn’t a flood. I asked for you to stay over so you can ride along with Jeff to the dairy like he asked you.”

“He told you?”

“I told him to. The two of you, making eyes over the fence.”

Annie stood very still at the sink, watching soap bubbles pop, one by one.

“I can’t. Cora, you know I can’t.”

“Seventeen years old. Old enough to work right alongside me, and plenty old enough to go with Jeff if you fancy.”

“But I don’t know him.”

“You spend some time together. Get acquainted. He’s a good boy from good people, hauls the milk dependable. Might have got to college and played football if he hadn’t busted his knee.”

“Daddy wouldn’t let me. You know how he is.”

“Well, I know how he is now, and I know how he was when he met your mama in high school,” Cora sniffed.

“What do you mean?”

“Your daddy just lost all interest in fishing and hunting overnight. They were crazy in love. Sometimes he’d bring her up here to visit awhile, then they’d run down that pasture to the woods like spring lambs.”

Annie stared out the kitchen window, trying to see her grim father skipping down the meadow, crazy in love with a red-haired girl running beside him.

“He got religious to make up, when your mama died having you.”

“Make up for what?” she asked, wary.

Cora vigorously ran a dishrag over the spotless oilcloth on the table.

“Make up for what?” Annie demanded, determined to get the answer.

“For loving too much, too soon. For not waiting to start you.” She kept her head down, the gray curls in the home permanent Annie had helped her with seemed to bristle.

Loving too soon. Not waiting. “You mean they had to get married? I was a mistake?”

Cora’s broad face crumpled like a ripe puffball mushroom after you stomped on it. The setter paced, toenails clicking on the scarred wood floor, and began to whine.

Annie exploded out the screen door and stumbled down the meadow behind the house, blinking in the sudden sunshine. She ran, trampling bluets and spring beauties in the grass. Safe in the shady woods she slowed down. The setter found her and bounded ahead, nose and tail quivering as he chased scents. She sat on a log and inhaled the loamy air. A woodpecker drummed on a tree trunk. May apples speared straight through last year’s fallen leaves, white blossoms hidden beneath the green parasol of leaves. A few early trout lilies gleamed yellow. Purple violets bloomed by the stream.

Annie climbed down the bank to the water. She crouched, turning over rocks, startling hidden salamanders, searching out stones inscribed with the twisted trails of fossil worms. Once this had been the Appalachian Sea according to the geography teacher.

The setter splashed up the stream, shaking off wetness in a rainbow shower. He raced through the trees to the bright margin of the meadow. She followed to the edge of the woods. Cora’s house perched at the distant top of the steep slope, like a ship sailing across a high green wave. What would it be like to sail away?

Cora’s small figure appeared on the porch. Her voice wafted down the hillside.

“Annie, Annie. Come on up! Jeff’s here!”

Annie fell back into the shadows. She paused beside the old walled spring where cows had been watered, before there was well water on the ridge. The spring was held on three sides by stone walls set into the hillside, a mossy hearth for water instead of fire. There was always water here, even on the late dry days of summer, mysterious water from the deep earth. She knelt and rested her head on her knees.

Leaves rustled. Annie froze still as a stalked deer. Footfalls crackled, a stick broke. From the corner of her eye she saw his work boots approach.

“Cora sent me. She’s making tea,” Jeff said.

She tried to answer, but her throat locked.

He knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes burned. She dropped her head between her knees, hunching her shoulders to strangle the tears. His hand touched her shoulder, gently. She held her breath. His hand traced circles on her back—wide, firm circles.

His arm cradled her; she rested on his flannel shoulder. He tipped her chin up, stroked a finger across her forehead and down her cheek. He kissed her. The sounds of the woods faded away. Liquid warmth spread inside her. His tongue slipped sweetly into her own mouth, his hand was moving down her belly. She felt as though a combination lock was being turned, tumblers clicking; she was opening. Then she pushed his hand away.

“No, I can’t,” she whispered, and pulled back.

“I’m sorry. It’s just—I’ve been wanting to kiss you since I first saw you come out of the barn last winter.”

She had never seen him before without his generous smile. He looked sad. Annie almost reached out to touch his lips.

The woodpecker drilled its lonely song. Jeff stood, brushing off his jeans, and held out his hand for her.

“We should get up the hill now. Cora’s fixing to cut your pie.”

“You go. I’ll be along.”

“What about that ride to the dairy? I won’t bother you, I promise.”

“No, I can’t. Not today, anyway.”

“Alright then. I guess I know how it is,” he said.

She heard him walk slowly away. When he was safely distant, she looked up and watched him disappear, limping slightly, through the shade into the bright meadow.

Like a fish on a line drawn tight and tighter, she felt a sharp pain in her throat where a hook would lodge. Soon the line must break, or her throat would burst.

Annie peered into the clear, still spring. Her reflection stared back. She picked up a long stick and stirred the water fiercely, disturbing the mirror. Murky clouds of mud and debris swirled and slowly settled, like tea leaves in a fortune teller’s cup.

She could not read any message in the clotted foliage floating in the water.