“What do you want?” she repeated as I took the pitchfork from her hands and finished the job for her. I needed the distraction. Her hands fell helplessly to her sides and she took a step back, clearly unsure of the situation.
“You had a son.” I continued to spear the bale of hay and shovel it over the fence in sections, not looking at her as I spoke. I never looked at the family members. I just kept talking until they interrupted me or screamed at me, or sobbed and begged me to continue. Usually, that was enough. The dead would leave me alone once I delivered the message. And I would be free until the next time one of them wouldn’t leave me alone.
“You have a son and he keeps showing me pictures. Your son . . . Eli? I don’t know what he wants exactly, but he won’t leave me alone. He won’t leave me alone so I’m here . . . and maybe that will be enough for him.”
She hadn’t interrupted me. She hadn’t screamed at me. She hadn’t run. She just stood with her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes fixed on my face. I met her gaze briefly and looked away again to a spot just above her head. The bale of hay was gone, so I leaned against the pitchfork. And I waited.
“My son is dead.” Her voice sounded odd, as if her lips had turned to stone and could no longer easily form words. My eyes glanced off her face once more. She had, indeed, turned to stone. Her face was so still it resembled the sculptures in my books. In the muted light of the golden afternoon, her skin was smooth and pale, just like marble. Even her hair looked colorless, thick and white and spilling over her shoulder in that long braid that reminded me of the heavy rope that Eli kept showing me, rope that spun in the air and fell in a sinuous loop over the horse’s head, the horse with colors on his back.
“I know he is,” I said mildly, but the pressure in my head increased exponentially. The water was rising, pulsing, and my levies were close to bursting.
“So how can he show you anything?” Georgia challenged harshly.
I swallowed, trying to stem the tide and met her eyes again. “You know how, Georgia.”
She shook her head briskly, adamantly denying that she knew any such thing. She took a step back and her eyes shot to the left, as if she was preparing to run. “You need to leave me alone.”
I pushed the anger back. I shoved it hard so I wouldn’t shove her. And I wanted to push her, wipe the denial off her pretty face, push her head into the dirt until her mouth was filled with mud. Then she could order me to go. Then I would deserve it. Instead, I did as she asked and turned away, ignoring the little boy who trotted after me, sending desperate images of his mother to my brain, trying to call me back without words.
“What does he look like?” She called after me, and the desperation in her voice was so at odds with her rejection that I stopped in my tracks. “I mean, if you can see him. What does he look like?”
Eli was suddenly in front of me, jumping up and down, smiling and pointing back toward Georgia. I turned, still angry, still defiant, but willing to go another round, and Eli was there in front of me again, standing between me and the horse corral. I looked at him and then back at Georgia.
“He’s small. He has dark, curly hair. And brown eyes. His eyes are like yours.” She winced and her hands rose to press against her chest as if to encourage her heart to continue beating.
“His hair is too long. It’s curling in his eyes. He needs a haircut.” The little boy brushed a droopy curl out of his eyes as if he understood what I was telling his mother.
“He hated haircuts,” she said softly, and her lips tightened immediately as if she wished she hadn’t contributed to the conversation.
“He was afraid of the clippers,” I supplied, Eli’s memory of the buzzing around his ears making my own heart quicken in sympathy. Eli’s memories were shot with terror and the clippers were twice as big as his head. They resembled the gaping jaws of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, proving that memory wasn’t always accurate. Then the image changed to something else. A birthday cake. It was chocolate with a plastic horse in the center, rearing up. Four candles flickered around it.
“He’s four,” I said, trusting that that was what Eli was trying to tell me. But I knew. I’d seen the dates on the grave.
“He would be six now.” She shook her head defiantly. I waited. The child looked up at me expectantly and then looked back at his mother.
“He’s still four,” I said. “Kids wait.”
Her lower lip trembled and she bit into it. She was starting to believe me. That, or she was starting to hate me. Or maybe she already did.
“Wait for what?” Her voice was so soft I barely caught the question.
“Wait for someone to raise them.”
The pain on her face was so intense, I felt a flash of remorse that I’d cornered her like this. She wasn’t prepared for me. But I hadn’t been prepared either. It was aces as far as I was concerned.
“He would have been waiting a long time for you,” she said softly, taking a few steps toward me and then stopping, her stance aggressive, her hands clenched. The grieving mother was gone. She was the wronged woman now. And I was the man who knocked her up and left town.
“That’s how you want to play this?” I gasped hoarsely, all my anger back in full force, so angry I wanted to start ripping fence posts from the ground and flinging barbed wire.
“Play what, Moses?” she snapped. And I snapped too.