As Annie passes through the rows, trying not to let her skirt brush against the stems and stir up the odor any more than has already been stirred by the heat of the day, the truth starts pushing its way up and out. She feels an obligation to Ellis Baine for being so kind as to deny her being the daughter of Joseph Carl. It might bring some peace to all of them, to both families, if she were to offer up this truth. At the top of the hill, Grandpa’s tobacco barn stands to her left. The rock fence is straight ahead, and Ellis Baine is still leaning there against the well, waiting. Annie steps up to the fence that stretches to the road on one end and farther than she knows on the other, presses her hands flat on top, hoists herself over, and walks a few steps toward Ellis Baine.
“Abraham Pace,” she says, knowing the moment she says it, she has made a mistake. This won’t bring peace of any kind. But she’s done it and she’s put something in motion, and now she can’t stop.
“Abraham Pace,” she says in a louder voice, so Ellis will be certain to hear. “He saw me holding them and took them from me. Said he was sure glad I found them. Said they missed them when they sat down to play cards.”
Ellis nods. She had expected her answer to matter to him, that it would mean something important, but he leans there, picking the bark off a twig, not making any show of being upset or carrying on in any way.
“Why do you care about an old deck of cards?” Annie says. “What’s them belonging to Abraham Pace mean?”
Besides driving stakes for Mrs. Baine’s tomatoes, Daddy has done other things for her over the years. Mama never liked him going up there, said a person never knew what might happen, but Daddy always said it was the least they could do. He said it like her being alone in that house without her boys to help her keep it up was largely Mama and Daddy’s fault. It’s the least I could do, he always said when he would come home from hammering a sheet of plywood on her roof or replacing a few rotted boards on her porch.
“That boy down there hollering for you,” Ellis says, ignoring Annie’s question about the cards and Abraham Pace. “You see that boy in this well?”
“No.”
“Betting he wishes you did.”
Might as well mow it all down, Daddy said the last time he went to Mrs. Baine’s place. He was there to fix a broken-out window and couldn’t hardly get a new window to fit because the house had so settled it was no longer anywhere close to square. But in the few short weeks Ellis Baine has been back, he’s stripped away the clutter. He’s toted off rusted, twisted scraps of metal and the bones of discarded furniture, all of it tossed out on the porch or along the side of the house. Ellis has mowed down the grass and turned under the weeds. Grandma says he’s cleaning up the place so it can begin again with new folks.
“You got a family?” Annie asks.
“Couple nieces. Bundle of nephews.”
“None of your own?”
He shakes his head.
“Never married?”
“Nope.”
“Is that because of my mama?” Annie asks. “Did you love her?”
“Should have,” Ellis says, digging a thumbnail under a stubborn piece of bark. “If I hadn’t been such a damn fool, probably would have. Plenty of fellows are fools when they’re young.”
“She loved you.”
He shakes his head.
“Then why does it make her so sad to see you?”
“Not sadness.”
“Then what?”
“It’s regret, I suppose.”
“What’s she regretting?”
He points his nearly bald stick at Annie. “Not telling you that. None of your damn business.” And while he’s pointing and cursing, he’s smiling too. Almost smiling. “Truth?” he asks.
Annie nods.
“As much as I’m a damn fool for not loving a woman like your mama, she’s probably figuring to be a damn fool for ever thinking she was in love with a man like me.”
Annie says nothing, mostly because she doesn’t understand what Ellis has said. So instead of trying to talk, she works on remembering his exact words so she can keep on thinking about it later and maybe piece it together.
“You ought get back home now,” Ellis says.
Annie thought Ellis Baine had pulled out all the tomatoes, but walking toward the well, toward Ellis Baine, who has gone back to picking the last of the bark from that twig, she sees a few yet grow. He picked good ones to save. They’re waxy and green, smaller and newer than the tangled plants that had been here before, but soon enough, they’ll grow too top-heavy to stand on their own.
“You still got those stakes you took out?” she asks.
Ellis pushes off the well, cocks his brows at Annie because now he knows she’s been watching him in the days since he came back, and walks toward the house.
“String too,” Annie shouts after him. “String of some kind.”
She’s snapping off some of the top buds so the plants will stop growing up and start growing out when she hears Daddy.
“Annie?”
She looks to one side and then the other.
“Annie, what are you doing?”
She stands and turns. He’s there, just this side of the fence.
“What are you doing over here?”
But before Annie can answer, before she can tell about the cards belonging to Abraham Pace and the stakes Daddy drove for Mrs. Baine and tying up the last of the tomatoes so they fare better than the rest, Ellis Baine walks out from behind his house, a bundle of white twine slung over his shoulder and three of Daddy’s stakes in his left hand. He stops when he sees Daddy, stands looking at him for a time, and then walks closer.
“What’s he done?” Daddy says.
“Nothing, Daddy.”