Daddy shoveled dirt over the last of the flame, dousing the embers. He sent us inside and left us. When he came back, he had milk, most likely from the Brashears, most likely from a goat. We didn’t know, neither of us, what to give a child. I used one of the bottles Mrs. Ripberger had left along with all the tiny clothes. I had boiled them because that’s what the ladies told me to do. I touched the rubbery tip to the baby’s mouth, and she took to it. Just that much made me smile. Never thought so little could make me smile so big.
Daddy said we could never tell. Sure as he saw Joseph Carl hang, those Baines would see me hang. Out of spite, they’d do it, Daddy said. They’d come back, every one of those Baine brothers, to see me hang. Joseph Carl didn’t have no business dying, and neither did I. This made me wonder how long Daddy had known Joseph Carl should have never been hanged. Probably he’d known all along, and that’s why he would die before that ground ever thawed.
Two days later, Daddy went to Abraham Pace and told him Juna was gone. Told him she gave birth to that baby of Joseph Carl’s and walked right out the door. Next, Daddy went for John Holleran. I don’t know what Daddy told John or what he promised him or what he confessed to him, but John came. He never asked after Juna. Never asked where she’d gone or why she’d gone. That’s the thing that makes me wonder if John has always known.
We were married two weeks later. Same as John, folks didn’t ask much after Juna. The fellows slapped John on the back, told him it was high time he strapped himself in. The ladies stood at arm’s length from me and tipped forward to get a closer look at the baby. If she was sleeping, they’d ask me straight out. Does she have those black eyes? Dark brown, I told them. As dark as brown can be. Annie is as sweet as a baby can be.
John and I lived with Daddy those early days. We slept in the room Juna and I once shared. For the first three months, John slept on the floor. Cold as that floor was, he slept there. I never wore the slip I’d been wearing that night with Ellis Baine, never mentioned the thing John had seen. I wanted him to know I’d never been with a man, not Ellis, not any other. I wanted John to know he’d be my first and he’d be my last. I wanted him to know his mama had been right about our future together. But I couldn’t say those things without bringing to mind the thing John most likely saw every time he closed his eyes.
It was nearly spring and we had buried Daddy when John finally came to our bed. I didn’t have to tell him he was the first, and I would say it brought him some peace to find it out for himself.
“That’s a cold hard floor,” he said when it was done.
24
1952—ANNIE
IN AN HOUR or so, folks will begin to arrive. As Annie and Mama walk out the door, Grandma fusses at them for running off, but Mama says they’ll be back in plenty of time and motions for Annie to climb into Daddy’s truck. Mama never drives Daddy’s truck, but today she will.
At first, Annie thinks they’re headed to town because they drive down the hill same as always. But then Mama takes a hard right and starts back into the hills again. She’s wearing her new dress. It’s pale green, and Lessie Collins in town stitched it up so the top is molded to Mama’s body. It shows her every curve and valley such that Daddy couldn’t help rubbing that stubbly chin of his against her neck.
Daddy is sleeping in his own bed again for the first time in two weeks. After Daddy carried Annie home from the Baines’ place—taking care she never saw what had become of Ellis Baine—Daddy, the sheriff, and Abraham talked for a good long time while Miss Watson sat in the back of the sheriff’s car. Once Abraham and the sheriff left, Daddy and Annie waited at the kitchen table until Mama came back from town. When her car pulled up outside, Daddy told Annie again that when he finally drew his last breath in this life, he’d still not have forgiven himself for raising a hand to her but would she please take Caroline and Grandma upstairs and give him and Mama some privacy.
At first, Grandma wouldn’t let Annie eavesdrop from the top of the stairs, but after sitting on the beds and hearing nothing but quiet in the house, Grandma said it wouldn’t do no harm and told Annie to go have a listen.
There wasn’t much to hear from the top of the stairs either. Mostly just Mama crying, not hard crying, but the kind of crying that stuck in the back of her throat and choked off every third or fourth word. Daddy said Abraham had no choice but to fire his gun. Likely Ellis Baine wouldn’t have pulled the trigger, but likely wasn’t good enough. That was Annie up there, and likely wasn’t good enough.
Mama doesn’t stop the truck outside what’s left of her childhood home. Annie never knew her granddaddy on her mama’s side, the man who built this house where the sun rarely shines. That’s what Mama always talks about when she talks about her childhood. No sunshine, she says. Can you imagine? Lord, our socks and shoes never dried. Grandma says Granddaddy’s history sizzles underfoot, but Annie doesn’t ever feel him.