I sit at the kitchen table, the doors and windows shut up tight because this is the time of day I hate most. Usually, it’s because sunrise marks the start of another day just like the last. Today, it marks the time Dale has been gone. Out on the porch, the wood is too damp to use in starting another fire. This is how I’d find it if I were to look. Daddy doesn’t stack his wood right, so it rots, and that’s where the snakes take up. The box inside the house is empty, save a few scraps of kindling. It’s Dale’s job, his only job, to fill it every night. So this morning, there will be no fire.
The air is thickest at this hour, so thick and full it nearly drips, weighing heavy on everything. My clothes hang, and my hair wilts and will stick to the sides of my face and the back of my neck until I pin it up. And with the dampness comes a kind of cold that seeps in deeper than most. I’ll be trying all of the morning to warm myself, but even if I step outside, there’ll be no sun because Daddy built this house and Daddy is cursed.
The tapping at the front door is a strange sound. I don’t stand but instead listen, trying to work out what it is. In less than two days’ time, it’s become normal for folks to walk on inside, not bother knocking. They’ve come and gone with their cucumbers and tomatoes, eggs and milk. Not wanting to disturb Juna, not wanting to see her or be seen, they’ve slipped in and out, a few of them stopping long enough to say a hello to me and ask after what they can do. There is another tapping. I push away from the table, glance at Juna’s closed door, and stand.
I’ve seen Juna and Abraham Pace before. When I’ve gone to fetch her for supper because I’ve worried Daddy might find her first, I always know where to look. I’ve seen them on the patch of grass where the trees clear. They never hear me because the sound of the river, lazy as it is, covers over twigs and leaves snapping underfoot. I’ve seen Abraham trailing his fingers over the inside of Juna’s arm, the white part I know must be as soft as it is on me. I’ve seen him fill her mouth with his tongue and the way it makes her arch her back and press herself into him. I’ve heard sounds coming from Abraham, sounds that reached me before the sight of the two of them reached me, and those sounds made me turn away. From down near the river where they’d think I hadn’t seen, I’d call out for Juna to come on home.
These last few hours since Daddy dropped Juna and me back at the house, as I’ve been waiting for the sun to rise and the dampness to burn off, I’ve thought of those days and what I saw. But now, instead of seeing Abraham working his tongue over Juna or hearing the groans that roll up and out of his mouth, I see and hear Ellis Baine. I see his tongue and his fingers trailing across Juna’s body and hear his deep voice rumble through his throat as he calls out her name.
I open the door, and there stands John Holleran holding his hat in one hand, working the other around its brim.
“May I?” he says.
“There’s no fire,” I say, meaning there’s no coffee.
He hands me his hat and walks back to the woodpile. He gathers an armful of the logs stacked on top, sets them on the ground, and gathers another load from the drier wood beneath. He looks each piece over as he loads it in the crook of his arm and then carries it into the house. Inside, he nods at the wood box. Empty, I tell him. Like the flue at the Baines’ place, ours doesn’t draw so well, especially when it’s gone altogether cold. The fire smokes, but John is better at building one than Daddy or me, and soon enough it’s crackling and snapping and wearing off the chill. As John works the fire, I set to work on the coffee.
“I got to wondering,” John says, sitting at the table while I stand over the coffeepot, “if you’re safe here in this house.”
The pot always lets out something of a hiss just before the coffee gets to rolling. There’s no need of me standing over it, watching it, waiting for that hiss. Doesn’t make it come any faster, but I do. I wrap my hand in a scrap like Mrs. Baine did, grab onto the pot, and hold tight like it’ll slip from the stove if I don’t.
“You safe here, Sarah?”
The one lantern is still lit, the one Daddy always insists on so he never wakes to the dark, but the light in the room has lifted enough that the lantern does no good. I drop the handle on the coffeepot, walk to the lantern, and put out the flame.
It’s a disturbing thing to know someone loves you. It makes a person wonder why. That’s the first disturbing thing. But putting that aside, it makes the future spring up in a person’s mind. It makes a person see a house, a bedroom, a kitchen table, and boots at the door. It makes a person see the children that will tie her to that house. It makes a person see the garden she’ll tend, the sopping clothes she’ll wring dry and hang on the line, the beans she’ll snap and the canning she’ll do. Having someone love you gives the future its footing.
“They’ll hang him, won’t they?” I say, staring down into the dark lantern. “A man who does those things, the things Juna says . . . they’ll hang him for it.”
“Not until they find Dale,” John says. “You have an answer for me? You safe here?”