But then I remember everything. I push aside Juna’s hand still resting on my shoulder, stand, and seeing that Dale is yet asleep, I walk from the room without giving Juna an answer.
I fix Daddy breakfast, same as always, and as he eats, I put out the lamp we kept burning through the night. Usually, I see to it the lamp never goes dry, but Juna must have done it last night, or maybe Daddy himself. Daddy says no to seconds on his coffee and no to seconds on his biscuits. He sits low in his chair, shirt buttoned up to the top button, one boot crossed over the other. He’ll be going to the fields. The other fellows will be helping him, just enough to get back on track. It’s what he’s always needed. A little help. Just a little Goddamn help. Mostly folks stay out of Daddy’s fields because they are cursed, but Dale coming home has softened them, at least for the day.
“Where did you find him, Daddy?” I ask, following him onto the porch.
He tells me I won’t know the spot.
“On up the hill. Farther south than you might have thought. Where the river widens. On up the hill.”
Straightaway, I know exactly where they found Dale. It was Juna and Abraham’s spot, or somewhere near there.
“Blackberries still waiting,” Juna says after Daddy disappears down the road. She is waiting for me in the kitchen, maybe waiting for Daddy to leave. “Won’t Dale like some blackberries?”
Juna isn’t up to it yet, she tells me as she braces herself by pressing one hand to the kitchen table and slowly, gingerly lowering herself into a chair. She tells me where they’ll grow. On the northern side of the hill, that’s where you ought find them. Touch the soil, rub it between your fingers. In the cool soil, where the water doesn’t rest, that’s where they’ll grow.
“Fetch some berries,” she says. “I’ll see to Dale.”
I go. Even knowing I shouldn’t, I leave Dale with Juna. I go because she took Ellis Baine and she took the whole of my future. I go, even knowing I shouldn’t, and I leave Dale to Juna.
? ? ?
OVER THE NEXT two weeks, Dale’s face and the scrapes on his knees, hands, and elbows heal, and Juna takes to standing a certain way. She clasps her hands just below her belly. The first time I noticed, as I recall, it was the night Dale came home. I thought she looked to be cradling a basket. And her gait changes. It slows, or maybe it doesn’t slow, but her steps are more measured, she takes greater care, all of it to remind me or Daddy or whoever might be near that she has been tarnished and damaged by Joseph Carl Baine.
And she takes to wearing my dresses, and each time Daddy hints at weeds that need dug or the worms that have been spotted on a neighbor’s tobacco and so have surely taken up on his, she tells him she’s not yet up to it. But isn’t she lucky, so lucky, to have a father who would care for her and fight for her and see to her well-being.
During the days, and most nights too, Juna cares for Dale, tending a fever we can’t rid him of. She rarely leaves his bedside, sitting with him even while he sleeps, and when he wakes, they whisper together, their heads pressed close, she patting his hand all the while. Abigail comes to the house most every day, but Juna sends her off because Dale isn’t strong enough yet. Juna says she and Dale share something now, something the rest of us can’t understand. He wants only to be with Juna. That’s what she tells us.
And while Juna busies herself with Dale, never does she talk of Abraham Pace or speak of missing him or wondering after him. She never asks Abigail how Abraham is getting on. Except for seeing Dale safely home, Abraham hasn’t been back since the night in the sheriff’s office when Ellis Baine said Juna had been ruined by plenty of men.