“Juna said he was better,” I say, turning to Juna, who has taken to her corner. Her hands are clasped in that troublesome way. “I kept saying he didn’t look well. But he was sleeping, always sleeping. Juna said he was well.”
“Has he been eating?” the doctor says, again to me.
“Tell him, Juna,” I say. “Tell the doctor he’s been well and eating and sleeping.”
“It’ll be a poison in his blood,” the doctor says, not waiting for an answer from Juna. “A poison deep in his blood and on into his bones.”
I run to gather water straight from the well. And when I draw it up and it’s not so cool as I would like, I yell for John to go to the river.
“Go and bring it back quick. Bring enough we can bathe him.”
The doctor stays on through the day. Juna makes the biscuits, which turn out hard and blackened on the bottom. She tries to lace the greens but pours too much vinegar. I pick the tomatoes and have her slice an extra for the doctor, and while they gather at the table for an early supper, I sit with Dale.
In such a short time, he’s withered. I should have seen. I shouldn’t have been so tired as to fall asleep straightaway each night. I should have sat with him, tended him, seen that he wasn’t well. Mary Holleran told me to keep an eye, and now Dale’s nose is sharp and pointed, the plump, rounded tip gone. His forearms where I would grab hold if he tried to run from a washcloth have been whittled to bone. There is no softness left for my fingers to dig into. His eyes have settled deep into their sockets, and if he were to open them again, ever again, I’m sure I’d see they’ve turned a watery blue.
John Holleran’s mama comes again and this time brings rhubarb that grows in a thick cluster behind her house. It’ll be the last of her crop. Out in the kitchen, I hear her tell Juna to cut off the woody ends and that it’ll make a fine pie. She looks into Dale’s room, presses two fingers together, and taps them to her heart. She is shaking her head when she turns to go.
Daddy, John, and the doctor sit at the kitchen table, waiting. Juna sits with me, every so often fetching fresh, cool water. Someone strikes a match and lights the lanterns in the front room. John comes into the bedroom and lights the one at Dale’s bedside. The yellow glow throws deep shadows under Dale’s eyes and his chin, making him look all the more like Daddy.
“Come,” John says, taking my hand in his, rubbing the tips of my fingers. “Step outside. Get a bit of fresh air.”
I know John is happy, happier than ever in his life. Even with Dale lying here in this bed, burning with fever, John is happy and wants me to himself. He wants me to step outside so he can rub my arms, brush the hair from my face, kiss me when Daddy isn’t looking. I jerk my hand from him and push him away.
The hole is dug by morning. Daddy, jamming the shovel into the ground one last time and wiping the dirt from his hands, asks John if he won’t fetch the preacher.
Juna has never said it out loud, but I see it in the way she looks at me now. It’s in that odd way she has of tilting her head just off center. That day, that first day, she told me it wasn’t time for her to go to the fields. She had known because she has a way of knowing. She knows a thing will come before it has come. She told Daddy and me both it was the day for her to pick berries. She told us both, but I had an ache for Ellis Baine, and now Dale is dead.
I pull on a gray sweater and draw my hair up, bind it tightly at the base of my neck. Juna wraps her head in a dark scarf. And then we sit with Daddy and the doctor at the kitchen table as we wait. We all stand at the sound of tires on the gravel road. John’s engine shuts off; his door opens and slams closed. Footsteps, one set, cross the porch.
“Won’t come,” John says. “Says it’s best he not come.”
Some folks have always believed. I know because when Juna and I were children and would walk through town, there were those who would drift to the far side of the road. They wouldn’t look at us, and some would cover their mouths to keep Juna’s evil from snaking its way inside of them. And then there were folks who sure felt bad for Daddy and those three little ones with no mama. Nothing in this world went Daddy’s way, but life was like that for some. Some folks had a higher calling. Other folks had a harder calling.