But then times turned hard for everyone. The dirt started to blow. The crops wilted in every field and not just Daddy’s. Children cried for being hungry, and a man couldn’t find work. Strong men with good backs and skills in their hands took to standing in lines when never in their lives would they have thought to lower themselves to such a thing. Day by day, the curse that had once loomed only over the Crowleys’ place stretched itself out over the whole of the city and then the county, and by God, if it hadn’t taken over just about the whole of the country.
The doctor is the next holiest among us, so he speaks the final words as Daddy and John lower Dale into the ground. The doctor reads from the Bible, his words seeming to damn the soul instead of blessing it. Near the end of the drive, leaning against a lone fence post, is Abigail Watson. She wears her white cap tied off under her chin and her long-sleeved gray dress. Her head is bowed, and her hands pressed together as if in prayer, as if she can hear the doctor’s words, though I know she can’t.
As the doctor continues to read, John jams his shovel into the pile of dirt and tips it over the open hole, letting it dribble onto Dale. John takes his time with every shovelful, one after another as the doctor continues, verse after verse. Daddy stands on one side, Juna and I on the other, the doctor at the head of the grave. John digs and throws, digs and throws, and an hour passes as he fills the small hole until it’s no longer a hole but instead a mound of dirt that will slowly settle as Dale rots away beneath.
When John is done, Daddy kneels where the doctor had been standing and, with a hammer, pounds a small cross into the ground. The doctor must have brought it, probably has a crate full of them in his truck. John leaves quietly, without a good-bye or a kiss he sneaked when Daddy wasn’t looking. Juna walks slowly toward the house, and the doctor gathers his hat from the porch.
“That one’s with child, you know?” he says, nodding off toward the house.
Then he climbs inside his truck, slams closed the door, and fires up his engine before I can ask him to repeat himself please, because maybe I didn’t hear him quite right.
16
1952—ANNIE
AS ANNIE HAS sat here on her bed, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, the cicadas have gone silent for the night, and the buzzing and clicking of the cricket frogs have filled in behind. The breeze blowing through her window has turned cool with the setting sun, and as the light outside has slipped from white to orange to a dusty gray, the sizzle Annie has been feeling all these many days has swelled up inside her again.
Ryce Fulkerson came pedaling up to the house after supper. While sitting with the rest of the family on the porch, all of them full from the meal celebrating Annie’s day, she had heard him, the whining of his bike’s front tire, long before he appeared, and she excused herself. Too much supper, she had said, or perhaps she was coming down with whatever had sent Mama to bed for most of the afternoon.
For two hours, Ryce has sat on the porch with Daddy and Abraham Pace, each of them taking a turn cranking the ice-cream maker. Every so often, Daddy gives it a whack and bangs it on the ground to loosen the ice when it freezes up on him. Since Ryce arrived, Daddy and Abraham have been drinking whiskey, and the more they drink, the louder Abraham’s voice grows. They’re mostly talking about Ellis Baine. Daddy thinks he made a damn fool of himself when the man stopped by. Abraham says Daddy is only a fool if he doesn’t keep a gun close at hand, because that’s what Abraham damn sure plans to do. And when Abraham goes so far as to shout out Goddamn right I’ll keep myself a gun near at hand, the hinges on the screen door squeal and Miss Watson asks that Abraham please keep his voice down. The third time Abraham lets out such a laugh, he riles that dog of his. She lunges against her chain, lets out a yelp, and starts barking. Abraham and Daddy both shout at her to quiet herself down, but it’s Ryce who finally tends the animal.
Peeking out the window, Annie watches him jump off the porch, not bothering with the three steps, squat with the dog and scratch at Tilly’s ears until she walks in a small circle and drops down on the ground. When Ryce stands and it seems he might look up at Annie’s window, she drops down too and sits there, leaning against the wall, until the top step creaks, which it always does when someone sits on it.
Once it’s quiet again, Miss Watson closes the door, letting it slap the way Mama does when she catches Daddy smoking, and Daddy tells Abraham a man is only as happy as the wife he raises. Mama wouldn’t like it if she heard Daddy saying that, and Daddy would never say it when Mama was near enough to hear.
“Ain’t my wife, yet,” Abraham hollers.
Miss Watson doesn’t do any more shouting from the kitchen.
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