for a few dollars an acre more than he’d paid for it, at least until he saw the price of a farm like his in another part of the county. Maybe he’d take that money to Seneca or Anderson and buy a house with an indoor toilet and electricity and think he’d found paradise. He’d work in a mill where he’d get a paycheck at the end of every week and not have to worry anymore about drought and hail and tobacco worms.
Other changes he wouldn’t like as much, things that would make him miss being behind a horse and plow. He’d have to ask permission to get a drink of water or take a piss. The work would be the same thing day after day, week after week, the mill hot and humid as dog days all year round. He’d breathe an unending drizzle of lint he’d spend half his nights coughing back up.
His work would give him no satisfaction, but he’d have a wife and child to go home to when the mill whistle freed him at day’s end. There were men who would envy that about him if nothing else.
As for my life, it was in Seneca. My morning telephone call had woke me up in more than one way. It had been a reminder of something I had already known despite what I’d been able to pretend for a few hours—I had chosen my life long ago when I had picked up a fork, picked it up in a house I had believed to be solid and permanent as anything on earth.
But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don’t need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.
I watched Billy through the bars, knowing in a few minutes I’d drive out of this valley. I’d look in my rearview mirror and watch the land disappear as if sinking into water.
When I had become a deputy I had made out my will and stipulated that I was to be buried here in Jocassee with the other Alexanders. I hoped I would be in that grave before they built the reservoir so when the water rose it would rise over me and Daddy and Momma and over Old Ian Alexander and his wife Mary and over the lost body of the princess named Jocassee and the Cherokee mounds and the trails De Soto and Bartram and Michaux had followed and the meadows and streams and forests they had described and all would forever vanish and our faces and names and deeds and misdeeds would be forgotten as if we and Jocassee had never been.
I wish you well, Billy, I thought. I stepped closer and blotted out most of his light.
‘You got away with it,’ I said and left him there, his hands shaping the future.
A t first it was just a kind of joke between me and the older women. They’d lay a hand on my belly and say something silly like ‘Is there a biscuit in the oven’ or ‘I don’t feel nothing blossoming yet.’ Then we’d all have a laugh. Or a woman more my own age might say, ‘A latch-pin can poke holes in the end of them things,’ or ‘Nuzzle up to him of a sudden in the barn or the field edge and that will do the trick.’ Such words made me blush for they brought up notions I’d never known women to talk of out amongst each other.
Me and Billy hadn’t wanted a baby right away. We had a full enough portion just getting used to one another so he wore a sheath each time he put himself inside me. As that first year passed we settled in and got easy and comfortable in our marriage, the way a good team of horses learns to work together and help each other out.
We had a good harvest that fall and got ourselves a little ahead and our second winter together a night came when I said ‘You don’t have to wear it’ and he knew my meaning. That night as we shared our bodies the love was so much better, for the hope of a baby laid down with us.
The weeks went by and I didn’t get the morning sickness or tired easy or any of the other signs. Then it was six months and then our third anniversary. We held each other most every night but when the curse was on me. Yet it didn’t seem to do no good. The older women still made
Other changes he wouldn’t like as much, things that would make him miss being behind a horse and plow. He’d have to ask permission to get a drink of water or take a piss. The work would be the same thing day after day, week after week, the mill hot and humid as dog days all year round. He’d breathe an unending drizzle of lint he’d spend half his nights coughing back up.
His work would give him no satisfaction, but he’d have a wife and child to go home to when the mill whistle freed him at day’s end. There were men who would envy that about him if nothing else.
As for my life, it was in Seneca. My morning telephone call had woke me up in more than one way. It had been a reminder of something I had already known despite what I’d been able to pretend for a few hours—I had chosen my life long ago when I had picked up a fork, picked it up in a house I had believed to be solid and permanent as anything on earth.
But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don’t need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.
I watched Billy through the bars, knowing in a few minutes I’d drive out of this valley. I’d look in my rearview mirror and watch the land disappear as if sinking into water.
When I had become a deputy I had made out my will and stipulated that I was to be buried here in Jocassee with the other Alexanders. I hoped I would be in that grave before they built the reservoir so when the water rose it would rise over me and Daddy and Momma and over Old Ian Alexander and his wife Mary and over the lost body of the princess named Jocassee and the Cherokee mounds and the trails De Soto and Bartram and Michaux had followed and the meadows and streams and forests they had described and all would forever vanish and our faces and names and deeds and misdeeds would be forgotten as if we and Jocassee had never been.
I wish you well, Billy, I thought. I stepped closer and blotted out most of his light.
‘You got away with it,’ I said and left him there, his hands shaping the future.
A t first it was just a kind of joke between me and the older women. They’d lay a hand on my belly and say something silly like ‘Is there a biscuit in the oven’ or ‘I don’t feel nothing blossoming yet.’ Then we’d all have a laugh. Or a woman more my own age might say, ‘A latch-pin can poke holes in the end of them things,’ or ‘Nuzzle up to him of a sudden in the barn or the field edge and that will do the trick.’ Such words made me blush for they brought up notions I’d never known women to talk of out amongst each other.
Me and Billy hadn’t wanted a baby right away. We had a full enough portion just getting used to one another so he wore a sheath each time he put himself inside me. As that first year passed we settled in and got easy and comfortable in our marriage, the way a good team of horses learns to work together and help each other out.
We had a good harvest that fall and got ourselves a little ahead and our second winter together a night came when I said ‘You don’t have to wear it’ and he knew my meaning. That night as we shared our bodies the love was so much better, for the hope of a baby laid down with us.
The weeks went by and I didn’t get the morning sickness or tired easy or any of the other signs. Then it was six months and then our third anniversary. We held each other most every night but when the curse was on me. Yet it didn’t seem to do no good. The older women still made
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