Bittersweet Page 8

  “Good afternoon,” Imogene returned. “You are working hard today.”

  Clay laughed good-naturedly. “Mr. Rorvack’s been called up to the mine. A cart broke. I’m watching the place.”

  “Watching it do what?” Karen asked.

  “Just watching it, I guess.” He grinned without getting the joke. “You seen Earl?”

  “No, I ain’t seen Earl!” Karen snapped.

  One of the old men playing checkers, wrinkled and white-haired, one arm ending in a stump above the elbow, cackled. “Question is, has Earl seen you?”

  His opponent, some years his senior, spat contemptuously and wiped his rheumy eyes on his sleeve. “Kirby, you playin’ checkers or gabbin’?” The one-armed man returned to his contemplation of the board.

  Clay walked over to the women. “If you see him, will you tell him Ma’s looking for him? He ain’t been to the mine more days’n he has been, lately. Ma’s afraid he’s goin’ to get himself fired. You’ll tell him, won’t you?”

  “I ain’t seeing him, Clay, I told you.”

  “But if you was to?”

  Karen rolled her eyes and swished her dress, ignoring him.

  “That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing.” Astounded at his own boldness, Clay giggled.

  Karen stopped switching her skirt tail. “It’s nothing but an old housedress.”

  “Oh.” Clay stood dumbly for a moment. “It’s sure pretty on you, just the same.” He ducked his head several times. “Good seeing you, Miss Grelznik. You too, Sare.” He ducked again, this time into his cap, and went back to the checker game.

  Karen took another stick of the wedding candy Imogene had bought for Sarah. “Me and Earl are engaged,” she confided.

  Sarah snorted.

  “Hush, Sarah,” Imogene said quietly and, chastened, Sarah dropped back half a step as the three of them walked on. Imogene stole glances at Karen, noticing the thickened waist, the high color, the glow of her skin even through the accumulated layers of dirt. Karen was pregnant. Imogene’s heart went out to the girl and she unconsciously touched the jade ring she had taken from Mary Beth’s hand. “Karen,” she began delicately, “it has been a while since you were a student of mine, but if—for any reason—you need someone to talk to—”

  “Why would I need to talk to somebody?” Karen interrupted suspiciously.

  “Sometimes people need a friend,” Imogene replied. “Just someone to talk with.”

  Karen’s eyes narrowed and her hand strayed to her swelling belly.

  “For any reason, Karen. Please come.” Imogene laid a hand gently on the girl’s arm.

  Karen recoiled at the knowledge she read in the schoolteacher’s eyes. “You keep your mouth shut!” she hissed. “You better keep quiet. No matter what I done, it’s better than what you’re doing. You and Sarah make me sick. Since you come, she’s been mooning around you and now you’re buying Sarah ribbons. Like an old dog suckin’ around the chicken coop ’cause no man’ll look at you.”

  Imogene slapped her. The print of her hand stayed white on the girl’s face, then filled with blood until it burned red on the pale cheek. Sarah sucked in her breath, her hand over her mouth. For a moment they stared at one another, their faces frozen; then, with the suddenness of a frightened rabbit, Karen turned and ran. Imogene called after her, but she didn’t stop or look back.

  Back at the schoolmistress’s house, Imogene brushed Sarah’s long hair and divided it into two parts. When she had plaited the ribbons into the braids, she wound them into a crown around Sarah’s head. The ends of the ribbons fluttered prettily down behind the girl’s right ear. Both made an attempt to be gay.

  Imogene looked out the open door as she tied the last bow. “We’re just in time. Your mother and Mr. Ebbitt are here. Run along and show them your ribbons.”

  Sarah slipped into the bedroom to put away the brush and the looking glass. “Thank you for the ribbons,” she said. “They’re the nicest present I’ve ever gotten. Almost,” she amended, and smiled at the beautifully framed miniature of Imogene she’d done with the water colors—the schoolteacher’s first gift to her. It was hung in the place of honor over the mantel.

  Imogene came to the little door. “You are welcome.” She ducked through and stood behind Sarah, looking over the girl’s head at her image in the mirror. The braids made a soft yellow circlet shot with gold and blue. With the hair swept off her cheeks and temples, Sarah’s hazel eyes dominated her face, and her small mouth and pointed chin lent her an elfin look. Imogene laid her hand gently on the coiffed hair. “Better go now. Sam’s waiting.” She walked with Sarah to the carryall.

  “Get a move on, Sare. Be milking time before we get back, as it is.” Sam nodded curtly to Imogene. “Welcome back, Miss Grelznik.”

  Sarah stopped short. “My candy!”

  “Well, go get it, goose,” Imogene laughed. “It’s on the kitchen table.” Sarah ran back to the house. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Tolstonadge.”

  Mam smiled and fanned herself. “Hope the heat hasn’t made you sorry you’re back. Must have been cooler back in Philadelphia. That’s by the ocean, ain’t it?”

  “Not much cooler, and I’m glad to be home.”

  Mrs. Tolstonadge leaned forward to look past Sam at Imogene. Her brow creased sympathetically. “Why, you’re wearing mourning!”

  Imogene’s throat tightened when she heard the kind words, and she nodded. Tears started in her eyes. “A very dear friend, a student of mine, died in childbirth. She was such a little thing. She looked very like Sarah Mary.”

  Sarah came out of the house with her bag of candy as Mam started to speak. Imogene waved her to silence and smiled shakily. When she turned to Sarah, her eyes were dry.

  “Mam, Imogene bought me ribbons.” She turned a pretty circle for her mother; then, catching Sam Ebbitt’s dark eye, she stopped.

  “Get on in, Sare,” Mam said gently. “Sam’s got chores to get back to, and so do we.”

  Imogene watched the wagon roll away, the setting sun dyeing the dust orange in its wake, and shuddered. “Someone’s trod on my grave,” she murmured, and laughed to cheer herself.

  Several weeks later, Earl Beard left town abruptly. Shortly thereafter, a piece of slate was hurled through the window of the schoolhouse, the words I’ll get you for telling scrawled on it in chalk. Imogene recognized Karen’s handwriting, but pitied the girl and, paying for the new window herself, said nothing.

  10

  THAT AUTUMN WAS A LANDMARK TIME FOR THE GOSSIPS OF CALLIOPE. The little church had two weddings in as many weeks. The first was the marriage of Karen Cogswell to Earl’s brother, Clay. Judith laced her daughter tight in a whalebone corset, but Karen’s pregnancy still showed. Halfway up the aisle, the bride, wild-eyed and sweating, clamped her hand over her mouth and bolted for the side door. Her father held her veil out of the dirt while she vomited. “Ought to have known better than to have a morning wedding,” someone grumbled.

  Clay alone, of all the wedding party, was happy. His broad face was radiant as he took Karen’s hand from her father’s and closed it reverently in his.

  The second wedding was that of Sarah Tolstonadge and Sam Ebbitt.

  They were married September 29, 1874, and with a box of clothing and two dozen cookies tied up in a borrowed cloth, Sarah moved out of the little bedroom she had shared with her sisters for as long as she could remember.

  The Ebbitt house was a two-story log building. The second story, larger than the first, jutted out over the squat lower rooms, throwing the few windows into deep shade. Sam had lived alone in the house for twenty-six years. No homely appointments warmed it; no curtains hung at the windows, no rugs brightened the dark floors, no cloths made the plain tables and heavy chairs less dreary. Twenty-six years of dust hardened in corners and crevices, twenty-six years of flyspecks darkened the window glass, and twenty-six years of dinners were burnt to the stove. A new wire brush and a new store-bought broom were in the pantry; Sarah had begun marr
ied life.

  She and Sam quickly settled into the routine their days were to follow. Sam altered his life very little; he ate and he worked, and in the evenings he read from his Bible or sat silent by the living room stove. Sarah cooked and cleaned and lay still in the bed nights when Sam climbed on top of her. There was plenty to eat, and for the first time in Sarah’s life, there was money for sturdy shoes that fit, and warm woolen dresses for winter.

  December passed cold and dry, the new year blowing in on icy rains that turned the barnyard into a mire. Arms full of kindling, Sarah slogged back from the woodshed, eyes wide against the night. The dog growled, lunging at her in the darkness, straining at his chain. Sarah ran quickly by. Balancing the wood against her hip, she wrestled with the kitchen door latch. The cold metal gave grudgingly and she backed in and dumped the kindling into the woodbox. It still looked pathetically empty. Pulling out a few sticks, she opened the maw of the stove. Wind caught in the chimney and puffed a cloud of sparks out the open door. Emitting a shriek, she dropped the wood and leaped back, batting at the burning embers on her apron and skirts. Only one had burned the fabric and it was scarcely noticeable.

  Quickly she collected the scattered firewood and peeked around the door into the main room of the house. Sam sat undisturbed before the potbellied stove, the Bible open on the table, his hands folded on his stomach, knees wide and feet planted, staring into the empty air in front of him. Sarah let the door close softly and, standing carefully to the side, stoked the stove. When the water was hot, she poured it into the sink, wincing as the steam hit her chapped hands, and busied herself with the supper dishes.

  Sam pushed open the kitchen door soundlessly. Sarah hummed softly under her breath, swaying slightly in time with her song, her slender hips swinging from side to side, her skirts sweeping the heels of her small boots. Sam hitched up his trousers and combed his beard with his fingers.

  “Sare.”

  She jumped, startled, and resting her dripping hands on the edge of the sink, she looked over her shoulder. “What is it, Sam?” His eyes were narrowed and his face taut. Sarah’s eyes flicked down over the bulge in his pants. “Let me finish these dishes,” she said wearily. “They’ll stick if I leave them.”

  “It’s time for bed. Let ’em go till morning.” He held the door open as she dried her hands and took off her apron. His bulk almost filled the doorway and Sarah pressed by him. He followed her up the stairs with the lamp, closing and locking the bedroom door behind them.

  Sarah waited on the edge of the bed, the coverlet pulled over her shoulders for warmth. Sam had shut himself in the little room adjoining, and she could hear him getting undressed. The bedroom, like every other room in the house, was larger than it needed to be and was impossible to keep warm. A small stone fireplace gaped against the end wall, dark and free of ash. Sam wouldn’t waste wood to heat a room used only for sleeping. Dark walls built of squared-off tree trunks climbed up out of sight into the gloom beyond the rafters. The bed, too, was oversized and Sarah’s feet didn’t touch the floor. Bed, dresser, and washstand were the only furnishings; without rugs on the floor, the pieces looked adrift in a sea of wood that vanished into dark walls and darker corners.

  The dressing-room door opened and Sam emerged in his nightshirt and cap, his feet still in his wooden work socks. Without the heavy outer garments he wore summer and winter, he was not imposing—his nightshirt bulged out over his pot belly and his legs were white and bandied. He brought the candle with him, setting it on the washstand. Sarah jumped down from the bed and snatched up her old flannel gown. Sam stood between her and the dressing room. “It’s cold, what with the window in there. You’d best be changing here.”

  Sarah looked at him oddly. “There’s windows here too, Sam. I don’t see—”

  “It’s cold,” he said flatly.

  She chewed her underlip. “I don’t mind the cold.” She started past him, but he put out his arm.

  “I’m telling you, Sare, you’ll be undressing in here tonight.”

  “Sam—” Sarah looked up at him and broke off; his eyes were hard and wet, like those of a man with a fever. He got into bed, his back against the heavy headboard, the covers tucked around his waist.

  Poised on the balls of her feet, holding her nightgown to her chest, Sarah looked uncertainly from the bed to the dressing room. She unfastened the top button of her bodice awkwardly. Her hands fumbled and she broke for the shelter of the darkened dressing room.

  “Sare!” Sam’s voice caught her. Tears sprang into her eyes and she wiped them on the soft flannel before she turned around.

  “Sam, you want me to put out the light?” She reached toward the washstand.

  “Leave it be.”

  She stopped at the edge in his voice, and turning her back to him, she began unbuttoning her dress. On the wall her shadow leaped and danced; Sam had turned up the lamp. Sarah faltered and a button clattered to the floor.

  “Get on with it. It’s too cold to be dawdlin’.” His voice was thick.

  She pulled the dress off over her head and laid it on the chest of drawers, hugging herself against the cold and the light. Goosepimples stood out on her bare arms, and her small breasts, their nipples hard, showed against the thin cotton of her chemise. She hiked her skirt over her knees and rolled her black stockings down. Sam’s breathing quickened, audible in the silent room. In the mirror she could see his face; his lips were slightly parted and his eyes glittered in the moving light. She shivered, a prickling between her thighs, a warmth catching her breath and filling her throat. She paused, her arm outstretched for her nightgown, and watched his eyes devour her. Her breath escaped in an aching sigh. Leaving the gown where it lay, she untied the ribbons of her chemise slowly, deliberately. Sliding her hands under the cotton, she cupped her breasts a moment, her palms warm against her skin, then shrugged, letting the chemise slide free of her shoulders. She stepped out of her petticoats and stood naked, feeling the cold on her thighs and the heat inside her. Her narrow shoulders sloped gently away from a round neck; her breasts, pointed and firm, threw their shadow on the wall behind her. The lamp by the bedside warmed her body with yellow light, catching the soft hair at her nape and groin in a golden mesh.

  Sam sucked in his breath. “Come to bed,” he said hoarsely. Sarah slipped on her nightdress as he blew out the lamp, and crawled under the covers. He rolled against her, fumbling with the edge of her gown, pulling it up. His callused hand slid up over her thigh, pressing her groin. Fingers, working their way up her belly, kneading the soft flesh, closed roughly on her breast, pinching the nipple. She closed her eyes tight and gasped. There was a tearing sound as Sam ripped her nightgown; his mouth, wet, groping, worked down her throat. His lips closed around her breast and he sucked greedily, like a hungry child. Sarah’s fists clenched on the sheets and her eyes widened, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Sam’s mouth searched out the other breast as he forced her thighs apart with the side of his hand. Yanking his nightshirt up, he pulled himself on top of her. Sarah’s knees fell wide to receive him. He grasped his thick penis and thrust it into her, letting his weight fall against her. Whimpering, she arched her back to meet him, a small, animal cry deep in her throat as she grabbed his buttocks to pull him into her.

  Sam froze, his body gone rigid, his weight crushing down on her.

  Sarah moaned and shoved her hips hard against his, grinding for her own release. He wrenched himself up off of her as if he’d been burned. Sarah emitted a stifled sound, following his body with hers, and he jerked away, pulling himself free with a sucking sound. Sarah fell back on the bed, opening her eyes like a sleepwalker.

  Limp and flaccid, Sam’s penis shrank away under the overhang of his belly. His face twisted with anger, and he slapped her. “There’s a whore in you,” he cried, and slapped her again, snapping her head from side to side. “Crying like a bitch in heat.” He spat at her contemptuously, but his mouth was dry. Sarah flinched. “You be afraid and you go on being
afraid.” He threw back the covers and stared down at her. Her nightdress was rumpled above her waist, her legs and loins bare. He backed away from the bed and pulled his trousers on over his nightshirt. He pointed a blunt finger at Sarah. “You stay in that bed and you think on yourself.”

  The sound of his footsteps receded down the stairs and the back door banged as he slammed it behind him. Sarah lay listening, her face crumpled in a soundless cry. Fear numbing her fingers, she pulled at her nightgown, working it from under her back and tugging it down until it covered her nakedness. She was shaking. She clenched her teeth to stop their chattering, and stared into the shadows over the bed until the muffled tread of Sam’s stockinged feet sounded on the stairs. Sarah pulled the coverlet under her chin and squeezed her eyes shut as the bedroom door opened. He lit the lamp.

  “Get out of bed,” he said coldly. Sarah didn’t move. He crossed the room and jerked the covers off her. Her hands still clutched, clawlike, at the air where the blankets had been, her teeth clattered, and she sucked air noisily through closed jaws.

  “Get up.”

  Sarah gasped; her breath had gone out of her and she gulped at the air. Abruptly, Sam rolled her over, putting her feet on the floor, her face and torso still on the bed, and grabbed up the willow switches he had dropped inside the door. Frozen into rods, the willows sang through the air as he slashed at her legs. Pain loosened her jaws and she screamed. Scrabbling at the covers, she tried to crawl over the bed. He grabbed her collar and dragged her back, whipping her until her nightgown was ripped and ribboned.

  He threw down the rods and lifted her up by the shoulders, turning her to face him. “Quit your howling.” A scream tore open her throat, and he shook her. “Quit it now!” Sarah choked and coughed. He held her until she was done. “You feel those welts on your legs and you think on yourself.” As he let go of her, her knees gave way and she sat down hard. Sam pulled off his trousers and, extinguishing the lamp, got into bed, settling the covers around his shoulders. Steam issued from his mouth, the room had grown so cold. He looked at his wife’s narrow shoulders hunched in the dark. “Pull some covers over yourself,” he said, not unkindly. “No sense freezing to death.” There was no response, and he rolled onto his side, away from her.