After Eli (7 page)

“It’s been done,” Dora said flatly. “None of us’ll say different.”

“What you done was for one of us,” argued Rachel. “You talk about bein’ beholden to Mama Ada; we’re beholden to you. It’s all we can do. You’ll not leave until your strength’s back.”

Michael paced the small room. He ran his fingers through his hair. A small clucking sound, a protest, rattled in his throat.

“It’s not right, it’s not,” he said. “Bein’ alone in the house with the three of you. Not the least.” He stopped his pacing abruptly. “Miss Sarah, if you’ll be bringin’ me my knapsack and goods, I’ll feel better bein’ outside, in the barn.”

“There’s no need—” Rachel began.

Michael’s raised hand stopped her.

“Exceptin’ how I feel about it,” he corrected. “There’s some decency left, I’d hope. The barn’s fine. The barn’s better’n any night I’ve seen in weeks, save the softness of your own bed.”

Sarah moved in her chair. She started to rise, then sat back. Her eyes darted from Dora to Rachel.

“Mama?” she said.

“Do what he wants,” ordered Dora. “A man’s got a right to his pride.”

Rachel nodded once and Sarah rose and left the kitchen.

“There’s a room out in the barn,” Rachel explained methodically. “We used to have a worker when Eli was home, a man he bailed out of jail one time. They put up a little room in one corner, out of the way, with a stove and a rope bed. We keep
the place picked up and the mattress aired. Out of habit, I guess.”

Michael heard the monotone of her voice, the note of resignation, of invisible surrender, to her sister. He saw the curl of a smile in Dora, though the muscles of her face did not move.

“You’re an understandin’ woman, Rachel,” he said gently. “I’d feel better about it, and it’d do me good, bein’ outside. Maybe there’s some light work around I can do to help out today. Nothin’ heavy, mind you. Just somethin’ to get the blood flowin’ again. I know the needs of my own body; work’s good for it.”

Rachel carried the dishes to the work counter. She would not look at him, or Dora.

“We’ll see,” she said. “Dora knows about the outside work. I do the quiltin’.”

“We’ll be hoein’ in the garden,” Dora replied. “You can help out some if you feel up to it.”

“I do,” Michael said. Then to Rachel, in a whisper: “I’m sorry about your husband, your Eli. Him bein’ a wanderer. I’ve some of the same blood in me, I’m sorry to say, travelin’ the world over like I’ve done. It’s a bad sickness, it is. Worse than any fever. Could be you told the truth in part; could be me and your Eli are cousins of a kind.”

The words drove into Rachel. It was like a voice in the back of her mind. He was very like Eli.

Sarah reappeared in the kitchen, struggling with the knapsack. Michael took it from her, lifting it lightly with one hand.

“Now, what’s the matter with me?” he said gently. “Askin’ a lady to carry the burden of a junk collector. I’d do better burnin’ it in the trash than carryin’ it around like it’s a king’s prize. Shows what a man thinks of himself, pickin’ up bits and pieces along the way just to prove he’s been there. Truth is, not a thing in it’s worth the price of a smile. Exceptin’ my greenery for Saint Paddy’s celebration.”

“What’s Saint Paddy?” asked Sarah.

“Saint Paddy? Ah, child, it’s the soul of the Irish, it is. Saint Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland. Grand as the sight of the Almighty himself.”

Michael turned the knapsack in his hand like a toy. He dropped it into a chair and unlaced the top.

“But there’s somethin’ else in here,” he said secretively. “Somethin’ I’d be grateful if you ladies would let me share with you. Made by my own hands, they are, and it’d be my honor to make a gift of them.”

He pulled back the cover of the knapsack and reached deep into it and withdrew a small box tied with a string. He held the box up in front of him and smiled proudly.

“It’s little enough,” he announced, “but next to my greenery for Saint Paddy’s Day and the carvin’ on my walkin’ stick, it’s the best I’ve got.”

He untied the box and removed the top.

“Close your eyes, Sarah,” said Michael.

Sarah obeyed, like a child.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

Sarah cupped her hands before her.

He reached into the box and picked out a green paper flower and placed it in her hands.

“It’s a shamrock,” he told her. “The flower of the Irish. And I made it with my own two hands, to sell on the streets of New York City.”

“It’s—it’s pretty,” Sarah said softly, turning the paper flower in her hands. “I never seen one.”

“It’ll bring you luck—but only paper luck, I’m afraid,” Michael replied happily. “The real thing, now that’s another story. That’d be a blessin’. Here, ladies, there’s one for each of you. Woman I worked for in New York City said I should’ve been an artist. Said I was the best at makin’ paper flowers she’d ever seen. We sold ’em by the baskets, I’ll tell you.”

Rachel and Dora accepted the flowers silently.

“It’d make me feel good inside to know you’d be rememberin’ Michael O’Rear whenever you look on these in days to come,” he said gently. “The people I’m fond of, I leave a shamrock, like it was a fancy callin’ card. Like Johnny Appleseed markin’ out his travels with apple seeds.”

“They’re pretty, like Sarah said,” remarked Rachel. “We thank you for them, Mr. O’Rear.”

Michael smiled broadly. He retied the box and pushed it back into the knapsack.

“Miss Dora,” he said, “let’s have at that garden before the sun gets up and makes a puddle of us all. Get it done while the dew’s up and then I’ll be for findin’ a fishin’ pole and bringin’ in a string of fish for supper.”

Dora dropped the shamrock she held onto the table and stared coldly at Michael.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she said.

* * *

Michael’s presence filled the day, with the playfulness of his stories, the booming of his song, the drum of his laughter. And Sarah circled him like a butterfly, awed by the exaggerations of his endless adventures. She was girlish and giddy and her small voice, flooding with questions, was as free as a bird sitting on the shoulder of a limb, singing into the ear of a tree.

Rachel worked inside at the quilting frame and listened. She could feel the power of exuberance building like a parade, with brass and cymbals, march-time and costumes of shimmering colors. The parade was a man very like Eli, whose step had the heavy sound of an announcement and whose shoulders seemed to crowd even the out-of-doors. It was good, she thought. It was very good. She wondered only if Sarah would become intoxicated by the man, as she herself had become intoxicated by Eli. No, she decided. No, he was far too old. Sarah would see him only as someone who was fascinating. And that, too, was good. Dora’s warning did not matter.

At night, Rachel and Sarah sat on the front porch and listened as Michael recited Irish poetry and told them of his years on the tent Chautauqua. His voice was that of a man who had been often alone and was unashamed to speak aloud for the joy of his own sound. It was a time that passed quickly, too quickly, before Michael went to the barn to sleep.

* * *

Rachel woke before morning to the sound of a lusty Irish tune whistled in the field below her bedroom window. She wrapped her cotton robe around her and peered through the window. Michael was in the field with a shovel, marking the ground with shallow holes.

“You’re up early, Mr. O’Rear,” she called through the screen.

Michael whirled on his heel and faced the window. He could not see Rachel through the screen.

“True,” he replied. “I’ve rested my fill, I suppose. Couldn’t stay asleep another minute, not with all that’s waitin’ to be done, and with the day screamin’ to be lived.”

“You feelin’ better?” she asked.

“Better, Rachel. Better. A fellow once told me that a man what lived in the mountains would be a bit of a loon to want to be anywhere else, and I’m believin’ I know what he meant. It’s a lovely time of the day, it is. Like lookin’ into the face of the Almighty. Take a breath, Rachel. You can feel it.”

Rachel breathed deeply, obediently. The air was sweet.

“What’re you doin’?” she asked.

Michael raised his shovel like a flag and pointed along a line from the road across the field.

“Well, I’m doin’ somethin’ that should’ve been done a long time ago, Rachel,” he answered. “I’m markin’ out for a fence. Put in a fence and there’d be grass aplenty for grazin’, and it’d be a help to the land. It struck me last night, when I found the rolls of barbed wire in the barn, just sittin’ there. It’s the least I can do before movin’ on.”

“That’s doin’ too much, Mr. O’Rear,” Rachel protested. “You don’t owe us—”

“Only my life,” he interrupted. “Only my life. And it’s Michael. Save the ‘mister’ for the preacher.”

* * *

Dora moved noiselessly into Sarah’s bedroom to stare out the side window of the house. Sarah sat on the edge of her bed, listening to the conversation between Michael and her mother.

“What’s goin’ on?” Sarah asked Dora.

“Nothin’,” Dora answered.

“Why’s he up so early?”

“He had somethin’ to say.”

“What?” Sarah was confused and sleepy.

“He’s tellin’ the world that he’s here and that he’s to stay around awhile,” Dora replied bitterly. “As long as he wants. That’s what he’s sayin’.”

MICHAEL’S FENCE WAS not an ordinary fence.

He did not build it as other men would have. Other men would have cut and set the posts and then stretched the wire, and the fence would have been completed. Michael built his fence in parts, in spans, posts and wire together. He wrestled it from the ground slowly and deliberately, urging it into shape with a performance that made it seem gravely important. Each post, each stretching of wire, declared the need for the fence and each act of its building was accomplished in festive excitement, like the discovery of an obscure but rare truth.

In the retiring peace of late afternoons, Michael coaxed Rachel and Sarah to walk the fence line with him as he surveyed his progress with an artist’s anxiety for perfection.

“That’ll be redone,” he would thunder. “And that. Fool that I am for doin’ such sorry work.”

The fence would be solid, he vowed to Rachel. It would last longer than any of them.

It would be what a fence should be: for keeping out as well as keeping in.

“There’s a tune to it,” he said proudly, plucking at the taut wire. “Listen, Sarah. Listen. You could sing to it, you could. Wait till the wind comes up. It’ll be like a Gypsy band playin’ violins. Wind music like you’ve never heard. You’ll be sleepin’ to it at night. You’ll see.”

* * *

The fence seemed to possess him. He poured his energy into it madly. He behaved as though time did not exist, and if he recognized the awkwardness his presence had created, he ignored it. It was the fence that mattered. The fence. It had become a kind of private staking line, like the boundaries of an animal’s roaming. The fence had his scent, his signature, his coded warnings against invasion. The fence was his. And the three women watched him from a distance, each with her own questions. There was a man among them. Nothing was the same. The air sizzled and popped with an electric charge that flowed from him like a storm, and his voice began to hypnotize the space about him with the driving cadence of a march song. And the space about him, and the three women who lived in that space, began to accept him.

* * *

“Funny how that fence is in me,” Michael confessed one night. “Like it’s me I’m plantin’ down instead of posts. Like the tighter the wire pulls, the more it holds me in. Here I am, hangin’ around like a stray cat, puzzled at not up and leavin’ like I’ve done lifelong. But it’s a job that’s got a hold on me, ladies. It has at that. And I’m hopin’ my stayin’ to do it hasn’t put a strain on you.”

“No,” Rachel answered hesitantly. “No. We got our work to do. Nothin’s changed.”

But there had been changes. Imperceptible changes of mood and habit. Michael filled the eye of their subconscious seeing like an inescapable force. He was in their thinking and in their tensions and there was no way to exorcise him. They could only watch. And wait. There was an unknown and it was gathering beyond them.

The unknown arrived with Floyd Crider.

* * *

On the first Wednesday of his work with the fence, Michael recognized Floyd’s wagon on the road that led into Yale and
hurried from the field to meet Floyd at the turnoff leading to the house. Rachel watched from the window as Michael and Floyd talked. She knew Floyd was uncomfortable by the way he sat forward on the wagon, rolling the rope reins in his hands. He would have to be, she thought. Though she had told the two men of one another, Michael was a stranger and Floyd was awkward around strangers. Michael’s voice was strong and his accent confusing and when he spoke he animated his words with bold gestures. Floyd would not know what to say. He would be embarrassed. She watched as Michael pointed to the fence he was building and waved his hand along an imaginary line that circled above the house and skirted the edge of the woods. Then Michael stood quietly beside the wheel of the wagon and listened to something Floyd was saying. After a few minutes, Floyd left and Michael returned to his work. Rachel stood at the window watching him. There was something unusual about Floyd’s visit, she thought. He had talked with Michael more freely than she had believed he would. Maybe Floyd was more comfortable around men, even men like Michael. But that would be expected. Still, there was something missing in the routine of Floyd’s visit. Jack, she thought. Jack was missing. Jack was not with his father. She could not remember when Jack had not been with Floyd. She walked to the kitchen and poured water into a glass fruit jar and carried it across the field to Michael.