Rush Home Road (5 page)

Addy didn't stir when she heard her family return. When the door to her bedroom creaked open and her mother whispered, “Are you awake, Daughter? Are you all right?” Addy heard a tiny voice rush up from her throat to answer, “Yes, Mama. G'night.”

The blood had soaked clean through the thin cotton mattress and left a pea size spot on the floor beneath the bed. Wallace was confounded at having to replace the thing and said Addy could use the money she'd earned from Kenny's or sleep on the stain, he didn't care which. Laisa didn't tell her husband the linen was ruined too. She hid the sheet in her scrap chest and would find a good use for it someday.

Laisa bled heavy like that when she was young too. You couldn't blame a woman if her cycle came early, especially when the woman was only fifteen years old and it happened in her sleep. Besides, Addy looked so sickly when Laisa went to rouse her for work Monday morning she felt nothing but tenderness and was hardly annoyed about the bed. It put her in mind of when L'il Leam nearly passed and made her wring her hands.

Addy didn't go to work at the Kenny farm that morning and never would again. She bled spots for three days and stayed in the house or yard after that. She only said a few words to her mother and L'il Leam and found a way
not to speak to her father at all. She didn't believe Wallace had known or allowed what happened, but she felt betrayed by him all the same.

Though she knew the doctor'd say melancholy and prescribe castor oil and sunshine, Laisa thought they should have him come around anyway. Wallace thought it was a poor idea to indulge any female too much, and he'd already noticed a weakness for emotion in his daughter's character and didn't like it. Wallace said though it was true a woman's balance went off every month, it always came back and Addy's would too.

Laisa didn't think so. It seemed to her that Addy was so mad or sad she'd like to wring her own neck. She wasn't eating but a little bread each meal and could have been taken for consumptive. Laisa doubted by the look of her eyes that Addy was sleeping much either. If she'd known about Addy's affection for Chester Monk, Laisa might have suspected it was love sickness. But she would never believe, even if she was told it outright, the true thing that had crushed her daughter.

Birdie and Josephine came around at first but Addy would pretend she was asleep or pick up some neglected sewing and beg her Mama to send them away. Camille stayed away altogether, feeling responsible for Addy's grief. She wanted Josephine to tell Addy that Chester Monk only took her for a stroll to ask was it true her father was looking for a few men to expand his business? And was it true he'd pay twice what Mr. Kenny would? And if so, could she
walk him on over there to her Daddy's shiny new auto and introduce him as a friend?

Addy was rocking quietly in a chair set back from the window, feeling hot and parched and suddenly hungry, hungrier than she'd felt in some time. The hunger alone lifted her spirits, and she wondered if she might come back to herself after all. She wondered if she might eat a biscuit, or a chicken leg, or one of the blood ripe tomatoes L'il Leam brought home from the farm, and feel altogether different.

And for the hundredth time since Strawberry Sunday, Addy thought of Chester Monk. She thought of him in the field, having stripped the shirt from his strong brown back, bending over the tomato plants, working in a steady rhythm to fill the bushel baskets. She imagined him rising to full height, maybe he'd grown even taller over the summer, stretching out and biting into a tomato like it was an apple. She thought how he'd wipe the juice off his chin with the back of his hand, if he cared about it at all. The idea of Chester Monk made her smile, surprised she remembered how.

Addy rocked and rocked and soon a pleasant hum rose up to tease her tongue. Though she could never forgive him his trespass, maybe she could take the memory of Mr. Heron and what he'd done to her in those few wrong moments, put them in a boat, and sail that boat out to the middle of the lake. Maybe she could imagine it all happened to someone else, and maybe it did, because she was nowhere near the same girl now. Maybe to help her put it out of her mind, she'd ask L'il Leam if Chester was well
and how he was finding the fields this summer. Was the corn high? Was the lake warm? Did it look like the pumpkins would be early or late?

When finally Addy did ask her brother about Chester Monk, she was unprepared for his response. “Chester's gone, Addy. He's over in Sandwich bootlegging for Teddy Bishop.” Leam had added darkly, “I wouldn't count on him coming back.”

Her legs had seized upon hearing the news. Her tongue too. She stood, numb and dumb, watching her brother watch her. Was it possible she'd been wrong about Chester? Could it be he hadn't loved her after all? If she could be wrong about something she felt so certain about, how could she ever trust her judgment again?

When it was clear to Leam that Addy had no reply to the subject of Chester Monk, he hefted a bushel basket of tomatoes up to the table and suggested she clean a few for supper. Addy was glad of the chore until the tomatoes reminded her of the season, and she was overcome by the sudden and terrifying awareness that it had been six weeks since strawberries and more than that since she last bled from her cycle.

 

 

AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT
to starve herself and maybe it wouldn't sprout. But by the time the apples bent their branches, and the north wind claimed the night, there was a gentle swell to her stomach and her nipples were big as
saucers. Addy knew there'd be a child before the trilliums poked up in the ditch, and it horrified her that, being Mr. Heron's child, it might grow gigantic in her womb.

Once Addy started eating she could not stop. Though her daughter's spirit was still dull, Laisa was relieved to see Addy finish a third corncob and reach for a fourth on one ordinary Tuesday. And she was reassured when her daughter's interest in baking was revived. Addy even let Birdie Brown come around for a visit to show her the new books they'd been learning from in school. Addy politely inquired about the Bishop twins and Birdie thought it an honour to have such a pure saint as a best friend.

Wallace had never concerned himself much about Addy, and though he didn't notice she hadn't said a word directly to him since June, he did notice he was coming home to warm apple or pumpkin pie each night, and quietly thought his daughter a finer baker than his wife.

It was L'il Leam who changed the course of all their lives. L'il Leam had suspected that Addy's hunger for corn-cobs and pumpkin pies was more than just good appetite. And though it was not proper for a brother to do, he'd studied her changing body mindfully. He was distracted from his schoolbooks in the morning as he envisioned the complicated web of events, and his rage simmered afternoons at the farm. By evening he was puzzled all over again, sure he could not be right in his thinking.

After he saw Addy consider her reflection in the window and move her hands in a circle over her swollen belly,
L'il Leam screwed up his courage and asked Mr. Heron if he could have a word when the day's work was done.

When the sun fell, Big Zach Heron brought a pint of bourbon down to the cold barn, feeling very sorry indeed. He took several long pulls on the bottle and blew steam out his nostrils as he strode from one end of the barn to the other. At last he stopped, having set his sights on an old broken manger. He let the alcohol numb his throat as he considered the manger. It was the right size, Leam being such a small boy, and could be covered easily with a few seed bags or some hay.

Zach Heron took another drink and another walk around the barn to ensure the manger was well hidden from all angles. He'd find a reason to send one of the boys back there in a week or so if the smell didn't alert anyone sooner, or an animal didn't get there first. He thought forward to how he'd hang his head and shake it when he got told the news.

L'il Leam showed up with his hands in his pockets and a look on his face. Zach Heron asked did he want to sit down and L'il Leam said no. He asked did he want a belt of bourbon and L'il Leam said yes. Leam gulped twice before handing back the bottle.

Zach Heron had his actions fairly well planned and the boy didn't have a knife or gun, but he thought to ask anyway, “What's this about, Son?”

The small boy drew himself up like a young man and said, “First, let me say what I got to say, then I'll tell you
what I got to do about it.” Then the words spilled out of his mouth like they'd been drowning him and it was nothing but a relief.

“I can trace it back to Strawberry Sunday. It's a puzzle, Mr. Heron, but I know it started there. What I remember most on that day was how Addy was feeling poorly and decided to go home and lay herself down. Nothing in that is very unusual, being women up and start feeling poorly at surprising times, but I knew how much she been looking forward to that supper and I thought it were a shame she got ill.

“My Daddy'd gone off to work in Chatham so it were me my mother called to drag my sister's old mattress out that Monday morning. She said put it in the backyard so the sun can get at it, but clean out of sight because no one needs to know the girl's on her cycle. When I saw how much blood was in the middle of it and how it soaked clean through I understood why Mama was wringing her hands the way she was and I near lost my breakfast.

“And now, I do apologize to you, Mr. Heron, for being indelicate, but the thing is, I happen to know for a fact my sister had her cycle blood a full two weeks before that day. And the reason I know is I found one of her blood rags in the commode and I was ashamed to find it, but of course I didn't speak to her about such a thing.

“And though I truly wished I didn't know this, that blood rag did not belong to my mother because I overheard her tell the Pastor's wife that her monthly had stopped altogether.”

Zach Heron nodded but he was hardly listening because he already knew the truth and hated the cagey, breathless way the boy was baiting him. He thought how simple it'd be to reach out and snap L'il Leam's twig neck. He reckoned he could do it with one hand and not have to set down his bottle. He thought to do it now and get it over with, but L'il Leam was agitated and started pacing.

“Again, I apologize to you for my crudeness and wouldn't say any of this if I didn't feel I had to, but the blood on the mattress was such a quantity that it just don't make sense it were cycle blood. Even if, like my Mama, I could believe Addy's moon just come on early, it looked more like the blood from when a person gets cut. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Heron?”

Zach Heron nodded slowly and kept his eyes to the ground as he advanced on the boy, but L'il Leam was shaking his head now and maybe even feeling the bourbon.

“I know now that I was right in my suspicion. It appears like my sister has got herself in a condition.”

Zach Heron blinked five times and had to make himself stop. He hadn't seen the girl since that night and didn't know she was in a condition. He started toward L'il Leam again, but now he felt fear.

L'il Leam went on before the big man could reach him and just in time. “I was thinking on it one day a few weeks back and it hit me like a storm. The only other person gone from the fire and hymn singing that night was Chester Monk. Addy's in love with Chester and baked a berry pie
expressly for him. I saw them together under the willow near the graveyard. It started to make sense that Chester arranged it so Addy'd say she's sickly and come back to the house. I know she done it willingly. And though she likely expected a little kiss or tender word, she could not have expected what he done to her. No sir.”

L'il Leam looked up into the huge man's wide, stunned eyes and said, “I know I shocked you here and I'm sorry for it. But if you had seen the blood on that bed, Mr. Heron, and the look of Addy the next day and all the days since, you'd have thought the devil himself drove his pecker into that poor sister of mine.”

Zach Heron took a long slow pull on the bourbon and told L'il Leam to finish it off, which he did.

“Remember the next day, how Chester never showed up at the farm and word was him and Jonas Johnson gone off to work for Teddy Bishop and that Frenchman running booze over to Michigan?”

Zach Heron nodded and stopped himself from glancing at the broken manger behind the wheelbarrows.

“I was surprised he never said nothing to me about Teddy Bishop because Chester was a good friend, or so I thought. I went around to his house that night but his Mama wouldn't come to the door. A few weeks later, when I started having my suspicions, I went back and knocked till she come. She was bitter and told me Chester's a bootlegger now and gone from the Lord. She didn't even know how right she was. She said though he never had the
decency to tell her hisself, she heard he and a few like him was living in a house in Sandwich and God have mercy on his soul.”