Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other

“Why am I here?” I asked Ed.

He shook his head — about all anyone could do for me those days. I’m accustomed to the quiet that rises now, the lack of words that comes from comfort and stillness, but in that field with Ed, all the silent head-shaking built upon itself like the frustration that drove bruises into Gerald’s arms and threw insults at Reed. I pulled the drawknife, anger wobbling my grip on the handles, the blade sloppy across the pole, my knuckles against the rough bark. I didn’t register the skin coming away, the red imbuing the pine.

I pulled Marie into my anger, and I wanted her there to answer for herself.

Maggie whined at my side, her nose against my knee.

“Back!”

My blood would stay in the grain of the wood even after I’d scraped it again. Only one strip was left. Maggie nosed me again, and I kicked her fiercely in the chest.

“Back, goddamn it! Back!”

Then, just as quickly, I was on my knees, crawling to her as the coward I was, as the coward I fear I still am, at least on certain days. She let me grab her round her neck, press my face into the soft fur of her chest, pull on her ears like chords or ropes, like things to climb.

“Good dog. Good. You are a good dog.”

She tried to lick my hands, but I lifted them out of her reach and went inside to get her a fresh bone. She took it, but dropped it immediately, watching me go to the basin where I pumped water into the bowl, setting my hands in it to soak. They ached. The water clouded pink.

I ripped strips from an old shirt to use as bandages, and when I gripped the drawknife again, pain seared up my arms. “You know this,” I told my hands. “Go through the movement.” I gripped and pulled, and blood crept through the layers of cloth. Still, I struggled against the pain, against myself, against Marie, the cottage, Kilby, even the village there on the Coosa — against everything that had brought me to that pole in that meadow.

WHENit was time to start digging, I went to the big house to borrow a shovel.

“Help yourself to anything in the shop,” Wilson told me. It was morning, and Moa and Wilson were on the porch again, a couple taking a moment to enjoy the start of the day.

“Not anything ,” Moa added.

“Just a shovel, Moa. I promise.”

The thresher greeted me in the musty shop — intimate, but also distant. I felt nervous, the way I would should Marie appear. I placed my hand on the machine’s metal, cool there in the dark, and I saw it moving with its electric engine, turning power into food into sales into salvation. I should have felt guilt. I should have hated that beast of a machine. But I was still proud. I could still recognize the accomplishment, and I wanted — right then, more than anything — to be acknowledged for the success I’d brought.

I picked out a narrow-bladed shovel with a thin shoulder.

The muscles of my left arm took the bulk of the digging, my bad shoulder weak and useless in this task. The hole needed to be deep. The cloth around my knuckles kept my hands from blistering too badly, but nothing saved my thumbs. They opened into sores before I’d finished, and I had to stop to soak my hands in cold water again. Maggie followed me inside.

I made more bandages from the same shirt, my hands so thick with cloth that I could barely operate my fingers. If my hands would just do this last bit of the first hole, I’d go back inside and eat an entire jar of peaches. I would lie down on the thick mattress and try to sleep. I would give my body anything it wanted.

When I finally finished, I let out a cry that brought Maggie to my side. My thumbs had bled through, and the scabs that had formed on my knuckles were broken open.

Inside, I built a fire and set pots to boiling on the stove. Wilson and Moa must have added the bathing room during their time there, and I gave them my thanks as I lowered myself into the hot water. My hands burned and then went quiet, like the muscles in my arms and legs, my shoulders and neck. The steam from the water felt warm and good in my lungs, and I listened to my breaths, each a Dear Roscoe , the Dear strung longer than the Roscoe. Dear coming in, and Roscoe going out. I could hear Marie’s voice, there in that tub. To Ed she was saying, “Oh? You shared a cell with Roscoe? Come in.” She was saying, “Come.” And to me she said, “Dear Roscoe. Dear, dear Roscoe. I’ve been canning like mad this season. The harvest was grand, and we had money for more peaches than we knew what to do with.”

Then I heard my young Marie come, not in person, but in a voice just slightly off from her older counterpart’s. “Take the blame. Get yourself a permanent place here in Kilby. There’s nothing for you when you get out.”

The water went cold before I left it, my body turned to a shriveled kernel. The cottage towels were on the thin side, but still thicker than anything we saw in Kilby, and I rubbed myself dry before pulling on my same pajamas.

Maggie was by the stove when I came into the main room, her body hot to the touch. Kilby had given her a rusty pen, long hunts in the woods, the onerous strain of whelping, where here she had bones and ham scraps, grass and floors to lie on, stoves, pallets. There was nothing of conflict for her in that new life of ours.

I pulled her a foot away to keep her from catching on fire.

I hung my washed bandages across the back of a chair and blew out the lamps. I went to the thick mattress in the bedroom, but it took only a few minutes of shifting and turning to drive me to the pallet, and then just a few minutes of cold to drive me to the stove. I dragged the thin sleeping pad out, with its sheets and blanket and pillow, and I slept on the floor with my dog.

MAGGIEhad curled herself against my legs in the night, her body up on the pad. I reached down to pet her when I woke and then rose to work on my throbbing hands. I was anxious to start the wiring and even more anxious to start the leaving, sure that my time there was temporary, a stopover while I waited to hear my real sentence.

Maggie lay close by in the grass while I worked. Toward evening, she lifted her head at the sound of footsteps as Jenny emerged into our clearing. “Dinner.” The girl lifted the bundle in her hands. “I’ll leave it by the door.” Jenny hadn’t visited before.

“Thank you.”

“Thank my mama.”

“Thank your mama for me, then.”

Maggie wandered over to sniff at the hem of Jenny’s skirt, and the girl crouched down to pet her.

“Mr. Roscoe?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a favor I need to ask of you.”

The sentence startled me. I didn’t seem the type to grant favors. “What can I do?”

“Papa hasn’t told you because he’s ashamed, but Charles was—” She scanned the trees as if looking for words. “He was—incarcerated? Like you were. Sent to prison? And, well, we don’t know where he’s been sent. Papa thought you might have some connections at the prison and could do some asking round. We’d be awful grateful.”

“What did he do?”

Jenny twisted the fabric of her skirt. “He drank too much and he — assaulted a man?”

“Do you know what that means?”

She nodded quickly. She must’ve been twenty, maybe nineteen, and I found myself growing angry with Wilson and Moa for making her deliver this request.

Now, of course, I understand why Jenny was given the job.

“I’m happy to do you the favor, Jenny, but tell your parents they’re welcome to ask anything of me, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir .”

“All right.” She crouched back down to pet Maggie. “I wish people would stop leaving,” she whispered.