Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other

Hows that dog?

Maggie lay in the shade of the cottage, on the side farthest from the roof debris. She was deep in the thick grass, her head cradled in her front paws, her ears dribbling onto the ground. She’s good, I wanted to tell Taylor. The best dog. The best gift. She was a gift. I could see that then. I see it now.

I never again wrote to Taylor, though.

“What does that mean?” Jenny asked.

I folded the letter along its creases and tucked it into its envelope. “It means he only notices the boys he has working for him or the ones he’s tracking down. It sounds like Charles isn’t one of them.”

“Well, it’s disappointing.” She broke into a determined smile and pointed to the roof. “But that’s sure to take a while.”

“No more than a week.” Then I would leave. There would be a dam near the ocean somewhere, lines to run, forces to capture and convert. I would go and work as I once had. Maggie and I could find ourselves a small house in a village, and I might even meet a nurse like my Hannah, maybe even have a child or two. I’d forget I owed Wilson the work he could no longer do, forget I’d seen my grown son, forget that all these people existed this many years after my memories of them stalled.

“I’ll go get your dinner.” But Jenny didn’t move.

“What is it?”

“Just—” She didn’t look at me. “I don’t know why it feels so wrong, but I have — I have. They have. I mean, they—” Her eyes trained themselves on some high branch far off to the right of her vision. “It’s theirs to talk about. That’s what I mean. And they don’t want me saying anything, which is why they put me here in the first place. You asked that, and it was all I had in me not to answer truthfully. They wanted time to pass, you see, wanted everything to get settled, wanted—”

“What are you saying?”

When she spoke, the words were mousy and skittish. “They figured the bit about Charles would keep you occupied. They had all kinds of talks before your release, and you have to believe that this was only a backup in case it seemed like you weren’t going to stay at all.”

“Where is Charles, Jenny?”

She looked over her shoulder toward the big house.

“Where?”

“He’s in New York.”

“And Henry?”

“Oh, that’s true, Mr. Roscoe. Henry’s in New York, too. They’re all there. Mama and Papa are awful proud.”

“Why did you choose Charles?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why’d you all decide to make Charles the criminal? Why not Henry? Hell, why not Gerald, my own son?”

“Daddy remembered the times you’d seen him lose his temper out when he was helping you two with the thresher and the crops.”

Of course. I had seen Charles slam his closed fist into the unforgiving wall of the shop, ripping his knuckles raw, and all because his count was off — not as many shucked ears in the bucket as he’d anticipated. I had seen him shout and kick, and I hadn’t thought to question a moment of violence that could send him to prison. They’d been smart in their planning.

“The they ”—I stepped closer to the girl who’d so blatantly deceived me—“the they who orchestrated this — I assume you’re talking about Marie?”

She shook her head.

My anger paused, confused. I was set to add this injustice to Marie’s register. She’d ignored my letters, forgotten our marriage, stolen my son, and then settled me into the help’s quarters. It made sense to blame her, and I wanted to. I wanted to loathe her charity and pity and condescension.

“Who then?”

“You need to talk to Mother and Father and Gerald. I know he’s visited, but there’s more he needs to tell you.”

“He was supposed to come today.”

“Yes, I know. But then the letter arrived.”

“And your time was up?”

“I suppose that’s it.”

We stood staring at each other for what seemed a day, a week, nine years.

Finally she said, “I’ll get your dinner, Mr. Roscoe.” She walked toward the trail, fading and fading until there were only woods and grass and the power line sloping from the third pole to the conduit on the house.

THEnext morning, the Grices found me on their porch when they returned from church. Maggie lay at my feet.

Jenny and Wilson stood at the bottom of the steps, but Moa strode up next to me. “Least you can do is wish us good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“That’s better. Now, come inside and have some lunch. Best invite that beast in, too.” Moa was trying to soften me, and I should’ve declined in order to keep my solemnity. No thank you, I should’ve said. Maggie’s comfortable out here.

But I couldn’t deny Maggie a bowl of scraps inside that fine house, and Moa knew it. She’s still the smartest of us all.

Jenny helped me up from the rocker I’d chosen hours earlier, and we walked into the house hand in hand behind her father. Maggie brushed by us, trotting toward the kitchen as though she’d been there innumerable times. She was spoiled, that dog. Still is.

The squirrel wallpaper confronted me in the foyer, and I fought to keep my eyes trained away from that whimsy. Like the layers I’d seen on my son, those squirrels were products of ease and time. I’d have longed for extra pounds in Kilby — a few to fill in my face, raise my eyes, cover my ribs. I’d have longed for images that meant nothing, there only to see, to lighten the scene like Chaplain’s flowers. Instead, I’d grown used to efficiency and precision. What wasn’t necessary was relinquished. Whoever I’d been when I came to Kilby, I’d left condensed, only the core of me surviving, the part that worked, the part that ate and slept in order to continue.

Wallpaper and fat had no place in that life.

Moa was already at the stove in the kitchen, the kettle nearly boiling, the table laid with biscuits and spreads. “Sit down, Roscoe. Help yourself.”

She fed Maggie by the back door, and the dog fell to the food quickly, wolfing it down as though those other prison dogs were still pushing at her sides, trying to get their piece — a dainty drinker and a ravenous eater.

I was hungry, too, but I didn’t follow her lead. I’d been sitting on the porch for hours, hunger sharpening the words I planned to say. I didn’t want to feel full.

“You’d like us to start, I imagine.” I looked to Wilson, who was pulling up a stool across from me. “You know about our deception, and I apologize for it. You have to know that we did it out of true concern for you. We needed you to stay, and we couldn’t think of another way to do that.”

“Why did you need me to stay?”

“We needed to get a sense of you,” Moa said.

“And,” Wilson added, “we wanted you to have some time to figure out a place for yourself.”

“I don’t think that’s happened.”

Wilson shook his head. “You’re wrong about that. Look at all you’ve done — the power and the poles and wiring, the improvements to the cottage. It’s work you can do, Ross, work you’re good at.”

“For better for worse,” Moa added.

“Moa.”

She looked at her husband. “I’m allowed my doubts, Wilson.”

I still think about those words of hers.

I ran through uncertainties of my own. I’d seen myself working, as Wilson had said — and with power, the electricity that had first awoken me to inquiry and pursuit and knowledge. It wasn’t dogs and it wasn’t musty books, not reading to men from a Bible. It wasn’t dairy cows, pails of milk, calves mewling. It was work I knew and loved, but it was here, on Marie’s land, with its memory — the haunted familiarity of the shop and the trail, the cornstalks and that line of fence where I’d first told Wilson the idea, the house I was sitting in, with its new wallpaper and residents, my family still gone.