Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

“He won’t even have to do that much.” Father grinned and set his hat on his head. “Boys.” I had never seen Father with a face like that.

The north field was level plenty. Still it curved at the far edge to make way for the river. That would be the trouble. But I wasn’t thinking of troubles then. The sun was low but rising. The soil caked our tongues. It would be hot as fry, but it wasn’t so hot yet. In the house, Mother was baking her egg and butter crust. I counted up to twenty the times we passed the house, smelling that, while Ray was at the cutter. Ray, he never would give me a chance. “Elliot doesn’t know fields from fish,” he was saying. “Doing nothing, that’s what Elliot wants.” I cocked my head to listen for hoppers, a kind of singing. When I slept, they sounded just the same. Nan said night hoppers were different from the day. Why, at night they weren’t even hoppers at all. But I knew some creatures sing different in the dark. It was a matter of being by yourself. Who you were then and who otherwise. In bed with the ceiling low and the lanterns put out, Ray slept next to me only an arm’s reach between us. But he slept so quiet, I had plenty of time for believing I was alone.

“With Elliot, we could have gotten it done in months,” Ray talked on. “Then I’d be free for cards, harvest or not.” Ray’s voice, it was a hard thing to listen to. To ease against it, I fingered a stone in my pocket. I’d found it the day before when one of the cows kicked it up. I don’t normally take to stones. But this one showed bright against the dirt, even at dusk. It was smooth as the river, the shape of an egg and nearly the color. What so white a stone was doing in the pasture, I couldn’t figure. While all the rest were muck-colored, broken in their rocklike shapes. I cleaned it nice at the pump, carried it back to the house. Must be others like it, though I hadn’t found but the one. I watched Telly’s hooves for kicking up more.

A musk of flowers and reeds, and I knew we were close to the river again. The water was high and rushing. The sun had fallen to clouds, those clouds spitting. Buck was slagging, while Telly was near to nipping his backside. With one hand on both reins, I managed the turn. My other hand was in my pocket, thinking of stones. How that egg-shaped one could be by itself mixed in with the others. How there must be more. Ray was going on. “I told him I didn’t care if we finished it or not. I’ve got a right to go when I want.” The rain made a low kind of steam on the ground and the horses stumbled. Could have been Buck, though with a jerk of her head I knew it was Telly. She was tired of backsides. I tightened the reins. Tried to get the other hand out of my pocket, but the hand stuck. The reaper jumped with Ray riding it. Ray’s voice jumped too, the hoppers gone quiet, and behind me something cracked. I pulled the reins short. When I looked, Ray’s pole had caught in the cutter and snapped. The ropes on the bullwheel puckered. Ray stood to fish his fingers under, trying to loosen the pole. Then the horses started again. As if told to, they did, and the ropes on that wheel pulled straight. Ray’s fingers caught. I jerked the reins, but Ray was hauled up and flying over the wheel.

If I’d been quicker about it, I could have stopped them. The horses wouldn’t have started. The rope would have stayed loose, and Ray’s fingers wouldn’t have caught. But Ray was already on the ground, his arm hung up in the ropes and strange behind him. His hand was tied good. Bloody as gutting a thing and not even a hand anymore. He lay there white, his eyes dark. Looking at me and waiting for something. Then his head fell back. I jumped to the wheel. Worked him loose. He was an empty sack on my shoulder as I carted him home. It was long and slow over that field, the house a far shot, and raining enough to drown us. If it wasn’t for Elliot , I thought, because now Ray was quiet. If it wasn’t for rocks being in a place where they shouldn’t. Father would paddle whip me good. What were you doing? he’d ask. Only hours before he’d been grinning. Boys , he’d said. Not for years would Father say that again, but my brother would say plenty. About keeping your mind to how a thing worked. About what a man without a hand could and couldn’t do. The way he looked at me before he was dead did. And the way he looked at me after said it too.

If a person asked, I’d tell them war wasn’t any different. Brothers by the dozen, accidents too. When I found myself laid up in France, they said I was wounded. I didn’t remember that. About the hospital, I remembered plenty. One bed after the other, all of us at arm’s reach, some sleeping, some not. At night the nurses kept the hall lit and there wasn’t a quiet to be had. Not with so many of us. Shudders and howls. Most of the boys worse the better they got. In the daytime they made notes on my chart. Did I see flashes? Hear ringing sounds? Doc said I was on the mend. With my feet red and hot enough to burn, he said that was what mending felt like. I said, time to go then, if I’m mended. Not yet, he said to that.

I was in La Fauche, Base Hospital 117. The light outside the windows was cold and clear. Must have been after harvest, but I couldn’t see more than fences in the yard. At home, I’d surely missed it. The doctors didn’t bother about harvest. The stink of us, a high taint they called disinfectant, that’s what they bothered about. Our bed frames were hollow as tubes, our pillows blocks. Those pillows carried the sweat of every worry in our heads. Morning and night, an old man mopped the floor, leaving behind his piney scent. I’d been in the woods, an infantryman in the 88th near Hagenbach, border of Germany and France. It was late October then. The mud in the woods nearly finished my feet. Boot rot, they called it, but it felt something worse. We had crossed the lines, the boys wild for a taste of something better than beets. Then the blast hit. I hadn’t seen one man from our squad since.

“Private Hess, your dinner.” The nurse spun a table to my chest. She had the accent of a Brit. Her hands were small, warm as a loaf. The food should’ve had a smell, but didn’t. Some kind of chicken, a helping of pea-like shapes. The English tea, it was a brown stir of water, though I’d taken some liking to it. The nurse’s hair was plain and brown too, her face milky. She wore it short and close to her face, the way Esther did. That smile of hers, it was hitched at the corner. Same as Esther’s too.

“Be good,” the nurse said. “Try to eat this time. Otherwise they’ll never send you home.”

I couldn’t tell her. Since the blast, I didn’t have the stomach to eat peas or anything else.

They kept us on a straight watch. 06:00 to wake, noon for dinner. At 14:00 there was exercise and 18:00 another tray in our laps. Lights out wasn’t very dark. But I’d never thought sleep was good for much. The boy next to me favored talk. “Hush,” he whispered. “You’ve got to hear this.” Squire was his name, his bed nearest. He had a mother who wrote him every day but Sunday, though he couldn’t write back. His arms were as dead as drowned pups. Nurse said she’d do a letter for him. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes. But to me, he told plenty. About a cousin he fancied. About a cellar back home, so dark he never went close. There was a Jerry he shot in the stomach. Couldn’t finish him off. He talked about that. I thought to tell him about our farm and how I missed harvest. How with a man gone, Father and Ray might have it some hard. But I was the one who’d made Ray less than he’d been, and I stood for the draft to make things right. Can’t shoot with a busted hand , the corporal had told my brother. Can’t even hold a pistol. But this one here . The corporal had looked at me. He’s big as a horse. We’ll take him, old enough or not.