C. Morgan - All the Living

Nowhere.

Nowhere…

What are you doing? he said.

Waiting.

Aloma, he began.

I’ve been waiting here for you, she said again, louder.

Orren exhaled roughly through his nose and looked down. Then he drew his left hand out of his pocket and placed it on his hip. But still he did not straighten up.

Don’t you have anything to say to me, Orren?

About what, he said to the ground.

About what we were talking about, she pressed.

We ain’t renting out no part of this place, he said.

Do you ever listen to me at all? she said and her voice was acid and then her temper surged free. You didn’t even bother to come up for supper. You’re never here, Orren. It’s like you’re leaving me without leaving your own damn property.

No, he said.

Well, don’t think for a second I believe you’re doing this for me. None of this is for me, she said.

He looked up then, but a long breakable moment passed before he said, What’s that supposed to mean?

All of this is for them, Orren, and they’re not even here. You kill yourself and they’re already killed. Why don’t you—

Shut up, Aloma, he said.

Don’t tell me to shut up, she snapped, ready to fight. But before she could say another word, he turned and slipped around the corner of the house. In an instant, she was up from her seat on the steps and running around the corner after him. She caught up to him as he stalked through one of the squares of light that shone through the windows on the north side of the house. She reached twice for the shirt fabric at his elbow before she found it with her fingers. He wouldn’t turn to meet her so she grabbed awkwardly again at his elbow to force him around. And then he did turn and he wrenched her arm up with all the strength of his right hand and struck her own arm so hard against her chest that her teeth rattled in her mouth and she stumbled back a few paces, tripping, groping wildly out at nothing. Orren’s face in the yellow streaming light was wild and he raised his hand and it pointed accusation at her, his words all secondary. You, he said, gathering up his words, you spoiled bitch. You’re a goddamn spoiled bitch, he said. His voice was higher than was natural, not his own, but inherited from atavic fury. His throat caught and a strangled sound was stoppered there. Aloma secured her ground before him, all eyes, and a hard joy of awaited engagement rose up in her, her blood rose up in her. He came forward one long step. They cut off my legs, Aloma, he said. They cut off my legs and you want me to run.

But what about me! Think about us! she cried.

What about you? You don’t know nothing about it, none of it. You got no feeling. All you care about is being happy. I — and he thudded his own chest with the butt of his hand — I can’t have that, that ain’t a option. You get me? He took a step back and she saw his letheless fury in the full light of the window and the tears that figured on his face. But he came back again, stalking forward as if to grab at her, but stopping short before her so she didn’t know if he would hit her or only speak, but he spoke, saying, And leaving. I ain’t the one leaving. His finger again, right at her mouth. You, you, you, he said and she found she couldn’t turn away even though his hands weren’t on her. You, darlin, are the one fixing to leave. I’m just digging deeper in what you think’s a empty well, but all the while you’re looking out. He cast his hand out toward the outlying dark. You’re looking out, Aloma, I ain’t stupid. So don’t tell me I’m fixing to leave. I never left a thing I loved.

Orren turned on his last word as if to get away without his own sentence touching him, walking out of the cast light of the window so that he became the vague shape of his lighter clothing and then a brisk shadow, then no different from the rest of what Aloma couldn’t see. It took her a moment to gather herself up, she panted in the dark as an animal pants, her mouth was dry. She felt her arm would bruise to the bone. She folded its shaking length to her belly and looked desperately around, her eyes wide, her pupils dilated for any small light to be found in the dark.

She came around the side of the house as a sleepwalker might, barely propelled by an expiring rage and stumbling. The air was muggy around her, the heat of the day still expressed in the air. She stepped into the light of the kitchen and smelled the black acrid burning of meat. The chicken was ruined. As she slid the skillet to a cold burner, somber, barely moving, but her heart still beating with a kind of heady unease that made her strangely glad, Orren’s accusation came again. Again she heard the word — leaving — and she began to touch the thing, to turn it over and over in her mind like a worry bead.

He did not come to bed with her. When she awoke, it was to the unapologetic knocking of his boots approaching the room and she knew from the way he stopped at the door and came no farther that he was still angry.

I need you up, he said.

She lay on her side facing the window. For what? she said flatly without turning around, her mouth half sunk in a pillow.

I’m fixing to finish this harvest.

Now she turned around. His face was without expression, but there were purpling circles under his eyes. What about those men you hired? she said.

I let em go yesterday. I can’t afford no two days what I can do with you.

But—

Get up, it’s late, he said and he took one long stride into the room, reached down and snatched at the sheets so they came off her white naked supine body and she said, Hey, sharply, as if he’d never seen her naked before and yanked the sheets back to cover herself. She glared at him.

Up, he said, no choicing in his words.

Alright, she said in a voice too loud for the room so he turned and left with one hand up like she couldn’t be suffered and she sat up straight in the bed, propelled by something akin to hate. She jerked the covers off herself now that he had retreated and she stomped to the closet, but she did not want to ruin any of her clothes so she struggled into one of his long-sleeved shirts and a pair of his jeans and belted them tight. She smelled like him now, as if she were wearing him, and that irritated her, but not as much as the memory of him yanking her sheets away. She glared at the door frame as though he were still standing there and she argued with him in her mind as she walked out the back door and marched down to the half-harvested field.

They did not talk as they worked. Orren stooped with a knife and he severed a plant below the butt where it strove from the soil, wagering its stalk for the sun. Then he stood and skewered the neck on the holed stick where it would dry before being tied and hung from the high rafters of the black barn. He demonstrated her this once without saying anything and then she bent in the neighboring row and with her own knife struck her first plant above its roots. When it fell, she grasped the thing up and with both hands drove it onto the stake through its sharp silver topper, cutting clean through the strong stalk. There the aborted plant hung and shortly began to wilt and wither against its supports, dying into itself. They worked in a sweating silence along side-by-side rows as though the other were not there. Orren did not look up at her as he worked. All morning he cut and speared, hovering over the plants and his own thoughts, and she followed him as best she could up the rows, but he was much stronger, much quicker, and soon he was moving down her row toward her, bending, spearing, bending, spearing.

Before noon they’d left two windrows of plants to wilt.

When the sun was high and they’d drunk all the water in a gallon jug, she said curtly, Food time, and turned to the house to make sandwiches. She did not want him to see how her arms shook with the morning’s efforts. In the first-floor bathroom she saw the sun had burned her cheeks already and she’d sweated through Orren’s shirt. She looked even younger than she was, she thought, with high color on her cheeks and her hair platted back, a ragged thing with dislike etched on her sunworn face. She eyed her hurt arm acidly, it had failed to bruise sufficiently.