C. Morgan - All the Living

But she woke to herself and she stumbled sore and disoriented from the bed, her mind still cleaving to sleep. She knew only that she could remain no longer in their bed and the same galloping unease that drove her from the bed drove her from the house itself. She did not go to the back door first to search for Orren and she did not make him any food or even go down to the barn to check the chickens she had already neglected in the early hours of the morning. She simply picked up her keys and left without asking herself where she was going or why.

She drove across the county into Hansonville and her halflid eyes undressed the place as she passed, her face sober. The whole of it was small, graceless. There was not a building in the town that was more than two stories high. She parked out front of the church, looking north to where the county ended, where the road ran on and on. Then she scrabbled through the scores she kept on the passenger-side seat, but in the end grabbed one randomly, anything would suit. She would go inside and play on the piano because she could not think what else to do. And she would make noise, the box would resonate with sound only because it was empty, it did nothing of its own accord, it only waited for her to make it sing.

Aloma brought a hand to her brow and peered through the gate of her fingers to clear her thoughts. Was it only that she was tired of herself today? Or was it that every time she sat down before a piano now she heard in it, in the falling keys, a metronomic ticking that announced the hours that she did not know how to fill because she did not know if she was coming or going. Or who she would come or go with. She shook her head and opened her eyes, and taking up her score, she walked inside.

She had barely spread her fingers on the keys when Bell appeared in the doorway and said, Aloma, I need you in the office.

Of course, she said. She rose from the piano, the last strings still vibrating behind her, and followed him out of the little sanctuary. Bell was seated again at the desk in his office when she paused in the doorway. His black Bible was closed and pushed against the wall.

Set down a minute, he said and she sat with her hands in her lap and looked at his face, which had always struck her as a pleasing face but she now thought held some new veiling she’d never noticed before. That surprised her.

He turned to her, he did not smile.

Aloma, he said, I need your home address.

For a moment she did not breathe. What for? she said.

I’m fixing to change the way I pay you. I’m sending it out now instead of just handing it to you.

Oh, she said, looking from one side of the small office to the other, then at the plywood door, but not at him. Oh, that’s not necessary. I’m fine just to take it the old way.

I need your address, Miss Aloma, he said and the way he called her miss drew her eyes to him. His face was quiet, the pen in his hand did not move but was suspended point-down over a sheet of paper. She could think of no lie, so she said, Fourteen Burnt Ridge Road.

He laid his pen down. He laid it down so softly that it frightened Aloma and she did not dare to move. He nodded.

You are living with Orpheus up at the Fenton place, he said. When she said nothing but only sat there with her lips parted and her breathing uneven, he said, Are you married to him? She shook her head slowly. She watched the expression on his face alter in a way she could not read, then his eyes cut away. How come you didn’t tell me you were with this man?

When she spoke, her words rustled out in a whisper. I thought you wouldn’t want to hire me to play in your church.

That’s right, he said quickly. I would not have. That may sound unchristian, but I would not have. I can’t abide that kind of deceit.

But it’s not deceit to—

He cut her off with one raised calloused hand. It’s deceit to play married when you’re not. Quit fooling yourself. And quit trying to fool me.

He tilted his head down then to contain his expression so that she could only see the top of his black curls. He stayed like that with his head bowed, but for how long she did not know and she could not remember later, because when he raised his head he was angry and she had never seen that before.

You deliberately misled me, he said. You just walk into my church here — our church — and live a lie with us, saying you’re not attached to a man. But you are very much attached to a man. You may not be married, but you are bound for better or worse whether you know it or you don’t. For now and forever since you done it. I don’t know what you thought you were doing here… His dark eyes slashed at her. I don’t know what — But he did not finish his thought, only dampered the sentence while it was still burning in his throat. But still something was rising up in him and she felt it coming and winced even before he spoke it.

You are foolish, he said. You are pretty, you play pretty music, but you are foolish. He stopped suddenly and he brought his hands together and bowed his forehead again atop the box of his two hands. Aloma did not think then to defend herself, she had no defense. She just watched him, watched him without blinking, waiting.

With his head still down, he said, Aloma, don’t grant yourself permission to be ungodly just because you’re young. Maybe you think it’s some small thing to stir up love, but you’re wrong. And then he said nothing more. When he lifted his head finally and their eyes met, Aloma looked away, pale.

I’ll go, she said quietly, finding her voice, surprised that it didn’t tremble. She drew her feet firmly under her, ready to rise.

Yes. Go, he said. I want you to go.

She stood up and moved to the door. Then she turned and said, Who told you?

Mother, he said. Mrs. Breathitt told her.

Who’s that? said Aloma.

She owns the grocery down near your place.

Aloma almost laughed. Then she turned to go, but did not leave before he said her name one more time, saying, I owe you money. But she just said, No, no, you don’t, and could not find it in her to look back.

She sat in the stillness of her truck for a long time, willing herself to move, afraid Bell would come out and yet unable to turn the key, staring straight ahead, her breathing coming hard and fast. Why was it still light? She wished the day would go. She fidgeted with the sunbleached wheel, with the knob of the stick, her hands ran in repeating swipes down the denim over her thighs, she could not stop. Her empty hands had stolen something. The knowledge cut her with a guilt that was so clear and so sudden, she didn’t know how she’d not felt its sharp edge before, her own feeling numbed by some dulling desire. She couldn’t name the thing she’d stolen, she could not hold it in her hand, though she could break it to bits, and she didn’t know whether it belonged to Orren or Bell or both, she only knew that she had done it. And she knew because the guilt that came was clear as a road sign pointing her back to the house. She turned the ignition suddenly and gunned once, drove home in a heat, forgetting her scores on the piano and not remembering them until much later. She thought to cry, but she would not grant herself the comfort of easy remorse and the wind whipped her eyes dry, relentless. She passed through the land without seeing it, finding her way home by an old habit newly felt.

When she came to the house, when it appeared from a distance almost gray because of the paint stripping away from the weathered boards, she found the sight of it, even its ugliness, not beautiful — it could never be that — but bearable in its unremarkable way. And better, far better, than a roving desire that searched the horizon for new locations in which to discover an easier love, as if love — mixed and diluted with laziness — could still be love. Bell’s words lashed her, she shivered with shame. She shaded her eyes with one hand as she drove up the long gravel drive. The sun was already leading west. The days, without her noticing, had grown short.