Light to the Hills: A Novel (52)
“Aw, last I heard he’d made it down south to the Gulf, aiming to throw nets for shrimp. That man never swallered a shrimp in his whole life, less you count its crawdad cousin.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s full of ideas but empty on brains. Reckon the day he lit out for the railroad was the last I seen of his skinny backside.” Mooney rubbed her belly again. Amanda remembered having a constant hand on her belly herself not that many days ago.
“Well, bless you, Mooney. Maybe our young’uns will be friends, seein’ how they’ll be close in age.”
Mooney had smiled and squeezed Amanda’s hand. “No two ways about that. I’m countin’ on it.”
Never in a hundred years would Amanda have featured herself shy of turning eighteen, bouncing a baby in her arms beside her husband’s fresh grave. Daddy presided over the funeralizing, which included his daughter’s husband and four others who’d died in the waters, including a boy who’d foolishly tried to snag a catfish for supper right when the river crested. It had taken a full month for the ruins of the mountain to be passable. Debris had to be cleared from trails, and mud on the steepest parts had to harden into ruts before it was safe for horses to pick through.
A yellow autumn sun shone through the newly budded trees of the graveyard, warming the faces of the stone markers. The birds chirruped and twittered so loudly that Daddy had to raise his voice to be heard at the back of the gathering. After so many days of rain and mud, the dry sun made the occasion seem almost festive, and more than one mama pinched a boy’s ear or snatched up a collar to keep their restlessness in check. Mama and Amanda stood looking not at Daddy or at the clods of dirt piled beside the grave, but hypnotized by the baby in Amanda’s arms, blinking his unfocused eyes against the light like a sleepy cat. Had there ever been anything so tiny and perfect, so easy-tempered and quick to smile, despite his hard beginning? Mama apologized over and over, eaten up with sorry that she hadn’t made it for his arrival, even more so because Amanda had been alone for so long afterward.
“How could you have known?” Amanda reasoned. “Unless you’d sprouted wings and flown down the mountain, you couldn’t have made it down in that flooding without ending up in the ground today yourself.”
They’d arrived only that morning, with the coffins already laid out in the graveyard. Amanda had begged the diggers to wait until her daddy got there. They’d tried to explain that the moon was too old and they’d have to cart in extra dirt to fill the graves back in. Graves were meant to be dug on the new moon, so there’d be dirt enough left to throw away after, packing it tight. Dig on the old moon, and the filled hole would stay loose and not settle. The grieving widow’s wishes won out. Her parents had ridden up to Amanda’s cabin, laden with jars of past-summer goodness put up from Mama’s garden and a quilt she had pieced for the baby. Daddy had even fashioned a jangly ring of tiny keys from scraps of iron as a play pretty.
They’d found Amanda not only having settled into her new role but also tending to a housemate, another woman who’d just given birth the day before. She sat propped up in the bed under the quilt, her dark hair tucked behind her ears and her eyes heavy.
“This is Mooney,” she’d told them, “and little Maisie. I couldn’t have managed without her these past days. We’re in the same boat, so I’m takin’ a turn at the oars now.”
“I hate like everything I can’t go to the graveside with you,” Mooney said.
Amanda waved her off. “Don’t be silly. What’s the sense in you being on your feet all that time? I’ll bring you a plate from the gathering after.”
“See if you can stick in a’ extra piece of jam cake,” Mooney said with a wink.
“Two babies!” Beady had fussed over them both.
Daddy had stood by the door, casting anxiously about for a place to settle his eyes. Amanda could tell he was having trouble imagining his daughter being someone’s mother; the whole situation had him rattled. He would be much more comfortable out in the graveyard, speaking words over the departed.
Baby Maisie had arrived, if not easier than Miles, then at least much less lonely, with a houseful of eager-handed women. When it came time, the midwife had quickened the birth by blowing red pepper into Mooney’s nose through a quill to induce sneezing. They’d been there to flip Maisie and dose her with catnip and turpentine and had buried the afterbirth behind the cabin. Amanda watched all the activity with apprehension, counting all the things she’d not done, and prayed her love and fumbling care for Miles in the days after he was born were enough to protect him.
After the graves had been covered over—and sure enough, the diggers made a show of needing more carts of dirt to finish the job—they’d stayed long enough to share the picnic meal. Several families had made it into a day to clean up and decorate the graveyard (two birds with one stone), but Amanda felt no gaiety. Neither did she cry at the sight of Frank’s fresh, mounded grave. She’d loved him, seduced by his otherness, his bouts of attention and tenderness, but like a first taste of whiskey, it hadn’t taken more than a good sip to leave her dizzy. She’d loved him without knowing him, not really. While she stood by the rectangle dug in the earth, hearing but not listening to the words her father spoke, the memory of Frank that repeated in Amanda’s mind was of him leaving that night with Gripp, the way he’d looked at her and found her somehow weak but not worth protecting, the scale tipping in favor of money and the next grand thing. Nestling Miles close to her body, she gave him her little finger to grasp. To Frank, even before he’d seen his own likeness in his son’s face, the baby was another load to carry. At least Miles wouldn’t have to feel that like the sting of a willow switch across his legs his whole life.