Light to the Hills: A Novel (67)

Talk at the supper table was about the ride to town, the hummingbird they’d rescued, and the things they’d purchased. Daddy had spent the day a few miles away at a neighbor’s house, trading his labor for a share of their honey stores come summer. The man had set up several hollow stumps he’d made into beehives, and Daddy wanted to learn the skill so that they could have a reliable source for something sweet instead of chancing on a tree in the woods. Cricket told Daddy about the airship that had caught fire, and he allowed that it might be a wonder to fly like that somehow. Daddy said the world was changing fast, no telling what Cricket might do. It would be a blessing if it were something other than mining. He’d been casting around for options and was chewing on some ideas. As usual, when he finished supper, Daddy hit the bed for a quick nap before he had to head to the mines, but even by the time he gathered his dinner pail and water, Finn still hadn’t come home.

Sass tried to read by the fire, but her mind kept jumping around like a Jesus bug on creek water. She turned page after page, but all the while her hand kept reaching into her pocket to feel the folded scrap of paper she’d picked up outside the Feed & Seed. Where had Finn got off to? She gave Daddy a kiss when he left for his shift and promised to be good. She started the same page over again for the third time, remembering nothing of what she’d just read. The doses of tea sloshed in Sass’s stomach, making her feel queasy, but darned if she’d let her mama know. The last thing she wanted was another remedy. Her head ached from all the thoughts that raced there—the rooster man, what she’d heard him say about the mines, how he’d touched her and made her sad and angry all at once, the list she’d found. Finally, she curled up in the bed with a lantern nearby, trying to concentrate on her book. Tomorrow the book woman was due to come, and Sass wanted to finish so that she could trade for another, but try as she might, her eyes grew too heavy to read any more or wait for her brother.

In the middle of the night, Sass woke with a start, feeling like she’d wet the bed. She sat up and let her eyes adjust to the light from the dying coals in the hearth. Cricket, Fern, and Hiccup lay sound asleep, head to toe in the bed beside her, and Mama’s light snores carried from her bed behind the curtain on the opposite side of the room. Sass reached a hand to her underwear and, sure enough, felt a sticky wetness, but she still felt a pressing urge to go to the outhouse. Confused, she slid out of bed and turned up the lantern light. She slipped into a pair of brogans by the door and stumbled, groggy, behind the cabin as the dogs whined after her and trotted behind.

Half a moon hung low in the sky, and tree frogs and crickets sang all around her as Sass opened the outhouse door. She hung the lantern on its hook and squatted, yawning big enough for her eyes to water. A horned owl’s hoot questioned outside—who, who, who, who-oooo?

“Just me, silly,” Sass whispered. She looked down at her underwear as she pulled them up and gasped. She’d have to wash them. A red stain of blood soaked them through. Panicked, she pulled up her dress and examined herself in the dim lantern light. It was all over her thighs and hands where she’d smeared it, all down the back of her dress. It didn’t hurt, but Sass stifled a cry. Had she cut herself? When? How? Then a sudden horrible thought: the rooster man. Had he somehow caused it? Sass lived on a farm and knew how babies were made, but there was more to it, she knew. You had to like boys first, like her sister Fern, or be married to one like her mama, and then somehow, blood came. Was that right? Somehow, it knew about how he’d come close and touched her. That must have been the signal for her body to start. Sass groaned, this crimson stain evidence of her shame. How could she hide this from Mama? It wasn’t like she had a drawer full of extra underwear, let alone a drawer itself.

She crept out of the outhouse, careful not to let the door squeak, and let the lantern and moon light the path to the barn. Once inside, she hung the lantern once more—Daddy had taught them young never to leave a lit lantern near bedding or hay—and spoke softly to the horses rustling the hay, their dozing interrupted.

“Sorry, Janie girl, I need to borry some water,” she said. Sass cast around for a bucket, and she tipped Jane’s water bucket into her own. That oughta be enough to wash with, she thought. Sass stripped off her underwear and squatted over the bucket to wash and rinse the blood out. She crumbled a bit of salt off the horses’ salt block to help ease the stain and ground it in with her fingers. Then, she pulled her dress over her head and used a ratty blanket that had been tossed over top of a saddle to cover herself while she scrubbed and rinsed the dress, trying to wet only the soiled spot. The horses hung their noses over the stall doors and whuffled puffs of breath at her. On the ground where she squatted, blood dripped into the hay. She couldn’t wash her things over and over all through the night. Sass bit her lip and pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, shivering in the chilly damp of the night. She fingered the edge of the old quilt and pulled a scythe from its peg on the barn wall. It didn’t take long to cut and tear several strips of the quilt. She wrapped one inside her underwear and pulled her wet garments back on, wincing as the cold fabric stuck to her skin, and retrieved the lantern to return to the house.

“Sass?” The voice came out of the dark, from the back corner of the barn, where bales of hay were stacked in neat rows. Sass nearly dropped the lantern when she jumped. “What’re you doing out here in the middle of the night?”