up to her elbows in steaming water, scrubbing clothes up-and-down over the rub board in front of her. The girl did not say a word as she stood in the cold air, a slight mist of steam rising from the washtub before her, and that made Deborah only angrier, even as she prayed again, for the innumerable time, for the patience to deal with the girl.
Janson had been back in Eason County for a little over a month now, having brought this one back with him after almost a year’s absence from his family and home—Lord, but Deborah had been surprised to see the sort of girl Janson had taken to wife, with her bobbed-off hair and her short skirts, and—heaven help them both—she had already been with child when Janson married her. Deborah still did not know what to make of this Elise Whitley, except that she was a spoiled child who had never done a day’s work in all her life. Deborah had no idea what sort of marriage this was going to be, since the girl had never cooked or cleaned or sewed or made a bed even once in her life for all anyone could tell of her. She had burned so many pans of biscuits and cornbread over the past month that Deborah had worried she would set the house ablaze over their heads if not kept away from the stove—Elise was never going to be able to keep house on her own, Deborah was certain of that, if Janson kept to this fool’s plan he had announced to them only this morning. She had known something was coming, had felt it, over the past weeks as Janson had gone about the work that Tom and Wayne had found for him to do about the place—he had only been waiting, finishing up chores he knew would be easier for a younger man to do, even though she realized now that he had known all along that it had many times been make-work that had been given him.
She stared now at this girl through the haze of woodsmoke that came from beneath the black pot of boiling clothes nearby, setting her lips for a moment, then snapping: “You’re gonna rub a hole in that shirt. If it ain’t clean enough already, put it back int’ th’ pot t’ boil some more.”
The girl stopped rubbing the shirt, dunked it back into the wash tub, and reached in for another piece of laundry, coming up with what looked to be the same shirt again, which she then set about scrubbing vigorously on the board. Deborah sighed, exasperated, and reached to sling the wash she had been beating into the girl’s tub as well, surprised when Elise only paused for a moment, then went back to rubbing the shirt without saying a word. Heaven help me, Deborah prayed silently, asking God to make her not dislike the girl so much, even as she knew that her own feelings stood in the way of any intercession from the Almighty, for she could find very little even likeable within the girl. Henry and Nell would have been surprised to have seen this little piece of baggage their son had wed, even more surprised to have seen what she had brought him to—Janson working in a cotton mill, Janson working in town, for the very people who had—
Lord, give me strength—first to find out the girl was already with child, then her absolute incompetence at anything wife-like, then, to seal forever what would probably be Deborah’s unending dislike of her, the girl had burst into tears when Deborah had told her she would be the one to midwife her child at its birth. Elise had thrown herself on her bed and cried until Janson had promised her a doctor to bring the baby—a doctor, when money was so precious; a doctor, when Deborah had helped bring into the world more babies than anyone else in this county, when she had brought Janson himself into the world, and now she was not good enough for—
Deborah slung a new handful of wash onto the battling block and began to beat it even harder than necessary with the stick, considering the girl’s figure, too flat-chested and still too skinny, even though she was already beginning to show with child. She was a pretty little thing, Deborah had to grant her that much, and she could see how Janson might have been attracted to her, with her reddish-gold hair and blue eyes, but Deborah would never have thought it possible that he would have had his head turned to such a degree by this sort of girl, so modern, not at all the sort of girl he had been raised to marry. She had even allowed herself the worry that the child the girl carried might not be Janson’s—but she had voiced that concern to no one but Tom, and then only in the privacy of their bed in the night. Tom had told her to hush her mouth, that Elise seemed a good girl, and that Janson loved her dearly. Tom believed the girl loved Janson as well—men could be such gullible fools about some things, Deborah told herself. Such gullible fools.
She heard the front door of the house open and close, and a man’s footsteps on the porch, and then descending the steps toward the yard. A moment later Janson walked around the edge of the house, coming toward them where they worked in the side yard. He was dressed neatly in his best dungarees and a work shirt that was neatly pressed, though worn and frayed both at the cuffs and neck. His shoes were knotted together at the strings and slung over one shoulder, and his worn coat was in his hands as he walked to where his wife stood working at the washtub.
Elise had paused in her work and was staring at him, a look on her face that Deborah had not seen there before. Janson stopped before her and dropped his shoes to the ground, then took his coat and wrapped it about her shoulders. “You ought not be out here workin’,” he said quietly, but still she did not say anything. He turned to Deborah instead. “Gran’ma, she ought not be out here in the cold with her sleeves rolled to her elbows an’ her hands in that water. With th’ baby an’ all, she ought t’ be inside.”
Deborah looked at the girl and actually felt a twinge of guilt, realizing she had been working her so hard simply due to her own anger. She herself had worked harder than this throughout each of her own pregnancies, but this girl was not accustomed to such work, to any work at all, and Deborah had known that.
“I’m all right,” Elise said at last, drying her hands on the too-big apron Deborah had given her to wear, and then reaching back to take Janson’s coat from her shoulders and hold it up for him to slip it on. Janson’s hands closed over hers instead as she held the coat for him, and he looked down at her for a moment.
“I’ll be back soon as I can,” he said. “Don’t be worried if it’s late.”
“I won’t be. I just hope someone will stop to give you a ride into town, so you don’t have to walk so far.”
“Somebody probably will. If not, I’ll walk it; I’ve done it before.”
She nodded, and after a moment he drew her closer, holding her against him as his mouth came to hers. Deborah cleared her throat self-consciously, and, after a moment they separated, Janson finally moving to allow her to help him with his coat, and then turning back to look at her again.
“You go in an’ rest in a little while, you hear me?” he told her, and she nodded. He glanced at his grandmother for a moment, but did not say anything more, then he turned to look about the yard, toward the sharecropped house one more time, toward the fields where the dry cotton plants had recently been turned under, his eyes moving over the red land in a way that Deborah had so often seen before. For a moment he looked torn. There was a longing in him that she could almost feel—and then it was gone.
He straightened his back and turned his eyes toward his wife again, a brief smile touching his lips as he looked at her one last time before taking up his shoes and starting toward the road that would take him into town and away from the only kind of life he had known throughout his twenty years. Deborah watched him go, seeing him turn back to wave toward them before the rise of the land could cut off sight of the house behind him. She saw the girl wave in return, but Deborah did not. She could only turn back to her work, thinking of the years her son Henry had spent in that cotton mill, and of how often she had heard him swear that his son would have a better life.
Walter Eason sat in his office at the mill that morning, listening to the words of his son, Walt, but his eyes never left the hands folded neatly atop the massive oak desk, his own hands—his knuckles were large, his fingers long and tapering. Dark veins stood out along the backs of both hands; his nails were neatly groomed. Here and there were signs of his seventy-plus years, but the aging did not bother him. His hands were steadier still than many a younger man’s;
