upper lip as he began to tremble—there was the sudden strong smell of urine, and Janson realized with disgust that the man’s bladder had voided itself. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kill Buddy Eason. Nothing more than to—
He slowly forced himself to his feet, weaving slightly as a wave of light-headedness hit him. Pain throbbed through his right shoulder, a sick feeling in the back of his throat—but he tossed the knife away, and then stood staring down at Buddy Eason where the man lay on the brick floor at his feet, seeing Buddy begin to shake with rage, with fury that Janson had fought and whipped him, and even that he had let him live. Then he turned his eyes toward Lecia Mae where she sat in the open doorway of the touring car, her words stilled now, her eyes never once leaving his face, her hands not attempting to pull down her skirt—he stared at her for a moment longer, then turned and walked away, through the open archways of the coach house and out into the clean summer air, one hand pressed to his bleeding right shoulder.
For a long time he could hear Buddy Eason’s voice yelling after him as he walked away, the same words, over and over again. “I’m gonna kill you, you red-Injun’ nigger! One day, somehow, I’m gonna kill you!”
But Janson Sanders never once looked back.
He never knew exactly how he got home that day, just that someone stopped and picked him up, gave him a ride—how he swore to himself over and over on that trip home that he would never go into town again, never trust another fancied-up modern woman, never risk losing his life for—
His mind was muddled by the time he reached home. There were confused thoughts about the land, about his home, about fields green with plants, white with cotton—then one last clear image as he stumbled from the car, his mother seeing him, dropping the clean wash she had been hanging on the line, running toward him as he stumbled and fell. Then there was only darkness.
The house was quiet those hours later as Nell Sanders sat by the side of the old rope bed in the back bedroom of her home, the softness of her son’s breathing the only sound to be heard in the quiet around her. Dawn would not be long in coming, but sleep was still very far away—she had been sitting here for hours now, throughout the night, just watching as Janson slept, listening to the sound of his breathing, as she had done on so many nights when he had been little more than a baby. Henry sat on the bare wood floor at her feet, much the same as he had done over thirty years before when they had been young together and courting, his hand holding hers, resting on the arm of the rocker, his eyes on their son as well—there had been no sleep that night for either of them, only worry, concern, and prayer, for Janson was their only son, the only child they had given life to, and he had been so badly hurt.
When Janson had arrived home those hours earlier, had gotten out of the car, his face paling beneath the sunburn, the blood soaking his shirt and hands, his steps staggering, Nell had thought her heart would stop within her. She could remember running toward him, catching him somehow as he fell, though she was small and slight and the top of her head did not even reach his shoulders—she knew she must have screamed for Henry, for he had been suddenly there, taking the boy up in his arms and carrying him toward the house, laying him on the old rope bed in the back bedroom, then running out again a moment later, through the pine woods and toward his parents’ home, for they had been unable to stop the bleeding, no matter what they had done.
It had seemed an eternity later when Henry had returned to the house with his mother, an eternity in which Nell had thought she would see her son bleed to death there on that old bed, an eternity in which she watched blood soak into the clean petticoat she pressed to the wound, and into the sheet and linens on the bed, an eternity in which she prayed for sight of her husband and her mother-in-law. Deborah Sanders had not even spoken a word as she had come into the house and to the bed of her grandson, but her presence alone had helped to calm Nell’s fears, for Nell had seen her stop blood so many times before, had seen her draw fire, and cure thrush.
Henry’s mother slept in the next room even now, near in case she should be needed through the night. She said Janson would be all right, that he would live, and that his shoulder would heal, but still there could be no sleep that night for Henry or for Nell. Janson was their only child, and he was all that mattered to either of them, other than each other.
Nell sat now, staring at her son’s worn and calloused hands, a farmer’s hands, where they lay at rest on the pieced quilt, remembering the tiny fingers and toes she had counted and touched those eighteen years before when her body had still hurt even too much to move. She looked at his face, seeing Henry there as well as herself, even with the green eyes now closed in sleep—how they had wanted a child, children; but there had been over thirteen years of wanting and prayer before this one had come. So many nights they had held each other and prayed, wanting to give each other a large family, sons and daughters to share the years ahead, but for so long there had been only the two of them, and they had been happy in each other alone—and then this miracle had come, a child, a son, and their world had been complete. They had the land; they had each other, and they had a son—what more could any man or woman want.
She looked at Henry now, watched him, though his eyes never once left the sleeping young man on the bed, noticing again the white that now liberally streaked the reddish-brown hair she had known for so many years. He would soon be fifty-seven, and she was now already forty-six, but his face seemed just as handsome now, just as loved, as it had on that first day she had ever met him, and she loved him even more—could that really have been almost thirty-two years before. Thirty-two years, over two-thirds of her life, and it seemed now as if it had been only a day.
She had not even been fifteen then, newly come to Alabama with her father because of a job he had been promised in Eason County. Until then she had spent her entire life on the Qualla Boundary reservation of the Cherokee people in North Carolina, very sheltered, over-protected, and greatly loved by a father who had been widowed at her birth. It was only the second time she had ever been away from home, the first having been the few months she had spent at the boarding school on the reservation, the few months that were still marked in her mind by having had her mouth washed out with soap for speaking her native Cherokee and not English—and then her father had died as well, in an accident within days of coming to Eason County, leaving her alone in a place of strangers, where there was not one other person with a face or heritage as her own.
She had been living with a farm family there in Eason County, tending their children, earning the money she would need to return home—and learning the meaning of cruelty for the first time in her less than fifteen years, hearing words she had never thought would be said to her, words spoken by the decent, good folk of the County, people who knew nothing of her, or of the people she had come from, words said simply because her skin was darker, and her heritage different from their own. Many of the people in the church the family attended had been kind to her, accepting her into their homes, looking after her until she could go home again to grandparents and an aunt who would take her in—and it had been at that church that she had met Henry.
He had been staring at her, staring at her long and hard until she could feel it and turned to look at him—but he did not look away, as did so many of the people who stared at her only because they had never seen a person of Cherokee heritage before. He only continued to stare, making her both nervous and at the same time happy, for she had never been stared at by a man so handsome before, so tall, or so good looking.
As soon as church was over, she had wondered who she might ask to find out who he was, and if it were even proper to make such an inquiry—but he had walked up to her before she could do anything, finding her waiting on the church steps for the Parker family, whose children she was tending. He had apologized for staring, had told her his name, and had asked her own. She had thought he might ask to call on her before he walked away that day, thinking that might have been why he had been staring, but had been disappointed as he had tipped his hat to her, and then had left her standing there.
That
