Ruby nodded, but Lady Mae knew it was an involuntary gesture from the lingering electricity. She wanted Ruby to say no, but she couldn’t speak. She wanted Ruby to change her mind, but she couldn’t think, her brain muddled and dim.

  8

  Lady Mae was late meeting Arbuckle that day; the surges she had hoped would help with Ruby’s amputation were not enough to keep the woman still. Though the leather straps were pulled as taut as possible without cutting into her skin, the woman’s hand shook and twitched when the blade touched the fourth finger of her left hand. Her mouth opened instinctively as she tried to scream with the first incision, but the electricity had made her weak and her moans, guttural and low, betrayed her earlier demeanor. When it was all said and done, Ruby had looked at Lady Mae. Her eyes, suffering and unclear, had held to Lady Mae’s face as she cauterized the cut and then wrapped it in cloth. Ruby stared at her as if trying to see something lying deep down in Lady Mae’s bones. What she’d said about her mother, about her—her mother had told her as much. Someday you’ll know, she’d said.

  This what you meant, Mama.

  Clear as day to me, my girl.

  As Lady Mae walked the crescent road toward the square, she saw Arbuckle up ahead sitting by himself on a bench. He was waiting for her even though she had told him to meet her in the square. She paused, smoothed her hair, and tucked the stray ends behind her ears. He had only one suitcase between his legs and looked in the direction of the courthouse. What would she say to him after all this time? That each time she’d dreamed of him it was nearly the same; the two of them standing in a field of nasturtium, the red petals brushing against their limbs? Would she say that she had held him still so as to not crush the tender leaves and stems, and that in doing so their lips came close enough to feel the heat of the other?

  Her throat seized as if it were trying to wrap itself around her loneliness, for she had not allowed herself to think of the emptiness his absence left in its wake. Because then what? He was gone then, and though she knew that he would return immediately at her words come back and why’d you go, she did not wish to be the thing for which he relented. She’d been angry for a long time; he’d left her, or so that was what she’d understood to be true after he’d gone. But since the fire, her anger had diminished. She was not surprised by this, but what she found, what was unaccounted for, was that the other feeling—the one she purposely hadn’t named—unraveled the tangled mass inside her just enough.

  Maybe I won’t need them no more, Mama.

  Careful what you let go of, my girl.

  “Arbuckle!” she called.

  His head turned in her direction, and when his eyes met hers, a relief washed over her so mightily that her legs went weak. Her heart leaped, and her stomach pitched. It was not just Arbuckle in front of her; it was her childhood, her own remains she thought long gone sitting and waiting for her. It was her own existence, and it burned her eyes bright. It was that she’d been there, and he hadn’t. It was what she saw that he knew but wouldn’t say directly. It was all of it, a deafening cyclone of madness that engulfed her there in the square in the late afternoon sun.

  They walked toward each other with trepidation, as if the other might disappear should they move too quickly. When they neared, their eyes took in the other’s. It was Arbuckle after all, the same boy that had watched her mother burn beside her. He was only slightly different—taller, more muscular. But the crease in his brow had remained, and though the scars from his father so long ago had faded, she could see them, knew which was from a fist, which from a glass bottle, a wooden beam. To Lady Mae he was as handsome as could be, more than she remembered. She put her hand to her stomach, took in a deep sip of breath. What would he think of her in the early evening light? Five and a half years ago, she’d been a child. Would he rustle her hair as he used to, tease her when she ran after the chickens? Perhaps he too had thought of her long into the dark night, remembering how their shoulders touched as they sat on the sofa, how close their hands remained during lessons.

  But then, as if they’d been doing it their whole lives, their arms found each other. They held each other tightly as if they were drowning, sinking down into the murky waters of memory. Lady Mae’s head fit just right into the curve of Arbuckle’s neck. They stood as one, pressed together by an unseen force, and when they pulled away from each other, they found themselves alone in the square, the hot wind blowing from the west and carrying with it the promise of rain.

  When their bodies broke from each other, Arbuckle cupped her chin in his hand, which was rough and warm. It had been years since she was touched in such a familial and loving way. Her eyes went hot, her teeth ground as she tried to stave off the welling sorrow working its way out of her. But it was of no use. The tears came, fell from her lids to the dust, and when she looked down, she saw the wet earth at the tips of her toes.

  “Lady Mae, what’s all this?” he asked as he brought his thumb to her cheek. “Thought you’d be mad at me.”

  “I was. I am.” She brought her forearm up to her face and wiped her cheeks with the rough fabric of her dress.

  “I know it.”

  Three birds circled overhead in a westward current. Their wings beat against blue sky, and Arbuckle looked up. He kept his palm on Lady Mae’s cheek, and while he stared after the birds, she studied his face. His lankiness was gone; he was a man, no longer a child under his father’s thumb. There was a tumble deep down, a knocking at her ribs; Arbuckle was back, and the fullness of it all nearly took her breath away.

  “Look at us,” Lady Mae said.

  “I’ll say.”

  “You look well.”

  “As do you. How high are them boots?”

  “Ain’t much. I grew is all.”

  “So you did, so you did.”

  “You as well.”

  He pushed up his sleeves to his elbows and dropped his eyes. “Well, I am newly twenty-five.”

  “That’d be right.”

  Their eyes held, squinting but not daring to blink. She was afraid to look elsewhere, as if even a momentary disappearance of his face would set her back nearly six years. How had she managed all this time? Bit by bit, cut by cut. In each she felt both a relief and an unrest—this was what she had to do to live. And that’s what her mother wanted. She assumed Arbuckle, too. So she had done it over and over again until it was like running her hands under cool water at the end of a day, both mechanical and necessary.

  “Well, what now?” Arbuckle asked.

  “Thought we’d go back to my shack. Unless—”

  “You ain’t got to go to the depot?”

  “I was already there. That’s why—”

  She cast her eyes toward the dusty earth and stared at the tips of her tattered boots, at the dirt lining the edges of her skirts, hoping that he did not notice the splatters of dried blood that could never come clean. A shame rose, knotted and lead-like.

  He ain’t going to understand, Mama.

  Not if you don’t give him a chance, my girl.

  “That’s why what?”

  “There was a woman, and she—”

  “Someone come at you?” Arbuckle asked. He brought his hand to her arm and squeezed it gently.

  “No. Ain’t no one lay a hand on me since the inheritance,” Lady Mae said.

  “They don’t need to lay hands on to hurt you.” In his eyes she saw the concern and for that she chastised herself. She did not want his pity.

  “I ain’t hurt.”

  Arbuckle said nothing in return, but she watched his chest rise with each breath, watched him work his jaw like he always had. She wanted to grab his arms, press into him the words you got your own lot and just as bad. He’d talked in his letters how things would be different once he was in charge at the cannery, but Lady Mae understood that not all things intended took hold, and not all that took hold was intended. Arbuckle would do what he’d need to do just as all the other residents had, including Lady Mae herself. But he was not made of the same mortar as the others; he had risen out of his own mother’s ashes with hope in his heart. And Lady Mae feared it would kill him dead.

  “Just wanted to tell you why I was late is all,” Lady Mae said.

  He didn’t believe her. She never could lie to him, but she didn’t want to have to explain—not there. There was Ruby’s talk of her mother, the Deputy on the telephone, and they both sprung in her a fear so mighty that though she tried, she could not push both back down into the bubbling mass.

  “This place changed much?” he asked.

  She knew what he wasn’t asking. She’d told him herself, the letter written and sent even before the timber stopped smoking. His father’s shack had caught fire and there had been no water to put it out. The flames were too hot to see if his father was still in there, but when it had burned to the ground, Wilson took a long pole and walking around the scorched perimeter, poked at the ash until he found bones. And so while Arbuckle did not mention his father, Lady Mae understood how the absence of an only parent, even if they’d been a monster, left a chasm that nothing could fill. He’d ask after his father when he was ready; perhaps when night came and they were safe in her shack together, she’d tell him about that night—what she’d heard about it at least—and say we both got ash now.

  “Want to go by it?” Lady Mae asked.

  “Don’t know,” he said and tucked his lower lip under his teeth.

  “I’ll come with if you want.”

  “It ain’t that.” He shook his head and looked down at the ground.

  “Then what?”

  Arbuckle then raised his head toward the hills, at the switch grass and salvias that still bloomed despite the heat. Although his face was turned away from her, she knew his eyes worried. His shoulders hunched, and he took his suitcase from one hand to the other.

  “Well, I’ve made up the cot for you. Let us just go on there,” she said. “Never you mind anything else.”

  “Sure did miss you,” he said.

  “I know it.”

  “What, you ain’t miss me?”

  “Stop messing. I did. Nice to be talking to someone else.”

  Lady Mae had not said what she meant; the truth, hidden behind words she had practiced and rehearsed and made sure gave nothing away, was there right at the edges. It simmered in her periphery, a longing so instinctual and prolonged, she felt as if it would swallow her up.

  There were few other residents out, but those that were walked hurriedly toward the square. Out of the corner of her eye, Lady Mae saw them turn their heads toward herself and Arbuckle as they passed. Perhaps they were afraid that when he took over at the cannery in just a few weeks’ time, it’d be just as bad as when his father ran it. Maybe worse. They would no doubt go back to their own shacks with the news of Arbuckle’s return and around their tables, the families would talk. Would he work them until they could stand no longer, until their knees buckled underneath them, their lips bloody and raw from the heat? Would their hands be blistered and peeling from the steam? When Arbuckle’s father had been in charge, the Deputies let him do anything he wanted as long as profit was involved. And despite the wretched human that he was, he did turn a profit. Not that the residents saw any of it. The Deputies kept from the residents what was rightly theirs, and instead sported new hats and shiny canes. Their chains glistened brightly in the sun. Their torches burned longer. The scaffold was sanded and scrubbed.

  Lady Mae and Arbuckle walked for several moments in silence; the earth, salty and dry, held them gently as they did. There was the sound of the horses’ hooves in gravelly dust, her skirts flapping in the wind, the squeak of the suitcase’s handle as Arbuckle shifted it from one hand to the other. There was so much she meant to tell him, but all she could do was count how many footsteps were in stride with each, telling herself that if she got to twenty he’d stay for good.

  “Been this hot long?” Arbuckle asked.

  “Since the solstice. Storm’s coming, though.”

  She licked her index finger and held it up to the sky. The wind blew against the pad of her finger, and she squinted to better see up toward the mountain ridge.

  “There,” she said and pointed above the white specked peak. “It’s just on the other side. See them clouds?”

  “When’d you learn about them clouds?” he asked. He took her hand in his; it was not the first time in her life that he’d made such gesture, but as she absorbed his warmth and strength she became aware of her body, of her heart leaping quick and untethered. It’d been so long since anyone had touched her, and in that moment there on the crescent road not fifty paces from the square she felt the weight of the absence as if for the first time. Her eyes stung and she grit her teeth together; she did not want to give into it there, did not want Arbuckle or any other resident to witness her weakness, gray and muddy and thick as hide.

  Lady Mae had long dreamed of their reunion—she’d planned what she’d say, how he might answer, where the words they spoke to each other might take them. The thing, the weighty question that burned at the edges—how could she ask that? What would he say to the why and how and could you that she so desperately needed to know? She’d resolved that morning that she’d ask, that she couldn’t move beyond anything without an answer. And so in a clear voice she asked, “Why’d you leave?”

  Arbuckle sucked in a breath, but did not immediately speak. Instead, his mouth twisted as though to not let the words out. She pulled at his hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “You can tell me.”

  “Don’t reckon I can say, exactly.”

  “What’d he do to you? Before you left?” She asked this gently and brought her other hand to his arm.

  “Ain’t nothing he hadn’t done before.”

  “They said it sounded like murder.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Ruby Swanson, Wilson. Overheard them a few days after you’d gone.”

  “What’d they say?” Arbuckle asked. Behind his voice was both a curiosity and a disdain that surely pulled at him; he did not wish to know what was said of him for he had spent his life trying to unhear the torment into which he had been born.

  “That the hollering bounded all through the settlement.”

  “I suppose it must’ve.”

  “When you got to the edge—them Deputies didn’t try to stop you?” asked Lady Mae.

  “No, they did not.”

  “So they just let you go?”

  “Aye. Said I still had my lot and to not go getting any fancy ideas.”

  “You could’ve waited—could’ve told me you was going to leave.”

  She didn’t mean to say it so sudden and accusatory-like, but she had, and now it was done. She had not said the words why did you and all alone, but she might as well have. His absence all this time—had it mattered to him as well? Did he feel the suffocating void of her as she did him? He would not think her foolish, though.

  “Been lonely around here,” she admitted. Doing so surprised her, and it was as if she wasn’t even herself. But still she could not help but let the truth fall from her lips.

  “Up there, too.”

  “We’re here now, though.”

  “So we are.”

  Arbuckle lifted her hand and brought it to his chest. She heard birds call from above, their song floating down around them, and felt his heart through his thin shirt. The wind shifted and kicked up the dust around them. Arbuckle took his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to his mouth and nose.

  “You know I been meaning to say,” he said through the fabric. She looked up at his face, at the lines that had appeared near his eyes. She opened her mouth to say you came back and didn’t never think and all them prayers. But the wind carried with it a clamor of voices that came from the direction of the scaffold. They dropped their hands and peered toward the end of the road.

  “Let’s go,” Lady Mae said and turned on her heels. “We can take the hill path.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  As she tried to pull him away, she heard clearly the chanting, the low calls, beastly and berating. “Come on, Arbuckle. Ain’t nothing for us over there.”

  “Seems like something,” he said.

  It was Saturday—market day. It had slipped her mind what with the preparations of Arbuckle’s arrival and then Ruby’s alarming demeanor. She never went to town on market day if she could avoid it. She’d told Arbuckle why in her letters, but she’d mentioned it only briefly and without opinion as she worried the Deputies would read her letters and disallow the correspondence. Outcries—that’s what they called what happened on the scaffold most market days. Residents that were beyond the butcher’s hand, their crime blasphemy.

  “Go on now,” she said, and elbowed him to the side. “We don’t want to be there.” But his legs were longer, his gait wider, and so he strode out in front of Lady Mae to get a better look. “Arbuckle,” she said over and over again. “Don’t you remember? I told you in the letters how—”

  Lady Mae’s explanation, her pleading, was drowned out by a large roar that erupted from the square. A throng of residents had converged across from the courthouse—it looked like nearly everyone in the settlement was there. Arbuckle grabbed her hand and pulled Lady Mae toward the back of the group. They could not get closer, but Lady Mae saw the shape of a Deputy up on the scaffold, a steel megaphone in his right hand. The residents, who stood dozens deep, pushed up against the wooden steps and platform, their arms spreading across the beams, touching and writhing as though they were snakes in a pit. Many had children on their shoulders. Some of the women sobbed, others raised their fists and punched the air.

  The residents stared at the two of them as they walked along the edge of the crowd. Arbuckle was back, and that girl was next to him. The two of them joined at the hip as anyone could be. But Lady Mae noticed the difference between a blink and a shift of the eyes, the rigidity of the residents’ bodies as they drew near; they were not welcome there despite the expectation that all residents attend the outcries.

 

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