“You talking about them—”

  “I am.”

  “Arbuckle, hush! Ought to know better than to go around saying things like that.” Lady Mae twisted her body around, parted the curtains ever so slightly, and looked out of the window. The sky, now a dark brown, was thick with dust. Tall grasses in front of the shack bent and whipped in the strong wind.

  Arbuckle looked out the window, too. They sat there silently listening to the whistling cracks and creaking roof, to the hatch door banging against the side of the coop.

  “Lady Mae… what if it could be different?”

  “Different how?” she asked and turned from the window to look him squarely in the eyes.

  “What if there weren’t no laws that said how you had to go about things?” he asked her.

  “You talking about atonements?”

  “Not just. What if,” he said and stood up. He rubbed his hands together and then put them on his hips. “What if instead of coming up with how many atonements to give, the residents thought of the reasons why they should forgive someone?”

  “Arbuckle!”

  “Just a question is all.” He paced back and forth as he did when he was onto something. “Ain’t nothing wrong with wanting to forgive someone.”

  “Sure is when doing so undoes a law.” But the words felt strange rolling off her tongue.

  Arbuckle stopped in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders softly. She could see him grinding his teeth, working his jaw in a fit of restraint, but try as he would he could not contain such treacherous thoughts. “What’s to say the law’s the right thing?”

  “The Deputies say is what.” She lifted up her hands and slowly took his off her shoulders, but she did not let go of them. She held them fast, desperately. What Arbuckle was saying wasn’t allowed; that much she understood. But it weren’t wrong, neither, and with that she knew not what to do.

  “What’s to say they’re right?” he asked her, taking her hand and rubbing the skin between her thumb and forefinger. He pressed it softly, and she felt a pinch, a sting at her temple.

  “You want to say they’re wrong?” she asked, pulling her hands away. “Get you skinned for sure.”

  Arbuckle crossed his arms. He looked down at her from above, and she searched his eyes for the intention that she knew was inside. He couldn’t help himself no more than his father, no more than her mother or herself. It was in him and she knew it and it was all she could do to not let the anger burn her up. You could’ve steered him, Mama.

  “Can’t skin us all,” he said.

  5

  That evening Lady Mae sat on the sofa and waited for her mother to return home from the depot. After Arbuckle had left, she’d put up the chickens; the storm was nearly upon them, and the muddy sky sagged thick with wet. The rains would be swift and dangerous, and they couldn’t afford to lose any more hens. Lady Mae closed up the coop, and as she did she thought of her mother’s meddling, of Arbuckle’s honesty, of the way her own hands felt in his. I ain’t no child no more, Mama.

  Her mother did not often anger her. Her voice was honey, her firm hand cradling. Perhaps what Lady Mae felt was not anger at all, but in any case she aimed to say something when her mother came home. She thought suddenly of her mother’s dress, of what might be lurking in other pockets. She looked down at her own hands, curling her fingers one at a time inside of her palm; would she miss them if they were gone? When her mother saw what Lady Mae had found on the ground—the fingertip—she had told her daughter that some residents wished to keep what they’d lost. True, some took their amputations home with them in a small glass case or even a satchel; did it help them to still have the tips and toes near, to be able to glance at them now and then? Maybe those residents kept their parts in a jar or bucket, tucked away behind their medicine cabinet or in their cellar. Or maybe they tied them to a string and brought them out once a year on the anniversary of their atonement to remind themselves that they survived. Others tore out of the chair without thinking—her mother had said it were the toughest of the settlement that ran the fastest.

  But why had the fingertip been in her mother’s pocket and not with the offal behind the depot? Her mother had patted her pocket as she said it, as though there were more bits and pieces than the one Lady Mae found. It wasn’t like her to forget, though Lady Mae did see the distraction that hovered behind her mother’s worried eyes. And while she had received the telegram weeks before regarding her upcoming obligations, that morning had been the first time her mother had mentioned the inheritance aloud. Lady Mae relaxed her fingers and felt something swirl inside of her.

  The oil in the lamp next to her burned steadily in the falling light. She stared out the window, stared until her eyes went foggy and dry and thought of how she should’ve told Arbuckle her misgivings. Then, there, something moved in the distance, far down the road.

  Squinting, she saw the shadowy shape of her mother grow as she came up the road. She was walking quickly, her arms swinging long as if scooping the air would get her home faster. The back edge of her dress billowed behind her, and Lady Mae saw the dust still sparkling in the twilight. She got up to fold the quilt that had fallen off the back of the sofa and saw then her mother break into a run, holding her kit of tools close to her chest. Lady Mae watched, confused, as her mother twisted her head to look behind her, stumbling and falling to the gravel road, her arms spread wide and her kit spilling open in front of her. Scrambling to collect her instruments, she climbed to her knees and shoved them back into her kit. She ran again, faster than before, and Lady Mae heard through the open window her mother shouting, her voice rising above the call of the cicadas. But she was too far away to make out clearly what she was saying.

  Lady Mae had planned on demanding answers in regards to her conversation with Arbuckle, but a sickly feeling gave rise in her throat, and she found herself stepping backward into the dark corner of the room holding her great-grandmother’s quilt in her arms. What’s gonna happen, Mama? The clock ticked and her mother’s voice grew louder and louder until the door burst open and the flame on the lamp went out from the gust of wind. Leaves scattered, their dried stems and tips scraping the wood floor as they tumbled inside.

  Her mother slammed the door behind her and stood facing it, her head down and her hands on the latch. She hadn’t seen Lady Mae, and though she stood like that for only a moment, she was rock still, her breathing rapid.

  “Mama?”

  Her mother spun around and backed up against the door, leaving one hand on the latch. “Go on. Get supper on,” she ordered.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Go on now, in the kitchen.”

  Lady Mae did as she was told and turned to rush into the kitchen. But as she neared the doorframe she heard her mother’s voice call after her.

  “He was a child. Just a child. Six years old. When I tied the tourniquet, I had to wrap it four times around.”

  Lady Mae stood in the space between the living room and kitchen. She could not figure what her mother was saying, not exactly. But her mother’s voice had trembled, and there even in the falling light of the day, her mother’s sorrowful shoulders sagged and shook, her body engulfed in sadness.

  “What’d he done?”

  “Don’t know. I just read the statement.”

  “Didn’t it say nothing? Didn’t it give an explanation?”

  She wanted badly for her mother to say the boy deserved it; that he had murdered or destroyed or tormented. Instead, all her mother said was, “It don’t work like that. Statement just gives directives, that’s all.”

  “And what were they?”

  “Four atonements.”

  “For a child?”

  “Don’t matter big or small.”

  “What’d he chose?”

  Her mother didn’t reply right away. Instead she leaned toward the window, quickly looked out, her eyes scanning the road and then the room before turning back to Lady Mae. She kept her hand on the latch.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “What do you mean you couldn’t do it?”

  “I couldn’t do it. Didn’t do it. Sent him home, packed up my things, and came back here.”

  They spoke back and forth in the dark now. Just the other day they had talked about her inheritance, but Lady Mae had not asked what would happen if the resident committing the crime was the butcher. It had occurred to her, though, and she had often wondered in the thick, black night if she could just say no. But she never broached the subject as doing so would tell her mother all she needed to know. Lady Mae didn’t want to add to her mother’s worry that she carried inside, and so she said nothing. She had kept it hidden and secret all this time, a burning, torturous question to which her mother held the answer. Now, in the living room, Lady Mae held her great-grandmother’s quilt in her arms and finally understood. You said we all got to obey, Mama.

  Lady Mae rubbed her fingertip against her thumb, pressing the nail into the skin to keep the fear that she first felt in her feet from creeping up her legs into her heart. “Mama?”

  Her mother bent her head toward the window once again. Lady Mae approached her, finding solace in her mother’s physical presence. Arbuckle was right: her mother would protect her from whatever she was waiting for. She looked past her mother’s head out the window, toward the empty road and the fog that lay high enough to see where it started, a divide suspended just above the ground.

  “Mama, what’s going to happen?”

  Her mother stepped away from the door and took the quilt from her daughter’s hands. She folded it and draped it across the back of the sofa. Then she turned and embraced her daughter before pulling away and holding her hands to Lady Mae’s hot cheeks. “Listen to what I say exactly, and please do not fear.”

  She took her daughter’s chin in the tips of her fingers. “I am not afraid. Look at me,” she said when her daughter’s eyes fell to the floor, tugging her face up to her own. “There are laws, and they will come. Soon. And there’s nothing you nor I can do; it is already done and was done the moment I dropped that little boy’s hand and untied the tourniquet. It was done long ago, I suppose, before you was even you.”

  “What are you saying? You going to jail?”

  “My girl, I ain’t going nowhere.”

  She sat down. Patting the sofa seat so that her daughter might sit next to her, she wept openly and without abash. She held her arms out into which Lady Mae threw herself, pulling her mother in close enough to feel the racing of her heart.

  “You going to be alright,” her mother said. “We’ll be just fine.”

  “What’re they going to do you?”

  Her mother gently smiled and smoothed back Lady Mae’s hair, brushing it back off her shoulders and twisting curls around her fingers. “Don’t much know.”

  “You’ve got to know something! Can’t you remember the law?”

  “Not any more than you, but I’ll try if it’ll calm you.” She closed her eyes. “Seems I remember there being a penalty of some kind… a fine of some sort, or perhaps they’ll take me to the square.”

  “For what? An outcry?”

  “As an example. Try to shame me, us, our way. Even though it is the way the Deputies gave us long ago. Don’t reckon it’ll be that bad.”

  “But can’t you just explain yourself? Can’t you bring the boy back and give him his atonements? Just tell them you made a mistake, that you thought you had the wrong boy.”

  “It won’t matter to them. Besides, don’t reckon I made a mistake.” She looked out the window again. They saw it at the same time: a small dot of light glowing in the distance. That ain’t the only thing that burns, Mama. Lady Mae and her mother watched in silence as it grew brighter, bobbing up and down with each of the Deputies’ steps. Had they opened the window, they might have been able to hear the boots grind in the gravel as they neared the house.

  “What do you mean you didn’t make a mistake?”

  “I mean that sometimes one’s got to do the wrong thing for the right reason.”

  Her mother took her daughter by the hands and pressed them to her own knees, which were thin and hard through her skirts. “Look at me now,” she said to her daughter.

  But Lady Mae could not look at her mother because to look at her would be to know what she had always known to be true deep down. It would be to see clearly what she knew lay behind her mother’s kind eyes and tarnished hands.

  “I ain’t in the habit of telling you how to live your life, but I done been wrong about one thing I reckon.”

  “What? You ain’t been wrong about nothing.”

  “Taught you that you ain’t got no choice. Said I didn’t have no choice, neither. About being the butcher.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “True, it’s our lineage—ain’t no denying that. My mama, her mama, her mama before. All them women, all those years of standing by the chair. Never asking a single question.”

  Lady Mae wanted to ask her mother what she meant, what she was trying to say through the words that came rushing out like flooded waters. And none of it will save you, Mama. She felt herself barely able to breathe, to come up for air as she saw in her mother’s face a calm she had not seen before.

  “But that’s not all that’s true, my girl.”

  There were voices now, clear shouts and yells to come out, we just want to talk, you know the laws. Lady Mae’s mother gripped her daughter tight. They stood, facing each other, hands in hands, and Lady Mae saw out of the corner of her eye a Deputy light a torch. They were nearly at the door.

  “We all got a choice. I had one, but I chose to ignore it. To bury it down and use the laws as my cover.”

  “What kind of choice?”

  Her mother’s hands were cool and soft in her own. Lady Mae felt the fierce squeeze, the fingertips on her knuckles, as though her mother was trying to memorize her daughter’s bones. The torchlight grew, and their shadows bounced off the wall of the living room, quivering, flickering.

  “But I’d told you. That what I hear when they’re in the chair, well, they ain’t wrong. Comes from a deep place, not one I reckon the Deputies could even know about.”

  There was the sound of a fist on wood. One two three it rapped, knocked, banged on the door. The planks on the shack’s porch creaked under the weight of the Deputies. Their boots clacked, their tall hats illuminated by the torchlight. Lady Mae’s mother grabbed her daughter and pulled her into the kitchen.

  “We just want to talk,” called a Deputy through the thin wood of the door. “Just got a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

  “Mama? They just want to talk. I don’t think—”

  “Lady Mae: if we all started forgiving one another, then what would be the purpose of the Deputies? If there weren’t no crimes for the law to uphold?”

  “We going to give you to the count of three to open this door,” a Deputy called from outside. “No need to make this difficult.”

  Lady Mae heard three more pounds on the door. Then there was an axe through the door and the splitting of wood and the voices of the men. The first one to enter was Deputy Daniels, and he held the torch above his head. The shadows danced on his aged face. The light bore into Lady Mae’s eyes as she struggled to get the words what you done and don’t go Mama out of her mouth. But they were too sticky and thick to jump from her tongue. The three other Deputies of the settlement snaked in around Lady Mae’s mother and encircled her, behind them a new, unfamiliar Deputy. He walked in slowly, in his hands a club, and sucked his teeth. His skin glistened, his stomach hung low over his belt. This was the one from Settlement Six—the one her mother had said was on his way months ago—but he did not seem to be in charge. No, although each Deputy held in hands a rope or a club or a chain, they waited for Deputy Daniels to speak.

  “Winona, we need to ask you a few questions,” said Deputy Daniels.

  “I got nothing to say to none of you.” Her arms hung at her sides, but Lady Mae saw her mother’s gentle, small hands curl up into fists there in the glowing dark.

  “Stands to seem you do. Least you need to explain yourself.”

  Her mother stood a meter from Lady Mae, her back to her daughter. Lady Mae wanted to reach out, grab her shoulders with both of her hands, and drag her backward into the kitchen, out the door, and beyond the settlement’s edge. But all she could do was stand there, her feet in mud, and watch.

  “I ain’t butchering no child.”

  “You know your lot, Winona.”

  “What I know is that was just a boy. He ain’t done nothing nobody else in his position wouldn’t have done. He ought to be absolved.”

  “And you ought to know forgiveness by your own right is against the law.”

  “I don’t much care for the law no more.”

  The chains scraped on the wooden floor, and the torches crackled in the stillness of the room. Three of the Deputies stared at her mother, but the fourth, the fat man Lady Mae had never seen before, stared past her mother at her, his black eyes narrowed and eager.

  “Is that so?” Deputy Daniels asked.

  “It is,” replied her mother.

  “I reckon it’s your job to care.”

  “So you say.”

  “Anything less is, is—” he said, turning to the other Deputies. “That there’s blasphemy, now ain’t it?”

  “Ain’t saying nothing that everyone don’t already believe.”

  “And what,” Deputy Daniels, ignoring Lady Mae’s mother, asked the other men in the room, “is the punishment for that?”

  The unfamiliar Deputy spoke, his voice throaty and excited. “Judgment before the settlement.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21