A Slant of Light Read online

  August sat a moment longer, looking at the judge, who stood unmoved, smiling after Hopeton, his eyes dark and bright as stones of night. Then August flicked the reins and the team moved forward. They passed the wagon, the old hay fouled with blood. He studied the mule, which stood with its head up, ears pricked high, seeming to also watch as his master was hauled up the steps and then went out of sight in the dark behind the doors.

  “Let’s see how your brother is.” He clucked the horses up into the still-bright morning.

  Three

  Harlan slept the whole ride home and much of the afternoon. August guessed Dr. Ogden had drugged him and decided that wasn’t a bad thing. By the time Becca and August got the boy into bed and settled, August’s cousin Marsh was already out mowing the first of his hayfields with his sickle-bar mower. August hitched his own and by milking time they had that field and half of another down in broad swathes. Marsh rode home, leaving August to clatter into his own yard to find Harlan Davis sitting in a straight-back chair on the porch. Harlan made his way down into the yard, where he helped unhook the team. The bruise around his eye was even darker but the eye was clear and the lump above his ear stood through his hair.

  August called, from the near side of the team, “Don’t you be doing that.”

  “I reckon I can. I got a bump on the head is all.”

  “Don’t rush things. You’ve been through a rough patch.”

  “I’m not the only one. Is there any news of Mr. Hopeton?”

  “Your sister and I saw him brought in this morning, on our way to get you.”

  “You did?”

  “Indeed. It was not a pretty sight but he appeared hale enough. You go back up to the house now and let me get my work done. There’s time to talk this evening.”

  The team was free of the machine and August drove them off to the barn, where he had to feed and milk. He felt Harlan’s eyes upon him but did not look back.

  Later they sat together and ate supper: an old hen Becca had quartered, battered and fried in lard, along with shelled peas and yellow snap beans, radishes and scallions dipped in salt, red chard boiled with salt pork, lettuces drizzled with sour cream and cider vinegar, and beaten biscuits pulled hot from the oven, with butter and honey. After, with coffee, a strawberry pie. He admired her industry after such a day, knew she was not only reminding him she was capable but also feeding her brother.

  Once the plates were cleared and all were sipping coffee, Harlan said, “Mr. Swartout, I’m awful grateful for what you done for my sister here, these years. And also for taking me in, in my hour of need. I’ll make it worth your while and be out of your hair first chance I get.”

  August rose and went to the high shelf over the mantle where he kept the tin box, took out a new cheroot, struck fire to it and blew smoke into the late light of the day, and said, “You landed here for reasons beyond your sister working for me. I can’t tell what those are because I don’t know em yet, anymore than you do. But they will come clear. Patience, is what I’m saying, Harlan Davis. Patience and welcome.”

  Harlan said, “Seems the first thing is to learn what to do for Mr. Hopeton. His farm.”

  “I’d guess nothing at the moment. The law will be all wrapped up with that place. I’d hazard a lawyer will be along to speak with you at some point. Perhaps the judge. I don’t know.”

  “Amos Wheeler was a evil man. People need to know that much.” Then he said, “I’m not in any trouble, am I?”

  “I’d think not, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are. There will be questions about why you stuck it out so long at Hopeton’s, though.”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “I’m certain you did.”

  Harlan stood and went to the Dutch door and looked out upon the falling dusk of the yard. Then turned and said, “I believe I need to try and see Mr. Hopeton. If they’ll let me. I’ll talk to the judge, if that’s what it takes.”

  August considered this, all the way around. Then said, “I take my butter to the landing at the Four Corners the morning after next. You could catch that boat to town and the mail boat or the noon boat back. I’d go along if I could, to sit with you and the judge, to help remember what was said. But I can’t. I got hay down.”

  Harlan said, “I know you do. And I’ll get back quick as I can to help with it. I will.”

  August said, wanting to lessen the weight upon the boy, “You’re in a good place to get healed best you can and should get on to bed and do that. The morrow will bring what it brings, and the day after also. Becca, can you light him a candle for the stairs?”

  Late the next morning August and Marsh were back in the fields, Marsh raking with his team and August on foot, pulling stray bits of hay to the windrows with a bull rake. He looked up from his work to watch his dappled team hitched to a wagon coming down the field with Harlan driving and beside him, hay fork in hand, Becca Davis. He frowned and leaned on his rake and waited.

  She had a basket of cold dinner and a pair of sweating tin cans of water. As they came upon him, she called out, “You dawdling? Let’s make hay.” And so they did, working through the afternoon and long evening, Becca holding the reins as the team made their known way alongside the rake-rolled hay, August forking it up and Harlan building the loads upon the wagon. Then up to the barn and unloading, and back out again. Finally, late in the day, the last load forked upon the growing stacks, all three sitting reeking, too tired to move, August comprehended something of Becca Davis: Because life had upended her so young, she knew everything was uphill from where she stood but had the innate grace to know when and how to step herself forward. And he knew, swinging his tired legs, his face and arms itching, all was bequeathed of the Public Friend, passed down in words from their mother, or not that—perhaps in their poverty, the greatest bestowing were the teachings of life passed from mother to children. None of it simple to an adult but to a child, as Christ and The Friend understood, the whole wide truth of the world made clear.

  Just then the team swung both their heads sideways where they stood in the open door and one whickered a greeting. August walked out from the dense still heat of the barn into the bright sunlight and Harlan went with him. Becca remained behind, happy to sit resting on the empty wagon bed, drinking lukewarm water from one of the tin buckets.

  A towhead boy of nine or ten in worn trousers held over a ragged shirt by a single suspender, hatless and sunburnt, sat astride one of Malcolm Hopeton’s mules in its work harness, an old rein cut to make riding reins for the boy. The other mule was alongside its mate and tied to a hame ring was a dun-colored horse. All the creatures were dark with sweat, soapy yellow lather gathered along the bands and straps of harness, and the boy kneed the mule forward a last step and, keeping hold of his rein, lifted his leg clear of the inside of the mule team, then vaulted away, landing in the hard packed dirt a couple of yards away from the mules and darting fast to snug the rein around a hook set into a block of stone at the base of the ramp. All this in the time it took August and Harlan to walk out of the barn and down the ramp.

  August said, “You’re Benny Fulton’s boy, aren’t you?”

  Harlan said, “Howdy, Calvin.”

  The Fulton boy looked to Harlan. “I known they worked good for you and Bloody Hopeton but Papa got em on the dump rake when one or both spied somethin and shot into a dead run like hellhounds and went right around that field and were coming up toward where the crick runs along the end, faster all the way. I was standin there watching Papa look over his shoulder trying to figger if he jumped could he miss the rake tines, when them mules smelt the water and stopped dead and Papa flew off the seat and landed on the ass-end of one of em. I thought he was gonna get kicked to death but both mules turned their heads back and watched while he got hisself freed. He left em standing there and walked out into the field and fired his pipe and stood there, smokin and lookin up at the sky. He called me and we unhitched them buggers right where they stood. Then we got em geared together like
they is and it took some tries but here I is. And now will get on that brown mare which has more sense than them two together and less than a stone, and ride it home.”

  “Hold on,” said August. “Why’d you bring them here?”

  “Him.” The boy pointed at Harlan. “When the deputy brought the mule Bloody Hopeton tried to escape on, Papa asked where you was. After they started tearing things up he recalled you worked em just fine and their goose was cooked.”

  Harlan said, “Well, they ain’t horses. Here, let me help get your ride home freed up. You want some water afore you go?”

  “No sir. I just want daylight tween me and them ornery bastards, the more the faster the better is how I see it. I’d take that hand, though, freeing my horse. She don’t like em any better than Papa or me. You shoulda seen us tryin to set out. No, I’m only wanting a peaceable trot home.”

  Harlan turned to August. “Give me a minute to sort this out,” he said with a calm certitude that left August with no choice. Both mules were watching Harlan now, ears pricked high like two sets of bows.

  Harlan let the mules be and set about getting the horse untied, then walked around in a circle away from the mules and cupped a hand to let Calvin step up onto his horse. The boy gathered his reins and looked down at Harlan.

  “You goin to watch Bloody Hopeton swing?”

  “They ain’t tried him yet, Calvin.”

  “Papa says he’ll swing all right. I plan to be there, myself.”

  “Why?”

  The boy reared back on his horse and studied Harlan, as if wondering if some good bit more than mules had rubbed from Hopeton to Harlan. He sat straight and turned his horse, looked over his shoulder, and said, “To see it, a course.” Then kicked his horn-hard heels into the mare and trotted fast out the drive, his body tight and smooth with the horse’s gait.

  At some point Becca had emerged from the barn to watch all this. Together she and August stood silent as Harlan stripped the harnesses from the mules, which both stood trembling a bit but otherwise steady as he did so. August and Becca could not hear words but while he worked Harlan spoke to the mules in a steady, low singsong, as if he were reciting songs or psalms toward natal mule memory. When the harness and bridles were laid on the side of the ramp, Harlan stepped between the two and, still talking, reached a hand up to gently cup the underjaws and then walked off, the mules stepping easily alongside him. He took them down the lane, their backsides now diminishing, powerful legs and hindquarters ambling, ragged tails in futile swish against flies, until he came to the gate of the pasture where the milk cows were settled around two big beech trees, and turned the mules in with them. He didn’t bother to watch how the cows or mules might react but turned and walked back. When he approached his sister and August Swartout the edge of his mouth, his eyes, might’ve held the smallest of grins. But when he spoke it was gone.

  “Should we pick up here and get set to milk?”

  After supper they were all three sitting together on the porch, looking out over the night pasture where the red and white Ayrshire cattle worked their way along, tearing up mouthfuls of high clover and timothy, the mules some distance off, grazing but sporadic, lifting their heads to look around them both at once or turn by turn as if scouting danger.

  The porch looked east, so they sat in shade, the house behind, the barn downhill from them and the road a step up the ridge westward, a track parallel both to the ridgetop and the valley below. The sun was burning huge into the ridgetop trees and above a small string of clouds held motionless with red bellies, darkening above. To the east but high overhead a gibbous moon loomed. Past that the evening star, a hole poked toward heaven.

  Two meadows remained for the first cutting of the year, the hay already mowed this afternoon by Marsh. Even with Harlan gone for at least the following morning, they’d have the hay in the barn by the next evening. Following that, August was thinking, would be a good time to run cultivators through the fields of corn, the plants still young enough so the teams could traverse the rows as the narrow spades of the cultivators not only tore free weeds between the rows but also turned small heaps against the young stalks of corn, giving them a more sturdy base, as well as loosening the soil a final time before the corn grew too tall, this loosening making it easier for the earth to absorb water from rainstorms, in general aerating the soil, to also inhibit the varied blights, rusts, and corn-borer worms, any or all of which could diminish the crop. Beside him on the porch both brother and sister sat quietly in their own contemplations. You don’t always have to know all the ways a thing is right to do, it’s enough to know it must be done, August understood, still thinking of the corn.

  He was also thinking that the garden was beginning its first heavy overflow and soon days would be given over to canning and pickling. Becca would be back in the kitchen, which he felt some relief over: a small step back to the normalcy of the life he’d established four years earlier when he’d hired her, but also thinking, It won’t be just for me this year. The notion of a household ongoing, not just a needed convenience, intrigued him. Perhaps these unlucky orphans were part of that larger design set in motion beyond ken and so now only revealing this small particle, to him and to them. Perhaps a regrouping all three needed and not any accident at all. He knew Narcissa would smile and nod, as if they were the children he might’ve had with her, or, in fact, were the children he’d had with her. That he’d been appointed to oversee and guide, and they, in their turn, would oversee and guide him.

  Out in the meadow in the slow dusk one of the mules brayed and the other answered, and both went silent. On the porch or in the tiger lilies tall against the railings a cricket started up, paused and waited, tried again; and then first one and then others joined in. A spare handful of stars studded the vault of approaching night.

  “Your mules seem to be settling in nice and easy,” August said.

  “They’re not my mules. But they’ll work for me,you got work for two teams.”

  “There’s most always work for two teams. Except when there’s work for none. You still wanting to go see Malcolm Hopeton in the morning?”

  “Yes sir. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about it, though.”

  August was quiet a moment and then said, “I’d expect the sheriff or the judge will ask you some questions. You want to be polite but you don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to. If you’re uncomfortable, I mean. The judge didn’t say it in so many words but you can tell him I understand myself appointed guardian of you and if there’s questions you’d rather not answer you can say you want to wait until I’m along.”

  Harlan looked away. He said, “That business Amos Wheeler got up to with Missus Hopeton, I wasn’t any part of that. Not the first bit.”

  “I don’t believe there’s anyone thinks you were. But the law is a strange stew. Keep in mind all you’re after is to see if Malcolm Hopeton requires anything of you, as a hired man. Stay that course and you should be fine. Just don’t be thinking you can help him by telling too much. At least not yet. He doesn’t even have a lawyer, that I know of. There’ll come a time for you to tell all you want, or all he needs. But right now you can’t be sure if those are the same thing, is all I’m saying.”

  “He and I sorta spoke about that.”

  “You did?”

  “We had right much to talk about, that seven weeks.”

  “I imagine you did. Some of what you talked about, maybe some of that’s changed, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “Not so much, I don’t think. But I’ll keep quiet as I can. What you says makes sense.”

  “Lord,” Becca said. “I was just setting here thinking I’d never felt such a peaceful ease. Now I’m nervous as a cat.”

  Harlan said, “There’s nothing for you to be nervous about.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because you’re not the one going to town, that’s how.” His grin turned toward her in the dusk.

 
Becca scraped her chair forward and took her bare feet off the rail, ready to stand, but August was ahead of her. He struck fire and knew both were watching as he inhaled and the small flare lit his face. He held the cheroot out to his side and exhaled. “It’s a fine evening, isn’t it? I’m going to walk a last check of the barn. Why don’t the two of you get on to bed? Busy day tomorrow.”

  He stepped down off the porch and into the gathering dark. There was a lantern hung on a peg inside the dairy door he could light. There was a heifer might freshen anytime the next two weeks. There was also a spotted sow with a new litter could stand looking at, a big litter with not one but two runts. In his experience a good runt, nursed through, could turn out to be the stoutest sow or boar of them all. The root of another stronger tree.

  He could also walk up to the night pasture and stand and look at mules.

  Curious if they’d even notice him. Or care to walk over and touch a nose to his extended hand, palm open and up.

  Four

  At the Four Corners landing Harlan stood off to the side while August conducted his business and a worker from the steamboat loaded the four crates of butter, stamped with numbers in sequence to mark them as belonging to August, aboard the Catawba alongside other crates from other farmers. There was an orderly milling of wagons about the landing; all the farmers were in haste, all, like August making hay, caught in the heady turmoil of summer heightening. And, it being summer, all of August’s butter would be making the shorter trip to Elmira rather than to New York City: The premium market was best served in the cooler months. Then Harlan paid his fare out of the dollar August had palmed him as they’d approached the landing, stilling protest with the flat statement that it was an advance against wages. When Harlan protested the amount August reminded him it was not just the fare and back but also against possible unforeseen expenses.