A Reckoning Read online

  25

  An hour later, Benjamin’s big house was crammed with Dickinsons – sons and daughters, husbands and wives. Matilda provided the last log of Emly’s sweet cheese. There were doors slammed and voices raised while she dabbed at her eyes with the damp handkerchief. What else was she to do? She had inherited the house, which was not entailed in any mortgage or loan, and this news was a surprise to everyone. All of them should have been weeping. John took Matilda into the back hall, closing the door. He told her that the brick house was his because he had lost his own house to Benjamin’s unpaid loan. He said: We are exiled by the whim of a man who cared only for himself and this will now be our home.

  He cared for me, said Matilda. She added: And it’s mine.

  Throughout the afternoon, Martin sat on the long covered porch and Electa sat with Gina in the parlor, remembering the house as it had been under kinder management. All she had needed to feel valued back then was an afternoon spent with her aunt Elizabeth. A cup of sugared tea with a pecan biscuit. That warm hand stroking her arm and asking about her thoughts. Electa began to cry a little as she sat looking at the room and remembering the past, and still Martin stayed on the sidelines, trading remarks with cousins or tickling a younger child, oblivious to the outcome of his uncle’s death. He sat on the porch rail swinging his legs as if everything would go on as it always had but he was old enough to learn how thin the membrane was between life and death. Everything is fatal, she thought, feeling sad and adult. The house held a string of sun that crossed the floor and climbed the papered wall of the room where the Dickinsons were collecting. Matilda was smiling, offering brandy distilled from Benjamin’s pears. In a few moments everyone was clustered, gripping tiny glasses of the dark liquor and avoiding John’s scowl, as she set the decanter down on the little side table and sat back primly. All eyes were pinned on her and none more hostile than John’s. She pulled herself up, tucking her handkerchief into her bodice so that the lace stuck out between two pearl buttons. Do go on and help yourselves to a second drop, for heaven’s sake! Her accent was from elsewhere – Georgia or Alabama. Oh my goodness, she said. What a long day!

  They all felt the loss of Elizabeth, who would have drawn them together with appropriate charm and sensible wit. She would have resigned herself to taking on the burden of her children and her nephews and nieces since Benjamin had failed them so utterly. She would have managed it somehow, or so the bereaved were prone to believe. But this newly married child bride was no match for such a family. Benjamin’s sons had begun to plunder the closets and drawers. While the elders stood somberly in the parlor, nursing their grudges, grown children went on a rampage, collecting silver and china and flinging their findings into cloth bags. Dressed in black, her curly hair pushed under a cap, Matilda wore Elizabeth’s sapphire earrings and Lavina noticed that sacrilege. Then she said: I must inform you all of my dear husband’s last will and testament.

  They were astounded by Matilda’s calm demeanor as she calmly explained that the fields required to support the porch, the red bricks, and the four stone chimneys of the house were forfeit to a New York bank. To prove her point she read out the list of properties Benjamin had lost.

  374 acres on Powell River

  300 acres on the east side of Glade Creek

  647 acres on the west side of Glade Creek

  17 1/4 acres adjoining Jonesville

  640 acres on Milton Creek

  610 acres on Glade Spring

  500 acres on Glade Creek, location to be determined

  along with eighteen Negroes, among them two females and five tots. (It had not been reported that five of this number had disappeared and six had been sold along with an unlisted newborn.)

  Can you just imagine it? Matilda asked. All that land gone up in smoke and I am barely a bride and now a widow with nothing left! She looked around and blinked her eyes at the affront of it. Except for this house, she said.

  John growled: I have explained. The house reverts to Benjamin’s partner, who has lost everything by co-signing his loan.

  Not at all, said Matilda.

  26

  John stormed through the rooms of Matilda’s house in the following days as if the noise of boots and shouting could get the cotton planted and harvested before it was claimed by the bank. We’ll pay it off! Perhaps he thought noise would erase the memory of Emly’s children in their knee-length shirts, and Emly too, and Bry and Josiah and Nick and Billy and that last run-off fool, Sutter. But Benjamin had peopled his acres with creatures never made part of the success of the fields they planted and now word of impending foreclosure spread and how could anyone be induced to work? All those acres would be dust in the vault of a New York bank. But listen! John insisted: Each one of you, including Rakel and Reuben, must work ten acres of cotton and fifteen of corn. You will be roused before dawn by the clanging of a bell, given enough time to fill a gourd with water and another with dinner and then hurried to the fields while swallowing a cold piece of fatty pork. After dark, when you drag yourselves back to the damp cellar of the house, there will be the usual chores – feeding the mules, swine, and horses; cutting wood; grinding corn. There will also be yelling and crying upstairs to be heard and withstood. Missus Matilda will be snarling and promising to bring lawyers and buyers into the house you are forever dusting and sweeping but pay her no mind; she is nothing to us. I will be snarling right back at her and lying myself down on my brother’s bed and refusing to move because…

  where oh where would I go?

  Matilda had found willing buyers, the Milbourns, although any nearby land to be farmed would have to be purchased back from the New York bank. Having made a down payment, the buyers wanted immediate occupancy, but John had mounted his horse for years and ridden his circuit and preached the word of God while his brother took more and more chances, risking their worldly goods, and the Jonesville neighbors, knowing John as their preacher, eagerly took his part. John had married, buried, baptized, and chastised a thousand times over. They supported his right to the property he had managed, and agreed that the Milbourns would have to see John in court. He had kept his brother’s accounts and now he went over and over the books again, sleeping no more than two or three hours at a time, then getting up to pace the floor as if he could plant it and make it bear fruit. If only he could identify the hole in his brother’s design, find the mistake, and make restitution. It only meant making sufficient payments a little at a time. A little, that’s all. His thoughts wandered shapelessly in and out of past and present scenes, scenes remembered and imagined, sometimes even conjuring Emly in a different kitchen, but where? Emly and the children…images in sepia, the littlest one with Ruth’s down-slanted eyes.

  Without them, the house had gone hollow. Were there fewer furnishings than before? Had Matilda sold carpets? Drapes? The over-stuffed chair that Benjamin had so favored? Where was the silver tray? John commanded Lavina to make a list of furnishings and to keep her eye on them. Lavina had never been invited into the outside kitchen by Benjamin’s second wife but now she opened barrels and canisters with the help of Clotilde while Matilda sulked on the second floor in her chosen room. Lavina opened jars. She tasted the contents, licked her spoon, nodded or frowned. A long table sat to one side of the cavernous kitchen and it was covered with basins and bowls. Wood and stone. Beneath the table there were baskets of onions, yams, turnips, and potatoes. It wasn’t Lavina’s kitchen, not for a minute, but she was amazed to find such provender unused after the hard winter and she began to distribute the food to the people who lived in the cellar. They were hungry. Everyone was hungry, most especially the workers. Her own small outside kitchen had been swept, mopped, polished. It was perfectly empty and ready for imminent foreclosure. She had moved its edible contents out to the lean-to where she was storing up foodstuff while she wandered Matilda’s big lavish house, opening drawers, inspecting a pair of lace gloves and muttering her disapproval while Matilda packed her trunks.

  Lavina duste
d the piano Elizabeth had loved, although it now sat closed and silent. She thought of the Schubert Impromptus Elizabeth had played, inviting Lavina to come over for an afternoon to drink India tea and listen to the wondrous and emotional music of a man who had died in his youth. Sometimes Elizabeth let her tears fall as she played and Lavina was moved by that, although the music she had known in her youth bore no resemblance to anything composed by Schubert. Lavina and Elizabeth had been close in that familial way of women married to brothers. They had shared recipes and worries about their children. They had conspired on patterns at Elizabeth’s loom. If Elizabeth were alive, Lavina thought, none of this would have happened to us; Benjamin would never have taken such risks in order to please Matilda, who will not be pleased no matter what. Seven sons Elizabeth had and this well-kept house, which has been invaded by a second wife aged twenty-three or less. Oh, but we wives are easily replaced, Lavina said to herself, and maybe just as easily forgotten. It was a new bitterness, a slew of dark thoughts coming at her. A woman’s victories were quickly squandered, like Elizabeth’s sapphire earrings and Sister Eliza’s stolen child. Years before, Elizabeth had influenced John, given him a measure of sophistication when he was her sweet, young brother-in-law. She had flirted with him, wagging a finger and laughing at his mistakes. Did John remember that? Elizabeth had tried to teach him a few husbandly skills. Lavina had heard her suggest to John once sotto voce that he compliment his wife, take her in his arms now and then, and kiss her sometimes on her lips. It will do you both good, Elizabeth had said, but Lavina had put any hope of such attention aside. She had made of her home a respectable place but she could not be easy in Elizabeth’s house because she did not feel sufficient to its demands. She did not feel herself its proper mistress, any more than Matilda was. And then, what to do with Clotilde, who would not sleep in the cellar with the “dirt” but preferred the chilly lean-to, where she could feel superior. What to do with Rakel, who lazed about, staring at walls. What to do with Martin, who spent all his time in the barn, where the sleepy bear was most wont to curl around him while he read stories or sang hymns. Martin was growing too old for a pet, but with all the snow, school was often closed, and now Electa, too, was home and full of moods because there was no money for her spring tuition. Electa disliked Matilda and did not like living in her house. Electa wrote long letters to her school friends with inaccurate excuses about the sudden change in her life. She wrote that she would be back at school in the fall. She wrote that her father was suddenly ill. She wrote that her brother Patton was off to buy a plantation. And John. He kept to his office in the old cabin as if he meant to inhabit his last piece of solid ground. Days lengthened, with light from the sun making more time to wonder what had gone so terribly wrong, and sometimes Lavina found reason to go to the cabin door to check on him. May I come in for a minute? I have brought your coffee. Then she might peer over his shoulder and stare down at his scrawls in the ledger book. His accounts, as he called them, although they resembled the notations of dreams.

  March 30 hired a boy 17 years $37 with 2 plows going and Reub repair axel. wagon next

  April 10 court. Plow wetland- 3 out Brother Lucas to hire two I cannot spare Abe, Young Jim

  April 19 river risen 3 put manur plows put in corn

  April 25 all day at c court

  April 27 decision pending need rain care for mine enemies

  Hogs $25 Utinsels $100 Plows etc $100 3000 acres = $4000 letter to Patton returned

  Sent another to Louisville

  Lavina missed Patton so intensely there was no way to share her yearning with John. He might be sorry for sending their son away and then become more disheartened. And there was the hope that Patton would learn independence by going off in search of land. He might even save the family. At night she prayed without stirring the blankets. She kept her fear to herself so as not to cast blame on her husband, although she could not discern the full shape of his apparent regrets. John still sat at the old table in the cabin late into the night. His candle would burn down and he would finally slump into a sitting sleep while she climbed the great winding slave-built stairs in dead Benjamin’s house. Wood. Nails. Paint. She found no comfort in any of it or in the bed that had belonged to Elizabeth and Benjamin and then to Benjamin and Matilda, all three bodies lying together side by side in her tired mind. Each night, Lavina sank unwillingly into a cavity worn by those other wives. What pleasures had they found in this bed? Were their husbands as brusque as hers? I am not finished. I am finished. Words to that effect. Was all of the talk of wedded bliss an illusion maintained by unmarried girls? Lavina had no one to ask. She stretched her legs and felt the footboard as a comfort pushing back.

  And one night, waking to the usual long hollow on the right side of the bed, she heard a disturbance outside the house and found no rhythm in it to recognize. She shoved her feet into leather slippers and threw a shawl over her shoulders and head. When she listened closely, the wrangling sound seemed to come from the throats of angry men and she went to the window and saw on the lawn a straggle of bearded faces lit by lanterns held in large hands. The lanterns cast flickering shadows on the faces and Lavina saw that some of the men were Milbourns and she saw that her husband was going toward them in his nightshirt, holding his gun, the old rifle brought back from the War of 1812 to prove Mary’s husband was dead. Those men outside on the grass had come to declare defeat or triumph and they had accomplices, other men, who had knelt down in prayer with John but who now held a different spirit in their hearts. There is never anything so dangerous as self-righteousness, Lavina thought, and she leaned out of the window and yelled: For pity’s sake, Father, come upstairs to bed! Her hair was braided and it hung down her back. Her face was blemished and sleep-dented. When John did not show that he’d heard, she turned from the window and scuffed in the slippers down Benjamin’s stairs. Better to climb down a ladder than descend like a belle, but she took note of the shape her shadow made on the wall, wondering whether she’d kept any of the beauty she’d had as a girl. Mister Dickinson, are you daft? She rushed the last few feet of hall and out onto the porch.

  Some of ’em my congregants, John whispered angrily, if that isn’t the limit! His chin and beard twitched.

  And Electa was coming down too now, stepping into the hallway, peering outside with the look of displeasure she wore these days since she was kept home from school. What is all this? Holding a candle at shoulder-height, dark hair tumbling, nightdress clinging, bare feet showing under the hem.

  Your father is busy defending what he believes to be his, Lavina said dryly, turning away from her daughter’s immodesty. Go back to bed. A shawl might have been a good idea, she added.

  On the lawn, a piece of paper was held up and waved like a flag and Electa chose to float past her mother and down the porch steps, gliding over the unclipped grass, gripping it lightly with her toes, and coming upon her father and the assembled angry men. She tilted her head and then straightened it in order to look at their shadowy faces. Hello, she said, and reached for the piece of white paper, bringing the candle in close and then moving back a few steps without turning away from the men. Certainly they could see her form through the thin muslin of her gown and they could see the concern in her eyes when she turned to her father, leaving her back exposed, and squinted at the paper to read it out loud:

  …for and in consideration of the sum of Eight hundred dollars current money of Virginia, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, Matilda Dickinson doth grant, bargain sell and deliver to Andrew Milbourn all her right title in and to a certain tract and building, it being the same heretofore claimed by John Dickenson and on which the said John Dickenson unlegally resides, the interest of the said Matilda Dickinson derived as heir at law of Benjamin Dickenson, deceased, the said undivided tract being bounded as follows, to wit: Beginning at a stake on the Fox property line…

  Electa turned very suddenly then, having scanned the rest of the page. Papa, the court has ruled against
you.

  The men had tied horses to the elms at the edge of the lawn and when she handed the paper back, they were satisfied and went to the horses as nicely as students would do at the ring of a bell. Lavina stared at Electa and suffered a feeling she couldn’t name. John had cheated Electa of an education and yet Electa hurt for him. Perhaps her daughter was generous. So Lavina chided herself and led her broken husband upstairs, taking hold of his sleeve. She had two bushels of peas from the early spring planting and a gallon of corn oil saved. Pork she had salted. Beans. Flour.

  27

  A wagon train was organized and nearly ready. What were the chances? John put young Martin and old Reuben to rebuilding the family wagon, drawing his requirements on a piece of paper kept clean for his sermons. Straight lines top and bottom. New bed of seasoned oak to withstand weight and water. Sides jointed. No nails to work themselves out of the wood on a bumpy trail. The wheels to be straightened and rerimmed by the Jonesville blacksmith, a good Methodist. When John came to view the progress one late afternoon, Martin told him that the wagon would be heavier than it had been before. They’d need another mule, he said, although Cuff would do her best to pull. And then he laughed like the boy he was.