The children’s voices came again, their footsteps racing about the stables wildly as I jumped to my feet and went to find them. John, Simon, and Matthew—mine for that weeklong period of the family’s visit while Silva managed the house and Floyd the fields, and Jesse roamed in and out unchecked and unnoticed by all who were around except the Missus, who kept tabs on us all.
CHAPTER 12
There was no way to watch the three boys and Jesse. In the evenings, I would return to the house to see some new project he’d completed or just started, his presence announced only by the work he’d done or some tools he’d left in the kitchen. One day I found him chatting with the Missus as I passed the back stables with the three boys following me like the trains of my housecoat. His eyes showed remorse when he saw me, and he ended that conversation right quickly, the Missus turning to me then sauntering off toward the house, a devil in a white dress with satin hair.
Because of those three boys and their constant energy, I couldn’t tell you which mission was more taxing. John, the oldest child at thirteen, was a smart boy, well-dressed and considerably better behaved than his middle brother, Simon, who at age eleven was a firecracker, cunning yet as simpleminded as a flea, round and plucked straight from his father’s image, his pug nose sitting proudly on his face as he often scrunched it up and poked out his tongue at whomever issued directives that were not of his choosing. Then there was Matthew, age six, a sweetheart who had not yet learned the ways of this world, too young to see or understand this society’s distinctions and, as such, was as loving toward me as he would be to his own mother.
The boys followed me during each of my duties around the farm and the back stables where I worked the cattle and kept the pen and chicken coop tidy.
“Can I do it?” John asked as we stood at the pigpen this day.
“Yeah, me too,” Simon interrupted, not waiting for my response before he’d stuck his hand into the mix of cabbage and tossed it over the fence.
John then followed, having seen his brother’s example and learning from it. Still, while John placed the food gently for the pigs to eat, Simon threw it directly at them, laughing each time they drew closer as he’d rear his arm back to get them again. He had some type of devil in him, chasing the chickens and smashing their eggs and pulling the cows’ tails when he thought no one was looking. Then his father would merely pass and laugh, that proverbial thumbs-up the boy needed to continue his rampage.
Jesse had completed the entire kitchen and dining area by the time I saw that space again. It was beautiful, adorned with framed cabinets and matching doors, as well as fresh paint in both rooms that still smelled like new. He’d built a shelf by the kitchen door that stored the Missus’s preserves and now started work inside one of the downstairs bathrooms, as she’d requested.
When I entered the house, the silence that once plagued this place when I’d first arrived had swiftly returned. Mr. Kern sat in his parlor and the Missus upstairs in her usual room, almost making me believe that these months of frantic haste and her deliverance had never occurred. If it were not for the Missus’s revived color, I would be assured that they truly hadn’t.
“Why, Miss?” I heard a voice ask from within her room, as I stood in the hallway just outside her door.
I counted the number of people inside the house. Silva remained outside with Floyd, Mr. Kern sat inside his parlor, and the Arkansas clan was gone for the afternoon. I recoiled then slipped back as a snake would when inclined to strike.
“There’s no need even thinking about it,” the Missus replied, her back to the door and the stranger’s face veered toward the window, although the shades remained drawn and the dimness in the room was nearly impossible to see through. “There’s nothing you can do about things like that. God’s will be His will sometimes.”
“But don’t you miss her?” the man said.
“Sure,” she replied. “I’d be fool not to. I think about her every day. She would be Fletcher’s age about now, ready to go off to school or get married.”
There was a sudden rustling inside the room as her voice abruptly stopped, a sound of two bodies moving amongst the darkness toward one another. And it was there, just within the outline of the window and closet door that they stood, embracing one another innocently enough to get him killed. The embrace was quick, consoling whatever tears the Missus had, for she now regained her composure and sent him from the room to continue his duties elsewhere. She sat at the window a while longer, her body a deflated shell of self-pity and wrath, her youthfulness an ever-fading casualty to that scorn that ruined her from within. She did not move for hours at a time, standing only when her guests had returned to the house and their voices reached her in that upstairs room, the boys returning with that same vigor they had charged the house with on that very first day after their rest. They rushed upstairs with gifts to place at the Missus’s bedside, for it was indeed her birthday.
The boys then found me near that upstairs window, ready to once again race the fields. The three of them leapt wildly while my gait trailed slowly behind. They turned a deaf ear to any heeding to be careful when climbing the fences that had just received new posts, that might insist they not go so high when swinging from branches of the tallest magnolias. Floyd found us just as we neared the white heads of his cotton fields, the boys using this bit of distraction to rush along those patches as Floyd pulled me aside.
“I ain’t seen him all day,” he said. “Guess he been workin’ at the house?”
“He’s been there, but I can’t say he’s been working,” I said.
“What d’ya mean?” Floyd asked.
“Missus had him in her room talking as usual,” I said.
“Talkin’ ’bout what?” Floyd insisted. “That boy ain’t said a wise word since I’d know’d ’im.”
“Missus got him in there talking about Elizabeth,” I said. “All types of things.”
“If I hears that name one more time …” Floyd shouted, “I swear that child in heaven just beggin’ ta be left alone. Wanna live out the rest of her days in peace, not draggin’ up the dead. Been fourteen years an’ she still can’t rest. Listenin’ to those carrying on down here.”
Floyd stamped his foot, which sent dust to both our eyes.
“I’ll have words for him,” he said. “Lest he forget …”
The children rushed back with guilty looks on their faces, the smallest one holding his knee, which was bruised, although the other two would not say how it happened. I marched them inside with the little one over my shoulder, Floyd taking to finding Jesse and scolding him good.
Although it was the Missus’s birthday, not even that occasion could bring a smile to her face. As Floyd put it, not even the second coming could seemingly lift her mood. Her family was to depart Greenwood that evening, the little ones having their final go at wreaking havoc on this place as they ran past the kitchen window screaming while Silva prepared the cake inside with the help of the youngest boy, who piped icing messily.