Dewey nodded reluctantly. “I’m trying too.”
“Do you think maybe you could try a little bit harder? If you did he’d be in a good mood all the time, and everybody’s life would be a whole lot happier. You wouldn’t just be doing it for your daddy, you’d be doing it for me and Margaret Rose and us all.”
Dewey hesitated. Keeping his eyes on the baby, he mumbled, “Okay.”
Two weeks later when Martin returned home and saw Dewey standing with the other boys ready to greet him, he gave a wide-open grin and handed Dewey the peppermint stick that he’d intended to give Eliza.
From that point on, things seemed to get better. On his next visit, Martin brought Dewey a folding knife that was nicer than what he’d given the older boys. Dewey, in turn, thanked him profusely.
Mimicking what he’d seen his brothers do, he hugged his daddy’s neck and said it was precisely the thing he’d been wishing for. Given a quick glance it would appear all was well, but the boy’s expression barely managed to hide the resentment simmering beneath his skin.
As it turned out, that summer was the best they’d ever had. Martin’s company received a contract to install electric lighting across the south side of Charleston and along the Kanawha River walkway. It was three times larger than the one they’d lost and twice as profitable. Martin was made a job foreman, paid for overtime, and received an override on everything his workers made. With extra money in his pocket and more freedom to come and go as he pleased, he began returning home on Friday evening instead of Saturday. By the time he’d come whistling up the road, Eliza would have the kids fed and ready for bed.
“You can stay up long enough to see what your daddy has in his pocket and ask about his week,” she’d say, “but then it’s bedtime.”
After a bit of wheedling and pleas for more time, they’d gather around their daddy and listen as he told of the week’s adventures. Martin made everything sound like a splendid adventure just as he had in the early days of their courtship, and he gloried in the telling of it. Standing and stretching his arms above his head to illustrate the grandeur of it, he told of how his crew wired the Clancy Building, a structure that stood higher than eight houses stacked atop one another.
“Because of my crew,” he said proudly, “that building now has electric lights in the hallways and offices up as high as the sixth floor!”
Swayed by the swagger of such a story, Oliver and Ben Roland both declared that being an electrician had to be the best job in the world. Martin looked over to Dewey.
“What about you, Dewey?” he asked. “You think so too?”
Eliza cringed, fearing what the boy might say, but much to her surprise he said exactly what he thought his daddy wanted to hear.
“I sure do.” He gave a grin that was almost believable to someone who didn’t know him as well as his mama did. “Especially if a man can be the boss of a crew like you, Daddy.”
Martin roared with laughter then reached across and tousled the boy’s hair.
“Boss Man, that’s what the men on the job call me.” He tilted his chair back, rested his heels against the rung, and grinned. “Yessir. Being called Boss Man and having a bunch of fellows do as you say makes a man feel mighty good about his self. Mighty good.”
Without waiting for any of the kids to ask, he moved on to telling how his crew singlehandedly crisscrossed the city, replacing gas streetlamps with electric lights.
“They’re bright as the noonday sun,” he said. “Why, a single bulb can light a street from one end to the other.”
Later that night when he climbed in bed alongside Eliza, his touch was as gentle as it had been in that first year of marriage, and she gave herself to him willingly. They made love as they had before Oliver was born, and Eliza began to believe he’d gone back to being the man he once was: a man with big dreams. A man who could see promise in the future. In the wee hours of the morning after he’d turned on his side and gone to sleep, she lay awake wondering how it was that such a change had come about.
The two jugs of bootleg whiskey in the smokehouse grew dusty that summer. Instead of drinking, Martin spent afternoons with the older boys. He took them fishing, taught them to shoot a rifle, and even carried a bucket as he and Oliver gathered slack coal for the cookstove. Exhausted from all the activity the kids went to sleep early, crowded in the bed and on floor pallets in a single bedroom. That’s when Martin went to Eliza.
It was like the early days of their courtship. While the children slept, Martin and Eliza pushed back and forth in the porch swing or sat beside the creek with the cool mountain stream splashing their ankles. They talked until the night sky was filled with stars; then they made love. He undressed her slowly, savoring each moment, and laughed when she turned her face from him.
“I’m embarrassed that you should see me this way,” she said shyly.
“I’m your husband,” he replied. “It’s permissible.”
“Permissible perhaps, but not seemly.”
He laughed again and, despite her objections, pushed his tongue inside her mouth and lifted her onto the bed.
The second week of August, a blanket of heat settled over the mountain and the air became so thick it was hard to breathe. On a day when it was possible to raise a sweat just sitting, Martin made the four-mile walk from the train station and came in looking like he’d been caught in a rainstorm. There was no smile that day, and whatever he’d carried home in his pocket stayed there. He gave Eliza a quick peck on the cheek and said he’d be back by the smokehouse.
Fearing the worst, she replied, “Supper’s almost ready; why don’t you eat first?”
With an air of impatience pulling at his face, he mopped a rivulet of sweat from his forehead and glared at her. “If I wanted to eat, I’d have said so.”
She was going to suggest a cool drink from the well, but before she had the chance he slammed the screen door and disappeared. Since there was nothing much she could do about Martin’s mood, Eliza fed the children supper, tucked them into bed, then sat on the front porch to await his return.
The sky went from purple to black, and the night sounds of the mountain grew louder as they rolled across the ridge. The plaintive cry of a mountain lion hung in the air; then came a flutter of wings and the crack of a branch. A tear rolled down Eliza’s cheek, and for what could have been the thousandth time she whispered a prayer that he wouldn’t come in drunk.
“Not this time,” she said, her words breaking with her sobs. “Not when everything is going so well. Please…not tonight of all nights.”
Her prayer went unanswered, and as the hours inched by they took with them whatever hope she’d had that he would be sober. Too many times she’d sat here and waited. Too many times she’d wished for it to be different. Too many times she’d watched her hopes wither and die. Now she knew what to expect. Martin would drink his fill, then stumble through the door and fall heavy upon the bed. Or upon her.
She watched the moon drift across the sky, and when it started its descent she stood and went inside. There was very little time, an hour, maybe two, before the baby would wake and cry to be fed. She sat on the side of the bed for a moment. Then, without changing into her nightdress, she fell back and lowered her head onto the pillow.