Guest Author Patricia Weil

Part Three

 

Author Information

 
I know the world of this novel; I grew up in it–in Selma, Alabama, to be specific.  The “Clanton” of A Circle of Earth closely details the small city of Selma.  I thought it wise not to use the true place name, as that might set up the reader to expect a different sort of novel.  Circle is not political per se; yet to my mind much social commentary is there, for the person who looks for it.  I was not happy in Selma.  For my undergraduate degree, I was sent to a private woman’s college, designed to better prepare me for my world.  I escaped it by leaving the country altogether.  Since that time I have lived both in Europe and Africa, as well as other parts of the States.  At this time my husband and I live in an older suburb, Hyattsville, Maryland, once a small town  just outside Washington DC.  We also have a primitive old farmhouse in the Sinking Creek Valley area of Southwest Virginia, without which living in the DC area–though beautiful and historic--just might not be possible.

 

My Master’s degree is in English, this choice being made for the love of writing.  I was a good bit torn between literature and psychology.  I have spent most of my professional life as an English teacher.  I retired early and pursued the other love, by becoming a certified Life Coach.  My greatest pleasure in this area is teaching classes in stress management, which I often do on a pro bono basis.

 

My love for literature remains unchanged.  Someone has said that literature contains “the best of what’s been thought and said in the world.”  I agree with that.

 

Questions and Answers

What writers do you especially admire? Why?

It’s odd that the question of who my favorite writers are has always created a sort of blank in my mind.  There are just so many!  But the following authors would be on any list I put together, each one especially loved for a specific work.

Carson McCullers.  In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter she depicts in a way unequaled (for this reader) the experience of loneliness and isolation.  Her love for her characters is close to palpable.

Wallace Stegner.  In Angle of Repose he illustrates not just the feel and history of a region but the heart of an individual, with both her great strengths and her weaknesses.  His fiction in general bears out the truth that no personality is less than complex.

John Steinbeck.  The Grapes of Wrath has been called sentimental.  I don’t consider that a derogatory term.  The power–and yes, feeling--of Steinbeck’s vision in this book may have provided for some their first understanding of lives that society wills not to see.

Wendell Berry.  His writing and environmental activism are on a par.  Works like The Memory of Old Jack and the poem “The Peace of Wild Things” are reverential.

Barbara Kingsolver.  In The Poisonwood Bible the truths of the novel are just that: biblical in feeling.  The drama of the setting is paralleled by the drama within the main characters’ family unit–the reader truly experiences the distress of these characters.

Elizabeth Strout.  In Olive Kitteridge Strout has the daring to center her book around a character far too real to be entirely likable, in a place that some would find too ordinary for notice.

Elizabeth Gilbert.  Her achievement in The Signature of All Things is near breathtaking, a tour de force that might not be expected from the author of the likable Eat, Pray, Love.  I was nothing less than amazed at the depth and scope of her research in building this intricate piece of work. 

 

What caused you to want to write A Circle of Earth?

I have wanted to write since I first began reading adult literature, which for me was in third grade.  Even as a child I watched the world.  It was a world of extremes: poverty and wealth, privilege and insult (there was strong class prejudice, as well as the prevalent race prejudice).  All the niches between these extremes were filled with people--in this case white–trying to live their lives according to some vision.  It was rich material for writing.  And at age twenty-one I conceived the main idea for this book.  My motivation, then and now, is the conviction that life should be taken full notice of.  Everything matters.  In the present we are told to follow our dreams, even our bliss.  My parents were never told that–much less their own parents (the generation that this book largely focuses on).  Even the opportunity to think in this way is a privilege that very few people enjoy.  I’m very aware of the injustice of that.

 

I was especially impressed with your word selection and clarity of expression.  I know from experience that portraying skillfully a character’s complex emotions and thoughts is difficult to accomplish.  Please explain how you were able to do so.

For my graduate work I was caught between Literature and Psychology.  I’ve always observed feeling, both my own and of the people I’ve come into contact with.  I’ve done a good deal of journal type writing towards that end–it’s been important to me to get my understandings just right.  Since I was so many years in the writing of Circle, I had the time to grow with my characters and “watch” them, so to speak.  Their feelings and motivations became clearer and fuller to me as time passed.  In addition, some of these characters are composites of different people in my family, as well as composites of myself.

 

How long did it take you to write your novel?  Explain why.  Readers who are not authors need to understand better the writing process.

I began A Circle of Earth eighteen years ago.  There have been many revisions!  I frankly didn’t know what I was doing when I began.  I had to learn to structure and write by doing, and that required much trial and error.  Over the course of the writing, my own writing voice eventually emerged.  Then, what had been written had to be rewritten, to seem authentic to me!

 

In what ways has writing your novel benefitted you?

The overall personal benefit of writing this novel has been the experience of true creative joy.  This is such a rare thing, and I believe it expands the person who feels it.  I had had glimpses of this sort of experience with my graphic art, but not of this scope.  I felt very often like I was carrying around a secret golden egg.  The whole world was enriched.  I know I did a great deal more talking to people, especially the oldest people I knew.  There were details that couldn’t be found in reading.  I enjoyed the research I did for this book (there was a whole lot of it).  At one point I honestly felt that I had lived during the Depression.

 

For information about A Circle of Earth and where it may be purchased, click here: http://www.amazon.com/A-Circle-Earth-Patricia-Weil/dp/1478726806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403188518&sr=8-l&keywords=a+circle+of+earth

 

Excerpts

 
            He came back, as abruptly as he left.

            A little past midday on a Saturday, Emma sent the children off to the wood lot, to start on one of the trees they had managed to bring down over the summer.  The children's job was to remove the smaller limbs and stack them into the wheelbarrow.  As they moved across the back yard in an uproar of dissension, an inspiration came to her.

            "Now, don't let Billy or Ned try to fool with the saw.  They're too little."

            The five children went abruptly silent.  Buddy saw through the maneuver at once, but Ralph looked suddenly thoughtful.  All at once the five of them moved again—again with a clamor of voices.  Emma smiled at her success.  They'd bicker and compete with each other, now, for the privilege of doing the sawing.  It was a cold day, but bright with sun.  And as she looked across the chilly, sun-flooded yard, she realized she would have liked to go with them.  But her mending basket was full.  It was always full.

            The sound of a car on the drive struck her as odd—she wasn't expecting company.  A traveling salesman, most likely.  She’d offer a glass of water and send the man on his way.  As she stepped toward the door, Emma saw Ralston walking across the yard, with his head down.  He wore a business suit and a felt hat that concealed the upper part of his face.  She moved back quickly.  There was no time to think or prepare herself, although Ralston walked with no special hurry.  It seemed a long time that he stood just outside the door.  Then he knocked, as any stranger would have done.  There was no way to avoid answering—no way to compose herself as she’d have liked to.  When she opened the door, she was frowning.  Emma looked at a place just below the knot of his tie, the color leaving and coming back to her face.  Neither of them looked directly at the other.

            "Come in."  Emma heard her own voice—it wasn't quite right.  But Ralston was already crossing into the room.  He too was frowning.  He removed his hat and walked over to a clear space in front of the windows.  Then held the hat by the brim and turned it.  Twirled it.  Emma took a seat and waited, she didn't know for what.  There was not a sound in the house or yard.

            When he looked at her, it was not quite at her face but in her general direction.  His voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

            "I wouldn't have expected to find you here.  Had some business to settle with Hendrix."

            There was no reply for Emma to make.  He cleared his throat and continued, "I was on my way home to Malvern.  I thought to find you and the children there."

            To find her.  On his way to—.  Still, there was nothing for Emma to say.  And if there had been, she may not have said it.  Emma's tongue was trapped—because her mind was trapped.  A spot in her chest was burning.

            He had come back, it was true, to seek her out.  And although Ralston had gone over the prospect of this hoped-for reunion again and again in his mind, it hadn't occurred to him to prepare what to say.  Nor had it occurred to him that there would be any special awkwardness—that when the moment came, he might not know what to do.  Now the difficulty of it overcame him.  He turned, let out a breath, moved a foot across the floor.  He didn't know how he’d expected to manage the situation.  So he said, simply, "Emma, I've come back."

            Come back.  He had come back.  Still, there was nothing to say.  Emma didn't move in her chair.  But her feelings, now jarred loose, careened in opposing directions.  The children.  Safe.  They would be safe again.  They would no longer be hungry.  But he had deserted them, left them to get by any old way that they could.  His own blood—wife and family.  There was also anger in the wild rush of feeling.  And the shame of it.  Bruising.  She would never get over it.  Emma's emotions were crazy, in their sudden release.  For so long it had been there:  the dread that tugged at her mind like a tiny, malicious bite.  Fear of the hunger.  The cold.  The mortgage money.  The crops.  All of it.  But it was over, now.  He had come back.  For a few moments the welter of relief and long overdue anger jammed inside Emma. Then she was overcome by it all.  She raised her apron to her face and wept, just as she would have done if she had been alone, without a trace of self-consciousness.  She was no longer thinking at all.  She didn't know how long she wept; nor did she know that Ralston was watching her.

            "I'm sorry, Emma."

            It was such a quiet voice, Emma didn't know how she had heard it.  And his voice brought a halt to the weeping.  For all her confusion, Emma felt a sudden curiosity.  Ralston's voice was different.  There was something she had never heard in his voice.  She looked at him directly then for the first time.  And the sight of his face answered her curiosity.  It was as if his face had been made out of clay that had gotten wet, softened, and slipped out of shape—Ralston's face had a crumpled look about it.  He realized that Emma was studying him, and that he would have to endure her scrutiny.  He swallowed—hard enough that the movement in his throat jerked his chin sideways just slightly.  It was obvious to Emma, astounding to her, even, that he was miserable under her eyes.  By all rights she should have made him suffer—she should exact that much from him.  But an unexpected thought came to Emma then, as much a surprise as the sight of his face.  He had hurt her and the children, it was true.  Was it possible that he had also hurt himself?  Emma didn't know if she watched Ralston's face for a long or a short time, didn't know that at the same time she was looking into herself.  A shutter in her mind opened, startled her, closed again.  She loved him.  All along she had loved him.

 

=  =  =

 

The radio was not the first thing to disappear in this manner—just the first thing that the girls had missed.  Lillian forgot not an item of what had been sold, not even the things that no longer counted.  There were stacks of packed boxes along the walls of the bedroom.  The Grays were doing no more than other families all over Clanton were doing, in the secrecy of their own homes—sorting through their possessions, deciding what could be sold off or pawned.  That morning Lillian was sorting her own things.  She pulled her drawers out one at a time, kneeling for a while in front of each one, her hands at first working slowly.  There were plenty of things she could do away with.  She considered herself composed—she didn't realize that her hands and mouth were angry.  Certain items, now, she almost tore at.  Lillian stood up, to work on the top drawer, which held her underthings, hosiery, and handkerchiefs, all carefully folded and laid in rows.  Inside the rows Lillian had tucked an occasional bar of soap, Yardley's English Lavender.  It was a thing her Aunt Nancy had taught her to do.  She looked over the rows of delicate, lace-edged handkerchiefs—Lillian had been taught to never be without a "really good" handkerchief.  The sight of the handkerchiefs irritated her now, for some reason.  She removed them all.  She fairly dumped them, her hands no longer methodical but fierce and impatient.  But there was one thing.  Lillian picked up a tiny red and black speckled box, with a gold snap and hinges, and a satin lining.  In it lay a filigree pin, designed a little like a triangle that had been pulled out of shape.  Over the filigree lay a sprig of leaves and a flower, these of platinum.  In the heart of the flower was a good-sized, beautifully cut diamond.  The pin had been given to Lillian by a great aunt, and looking at it, her hand went to her throat.  She had the habit of absently touching her pearls.  But Lillian's strand of pearls was one of the first things that had been pawned.  Lillian removed the filigree pin from its box and fastened it inside the pocket of an old apron, which she then folded tightly and put away with her everyday things.

            Now they followed each other in rapid succession, efforts such as these:  the separate, fear-driven measures.  Lillian already had the Leghorns that Myra and Howard had brought in from the country.  The hens lay prolifically, but the family ate few of the eggs—the eggs were bought just about as quickly as they were laid.  The girls took to the hens as they would have to a number of identical pets, naming all eighteen of them—there was always dissension over who was who.  The only certain identification was Xanthippe, a brooder, a hen who would not willingly part with her eggs.  Removing them required the use of a stick.  Xanthippe had to be pried.

            Lillian had grown used to the discrepant sound of the hens, clucking or flapping around in the yard.  For a moment she thought that she heard something else.  Something like a faint little knock at the back door.  And it was a knock:  Ralph, who had begged off school that day with a—possibly imaginary—toothache.  The boy held a bag in his arms, so fully loaded that the tips of the sweet potatoes showed over the top.  He looked at Lillian for a moment, frowning, trying to remember what to say—Ralph had been given his line before he walked over.  And now he'd forgotten it.

            "Mama said to tell you—."  He looked puzzled.  "Mama said—."  He looked a second or two at Lillian, then gave up and shrugged his shoulders.

            It was the closest to smiling that Lillian had come that morning.  "How kind of your mother.  Just put them down and wait a moment."

            She went back to the scene of her struggle with the boxes and came out with one of the bars of Yardley soap, still wrapped.  "Please give this to your mother for me.  And tell her how much I appreciate the vegetables."

            On his way down the steps, Ralph remembered his line and snapped a finger.  "Oh.  Mama says—they're more than she knows what to do with!"  He looked pleased with himself.

            Lillian laughed out loud.

 

            At her kitchen worktable Emma sat looking at the bar of Yardley—it gave her much pleasure just to smell it, then set it down and look at it again.  The soap that Ralston brought home with their household staples was a dark yellow, medicinal-smelling substance, cut into sharp, irregular bars.  Emma didn't think she'd ever come across scented soap.  And the package was as nice as the soap was—far too pretty to just tear up and throw away.  Soft tissue paper, pleated like cloth.  On the paper band that held the wrapping together was a picture of a woman and two children, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, somewhere on an old-fashioned street.  No, she couldn't destroy the wrapping.  And she couldn't think of an occasion important enough for using the soap—she frankly didn't know what to do with it.  She put it away in the drawer with her underthings, having no idea that in doing so she was using it for the very purpose Lillian intended.

            …

            The farm woman came again—Lillian didn't yet think of her as Emma.  And again.  Exchanging warm bundles of corn muffins, once a bottle of milk, always substantial and nourishing things, for a handful of eggs that by now Lillian knew she didn't really need.  Emma gave half of the eggs away to her friend, Bobbie Bell.

            "Please do call me Lillian."

            "Lillian."  Emma blushed a little.  "I'm Emma."

            "Won't you come in, Emma?"

            "Oh, I couldn't do that.  I've got something on the stove."

            She always said she had something on the stove.  

            So they stood out-of-doors.  Stood together like two conspirators in something.  Stood feeling the flow of confidentiality and goodwill pass between them, as palpable almost as something against the skin of their hands.

            …

           

…  Again there was a distance between Henry and Lillian, grown far past the point of anything he could tell himself he imagined.  …  Henry's worst suspicion was that now she merely tolerated him.  He knew Lillian; and he knew that, by her own lights, she would have tried to do what was right and fair.  And this he honored.  But right and fair was not tenderness or laughter.  There was a place, now, where he wasn't allowed.  Because she would no longer allow him.  He stood outside in the dark.

            His sense of shame was like a poison turned loose in his belly.  What was happening was the natural result of fault:  his fault.  He had been irresponsible.  What he also knew somewhere else in his mind was that not a hammer was flying all over Clanton, at least not one that he could lay hands to.  There was no work now, it seemed, that didn't go to a family friend or some distant cousin.  …

            It was no longer tolerable to Henry to be in the house with Lillian during the day.  Herself without blame.  Herself going about the innocent pattern of her days.  His eyes strayed often to Lillian's mouth; it was blameless.  There was the perfect sameness of it, the little arched upper lip.  It was no one other person's mouth, anywhere in the world.  Then, unaccountably, he was angry, when he'd never been more, at most, than occasionally annoyed at Lillian.  It unsettled him.  He had unsettling images.  He had a fleeting picture, so fleeting that he didn't have to make himself own it, of the little mouth being struck—anything to destroy that perfect blamelessness of it.

            …

            …  Henry darted a glance toward the Bluebird Cafe.  But he couldn't be still.  There was a plucking in his brain, in his legs and arms.  His head was charged and buzzing.  When he reached the shadows of the bank, he pulled out the pocket flask he had replaced.  He thought at the same time of Lillian.  What did she know?  What could she understand, she who had been as carefully taken care of as a child?  That, at least, he could blame—he could blame her for blaming him.  Henry was at last realizing that he was up against something he had no power to change.  There was nothing that he, Henry, could cause to happen, just by willing or wanting it to happen.  It was no longer a question of error.  Error he could have undone.  He took his liquor in slow, deliberate sips.  He stood by himself in the half-dark for some time, propped against a tree trunk.  His mind wouldn't go quiet.  The resentment wouldn't let go.  So he coddled it.

Guest Author Patricia Weil

Part Two

 

Synopsis of “A Circle of Earth”

 

A Circle of Earth tells the story of people whose lives were shaped by the limitations of circumstance.  Both main characters come of age during the years of the Great Depression.  Their story lines cross first circumstantially, when Emma witnesses the loss of Henry’s home.  Later, the story lines intersect again through the marriage of the characters’ two best loved children.

 

Emma is an innocent, the product of a simple piety that no longer exists in the world that most of us know.  Her marriage is not a love match.  She has been singled out and chosen, much in the manner of a necessary life commodity.  Her husband, Ralston, a small farmer, is a man who has been emotionally limited, even damaged.  Ralston’s idea of marriage precludes intimacy.  A determined and driven worker in his occupation as farmer, in his own time he pursues a petty rural debauchery.  Emma's close relationships with other women, her gratification as a mother, form her world.

 

Henry is an ardent character.  We first see him as a young adult in love with the world and its possibilities, which for him will be cruelly limited.  Henry has a deep love for the natural world, for his wife Lillian, his brother Drefus, as well as a strong but thwarted love for learning. The relationship between Henry and his genteel wife, Lillian, is as companionable and tender as Emma's marriage is stark.  Unlike Ralston, Henry is a loving and playful father.  Lillian becomes aware very gradually, as we do as readers, that Henry is an alcoholic.  Victim of this common disease, he is also victim to forces beyond his control--the worst years of the Great Depression.  His family life cannot withstand the circumstances into which it is forced:  that of being moved into a flimsy shotgun house at the farther edges of the town’s white slums.  He and Drefus resort to "riding the rails" for much of the Depression.  It is several decades later, during his stay in the state mental hospital, that he forms a deep attachment to a young psychiatrist who, without being aware of it, acts as a catalyst for Henry's self-reclamation.

 

For more information about this book and where it may be purchased, click here: http://www.amazon.com/A-Circle-Earth-Patricia-Weil/dp/1478726806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403188518&sr=8-l&keywords=a+circle+of+earth

 

Questions and Answers

 

What writers do you especially admire? Why?

 

It’s odd that the question of who my favorite writers are has always created a sort of blank in my mind.  There are just so many!  But the following authors would be on any list I put together, each one especially loved for a specific work.

 

Carson McCullers.  In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter she depicts in a way unequaled (for this reader) the experience of loneliness and isolation.  Her love for her characters is close to palpable.

 

Wallace Stegner.  In Angle of Repose he illustrates not just the feel and history of a region but the heart of an individual, with both her great strengths and her weaknesses.  His fiction in general bears out the truth that no personality is less than complex.

 

John Steinbeck.  The Grapes of Wrath has been called sentimental.  I don’t consider that a derogatory term.  The power–and yes, feeling--of Steinbeck’s vision in this book may have provided for some their first understanding of lives that society wills not to see.

 

Wendell Berry.  His writing and environmental activism are on a par.  Works like The Memory of Old Jack and the poem “The Peace of Wild Things” are reverential.

 

Barbara Kingsolver.  In The Poisonwood Bible the truths of the novel are just that: biblical in feeling.  The drama of the setting is paralleled by the drama within the main characters’ family unit–the reader truly experiences the distress of these characters.

 

Elizabeth Strout.  In Olive Kitteridge Strout has the daring to center her book around a character far too real to be entirely likable, in a place that some would find too ordinary for notice.

 

Elizabeth Gilbert.  Her achievement in The Signature of All Things is near breathtaking, a tour de force that might not be expected from the author of the likable Eat, Pray, Love.  I was nothing less than amazed at the depth and scope of her research in building this intricate piece of work. 

 

What caused you to want to write A Circle of Earth?

 

I have wanted to write since I first began reading adult literature, which for me was in third grade.  Even as a child I watched the world.  It was a world of extremes: poverty and wealth, privilege and insult (there was strong class prejudice, as well as the prevalent race prejudice).  All the niches between these extremes were filled with people--in this case white–trying to live their lives according to some vision.  It was rich material for writing.  And at age twenty-one I conceived the main idea for this book.  My motivation, then and now, is the conviction that life should be taken full notice of.  Everything matters.  In the present we are told to follow our dreams, even our bliss.  My parents were never told that–much less their own parents (the generation that this book largely focuses on).  Even the opportunity to think in this way is a privilege that very few people enjoy.  I’m very aware of the injustice of that.

 

I was especially impressed with your word selection and clarity of expression.  I know from experience that portraying skillfully a character’s complex emotions and thoughts is difficult to accomplish.  Please explain how you were able to do so.

 

For my graduate work I was caught between Literature and Psychology.  I’ve always observed feeling, both my own and of the people I’ve come into contact with.  I’ve done a good deal of journal type writing towards that end–it’s been important to me to get my understandings just right.  Since I was so many years in the writing of Circle, I had the time to grow with my characters and “watch” them, so to speak.  Their feelings and motivations became clearer and fuller to me as time passed.  In addition, some of these characters are composites of different people in my family, as well as composites of myself.

 

How long did it take you to write your novel?  Explain why.  Readers who are not authors need to understand better the writing process.

 

I began A Circle of Earth eighteen years ago.  There have been many revisions!  I frankly didn’t know what I was doing when I began.  I had to learn to structure and write by doing, and that required much trial and error.  Over the course of the writing, my own writing voice eventually emerged.  Then, what had been written had to be rewritten, to seem authentic to me!

 

In what ways has writing your novel benefitted you?

 

The overall personal benefit of writing this novel has been the experience of true creative joy.  This is such a rare thing, and I believe it expands the person who feels it.  I had had glimpses of this sort of experience with my graphic art, but not of this scope.  I felt very often like I was carrying around a secret golden egg.  The whole world was enriched.  I know I did a great deal more talking to people, especially the oldest people I knew.  There were details that couldn’t be found in reading.  I enjoyed the research I did for this book (there was a whole lot of it).  At one point I honestly felt that I had lived during the Depression.

 

 Excerpts

 

            The mill whistle sounded, a long, monotonous blast.  Noontime.  The noise of machinery was quickly replaced by a blur of voices and the movement of feet.  Henry shuffled down the back stairs with more noise than was necessary, excessive energy, and on this particular Thursday, especially good humor.  The stairs stopped at the wall where coats hung and pails were stacked.  Henry passed a youngster bending over to pick up a lunch pail.

            "Something in your pocket, son."

            A couple of feet away a tall girl was lifting a coat off a peg.  "Spider, miss!"  Henry smacked the wall with his palm, then pushed something into her hand.  The girl smiled.  She knew the one about the spider.  What Henry had given her and the boy were pieces of hard candy, cheap candies from the general store, lingering tastes of sugar and flavoring delectable to the mill children.

            "Hey there, June bug!"  This greeting to a little girl named Eloise, who was also taking her coat from a peg.  Eloise would get the peppermint, a favored piece.  The little girl's color was wrong.  It disturbed Henry. 

            Now he ducked inside the door to his father's office, to collect his own things. "That little skinny one out there, with the pigtails,” he spoke of Eloise, “she ought not to be here at all."

            Mr. Gray was used to these opinions of Henry’s.  It had occurred to him that his boy was a dreamer.  They’d never had one like that in the family—it was frankly a curiosity.  But he would get over it, Mr. Gray told himself.  In this same son there was something that plumbed true and right, in a way that was absent in the others.  And as for Henry and his running opinions, if he'd realized Mr. Taylor was also present, he would have withheld his launching comment.  The two older men had grown up together, had the habit of meeting during the day between business hours.  Mr. Taylor was a drawling, self-satisfied man of some leisure.  The family owned land; he ventured one business experiment after another with the capital.  And Henry, who by habit observed all the rules of good manners, was embarrassed to be caught in his unguarded, at-home behavior.  He snatched up his coat and cap in a rush, while the older men watched him, then looked back at each other.  Mr. Taylor had a high opinion of Henry, and the behavior amused him.  He often remarked to his friend Joe that Henry had, as he put it, fine prospects.

            The truth was that Henry’s loathing of the mill had increased to the point that he had to allow it these little exits.  He hated being shut up, any place.  But this place he hated just walking into—the smell of it by itself annoyed him, stinking and stale, the air itchy with lint dust.  He grew irritable, a thing not in his nature.  He broke out at times in a very fever of restlessness.  Once, after closing time, he struck off in the direction opposite to home.  And in the cover of first dark took off his shoes, tucking both under his arm like a football, and ran—he didn't stop to think why.  Had run down a little dribbly sand road between cornfields, run to the point of punishing himself, run until exhaustion brought him the relief of mental and physical calm.  He didn't remember what he'd told Lillian about the sand in his clothes.  He and Lillian had been married since that summer, and she was several months pregnant. 

 

=  =  =

 

"Is this it?"  Emma's tone had changed.  It was no longer a question, just a collection of words.  Emma made a noise and handed the can to Ralston.  In her enthusiasm, she lost all sense of the strain she had been under.  They were here.  And the house was her own.  It was bigger than she would have expected, solid and well built.  Tall and squarish, sitting high up on its cellar.  It was a handsome house in a sturdy kind of way.  A porch ran along the front, with three columns.  The sight of it delighted Emma, its neglect a detail too trivial for notice.  They continued around to the back, where Emma spotted the pump, built right into the back porch.  The Swann children had always had to run back and forth to get to the pump.  Emma remembered having to run in the rain.

            In her eagerness, the inclination to chatter returned to Emma.  The house, empty except for the kitchen range and an ornate, fussy-looking stove in the parlor, had that strange feeling of vacancy about it.  Across the back porch lay drifts of rain-pocked pollen, withered oak silk, and leaves.  The prints of a pair of man's shoes led back and forth from the porch steps to the back door.  But there was no trace of ownership left in those dim, hollow rooms.  The house was theirs.

            …

            When Ralston walked outside in the late light, Emma trotted after him.  They stood together for a little, at the west fence, looking out over what had been the cornfields.  Where Emma saw acres, Ralston saw neglect, even ruin.  It was the best of soils, one hundred sixty-six rich Black Belt acres.  A soil almost black, heavy in the hand and fragrant, not like the pale Wiregrass soil that fell through the fingers.  Over the course of a single, sun-stricken summer, the acres of crops had reverted, were by this time thick masses of half wild vegetation.  Emma knew a ruined field when she saw one—she could see that the state of things troubled him. 

            "Well," Ralston let his head fall between his shoulders and shook it, with something like a chuckle.  "Looks like it's mine, now."

            "I know you're proud of it."  It was in Emma's nature to comfort.  She gave a little stroke to his arm, and her hesitancy in touching him puzzled her.  She felt a strong sympathy for him, then–she felt it often.  She could have lavished him with affection at such times, if he had let her.  Perhaps if she could have for once dropped that restraint, have been herself freely and convincingly with this man she had married, it may have made some small difference.

            Ralston looked down at her curiously.  He felt no need to reply, simply because a remark had been made.

            Emma would have liked most to ask if he were happy.

            …

            She and Ralston worked together, that first week, then the second, another—Emma lost count.  First, the ruined cornfields had to be dealt with.  Ralston moved inside the rows, muttering profanities where the masses of weeds had already gone to seed.  In places it was difficult for the two of them to spot the stunted ears, and a good number of the corn plants were barren.  With the mules and wagon behind them, they pushed through the tangles, twisting and snapping the small ears where they found them.  The tall grass tickled and tormented Emma.  Her face splotched and broke out.  It didn't take long for the continuous twisting of the hard, stringy ears to make blisters in the palms of their hands.  The blisters would rise, break, and make sore places.  Emma had to force her hands to work again—but she didn't try to beg off.  …

            After the corn came the cotton.  The bolls were small, undersized like the corn, not easy to spot through the Jimsonweed and Johnson grass.  The tiny bolls affected Emma like something deliberately vicious.  The hard, sharp hulls stabbed her fingers.  Emma's cuts swelled and bled—and she knew she'd be stabbed again, in the same places.  She wrapped her own fingers in strips of cloth, but Ralston wouldn't let her wrap his.  The picking seemed to go on forever.  Ralston swore.  Emma wept.  Salt water ran through her eyes.  Perspiration or tears, she couldn't say—it didn't much matter.  The plants caught and tugged at the bag that she pulled.  The strong equinox sun hammered.  With each other Ralston and Emma grew silent, bruised by their weariness.  There were times during the picking when Emma cooked, served, ate beside Ralston without a word passing between them.  Just to be still and be quiet—they needed that—though Emma less so than Ralston.  After the corn and the cotton, the digging of the sweet potatoes, the lifting, cutting, and bundling of pea plants were gentle harvests, in comparison.

            … 

…  Emma's longing for her family was like a physical illness.  No one had told her it could be this way.  Always, before, there had been company, the three other sets of hands, her mother's and sisters'—she had lived with the closeness of bodily contact.  Now  there was only Ralston’s brief, nightly gratification of that need of men—there were no caresses, no fond touches—unlike her own family, Ralston was not fond of being touched.  And with her own family there was always the jostling, the blandishments, as well as the kisses and pinches.  The stroking.  There was a thing that she wanted—Emma couldn’t have attached a word to this feeling.  She was nonetheless driven by it that night when she had come up to find Ralston sleeping.  He lay curled on his side, facing away from the doorway.  Emma sat down to unpin and re-braid her hair; and as her fingers worked, she watched him, not aware that her mind was also working.  She was lonely—there had never been reason to give the feeling a name.  The house was quiet.  It was empty.  The fields lying around it were empty.  Silence—that mean, unaccustomed thing—filled the rooms of the night-swallowed house.  Emma blew out the lamp and lay down behind Ralston.  If only, if just—she didn't know what.  Tentatively she touched his back, then withdrew her hand like she had touched something hot.  It was not the sex act that she craved—Emma’s body was not yet awakened.  She knew nothing of sensual pleasure.  In his sleep, Ralston twitched a shoulder, as he would have done to toss off an insect.

 

=  =  =

 

At not quite 6:30 on a Sunday morning, the sound of the telephone woke Henry.  The ringing was strange to his ears, and he lay for some time resisting it, sleep-soaked and perspiring.  Night had brought no relief from the early heat spell that had lasted for more than a week.  He and Lillian had tangled themselves in the bed sheets, which felt damp to the touch.

            "Henry?"

            By now Henry was sitting up in the bed.  The ringing was shrill.

            "It's got to be something important, at this hour of the morning." Lillian’s voice was already apprehensive.

            She stood next to Henry in the kitchen, her head below his shoulder, listening to the conversation.  Which wasn't difficult to do.  Mr. Taylor shouted into the receiver—it was a habit.  Why this call should have taken place at that particular hour or why Henry should be asked to go out right away was not clear.  But no one asked for an explanation.  People nearby had got word to the Taylors.  The sawmill had burned to the ground.  It had happened some time during the night.

            "I'll be on out, soon's I can get dressed," Henry hung up, and he and Lillian stood for a moment, exchanging looks, then looking past each another.  They were stunned.  To the ground.  That meant gone.  All of it.

            …

…  His mind was quiet now.  Blank.  The morning was quiet.  From the pasture across the road, the single sound of a meadowlark flew over the air—it was a sound Henry particularly loved, a clean, sweet sound that fell like an arc.  It caught his attention.  He looked up that way.  When he glanced down again, he gave a push with his foot, and the stair steps collapsed into pieces.  It was at that stray moment that it came to Henry that he wasn't sorry—he wasn't sorry that the sawmill had burned.  The admission of it, once it was out, oddly enough didn't amaze him.  Now he stepped across the road and walked a little.  He stood before a line of sagging barbed wire that ran along the stretch of pasture.  The old pasture hummed with sun motes and the heat waves that stood in the distance.  At the far end of the field was a single, moss-hung oak, smoky green against the line of woods.  Henry's eyes fastened on the shape of the tree, taking in something he needed from it—there was a kind of knowingness about old trees.  He heard the sound of the bird again, somewhere off where he couldn't see it.  Now Henry knew for a fact that he wasn't sorry.  And once past that point, it was difficult all of a sudden not to be glad.  He hadn't let himself actually think of the place as a trap; or if he had, he'd grown too used to the weight of it to take much notice.  Now the whole of it dropped away from him, like a sheer pane of water.  Already he began to lose touch with the feel of its having happened at all.

…

…  Myra filled both their cups with fresh coffee, added cream and sugar to her own, tasted it for the first time that night with real enjoyment, before looking up again at Lillian, whose cup wasn't touched.  Lillian sat with her palms pushed against her eyes, and the sight of it was unbearable to Myra.  She moved quickly to the other side of the table and pulled Lillian over, stroking her sister's head with her cheek.

            "Now, everything will work out all right, Lillian.  He had a shock.  That's all."

            "That's not all."

            "Why, baby, you've got to look on the bright side.  It was awful about the sawmill.  But Drefus already has a job lined up for Henry.  Things will work out."

            Now Lillian jerked her head away.  "He drinks, Myra."

            Myra laughed and rubbed her sister's shoulder.  "They all do."

            "This is different.  He drinks all the time."

            Now Myra reacted to something in Lillian's voice.  "I don't think I know what you mean."

            Lillian sighed, uncrossed and recrossed her legs, which trickled with perspiration.  "It's just that he's always drinking.  That's what I mean.  All the time.  Even out with the children and me.  He carries a flask."

            "A flask."  Myra crossed back over to the other side again and sat down.  Among the sisters she was the mild one, a gentle presence on this earth—as simple of heart as any well-behaved child.  The complexities of what Lillian was telling her were frankly beyond her capacities of reason or experience.   "But does he drink to get drunk?"  She had heard that question asked.

            "That's just what I don't know."  And here Lillian's face went crooked.  "It's so hard to tell with Henry.  It’s never much.  Just a little all along.  But all the time.  All of the time."  Her voice rose and collapsed on the words.

            Myra understood—it was hard to say with Henry.  Whether he was cheerful when he drank due to his own good nature—or cheerful because of the drink.  Herself, she would have said almost anything at that moment to comfort Lillian.  "Henry does have a cheerful nature."

            "Cheerful.  I know.  Oh, I know."  There was a pause.  "I'm scared."  Lillian had never said that to anyone.

            "Scared," Myra echoed.  "Have you decided what to do about it?"

            "I don't know what I can do about it!"  Anger edged into Lillian's voice.

            "Have you talked to him?"

            "I don't think he realizes it, himself."

            "What about Drefus?"

            "I think it all started with Drefus."

            Myra considered.  "You’re tired."  The weak comment dropped off into the silence of the house, a murk of syrupy darkness.  Now waves of alarm passed back and forth between the two sisters, these small, round-eyed women who were almost extensions of each another.  Even Myra understood that liquor poisoned a man.  Poisoned his family.  Their very lives.