Wilton had greeted my invitation with open arms, and he never showed a trace of homesickness in his weeks away. I could see that Leela and even Clarence would look a little hacked when they'd pay us short visits and watch their son wave them blithely away as they headed home. But they were too smart to show real jealousy, and Leela let me know she understood how much her boy was helping me onward.

There was no secret to it, no peculiar hunger or weird craving. I've said that Wilton Rooker was a fine child to look at, fine to touch and smell, to listen to. I know that, so far as my pure love was concerned, he had two powerful traits from his past. He looked very much like baby pictures of Ferny Dane, and he had his mother's natural grace. Even when Leela set my teeth on edge in our childhood, I never once doubted she moved like a beautifully trained slow dancer through s.p.a.ce. And ordinary air was far more flattering to Leela than any s.p.a.ce I knew.

Without a trace of girlishness, young Wilton could walk straight toward you through a room and make you thoroughly grateful for the sight. He also spoke in a voice that was unlike anyone near us. In those years well before television, educated Americans still didn't all speak alike. People in our part of North Carolina then spoke with the soothing tidewater roundness (aboot the hoose for about the house). It was easier by far to bear than the piedmont tw.a.n.g or the mountaineer whine. Wilton had somehow invented himself a means of speech that was low-pitched for his age and that always invited you to answer him fast.

His voice also had the tidewater tendency to curve up gently at the end of anything he said like a finger luring you to answer soon in your smartest best words. It seemed a welcome form of courtesy--seemed and was. And long before usual Wilton had things to say worth listening to. They were smart observations, not the childish jokes so many people keep making till they're eighty. One night when Palmer was reading a history book in the parlor, Wil bent down beside him to study some picture of the Revolution. Then he tapped Palmer's cheek and, clearly into his hearing aid, Wil said "Could you take me to meet General Washington?"

Palmer had the sense not to laugh but to tell him "Son, I wish to G.o.d I could have that privilege."

And Wil said "You can. He'd like to meet a child."

It was only a fact that Wil had gathered by watching the world. He saw everything that happened around him if he had sufficient light.

But I won't continue this hymn of praise.

Other people's children are of little use generally in strangers' minds. I must record though that, in those weeks of his mild company, he taught me (too late for my own son and daughter) what actual springs of healing water children can be if you get very still and love them at just the perfect distance and temperature, not asking for what most hungry parents crave--which is full reward for all they've lost, among other things. And I will just add one true story to explain my certainty that one child's presence in the midst of my life was a gift from Fate when I mostly needed a trustworthy guide back into the world from where I'd been in the dim core of torment.

The week before Easter at Leela's request we made the plan that Wilton would spend Easter Sunday with me. Then he'd move back in with his parents the next day. Leela had been very generous as I mentioned, but she let me see she missed the child badly now and was calling him in. I'd suspected for some weeks that I was all but safe to be on my own again. So I told her I'd have Wil clean and ready on Monday morning. What I didn't say was I planned to outfit him very handsomely for Easter. That seemed the least I could pay in return for his goodness. I'd already cleared that idea with Palmer.

So on the Wednesday I gathered myself for my first trip to Henderson since I fell. Dinah was in school, Henrietta was driving and Wil and I were on the front seat beside her. To my knowledge still, Wil knew very little about my fall or where it had happened. But several times in recent days, he'd asked me questions about Jesus and Easter. He couldn't yet understand why it had been necessary for Jesus to die so G.o.d could forgive the world. More than once I'd told him that I couldn't comprehend it either, but it seemed to intrigue him. Children started early back then on the really hard questions. He'd also mentioned his mother referring to how the blood of the sacrificed Lamb could cleanse us all (wil used the word wash).

So when Henrietta drove us into that same long curve where I'd made my lunge, Wil looked at the side of the road where I'd wound up on my hands and knees stunned blind in h.e.l.l. I had no idea what his mother had told him about my calamity. But as he stared at that concrete pavement and the roadside scrub, he said "Everybody's all spic and span." When he

turned back to me, his eyes were mischievous as any feist pup. And he burst into laughter so fine and silvery that I had to follow as did Henrietta.

To this day I've never known what Wilton meant. I haven't asked either (maybe Leela had told him about the blood I'd left at that curve). I'm sure he didn't know himself and wouldn't today. He was acting that instant as an angel of light. And I've felt cleaner every day since he spoke.

I somehow knew I would, even the moment his simple words reached me. I could almost see it in his endless eyes that could go whole minutes without a blink. So through two more years when he entered public school, Wil served unknowingly as my central hope for staying healed and enduring the time that came my way. He'd pay me short visits, just a night or two; and few days pa.s.sed without his calling me on the phone or sending a postscript to Leela's letters. Close as we were, Leela still wrote me letters like a pioneer mother on the dim far side of impa.s.sable mountains.

And though school took up most of Wil's time and though adolescence came on him early and broke his focus on his one aunt Anna, he's gone on all his lucky life repaying my interest since the day he was born. I a.s.sume most women even today can understand that--how a child, especially if it's not your own child--can throw out lifelines and haul you in from some strong whirlpools. Not every child but some. I wonder how many men are left, alive above ground now that men have got so mannish, who can enter that brand of perfect trust and selfless devotion.

Palmer Slade could and did. He had the watchful good sense to see, even when he couldn't hear, Wil's good effects. And once I was firmly back on my feet, Palmer let himself share the child's good graces. He'd loved August dearly in early childhood. But I'd seen his love drift and hide for long stretches as August started telling us in everything but words that he was not all ours and needed room to swing his own cats. That coolness warmed a little when the boy got home at last from the war in the fall of '46. He and his father went out bird hunting several times and would otherwise sit on the porch after supper and

swap long funny stories.

One last link they had was August's voice. Since he was fourteen he'd had a ba.s.s speaking voice, not a froggy boom but a dark walnut sound that I still love. And that one voice reached Palmer when almost nothing else could, even on those days when the atmospheric pressure was so low the poor man could barely hear lightning strike a tree (his ears obeyed the barometer). But after a month with us at home, August set out for Winston-Salem and found a decent job there, selling life insurance. And that let Palmer turn back to Wilton and lavish on him what affection was left in his nearly drained heart.

I could do little for my lonely husband, though he never seemed to blame me. Once the pall had thoroughly lifted from my mind and I began to have some confidence that I wouldn't wear it soon again, Palmer and I had a few excellent quiet times. Sometimes when I'd see him just staring at a wall, to show I was with him I'd say "Let's get outdoors."

He'd say "You're sure you want to?"

And once I said I did, he'd ride us around till he chose some spot we'd never seen together before. Then we'd climb down and spend an hour trekking through briars and brush. It might be pasture as empty as Mars or a stretch of woods deserted by birds. It was always a quiet deserted place. But Palmer would tell some tale about it. For instance he might claim that if he remembered correctly Major Slade had fought a cavalry skirmish here in the final years of the War. On his way north from Georgia, Sherman and all his maddogs had pa.s.sed our way.

Palmer's eyes at least had never lost their keenness, and we could be walking along in dense growth that looked to me like nothing but compost when Palmer might stoop and tease a bullet out of the ground. If the bullet was whole, he'd know it had spent its force on the empty air. But if it was flat or at all lopsided, he'd tell me "This might be the one that got Major's leg." I'd tell him that might well be the case, and Palmer would carefully store it in his pocket. Then he'd always smile as if to say "I know this is foolish," but he never put a single bullet back down.

And we must have wound up with fifty on the mantel. In any case Palmer never failed to thank me for keeping him company on his lonely jaunts. And the best thing I remember from our trips is the time he found the rusty blade of a Union bayonet. He held it up toward me and said, of all things, "If Mother had been the soldier instead of Major, we'd be living in a separate country now." Palmer laughed but he meant it and I half agreed.

Then once in the late spring of 1948, we stopped on a dirt road I didn't recognize. Palmer didn't wait for word from me but led me inward in silence so peaceful I was halfway dozing when he pulled us up short and pointed ahead. My own eyes were still good and sharp-- they're good today--but I didn't see anything I'd seen before. Still I didn't want to disturb the calm air and raise my voice to ask Palmer what and where this was. I let him lead me, and we had practically walked into it before I saw this was what was left of the old Montezuma gold mine. It had been more than twenty-seven years since our last visit here. And as I looked closely, I could see that very little of the cliff face anyhow had changed at all. There were just more tangled vines covering the mouth.

Palmer didn't face me but he finally said "You scared to walk in?"

I laughed and put my mouth to his good ear. "Never, dear friend. I've been in far longer tunnels than this. You lead the way."

Palmer met my eyes at last and said "This may be risky. I haven't been in there since you and I were married."

I thought of who would suffer if it caved in and trapped us forever. Dinah was nearly nine and, sweet as she was, she'd long since had to master the skills of flying alone. August was socketed in his life with a steady girlfriend. Wilton would miss us but he had his full mind to keep him company through any loss--he could imagine his way through considerable torment. Leela had Wil and Clarence. So I said to myself "Let it cave in now," and I took the first step pulling Palmer behind me.

I still don't understand quite what I meant to accomplish. But I'm almost sure it was one last peak in my love for my husband. I knew how

unchangeably sad he'd become. I must have thought that death for both of us here on a fine day would solve more oncoming problems than it caused.

Turned out neither one of us heard a thousand violins or harp strings as we pushed through the young vines and entered the shaft. Palmer hadn't brought a flashlight this time. So once we'd gone two steps past the reach of daylight, we were in deep darkness for the whole long way till we saw pale sun creeping through the far end. I think I can speak for Palmer's no-nonsense view of things. I can surely speak for mine. So it's all but certain that neither one of us had any thoughts of what our walk represented. It was nothing near as tacky though as a last Dark Stroll Toward the Light of Easy Death.

At the far end we came out again on the plain that I'd called the sea except that now it wasn't a plain but a curious stand of tall thick trees that seemed much older than the twenty-odd years they'd had to grow in. They were mostly pines and between them lay wide s.p.a.ces of ground under deep pine straw, no gra.s.s or weeds. Why hadn't Palmer offered to buy them years ago when they were young pulpwood? Again I saw no hidden meaning in the trees or in the quick change they'd made in this place where--more than any other surely--I'd chosen this broken man beside me when he was a lean eternal boy who'd buried his only rival brother and faced life alone, less likely even than ignorant me to last and thrive. Our hands were still joined.

Palmer took mine up and studied the fingers briefly. Then he slipped off the thin gold band he'd placed there in 1921. It had literally never been off my hand since our wedding. In my three childbirths and all through my sickness, I'd never removed it for any reason. Then still holding mine Palmer slipped off his own and showed me the two. They were nearly identical except for their weight on his palm. Finally he said "How long has it been?"

By then a cold fear had flushed up in me. As I've mentioned before, divorce in our world was scarce as gold ingots. But people sometimes separated and went in opposite directions. Was Palmer bracing me to ask for that? Where would he go now, tired as he was? Who would take him in? First

though I had to answer his question. I said "If you're asking how long we're together, it's twenty-seven years this coming November."

Palmer said "How old did Larkin live to be?"

"You remember," I said. "He was twenty years old when I first saw him--the day I met you, my own birthday."

Palmer said "We've outlasted him at least. By a good long way." He was studying the wedding rings still.

And I was still fearful.

But then Palmer faced me and broke out a smile that was broader than any I'd seen in years on his long face. He closed his fist tight around both rings and said "Can I do anything I want to?"

I somehow managed a smile of my own. "I vowed to obey you, yes sir--go to it."

So he waited forever, then turned toward what I'd once thought was the sea and flung both rings east as hard as he could.

I can still hear the dull little pock they made as they each struck trees and dropped to the ground. And I tried to see where they might have landed but saw no trace. They'd been truly swallowed up.

Palmer's smile grew wider still and then he laughed.

I said "You telling me to walk home alone?" He didn't hear me and after a long time he tapped on his ears as if I'd never known of his deafness.

I lowered the pitch of my voice and said "You've ended something. I need to know what."

"Ended?" he said. He was genuinely stumped. "Christ Jesus, Anna, I was just discarding what we don't need--I don't anyhow."

All I thought I knew at the moment was I've never heard Palmer take G.o.d's name in vain. Whatever he's done, he's in dead earnest.

When I didn't speak again, Palmer reached for my bare hand and turned back to lead us through the mine again. I must have pulled back slightly for an instant, so he stopped and said "Not a d.a.m.ned thing's changed. We're in this for life."

I still had no clear idea what meaning he saw in the thing he'd just done. I don't today. But I never asked him for any more. What he'd thrown

away was just a few dollars of a common metal. The rest of his life, like most of all our time together, was a demonstration that he'd kept his promises and planned to continue. He did, to the grave.

His grave was four years off, sad to say. If he'd gone that evening after Montezuma, he'd have died as near to peace as he'd ever been. What he had to go through between that day and the final end was more than hard on him, and it gravely damaged another human being. No way to tell it but straight through and honest. For two more years from the day at Montezuma our life went on very much as before. Both of us worked hard every day but Sunday. And once I was strong and Henrietta (my babysitter) was gone after two long months, of course I cooked on Sunday as well.

August married his girlfriend in '49. And we attended the wedding in Roanoke, the bride's hometown.

Her family were some of the well-known Shiflets of Virginia--well-known in those days anyhow for exceptional meanness. They did seem unusually sullen at the various wedding events. The bride's mother asked me if I was married when August was born. Turned out she meant was I Palmer's first wife and not a second choice, but still the family were remarkably odd. All but Daisy the bride. Daisy was only nineteen at the time. Still her even temper and the loveliest laugh in the Southern states won everybody's love, not to mention a mind as strong as a bear trap which--given August's tendency to slowness in the upper story--have come in handy many times through the years.

Dinah was a bridesmaid at ten years old. She'd quietly gone on making herself a priceless treasure (she was never less than her father's darling); and I went on just taking that for granted through decades to come, though in feeble defense I can say truly that at least I never treated her harshly for one single moment once I was my self after the torment.

What happened to Palmer, and all of us plus more than one stranger, came late in the summer of 1950. For a good many years, Palmer's main helper in the timber business was a light-colored black man from up on the river--Simon

Walton. He was younger than Palmer by six years exactly. But like so many of his dauntless people, Simon had refused to age and was still a healthy giant when Fate struck hard. He was more than six feet tall, entirely bald all over his fine head and gentler than any spring b.u.t.terfly. He and Palmer had not only worked together forever, they'd hunted and fished and gone on timber scouting trips as far off as Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains northwest of there.

It was liquor that did it--that and the blight on all white men of my generation in our part of the world where Negroes were concerned. And it happened on Sat.u.r.day, the worst day for liquor in all local towns. I'd noticed in the winter of 1950 that Palmer was drinking more in the evenings. He'd casually mentioned that his sciatica was giving him fits. And he'd had arthritis since late in his thirties, not to mention the deafness.

So I didn't say a word when I'd see him head out the back, open his truck door, reach down deep in the glove compartment and bring out a pint of Kentucky bourbon. He'd take a seat on the pa.s.senger side with the door still open and drink off one or two long swigs, then wipe his mouth with his ever-clean handkerchief and come back inside. That was the only way country gentlemen drank till after the Korean War, and many men still won't drink today in the presence of a woman or a lady anyhow.

On the Sat.u.r.day in question, I'd seen Palmer take a drink twice at least before I called him to dinner near noon. As ever I didn't say a word. And with me and Dinah near, he was his best self--no trace of trouble. He lay down briefly in the heat of the day. It was sweltering hot, first week of September. When I went in later to offer him some cold tea, Palmer sat up and said "Oh Anna, I promised I'd meet old Simon in town." As I said Simon was younger than Palmer.

Nothing seemed remotely wrong with their meeting on a Sat.u.r.day. They often had weekend business in Henderson--some tool to buy, a truck to repair--but I warned Palmer not to get overheated and to be home in time for the good cool supper that Dinah was going to help me fix. She'd recently showed great interest in cooking, though if she had an ounce of fat anywhere on her body, I could never see it. Somehow as the afternoon

went on, I felt uncertain about Palmer. In all our years he'd never once come home drunk or more than mildly tight. So I had no reason to suspect he was drinking. And certainly not with Simon.

It had always been a matter of strict principle with Palmer not to give any black person alcohol. In fact I never saw him offer so much as a sip to anybody white. He truly believed that few people should or could handle alcohol. And he'd once explained his theory to me, one he'd put together from his reading. It started like everything else with the Egyptians who'd been the first to ferment grain and manufacture beer. That clearly hadn't stood in the way of the Pyramids and Sphinx. Then the Greeks had learned to press wine from grapes and still invent civilization, so those skills had moved across the lower side of Europe in a few thousand years. It was only much later--all but modern times--when fermentation reached the frozen north of Scandinavia and Britain and later still before it reached the center of Africa and the Indians of America.

So all those nations who discovered it late had still not developed the blood that could handle any strong drink calmly. I have no idea how crazy or sound the theory was. It seemed to make sense when Palmer explained it to me on a map. A day seldom pa.s.sed without his opening the atlas for some reason. But he at least--as a man of English, Welsh and Scottish blood--included himself in the cla.s.s of the alcohol-belateds who had to be careful. And so he'd been, for that and no doubt other reasons which he felt I never needed to know.

Anyhow Dinah was ready to serve the first chicken salad she'd ever made when a sheriff's car pulled right up under the kitchen window and sat still a long time with n.o.body moving.

After maybe five minutes I arranged my face and stepped out onto the back porch to see if anybody was lost and needing help.

A rabbit-eyed young deputy got out and tipped his hat to me. When I said I was Mrs. Palmer Slade and could I help him, his big Adam's apple went out of control and he croaked out "Ma'm, the sheriff in person is driving your husband home in you all's car. I'm just waiting to drive Sheriff Phelps on back."

To my lasting regret I said "Is he

drunk?"

"The sheriff? No ma'm."

"Mr. Slade of course."

"No ma'm, not that I heard any mention of. No, his nerves are just all tore up, it looked like. So me and Phelps are helping him a little."

Nerves had never been a problem of Palmer's. Whatever failings he had I never once saw him shiver or flinch at any surprise the world spun at him. Naturally I couldn't imagine what this might mean. I said "Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

The young man took his hat off entirely then and said "My name is Foster Pickens. I'm pretty new at this. But see, your husband has damaged a n.i.g.g.e.r. Bad."

I could only say "Seriously?"

He said "I'd estimate the answer is Yes. The n.i.g.g.e.r's left eye was busted all open by the time I got there."