He said "It's my first, I want you to know." I could just believe him, just barely believe him --I wanted to of course. For part of an instant, my mind heard Miss Olivia and what she'd mentioned about white men and their secret black girls. I well knew Palmer had been around black girls, in some way or other, all his life. I guessed he could have pretty much what he wanted if he only said the word in the right dark shack or under the stars. After all, white girls were scarcer than polar bears this far in the sticks. But that moment pa.s.sed. From then on, I just believed his claim; and I told him as much.

Then he waited so long in the total dark that I kept sliding to sleep beside him. He finally started to lift my gown and feather his fingers up and down me.

I hadn't been touched in any such places by man or boy since Father tried to sponge me and Leela down when I was five and Muddie had gone to bury her sister two nights away--

innocent sponging, I'm speaking about.

My father never moved a finger to harm us, not that I ever heard of.

Anyhow after many minutes of light brushes and lingerings, Palmer moved onward to his main purpose.

The first few minutes hurt, yes, a lot.

It may have hurt well beyond the start, but pain has never been frightening to me. And as later, with the pains of childbirth, I likely forgot any serious suffering. Again growing up in a sizable family with boys and men of a.s.sorted ages, I'd luckily had no cause to think that anything a man might want from me could leave me bereft or even worse off than I'd ever been. Then that first pain stopped eventually, and my mind eased down. Young as he was Palmer moved slowly, and I gradually understood that a decent young man was way inside me searching for something I apparently had in my power to give.

Considering who he was--whose brother, whose son --and what I'd learned about him today, I chose to try giving Palmer what he was after, whatever that was or might prove to be. I was far from knowing. And not that I knew a thing about the simplest skills in stroking a likable man to his ease. Simple as I was I guessed it was up to my mind to help him toward his goal.

So in my mind's eye then, plain as anything I'd ever watched, I saw myself as taller than Palmer by at least a hand's breadth, holding him firmly by his left wrist and gently tugging him on down that rock ledge we'd been on today and into the sea. I've mentioned not ever seeing the real sea except in a silent movie or two. But the idea of it--waves and surf and a merciful undertow--seemed appropriate to me as a place to lead him.

And I got him there. Palmer had thanked me and drifted off into silence which may have been true sleep before I thought the next idea. It came as a boiled-down message to myself in six words-- Roxanna Dane, you're a mother now. I knew it as surely as I knew I was leaving this boy not long after daybreak and going home to my parents' house where in nine months' time I would give them a grandchild. They were yet to have one.

In the weeks to come, I'd learn I was wrong. It was Leela who told me that every time a man and

woman join doesn't necessarily end in a child. I hadn't been altogether clear on that point. But for those long weeks as fall got bleaker and winter hove in, I had all the thoughts I'd have in later years, making real children in my actual body.

When I woke into that last morning at the Slades', Palmer had left my room at some point without another word to me. As I washed in the chilly water from a pitcher I'd drawn with my own hands at the well yesterday, I asked myself how much of the night I'd dreamt or hoped inffbeing. There were signs on the bedding that something had happened which involved more than me, but my lower body didn't look too different or feel truly changed.

My mind was clear on what it thought had happened, but it had no other tangible proof. I went so far as to get down and look in the curls of dust beneath the bed for any string or burr that might have dropped off whatever clothes Palmer wore when he entered, if he did. And all I found was a single dime that might have belonged to anybody. I still have it somewhere.

Finally as I combed my hair in the scabby old mirror, I studied my face and eyes as closely as if I might be a vicious stranger, some creature who--for mysterious reasons I'd never met with on Earth before-- intended me harm or death itself. Plainly I wasn't any such person now. But to me all the same, I looked unquestionably changed and new, even stranger than I looked the night Lark died--so strange that I felt an actual fear of heading downstairs and having the major and Miss Olivia see a person so altered they'd scarcely know her at close range. The difference involved my eyes entirely. They were opened now on deeper places than anywhere I'd ever been.

But n.o.body mentioned the change when I walked down into the kitchen. Miss Olivia was drinking coffee at the table, the major and Fern were drawing some kind of map of their plans to wander, and Coy was pounding a huge piece of round steak to batter and fry. As I said country breakfasts in those hard days were serious business. No sign of Palmer but that was not new with all his lone-scout secret

ways.

His absence though did feel a little cold. Of course I'd have no more mentioned him than I'd have stood there and told my story from the dead of last night, but oddly Miss Olivia took her first look at me and said "Palmer Slade expressly told me to give you his thanks when you left." She often spoke of members of her family by their full names.

So I took her lead and said "Where is Palmer?"

"Oh riding the wind on a homemade glider for all I know." Miss Olivia actually looked to the window as if he might fly by in the clouds.

Coy said "No such a thing. Gone to get my medicine."

Miss Olivia said "You out of that medicine this soon again?"

"Run out of it once a month," Coy said, "--e month of the year on the very same day, and don't n.o.body but Palmer remember." Coy took frequent teaspoons of some black syrup for her rheumatism, and the nearest drugstore was long miles away.

So in case I'd worried about embarra.s.sment, I wouldn't have to lay eyes on Palmer today. That chance at a calm pause might have relieved me. To the contrary though I felt, like a grievous surge in my throat, the bitterest taste I'd known till now. Some vital part of my mind and body was not here near me, and I felt cold fear to be leaving without it.

But when Father and I reached home before nine that same cold morning, Palmer had already stopped by the house and left me a small package wrapped in white paper and tied with green string. The moment Muddie put it in my hands, I knew it was Woodall Drug Company's wrapping. I didn't ask her who had left it, and she didn't volunteer the name or take the chance to tease me at all. That made me wonder if Muddie could see the change I'd noticed in my eyes and face.

If so she didn't allude to that either, though oddly she did take both my hands and open them palm up to study them closely. Whether she saw anything, I never learned; but n.o.body on Earth ever knew me better. At the moment Leela had

walked into town to fetch the mail; so I was free to go to our room, shut the door and open the package in that brief privacy.

It was a big box of Jordan Almonds which I remembered telling Palmer were my favorite candy. I searched the box itself and the wrappings but found no card, note or signature. So when I'd sat there and eaten two almonds to sweeten my throat, I was forced to hide them way back in the chifforobe while I unpacked my few worn duds and got myself ready to face my sister and Muddie again.

For whatever reason they were kind and welcoming, folding me back into my old place and my round of ch.o.r.es as easily as if I'd never been gone. There was not one syllable of teasing or probing and, oddest of all, not a single mention of Palmer's visit with the candy box. Even when Father came home for the noon meal, no Slade was mentioned except Miss Olivia and the pitiful major.

By the time night came and Leela and I undressed together for an early bed with no word of Palmer, I'd begun to wonder if he'd stopped by at all; or were the almonds just a welcoming gift from Muddie herself or somebody else? That began to seem more and more likely. Yet no other member of my family but Fern had the slightest knowledge of what had pa.s.sed between Larkin and me on the day he drowned nor surely of anything between me and Palmer these past two weeks.

In the following days then--with no word from Palmer and nothing but a letter of thanks from Miss Olivia --I began to turn inward and dwell on myself, always a grave mistake. After their original lack of talk about Palmer and the other Slades, Muddie or Father or occasionally Leela would mention the family and wonder how they were. Ferny wrote us less than no news except to say that the major was paying him now for his time. That was meant to a.s.suage Father's growing sense that Fern had abandoned him at the store and for no gainful purpose.

But again n.o.body touched on my feelings, and n.o.body seemed to notice what I could feel--that I was beginning to pick up speed in the long process of sliding down into a siege of the blues. It had been a tendency with me since childhood. I'd forge ahead strongly through trouble

at school or a spell of bad weather and deep bronchitis. Then one day when I seemed better off, a sudden cloud like black ink in water would burst on my mind. And I'd be left half blind in spirit with no other hope or visible help than the sense that I was bound for death and must fight my way free. Since n.o.body among my family or friends had ever mentioned feeling anything more than blue on occasion, I had n.o.body to tell my failing to--n.o.body, G.o.d knew, to ask for help.

This time as always I was baffled to know what had flung me down. Of course I'd lived through Larkin's death, then two weeks in a sad cold house, Palmer's visit to me that final night, my wrong conviction that his child was in me, his refusal to contact me by mail or pay the briefest visit. But no single item from that sizable list seemed sufficient to be the weight that crushed me.

I'd realized in my first few days at home that I'd misunderstood about the child--my monthly came on normal schedule. In the calm at home I'd realized that much of what I felt for Larkin was just the excitement of meeting a likable face and limbs on the edge of vanishing. Palmer's late-night visit--for all my training in morals and manners--had never felt like a wrong in G.o.d's eyes, much less my own.

And it was surely his right--Palmer's, that is-- to disappear into empty s.p.a.ce if he had nothing left to tell me or ask me for.

But down I went and again n.o.body noticed. Once Muddie paused in the front hall, looked at me for maybe three frowning seconds and said "You might need a fall tonic, darling." Tonics in those days, spring or fall, generally meant some thunderous strong dread laxative. Free bowels were the absolute secret to health for all my forebears. I just told Muddie No and went my way.

So from then on I managed to have a nervous breakdown and hide the fact, a common enough skill in those old days when you could find your normal-acting aunt or your quiet brother hanging dead by the neck from the stable loft-- self-killed and n.o.body understood the reason--or what was more likely, sitting on the front porch and facing the road without a murmur for the length of a whole long blistering summer till they finally turned your way and said "It's a cooler day,

praise G.o.d" or stood up and walked downtown for the first time in maybe ninety days.

I stayed clean and well combed, I did my light ch.o.r.es, I never burst out into public tears nor otherwise complained nor tongue-lashed a soul. Whenever I lay down though for an afternoon pause or walked into town for a spool of darning thread, I realized in lone-wolf silence how utterly gray the world had turned in every particular and how entirely beyond belief it was that I was expected to live on here for fifty more years of this much numbness. What had swamped me was not pain exactly but a lack of feeling so complete as to hurt worse than any kind of death I'd witnessed anyhow.

I got so bad--but still in secret--that when Muddie and Leela began to plan for a big Thanksgiving weekend with my elder brother and his wife back home, plus food for thousands, I gave the first thought of my life to an ending (the ending of me by my own hand). In those simpler days suicide was well known even in small towns. There was lots of rope around as I said. Every kitchen had its can of Red Devil lye or other strong poisons, every master bedroom had a loaded pistol on the mantel, every house had a deep well of endless water for anybody with the will to jump.

I could sit by a window, and did more than once, in a really hard afternoon and plan my ending to the last small detail as painlessly as you might plan a trip to return a library book overdue by no more than a day. I finally settled on the Monday morning after Thanksgiving. I'd rig a strong rope from the loft of the stable and be hanging quiet, with no drop of blood, when Father found me by dinnertime. I thought so long and precisely about it that even today I could paint you pictures of how it would look and tell you every word they'd say at the sight of my corpse. The nearer I got the righter it felt. And so it still does in memory now.

What stopped me was Ferny's last postcard before the late November homecoming. It asked could he bring Palmer Slade back with him. They'd sleep on pallets for a night or two, help with the company and leave late Sunday. Miss Olivia was forcing them out of her way since some of the major's descendants by his first wife were threatening to visit, and she wanted them to see

old Major at his frailest since they'd all but deserted him in recent years. I collected the card myself from the post office on that morning's first mail, and walking home with it I thought at first I must speed up my plans and not have to face Palmer after his silence.

But by the time I neared the house, G.o.d himself or some branch of grace had flashed a beam toward me, and I'd remembered my dark night with Palmer as clearly as if we'd been in warm sunlight beside a real sea. At first it failed to touch my stunned feelings. But just as my right foot took the first step up toward our back door, I heard Palmer's voice in my head again as it spoke the final sentence before I gave him permission to join me bare in the night--"You want me to leave?" I knew that I didn't.

I wanted to see him, and I somehow knew he'd ask for my life.

With the card in my hand, I opened the kitchen door at last on Muddie's energetic voice. And as shy as I've always been of calling anything a sin, I thought what a sin it was to let such a small thing drive you crazy and then let another thing as small as a postcard haul you back from the far edge of death. But as my mother reached to take the postal news from me, I said the word Thanks once, aloud in the room.

My older brother arrived on the late Wednesday train for Thanksgiving. Ferny and Palmer came early Thursday morning in Major's car. And the weekend went more smoothly than expected by anyone, though we all over-ate like hogs in Heaven and despite three or four of the usual sharp exchanges and sulks that every family reunion inspires if it lasts any more than fifteen minutes.

Palmer and Fern spent a good while riding around town or walking off meals. When they were indoors Palmer was pleasant-faced but mostly as silent as in his own home. As I watched his hands particularly, I came even closer to wondering if I'd dreamt the whole night of our joining together. Had those enormous powerful hands really ever touched me in curiosity and need, really reached my quick?

My elder brother left at three on Sunday afternoon. Our liberation from that many hours of his

talking wife and peculiar daughter felt like the end of centuries of slavery. Ferny had mentioned earlier that he and Palmer promised to be back up at the Slades' by sundown. So when time got on past four-thirty and Palmer had still not said a word to me in privacy, I told myself I'd go back to being my lone-wolf self again any minute now and to get ready for it--not to slide once more down as deep as I'd gone. I told myself You learn to be single or cut your throat quick.

But at that same instant, the boys were drinking coffee in the kitchen. I was washing the white turkey platter, bigger than West Virginia on the map, when something made me turn and take a last glance at Palmer's hands. And something about their healthy color, the warm blood in them, told me at last You didn't dream a thing. Palmer Slade came to you. When I looked up at his face, his eyes caught me and I must have flushed scarlet.

As I finished the platter, he came up quietly behind me and said "Let's get a quick last breath of fresh air." Fresh air in those days was thought to be the finest medicine available so long as you didn't partake it at night. Night air was lethal from the instant of darkness to the first streak of dawn.

Muddie and Father were in the front room. Leela was somewhere else as well. So I met Palmer's look and said "You think it's worth doing in the short time you've got?"

He thought and then very gravely said "I do, yes, lady."

I told him in that case I was game.

Palmer chose our path and we walked into town, took a turn round the courthouse tree that had stood there for three hundred years (so Father claimed) and headed back without having said more than thirty words each. We'd even pa.s.sed the Methodist church which my family attended, and home was in sight before Palmer stopped and moved so close to my face I could smell his characteristic odor like distant vanilla flavoring, a favorite of mine.

He said "I'm apologizing in real shame, Anna."

I told him he owed me nothing on Earth. But his broad hand waved me silent in no

uncertain terms.

"I've treated you harshly with my long silence, and I want you to know exactly why before I let Ferny drive me home."

I said I'd listen and stood while he braced himself.

At that instant a smile was as far from his face as the tigers of Asia. But he finally said "I've waited this long to be sure I could speak the real truth to you. And I know I can now." Our hands were separate at each of our sides. He seemed to reach out for my left wrist, then abandoned the try. What he said was "Could you forget Lark ever breathed and just live with me?"

I said "No sir."

Palmer said "Why not?"

I said "See, Larkin was kind to me. And we all watched him die that sudden clean way. No, Palmer, I'll see Lark's face till I die. That's all there is to it."

Palmer thought about that. "But that's truly all? You'll just see him sometimes in your mind's eye?"

I suspected it might be halfway a lie, but I nodded and said that sounded right. "My mind's eye, yes."

"Will you marry me then?"

It occurred to me that I'd given Palmer everything else I owned that somebody else hadn't got claims on. And that was no more than the duty to love and help my parents, my sister and brothers if they should need me down the long road of the future we'd get. That felt as normal as the mist I was breathing out in the cold air. I could still be married and do all that. So I said "Yes. When?"

It was Palmer who said "My mother asks us to wait till we've pa.s.sed the first anniversary of Larkin drowning."

That also was normal and perfectly acceptable given the way families mourned back then, never less than twelve months. I said "October 9th then--1921?"

Palmer nodded, still solemn. Finally he took my wrist and made a curious little figure in my palm, round as a ring. But he offered me no engagement band. The jewelry stores of America hadn't yet made that a compulsory part of being betrothed.

I wondered plainly inside my mind Will we live to turn that circle he made

into actual gold? But I said the word "October" again.

And Palmer thanked me before I could say any thanks of my own.

So I wished him many happy years to come and asked if he would keep it a secret till I'd got my own feelings under control. I'd mentioned being under the weather here lately, but I'd never hinted at the depth of my blues.

Palmer said "That sounds fair at least, but Mother will want to know as soon as possible."

I told him I'd write him in no more than ten days and give the signal for him to tell his mother. Then he could come back here before Christmas and get my father's permission and Muddie's. When Palmer nodded his acceptance of that, I felt entirely different from how I'd ever felt in the past except for maybe once--those very few minutes I'd sat with Larkin Slade by the Roanoke River in fall sunlight. I thought it was happiness. And I guess I still do, though I've known my share of happiness from numerous creatures in the long years since.