Deep Down and Low

The author does not own any publicly recognizable entities herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

Please note that this story is written in a similar style to the pattern of speech and thought in Appalachia in the 1930s. Language and grammar were different than commonly accepted English usage today.

Daddy was skinning a squirrel the day the federal man come. His fingers were making quick work of that soft grey skin and that knife lay beside him on the porch, silver and smooth in the morning light. I looked at it, stuck tip down into the edge of the half rotted wooden bannister, and I was not the only one seeing it.

Emmett McCarty took off his fancy hat when he addressed Daddy but that man from the government, he didn't at first. He was watching the skinning, his thin grey eyes following that grey pelt down to the blood and bone Daddy was working it loose from, seeing how it soaked through the paper sack underneath. I could see his eyes follow the trail of that blood over to the sack of waiting squirrels and on to the knife blade, and it was about that time, when his gaze lit on the blade, that he reached up quick and pulled off his hat. His hair beneath was slick with pomade, silver as the blade, and combed so stiff his hat had not disturbed it.

Daddy never looked up.

"You going to say hello, Metzger?" Emmett said with a frog crouching in his throat after several minutes had passed on by with Daddy just working the squirrels and his lip packed with snuff.

Daddy flipped another hide into the cast iron pan beside him and reached for the next critter. He'd been in the woods at four this morning and come home with enough animals for a big stew to share with the Hales up the holler.

"Mister McCarty, you come to my place with a guvment man, I reckon he can state his own business. I got no greetin' for outsiders they be wantin' me to give. None of them others you brung and not this'n either."

That federalist swallered but Emmett kind of smiled. Thing about Daddy, you knowed where you stood. And right then, Emmett and the government man, they stood alive just by Daddy's grace and Mama's hand on his shoulder from heaven.

The federalist swayed but he stepped forward a little, his long, smooth fingers on his hat. His voice when he found it at last was thin as the reeds by Cullen's pond. "Mr. Swan, Emmett here tells me that you would like to secure a position in the city for your daughter. If you might be willing to take another look at the TVA's offer, I might be able to help you with an introduction to speed your inquiries after such a position."

"I ain't going nowhere in Knoxville less'en I go with Edward." Daddy didn't skeer me but the idea of lighting out of these mountains without Daddy or Edward was enough to bring my temper rushing up. "Daddy, tell him. I ain't going nowhere."

"Izbel Marie, you hush. Now." Daddy was pointing at me with the sharp end of his blade. The federal man, his Adam's Apple was wallering from one end of his throat to the other the way the dog, Jesse James, liked to roll from one side of our porch t'other.

"And you–" The blade was dangerous close to the man's watch chain on his front breast pocket now. "You going't introduce yourself proper or you're going't to get on down that holler quick, hear?"

Daddy would be forty-two in August. He had streaks of grey at his temples and in his mustache but his eyes were dark and deep, brown as our woods with bits of green scattered. Secret eyes, Mama said. She said he knowed them and he kept them, and you could see clear to the man of fifteen she'd married if you looked at him right. She'd been gone since Christmas, lost to pneumonia, was what Dr. Cullen said. All that to say, he wasn't skeery at all, but at four inches taller than six foot, he tended to impose, just by his length. His knuckles on the knife were over large with arthritis but he could gentle. I'd seen him sit up all night with Mama, drawing her shoulders over the steam pot and carrying her to the porch for the cool air, back and forth, and back and forth, a dark giant just a whispering cross the floor.

"I am William Black, Esquire, United States Magistrate Judge of the Eastern District of Tennessee. I brought the papers with me, Mister–"

"Charles Metzger Swan." Daddy had wiped his right hand on his bibs and extended it to the federal man, who was, even worse, a lawyer. Hand to God, I don't know why Daddy hadn't yet sent him and Emmett back down the hill with some buckshot for convincing.

Black shook but he rubbed his fingers together afterward and then retrieved a handkerchief from his vest for his hand, which came away stained slightly pink from the squirrel blood. "Mr. Swan," he said again, "I brought the papers. And Emmett here, whom I am told knows you and your daughter, will be happy to drive you to look at properties on behalf of the TVA, just as soon as these items are signed and you are amenable."

Daddy had gone back to his squirrels, and he didn't look up as he started at the neck and peeled a pelt from shoulders to haunches with a quickness that set lawyer Black to trembling from the wrists. "What you got for my Izbel?"

"Pardon?"

"I din'na stutter, Mr. Black. Izbel. What for Izbel?"

"My son is in need of a housekeeper and nursemaid for his children in Knoxville," Black said, and he straightened a little like he cottoned to talking about his son. "Jacob is well placed in the community, an engineer with the Corps designing the dams. Izbel will be comfortable, and have room and board in addition to a salary."

"Daddy, this'is gone far enough. I will not go."

"Izbel." Daddy's voice wasn't leaving much room for fuss so I reckoned to appeal to Emmett.

"Emmett McCarty, have you lost your mind? I'm to go mind a passel of brats I never met? What is wrong with you? Your daddy would be ashamed. He's rollin,' is what."

Emmett give me a look like he was pained, and he shook his head for me to hush. That was enough for me. "I'm going to see Edward. Nobody listenin' to me anyway."

"I can give you a ride, Izbel," Emmett said, and Lord, what nerve.

Daddy held out his hand for the papers Mr. Black had brought and dropped his knife over the last squirrel. "Let's go inside," he said to the federalist and I about died. I know he heard my huff. "Emmett, if you would be a taking Izbel down to the store to talk to Cullen, we ought to be done once'st you get back up."

"Daddy, please."

"G'won, Izbel. Have your visit. We've things to talk over."

"Don't send me away. Edward! I mean, he'll come–"

"He knows the way, don't he? We're just gone talk. That's enough, child."

Black walked through our front door chicken legged and lily white he was so peaked. The screen slammed behind Daddy and it sounded like the end of something, the Lord's great seals locked over my heart and hell on my mind.

I got up and picked my way toward Emmett's shiny Chevrolet with an anger in me that felt like it was working up to a squall. I opened the door myself and scrambled up onto the running board before slamming that door, but hard.

"Izbel, c'mon. Don't take it out on the Independence."

"Funny name for an automobile," I said, settling down not at'all. "Only thang they're good for is carrying people away."

…

Roy Stooksbury's general store was at the near end of Loyston, a few miles from our two-room cabin up the hills to the northeast. Daddy's land went both ways, up and down that side of the valley, and it run out a mile from the edge of town. Edward had been with the Stooksbury's since the former spring. He was saving, he said, for engineering school at the university. He said to me in private on our porch, it was for a ring and a house, too. Well, if he didn't get to Daddy right quick, it might be for a coffin. Not mine. His'n. I'd shoot him if he let Daddy ship me to Knoxville with that lawyer's boy and his childrens.

"Izbel, you know none of us have a choice, right? The surveys are almost complete. Loyston will be a memory in less'n three year's time."

"Hush."

"The Blacks are good folks. Billy's a bit of a stiff, but you'd like Jake. We went to school together. His wife is kind, too."

"Loyston ain't going nowhere, Emmett McCarty, and neither am I."

Emmett's big hands on the Chevrolet's steering wheel tightened to white cords. He had not changed since he'd gone off to school seven years ago. He was maybe even bigger, his muscles more solid barrels than ropes that seemed drawn on like Popeye's. He'd seemed like his suit would not fit him when he'd come back for Gerald McCarty's funeral and then Myra's year before last. But it fit him now. Shame his common sense did not seem to have grown with his shell. His tongue, however, it must've, because he was winding up for a sermon.

"Then you will get mighty wet, Izbel. And so will anyone who remains. You will go now or you will go later, and Edward of all people knows it. The TVA will bring light to the whole of the South. The president and the whole guvment is betting on us to bring the people back to the light, and Loyston is in the way of progress. If Edward don't want you sent to the Blacks, he'd do well to make Metzger a better deal and right quick."

I smacked the pretty wood dash in front of me, ignoring the pleasant feel of the wind lifting my dark hair as we hit cruising speed. "I hate you. And I hate the goddamned TVA too. You sold your soul." I spit the words across the three-speed shifter in his direction. "For progress."

"Izbel! I did no sech thing. You must think before you say no sech–"

"Tell that to Rosalie," I said, leaning as far toward the door as I could. "Roy Hale hit her so hard last week he knocked her back teeth loose. Little Jasper come down the hill for Daddy but his paw was gone 'fore Daddy got there. You left her to rot with the first drunkard that laid claim. And I hope you reap what you sew."

Emmett didn't say another word clear to town. Thing men never understood was you didn't need your fists to win an argument. You just had to pay right attention and then pick the words that wounded worse.

As we come into town, I thought about words and the weight of them, and which ones I needed to find to make Edward understand the seriousness of our situation. We were not playing at spades anymore. Daddy had gone and forced our hand.

The car rolled to a stop in front of Stooksbury's and to his credit, Emmett come around and opened the door for me. He offered his hand, but I ignored it and hopped over the running board to the dirt. He had without a doubt the nicest, newest auto in this part of Union County, a shiny Chevrolet, probably less than two year old, that stood out among the dying Fords and worn out mules but I didn't see what good it done him. His heart was up the ridge, taking her licks and raising a son that weren't his. "I'll just head over to the barber," he said, turning his hat in his hands and not looking at me. "I could use a trim."

"Fine."

It was not fine, but not much had turned out like I expected lately.

Edward was behind the counter selling sugar, yeast, flour, and a length of copper to runner Seamus Matney's wife, Jessica, when I slipped in through the screen door. I never would get over how he looked, the way his hair looked so nice slicked back and resting above his shirt collar, reddish like the haze of the sun coming up over the mountains. He was pretty as Emmett was big, and Daddy said he was lucky he was smart as he was too or nobody ever would take such a nicely cut face serious. He wasn't like Gable or any of those big men in the pictures, though he was tall like a willow but still stout. Daddy called him wiry and I reckoned that was right. He was straight and tall without bulk but with cheekbones like God hisself had just carved him out of glass and breathed fire into him, clear through to the roots of his wild hair that he worked pomade through to calm.

"Edward Cullen, I do not need no fabric, but I think I could use some muslin for a blanket backing I need to make." Jessica leaned across the counter, her grayed out shift all bunched up against the wood, and smiled up at him. "We got a baby coming early next year, did you know?"

"Why, no, ma'am," Edward said. "And a hearty congratulations to you 'ins. I'm sure Seamus is proud as a peacock."

"He will be, soon as he gets his son in his hands, I'd say."

I made my way over to the counter while Edward turned to fetch the muslin for her from some shelving up above his head. "Only if it's a boy? Men are fools."

"Well, Izbel. How dee do?" Jessica wasn't pleased to see me, but I wouldn't be happy to share Edward's attentions either.

"Right fine," I said, grabbing a few pieces of stick candy from the glass jar on the counter and dropping my coin on the counter. "You care for a mint? Rosalie says it helps with the sickness you'll get."

Jessica took the peppermint and stashed it in her pocketbook without so much as a thank you. Some people never did learn manners. She told Edward how much muslin to cut and he run the scissors down the cut in the board at two yards. She paid for all of it and he wrapped it in paper and twine and carried out the big the big bags of dry goods to her Ford for her. I waited and held my tongue because Stooksbury was around someplace and I didn't want to get Edward in trouble.

Soon as he was back in the door, though, and the place was empty, I spilled it. "Emmett McCarty come today. TVA sent him with a lawyer, and Daddy let that federal man in. They're trying to send me away. Edward, you're going to have to do something. I swear to Christ I will gut you both fore I get sent off like some snot-nosed kid."

"Slow down, Izbel." Edward had crossed the floor and drawn my hands into his, sliding from my wrist down to my fingertips and then entwining our fingers. He always kept space between us, inches maybe, but enough that Stooksbury would have no tales to tell Daddy. "You're no kid, and Metzger would never send you away."

"He will." I was trying to slow down but the fear was working up my throat like the fog in the hills. "He'll send me away if he thinks it will make me a better life. And Edward, I can't…I ain't…I got no life you ain't in. He thinks I'm a kid he can order around."

His hand went to my cheek and I stilled as he brushed his long fingers from my lips to my brow. "You are a pretty young thing," he said, and I shivered because he was close and it was still in here with wood and fabric and other dry makings. I could feel the heat of him across my shoulders like it was spilling down my neck between us.

"I'm no child," I said, and my breath was washing over the lower part of his jaw. I could just almost reach up and taste him, I could. "I'll be fifteen in September."

"And we'll be married." I looked for doubt in his eyes, or deer shit as Daddy would say, but found none.

"You mean it?"

"I do. Stooksbury took the payout from TVA a while ago. I'll be getting a bonus. I'll speak to your Daddy. I won't let him take you away from me. I won't let anyone, ever, Izbel."

I leaned into his hand, and the green of his eyes was as calming as always, my quiet field to lay down in since he was in short britches in the yard at the Methodist church down the way.

I told him all about Daddy, about the lawyer, and Emmett's conviction that Loyston would be a watery ghost town in less'n three years. "I know er'body says Roosevelt is saving us but Lord, God, Edward. They're going to destroy our home. How is that grace?"

Edward was pulling a caned broom across the floor while we talked, cleaning up from the day's customers. He stopped in the middle and leaned on the handle, looking at his dust pile with a finger through the front of one of his black suspenders. "What do you suppose Metzger would do if he couldn't feed you 'ins, Izbel?"

Well, that was neither here nor there. "Not feed us? Daddy can shoot. We'll always eat."

"But suppose he had to sell his guns, or he couldn't buy or trade for powder?"

"He'd fish. He'd set traps. He'd strangle something with his bare hands if'n he had to."

"A person? Do you think he'd steal? Kill? If he had to, to take care of you?"

"I…yes. I reckon he would. If he was desperate."

Edward nodded toward the door. "People are scared, Izbel. It's bad out west and it's getting bad here. A desperate populace makes a dangerous land. And President Roosevelt knows it. Think about how many people act like Dillinger and Pretty Boy and Baby Face are gods right now. Why? Because they're taking what they need. They're doing what everybody else would do if they were a little bit more desperate, just a little further gone. You give a man a chance to work, to better his land and himself, and you keep the beast inside at bay. You turn the tide of human nature back toward the greater good."

I opened up a piece of my peppermint before I answered him. He was a pretty man with pretty words but the worst part about pretty words is when they make sense and you're still mad about it. Nothing angered me more than the truth. It still don't. "You talk like you believe what they're selling."

"I believe in work. And if we have to move to put good men to work, then so be it."

"And when will Carlisle be signing the papers, Edward?"

Emmett took up the whole of the doorframe. Edward didn't look up from his sweeping. "You can speak to the doctor same as me. But while we're sticking noses where they don't belong, when will you be getting Roy Hale a Chicago overcoat? Rosalie showed up at the house this morning with two broken ribs. Told Dad she fell coming back from the well with Jasper for morning water."

I thought then that Edward was right. Desperation wouldn't just make men do crazy things. It made them plumb crazy. I looked at Emmett McCarty in that doorway, and I realized he had done left desperate down the road in Knoxville. He didn't come to get papers signed for his employers. He come to Loyston to settle up with his own insanity.

…

Daddy and I took fresh squirrels up the hill to Rosalie and Jasper again a little more than two weeks later. We had some frogs, too, and two loaves of bread I made Friday afternoon. He had stopped letting me go to see her by myself. He said Roy wasn't to be trusted sober or drunk.

It turned out not to matter as Roy had gone up the mountain with a load of dew and would not be back till his trunk was empty. I didn't begrudge any man a dollar made with or without tax, but if'n I had a way to contact them, I would have turned him in to the revenuers without a blink. Prohibition had gone the way of the dodo, but the federals were serious about taxes on corn liquor. Well, I seriously hoped they would do away with Roy and quick like. I don't think anybody is born evil, but Roy Hale had been earning his way to hell for the last six years and dragging Rosalie and little Jasper with him. I'd thought when Jasper was borned Roy might back off, but it seemed to make him meaner when she had to split her time to take care of the boy.

Daddy said it wasn't the drink. Roy was just that hateful. He had to be to lay hands on Rosalie, the angel of Union County. I think some people know mean, though, and somehow all you know is what you cling to, because when Rosalie's nasty old pa refused to let Emmett wed and take her to school with him for fear she'd get above her raisin', Roy came calling. I thought sure she'd send him packing but him and her pa got along thick as thieves, and she just went along. Well, they married, and then come Jasper. I knew Roy was useless as a bow and arry at a shooting match when he sent her to draw water that winter and her eight months pregnant. I guess God did give her some respite. Her pa died when Jasper was a wee thing so now she just had the one tiger tail to hold to.

We left Daddy frying a big batch of squirrels with Jasper playing marbles at his feet and off we went down to the edges of Daddy's fields to look for poke weed to fry too.

"I swear Daddy is avoiding Edward," I said, pulling six leaves down the deep pink shoots and laying them in my basket. "Edward sent word he wanted to come pay a call but Daddy said no, he's too busy with the planting to have company right now. And here we are, anyway."

"You didn't want to see me? I'm offended, Izbel." Rosalie's eyes were blue and full of mirth. Her hair was up in a double plait crossed over her ears, and with the sun shining on her and the hills behind, she looked like a woodland fairy. I don't know how a woman of twenty-five could be so perfect, but even childbirth had only made her more fair.

"You know what I mean. I love you rightly but if we've time to have a fry, why can't he talk to Edward?"

Rosalie's basket was fuller than mine and as she worked she hummed "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" under her breath. She got the high leaves and I got the low ones since she was still taped up on her right side so she'd mend good. "Metzger is just postponing the inevitable. Let him work through it in his own time. He wants to keep you to home a little while longer, let him."

"But what if he says no?"

Her dress, stitched together from flour sacks, caught on a bramble and I helped her loosen it. "He won't."

"But your pa did. How can you be so sure?"

She caught my chin between her roughened fingers. "Your pa is twice the man mine was, and Edward is a good boy. He's more of a man at seventeen than Roy is at twenty-nine. Metzger won't say no."

"I hope you're right."

"I always am. And right now, we got rain coming. We best get back."

She was laughing. Her smooth cheeks dimpled, and she had freckles across the bridge of her nose. I always thought it was God's way to mark her for Earth. You can't just let angels run around free. The shine would blind us. It wasn't just her face either. She never complained. She didn't make excuses for her pa or for Royce Hale, but she didn't take it on herself or cry about it either. She just was. She lived with what she'd been cut, and she did everything she could to keep Jasper happy and healthy. Put Jessica Matney in her place and you'd hear her squalling clear to Chattanooga. Rosalie would never break. Her light come from within and above.

We got the poke and were making our way from the fields back up to her cabin when she touched my arm for me to slow down.

"Where will you go when you marry, Izbel? Where will Metzger go when Loyston is done with?"

"Edward wants more schooling. That's always been the plan. So Knoxville I guess, and then I don't know. He wants to study engineering and science – something about the inside of cells."

She looked off toward our house down the hill. "And you? What do you want?"

"Well, I always wanted babies of my own. And I read good. I can speak better if I think about what I'm saying first. I could teach 'em at home till they're older. I think I'd be good at it. And I think Daddy will always be close to us."

"Do you want to practice? I can teach you things you need to know about…about being a wife. What's expected. What to do. I can't pay you but I can tell you things."

"Practice what?"

She was looking at the ground and making a little sweep with the toe of her pointed black shoe. "Could you teach me, Izbel? To read, I mean? I'd like to learn."

"Oh, of course! I didn't know you wanted to learn. Why didn't you ask me fore now?"

When she looked up, I swear there were tears at the corners of her eyes. "Roy doesn't want me to. Says he's got by fine all these years without knowing. We'd have to be sneaky about it. If'n we ain't, he'll be mad."

I swung my arm through hers as we started back up the hill. "Well, good. I can't think of anythin' I'd like more than to stick it to that crumb."

…

On Tuesday, May 15, 1934, the United States government put a $25,000 price tag on John Dillinger's head. I figured he'd be caught within the week. Most people would rat out their mamas for that kind of dough. But come Sunday, he was still at large, and it was all anybody could talk about in the churchyard. Daddy looked sore when Edward interrupted his conversation with some of the other older men in the congregation before services and pulled him over by the cars. I was not invited and had no choice but to join Rosalie inside for services, with Jasper pulled at us to hurry up, as the opening hymn started.

Edward would come to supper that next night and there would be tears and smiles over cornbread and buttermilk and even a few sweet kisses, but what I still remember was the smile on Daddy's face when he walked me back to the car after church. He was the cat that went and drunk the cream to the last drop. "How you reckon you'd feel bout getting married next week, Izbel?" He was opening the door for me and Edward was already gone. Matter of fact, he never had made it through the church doors. I'd spent the whole service worrying what that might of meant.

"You mean it? Daddy! You mean it?" I hugged him so tight he gasped and then he put his hands in my hair and kissed the top of my head.

"Course, child. Boy takes the time to speak to me proper, by the Lord's house, I ain't a sayin' no."

Rosalie was coming toward us with Jasper on her hip. She was giving him a talking to for running off after she called him to go. She'd come to lunch and I'd help her with her reading again. But first, I had to be sure it was all right, all real.

"And I don't have to go to town with that lawyer's son and his kids? I don't have to go away?"

Daddy started to laugh. His whole face about split he laughed so hard. "Child. You never was going to Knoxville with the Blacks."

"What?"

"Sometimes a boy needs a little push to get things done up proper and timely."

"You mean that was all for show? Charles Metzger Swan! Oh, Lord. If Mama was here, she'd take care of you!"

I was so mad I almost stomped his foot, but Rosalie came up and she heard it all and she was laughing, too. What a big joke because I guess everybody knowed but me and Edward, but I couldn't stay mad at him. I couldn't because I was going to be Edward's finally. And he was going to be mine. We were going to be man and wife, just as soon as the ink would dry on the certificate he'd lit out to buy when the clerk's office opened in the morning.

…

I didn't have no money for a white dress or even a new dress so Rosalie and Missus Cullen altered one of Edward's mother's and added lace at the sleeves. Edward brought me a new belt, my something new, and the dress was old but it was my wedding dress then and that made it about perfect to me. Rosalie loaned me her lace gloves, a pair Emmett had bought her before he left, and for my blue I wore blue bonnets in my hair. Daddy put a penny in my shoe for luck. I think all of Loyston came to the Methodist church, which all told was maybe twenty people and another twenty children, but it felt like a good way to end it because we were all going soon and many of us already had left for new ground.

His hands were warm over my gloves but I think we both trembled with every "I do" and "I will." For me, he was the same boy who'd stolen my rag doll when he was seven and told me he I was pretty when I was eleven. He was my heart more than Loyston. He was where I belonged.

Daddy cried when the preacher introduced us. I did, too, I reckon.

I thought we would go to his parent's, or maybe to Knoxville to a room, but he went west instead of east or south. The last road we took turned from loose gravel to dirt a hundred yards or so past the first big maple. It wound up a ridge and flattened out on top like a mound of butter. He killed the engine on Doctor Cullen's green Tudor at the edge of a stand of trees. I didn't think we were camping out. He'd brought no blankets. He come round the side and opened the door so I could step out onto the board. I could catch a glimpse of a what looked like a cabin fifty yards or so in the distance.

"What is this? Where are we?"

My hand slipped into his as we walked, keeping close to the trail someone had recently cut. I couldn't see his face well in the low moon. "Home."

"Home?"

His arms went round me and he hoisted me, dress and all, over the sleeves of his dark suit. He carried me the way he had since we were kids, over his shoulder like a sack of taters. "Home, Mrs. Cullen."

Inside was just the one room, oak walls stained dark, and the floor was dirt but carefully covered with rag rugs. "I'll fix you a floor. I'll get started on it tomorrow even. I didn't know we'd marry so soon. I kinda ran out of time."

I turned around and around, once again on my feet. Someone, probably his mama or Rosalie, had put up curtains in the two windows. There was a stove and a washbasin by the door, two chairs and a short table, one shelf with the Bible and a few other books, and a bed.

"How long? Edward, I…When did you..what do you mean keeping this from me?"

His arms were crossed and he looked ten again, skeered but proud too. "I didn't keep it from ya to hurt you. I been saving for school, sure, but I got a little piece of land. It's not much and this place ain't either but it came with it. I just wanted to have a home for us to come to, and not give Mama and Paw more to do with us there."

"You sure are full of surprises."

His bright eyes, catching the light from the one candle on the stove, reminded me of new grass in March. "Is it okay? Are you happy?"

My gloved hands knotted over my handkerchief. "I am happier than I ever thought I'd a right to be. It's almost indecent." I looked up at him waiting by the table, hanging on my little words. "Thank you, Mr. Cullen."

He drew back a chair and motioned me over but maybe because I was the Missus now, I felt bold. I walked back to the bed and bent to remove my shoes.

Edward knelt at my feet, his fingers tracing my wrists in the borrowed gloves. "You have no idea how many times I dreamed about this."

I grinned at him. "About me taking my shoes off?"

"About being here to help you."

His fingers slipped down my palms and tugged off the gloves, fingertip by fingertip, until my skin was warm in his. He kissed me then and I wasn't surprised when his tongue went to my mouth because Rosalie had said it was like that, and that if he was kind, it would feel wonderful and not strange. It was more than wonderful. It was sorghum and cream and the smell of fall air. Magic.

I never thought much on how many buttons there was on clothes or how long it can take to get them all undone but I don't rightly recall being in such a hurry before. Lust breeds impatience and love apparently grows clumsiness. I caught his underclothes in the zipper of his britches and he squawked and we both laughed.

He got the stove going against the spring winds and we sat together on the bed kissing and touching for a long time. The hair on his chest was reddish gold. The scar on his right calf from an accident mending fences was still there, purplish and white against the muscle.

"You're so tiny," he said, and his fingers traced the holler between my breasts and smoothed up to my shoulder bones. "Like a bird almost."

"Don't worry bout me," I said. "I can take care of myself."

His lips found my neck while his hands traced my arms, my waist, my thighs, and down to my warmest places. "You don't hafta," he said. "Let me help."

I don't know if it was his daddy's medical books that showed him where to go and how or if men learned it from each other, whispered secrets like Rosalie telling me how it would feel, how it would both hurt and warm me, but he touched me like he meant it. Those hands I'd felt but there weren't no space between anymore. Air gave way to heat and his other head was growing like she'd said, his cock waking up to me as I tried to touch him, tried to show him how much I'd always wanted this moment too.

His fingers worked around and within me until I felt limp as a rag and nearly as light. "You ready?" I felt like he was talking to both of us but I reached up and kissed him again, and when he laid me down and sank in it did hurt but the heat of his skin burned away the pain as he moved. It was coming on light and I could see his face above me and the words he whispered were "doll," and "mine" and "Izbel" and "please" and "God, God, God."

The only word I could find was his name. Just that, till it was over and we both slept.

"Edward."

…

We heard tell that it took one family in Loyston twenty-five trips getting carted around by the TVA to pick the land they'd settle on next. Emmett said it had nothing to do with pickiness and everything to do with seeing the countryside for the first time probably ever and on somebody else's dime to boot. He probably was right.

Daddy looked at three places and then picked one right near us. He wouldn't come right away, and I thought sure he'd have just went to New Loyston like most everybody else except for the Cullens switching counties on him so Doctor Cullen could tend to the dam workers at Norris and Edward taking me with them. The land was better over here but you couldn't tell most people that. Truth be told, you can't tell most people much.

He had crops in at home already so I didn't see him much that summer. Progress would wait on no man though, so the surveying went on and the grave moving and the building of a dam the likes of which would seem almost immortal in the end. Edward worked a while helping build a new state park at Big Ridge, as Loyston became the camp for the men building the parks that would line the new reservoir.

As summer wound down, Edward said the dam work paid better. He wanted to go for a job on it but there were try outs of a fashion for open positions. He went on to a high school close by with large groups of men to take aptitude tests to help place him in the dam builder ranks. There was strength and endurance testing as well. He had to demonstrate how many pounds of grain he could lift, walk across high planks for balance, and swing great hatchets and axes. In the end, his smarts won him a spot not with the laborers, but with the Hungarian Mr. Wank and his team of drawing men and engineers who carried out the planning and directed the day's works in the center of the dam camp.

He went to work in the fall and every night he come home worn to the bone. Though he wasn't toting loads, he said the rigidity of it weighed on him. Mistakes in the plans or in the day's goals could mean lives lost. At barely eighteen, he worked along with men more than twice his age and morely educated. It was a type of school in a way, but low grades were not a possibility. They must keep to schedule and to safety standards. I listened as he talked about the great forms being built, about how the dam would be poured concrete, a task not done before in these parts or nearly anywhere.

And when he was talked out, I would pull his clothes away and work his muscles with oil over my hands until the stresses ran from his body to my fingers. I had not much to give, but I gave all of myself I knew how. In the night, I learned him and a good teacher he always was, whispering to me of children to come and doing his best to fill me with a bone deep joy that left us both without breath or care.

It was a happy time were but that I didn't see Rosalie and Jasper much. Edward drove us over for church so I was always promised a good long visit at week's end. We'd work on her reading at the table where Mama taught me, and she'd say how much it meant to her that she could teach Jasper soon. There were blessings such that I should have prayed for foresight. Happiness makes one slow in a way. You forget how to react, how to move faster than the slow beat of your own contentment.

That Sunday I remember, most everything was done. It was late in fall and Daddy would come home with us soon, to his place on a new hill, with better soil and he said fatter squirrels. Rosalie asked the congregation to sing "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder," and she quoted the page number, flipped to it, and read it out loud from the songbook we shared with our entire row.

I looked at her and she squeezed my hand, because she knew all the words already, sure, but she could read most of them now. She could read out that title plain as could be, and she was rightly proud.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hale. Song 151 please," the preacher said, and thankfulness carried our voices up to Jesus hisself, to please Him that made it all possible.

…

When Rosalie didn't make it to church the next Sunday, Daddy said Jasper probably just had a cold and kept her up but I knowed something was wrong. I knew it all through the service as I watched that door for a blonde-headed angel who wouldn't show.

The drive up to Daddy's seemed to take near on forever. "Hurry, hurry," I said, and Edward shook his head but pressed the gas harder anyway. We was barely out to let Daddy check the house when I was I running on up the holler with Edward crashing behind me yelling for me to wait. I could hear Jasper wailing the closer I got and it was just like Mama had always said. When your kith or kin be in trouble, the angels lift you up by the arms and carry you so fast your feet barely touch the dirt.

Daddy didn't get there till I'd already thrown open the door of that shack. Jasper had not come for help. He was too scared to leave her. He'd cried so hard he'd vomucked down his shirt and it was well dried. I needed to look at Rosalie but the sight of her, laying with such an odd angle to her arm at the foot of their tick among broken glass brought the bile to my own throat. There was so much blood, mostly dried, and smelling like a deer but less tart, so human and sweet in fragrance that I did vomuck then, all over my shoes.

I got Jasper to the porch and Edward got Rosalie like a flour sack in his arms. Daddy, I think, got the scare of his life and then a bit of the madness I'd seen in Emmett back in the spring. He told me to go through the room and take everything I thought she'd want. There weren't much–her mother's Bible, the gloves from Emmett, Jasper's blanket, and his wooden top and marbles.

I watched Daddy pick a quart of Roy's corn liquor out of the corner and a match from his own pocket. He doused everything, starting with the tick on the floor, and then he lit the whole place afire. He spat on the porch as we turned to go, and the whispering woods seemed to make his voice a refrain as he shouted to the trees, "If'n she don't live, I'll see you in hell, Roy. D'ya hear me? I'll come for you, you sorry sonofabitch."

I carried Jasper and they carried our Rosalie, the two of them, my daddy and my husband. Jasper was crying for his mommy, and I drew his head against my chest as we hurried away. "Shh, baby," I said. "Everything's gone be okay now. You ain't never going back there again. Hush, honey. We're gone take care of your mama."

…

Doctor Cullen said broke ribs, a broke arm that had to be set but she was so delirious with pain that she didn't notice that much, and then her head. She was for sure concussed. It took nine stitches that run into her hair from the side of her forehead. She said later it was one of his jars. He'd smashed it against her head when they were fighting. Someone had told him she could read, that I'd taught her behind his back. She'd deliberately went against his wishes and it wouldn't stand, an upstart woman. He wouldn't have no woman showing him up, putting on airs that she was smart.

She was in and out for the better part of three days at the Cullens' new house, a three-room frame in Norris. I changed her bandages, sang to her, played marbles and pretend telephone so Jasper could be near her. At the beginning of the second night, her eyes fluttered as I read aloud about Sam Spade and his brilliant adventures.

"Izbel?"

"Shh. I put the book on my chair and eased next to her on the bed. "Shh. I'm here."

"Jasper?" Her pink lips were swollen. She spoke with a lisp like the extra tissue was in the way. "By baby? Bh…my Jas–"

"He's safe. We're at the Cullens'. Roy didn't touch him."

"Ohhh…" and she was slipping away again, too tired to fight any more just then.

"Doll," I said, petting her hair like a child. "You got to get through it. You got to come back to us." I leaned down and touched her freckled nose. "I need you. I'm pregnant, Rosalie. I need you to tell me what to do. We need you so much."

I don't know if it was my imagination, but it felt like she squeezed my hand before she was asleep again. I could only pray that the Sandman would bring her sweet dreams.

…

I don't remember when Emmett showed up. It was almost like he was always there. I guess he probably always was, and if'n I was inclined to give Roy Hale more of a chance, it might be fair to say that that was part of the problem all along. Then again, I was not so inclined and neither was anyone else.

He asked her, sitting out on the porch one day when he come up the walk after work like he'd been doing for weeks, if they would come with him to Knoxville when she was well. I could hear him through the kitchen window. I never heard her say nothing, but I heard her crying, and I guess that was answer enough.

Rosalie and I worked on stitching baby clothes through the winter weekends in mine and Edward's place as I began to show. Her arm was not quite as strong as it had once been. There was a lump at the elbow that would not smooth out but she was fit as a fiddle otherwise. I had finally stopped vomucking every hour on the hour since my second term had started but I was up a lot more, reaching for the pan to ease my bladder. Our new wood floor was cold but the rugs I'd made helped some.

I heard the car before I saw the light coming up the path. Edward had sat up in bed and motioned me behind, taking his gun out from the edge of the bed and waiting.

Emmett didn't knock. He come through the door wild-eyed with some of the buttons missing on his white shirt, which was covered in blood. "I need you," he said, reaching for Edward's coat and hat on the pegs by the door. "We got trouble."

Edward was already swinging his long-johned legs into his britches. "Rosalie? Jasper?"

Emmett breathed like a train, pacing back and forth three feet each way. He had spit at the corners of his mouth and his black hair was wild as a crow. "No. They're safe at home. We went for him up there…and he…I kilt him. Hale. We've got to go, Edward. Right now. We've got to move 'em."

Edward tied his boots lickety split and handed me the gun. "Don't open that door for no man but Pa, ya h'yer?"

I nodded, mute.

They went off into the howling cold and snow, bringing in the end of the first month of 1935 with a murder.

…

Funny thing is, nobody misses the devil when he ain't around. There was talk of Roy running from the coppers, afeared that he'd kilt Rosalie, or even a drunken mishap at the cabin but then his body never did turn up. There was some question when Rosalie applied for the proper papers to enable her to remarry but Emmett's friend, Jacob Black, and Jacob's lawyer father handled that quick-like on her behalf.

We were secret keepers in and around Norris as the dam went up. We didn't speak of that night. It may have been only a dream but that I could smell the fire still as I had burned three sets of clothes the next day.

We had plenty to keep us busy but at night I would lay awake sometimes as the baby kicked and I'd worry. I started to pray for the dam to be done on time, for the water to come and cover our sins, to keep Edward and Emmett and Daddy safe.

We drove up the winding road with so many other families more than a year later. Daddy walked ahead after we parked. I watched him go, carrying our young Alice in his arms. Emmett walked to his right holding Jasper's hand. Rosalie was on his left, heavy with child. It was March 4, 1936.

They headed toward the platform that was draped in the American flag, but I lagged behind a moment with Edward as President Roosevelt pushed a button far away in the White House to close the eight sluice gates and sound the triumphant siren. When the peal of the alarm and the clapping finally died away, I took Edward's arm and whispered to him. "It's really done now, ain't it? Emmett is safe?"

Edward looked out over the dam and his green eyes were nearly as resplendent as the shine of such a beautiful spring day. The dam had cost $36 million to build. At 1,860 feet long, 265 feet high, and 208 feet thick at the base, Senator George Norris has secured a mammoth namesake. By summer, Norris Dam, the project that had changed the course of our lives and forced the relocation of nearly 2,900 other families and some 5,000 graves, would use its two hydroelectric generators to push out the first electric power in the eastern portion of the Tennessee Valley. The lights would come on and light up a secret city not far away in less than half a decade where another great work would once again change the course of our lives and the fate of the entire world.

Deep down and low that summer, somewhere under more than seventy-five feet of water as the reservoir filled, was a secret we would always keep.

"Where we put him, he won't be found. And soon, there won't be anything left. The fishes will have 'em. But it wasn't Emmett." Edward placed his hand over mine, curled around his arm. He leaned close enough I could smell the woodsy tang of his morning cigarette. "It was Metzger."

I thought maybe I wasn't understanding him right.

"Daddy? It was Daddy?"

"Emmett hesitated. They had planned it together but Em couldn't put him down. Your daddy took care of it like he promised, Izbel. I told you he'd do whatever was needed, come to keeping you 'ins safe."

I blinked in the sunshine, being shuffled a bit by the passing of so many people around us as we stood stone still in the crowd. "Good God."

Edward leaned down and kissed me while I stood there wide-eyed. "Yes," he said. "Yes, darling, He is good."

~FIN~