NewSouth

The house was quiet those hours later as Nell Sanders sat by the side of the old rope bed in the back bedroom of her home, the softness of her son's breathing the only sound to be heard in the quiet around her. Dawn would not be long in coming, but sleep was still very far away--she had been sitting here for hours now, throughout the night, just watching as Janson slept, listening to the sound of his breathing, as she had done on so many nights when he had been little more than a baby. Henry sat on the bare wood floor at her feet, much the same as he had done over thirty years before when they had been young together and courting, his hand holding hers, resting on the arm of the rocker, his eyes on their son as well--there had been no sleep that night for either of them, only worry, concern, and prayer, for Janson was their only son, the only child they had given life to, and he had been so badly hurt.

When Janson had arrived home those hours earlier, had gotten out of the car, his face paling beneath the sunburn, the blood soaking his shirt and hands, his steps staggering, Nell had thought her heart would stop within her. She could remember running toward him, catching him somehow as he fell, though she was small and slight and the top of her head did not even reach his shoulders--she knew she must have screamed for Henry, for he had been suddenly there, taking the boy up in his arms and carrying him toward the house, laying him on the old rope bed in the back bedroom, then running out again a moment later, through the pine woods and toward his parents' home, for they had been unable to stop the bleeding, no matter what they had done.

It had seemed an eternity later when Henry had returned to the house with his mother, an eternity in which Nell had thought she would see her son bleed to death there on that old bed, an eternity in which she watched blood soak into the clean petticoat she pressed to the wound, and into the sheet and linens on the bed, an eternity in which she prayed for sight of her husband and her mother-in-law. Deborah Sanders had not even spoken a word as she had come into the house and to the bed of her grandson, but her presence alone had helped to calm Nell's fears, for Nell had seen her stop blood so many times before, had seen her draw fire, and cure thrush.

Henry's mother slept in the next room even now, near in case she should be needed through the night. She said Janson would be all right, that he would live, and that his shoulder would heal, but still there could be no sleep that night for Henry or for Nell. Janson was their only child, and he was all that mattered to either of them, other than each other.

Nell sat now, staring at her son's worn and calloused hands, a farmer's hands, where they lay at rest on the pieced quilt, remembering the tiny fingers and toes she had counted and touched those eighteen years before when her body had still hurt even too much to move. She looked at his face, seeing Henry there as well as herself, even with the green eyes now closed in sleep--how they had wanted a child, children; but there had been over thirteen years of wanting and prayer before this one had come. So many nights they had held each other and prayed, wanting to give each other a large family, sons and daughters to share the years ahead, but for so long there had been only the two of them, and they had been happy in each other alone--and then this miracle had come, a child, a son, and their world had been complete. They had the land; they had each other, and they had a son--what more could any man or woman want.

She looked at Henry now, watched him, though his eyes never once left the sleeping young man on the bed, noticing again the white that now liberally streaked the reddish-brown hair she had known for so many years. He would soon be fifty-seven, and she was now already forty-six, but his face seemed just as handsome now, just as loved, as it had on that first day she had ever met him, and she loved him even more--could that really have been almost thirty-two years before. Thirty-two years, over two-thirds of her life, and it seemed now as if it had been only a day.

She had not even been fifteen then, newly come to Alabama with her father because of a job he had been promised in Eason County. Until then she had spent her entire life on the Qualla Boundary reservation of the Cherokee people in North Carolina, very sheltered, over-protected, and greatly loved by a father who had been widowed at her birth. It was only the second time she had ever been away from home, the first having been the few months she had spent at the boarding school on the reservation, the few months that were still marked in her mind by having had her mouth washed out with soap for speaking her native Cherokee and not English--and then her father had died as well, in an accident within days of coming to Eason County, leaving her alone in a place of strangers, where there was not one other person with a face or heritage as her own.

She had been living with a farm family there in Eason County, tending their children, earning the money she would need to return home--and learning the meaning of cruelty for the first time in her less than fifteen years, hearing words she had never thought would be said to her, words spoken by the decent, good folk of the County, people who knew nothing of her, or of the people she had come from, words said simply because her skin was darker, and her heritage different from their own. Many of the people in the church the family attended had been kind to her, accepting her into their homes, looking after her until she could go home again to grandparents and an aunt who would take her in--and it had been at that church that she had met Henry.

He had been staring at her, staring at her long and hard until she could feel it and turned to look at him--but he did not look away, as did so many of the people who stared at her only because they had never seen a person of Cherokee heritage before. He only continued to stare, making her both nervous and at the same time happy, for she had never been stared at by a man so handsome before, so tall, or so good looking.

As soon as church was over, she had wondered who she might ask to find out who he was, and if it was even proper to make such an inquiry--but he had walked up to her before she could do anything, finding her waiting on the church steps for the Parker family, whose children she was tending. He had apologized for staring, had told her his name, and had asked her own. She had thought he might ask to call on her before he walked away that day, thinking that might have been why he had been staring, but had been disappointed as he had tipped his hat to her, and then had left her standing there.

That disappointment had been short-lived. He had shown up at the Parker house the next day with a load of fire wood he said he owed them, and had come almost every day the following week on one pretext or another before he had at last asked to call on her. It was less than a month later that he asked her to marry him, pacing back and forth in the red dirt of the side yard of the Parker's sharecropped home, telling her his dreams and his plans for red land that already seemed such a part of him, though it was not yet his own. "I ain't gonna be a sharecropper all my life, Miss Nell. I'm gonna have my own land--th' old Stilwell place; you know it. It's good land, and it could make us a good livin'; that is, if you'd be my wife--"

They were married a week later, on the day after her fifteenth birthday, in the little church where they had met, returning to his parents' home that night where they would live until they could set up housekeeping on their own. There had been long years of hard work ahead of them, a decision they had made to have the land, no matter the cost it might bring to them. There had been a year of sharecropping for old Mr. Aiken, with half a crop lost for use of the land, the other half lost to the store bill; and then years in the mill village, in half a rented house, and long twelve-hour shifts in the mill for Henry--but at last they had the money, enough for them to get started on, and a mortgage for the rest. They had moved into the house Henry had dreamed of for so long, to the rolling red hills and the crop that no one could take from them, the land that was their own--and she had known Henry was at last home. Together they had worked the fields, planting or hoeing or picking the cotton, happy together in this place that had become part of them both.

For so many years there were no babies, and, as the years had passed, they had almost given up hope, though they often still prayed at night as they held each other, each wanting a child, but both knowing that, even then, they could be no happier. Then the miracle had happened, and she had been almost too happy to believe it could be true, and then another month had passed, with no blood as she had always known--Nell had taken the little money she had saved and had gone to see a doctor before telling Henry, not wanting to give him false hope until she knew for certain, for they had been waiting for so long.

After a horrid examination that had left her blushing and wanting to go home, the doctor had told her she was with child--at last, she was with child. She and Henry were to have a baby.

Henry had been in the fields when she had gone to tell him, and somehow that had seemed fitting, for she knew that nothing meant life and birth and continuance more to him than did the land--she was going to have his baby, she told him, their child. He had held her for a long time, not speaking, and, when she had looked up at him, he had been crying. And she had understood.

It had been a difficult pregnancy, a long labor, and a difficult birth. Henry had been banished from the house almost from the moment her pains had begun, told to wait on the porch with his father and his brother, Wayne, while his mother and a granny woman from the church tended Nell--it was his child, he had told them, his wife, and he had a right to be there; but they would have none of it, not even allowing him past the front door, telling him that a birthing was no place for a man to be, that he should find something to do in the fields to make himself useful until the time came when he could see his wife again, and his child.

It had seemed to Nell that the labor would go on forever, the pains continuing into the evening and late into the night, until it seemed to her the child would never come. But the pain had only worsened, coming and going until it seemed a constant, twisting her body with its intensity, making her bite her lips and dig her hands into the straw tick of the bed to keep from crying out--she saw the granny woman shake her head, heard her tell Henry's mother that Nell should never have conceived, that she was too narrow to give birth, and too frail. But Deborah Sanders had only pushed the granny woman aside, saying she had brought many babies herself over the years, and that she was not about to lose her own daughter-in-law, or her grandchild.

"You push, honey--" she had told Nell, her face already drenched with sweat in the hot room.

"You push with everythin' you got--you an' that baby's both Sanders; cain't nothin' get th' best 'a either one 'a you unlest you let it. Now, push! Push like the devil hisself has got a'hold 'a you! Push!"

She had pushed, had thought she would die, had prayed to see Henry one last time, to see the baby born and put into his arms before God took her, just as her mother had seen her put into her father's arms before she had died--she screamed aloud when the baby finally came, and Henry rushed into the room to see his son born into his mother's gentle and knowing hands, and to hear that first cry of life as Deborah Sanders lifted him by his ankles to slap him across the bottom. Henry collapsed to his knees by the side of the bed, taking Nell's hand in his, watching as their son was put into her arms for the first time, the baby screaming, red-faced, and angry at his entry into the world--and Henry would not be moved again, staying with her even as they tried to make him go, touching her and their son, keeping her from heaven itself with the very love in his eyes.

As long as she lived, Nell knew she would never forget the feeling of holding that miracle in her arms for the first time, of counting the tiny fingers and toes, and examining the small, perfect body of the son she and Henry had made--and she would never forget the tears in Henry's eyes, the wetness on his cheeks, as he brushed the sweat-drenched hair back from her face. "We got us a son," he kept saying to her, over and over again. "We got us a son."

They named the baby Janson after her father, and Thomas after his, and their world had been complete within the three of them. Henry's mother said there would be no more babies, but, after the years alone, they had never expected even this one, and they accepted that one miracle was enough for any lifetime. They had each other, they had a son, and they had the land that would be his one day. They could want nothing more.

Janson had grown fast, a handsome young boy with his mother's dark coloring and his father's green eyes. He was a loving and happy child, with a bad temper when pushed, and, as his grandmother often said, more stubbornness and pride than was right in any man or boy. He loved the land from the moment he could walk, loved growing things, and the feel of the red earth beneath his feet; loved his parents, his grandparents, and his kin, but the remainder of the world he was often uncomfortable with. He was dark, and he was half Cherokee, and he was proud with a pride the world would deny him--Nell knew he often heard the same things she had heard in the years since she had left the reservation, but, whereas she had fought her battles with silence, and with the dignity her heritage had taught her, she knew her son often fought his with fists, and with a temper that was nothing less than Irish and inherited from his father's side of the family.

As Janson had grown into a young man, he had kept few friends, often alone it seemed, but never lonely; a young man often silent, but at peace with the earth and the sky and himself. He often reminded Nell of her father, and often of Henry, and often of herself--but Janson was Janson, and often even she could not understand him, though she had almost died to give him life.

There was a sadness within her now as she sat in the rocker by the side of the old bed, looking at the young man who had been stabbed and so badly hurt, remembering the baby she had nursed and held and touched--he was a grown man now, eighteen years old, older than she had been when she had become Henry's wife. There was a feeling within her that he had already been close with a woman, had already learned things that she and his father had not known until their marriage night--young people grew up so fast now days, she thought, too fast. She knew the stabbing had probably been over a woman--the wrong kind of woman--though Janson had not spoken a word of it, though she knew he would not. He would remain silent if asked, silent, and with that look in his eyes that said there were things in his soul that belonged to him alone--and she knew she would not ask.

He was proud, proud and stubborn and determined, traits that would make his life all the more difficult, even beyond what his coloring and heritage had already deemed that life would be--but she had known that from the start, from the time he had been that baby first learning to walk, slapping her hands away as she tried to catch him, falling, only to push himself to his feet and take a few tottering steps before falling again. She had tried to protect him, to keep him from hurting himself, even as he had learned, but again and again he had pushed her hands away, falling time and again, bruising his chin, hurting his elbow, fighting even as he cried--she had not seen him cry in years now, not since he had been a little boy, beaten bloody by bigger fellows because he would not perform a war dance when they demanded he do so. She had tried to protect him then as well, had tried to get him to tell her the names of the other boys so she could talk to their parents, but he had refused, coming home bloody and beaten day after day until they had at last found more interesting game--even then there had been no shame in him for a fight well fought, no defeat after a hard battle. Those were traits she could see in him now, the same pride, stubbornness and determination, and she knew she could expect nothing less of him, for he was a part of her, and he was a part of Henry.

The door opened quietly and Henry's mother entered the room--her mother, she thought, for she and Henry were long since the same. Deborah Sanders was dressed in a long cotton nightgown buttoned to the throat and wrists, her brown and gray hair hanging over one shoulder in a thick plait that reached to well past her waist, her round face kind and gentle as she looked at them, knowing they had not slept at all, and knowing it was only what they had to do. She walked to the side of the bed and reached to touch Janson's forehead lightly, his cheek, and then to check beneath the bandages to the wound that had bled so freely earlier, as Nell and Henry rose to their feet at the side of the bed. Henry reached out and brushed Nell's hand almost unconsciously, as he often did, and they waited.

Henry's mother came around the bed to them, placing a gentle hand first on Nell's cheek, then on Henry's, as she smiled at them. "He's gonna be fine, jus' like I tol' you," she whispered. "He's jus' got some healin' t' do, an' restin' t' get his strength back. It ain't gonna do him no good, you two gettin' yourselfs sick. You need t' get some sleep--"

"We will," Nell said, looking back to the bed, and to the young man who shifted slightly in his sleep as he lay there. "We will--" But she sat back down in the rocker, and Henry moved to sit again at her feet, lowering himself slowly as he leaned heavily on the arm of the chair, as he had not had to do in years past. He took her hand in his again and held it, intertwining their fingers securely. After a moment, Deborah Sanders shook her head and sighed, knowing there was no use in talking to them further. She turned and crossed the bare wood floor without another word, going out the door and closing it again quietly behind herself, leaving them alone again with their son.

Nell watched as Janson slept, thinking of the baby she and Henry had made, the child she had carried within her, thinking that time had passed too fast, and that the years had been all too quickly gone. She looked down at Henry, remembering the tall and handsome young man who had so tenderly told her about love, and who had even more gently taught her; the same man who sat beside her now, his brownish-red hair streaked with white, the wide shoulders bent from age and work, the once-smooth skin near his eyes lined from years of smiles--but the green eyes just as alive, just as caring, just as full of love now near fifty-seven, as they had been at twenty-five. Life was too short for love, she thought, too brief for commitment; the years all too soon gone, but the love grown only stronger still--surely death could not end that, and life could not begin it. It had to be there, forever, for always. That was what they had taught Janson, and she had to believe it herself now--suddenly, she had to believe it so very strongly herself.

She watched Henry, thinking of how he often spoke now of having grandchildren in the house, of Janson finding the right girl, bringing a bride to the land, giving them grandsons and granddaughters for the years ahead--but, as hard as she tried, Nell could not see that, could not see Henry with babies on his knee, babies with his green eyes and his caring, and that frightened her. There was an ache growing inside of her that would not go away, an ache even though she knew Janson would be all right and that his wound would heal--life seemed too short. So very short. And the sadness would not leave, no matter how hard she tried. She wanted to cry but would not let herself, for there was no reason. No--

Henry's hand tightened over hers and he looked up at her, and she realized with a start that he had been thinking the same things, feeling the same things, she had been feeling. She tightened her hand on his and smiled, nodding her head to tell him she was all right, and, after a moment, he looked away, back toward the bed, and to their son sleeping quietly there.

Nell turned her eyes toward Janson as well, the tears finally coming, spilling from her eyes and down her cheeks. She knew that, as long as she lived, she would never forget the look she had seen on her husband's face in that moment. Henry Sanders had been crying.