She had tried once to reach for the lamp but she could not move. She called his name softly in the quiet but there was no answer. The door was open and after a while he was standing in it, he and the axe in an assassin’s silhouette against the slack gloss of the moon. He crossed to the table and took up the lamp and lit it, shaping the room from darkness. He turned to see her watching him, pale and disheveled and with such doll’s eyes of painted china.
Culla? she said.
You best hope it’s me.
Where you been?
Out.
Where’s it at?
There was a long silence. He had not set the lamp down. He was holding the stained chimney in one hand and she could hear him breathing in the quiet. The flame trembling unhoused between them held her eyes.
It died, he said.
When she woke in the morning he was not there either. There was a small fire on the hearth and she watched that. He came in after a while bearing wood but he did not speak. He got the dipper from the waterbucket and brought it to her, helping her up with one hand, her neck craned, drinking, on her lips a white paste that clove to the dipper rim.
I want some more, she said.
He brought it. When she had finished she lay back and watched the fire again.
How you feel this mornin? he said.
I don’t know. I don’t feel much of nothin.
You’ll be ailin some for a spell I would reckon.
I feel fevery.
You hungry?
I ain’t real hungry.
You want eggs? I believe they’s a egg.
If we got ary, she said.
There was one egg. He spooned lard into a pan and fried it over the fire and brought it to her along with a chunk of cornbread. I got to go to the store today, he said.
I got to go somewheres myself but I ain’t able.
She was eating very slowly, her eyes on the plate.
Yes, he said. All right. I’ll get somethin.
And she was bleeding again. He wet a fresh cloth and gave it to her.
You want anything?he said.
No. I don’t want nothin.
He took down a knotted handkerchief from the sideboard and untied it, laying the cloth out and unfolding a small sheaf of paper dollars. He counted them and took one, together with what loose coins there were, and put these in the pocket of his overalls. Then he retied the kerchief with the remaining money and put it back in the cupboard.
I’m gone, he said.
All right.
He stopped at the door and looked at her. She turned her head away slowly.
It was midmorning when he set out and it took him just a little over an hour to reach the store at the junction, the sun warm on his back and the fine pumice of the road already paling and going to dust again. A horsefly followed behind his head as if towed there on a string.
When he got to the store it was closed. He rattled the latch and peered inside. From an upper window a voice called down: We still christians here. You’ll have to come back a weekday. He turned away. By noon he was at the cabin again, sitting on a stump in the glade and carving at it intently with his knife. When he went in she was asleep in her foul bed. He sat before the fireplace watching ashes rise and wheel feebly in the cold light that fell there. She stirred heavily in her sleep, moaning. He watched her. When he could stay no longer he went out again and walked on the road. He could not decide what to do. He sat on a stone by the side of the road and with a dead stick drew outlandish symbols in the dust.
They made their meal that night on the last stale pieces of cornbread, a fine mold like powdered jade beginning on them where they lay dried and curling in the cupboard. She did not even ask him about the store. After she was asleep he again appropriated the quilt from off the bed and spread it upon the floor. He removed his shoes and lay down and folded the quilt over himself and stared at what shadows the joists and beams made upon the roof’s underside. The lamp guttered and ceased. His eyes were closed. Before he slept he saw again the birth-stunned face, the swamp trees in a dark bower above the pale and naked flesh and the black blood seeping from the navel.
He woke early, the hard boarding laminated against his spine. A smoky light crept on the one pane of glass. He rose and refolded the quilt, replaced it at the foot of the bed and got his shoes and put them on, watching her, finally leaning above her wasted face to hear her breath. He took a drink of water from the bucket and opened the door on this new day, leaning in the doorframe, drinking. He shook the last of the water from the dipper and stretched, one hand to the small of his back.
Before it was full daylight he had gone to the spring again, the empty pail jiggling against his thigh, against pathside briers with a tin squeal, kneeling finally and watching the water suck cold and sandy over the bucket rim, filling and setting it on the bank and laving water on his wrists and forearms, dipping two palmfuls against his forehead, leaning his mouth into the meniscal calm of it, wide and tilting in the water the eyes that watched his eyes.