CHAPTER ONE
SYCAMORE BALD
THE MISSOURI OZARKS
MAY 19, 1890
The road was rutted by the wheels of mule wagons and washed out by the annual torrents of spring. The wallows jarred the wheels pretty rough, and the mule had to be encouraged with whip and reins, but the wagon trundled on, and the trail led upward into a mystery of green that looked very like the mystery left behind. The waggoneer cursed, as well he ought, for cursing comes natural in desolate places. God is in nature—everyone insists it is so—but He is shy and unpredictable as a hummingbird, and you’ve got to look obliquely and quickly at that, and even then, He has probably already flown. Maybe if God were more Jove-like, standing tall and majestic as an oak with mistletoe hair and the doves of Aphrodite twittering and coupling in his branches, the waggoneer might have been gentler in his admonitions. But Jehovah God is not an oak. He is a hummingbird or a beetle iridescent with green, scuttling for cover under leaf mold.
The waggoneer was not old, not yet forty—the prime of life for many. His beard was carefully cropped and still coal black, and what wrinkles he had were gained by squinting in the sun; his eyes were brown, almost black, and he wore his hat pulled down to his brows. In fact, he was a plain man of common height who fastidiously tended what God and nature had bestowed. The crazy pulse of youthful desire had settled into a kind of throbbing of perpetual pursuit, and he could not pass the Garfield place without some hope of seeing Mrs. Garfield scattering corn to the chickens or pinning laundry to the line. Once she waved at him through the window, but he wanted more than she could or would consent to give.
Mr. Garfield was not dead. A week ago, his axe had sheared away from the chopping block and delivered a bone-splitting gash to his lower shin. The leg had been doctored by an old woman who applied mayapple pap and slipped chicken bones in his pockets, but in a matter of days, the gash became a stinking wound, and either the leg would go, or Garfield would. And it was a shame. Garfield had shot dead a ruffian who raped a girl over in Notch and was threatening more mischief; it was a fair fight with a just conclusion, and Garfield had never wavered. He had simply shot the ruffian thrice through the gut and that was that. And now here Garfield was, stinking of gangrene because of a goddamned knot he failed to see while swinging an axe as he had done ten thousand times before. It was shit luck. But for the waggoneer, it wasn’t shit luck at all, at least not today, because Mrs. Garfield—Daisy—was out front of the cabin, restoring a cedar rail to the top of the split rail fence and brushing the hair from her eyes. The rail was not particularly heavy, and one end had begun to rot and fester. A couple of useless and rusty nails pointed nowhere in particular and would never be driven into anything. Still the rail could last another year or so, maybe. The fence kept nothing out nor nothing in, but once constructed, it seemed necessary.
“Mornin’, Mizz Garfield.” The waggoneer lifted his hat and smiled, and he hoped that his wrinkles might manifest his good humor and trustworthiness, along with some latent traces of youth.
“Mr. Crawford,” Daisy replied.
“Need help?”
“Not with this here, but thank you.”
“Fences is always fallin’ down, ain’t they? Rain, critters—time, I reckon. How’s Mr. Garfield?”
Tears pooled in Daisy’s eyes, and she rolled the fence rail so the rotted end faced down. “Not too good. We had a regular doctor out yesterday who gave him something for pain, and he said John wouldn’t . . . And a preacher came by, praying and pretending he knows things nobody knows.” Her pretty head drooped, and a curl of her hair fell forward.
“Now I’m s’prised to hear you say that, Mizz Garfield, ‘bout preachers. Most women of my acquaintance put more stock in the maunderin’ of preachers.”
“Most women, like most men, are liars.” Daisy studied William a moment before she said, “Tell me, Mr. Crawford, why do I tend my husband, do you think?”
“Well, I reckon because you’uns belong to one another by troth and Holy Writ.”
“Yes, that is true. We do belong to one other. But taking care of John is more like tending to this fence. John living, breathing, sitting at the table and touching my hand keeps away the rain and the vermin and even time. I say unto you, Mr. Crawford, that John upright and polishing his rifle fends off time while John abed, well . . .”. Daisy looked Crawford in the eye and resumed, “God ain’t nothin’ but time, Mr. Crawford. John upright keeps God at bay while John dying ushers God right into my bedroom.”
“Never thought about it such a way. I ain’t shore I understand.”
So Daisy said, “I have determined that ‘God’ is just a word for giving up; kind of like saying ‘uncle’ when your arm is twisted high behind your back. Likewise, Time will surely bend your arm behind your back. Therefore, Mr. Crawford, God is Time.”
William puckered his lips and considered the logic. “Huh. Whereabouts do you hail from, Mizz Garfield? You and Mr. Garfield?”
“William Crawford—you’ve been driving that wagon past our front door ever since we settled here. Sometimes you carry pelts to town, and sometimes you bring back meal and whiskey; I know. I’ve seen you peer through my window and heard you swear by Satan himself every time one of your wheels lodges in a rut. And I’ve seen you sit on this very fence and talk to my John about nothing—weather and the sunrise and a bobcat you saw last Thursday. And only now do you think to ask whence we hail? Because I said something about the Lord God you did not expect?”
“Sorry, Mizz Garfield. I was just makin’ conversation, and what with Mr. Garfield laid up, I don’t know what to say,” William said. “I ain’t never asked ‘cause—well, you know the hill code—as a rule, folks keep things to theirselves, where people want ‘em to stay, back in the dark somewhere. This here,” and so saying, William Crawford gestured broadly to the woods, “the May sunshine comin’ green and gold through the leaves—this here is all the facts most of us’uns want or need. Everything else is shut out in the darkness, like Scripture tells us—like the ill-garbed wedding guest or the foolish virgins.”
“Or like God, Mr. Crawford. A shut mouth hides the past, and a good fence keeps God where he belongs, outside my cabin, outside the fence, out in the woods. So why are you trying to be like God now?” A little charcoal junco twitted down to the wagon, turned his eye and flew. “Why are you tryin’ to get inside where I’ve been?”
“Now wait a minute. What yore sayin’ ain’t right. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with God. And He ain’t got nothin’ to do with me. He don’t even know I’m here—I don’t mean on this road or in this wagon but in these hills, on this earth. I am as useless and unknown to the Almighty as that rail yore settin’ up.”
William Crawford let the reins go slack, and the mule shifted in the traces. “See here, I do confess you are a comely woman. I confess to lookin’ through your window. But I ain’t never, never considered knockin’ on the door of your heart like Jesus holdin’ his lantern or takin’ yore hand or doin’ nothing unseemly much less violent. John Garfield is a good man. Yore a comely woman, but you’uns are covenanted to one another.”
At this, Daisy let her head droop once more. She began tugging at one of the nails, wiggling it back and forth until she pulled it out like a splinter. She threw the nail onto the porch of the cabin, and it clattered a bit. “I’ll get it later,” she said.
Then she said, “Mr. Crawford, William . . . my John can’t keep out the rain any more. God is thick inside my cabin.” Daisy began to weep, silently and bravely. The heaving of her chest made her breasts press against the gingham of her bodice. Then she took a deep breath and said, “John and I . . . we came from nowhere and we’re going nowhere. In thirty years, this cabin won’t be nothing but a heap of stones where the chimney was and a well out back my John dug by stint of perseverance and a strong back. And that well will be full of dead things and sticks. It’s God tearing down my fence and filling up my well. William, listen: God ain’t nothin’ but Time.”
The urgency in her voice troubled William. “What do you want . . .?”
“I want . . . for God to leave John and me alone.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I—we—need your help.”
“What is it you’d have me to do?”
“Help John . . . move along.” Daisy looked up at him, and a
tear slipped down her cheek.
“Mizz Garfield, no, I cain’t . . . I ain’t the man to do it.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Yore talkin’ out of yore head, with all this rant about God and time and what-all . . . and now this.”
“William Crawford! Listen! You know that I have spoken more truth than anything you ever heard spoke. Don’t be a liar—neither a womanish nor a mannish liar. I’m sick of people saying women are more prone to believing lies or telling lies, like women are so weak we swoon at lies, like we love lies, like we’re all a bunch of Eves believing lies because men find some comfort in thinking they love lies less than we do. All people are liars: we love lies and we live to be liars and most folks go to their graves never saying one true thing. Well, it’s time for you to walk through that door and do the one truest thing you ever did and take my hand and help me keep Jehovah God in the outer darkness where He belongs! Do you understand me, Mr. Crawford?” Her eyes seemed far away and urgent at the same time, as if she suffered some disease that was bearing her away and so made the present moment crucial.
Daisy continued, “I’ll tell a story, a true story. When I was a girl, I had this puppy—I called her Lily, ‘cause she was all white. Anyhow, a coyote got her by the gullet and shook her and there wasn’t anything to do but put her down. So daddy took his pistol and we went behind the house, and he asked me, ‘Are you sure you want to see this?’ And I said—I was a precocious child—I said, ‘Daddy, this here is the most real thing I’ll see today.’ And so I watched him shoot Lily one good shot, and she was gone. And that’s when I learned that God had been pushed out of the whole affair, and things could go back to being normal. I got me another dog. Named her Clover. There’s always another dog somewhere.” Daisy looked hard at William and said again, “That’s what I learned that day: There’s always another dog.”
William nodded his head as if he understood. “How you want me to do it?”
“Well, don’t shoot him. Can’t be much more obvious than that. Use the pillow.”
“Is he ready? I mean, will he fight me or try pullin’ a gun or anything?”