Back in the house, I place my best folded linens on the table-snow-white tea napkins my mama hand-stitched-and four silver teaspoons, tarnished, though I polish them regular with baking soda. I serve Abigail the last biscuit to go along with her milk. I wonder if she’s slept since we first realized Dale was gone.
“You shouldn’t waste what little you have,” Mrs. Brashear says, meaning Abigail isn’t allowed.
“Please,” I say. “It’s no waste. Abigail has been such a help to me.”
Since daybreak, Abigail has been at the house, brewing coffee and digging the mud out of the men’s boots, but she won’t go outside to pick from the garden unless someone goes with her. She’s even washed the clothes Juna had been wearing when we found her in the field. Three times Abigail has scrubbed the dress as if hoping once it’s finally clean, Dale will come home.
“Go on and eat,” I say to Abigail, slipping the white cap from her head and brushing my hand over her hair.
“We seen a fellow,” Mr. Brashear says as I freshen his coffee. He leans over the kitchen table as he speaks, his long, slender frame tipped forward, and he presses one ear toward me.
“We did,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Both of us seen him. Ordinary-enough-looking fellow.”
Mrs. Brashear, short and stout to her husband’s long and lean, wears a pale-yellow dress, always pale yellow even in winter, and a white kerchief nearly the same shade as her graying hair is wrapped over her head and tied under her chin. Next to them, Mrs. Baine clings to her coffee cup with both hands and keeps her eyes lowered. I’ve always thought her like a dog that has carried one too many litters. Her long hair, mostly brown but for the many wiry gray strands, hangs down her back. She is a tiny woman with narrow hips and shoulders who must have once been bigger, stronger, because the clothes she wears have a way of hanging on her such that she’s always tugging at them and tucking them in. They must have fit her at one time, probably before all those boys of hers wore her down.
“A fellow?” I say.
“What’s that?” Mr. Brashear shouts.
“You say you seen a fellow?”
Mr. Brashear slaps the table, causing his coffee to slop over the edge of the cup and Abigail to startle. “Took a shirt right off Mother’s line.”
Mrs. Baine lifts her head, her hair falling back just enough to let me see her face.
“A fine shirt,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Good, heavy shirt.”
“Figured to let him have it,” Mr. Brashear says. “What with Abigail in the house, we don’t want no trouble. If that’s all he wanted, figured to let him have it and move on.”
Mrs. Baine, still clinging to her coffee cup, scoots forward on her chair. She is looking at Mr. Brashear. “With buttons?” she says. “And a fine stiff collar?”
“He went on his way,” Mrs. Brashear says, her voice having risen to a shout, and she nods yes in answer to Mrs. Baine. “Didn’t think so much about it, except to be sorry that shirt was gone. It always pressed up real nice. Thinking now maybe that fellow is worth knowing about.”
We all turn toward the back of the house at the sound of a door opening. Mr. Brashear lowers his eyes when Juna walks from the bedroom into the kitchen, and his slender shoulders roll away from her. Mrs. Brashear turns her eyes too, pats the table with a flat palm, and points at Mr. Brashear to leave the house. He pulls his hat over his silver hair, nods in my direction without letting his eyes follow, and steps out onto the porch.
Juna’s cotton nightgown covers too little. Even in the dim light, we can see the rise and fall of each curve, the dark shadows of her intimate parts. I sweep past her, stirring up the flames of the candles I lit before dusk. A few are snuffed out. A few others dance, dwindle, and then rise again to throw a steady light. I slip a blue blanket over her shoulders and pull it closed under her chin.
“You don’t want a chill,” I say, even though the house is closed up and the air stuffy. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“There was a fellow,” Juna says, clinging to the thin blanket with both hands. She leans into me as if struggling to stand upright. She’s not been out of bed, barely eaten or taken a drink since Abraham placed his claim on her. Each time he’s come to the door, she’s told me to send him away and have him come another time. It’s likely why Abigail has barely left the house. Abraham will have asked her to keep watch over Juna.
“I seen him too,” Juna says. “Wore a fine white shirt, buttoned to the collar and at each wrist.”
Mrs. Baine stands, her fingertips resting on the table. Her brown hair hangs nearly to her waist, and her gray dress is tied off with a thin leather strap.
“That’s good,” I say, speaking as if Juna were a child. She is about to tell us what we’ve been waiting to hear, and as Mrs. Baine begins to slide around the table toward the kitchen door, I worry she’ll scare Juna, interrupt whatever she is about to say.
“Please,” I say, stroking the hair from her face. “Keep on.”
“His nose, it was bent.” Juna’s black eyes are empty sockets except when they catch the candlelight. “Crooked in a funny sort of way. Like it had been broke.”
“Good, good,” I say.
“Why, that’s him,” Mrs. Brashear says, giving the table another whack. “That’s sure enough the fellow we seen. Abigail, don’t you figure? Don’t you figure it’s the same fellow?”
“It’s the same fellow,” Abigail says, staring at the table instead of Juna.
Mrs. Baine isn’t the type of woman a person would notice. In church or at a summer gathering or on the street in town, a person wouldn’t remember her walking among the others. She is a woman who blends in, and I’ve often imagined she’d make a fine mother-in-law. I would hope to live one day under the same roof as her and call her son my husband. She is quiet, humble, happy enough to be overlooked, but as I stand next to Juna, holding her, stroking her, waiting for her to say more, I can’t stop staring at Mrs. Baine. I can’t stop the worry creeping up from the soles of my feet.
“Go on,” I say. “What more do you remember?”
“Thought it was a fine shirt,” Juna says. “Too fine for any day but Sunday.”
Mrs. Brashear nods. “Yes, it was a fine shirt. Mr. Brashear’s best. That was the fellow.”
“A fine shirt,” Abigail says.
“That don’t mean nothing,” Mrs. Baine says. “A man can walk down a road if he chooses. And he can wear a fine white shirt too. Don’t mean he stole it.”
It is the most words I’ve ever heard Mrs. Baine say. Mrs. Brashear must be surprised too, not so much by what Mrs. Baine is saying but that she is saying anything at all.
“Please,” I say, “have a seat, Mrs. Baine. Daddy or John, they’ll walk you home. It’s too dark outside. Sit a bit, wait. They’ll stop in soon.”
Mrs. Baine backs toward the door. “Don’t mean nothing, that man walking down the road.”
Juna steps forward into the glow of the candles that burn around us. She drops the blanket. It slips from her shoulders and pools at her feet.
“That’s the fellow who took our Dale,” she says.
“That ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says, and I know the man in the white shirt is one of her boys.
There are seven Baine brothers, but only six who still live in Hayden County, all of them with their mama. All of them except Joseph Carl. He left a half dozen years ago to travel the country. He was, still is, the oldest of all the brothers. Because he’s been gone so long, he’s the only one the Brashears wouldn’t know because they moved here in the years since he left. He’s the only one Juna might not know if she were to see him walking down the road.