“That just ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says again, and I know I’m right. Joseph Carl is back home.
“He’s the one,” Juna says. “The one in the fine white shirt with a bend in his nose. He’s the one who took Dale.”
BEING FOUR YEARS older than Juna, I remember Joseph Carl better than she. He is the one kind soul among all those Baine brothers. Even given my ache for Ellis, I know he isn’t such a kind man as Joseph Carl.
Joseph Carl was the brother who would take his mama by the arm, escort her into church or down the road through town. Walking with Joseph Carl was the only time Mrs. Baine would hold her head high so a person could see her eyes. She would nod to passersby, pat Joseph Carl’s hand, even call out a hello to one of the ladies. But Joseph Carl’s kindness didn’t serve him well in that family. It’s surely why he finally left, even knowing he was abandoning his mama to the care of those other boys. He had a yearning for something more and too much kindness to survive his family, so he packed up and left Hayden County.
For weeks, months maybe, before Joseph Carl stepped aboard a train, he talked of traveling north and west. Not so far away, he said, but look at how tall they grow their wheat. For anyone who would give him the time, Joseph Carl unrolled for them a poster that showed a man standing on a ladder so he could see over the top of his crop. This is how tall it grows, he said. Land so rich, crops sprout like weeds. When he did finally step aboard a train, most folks thought it was a damn foolish thing to do and he was a damn foolish man for doing it.
I’ve thought of Joseph Carl over the years, thought one day Ellis and I would marry and we’d go to live near Joseph Carl somewhere away from Juna and Daddy. I remembered the sun in that poster of his. The landscape had glowed orange, and the wheat was yellow, and the man who stood on that ladder had red cheeks. We would live there, where it was dry and warm and not all the time moldy and damp. I imagined Joseph Carl would be my brother, even on the day he left and I was too young to want Ellis in the way I want him now. I imagined Joseph Carl, and not any other Baine, would one day be my brother and Ellis would be my husband.
Most folks thought Joseph Carl likely died in the years that followed, or packed himself up and kept moving west like so many others when that dark rich soil dried up and blew away. I would imagine, sometimes, in more recent years, when we had a bit of dust blow through and it was a particular dark-brown shade, that it had come from a place where Joseph Carl had been and that he had touched it or walked upon it or dug it with his own bare hands.
He did write me a few times, three letters that came over two years. By the third letter, he told me he knew I loved Ellis but that it was a feeling I should be shy of. He said Ellis was a good enough man, but not as good as I might want him to be. Don’t mistake foolishness for bravery, Joseph Carl wrote. I’d tell you to find another man, but I know that’ll only make you want Ellis all the more. But I’ll say it anyway. Find another sort of man. Joseph Carl was the only person I ever knew who left Hayden County. The only person most anyone knew who left. But now, it would seem, Joseph Carl is back.
I leave the house before Juna can say Joseph Carl’s name out loud, and I take Mrs. Brashear and Abigail with me. On the porch, Abigail shakes her grandfather by the shoulder, him having already fallen off to sleep.
“Go on home,” I tell them, standing on the porch, drying my hands on my apron like I’ll be staying right here and have no other place to go. “Abraham will probably be there by the time you get home.” I say this because I can see in Abigail’s eyes, the way they are near to tearing over, that she’s scared to walk home with only her grandparents. “You all be safe, and thank you for the milk. We’ll send word when Dale is found.”
Once they are gone and their voices have faded into silence, I start up the road toward the Baines’ place. Along the way, I pass John Holleran’s home. He lives there with his mama and father. His mama has been to the house a half dozen times already since Dale disappeared. Each time she’s stopped in, she’s said she knows Dale is near and that he’ll be home soon.
Once past the Hollerans’ place, I know I’m close. All the fields here have been planted, and the tobacco has rooted itself and is growing. It’s already taller than Daddy’s. Maybe Daddy is cursed, because the crops in his field and this field and that field there, they should be the same. They’re set in the same dirt, the land has the same rise and fall, the same sun shines here as it does on Daddy’s land, but Daddy’s crop is already failing. At the break in the hickories, I stop long enough to draw in a few deep breaths. When my chest has stopped rising and lowering and I know I’ll be able to speak again, I continue up the drive toward the house.
Mrs. Baine has not yet reached her front door when I come upon her from behind. It’s a long walk, all of it uphill, and I’ve been faster, caught her before she’s reached her front door. She stops, probably because of the sound of my footsteps. In the dark, I can’t see the look on her face.
“We got to burn it,” I say.
She nods toward the side of the house and walks up the stairs and disappears through her front door.
I grab handfuls of dried-out pokeweeds growing alongside the house. There’s nothing else. No wood stacked that the boys have cut for winter. No twigs. No fallen leaves. I twist the weeds into thick strands, the closest to kindling I can find, and toss them in the barrel at the corner of the house. Things are dry. It won’t take much to get a flame going. I’ve made a good pile when Mrs. Baine returns with the shirt. The fabric is still warm. She’s taken it off Joseph Carl just now, must have stood by as he unbuttoned each button, pulled it off, folded it over, and gave it to her.
“He wanted a fine and nice shirt to greet me in,” she says as I strike the match I brought from home. “He was going to put it back. Tomorrow, he said. Was going to hang it right back there on the line. He wanted to look nice for me.”
I drop the match in the pile of tangled weeds. The flame spreads quickly until it reaches the heavy cotton. Then it fails, almost goes dark, but the fabric finally catches and the flame takes hold again. Smoke rises, and a light breeze blows it across me. It’ll be in my hair and in my clothes now. Juna will smell it on me.
“She’ll tell Daddy,” I say. “Juna will. And he’ll believe her. He’ll come here looking for Joseph Carl.”
Mrs. Baine backs away from the fire, the glow catching the underside of her chin and throwing shadows that lift up along the edges of her face.
“Where are your boys?” I ask. “Where’s Ellis?”
Mrs. Baine continues to back toward the house. “My boy didn’t do nothing. You know he didn’t.”
“Don’t matter what I know,” I say, dropping in another handful of weeds. “Now that Juna’s said it, Daddy will be coming. You need to get your boys home, Mrs. Baine. You need to hurry on up about it.”
I SEND MRS. BAINE for a shovel when the flames have fallen and the shirt is but a few orange embers. As I wait for her, I look back at the house and I see him there in the window. It’s Joseph Carl, though I was wrong about my being more likely than Juna to recognize him. Had I not known Joseph Carl was inside, I’d have not known the man looking out that window. The curves of his face have been worked away, leaving only bone to give it shape. His small eyes lie deep in their sockets, and his cheekbones flare wide over a narrow, square chin. He lifts a hand and smiles, and that’s the thing I recognize.
After handing me the shovel, and before I’ve dug it even once in the ground, Mrs. Baine is gone, up the porch and inside her house. When the door closes, I hear the latch drop and Joseph Carl is gone from the window. I throw a shovelful of dirt on the last of the fire, lean on the handle, and look down into the barrel. Still seeing a glow, I throw another shovelful.