Counting Backwards

6

Carrie

June 1923

Everything started to change a few weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday.

Three years had passed since I’d learned about Ma being sent to that Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in Lynchburg, and I’d still not managed to do a thing about it.

Nor had I found out what had happened to Doris and Roy.

Instead, I’d spent endless days hauling feed, cleaning troughs, and collecting eggs from angry hens.

That all was on top of the laundering, sweeping, and pressing that had been my job since the day I’d first arrived at the Dobbs home.

It didn’t leave much time spare for plotting how to reunite my family.

And I got distracted from thinking about my family sometimes, so fixed was I instead on my longing to return to school.

Some days I worked extra hard, thinking that if I pleased Mrs.

Alice, she’d relent and send me back to the classroom.

Other days I’d foul up on purpose, hoping to show I weren’t so useful to have around all the time anyhow.

But my mistakes never led Mrs.

Alice to suggest more school.

Instead, she’d just set me to doing over whatever I’d ruined, and I’d be cross with myself for making the extra work.

Mrs.

Alice said that sometimes it seemed like I was of two fully separate minds, doing my very best or doing my awful worst depending on the day.

I reckon she was right.

But that was how the time kept unfolding for me, one day after the other, so much the same as each of the days before it.

Loretta Dobbs had married a young man the year before, a homely, churchgoing fellow who came from a family just two roads over.

He and Loretta moved farther down south, where the husband was taking a job at his cousin’s construction company.

I liked to think on her new life and imagine something similar for myself, a love story and an escape.

With only one more year remaining until I turned eighteen, I’d talk out my dreams with Billy, guessing on where I’d go after I was legally an adult.

Maybe I’d work as a telephone operator and get my own little apartment to rent.

Or I might be able to find a position at the glove factory down on Hendricks Street, on account of my experience with so much mending at the Dobbses’.

I didn’t know what other employ there could be for someone like me, a quiet, hefty girl who’d never gone past the sixth grade.

If I managed to get the right job and save some earnings, maybe I could use the money to get my ma free.

That was what I hoped.

I’d tell them I could look after her just fine all by my lonesome.

That’s what I was thinking about that June day as I walked into the dusty shed out behind the house and hoisted a bag of feed onto my shoulder.

When I came back outside to bring the feed to the coop, I noticed Mr.

John walking up the road with another fellow.

Mr.

John had lots of friends around town, and it wasn’t unusual for him to bring someone by the house, so I didn’t pay them much mind.

I was hurrying through my tasks so I could have time left over to walk up the road to the Wilkenses’ farm, where they had a litter of kittens.

The white-haired wife, Claudia, said I could come feed the little tabbies using milk from a dropper.

In the years I’d been living over on Grove Street, that Claudia Wilkens had always been extra kind toward me.

Each time she visited with Mrs.

Alice, she’d slip me one of her fresh-baked biscuits or offer to comb my hair.

Maybe because her own children were grown, she was lonely.

Or maybe she just liked having another somebody to watch over.

I could understand something like that because that’s how I felt about them kittens.

It filled me up, looking after little ones like that, much the same as when I’d looked after Doris and Roy.

I was making my next trip out of the shed, the slop bucket full and heavy in my hand, when Mr.

John was upon me.

“Carrie,”

he said.

His tone was always the same, deep and strong.

Looking back now, I think Mr.

John had the kind of voice that belonged on a radio program.

His hardy timbre made it so a person would barely notice how his hair had thinned or how liver spots now dotted his face.

“This here’s Clarence Garland, my nephew, here to work with you.”

He pointed with a thumb to the young man beside him.

When I turned my eyes to greet the newcomer, I near up and lost the use of my tongue.

I’d never seen such a looker as him in real life.

He was more like the fellows on the giant placards outside the playhouse in town, like that Rudolph Valentino.

He was tall, like me, and I was near eye to eye with him.

I guessed he was about five years older than me, his dark hair slicked back with some kind of pomade, and his eyes so light they looked almost unnatural.

We already had two farm boys hired up for the year, so I couldn’t figure why we’d need yet another, even with all the produce and eggs selling faster than they used to.

“Mrs. Alice and I are heading down to visit Loretta in Durham for a time,”

Mr. John said, “and Clarence here is going to be looking after the farm while we’re gone. He’ll stay in the apartment with the other boys,”

he explained, talking about the spare room over the barn. “You just follow what he says.”

Mr. John turned back to Clarence then. “She’s a sturdy thing. Good worker. Won’t give you no trouble.”

I felt my face redden from Mr. John’s words. He’d said such things about me plenty in the past, but this was the first time I ever minded it, standing as I was in front of that young man. It was like I suddenly noticed then how my gray dress hung loose and shapeless on me, like a burlap sack, and how my boots were caked in manure and mud. And yet, when Mr. John stood there describing me no different than he would a tractor, Clarence seemed somehow not to notice the unfavorableness of it all.

He smiled back at me, showing me straight white teeth. “Good to meet you, Miss Carrie,”

he said, like he really meant it.

I wondered where he came from, how long he’d stay, how long Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs would be down there visiting with Loretta, but I couldn’t hardly find my words to ask about any of it just then. The pail full of old scraps was still hanging from my hand, weighing me down. I just nodded and went back to work.

Two days later, Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs finally left to stay with Loretta. I kept about my chores anyhow, having long since settled into my routine, taking care of the house in the morning and then heading out to clean the coop and collect fertilizer in the afternoons. I saw Clarence coming and going throughout the day, stopping to check in with Ralph and Tony, the other farmhands. It wasn’t until the sun began sinking lower in the sky that first day we were on our own that he approached me.

“Carrie,”

he said, smiling like he was real glad to see me. “You planning to take supper all alone tonight?”

I didn’t tell him I always took my supper alone.

“Why?” I asked.

“I thought maybe you and I could take ourselves on a walk into town. You could show me around. Maybe we stop at a soda fountain?”

He smiled at me, and something in his expression made me think he was feeling shy to even ask.

But then I thought he probably just felt sorry for me, a girl with nobody to look after her and such.

I didn’t have any money to spend on a soda pop anyhow, and I didn’t want to say so.

“The day’s been long and hot,”

I said. “I’m fixing to stay in.”

I didn’t need someone’s pity, not even if that someone was so fine to look at.

Clarence’s shoulders dropped a little at my words, and his lips tightened in on themselves like he was truly disappointed. Before I even thought about it, I surprised myself by saying more. “There’s extra hash and boiled peas.”

I pointed back toward the house.

“That sounds like just about the best offer I’ve had in a real long time.”

He smiled at me so wide that I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Come on then,”

I said. I was suddenly brimming with a brand-new kind of giddiness.

I set us a place on the back porch where the air was cooler, on account of the sugar maples flanking the house on both sides. I turned two chairs, facing them out to the yard so we could gaze out into the evening. The train tracks were just beyond the yard, and I knew a train would be passing by soon, something for us to watch while we waited for the lightning bugs to arrive. Once we were settled, both of us with full bowls balanced in our laps, the smell of warm dirt still lingering in the air, Clarence set to asking me questions. He inquired about one thing after another, like he needed to know everything there was to know about Carrie Buck. Somehow, we talked for three hours, until the moon was sharp and bright.

After that day, I knew for certain that my feelings for Clarence were more than just friendly in spirit. I couldn’t say what he thought in return, except that everywhere I went on the farm, Clarence seemed to show up beside me.

On the fourth day after the Dobbses left, I was hauling a basket of turnips toward the root cellar, and then there was Clarence.

“Let me get that for you,”

he said, lifting the heaping basket from my hands before I could answer. “Carrying for Carrie,”

he said, laughing a little at his own joke. I grinned back at him and his foolishness. I stood at the top of the steps, trying to decide whether to follow him down to the cellar, but he made quick work of it. Wasn’t even a minute before he was on his way back up, his strong hands free again.

“See ya,”

he said, winking at me before walking off toward the barn.

He showed up at lunchtime that day too, holding a big yellow flower. I couldn’t tell you what type of blossom it was, but I knew it was the kind that grew down by the little crick.

“I saw this and thought of you,”

he said, pushing the flower gently into place behind my ear. It felt silly to me, wearing my dusty work dress, heading back to the coop to shovel dung while having a flower wedged into my hair. But I left it there just the same.

All the rest of that day, I found my eyes roaming across the property. I looked up toward the barn roof, where Clarence was working and hammering while Ralph stood on a ladder beside him. He didn’t look back my way, but I reckoned it was best he kept focused on his balance up there anyhow. As each hour passed, I wondered harder if maybe I’d imagined his interest in me, stocky and plain as I was.

But then he came looking for me again before supper. Not just that night, but every night that week. He’d show up at the back door, offering me that easy smile, his eyes never drifting from my face. As we sat on the back porch night by night, chewing our corn and greens, or anything else I scrounged from the larder, I could feel myself tumbling toward something.

One such night, he told me all about how he came to be here on the farm with us instead of back in Richmond, where his own family lived.

“My father’s not like Uncle John,”

he said before biting into a piece of the sourdough loaf I’d sliced for us. “My old man’s always telling me I have to be this way or that. I was getting ready to just take myself on the road when we heard from Uncle John about him wanting my help.”

He pushed his lips out like he was figuring about something. Then he looked over at me, a flush spreading on his face.

“I don’t mean to act sour. Just wondering where life’s going to take me next.”

“You could stay on here, couldn’t you?”

I asked, maybe sounding too hopeful. “Mr. John’s always hiring one man or another. Why not you?”

Clarence put his dish on the little table between us and looked me square in the face, nodding as he did.

“Why not me.”

He didn’t ask it, but said the words like he was stating his mind. He stared at me longer, and I wondered if I was meant to say something. I didn’t know what though, so I just sat quiet while heat rose in my cheeks. I reckon he noted my flush because his lips turned up in a big smile. Then he cleared his throat and turned his eyes back toward the train tracks.

After that night, I started to think that maybe Clarence’s arrival at the Grove Street farm was the beginning for me, the first step in my adult life. After he went back to the barn on those nights, I’d lie on my little cot in the alcove and think about what would happen when Mr. John and Mrs. Alice returned, when they saw their nephew’s good work on the farm and his growing interest in me.

One afternoon, after the Dobbses had been gone so long it felt like maybe they were never coming back, Clarence came to see me where I was hanging linens on the back line. It was late in the day, but I’d been so busy preparing pepper jams that I was only just finishing the laundry.

Clarence took up the last sheet in my basket and started pinning it to the line.

“How about you come on a walk with me to the creek?” he asked.

“Just let me set this back inside,”

I said, my blood quickening at the invitation. I lifted the basket with one hand and untied my apron with the other.

Once I’d tidied up, we made our way down the hill, heading west toward the small crick and squinting our eyes against the glare of the sinking sun. Charlottesville was a place that seemed to fill with more buildings and concrete every day, the natural areas getting covered up one after another by the fuss and such of big-city life. Yet this particular area of forest where we were headed, with its trickling stream of water and its tangled thicket of trees, was still holding on.

“I heard from Uncle John today,”

Clarence told me as we stepped over the fallen branches and the thick cover of leaves. “They’ll be back from Durham on Monday.”

The news hit me like a weight in my stomach, dropping like a stone.

When we reached the small stream of water, he took my hand in his. I’d never held hands with a boy before, and my palm started to sweat at the touch.

“Will you tell them you want to stay on?”

I asked, unable to pretend that wasn’t the very question I thought about all the livelong day.

“I sure hope they’ll have me,”

he said, stopping us in our tracks with a light yank and turning so his full body faced mine. He pushed some of my hair away from my eye as he looked at me real intent, like I was all that mattered in the world.

I opened my mouth to answer, but before any words came out, he put his mouth on mine for a kiss. I gasped in surprise, but I kissed him back just the same. When he pushed his tongue between my lips, I think I jumped a little. I didn’t know anything about that kind of kissing, and I put my hand against his chest to push him back.

“Shh,”

he told me. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I saw you.”

I liked hearing that he felt the same about me as I did him, and I put my lips back to his, this time opening my mouth for him to teach me.

Soon he was lowering us to the ground.

“Wait, Clarence,”

I said, “we can’t.”

I was thinking about the dirt stains that would get on my dress if we did our kissing right there on the muddy forest floor.

“It’s okay,”

Clarence said, continuing to lower me to the sodden ground. “Trust me.”

And shame on me, because in that moment, I did.

As soon as we were down against the leaves and muck of the ground, Clarence started pushing up my dress. That was when I realized there was more risk to lying down than just soiling my smock.

“Wait, Clarence, what are you doing?”

I pushed at his hands.

He didn’t even answer but just kept on shoving up my dress, his breath growing heavy and ragged. He put his lips to my neck and started kissing me there, his mouth making my skin all slick in a way I didn’t like.

“Stop it, Clarence,”

I said, suddenly feeling mad. I pushed against him, but he was lying on top of me, his weight firm. He had me pinned down with one arm, and with the other hand he was fumbling with his own pants, all frantic-like. My dress was up around my waist, and I was pushing, trying to free myself from his grasp. I learned in that moment that I was not as strong as I thought. All that business with Mr. John calling me “a sturdy thing”

wasn’t but nothing.

“This is what you’ve wanted,”

he said, huffing. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“No, Clarence! Please! No!”

I was shouting now, but he clamped his hand over my mouth.

“You stop,”

he said. “Just keep still so I can . . .”

I cried out against his hand, but the sound didn’t carry none, covered as it was. My body went limp against the force of it all. And then my mind did this curious thing, where everything went suddenly and completely blank, all my thoughts shoved into nothingness. Even though I could still feel Clarence up above me, it was somehow like I wasn’t there, like I had gone away. I just watched what happened as if I was looking down from up above us. Years later, when I learned the word obliterated, I thought back to that moment with Clarence. That was what he had done to me then; I felt obliterated. I wish now that I had fought harder—I wish for that all the time, but I can’t go back.

* * *

He didn’t hold my hand as we walked back up the hill, but he talked a bunch just the same as he had on our way down, as if nothing had changed. I might have wondered if I’d imagined everything else, if not for the burning stickiness between my legs and the ache I felt where his thumb had dug into my shoulder.

“Chances are,”

Clarence said, “Uncle John will send me off after he returns. He doesn’t really have enough work for four men, especially with you here doing your share. Don’t you think?”

How different a person could feel from one hour to the next. Though I would have been devastated for him to leave just that afternoon, now I couldn’t wait for him to go. Whatever I thought I’d felt for him earlier, well, he’d more than extinguished that. If this was how a man loved a woman, I didn’t want no part of it.

He glanced over at me when I didn’t answer.

“Well?”

he asked lightly, like I was the crazy one for keeping quiet. I just wanted to reach the house and get to the washbasin. I was keen to scrub at myself, to wash every part of him off my skin, out of my body. I was crawling with the feel of him.

“Aww.”

He looked at me with that expression I had mistaken for goodness, the corners of his mouth lifting. “Don’t be sore at me for leaving. You know I’ll come and see you. You’re my girl now.”

I didn’t want to be his girl. Not anymore, not after the way he’d acted. I didn’t know how to tell him that, and I worried he might still do something else to me, so I just kept my lips closed tight.

When we reached the edge of the Dobbs property, he stopped walking and took my chin in his hand, looking me straight in the eye.

“I promise,”

he said. “I’ll be back.”

Well, that was just what I was afraid of.