Cotton picking began this morning. Not the full harvest, but scattered bands of men and machines controlled by farmers who got fed up with staring at stunted cotton that would grow no more before the drought finally broke and soaking rain flooded the scorched fields and a money-eating rot set in. Men who felt like fools for gambling against God by putting out growth regulators at the wrong times and who finally just said fuck it and called their hands and fired up the four-row pickers to try to salvage what they could.
From my front porch I watch gunmetal clouds gathering over my neighbors’ fields. They hover with mocking heaviness, unmoved by wind or by the drone of the mechanical pickers. Drewe left early this morning for her clinic in Yazoo City. I’ve passed most of the day walking from room to room, avoiding my office. No one has called, few cars have passed on the road, and despite the slow dusty progress of the pickers, the whole world seems to be waiting.
The ring of my office phone is almost a welcome sound. I trot through the front door and veer left, expecting Daniel Baxter’s voice from the machine, or Miles’s, but I hear neither. It’s Drewe, and she sounds shaken.
“I’m here!” I say, picking up.
“Harper, I need you to drive to Jackson right now.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid Erin might hurt herself.”
“
“No, she told me everything was fine.”
“Then what-?”
“Everything is
I feel like my body temperature is plummeting.
“I want you to go right now.”
“Wouldn’t she rather see you?” I ask.
“She doesn’t want me there. I’d go anyway, but I’ve got a difficult delivery on my hands. It could be a while.”
“Drewe, I’m the last person Erin wants butting into her problems. She doesn’t even like me.”
“Harper, please. Erin respects you more than any man she knows.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Then why did she tell me that? Now get your butt over to Jackson and talk her out of doing anything stupid. Get her out of there if you have to.”
“And take her where?”
“Bring her to our house. Do whatever you have to do.”
“And if she won’t come?”
“Figure something out.
“I’m on my way.”
“Call me if it gets crazy, and I’ll find someone to handle this delivery.”
Erin and Patrick live in the Belhaven district of Jackson. Most people at their income level long ago moved out to the enclaves of Ridgeland and Madison, but Patrick took advantage of white flight to trade up to palatial quarters for a bourgeois price. I managed to make the whole hour-and-twenty-minute drive from Rain without thinking. I popped in Joni Mitchell’s
The front door of the house has one of those burled finishes you’d expect to find at a Victorian men’s club. I hammer the big brass knocker and wait, listening to the blows reverberate over the slate and hardwood floors inside. At least a minute passes before I hear heels clacking. There’s a rustle at the curtained windows to one side of the door, then stillness again.
I try the handle, then push open the door.
Erin stands just inside, looking at me with preternatural calm. Her facial bruises are yellow at the edges, setting them off from the tanned skin that might otherwise have masked the damage. The orbit of her left eye is a continuous contusion, like an indigo map of an island. Flecks of blood dot the corner of the eye itself. A closed fist delivered that blow.
She’s wearing a linen sundress, the color of lilac. It lies as smoothly against her upper body as a silk camisole, billows slightly at her waist. Another bruise marks her left breast where it disappears into the dress. Her hair is tied up, with a dark spray falling around the back of her neck. She wears no shoes, earrings, or wristwatch. No wedding ring.
“Come in,” she says, turning away and walking through the entrance hall. “We’re in the TV room.”
“Is Patrick here?”
The back of her head turns once from side to side.
As she moves deeper into the house, I fear that Drewe may be right about the danger here. The air conditioner is not running, which on this day is evidence enough of mental instability. Ahead of me, Erin walks with the grace she always possessed, yet her fluidity seems oddly exaggerated. The dimness and heat increase with each step I take. I have a disturbing vision of myself following an Egyptian girl into a tomb.
What do I sense here?
Resolve. Some decision has been taken. A choice has been made in cold deliberation, and the weight of it is tangible. As Erin steps out of the dark hallway and into a blue glow, fear suffuses me. Not for myself, but for what I might find at the end of this brief journey.
Then I see Holly. She’s propped on thick pillows in front of Patrick’s treasured fifty-two-inch television. Her back is to me, and she doesn’t seem to be moving. I don’t see Erin at first; then my eyes pick her out of the shadows, seated in a cushioned chair against the wall to my left, her long bare legs stretched across an ottoman. I move quickly to Holly and lean over her. Her eyes are barely open. I stare with frantic intensity at the little belly beneath the “Precious Cargo” T-shirt, watching for the rise and fall of respiration.
She is breathing. With relief cascading through me, I swoop her up from the floor as though she were weightless.
“You’re going to wake her up,” Erin says.
I lay Holly’s head on my left shoulder and begin rocking her gently as I walk around the room.
“Put her down,” Erin insists. “It’s nap time. She’ll be comatose by the time Ursula the Sea Witch shows up.”
I turn toward the TV and see the comforting yellow splash that is Flounder, then the orange hair of Ariel, the Little Mermaid. “What’s going on, Erin?”
“What do you mean?”
“Turn on the lights.”
“They’ll wake up Holly.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re not her mother.”
“I-”
“You’re not that either,” she snaps. “Except in the genetic sense. You’re the sperm donor. What are you doing here anyway?”
“Drewe called me. She’s worried about you.”
Erin gets to her feet and moves toward me. “Give her to me. She’s already asleep.”
“First tell me nothing crazy is going on here. That Holly’s okay.”
“What?” Her voice drops to a threatening whisper. “
Reluctantly, I release the little body that is flesh of my flesh yet resides under another man’s roof, under
