Chemistry and Other Stories

Blackberries in June

On those August nights when no late-afternoon thunderstorm rinsed the heat and humidity from the air, no breeze stirred the cattails and willow oak leaves, Jamie and Matt sometimes made love surrounded by water. Tonight might be such a night, Jamie thought. She rolled down the window and let air blast away some of the cigarette smoke that clung to her uniform and hair. She was exhausted from eight hours of navigating tables with hardly a pause to stand still, much less sit down, from the effort it took to lift the sides of her mouth into an unwavering smile. Exhausted too from the work she’d done at the house before her shift at the restaurant. The radio in the decade-old Ford Escort didn’t work, so she hummed a Dixie Chicks song about chains being loosened. That’s what she wanted, to be unchained in the weightlessness of water. She wanted to feel Matt lift and hold her so close their hearts were only inches apart.

In a few minutes the road fell sharply. At the bottom of the hill she turned off the blacktop onto what was, at least for now, more red-clay washout than road. The Escort bumped and jarred as it made its way down to the lake house. Their house, hers and Matt’s. Barely a year married, hardly out of their teens, and they had a place they owned, not rented. It was a miracle Jamie still had trouble believing. And this night, like every night as she turned in to the drive, a part of her felt surprise the house was really there.

But it was, and already looking so much better than in June when she and Matt had signed the papers at the bank. What had been a tangle of kudzu and briars a yard and garden. Broken windows, rotted boards, and rust-rotten screens replaced. Now Jamie spent her mornings washing years of grime off walls and blinds. When that was done she could start caulking the cracks and gashes on the walls and ceilings. Matt reshingled the roof evenings after he got off, working until he could no longer see to nail. As he must have this night, because the ladder lay against the side of the house. In another month, when the shingles had been paid for, they would drive down to Seneca and buy paint. If things went well, in a year they’d have enough saved to replace the plumbing and wiring.

Matt waited on the screened-in porch. The light wasn’t on but Jamie knew he was there. As she came up the steps his form emerged from the dark like something summoned out of air. He sat in the porch swing, stripped to his jeans. His work boots, shirt, and socks lay in a heap near the door. The swing creaked and swayed as she curled into his lap, her head against his chest. Her lips tasted the salty sweat on his skin as his arms pulled her closer. She felt the hardness of Matt’s arms, muscled by two months of ten- to twelve-hour days cutting pulpwood. She wished of those hard muscles a kind of armor to protect him while he logged with her brother, Charlton, on the ridges where the Chauga River ran through Big Laurel Valley.

You best get a good look at your husband’s pretty face right now, Charlton had said the first morning he came to pick up Matt. Feel the smooth of his skin too, little sister, because a man who cuts pulpwood don’t stay pretty long.

Charlton had spoken in a joking manner, but she’d seen the certain truth of it in her brother’s face, the broken nose and gapped smile, the raised, purple ridges on his arms and legs where flesh had been knitted back together. Jamie had watched Charlton as he and Matt walked to the log truck with its busted headlights and crumpled fender and cracked windshield. A truck no more beat-up and battered than its owner, Jamie had realized in that moment. Charlton was thirty years old, but he moved with the stiffness of an old man. Dr. Wesley in Seneca said he needed back surgery, but Charlton would hear nothing of it. Her sister-in-law, Linda, had told Jamie of nights Charlton drank half a bottle of whiskey to kill the pain. And sometimes, as Matt had witnessed, Charlton didn’t wait until night.

The porch swing creaked as Jamie pressed her head closer to Matt’s chest, close enough so she could not just hear but feel the strong, sure beat of his heart. First get the house fixed up, Jamie thought. Then when that was done she and Matt would start taking night classes again at the technical college. In a year they’d have their degrees. Then good jobs and children. It was a mantra she recited every night before falling asleep.

“Want to get in the lake?” Matt asked, softly kissing the top of her head.

“Yes,” Jamie said, though she felt, to use her mother’s words, tired to the bone. In some ways that was what made their lovemaking so good, especially on Saturday nights — finding in each other’s bodies that last ounce of strength left from their long day, their long week, and sharing it.

They walked down the grassy slope to where a half-sunk pier leaned into the lake. On the bank they took off their clothes and stepped onto the pier, the boards trembling beneath them. At the pier’s end the boards became slick with algae and water rose to their ankles. They felt for the drop-off with their feet, entered the water with a splash.

Then Jamie was weightless, the water up to her breasts, her feet lifting from the silt as she wrapped her arms around Matt. The sway of water eased away the weariness of eight hours of standing, eased as well the dim ache behind her eyes caused by hurry and noise and cigarette smoke. Water sloshed softly against the pier legs. The moon mirrored itself in the water, and Matt’s head and shoulders shimmered in a yellow glow as Jamie raised her mouth to his.

THEY SLEPT LATE the next morning, then worked on the house two hours before driving up the mountain to her grandmother’s for Sunday lunch. Behind the farmhouse a barn Jamie’s grandfather had built in the 1950s crumbled into a rotting pile of tin and wood. In a white oak out by the boarded-up well, a cicada called for rain.

“Let’s not stay more than an hour,” Matt said as they stepped onto the front porch. “That’s as long as I can stand Linda.”

Inside, Jamie’s parents, Charlton, Linda, and their children already sat at the table. Food was on the table and the drinks poured.

“About to start without you,” Linda said sharply as they sat down. “When young ones get hungry they get contrary. If you had kids you’d know that.”

“Them kids don’t seem to be acting contrary to me,” Matt said, nodding at the three children. “The only person acting contrary is their momma.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “We were working on the house and lost track of time.”

“I know you all are trying to save money, but I still wish you had a phone,” her mother said.

Grandma Chastain came in from the kitchen with a basket of rolls. She sat down at the table beside the youngest child.

“Say us a prayer, Luther,” she said to her son.

For a few minutes they ate in silence. Then Charlton turned to his father.

“You ought to have seen the satinback me and Matt killed Wednesday morning. Eight rattles and long as my leg,” Charlton said. “Them chain saws have made me so deaf I didn’t even hear it. I’m just glad Matt did or I’d of sure stepped right on it.”

“Don’t tell such a thing, Charlton,” Grandma Chastain said. “I worry enough about you out in them woods all day as it is.”

“How’s your back, Son?” Jamie’s mother asked.

It was Linda who answered.

“Bothers him all the time. He turns all night in bed trying to get comfortable. Ain’t neither of us had a good night’s sleep in months.”

“You don’t think the surgery would do you good?” Grandma Chastain asked.

Charlton shook his head.

“It didn’t help Bobby Hemphill’s back none. Just cost him a bunch of money and a month not being able to work.”

When they’d finished dessert, Jamie’s mother turned to her.

“You want to go with me and Linda to that flower show in Seneca?”

“I better not,” Jamie said. “I need to work on the house.”

“You and Matt are going to work yourselves clear to the bone fixing that house if you’re not careful,” her mother said.

Jamie’s father winked at Jamie.

“Your momma’s always looking for the dark cloud in a blue sky.”

“I do no such thing, Luther Alexander,” her mother said. “It’s just the most wonderful kind of thing that Jamie and Matt have that place young as they are. It’s like getting blackberries in June. I just don’t want them wearing themselves out.”

“They’re young and healthy, Momma. They can handle it,” Charlton said. “Just be happy for them.”

Linda sighed loudly and Charlton’s lips tightened. The smile vanished from his face. He stared at his wife but did not speak. Instead, it was Grandma Chastain who spoke.

“You two need to be in church on Sunday morning,” she said to Jamie, “not working on that house. You’ve been blessed, and you best let the Lord know you appreciate it.”

“Look at you,” Linda said angrily to Christy, the youngest child. “You got that pudding all over your Sunday dress.” She yanked the child from her chair. “Come on, we’re going to the bathroom and clean that stain, for what little good it’ll do.”

Linda walked a few steps, then turned back to the table, her hand gripping Christy’s arm so hard the child whimpered.

“I reckon we all don’t get lucky with lake houses and such,” Linda said, looking not at Matt but at Jamie, “but that don’t mean we don’t deserve just as much. You just make sure your husband saves enough of his strength to do the job Charlton’s overpaying him to do.”

“I reckon if Charlton’s got any complaints about me earning my pay he can tell me his own self,” Matt said.

Linda swatted Christy’s backside with her free hand.

“You hush now,” she said to the child and dragged her into the bathroom.

For a few moments the only sound was the ticking of the mantel clock.

“You don’t pay Linda no mind,” Charlton said to Matt. “The smartest thing I done in a long while is let go that no-account Talley boy and hire you. You never slack up and you don’t call in sick on Mondays. You ain’t got a dime from me you ain’t earned.”

“And I wouldn’t expect otherwise,” Matt said.

“Still, it’s a good thing Charlton’s done,” Jamie’s mother said as she got up, “especially letting you work percentage.” She laid her hand on her son’s shoulder as she reached around him to pick up his plate. “You’ve always been good to look after your sister, and I know she’ll always be grateful, won’t you, girl?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jamie said.

The bathroom door opened and Christy came out trailing her mother, her eyes swollen from crying.

“We ought to be going,” Matt said, pushing back his chair. “I need to get some more shingles on that roof.”

“You shouldn’t to be in such a rush,” Grandma Chastain said, but Matt was already walking toward the door.

Jamie pushed back her chair.

“We do need to be going.”

“At least let me wrap you up something for supper,” Grandma Chastain said.

Jamie thought about how much work they had to do and how good it would be not to have to cook.

“Okay, Grandma,” she said.

MATT WAS IN the car when she came out, the engine running and his hands gripping the steering wheel. Jamie placed the leftovers in the backseat and got in beside Matt.

“You could have waited for me,” she said.

“If I’d stayed any longer I’d of said some things you wouldn’t want me to,” Matt said, “and not just to Linda. Your mother and grandma need to keep their advice to themselves.”

“They just care about me,” Jamie said, “about us.”

They drove back to the house in silence and worked until dusk. As Jamie cleaned the blinds she heard Matt’s hammer tapping above as if he was nailing her shut inside the house. She thought about the rattlesnake, how it could easily have bitten Matt, and remembered twelve years earlier, when her mother and Mr. Jenkins, the elementary school principal, appeared at the classroom door.

“Your daddy’s been hurt,” her mother said. Charlton was outside waiting in the logging truck, and they drove the fifteen miles to the county hospital. Her father had been driving a skid loader that morning. It had rained the night before and the machine had turned over on a ridge. His hand was shattered in two places, and there was nerve damage as well. Jamie remembered stepping into the white room with her mother and seeing her father in the bed, a morphine drip jabbed into his arm like a fang. If that skidder had turned over one more time you’d be looking at a dead man, her father had told them. Charlton had quit high school and worked full-time cutting pulpwood to make sure food was on the table that winter. Her father eventually got a job as a night watchman, a job, unlike cutting pulpwood, a man needed only one good hand to do.

“I GET SCARED for you, for us,” Jamie said that night as they lay in bed. “Sometimes I wish we’d never had the chance to buy this place.”

“You don’t mean that,” Matt said. “This place is the best thing that might ever happen to us. How many chances do young folks get to own a house on a lake? If we hadn’t seen Old Man Watson’s sign before the real-estate agents did, they’d have razed the house and sold the lot alone to some Floridian at twice what we paid.”

“I know that,” Jamie said, “but I can’t help being scared for you. It’s just like things have been too easy for us. Look at Charlton. Him and Linda have been married ten years and they’re still in a trailer. Linda says good luck follows us around like a dog that needs petting all the time. She thinks you and me getting this house is just one more piece of luck.”

“Well, the next time she says that you tell her anybody with no better sense than to have three kids the first five years she’s married can’t expect to have much money left for a down payment on a house, especially with a skidder to pay off as well.”

Matt turned his head toward her. She could feel the stir of his breath.

“Linda’s just jealous,” he said, “that and she’s still pissed off Charlton’s paying me percentage. Linda best be worrying about her own self. She’s got troubles enough at home without stirring up troubles for other people.”

“You mean Charlton’s drinking?”

“Yeah. Every morning this week he’s reeked of alcohol, and it ain’t his aftershave. The money they waste on whiskey and her on makeup and fancy hairdos could help make a down payment, not to mention that Bronco when they already had a perfectly good car. Damn, Jamie, they got three vehicles and only two people to drive them.”

Matt placed his hand on the back of Jamie’s head, letting his fingers run through her cropped hair, hair shorter than his. His voice softened.

“You make your own luck,” Matt said. “Some will say we’re lucky when you’re working in a dentist’s office and I’m a shift supervisor in a plant, like we hadn’t been planning that very life since we were juniors in high school. They’ll forget they stayed at home nights and watched TV instead of taking classes at Tech. They’ll forget how we worked near full-time jobs in high school and saved that money when they wasted theirs on new trucks and fancy clothes.”

“I know that,” Jamie said. “But I get so tired of people acting resentful because we’re doing well. It even happens at the café. Why can’t they all be like Charlton, just happy for us?”

“Because it reminds them they’re too lazy and undisciplined to do it themselves,” Matt said. “People like that will pull you down with them if you give them the chance, but we’re not going to let them do that to us.”

Matt moved his hand slowly down her spine, letting it rest in the small of the back.

“It’s time to sleep, baby,” he said.

Soon Matt’s breathing became slow and regular. He shifted in the bed and his hand slipped free from her back. First, get the house fixed up, she told herself as she let her weariness and the sound of tree frogs and crickets carry her toward sleep.

TWO MORE WEEKS passed, and it was almost time for Jamie to turn the calendar nailed by the kitchen door. She knew soon the leaves would start to turn. Frost would whiten the grass and she and Matt would sleep under piles of quilts Grandma Alexander had sewn. They’d sleep under a roof that no longer leaked. After Charlton picked up Matt, Jamie caulked the back room, the room that would someday be a nursery. As she filled in cracks she envisioned the lake house when it was completely renovated — the walls bright with fresh paint, all the leaks plugged, a porcelain tub and toilet, master bedroom built onto the back. Jamie imagined summer nights when children slept as she and Matt walked hand in hand down to the pier, undressing each other to share again the unburdening of water.

Everything but the back room’s ceiling had been caulked when she stopped at one-thirty to eat lunch and change into her waitress’s uniform. She was closing the front door when she heard a vehicle bumping down through the woods to the house. In a few moments she saw her father’s truck, behind the windshield his distraught face. At that moment something gave inside her, as if her bones had succumbed to the weight of the flesh they carried. The sky and woods and lake seemed suddenly farther away, as if a space had been cleared that held only her. She closed her hand around the key in her palm and held it so tight her knuckles whitened. Her father kicked the cab door open with his boot.

“It’s bad,” he said, “real bad.” He didn’t cut off the engine or get out from behind the wheel. “Linda and Matt and your momma are already at the hospital.”

She didn’t understand, not at first. She tried to picture a situation where her mother and Linda and Matt could have been hurt together — a car wreck, or fire — something she could frame and make sense of.

“Momma and Linda are hurt too?” Jamie finally asked.

“No,” her father said, “just Charlton.” His voice cracked. “They’re going to have to take your brother’s leg off, baby.”

Jamie understood then, and at that moment she felt many things, including relief that it wasn’t Matt.

WHEN THEY ENTERED the waiting room, her mother and Linda sat on a long green couch. Matt sat opposite them in a blue plastic chair. Dried blood stained his work shirt and jeans. He stood up, his face pale and haggard as he embraced her. Jamie smelled the blood as she rested her head against his chest.

“We were cleaning limbs,” Matt said, “and the saw jumped back and dug into his leg till it got to bone. I made a tourniquet with my belt, but he still like to have bled to death.” Matt paused. “Charlton shouldn’t have been running that saw. He’d been drinking.”

Matt held her close a few more moments, then stepped back. He nodded toward the corner where Linda and her mother sat.

“You better say something to your momma and Linda,” he said and released her arms. Jamie let go too. It was only then that she realized the key was still in her closed right hand. She slipped it into her uniform pocket.

Her mother stood when Jamie approached, but Linda stayed on the couch, her head bowed.

“Pray hard, girl,” her mother said as she embraced Jamie. “Your brother is going to need every prayer he can get.”

“You seen him yet, Momma?” she asked. Jamie smelled the Camay soap her mother used every night. She breathed deep, let the smell of the soap replace the smell of blood.

“No, he’s still in surgery, will be for at least another hour.”

Her mother released her and stepped back.

“I can’t stand myself just sitting here,” she said and nodded at Jamie’s father standing beside the door marked SURGERY. “Come on, Luther. I’m going to get us all some doughnuts and coffee and I need you to help carry it.” She turned to Jamie. “You stay here and look after Linda.”

Jamie sat in the place her mother had left. Linda’s head remained bowed, but her eyes were open. Jamie looked up at the wall clock. Two-twenty-three. The red minute hand went around seven more times before Jamie spoke.

“It’s going to be all right, Linda,” she said. It was the only thing she could think to say.

Linda lifted her head, looked right at Jamie. “You sound pretty sure of that. Maybe if it was your husband getting his leg took off you’d think different.”

Linda wasn’t thirty yet, but Jamie saw something she recognized in every older woman in her family. It was how they looked out at the world, their eyes resigned to bad times and trouble. I don’t ever remember being young, Grandma Alexander had once told her. All I remember is something always needing to be done, whether it was hoeing a field or the washing or feeding hungry children or cows or chickens.

The elevator door opened and Jamie’s parents stepped out, their hands filled with paper bags.

“You think this couldn’t have happened to Matt,” Linda said, raising her voice enough that Jamie’s parents came no closer. “You think it happened because Charlton had been drinking.”

“I don’t think any such thing,” Jamie said.

Linda looked at her in-laws.

“I got three young ones to feed and buy school clothes for, and a disability check ain’t going to be enough to do that.”

“We’ll do everything we can to help you,” Jamie’s father said and offered Linda a cup of coffee. “Here. This will give you some strength.”

“I don’t need strength,” Linda said, her voice wild and angry. “I need the money Charlton overpaid Matt. Money that should be ours. Money we need worse than they do.”

Linda looked at her father-in-law.

“You know Charlton paid hourly wages to everybody else who worked for him.”

“I earned every cent he paid me,” Matt said. He had left his seat and stepped closer, standing next to Jamie now. “I been there every day and I’ve cut plenty of days dawn to dark. It’s bad what’s happened to Charlton, and I’m sorry it happened. But me and Jamie don’t owe you anything.” Jamie placed her hand on Matt’s arm, but he jerked it away. “I ain’t listening to this anymore.”

“You owe us everything,” Linda shouted as Matt walked toward the elevator. “If Charlton hadn’t taken you on you’d never have been able to make a down payment on that lake house.” Linda looked at Jamie’s parents now, tears streaming down her face. “A lake house, and the five of us in a beat-up double-wide.”

The surgery room door opened, and a nurse glared at them all briefly before the door closed again.

Jamie’s mother sat down on the couch and pressed Linda’s head to her bosom. “We’re all going to do everything possible to get you all through this, and that includes Matt and Jamie,” she said.

Linda sobbed now, her face smeared with mascara. Minutes passed before she raised her head. She tried to smile as she brushed tears from her cheeks and slowly lifted herself from the couch. Jamie’s father gripped Linda’s upper arm when her knees buckled.

“I know I look a sight,” Linda said. “I best go to the bathroom and tidy up so Charlton won’t see me like this.” She looked at Jamie. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Jamie’s father walked Linda to the restroom and waited by the door.

“Come here, girl,” her mother said to Jamie.

Jamie didn’t move. She was afraid, almost as afraid as when she’d seen her father’s face through the windshield.

“I need to call the restaurant, let them know what’s going on.”

“That can wait a few minutes,” her mother said. “We need to talk, and right now.”

Jamie remained where she was.

“I know you’re put out with Linda,” her mother said, “and I don’t blame you. Grieving don’t give her no excuse to talk that way to you and Matt.” She paused, waited for Jamie to meet her eyes. “But you know you got to help them.”

Jamie turned and stared at the wall clock. She thought how only two hours earlier she had been caulking the back room of the lake house.

“Me and your daddy will do what we can, but that won’t be near enough. Your daddy says even if the skidder’s sold, it’ll bring no more than two thousand dollars. We’re not talking about just Linda here. We’re talking about your niece and nephews.”

“Why are you saying this to me, Momma?” Jamie asked. “Matt’s going to have to find another job now, and there’s no way he’ll make the kind of money Charlton paid him. We need all the money we got just to make the payments on the lake house, much less fix it up. We’ll have tuition to pay as well come spring.”

The elevator door opened. Jamie hoped it was Matt, but a chaplain got off and walked past them toward the intensive care unit.

“You’ve been blessed, Jamie,” her mother said. “Linda’s right. Charlton never let anyone but Matt work percentage. You could give Charlton the difference between what Matt got paid and the six dollars an hour anybody else would have got.”

“But we’d have to sell the lake house,” Jamie said. “How can you ask me and Matt to do that?”

“The same way I’d have asked your brother to quit high school. Only I never had to ask. He knew what had to be done and did it without me saying a word to him. Seventeen years old and he knew what had to be done.” Her mother laid her hand on Jamie’s. “That lake house, you had no right to expect such a place so young. You know it was a miracle you got it in the first place. You can’t expect miracles in this life, girl.”

The bathroom door opened and Linda came out. She and Jamie’s father walked toward them.

“Maybe not, Momma,” Jamie said, her voice low but sharp, “but when they come a person’s got a right to take them.”

“You got to do what’s best for the whole family,” her mother said, speaking quietly as well. “You got to accept that life is full of disappointments. That’s something you learn as you grow older.”

THERE HAD BEEN complications during the surgery, and Jamie was unable to see Charlton until after seven-thirty. His eyes opened when she placed her hand on his, but he was too drugged to say anything coherent. Jamie wondered if he even understood what had happened to him. She hoped that for a little while longer he didn’t.

When Jamie and Matt got back to the lake house it was dark, and by then things had been decided, but not before harsh words had been exchanged.

“Come on,” Matt said, reaching for her hand after they got out of the Escort. “Let’s go down to the lake, baby. I need one good thing to happen in my life today.”

“Not tonight,” Jamie said. “I’m going on in.”

She changed into her nightgown. Matt came in soon afterward naked and dripping, work clothes and boots cradled in his arms. Jamie stepped out of the bathroom, a toothbrush in her hand.

“Put those clothes out on the porch,” she said. “I don’t want to smell that blood anymore.”

Jamie was in bed when he came back, and soon Matt cut out the light and joined her. For a minute the only sounds were the crickets and tree frogs. The mattress’s worn-out springs creaked as Matt turned to face her.

“I’ll go see Harold Wilkinson in the morning,” he said. “He knows I did good work for Charlton. I figure I can get eight dollars an hour to work on his crew, especially since I know how to run a skidder.”

He reached out and laid his arm on Jamie’s shoulder.

“Come here,” he said, pulling her closer.

She smelled the thick, fishy odor of the lake, felt the lake’s coldness on his skin.

“They’ll be needing help a long time,” Matt said. “In two, three years at most we’ll have jobs that pay three times what we’re making now. Keeping this house is going to save us a lot of money, money we can help them with later.”

Matt paused.

“You listening to me?”

“Yes,” Jamie said.

“Linda’s parents can help too. I didn’t hear your momma say a word about them helping out.” Matt kissed her softly on the cheek. “They’ll be all right. We’ll all be all right. Go to sleep, babe. You got another long day coming.”

But she did not fall asleep, not for a while, and she woke at first light. She left the bed and went to the bathroom. Jamie turned on the faucet and soaked a washcloth, wrung it out and pressed it to her face. She set it on the basin and looked at the mirror. A crack jagged across the glass like a lightning bolt, a crack caulk couldn’t fill. Something else to be replaced.