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By Root 770 0

myself think that “the unit,” as Howard called it, with no space to breathe, was the price we were all paying and paying for my release. That first night Howard sat me down at the kitchen table in the breakfast nook and showed me his accounts. He was going to be able to pay off his debt to the bank if he could get a job. He had paid my bond, money which we would get back when I showed up for my trial. There was enough to pay Rafferty for the time being, a meager amount for food, insurance, rent, taxes. Nellie would have to wait for her portion. I think Howard was trying to show me that the reason for everything was in the account book. “I see,” I said, although the numbers ran together into one big blot of ink at the edge of the page. I am sure I will never understand what moved Howard. He said that our life in Prairie Center was tainted. It was a defensible excuse, and yet I had always felt, as he did, that the place was ours in a way that went beyond ownership. When Howard farmed he looked as if he didn’t have to do anything much more than pick up a shovel and start digging to be a part of the landscape. I don’t mean in a pictorial way, but actually a part of it, part of the dirt, the sky, the growing things. Away from home I had realized that the farm was not as dear to me as flesh, but nearly so, that the ground was something that I could very easily have knelt down on and kissed, tried to embrace. Perhaps it was Lizzy’s death that had given new meaning to the word “ground.” It, the ground, the shabby buildings, the shoots in spring, the pond, the garden, began just where our bodies ended.

Sometimes his letting the land go seemed as if it could only have been an extraordinary act of kindness, that he assumed the months until the trial were going to be my last chance in a long while to be with the girls, that even Rafferty’s reason would not prevail and I would be proven guilty. Sometimes, it seemed another punishment for something we didn’t even know we’d done.

We were sitting on what he used to like to call “the davenport,” that first night, after the girls were in bed. He set his muscled arm around me. It didn’t seem to weigh much more than a stick on my back and shoulders. My head was thrumming, something it did when I was tired. I could tell he was nervous; I was going to ask him about the farm, he thought, or say something about the apartment or Rafferty. He was sitting with a terrible erectness and formality. We must have looked as if we’d been positioned, like mannequins, as we tried out various topics, all of them running aground before we touched on anything difficult or meaningful. “What about Nellie?” I finally asked.

“She’ll be back soon,” he said.

“She always knew you shouldn’t have married me,” I said lightly.

“I haven’t told her much. She’s pretty involved over there.”

“We still owe her quite a bit, don’t we?”

“Yep,” he said, “we owe her.”

We were quiet for a while. “Thank you, Howard,” I said. “Thank you—” He sprang up before I could finish.

“We tried to have a fire one night when it wasn’t so hot,” he said, looking at the fireplace, “to roast marshmallows. The girls wanted to,” he added, perhaps to make it plain that there wasn’t much he wanted anymore. “You can hardly get a log in the grating, it’s so small. What’d they make the thing for if you can’t use it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“But what’d they make it for?”

I followed him up the stairs to the master bedroom. I wanted to lie down with him and cry or laugh or be sick, shivering under the covers, partners in misery. He had put the futon on the orange-flecked carpet, the old lump we used to haul out for guests. Our clocks were there, the Big Ben and the Little Ben, ticking away as always, both of them keeping the wrong time. From storage Howard had pulled together a box of essential things for me, not unlike jail basics: underwear, socks, T-shirts. I was trying to think what to say beyond, “Thank you,” when he said, “I’m tired. Could you get the light when you’re done?”

I climbed in and he turned over and kissed my cheek, mumbling