his mother singing, and the sound of the sewing machine as long familiar as her voice—he kept his eyes closed, not having to look at this room to see it, for he had spent every day of his life here in this house. He knew every step of the way from where he sat through the house and out over the covered walkway to the kitchen, to the icebox that leaked water on the floor, or to the temperamental old wood stove that sometimes belched smoke back into the kitchen. He could find his way through these rooms in the dark or without sight, for this was his home, as much a part of him as his soul was. He knew the red land that rolled into pine-covered hills and woods, and the cotton fields he had worked for as long as he could remember. He knew the rise of land across the road, beyond the beginnings of the fields and the small apple orchard, the rise where the old oak tree stood, the place he liked to go to be alone, to think, to dream, or to just sit and look at the house and be. He knew every step of the way from the porch to the barn, to the smokehouse, or to the old shacks that had held sharecroppers long before his father had ever owned the land—if there ever had been such a time. He knew the rutted clay road and the woods, and every step of the way from here to his grandparents’ house, or to the sharecropped land of any of his kin or neighbors, as well as to the Holiness church they all attended. This was his home. This would forever be his home.
He sat with his head leaned back against the rocker, his eyes closed, his mind dreaming—he loved this land, this place, and he knew he would spend the remainder of his years here, working the red earth as God had intended man to do, even as his own father did now. Someday soon he would marry and have sons who would work this land as well. He would find a good woman, a nice girl from a Holiness family, for the Sanders were a Holiness people; a woman very much like his ma or his gran’ma, a woman a man could depend on, strong and level-headed and a good cook—and pretty, with a nice figure and long hair; not one of these modern girls with their bobbed hair and their smoking, their face-paint and short skirts and oh-so-modern ways that made them something less than ladies. He would marry a good, old-fashioned girl; they would have a family, and they would have this land—and someday he would buy more land, maybe the next farm over. And he would never sell at Eason prices again.
He must have dozed, for he woke with a start at his father’s cry. Henry Sanders was suddenly on his feet, sending the rocker he had been sitting in crashing over onto its side on the floor, the old Bible falling from his hands—he ran for the door, a horrified expression on his face, and for a moment Janson did not understand. Then he smelled it: Smoke, not the scent of wood smoke from the fireplace, but something more. And his eyes caught sight of the light reflecting orange and yellow onto the front windows of the house. Fire—
Within seconds he was out onto the porch beside his parents, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he saw the unpicked fields ablaze, the cotton going up—all that work, all that sweat, all that hope, gone for nothing. His father had grabbed up a quilt from where it had lain sunning over a chair on the porch during the day, and he was already running across the yard toward the fields—Janson did not know how the other quilt got into his hands, but suddenly he was running as well, stumbling, falling, only to get back to his feet and run again, almost unmindful of the sudden, sharp pain that shot through his left knee at almost every step.
The fields were choked with smoke, with flying pieces of burning lint that singed his face and hands. He began to beat at the flames with the quilt, the thick smoke choking his lungs until he thought he would never breathe again, the sweat pouring into his eyes until he could see nothing but the heat and the fire and the hell around him. He gagged on the smell of the burning cotton, his lungs fighting for air until his chest hurt with the very effort to breathe. He was in hell and he knew it was lost, everything was lost, this field and perhaps the next—but still he fought on, beating at the flames with the quilt, only to see them rekindle again from the dry and burning plants nearby.
His mother was a few rows away, beating at the fire with the beloved rag rug that had lain in the parlor all these years, the rag rug that had once belonged to her own mother, a mother she had never known, it burning already in her hands as she swung it over her head and down into the flames again. Her long black hair had come loose from its bun, hanging now down her back and past her waist, swinging with her movements. Her face glistened with sweat, something near absolute panic in her eyes even over the distance, her long hair and dress both swinging too close to the flames each time she lifted and swung the rug—he started to yell for her to get back, to warn that she was too close to the fire, but suddenly something in her face changed. She threw down the rug and started to run, and for a moment Janson thought she had caught fire, that she was burning—then he saw. His father, a distance away through the hell, was clutching at his chest, seeming to fight for air, for breath, a look of pain suddenly constricting his features.
Janson threw down the quilt that was already beginning to catch fire in his hands and ran toward his father as well, a pain suddenly shooting through his left knee that was now too bad to be ignored. Fire shot up in front of him, moving down another row of cotton—but the cotton no longer mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing but his father. And Janson already knew that he was dying.
Henry Sanders collapsed into his wife’s arms as she reached his side, and for a moment it seemed Nell Sanders would fall as well with the added weight—but suddenly she was dragging him from the field, her face showing the strain, the muscles cording out in her neck with the effort. Janson reached her side and began to help, taking his father’s other arm, hearing her voice, the same words, pleading over and over again:
“God, don’t take him from me. God, please, don’t take him from me . . .”
There was so much pain in his mother’s eyes, so much fear, a fear that matched Janson’s own as they reached the edge of the field and collapsed there, his mother’s strength giving out, his own giving way with the pain that now filled his left leg. Nell Sanders was crying as she drew her husband’s head onto her lap, her voice saying his name over and over again, her hands touching his face, tears streaming down her own—but Henry Sanders was already dead.
The burning field nearby cast the world around Janson into a hell of heat and smoke and writhing black shadows. Tears ran from his eyes and down his cheeks as he stared into the face of this man who had given him life more than eighteen years before, this man who had given him the dream of the land. His mother rocked back and forth on her knees, his father’s head cradled in her lap, her face stunned, disbelieving, streaked with smut and tears and more grief than Janson had ever known before. He lifted his eyes from the nightmare before him, begging God to understand, to know why—
Then he saw. And he knew.
Sweat poured down his face and into his eyes to mingle with the tears already there. Burning pieces of flying lint singed his face and hands, the thick smoke choking his lungs, the strong odor of gasoline coming to him from the burning field—but still he saw clearly as the black car turned around in the road and started away. He saw clearly. And he knew.
It was the black, 1915 Cadillac touring car.
It belonged to Walter Eason.
The glow of fire in the night sky soon brought neighbors and kin from nearby farms to help fight the blaze. As soon as Janson knew the fire was out and his mother safe, the church women and Gran’ma with her, he knew he would go after Walter Eason, would go after him to make him pay for what he had done, what he had caused—but his grandfather would not allow it, pulling him up short as he started to leave the blackened fields, as if the older man knew what it was he intended to do: Nell Sanders had already lost one man this night, his grandfather told him; she would not lose two.
Janson stood to himself in one corner of a chill room in his parents’ home hours later that night, tears rolling from his eyes and down his cheeks as he watched his mother, his grandmother, and his aunts bathe and dress his father for the last time, preparing him for the burial that would come. His mother had not spoken for hours now, not since the moment Gran’ma had knelt beside her, one arm around her slender shoulders, tears streaming from her own eyes as she stared down into the face of her son.
“He’s gone, child. He’s with th’ Lord now. Henry’s done gone—”
Janson did not sleep at all that night. He lay awake in the darkness,