IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THE NIGHT AT THE CLOSE OF EACH DAY, a black curtain drawn over the countryside, halting progress and productivity. The dark stifles the work, the schooling, the planting, the harvest.
It is as simple as heat and toil and falling into bed, limbs numbed from the workday effort. Of a lifetime spent in that manner.
It is as simple as lying awake after midnight in the stink of coal oil lamps, the muggy embrace of the hot mattress.
It is as simple as waiting for things to get better, and the entirety of a youth spent in that waiting, decades of an existence no different from one’s parents’, indistinguishable from one’s grandparents’.
A people gather themselves for an effort beyond any they’ve attempted before, striving not just for their own benefit, but for their children’s, for generations yet unimagined, for the hope of at last improving their lot.
And they reach.
CLAIRE WAS SLEEPING WHEN THE DISCOMFORT STARTED, and it had pressed its way into her dreams before she finally woke. The taste in her mouth had gone brassy and sharp, and her middle was heavy, as if a hot stone had become lodged inside her pelvis. She peeled back the sheet. Travis lay on his back, big arms sprawled, breathing evenly. He hadn’t bathed before coming to bed, and the smell of river dirt and sweat rose from him.
It took her a moment to find her shoes and then a moment longer to slip them on, laces forgotten in her hurry. It was like the time she’d had the diarrhea and could hardly hold back her insides when they took a mind to come running out, but this was in her bladder, or lower. She took down the candle that she kept by the door and lit it with a match. She unlatched the door and hurried across the dark to the outhouse.
When she hitched up her nightgown and let go, the burning left her breathless. It was like she’d been touched with a branding iron. She put her hand to herself and then held it to the candle’s flickering light. What was on her finger was a yellowed white, and sticky.
“Damn him,” she said. The burning pulsed again, and she quietly swore. After the moment passed, she wiped herself and started back for the house.
It took her shaking hands two tries to light the big lamp in the kitchen. A dim light washed the walls, and she found herself looking at Travis’ rifle, leaned in the corner to one side of the fireplace. She allowed her gaze to rest on it for a moment, then turned her face away.
In the bedroom, Travis had shifted to the middle of the bed. One sleep-flung arm lay across her pillow.
Her clothes were folded on a chair, and she began putting them on. He rolled over and ran a hand through his hair.
“What are you doing up?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
She kept buttoning her dress, and he lifted his head.
“It’s late, Claire,” he said into the pillow. “Come back to bed.”
She thought about the rifle. Her hurt was more than she could contain. When she spoke, her voice was hard.
“You’ve given me something. You’ve brought it home. Your whores. You’ve brought it home to your wife.”
He squinted at her. She began to tie her shoes. He seemed at last to realize what she was about.
“Don’t you fucking try it,” Travis said.
Claire took the lamp and went into the children’s room, leaving him in the dark. She roused them each and they sat up in their beds, covering their eyes against the light.
“What is it, Ma?” the boy asked. The girl, naked save for her wadded diaper, began to cry. Claire handed the lamp to her son, picked her daughter up. She turned in place, realized that she’d need her hands free to pack, and put the girl back down.
Travis stood in the doorway, his shadow cast behind him by the lamp.
“I’m warning you,” he said.
Claire addressed her son. “Tom, pack up a couple days’ worth of clothes for yourself and your sister. Get a sack from the kitchen.”
The boy put the lamp on the bedside table and got up.
“You sit down,” his father said, pointing to the bed. The boy did, staring.
“Tom,” Claire said. ”I told you what to do. Go on.”
The boy got up again and squeezed by his father. Travis didn’t stop him. Claire shushed the crying girl, began dressing her.
Tom came back with a bleached flour sack, began taking clothes from the dresser. When he was finished, Claire took the bag from him.
“Tom, take your sister now and go wait in the car.”
The boy stared at her with wide eyes. He didn’t move.
“Go on, Tom. Don’t make me tell you twice,” she said, and he picked his sister up under the arms and worked past his father once more. Again, Travis made no move to stop them, and the boy shuffled down the dark hall.
When she heard her son unlatch the front door, she held the lamp so that she could see Travis’ face.
“How long have you had it?”
“I wasn’t sure if I did,” Travis said. He ran a dirty-nailed hand over his cowlick.
“How long?”
“A week, two.”
The lamp in her right hand, Claire hit him as hard as she could with her left. His passive face took the slap, and his own hand swung around in response and clapped her across the cheek. She saw a flash and fell against the wall. The lamp went out. In the dark, she could feel him reaching for her, down on his knees now.
“Claire, Claire,” he was saying in a regretful voice.
She pushed away the hands. He caught at her skirts, pulling her back. She kicked once, twice, and then she was free, running down the hall. Someone had left a chair pushed out at the table and she went right over it, knocking her breath out of her when she fell. She could hear him coming down the hall now, and she forced herself up.
The boy was on the front porch waiting for her.
“Get in the car!” she said, pushing him off the porch. Behind her in the house, she could hear Travis calling.
When she got to the car, her daughter was crying again. Claire took up the starter crank with both hands and pulled it through the cycle as hard as she could. The engine came alive, and she got behind the steering wheel. As she turned the car around, the headlights swept the house, showing Travis, his unkempt hair, his grubby underwear, framed in the front doorway. She gained the road with a bump and pressed the gas, even as a piece of her realized that Travis had never come farther than the porch.
She steered the car along the dark track. From the seat beside her, she could feel the boy’s eyes, large, searching her profile for some explanation. When she glanced over at him, the spell was broken, and he spoke: “Where are we going, Ma?”
She was asking the same question to herself, marveling at her own temerity, untested before now. Having leaped, where would she land? She was half surprised when she knew the answer, though it did anything but buoy her.
“Gran’s,” she said, the word like a rock