The Evidence Against Her (19 page)

She had asked Howie to saddle Bandit, and she went downstairs, savoring the swing of her new skirt and the delightful importance of her beautiful new boots clicking down the staircase, and when her mother came into the hall from the back parlor Agnes smiled almost shyly. “Oh, Mama! This was a wonderful present.” Catherine gazed at Agnes distractedly, and immediately Agnes remembered how aloof—how ungenerous—she had been to her mother in the late afternoon of the day before, when they were both tired and damp and chilled. “It’s a wonderful present, Mama,” she said again, and took several steps forward, being silly, parodying the attitude and stride of some very fine, aristocratic lady, and then twirling twice around, holding her arms out slightly bent with her hands exaggeratedly but gracefully canted. Her skirt swung out widely in the second turn, wrapping around her legs when she stopped abruptly and then falling back into its draped flare. She laughed a little and relaxed into her natural posture. “Isn’t it nice, Mama? I’ll write to Aunt Cettie tonight.”

But Agnes realized her mother’s mind was somewhere else. “I don’t feel well at all, Agnes,” Catherine said with a little urgency. “I can’t keep anything down. Mrs. Longacre will be off to church with the Damerons, and Edson’s putting up such a fuss again. Oh, about his ear.” She gestured toward the room behind her, where Edson leaned sideways against the arm of the old horsehair sofa. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be oblivious to his mother’s displeasure.

“He’s just going on so, and your father’s worried about getting into Columbus. I’ll need you here. I just can’t put up with it, and you know Edson won’t listen to me.” She was exasperated, as she always was if any one of her children was sick. Any illness on their part seemed to Catherine to be an indictment of her and, also, an unfathomable demand, somehow, that she had no idea how to appease. Her children’s illnesses made her feel inadequate and uneasy, and she was convinced it was some ruse to ask of her something more than she had the ability to provide. She was undone by their vulnerability, and any sort of ailment made her deeply suspicious and uncertain.

Even when they were very young it was their father the Claytor children learned to depend on if they got sick, if they came down with the croup, for example, as Richard often had, in the middle of the night. Dwight had been endlessly patient with the whiny plaintiveness that his wife could not abide, and he would sit holding the feverish child on his lap over a steaming pot of water on the stove with an umbrella open above their heads to catch every drop of moisture. And Richard would wake up soggy against Dwight’s chest—his father’s own head nodding against sleep, and the wide umbrella still in his hand but canted open on the floor—and be able to breathe easily in the moist air of the kitchen, where the light finally illuminated the windows, which ran with condensation.

“I can’t keep anything down this morning,” Catherine said once more. “And I just can’t tolerate Edson when he thinks he’s sick. If that child gets so much as a splinter . . . He’s so . . .
overwrought
about everything. You’ll have to stay home. Your father’s got to get into Columbus, and I don’t feel at all well. I’d forgotten how tired I was when I was carrying Edson.” Her mother spoke with absolute confidence in the reasonableness of what she was saying, but Agnes refused to know what her mother was talking about. In fact, Agnes had to fight off a feeling of disgust, and she could scarcely bear to meet her mother’s eyes.

“I have to go to church, Mama. I’m going to ride in to Lucille’s to show her my beautiful new riding habit!” She infused her voice with enthusiasm. “It truly is the best present I’ve ever gotten, Mama! And then after church I’m going to have Sunday dinner at the Drummonds’, because Lucille and her mother are making a cake to celebrate my birthday. Sally and Edith are coming over in the afternoon so we can finally finish the class book.”

Catherine Claytor moved along the hall and hovered near her daughter. “I don’t feel well at all, Agnes. Even the light hurts my eyes . . . . Why, even the
light
makes me feel nauseated . . . in the
condition
I’m in,” she added, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You can wear your new habit next Sunday. Keep an eye on the boys. Could you be sure the boys have breakfast? The smell of food—”

Her mother’s hand was on her arm, and Agnes was suddenly, and for the first time in her life, physically revolted by her mother’s proximity. Agnes had been so pleased with her own looks that morning she hadn’t taken into account until just then that her mother’s hair was lank and disarranged, that her complexion was bleached of any sign of good health. She seemed unwholesome, somehow. Agnes stepped away from her touch without realizing she had done so. She didn’t feel even a whit of pity. The only thought that came to Agnes as clear as a bell was that her mother was a woman who was reckless with her life.

Her mother’s stubborn inability to live a seemly life, her wispy fragility and distractedness were not, this morning, in the least sympathetic. They called up not one ounce of protective loyalty from her daughter on this particular Sunday in April. Agnes was repelled by her mother’s dispirited dependency, standing as she was in the drafty hall in her cotton wrapper when the morning was so chilly, imploring Agnes—
assuming
that Agnes would stay close at hand. Catherine Claytor seemed thin and slatternly; she seemed to be everything that was not ordinary or dependable.

“Oh, no, Mama. I can’t stay home. I’m all dressed for church. Look at how nice my riding habit looks.”

But Catherine Claytor had survived a long time on pure instinct. She moved away from her daughter, and Agnes followed her into the parlor, where her mother turned to the mirror and began tucking her hair more carefully into the knot at the nape of her neck. She fluttered her hands against her cheeks to bring up her color, and she touched a fingertip to her tongue and then smoothed her lovely, gently arched eyebrows. And as she regarded herself—leaning into the reflection in the glass with intense scrutiny—she became that woman she sometimes was who was
never
to be pitied. When she turned to face Agnes once more, Catherine’s head was drawn back swanlike on her long neck, and she stood in a tall, elegant silhouette against the light.

“Yes,” she said, “Cettie did such good work with that beautiful piece of wool.” Her tone was detached and ominous to Agnes, and Edson, lying against the stiff arm of the sofa, opened his eyes and slid his gaze in his mother’s direction. But she continued to look at Agnes straight on. Catherine pursed her mouth in concentration and then exhaled a little whispery puff of resignation. “It’s too bad . . . Well, it’s my fault, I suppose. I
insisted
on that fitted jacket. Cettie wrote me twice about it before she’d even make a cut. She said I was thinking of Alcorns, not Claytors. Oh, through the chest!”

And she made a little clicking noise against her teeth. “I meant for it to be . . . oh, to have a tailored cut. A
restrained
look, you see. I suppose it takes a taller girl to carry that jacket off . . . .” She gave a rueful little laugh. “And certainly there’s been no restraining your figure since you were no more than twelve years old. I remember when I realized that even the farmhands turned to . . . well, to
gape
at you, and I thought, ‘I won’t be able to let
that
girl out of the house until she grows into her figure.’ But, of course, you never did. The color’s good on you, though. Your skin doesn’t look so green against that gray. Oh, but your
hips . . .
in that
skirt . . .
Ah, well . . .”

Her father had come into the parlor holding his hat, ready to leave, waiting to say a word to his wife, and anxious to be on his way. But he looked carefully at his daughter in her brand-new jacket, fitted over her full breasts, her skirt flaring from her small waist, and his expression tightened down around his mouth in disapproval. “Edson’s sick, Agnes. And your mother’s feeling bad. But I know you want to go in to church. I’ll ask Mrs. Longacre to come over and see about Edson. Or Mack Evans can look in. Edson doesn’t have a fever. But I don’t want you leaving the house in that getup.” He looked frankly at her. “It’s far too . . . It’s too old for a girl in school. It’s always in bad taste to show off, Agnes. You’ll make a fool of yourself. Go put on something sensible, and I’ll let you off at the Damerons’.”

Catherine was startled; she hadn’t heard Dwight come into the room, and she turned to him in surprise. “Oh, well, Dwight, I expect she’ll be fine in that . . . .” She made a vague wave in Agnes’s direction. “She’ll be riding sidesaddle, and the skirt’s . . .”

“She won’t leave this house on a Sunday showing her figure so! What were you thinking, Catherine? She’s a schoolgirl of seventeen . . . .”

Agnes had aimed her gaze out the window while she endured her mother’s scrutiny; she had struggled to remain as steely in her refusal to incorporate her mother’s disappointment in how she looked as she had been the day before to hear about a new baby. But as her father joined in, Agnes let out an involuntary little grunt of despair and turned coldly on him. “I am
nineteen
years old, Papa! I
am
going to wear this to church. Howie’s saddling Bandit with Mama’s sidesaddle, and Mama gave me this habit for my birthday. I won’t be . . .” Her voice started to break, but she pulled herself together. “I won’t have you say such things to me. I’ve never done anything vulgar in my life! Aunt Cettie made this for me! I’m nineteen years old, and I
am
going to church this morning in my new dress that
Mama
gave me herself!”

“Yes, Dwight. She’ll be all right. She will. She’ll look just fine,” her mother added, but her husband didn’t pay any attention.

Agnes had never seen anyone turn pale with anger, but Dwight Claytor shuddered with rage, and every bit of color left his face. He moved squarely to face Agnes, and she saw his whole body tense. “Don’t you ever speak that way to me. You seem to think you run this household. But I’ll tell you . . . I’ve put up with a lot from you over the years. You boss everyone . . . your poor mother, Mrs. Longacre . . . your own brothers. I’ve never laid a hand on you in your life . . . not one of you children . . .” His voice was not loud but was slippery with menace, and he took a step toward Agnes, who would not retreat but who was filled with an awful, desperate dread as he came toward her.

She was shocked at her father’s unknowableness—at his utter unfamiliarity to her. He had been annoyed, even angry, at her before, but his face, as he approached her in the parlor, had the terrifyingly pleased expression of a man whose appetite has been piqued and who sees an opportunity to sate it. She was frozen under his gaze; she was appalled. She had no ability even to object as he came nearer and grasped her upper arm, jostling her backward a step or two. She didn’t even make a move to protect herself. And then all at once Edson and her mother were on him like furies—Edson launched himself off the sofa like a rocket, and the impact threw Dwight off balance, while Catherine flailed at his face with her open palms.

“ . . . and
kill
you
kill
you
kill
you
kill
you . . .” Edson was saying through clenched teeth, pummeling his father with one clenched fist and gripping him around the neck with his other arm. Her father’s reaction was slow; for a moment the straight, satisfied line of his lips held in a near smile, and then his mouth opened as if he might object, his eyes widened, his whole face lengthened in a slack O of surprise. His wife slapped at his face and shoulders and knotted her fists, battering at him and muttering wildly. “
Don’t
you touch her!
Don’t
you touch her! No! No! No! No!
Don’t . . . you . . . dare . . . Don’t . . . you . . .
,” and he was knocked to the floor, where he lay on his side, curled knees to chest, with his arm up to protect his face.

“. . . hate you! I’ll kill you
hate
you I’ll kill you I
hate
you I’ll kill you . . .” Edson was in a frenzy of flying feet and fists, crowding in on his father.

Agnes looked on paralyzed and finally opened her mouth as well, at first just in surprised noise, just an appalled and elongated wail that resolved itself in calling Edson’s name. “Edson. Edson. Eddie. Eddie. Stop! Eddie, stop! Mama! Mama! Stop! No, stop! Stop, stop, stop, Mama. Let him up! No. Stop, Eddie!”

Edson backed away but still stood bunched and ready to leap at his father again, and Catherine backed off, too. The room was absolutely silent except for the sounds of Dwight Claytor, who remained huddled on the intricately patterned carpet for a long moment and then grunted with the effort to rise. He rolled himself to his hands and knees, his head bowed between his arms as he struggled for breath. The room was quite still, but the atmosphere was saturated with a sour, peculiar air of confounded defeat. They were stranded there together in an intolerable domestic unseemliness, and everyone in the room knew it was really Agnes’s fault.

Edson had expended every ounce of energy, and he went limp with dismay, as did his mother, who sagged in fatigue against the doorway. Both of them, and Agnes, too, looked on in appalled fascination as Dwight slowly righted himself, finally managing to sit back on his haunches. His wife and two children gazed at him blankly. He was horrible to see—pitiable, almost, revealed in his essential impotence—and Agnes fled the room and the house and headed toward the stable. Not one of the four of them ever mentioned the incident to any of the other three—or to anybody else, for that matter—for the rest of their lives.

A
GNES FLED THE ROOM and the house with no thought at all in her head, and as she approached the barn she branched off and slowed a bit, taking the path up the hill to the pasture. She stood leaning on the fence under the walnut trees and looked off toward the woods. She was short of breath and her mind raced, but she refused to let any image settle in her head. Eventually she heard Howie calling her and she turned and saw him crossing the barnyard in the direction of the house. She called out to him that she was coming. He swiveled around to see where her voice was coming from, peering up the hill, shading his eyes with his hand to see her in the glare.

“What are you doing, Agnes?” He came along to meet her as she started down the path. “Bandit’s ready to go, and I’ve been waiting . . . .” Then he hesitated as he came nearer. “You look like . . . I don’t know, Agnes. You look
beautiful,
” he said in surprise. But she could do no more than nod her head that she had heard him. He turned and walked along beside her to make his point. “You look like someone I don’t even know,” he said, throwing his arms outward to indicate the many people he had seen and admired but did not know. “I can hardly believe it’s just
you,
Agnes. How’d you do that? How did you?”

She had nothing to say to him, but he trailed along beside her, reining in his longer lope, frowning a bit in earnest bewilderment at what his sister had pulled off. He was genuinely curious. “What did you do, exactly? I can’t tell what it is. Is it your hair? It might be that with that hat on . . .”

Finally she stopped still and turned to him, staring at him blankly for a moment. “I don’t
know,
Howie. I just don’t know when this happened. It’s nothing I did on purpose.” Howie was subdued by her odd expression, and he didn’t say any more but just followed along and held Bandit while Agnes mounted and arranged her skirt and adjusted her seat.

But Agnes no longer had a vision of the day ahead one way or another. She brought to bear a single-minded concentration on the matter at hand. She hadn’t ridden aside in such a long time that it required considerable attention to remember to keep her right toe pointed—which felt unnatural after riding cross-saddle. She had to remember to keep her hips forward, her knee and thigh pressed down firmly for leverage against the upright pommel of the sidesaddle. “See how I do, Howie. I don’t think I’ve quite got my purchase.” She rode out around the pasture and made a circuit of the far field.

“You look good,” he called out to her as she approached. “You look really good,” he said again, and she pulled Bandit around and made the loop once more. When she came around again Howie was gone, but Agnes felt fairly comfortable, even with the unaccustomed heavy drape of her beautifully made skirt.

She had to hold Bandit in check, because he was eager to go when he realized they were heading off toward town as opposed to taking the path through the fields and out into the countryside. He was so high-spirited that Agnes spoke firmly to him, trying to settle him down a little, giving a gentle pull on the reins now and then, and she tried to keep a settled purchase against the pommel. But even with all that and the morning behind her as well, a picture of herself slowly took shape in her mind’s eye: a pretty girl riding a gleaming chestnut horse, progressing down the tree-lined drive of the farm, moving along with stately grace over Newark Road, her black hat and soft gray habit vivid against the gently rolling fields still winter browned.

Everyone in the Claytor family was practiced at selective recall, careful anticipation, and determined hopefulness, not unlike the members of so many other families. The whole sky lowered over her, bright platinum, overcast but glaring white, so that Agnes squinted her eyes a little bit as she held Bandit to a trot, because she could tell he wanted to break out full speed.

She was becoming a little disheveled as she struggled with Bandit, but she maintained her will over his by the sheer strength of her resolve and the peculiar sensation she had of being held safely in place on the earth by the taut membrane of the flat, silvery light of the day. Her happy reconstruction of herself, as she rode down the lane, was held fast by the strange tension of the light’s inflexible sheen.

She picked cautiously through her imagination and resurrected the image of herself as a pretty girl so well turned out in her new habit on her good-looking horse that total strangers would turn to stare at the sight of her. Even though they knew it was rude to stare they would glance back involuntarily, wondering who she was. It was a romantic idea that required a good bit of concentration, though, given all the other things in her life that she didn’t dare allow herself to consider just now, and Agnes had her hands full with Bandit, too, who was prancing and sidestepping in his eagerness to go.

She continued to try to settle him down, but when she had gotten no farther than two miles along Newark Road the tamped-down day broke open into heavy sun. The white light turned to a syrupy gold, and the cloud cover thinned, revealing rifts of deep blue. It was suddenly very warm. The fields stretching out on either side gave off a sour, marshy scent of new growth breaking through, and all of a sudden the morning was oppressive with a fertile, humid heat.

There was no shade for quite a while yet, and Agnes was increasingly distressed as the air grew thick all around her. She had been delighted as she had done up her hair that morning to have achieved that tension against her scalp which always assured her that every strand of her unmanageable hair was securely pinned. But as the sun blazed down she could feel sweat under the knot of heavy hair at the nape of her neck and at her temples. She could feel the carefully arranged wings of her hair—which she had smoothed so satisfactorily over her ears—springing back into damp, wiry, unrestrained curls; she could feel the heat under her handsome new hat, and her self-confidence began to evaporate.

Bandit was too warm as well and was working up a lather, and Agnes became flustered and realized too late that she had automatically pressed her heel down as if she were riding astride. This had thrown her too far back in the saddle, and her right leg had crept up Bandit’s neck. She forced her toe into a point once more and pressed her foot into Bandit’s shoulder, but she was slightly twisted, and she struggled to regain her seat. Bandit was rattled, too. He was full of himself this morning anyway, and he picked up on her uneasiness.

The wool of Agnes’s vest and jacket was so fine that it was almost gauzy to the touch, but, lightweight as it was, it was still far too warm, and she felt perspiration trickle between her breasts and down her sides, and her boots were hot under the weight and dense weave of her loden cloth skirt. But most awful of all was that she felt tears sliding down her cheeks. And then Agnes had to wrestle with her flagging idea of herself as anyone who was at all lovely. As anyone who should even be seen in public. Perhaps she
was
no more than vulgar looking, with her frizzing hair and coarse, blatant, inelegant figure. A plain Claytor, a farmer’s fool of a daughter, overhorsed on her big Kentucky saddler. What in the world did she think she was doing in this ridiculous outfit riding sidesaddle through the unassuming farmland of central Ohio?

Finally she simply could not escape the ill will her mother had revealed once more, or the disgust that had crossed her father’s face when he had first caught sight of her in her closely fitted new habit. Her
father.
And Edson was so . . . And finally the awfulness of everything caught up with her. The culmination of lifelong despair cut straight through her as she looked down the road where no one traveled this Sunday morning. She made an involuntary and agonized little exclamation. Bandit’s ears flattened, and he danced sideways.

But Agnes still tried her best to collect herself. She pressed her thigh hard down against the pommel: Toe
down!
Thigh
down!
Knee
down!
Hips
forward!
But she sighed with tears in spite of herself. And then she was flat on her face in the road, her cheek pressed into the sandy grit, aware of nothing at all but a wide, flat pain. She opened her mouth, desperate for breath, but nothing happened, no air moved, and she couldn’t make a sound. She lay with her eyes wide open. She was stunned with light and unable to breathe, unable to make a sound. And then she could. Air rushed into her lungs, inflating her rib-cage with such force that she gasped, and was relieved to gasp once more. She lay in the dust just breathing, and thinking about nothing more than breathing with each painful inhalation. And then an exhalation. It was an astonishment: inhale, exhale. She didn’t consider where she was; she didn’t think about time; she had no thoughts to spare for anything except finding breath.

She lay very still for only a few minutes, but—when she finally began to pull herself together, to sit up gingerly—it seemed to Agnes to have been a broad, round bit of time. Seemed to have been an hour, at least. She couldn’t tell. She sat for a minute or two, taking off her gloves and brushing the gravelly dirt from her face and clothes as best she could. And then she stood up very carefully to be sure she was all in one piece, and she bent and retrieved her hat and looked up to see that Bandit had moved off a little way but was standing still, aloof and indignant.

She moved toward him, but he turned his head and caught sight of her and moved ahead a little farther and stopped once more. And so they proceeded along Newark Road on their way to church: Agnes—with steady, silent tears and shallow, ragged breath—approaching, and Bandit, keeping a suspicious eye on her, moving on just as she got near.

•  •  •

At the very same moment Agnes Claytor went flying off her horse and landed in the dust, Warren Scofield had his second flat tire in a mile and a half, but he didn’t much mind. He’d already used his spare wheel, and he hadn’t decided whether to patch the inner tube of the second flat or walk back to town for a new tire and a ride. He wasn’t in any hurry to do either, since he didn’t have to be anywhere. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves in the suddenly hot morning and studied the tire for a moment. But then he just sat down on the running board and leaned against the warm metal of the door and looked out at the fields stretching away to the distant woods. He had simply been out for a drive, very glad this morning to be all on his own.

As a child, Warren had thought that the inevitable stir of Sundays at Scofields actually centered on him. Eventually, of course, he had realized—with the muffled, resigned disappointment of childhood—that it was only that his father relished any chance to needle his brother Leo. For years and years of Warren’s growing up, if his father dressed and joined the family for the short walk to church, he would proclaim when they arrived that upon reflection, he realized once again that during the preceding week he had not gotten religion.

He would adopt a tone of jocular pomposity, a little twist in his voice to indicate that he was just teasing them all. “No, no,” he would say as he stood with them under the trees across the street from the church steps, “I’m afraid my soul is still unfettered. Still as free as a bird. I’ll leave the salvation of it to you, Leo, and anyone else who might care for me just a little bit. Anyone who might care enough to send up a prayer or two on my behalf. In case I’ve got it wrong. I’ll leave it to someone who might think enough of me to attempt to save me from consignment to eternal perdition.”

Warren’s mother, Lillian, would turn her face away; she would concentrate on carefully smoothing the seams of the fingers of her gloves, or she would move away altogether and speak to a friend, bending toward some other churchgoer with a soft gesture of inclusion and interest. “Mrs. Rydell,” she would murmur, as though the conversation among her family had long ago been dealt with by her, “I’m awfully glad to see you out this morning. You must be feeling a good deal better.” She could not betray embarrassment or anger because in the face of her husband’s good-natured teasing she would appear either foolishly sensitive or would seem to be carping. And besides, John would do exactly as he wanted in any case.

He would cock his head at Warren with a wink, and Warren would be thrilled at being singled out. “Lillian, I’ll leave this boy in your hands until he’s twelve years old,” he would say, and Warren’s mother would turn toward him with a beatific smile, as if she were delighted to participate in this little joke. She would place her hand on the arm of whomever she had been speaking to, indicating that she intended to return to their conversation in only a moment. “Oh, yes, John. Yes, yes. Well, I’ll do my best, you know,” she’d say airily, as if it were of little consequence, and then she would direct her attention elsewhere while her husband carried on.

“And you, too, Leo. Exert whatever persuasion you like, but after that he can decide for himself. He can decide whether Dan Butler is offering superstition or salvation. Warren here can decide it for himself soon enough. But I’ll be down at the Company, ensuring the stability of our
earthly
kingdom.”

Warren was delighted to be treated so seriously by his father, but he was also unnerved by the anxiety the whole thing caused his mother, who sometimes spoke to him with soft intensity as they walked home from church, the two of them some distance from the others, or when she came up to tell him good night. “Warren, I don’t think it would be bearable to . . . well, to
live
life without knowing that God watches over you. I don’t think I could ever be happy for a second of my life if I didn’t know there was heaven where there’s eternal peace. I’m certain you understand that.
No one
could be happy without believing that. You know your father believes the same thing. Why, Warren, I know he does.”

On those Sunday mornings, too, Warren was dismayed by the detached but stern look of disapproval leveled in his father’s direction by his uncle Leo as his father engaged once more in this customary banter. Uncle Leo didn’t bother even to respond, and Warren worried over this, because so very young he had transferred the majority of his familial loyalty from his mother and even his aunt Audra to that brisk world of the two elder Scofield brothers. Any disagreement between them threw Warren into a dilemma of allegiance.