After Eli by Terry Kay Page B

right?” he asked. He did not care if the question sounded personal. Being personal was his business.
    She nodded.
    “Just wanted to know,” he replied. “Been a long time since you’ve been in to see me. Not since Sarah was born, I guess.”
    “I’ve been well,” Rachel said. “So’s Sarah.”
    Garnett looked across the cemetery to where Sarah stood obediently beside Dora and a group of older women.
    “She’s grown almost,” he remarked. “A woman now. And pretty. Got Eli’s fairness, but she looks like you just the same.” He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the perspiration from his eyes. “By the way,” he added, “I was glad to meet that O’Rear fellow. You tell him I meant it about coming down to Pullen’s. If he’s Irish—and he is—he’ll like it.”
    Rachel looked at him suspiciously, but his eyes were scanning the leaving crowd.
    “I’ll tell him,” she said.
    “Good.”
    Garnett began to walk away. Then he stopped and said, “If you need me, Rachel, let me know.” He turned and left without waiting for a reply.
    * * *
    The fence stretched like a backward question mark across the field and in a widening semicircle above the house. Michael worked steadily in the heavy, thick heat, but he had changed. He no longer walked the fence line at night with Rachel and Sarah and no longer boasted of his workmanship. His voice had lost its merriment and he often sat for long periods without speaking, absently carving on a block of wood. He seemed distant and solemn and restless, and his silence was as commanding as his bluster had been.
    He was a wind that had calmed and his moods affected each of the three women differently.
    To Rachel, it was a prelude to his leaving, the last calling of the wanderer’s instinct. It had been so with Eli and Eli had left many times. She had been controlled around Michael in the days following Mama Ada’s death—never touching, never asking, never signaling. She had lain awake at night and felt the imprint of his body and thought of the short, dark distance between them and she had plotted going to him. But she could not. She could not risk discovery, nor could she risk absolute surrender to him; surrender would have meant the confession that Eli was only part of her, not all. She loved Eli, she repeated to herself again and again, but here was this other man; here was Michael. And she fought his presence with a practiced coolness. She could not go to him and she knew he could not come to her; he was the kind of man who waited, who tortured women with his patience. Still, she yearned to hold his face and bring it to her breasts and feel him thrusting deep within her. She wondered if he thought of leaving because she would not go to him at night.
    To Dora, there was warning in Michael’s behavior. He was planning to stay. After the fence, there would be no reason to remain, but Michael would not leave and Dora knew it. He needed to invent an excuse and he would find one. Dora watched him closely. She knew that he would not simply pass among them as a casual visitor would; when he left them, there would be scars.
    Sarah was not suspicious. She was in awe of Michael. To her, there was nothing mysterious about his silence. He had grown accustomed to them and to his surroundings and had settled comfortably into an involuntary rhythm, like breathing. Michael belonged. He belonged there, among them. And he was not always quiet. Not with her. He was different when she brought him water in the glass jar and they sat together in the canopy of trees. Then he was relaxed and joyful. He laughed with her and told her colorful stories of his travels and he always kissed her on her forehead and pledged her to secrecy. Michael treated her like a woman, looked at her as a woman, spoke to her as a woman. It was man to woman, not man to girl. Even in his gentle teasing, his eyes were telling her of urges that swam between them like dreams. And Sarah began to feel