Charle's Tell

"You will choose - death."

His legs meant something menacing to her still. Not their crook, length, quickness or the way they kicked in his sleep, not their old strength turning horses, but their reminder of how it so happened.

She watched them. Billowing in the backyard breeze with his grayed teeth, he spun around the hung linens as their baby gave him a chase he most clearly couldn't conceive of. She sat back as a button seemingly popped off his shirt and sank into dust.

"Charles, pick that up now."

"Yes, my love."  

I'll sow it quickly, but in a little while - she thought, invigorated by her sharp eyes but cautious as to their next move.    

"Charles, leave her be. Come and bring me that button."   

His brow beaten by the sun into beads of feverish sweat, he came up with a creak to his step and bent forward to her.

"That'll be fine… Stop." She pushed him off that way she couldn't have done years ago when he'd taken her.

"A man needs ask, does he?"

"A man, yes. Yes, a man does. Now sit."

"Oooh, I'm beaten." He squinted, his lips worming inward. "Nothing in me left to see that child around our little yard again."

As the old man sat to shade and solitaire, she watched her baby looking to race with the wind instead. So much blew in from the blue mountains that the sun itself seemed sometimes to shake when she looked up long enough. More closely, a wind without mind rolled a leather ball back and forth, and so her baby, his baby, their baby and sin, gave chase to that.         

"What'll it be? Ahh, a King. Very good."

"The button now, Charles. You'll be taking your shirt off too."

"Now?"

"Do as told."

He strained back, dropping the deck, and got his shirt off with a cry. "Goddamnit. Yes, there."

"And the button."

"Yes, here."

The button felt much less than a feather, but she so clenched it into a fist and knocked on the table played on.  

"Charles, when will you be fixing this? You'll fix it while I'll sow this button."

"My job'll take a bit longer." He grinned. His torso, mottled like a mineral stone, stretched to bone. 

"Yes, it will. It's crooked."

"But my legs don't have it, my love, to fix anything today."

"Then you won't sleep till they do."

"Yes." He continued dealing.   

How he had taken her, he had taken everything. And now his legs were as crooked as their table's. A man without companionship or family, a stranger once to many in town, he had done it to find place and purpose, it seemed, in his way of force and misery, it seemed, those seven years ago. He had pinned his hope on her where many had tried the same with courtship and self-command. Not he. Not his way. His way had been a drag by the hair to the barn and a devil in command. This was what's left. But seven years had its way not only in their baby's changing body.

"So you'll fix it. You'll fix it before you take sleep. I have no mind as to whether that'll be tonight, tomorrow night or a week hereafter, but you'll -"

"Yes, yes. I'll do that. Please now." Growing, his voice quivered like a clear night.

"Very well."

As the cards were laid gently, she thought of the fortune teller passing through just a day ago, of cards with pictures on them as funny and messy as the teller's clothes. The morning milk hadn't waited a moment, and such a chase as she gave it through town, she caught the concern of the teller, an unbecomingly eager woman with painted toes. But unlike that common milk cart, the impressive height and breadth of the carriage she saw had made her agree to receive a free reading, quickly. She had even sat around a table inside that carriage as the teller cast spells within cards. "You will choose," the teller said, "death." "What? How menacing!" She had run back, spilling milk as she had.

Charles kept on dealing to himself the simpler cards of men. Their baby gave up beating the wind and came to him with cheeks bloated by amusement. Those wetted blue eyes and curled lips, their baby was more his than hers. Never mind, she thought. Never mind it.

"Your baby has the look right now of a hard question, Charles. Pay her mind."

"Yes," he replied, "what is it, dear?"

"Why didn't you stop, daddy?"

"Didn't stop?"

"Yes. You didn't let me catch you." She giggled, away. "You've always let me catch you."

"Well, it's time you have a lesson or two, dear." His deck thinned further.

"Daddy, no. Daddy, I go school."

"Not that kind lesson."

"What kind?" She demanded, squinting much the same as he.

"Kind that's about chases. It's never so easy as a chased thing to stop running."

"Oh."

"And that's a life kind lesson, kind I'll teach you long as strength is in me."

"Mummy, will you play?"

"No," she replied, "I won't play a game. I need to sow this button."

She rose to leave them chitter-chattering and, with his heavy shirt, carried everything to the window, including her needle and twine. Heavy as it was, she thought to bring him a glass of water as if he was forgetting his own thirst. As if that could be forgotten. He could forget, but she didn't think on it again and sowed.

It was done soon, so she stayed there to look into town. She smiled through to the man outside the busy bar with his milk cart parked so that he might talk to cowboys. He had been a suitor. And how foolish she looked every time she gave chase in the mornings, as if he wasn't waiting long for her to come out on purpose to shame and humiliate. But there was no good chance he could see her through this window and its stains, so she closed her eyes and cooled under the shirt's lingering sweat.

An hour passed. What could she have dreamt? Maybe of her mother and father, how little they'd done to believe it. She dreamt of summers before her last free one and the way the blue mountains slept under starry nights like children of God with sides turned and mouths whispering amusements to each other till eyes closed. She saw the teller calling her back to another carriage, shouting something that sounded most important and expensive to repeat. She dreamt of seven childish years gone.

When she awoke, he was inside on the stool by the stove, peeling potatoes.

"You've been falling asleep there much."

"I have. It's mine to do as I will."

"Not saying otherwise." He blushed. How odd, that color on his yellowed face.

"Put the peel outside when you're done."

"Yes, yes, love."

"What do you think you'll be doing with this shirt later?" She felt a dampness under her skirt, meaning the shirt had dried.

"Not running around, that's what." How odd that he grunted too, that sound from a void.

She went to take it to him. He looked up with a docile sting. He seemed to her eager too much. She felt a scratch in her cut hair, the scratchiness of an old tug. He kept looking. She was his fool just then.

"Stop."

"Stopping, yes, stopping."

"You'll remember the table." She almost shouted.

He grabbed the shirt she held onto firmly. "I will." The weakness wasn't in his arms.

Noon crawled to evening, evening bled to dusk, dusk disappeared into the quietest night in town. Her head brimmed like muddy bucket water as she tucked their baby to bed under no blanket except an embrace. "You'll sleep well now, won't you?" "Yes, Mummy."

Through stale air of the corridor, she carried the whistling lamplight and turned to their room, expecting him there. But the made bed lay perfect, flat without encumbrance. She went to lie herself and snuff the light. She laid still and stayed so, till he could be heard on the porch, handling the table.

For a while, he did a quiet work. He must have been bending low to pull nails out that clamored where they dropped in his tin box. He made fleshy groans distinct from any grunt. Everything creaked as he seemingly lost time and strength without getting the crook out of the legs yet. He worked with constant chitter-chattering, like he had found good company. But he was alone. He unfixed by accident anything he fixed - was how it sounded.

She laid in steaming stillness to listen for what might sound like him taking sleep. She’d recognise such a sound, she believed. It didn't come. But a thump of a hard, hard fall did. A double thump, like he'd fallen first on something other than ground. Nothing but emptiness. She smiled over the painted toes and cards of a teller, and slipped into sleep daringly like a new line into an ancient poem. "You will choose - death."