Free The Expeditions by Karl Iagnemma Page B

a bruise. Her fierce brow and tugged-down frown at moments of severe pleasure. Her sighing laughter breaking the bedroom’s silence. The pepper-rich smell of her hands, her long fingers. Her patient grin as she watched him shed his trousers.
    That last evening he had returned from an errand at the apothecary to find Ellen’s bed empty, her nightclothes crumpled on the floor. She was in the kitchen, dressed in housecoat and bonnet, scrubbing the floor with a soapy rag. He smiled, attempting to mask his surprise. “I figured you were saving your strength for pickling season. You’re yet two weeks early.”
    “If I laid there one more moment I would’ve died of tedium.”
    He thought to make a joke then held his tongue. He took the rag from her hand and said, “Sit. Leave it for Corletta.”
    That night she sat across from him at the supper table, picking at potato and broiled pork while Reverend Stone talked about the creek’s parched state, about a new milliner opening shop in town, about a notice posted for a runaway slave with six toes on each foot. He ate with strained heartiness, clattering his fork against the plate to obscure the sound of Ellen’s shallow breathing. She stood abruptly, a crust of bread in her mouth. She stepped toward the bedroom, then with a look of shocked discomfort sat heavily on the floor.
    He laid her on the bed and covered her legs with a quilt. Her jaw had slackened, the skin clinging to her cheekbones like wet cotton draped over rocks. A thread of saliva slid down her chin. She coughed, a ragged jag, and when the worst of it ended he kissed her, his tongue sliding between her cracked lips. She tasted of sour blood. Of death. Reverend Stone’s heart surged with panic. Love is as strong as death—how often had he counseled a member of the congregation with those words? Each occasion, he realized, had been a lie. He hurried to Corletta’s quarters and sent her to fetch Dr. Powell, and when he returned to the bedroom Ellen’s eyes were fixed on the open window.
    He stood motionless in the bedroom’s thick silence. A breeze lifted the curtain edges. He found himself holding his breath, then realized he didn’t want to fill his lungs—as though breathing might force time forward, and not breathing might somehow hold it back.
    Now Reverend Stone jerked awake to a moan from the room next door. He closed his eyes, grasping after the fading images. Where was Elisha in his memories? The boy had disappeared some three months earlier, but still Ellen had set a plate and knife and fork at supper every night, as if expecting him to rush through the door, his hair smelling of pollen and knuckles creased with dirt. Reverend Stone remembered praying for the boy, his thoughts clouded by anger. He wondered if his son could sense, wherever he was, that his mother was gone. Surely a person could feel such a thing. Surely he didn’t need to be told.
    The moan rose again, and with a shiver the minister realized it wasn’t a cry of sadness. It was a man and woman, together. Mumbled voices rose then trailed to a harmony of laughter; then a man’s heavy footsteps crossed the floor. Reverend Stone stiffened toward the sound. A trunk lid thumped shut. A bed frame groaned. The minister’s heart was smothered by tenderness, for these blissful strangers. Go forth in ignorance, he thought. You have my blessing.
             
    He had stepped into trousers and laced his brogans the next morning when he noticed the yellow stains covering the bed quilt. He surveyed the small hotel room: gaps between the scuffed floorboards were packed with clay and pebbles. The ceiling was cratered and split. The window was smeared with greasy handprints, so that the sun’s light held a filmy, liquid cast. Reverend Stone scratched a row of bumps along his wrist, a reminder of the bedbugs in the filthy pallet.
    He descended to the parlor to find the hotel’s proprietor reclined on a settee in a soiled linen shirt, reading