Free The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams Page A

time to light it when he saw the birds again, hovering over the line of trees before they settled in them out of sight. In the garden the weeds had grown, and dark came early in the tall grass. Once he thought he saw movement there, and he leaned forward quietly looking—he thought it might be a dog—but he never saw anything again, and he settled back in his same position.
    When it came full dark, he lit the candle and went indoors. He took off his clothes tonight and lay flat with a sheet up over him when the candle was out.
    Usually he went to sleep quickly. Tonight he lay awake. He looked at his clothes lying in a heap on the floor in the moonlight and in the quiet and dark gradually understood, as much as he could, that no one was going to stay here again. He was completely alone.
    He lay awake as the night and its silence deepened. He had always known silence, but suddenly he was afraid of it. He sat up, startled, and with one terrified, but reassuring cry, called out at the top of his lungs, telling them all, telling everybody, the one thing in the world he did know fully: that as deep as his own silence was, it was nowhere near so deep as hers.

Chapter Four
    Ruth Edna stood on the porch and watched Jake go down the path to the gate. He could manage her latch and lifted it, passed out to the exact center of the road and tugging up the straps of his overalls, went down the road and out of sight. A rooster ran from the yard after him, pecking frantically as if he had dropped something.
    Ruth Edna glanced upward at clouds sun-tinged and bright as gold, banked in a sky that would have nothing to do with rain. She turned back to the breezeway, reminding herself next time to see about Jake’s straps. Off the breezeway’s other end was the garden where only weeds flourished in the dry ground, and goldenrod, the color of mustard, rose in graceful spikes taller than the corn.
    As she went along the breezeway, Cotter called from his room, where he sat rocking, “What’d he want?”
    Otherwise she would not have stopped. “Sewing,” she said. She held up denim work shirts so worn they were almost white. Sleeves tangled in various ways held them together and suddenly, realizing Jake had been trying to make a bundle, she held them close. Then she smelled sweat, and more. The henhouse, she thought and knew she would wash the shirts too.
    Cotter said, “All you do is sew for him. Why don’t you sew for yourself. That dress you got on has a rip clear down the side.”
    â€œYou tend to your own business. I’ll tend to mine.” Ruth Edna flung across the breezeway to her own room.
    Large and dark, it served them as a dining room as well. All the furniture in the house had been her mother’s, except a cedar chest Ruth Edna had managed to buy. Now she crossed over to it and lifted the lid. She put the shirts inside. On top lay a doll. When Ruth Edna took her out, her eyes, blue as blueing, flew open and stared. Ruth Edna kissed her mouth, a tea rose, pink and perfect. She ran her finger inside little curls coiled like springs and admired again the tiny patent-leather slippers; a thin strap across the instep buttoned onto a white pearl button no bigger than a raindrop. No one knew Ruth Edna had the doll, and she put her away again carefully. She put out a finger and closed her eyes. Not to would be like burying someone alive.
    Afterward, she touched beneath her armpits with bath powder, changed her dress and was ready to go uptown when she heard a chirpy little voice down the breezeway: “Yoo-hoo. Ruth Ed—na!”
    â€œIn here,” she called, knowing Hattie knew it. She pretended to look so she could peer into all the rooms.
    When she had come in, Hattie stood transfixed. “Ruth Edna! Isn’t that new?” Her eyes darted quickly about the room, at the unwashed dishes, at the unmade bed, at the scraps of Ruth Edna’s dress still on the floor. To her