After it was done, he sat down on the log to catch his breath, to prevent the tears, to plan what to say, do. When he had settled enough to face her again, he stood up again.
But she was gone.
Fish Face! he almost screamed into the darkness. "Sarah, Sarah," he barked instead. He could see the cabins in the distance. Was that a light flickering on? Now was not the time for words. He felt with his hands. Only branches and bushes and creepy crawly things that bite.
The whore.
He stopped at the outhouse before sneaking back inside.
His father was sitting on the bed in the darkness. He started, a yelp choked back by terror. He could see the massive shoulders, the yellow beard glinting in the moonlight. He couldn't move as this dark shadow moved towards him. He was like the hypnotized prey of a cobra.
He shook as the hands came towards him. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the godless face slowly becoming illuminated in front of him. He did not see. He did not breathe. He did not feel the crushing weight of those hands. He could barely comprehend the weight of the single word.
"Who?"
***
They paid her family a visit. Before breakfast. Bad form. The mother, red-faced from standing over the large cast-iron pot, a flappy, pale-yellow bonnet hurriedly plopped over her graying hair. She poked her bulbous red snout out at them suspiciously. Company did not come at this time on weekdays.
"Why, it's the Duggins. And so early..." She squinted her mean eyes. "But it's just the father and his lad, eh?" Her smile turned crooked on one side. She always spoke with that stupid accent, he thought. Her husband stole her away from across the sea, or so they said.
"Well, come in."
The father was sitting by the fire, administering the bible lesson to the one male heir. The girls, the majority, were fussing about breakfast, clattering plates down, flicking spoonfuls of porridge at each other.
"Girls! Come set the table proper. We have guests."
They admittedly quieted down, embarrassed, resuming their womanly duties with a subdued air. All, he thought, except Fish Face. She looked him in the eye without flinching. She walked over to the other side of the room to fetch a pitcher of cream. He watched her straight, sure back, not so lumpy as he had thought before. She must be dumb, he thought. She must not Know.
***
There was no place for him. Fish Face was sequestered off to perform more household tasks with her sisters. The father and mother talked in strained low voices with Yellow Beard. The lone son sat near the adults, reading his bible upside down.
No one said anything to him, asked anything of him, offered anything to him. He was neither a guest, nor a servant. He did not exist and yet he was the center of it all. He had never felt so pathetic and important at the same time.
He watched Fish Face drawing water from the well, the overflowing bucket sploshing wildly. One of the younger girls tugged at her sleeve impatiently. Fish Face turned the bucket on her. The young brat ran screaming for her mother and the other girls giggled hysterically.
His eyes rested on her triumphant hyena's body. Whereas before he had seen it as merely soft, sagging flesh, he now saw robustness. Her flesh was literally bursting out of her clothes. The adolescent garb looked tawdry on her young woman's body. Her ample bosom, belly and buttocks strained against the stubborn calico to the point of loose threads in some places. Her cheeks were ruddy with activity. The bonnet, scandalously loose, betrayed those ever-orange curls, which he now saw glinted handsomely in the sunshine.
She met his gaze, briefly and without the slightest betrayal of emotion. Then she turned back to her sisters' merriment.
All their hair was orange, he realized. The color of an old sun. It could have been any of them. Any of them.
He knew it was all ending. He knew he would never see the sun setting past the rows of green tobacco leaves again, or at least they would never look the same again. He cringed when he thought of his brothers. He would be nothing to them now. And how could they be warned? They would not be. One by one, they would commit the same error, just as all their fathers before them. A catastrophe barely present for, a passing fancy, an evil they did not have the passion to be truly committed to. And the dark figure would wait on their bed like a knife after the strange dream they thought they had woken from, waiting in judgment to demand "Who?"
