Her Husband's Hands and Other Stories Read online

  For hours Job and Leah stand back to back inside the small circle, the spine of his sleeping rider pressed tight against the spine of hers, both demonstrating a level of divine peace well beyond the reach of those of us whose riders snarled and spat and brandished our worst secrets on this special day. Both Job and Leah are calm, smiling, confident of their ability to outlast the ordeal.

  Outside the circle, the required ritual abuse by our neighbors is mostly restrained, limited to little more than good-natured teasing. The unmarried girls cavort and waggle their tongues at Job, promising him endless nights of wanton abandon should he abandon his foolish devotion to this girl with no idea how to set a fire in a wedding bed. The unmarried men advise Leah that they understand her ignorance in these matters, but feel obligated to tell her that Job has a root doomed to remain soft for life and that she’d be better off spreading her legs for a man who can make his stand at attention. There is a bad moment when Kenneth strides from the crowd and circles the pair, looking over both of them as if appraising pigs that have come to market, but after two orbits he nods his head and ambles away, with a nod at me that I can almost consider friendly. It is never possible to tell for certain, but there is nothing in his eyes or in the eyes of his rider that betrays simmering malice against my son and his bride. He doesn’t seem to be letting the day pass without incident only so that he can indulge his cruel appetites later. There is reason for hope.

  The afternoon is of course not completely without trouble. Paul, who we gave the honor of drawing the circle, grows upset that his contribution is over with and that he is no longer the focus of all eyes. He starts whining that he’s bored and then wailing that he wants to go home, and is unstirred by appeals that this is his brother’s day and that he should be as happy for him as we all are. Miriam gets sick from something she’s eaten and is soon as cranky and as inconsolable as her middle brother. The tension Faith has felt up until this day combined with the poor behavior of our younger children makes her blame me for being so useless a father.

  But all of this falls far behind next to something else I see, something that I have never heard tell of happening before, and that as far as I can tell only I can see, because I will afterward question my wife and friends and neighbors and find not a one who confesses to beholding what my eyes are blessed to behold now. As I watch, amazed, Job’s sleeping rider turns its little head and, without ever opening its eyes, brushes its lips against the cheeks of Leah’s rider. Her rider, without opening its eyes, turns its head and kisses his on the lips. Both riders then turn their attentions back to those they ride. I look up at the faces of my son and his bride and see from both blinding smiles that both are fully aware of what just happened, and both know what it means. This is not just the only possible union for a boy born without sin and a girl who lived too long without hope; nor is it just the loving union we all hoped for. It is the kind of union they write about in the stories, the kind that is not supposed to happen in the real world. Maybe it is why even Kenneth would not wield his evil against them. I can only dare to hope, my knees turning weak at the thought.

  As the ceremony ends a great weight lifts from me as a cheer erupts from my friends and family and neighbors and the couple is mobbed by well-wishers who hoist them aloft and carry them about like trophies for long minutes before once again allowing their feet to touch the ground. Another cheer splits the sky as the couple kiss a second time. Job embraces his mother and then me and tells me that it does his heart well to know that I was watching on this glorious day. Leah kisses me on the cheeks and tells me that she will take joy, from this day forward, in being able to call me father. Even Paul senses the tug of family and congratulates his older brother. The songs and dancing begin, and then the feasts. It should be the happiest day of my life.

  I can only wish I knew why I remain afraid.

  Another two years later, something big happens. I do not know how to classify it in my heart. There must be a special word for an event of staggering undiluted evil that can only stun you with its depravity, that you are bound by all standards of human decency to regard with and that you cannot help face with any emotion darker than relief. But I do not know it. I can only report what’s happened and try to measure my feelings later.

  Kenneth has been murdered.

  It should be no surprise. His family has if anything gotten worse over the past few years, robbing homes and stealing livestock and growing their little colony of corruption by taking girls by force and making them too frightened to leave. In the last three years, three men who decided to stand against him had their homes burned, and one disappeared on his way home from an errand, leaving no signs of the nature of the misfortune that befell him. Kenneth was always in a public place, making himself visible, whenever these things happened, though he never showed any surprise whenever somebody came running from a distance to report the news. Nor were his sons anywhere to be seen. There was always a terrible, mocking knowledge in his eyes, showing us how much he relished our awareness that the responsibility remained his even when his hands were empty and displayed in plain sight. He loved our impotence.

  I have always known that it was just a matter of time before somebody did what so many have wanted to do.

  Noah, who witnessed the event, brings the news while I am at Job’s house helping adding a room for the baby now only two months away. We have been working all afternoon, enjoying the heat of the day and the slick sheen of sweat our labor summons to our skin, and when Noah rides up, his horse shining from a hard gallop, we wave at him, thinking at first that he’s only come to help us. But then he gasps out the news and we put down our hammers and we step away from the skeletal frame of the nursery under construction and join my brother on the front porch so he can tell us what happened while we were here preparing for the miracle of new life. After a few seconds Leah comes out preceded by her belly to hand him a cup of water, then stays to listen.

  This is what he tells us.

  It happened a little more than an hour ago.

  Kenneth rode his open wagon into the village to pick up some supplies he’s sent for, accompanied by his eldest son and the youngest of the young girls to join his extended family. She is Amelia and she is fourteen and she has been with him with three years, a relationship that began when she reported being raped by him at eleven, changed when she recanted two days later, and became whatever it is now when she left her parents and two younger sisters and moved in with Kenneth, calling him her “husband.” Following the usual pattern, her parents expressed outrage and appealed to her neighbors to help them rescue their darling girl, receiving little help before inevitably showing up bearing cuts and bruises and frightened expressions to go along with their insistence that it was all a misunderstanding and that Amelia’s new marriage had their blessing. The girl has rarely been seen in public, since then. Today, the first time in months, her little belly was as swollen with new life as Leah’s.

  Kenneth pulled his wagon up to the community store, tied up the horses, then took his boy and went inside to get and carry out his goods. It took several trips. Amelia remained silent where she sat, not answering anybody who tried to speak to her. A crowd started to form. By the time Kenneth and his son finished the loading, half the village was there, many surrounding the wagon in a crowd five bodies thick.

  Shaking his head, Noah tells us that Kenneth was not afraid, even then. He had always been untouchable and he thought he was untouchable still. When he took the reins and told the crowd that they better move, because they were hemming him in, he had the eyes of a man who was memorizing faces. His rider’s burning visage declared a dozen separate vendettas. Then somebody, it could have been anybody, shouted a call to action. Somebody, it could have been anybody, dragged Kenneth’s son from his seat. Somebody, it could have been anybody, grabbed Kenneth as well and forced him to the ground, where he was engulfed by a wave of shouting people.

  He would have survived the beating.

  But somebo
dy, it could have been anybody, stabbed him in the heart.

  So far, nobody had confessed to seeing who drove the blade between his ribs, though a number of the people there had long borne riders bearing the face of murder and a number bore riders bearing the face of complicity. No one will testify against a killer. In a sense, they may all be killers.

  I do not know how to feel about this. Kenneth’s family hurt someone I loved as much as anyone I loved has ever been hurt. There was once a time when I might have snuffed out his life myself, had I believed there was a chance that I might get away with it. But either I’ve grown soft with the years or the long time he’s left my loved ones alone have diluted any hatred I feel. No weight has been lifted from my heart.

  Leah, looking sad, asks, “Is his son all right?”

  Noah tells her, “As all right as any boy can be when his father is murdered mere steps away from him.”

  “And the girl?” Job asks.

  Noah tells him, “She is unharmed as well. She has been brought to the home of her mother and father, neither of whom she has seen in more than a year. There is no telling whether she will stay there, rather than return to Kenneth’s family, but for the moment she is where she should be.”

  Job says, “Good.”

  It is his only immediate reaction.

  After a little while Noah takes his leave of us and gets back on his horse, to bring the news to some of our more distant neighbors. We return to working on the new room. More than a hour passes, by my estimation, before I ask Job to stop.

  He puts his hammer down and waits.

  “If you were not the man I know you to be, and if I were not with you all day today, I would have wondered all my life whether you’d been the one to put that knife through that bastard’s ribs.”

  Unhurt and unsurprised, he says, “But I am, and you were.”

  “True. But with the man dead, there’s no reason to not tell me the truth. Was Kenneth the one who beat and robbed you, that last time?”

  “Yes. Him and one of his sons. I won’t say which son, but it was one of them.”

  “God. Are you all right?”

  He considers his answer a long time before answering. “If you’re asking me whether I feel any pleasure at Kenneth’s death, the answer is no. It solves nothing. The world is still awash with brutality, and becoming part of it, even taking distant pleasure in it, interests me not at all. All I feel is sadness for a man whose rider so bubbled with hatred and pain that he could only achieve release by sharing it.”

  “But don’t you feel safer?”

  “Of course not.” He takes up his hammer again and strikes a protruding nail just once before looking ill and putting the tool down. “One day I was born. Someday I will die. What takes place between the beginning and the end is too short to fill with fear. The bad days happen from time to time, and more must be coming, but I’ve had far too many good ones in between to give the bad more weight than they’re worth.”

  My vision blurs. “You’re a far better man than I’ll ever be.”

  “No, I’m not. I will not lie to you, father. I fear that I’m not the man you and so many others believe me to be. I’m capable of hating people who hurt me, and wishing for bad things to happen to them. But I don’t want to hurt anyone back. While I’m alive I just want to live the best life I can, and this is the only way I know how.”

  I know him well enough to recognize the closest he ever comes to annoyance. It hurts him, hurts everything he is, to be pressed for some form of celebration at his old tormentor’s death. It is the chief disadvantage of having a paragon for a son. Sometimes, many times, I cannot live up to him.

  It is only late that night, as I lie beside Faith, that I wake and realize that it must not have been Kenneth I’ve feared all these years . . . for in asking Job whether he felt any safer, I neglected to notice that I do not.

  The wheel of time continues to turn. Life in the village becomes much more peaceful without Kenneth around to prey on us. His sons heed the warning that there is only so much their neighbors will take from them, and scale back their criminality, without ever ceasing it. Leah strains a day in the birthing shed and presents Job with a son they name Isaac whose gentle rider betrays no sin worse than mischief. I put the baby in twelve-year-old Paul’s hands and he looks down at his new nephew with harmless bafflement, almost dropping him when the baby’s lips burble over with cheese. Miriam toddles about, stealing hearts with sideways glances. Leah brings me a jacket she has made for me and kisses me sweetly on the forehead, telling me that I am her second father, blessed for raising a man who could tame her rider and teach her that life can be an occasion filled with joy.

  While playing with my grandchild I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirror and am stunned to see that my own rider has been tamed as well. All my adult life I have tried to be a good husband to Faith and loving father to the children, but I have also always been aware, as much from the way it felt in my heart as from the terrible aspect of the second face peering over my own, that it has always been more the act of a man pretending to be good than a man who could just be. I have always told myself that this is true for everybody, because we all feel the weight of our riders and we all know the evils we bear. It does not mean that the good among us are frauds. But I have always felt that way anyway . . . until this moment when I see the reflection in the glass and realize for the first time that happiness, years of fighting the worst in myself, and the example of a man better than any I ever hoped to be, can calm the greatest beast. My rider’s gnarled features have smoothed, its aspect turned more human than ever before. It is not the peace Job and Leah know. But it is still more than any man could ever hope for. I turn to Faith, beaming, and see her beaming back, her own rider as soft and innocent as it has ever been. This may be the most loving moment of all our years together.

  We make love that night: the kind of love that only long-marrieds can make, when they are reminded of how hot their flames burned in youth.

  I don’t know why, but I remain awake long after Faith has surrendered to sleep, all the strangeness of the world large in my thoughts. After a long time I kiss the back of my dozing wife’s hand and go to the common-room, lighting a candle so I can look at myself in the mirror again. My face is lined with the kind of furrows that come with years, and hard work, and broad smiles, and—it stuns me to see—wisdom.

  My rider, wide-awake and curious, blinks at me, wondering what I’m up to. I find myself, wondering, idly, if its current strange purity would be at all affected by deliberate and conscious evil on my part. It is the kind of game played at least once by every child who ever picked up a mirror, tired of making silly faces at themselves and wondered if their rider could be induced to do the same.

  It could be done. The philosophers say that our riders don’t define us. We would not be perfect people, if we were lucky enough to be born without them. We would instead be people whose sins were hidden, who could conceal their most vile natures behind the most angelic countenances. We would never know if a man was fated to become a rapist, or a woman a murderess; we would not find out until the sins were committed, and the evidence of their crimes lay bleeding on cold earth. There would even be those of monstrous aspect but innocent hearts condemned for deeds committed by others: a terrible thought that speaks to alien possibilities, and worlds even worse off than our own. What would the world be like, if the prisons could fill with innocent men?

  I have not indulged in this kind of experiment since I was young. But a strange whim drives me to make the attempt now. I concentrate on the very worst atrocities I can think of, trying to mean them as more than ridiculous abstractions. I will go back to our bed and take Faith by force. I will go to Miriam’s bed, take her by the ankles, and smash her skull open against the wall. I will do what some monstrous parents do and take Paul as a man takes a woman. I will go out in the night and knock on Job’s door, pretending an emergency just so I can strangle him with my bare hands once we are alon
e. I will hold Isaac below water and

  I cannot go on. I am too sickened by even thinking these things, and feel shamed for allowing them to take root, for even a moment, in the imperfect soil of my mind. Maybe I am an evil man, after all. But my rider just blinks at me, its expression as placid as before, marked only by the confusion of a child who has just seen his father spouting inane gibberish.

  Our riders are part of us. They know our pretenses. They know what we are and what we only pretend to be. I cannot summon enough pretend evil to fool my own, any more than I could have summoned enough pretend good.

  Maybe that’s what prevents true evil from overrunning the earth.

  I put down the mirror, blow out the candle, and return to my wife’s side, imagining myself at peace.

  And then one day two years afterward Job shows up at my front door carrying Isaac’s shattered body.

  If a man’s life is like a ribbon of time, stretched out upon the earth and extending from the moment his parents conceive him to the moment some bedridden old man releases his last breath into a world that has long since robbed all of his reasons for living, then there are during those years moments that cut like daggers, that can plunge from the sky and snap that ribbon in two. They can even be poisoned, these moments, carrying toxins so foul they shrivel everything to come and everything that came before. Any happiness that ever existed becomes a lie, any hope that ever beckoned a fraud.