Meggon was hanging clothes the day he arrived; a dry, windy day, filled with sunshine and the early-pregnant smells of summer.
She looked fresh standing by a bushel basket, lined with fabric, and full of wet, clean wash.
Meggon was pretty - a timid, nervous sort of pretty: thin-lipped and big-eyes, with fine, flax-like hair that slipped from pins and ribbons and drifted about her face. Pretty in a tense, expectant way.
The wet clothes attached to the line by thick, wooden clothes pins flapped in the solid wind, little droplets of water tossed from them like dew.
Meggon turned, with her fragile sort of interest and her incongruous fevered eyes, to the lane as her father's truck bumped up it toward the yard. Her father brought the man in his green pickup truck; the man's things were piled, not carefully, in the bed. She could see they were talking loudly before the engine was shut off, when their voices suddenly filled the silence left by the engine. Her father's deep and humorous, the new voice dark, and intense.
The screen door to the kitchen remonstrated; Meggon heard Caroline, her sister, with her pretty singing voice as she greeted the men. The wet sheets pushed heavily on Meggon's back as she turned to watch Caroline greeting the men.
"You can get lunch on now, Caroline," she heard her father say. "Ben's a hungry young man."
Their father was getting old. Small signs evinced his age. His bigness was shriveling. He could no longer overwhelm a room as he once had; his eyes beneath heavy and stray-haired eyebrows were dull. Now Joseph Juniper was an old, whitened, eroded man, with two spinster daughters in their thirties to protect. So he had finally brought in a hired man; he who had told his young wife, Carol, when they bought the property that no other man would, as long as he lived, touch shovel to it. He had said that with the pride and jealousy of a husband, who will keep his wife for no see but his own.
Meggon bent and raised her clothes basket to her hip, empty now of the wet and heavy wash, and stood watching the men. Evidently, the bad fruit of her father's sire and his age had reduced his jealousy, and he was trying to inject something virile into the last days of his life. They headed, talking loudly, to the barn. Meggon watched until they disappeared, and then walked, in thumps and steps, into the house.
Inside, the house was cool, as big, tree-shaded houses are, smelling clean and nourishing. Meggon's eyes settled into the dim interior. A small, busy mud-room, filled with old jackets and barn boots led into the kitchen. The room smelled of the barn, a deeply fragrant and womanish smell, like a hint of secret cologne. Meggon discarded the empty basket on a wringer washer that stood at one end of the long, red and yellow painted kitchen, and walked towards Caroline's back, where she stood at the sink washing fruit and putting it into a big, red bowl.
"You met him. What's his name?" Meggon asked, brushing her hair back from her brown eyes.
"Ben Ramo," Caroline said, lightly, friendly. Her fingers, long and smooth, slid over the peaches. She smiled a faint, delicate smile. Plump Caroline, the tiny veins on her cheeks and nose so close to the surface that she blushed pink with the clean health that pressed out of the bosom of her house dress.
Caroline, like her fruit, blushed with ripe development, round, firm, well-fleshed. Caroline, with her long and heavy legs that she used so sparingly, walking slowly, standing still. If Meggon had those legs, she thought, she would run until they trembled so that she could never forget they were there. Meggon loved Caroline, and Caroline nurtured Meggon.
Ben Ramo and Joseph Juniper filled the kitchen then; the loudness of their breathing in sharp contras to the waitful stillness of the women and their muted sounds.
"At least you'll never go hungry, Ben," said Joseph, as they seated themselves at the long plank table covered with a red plastic cloth.
"Doesn't seem that way," Ben replied, mater-of-fact, deep.
"You ain't met but one 'a my girls. Caroline's sister there, Margaret. Meggon, this is Ben Ramo.
Meggon approached with reserve that seemed shyness, held out a hand, large for her small frame, big-knuckled and strong. Ben took her hand without standing, avoided her eyes; instead he stared with insouciance at her peg-leg. His grip was warm, firm, and brief; long fingers, clean nails and warm-colored skin from which full veins stood out. His face had the same quality, but there was a shadow on it that Meggon took to be unshaven beard, and the effect of his long, black hair and pale skin. She could not see his eyes.
Caroline and Joseph Junper talked during the meal; Meggon was still from habit; the hired man busined himself eating wolfishly. Caroline refilled his plate three times, not concerned, calm and bountiful. The men, after the meal, sat and smoked pipes, talking. Meggon and Caroline cleared the table.
"He eats so..." Meggon whispered to Caroline as they cleaned up in the kitched.
"Just like a hungry cat," Caroline said, laughing softly.
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Meggon had watched her cat mating. She had been twenty then. That cat was nine months old. It was a small cat, with slate grey fur, white around the legs. A small, green-eyed cat that rolled at her feet and purred distantly; washed its face with its candy-pink tongue, licking its paws to wipe every speck from its nose and head. Meggon had stood, transfixed, quiet, near the barn door. The two cats had sought the darkness for mating, and now Meggon peered at them from behind the sliding wooden door - intruding, stealthy, sly.
*********************
Meggon sat quietly, near a hot fire, a book in her hands. She watched Joseph Juniper. He sat inside; outside there was snow and wind that spun around the house and wrapped the inhabitants in their cocoon of warmpth. Joseph sat with his eyes closed, in the corner of the sofa, a hand laid, palm open and fingertips on the sofa arm, the other meditatively stroking his pant leg. He had been found, sity-three years before, on the front porch of a Methodist family on Juniper Street. The family named the abandoned baby boy after the mayor, Joseph Hoyt, and after the street they lived on. Later, he had joined the Roman Catholic Church, and was asked to leave the house. He was ready to go. So he married his sweetheart, Carol, a frail and honest lady, and they had managed, with her dowry, to buy a farm. But now he was tired.
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