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 Juniper talked during the meal; Meggon was still from habit; the hired man busied 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 kitchen.
"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 low fire, a book in her hands. She watched Joseph Juniper. He sat inside; outside there it was early spring, and gusts of wind spun around the house and wrapped the inhabitants in their cocoon of warmth. 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, sixty-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.
Meggon closed her book, listening to the crackle of the logs on the grate, and the small sounds of Caroline, who had begun putting away the left-overs, adding the waste to a slop bucket for the hogs, and moving plates and pans to the sink for washing.
"Caroline," their father called, his eyes still closed, his fingers still plucking at his pant leg.
"What is it?" she called back from the kitchen, her voice warm, smooth, thick as porridge.
"Bring me a drink."
Caroline glanced at Meggon as she entered the room, then headed to the cabinet where the liquor was stored. She poured some whiskey, neat, into a glass, and carried it to her father. She delivered it, and a crocheted coaster, then sat next to him on the sofa, surrounding herself in the the peace of the warm room.
"He's been working out well, hasn't he?" she nodded toward the window, where the barn was framed, where Ben was doing the evening chores.
"Huh," her father replied, taking a large sip from his drink. He drank a great deal; he always had, but now her was too weary to sweat away the dissipation. He had gotten very drunk that time he had been at the lawyer's, Meggon knew. He was brooding now, quiet, jaded.
Ben Ramo had, in two years, wedded the farm, a second husband to an insatiable mistress, and Meggon's father was sick of living, glutted with days and hours. he felt pride and love for Ben, but there were weak and slender emotions, and were too dilute to suck life from.
Meggon had slowly formed a friendship with Ben. He was a dark and dissatisfied man; only twenty-seven years old. He was not humorous or pleasant. Evenings, he and Meggon would sometimes walk abut the farm, in silences punctuated by Meggon's staccato walk, or in strangled, difficult conversation.
For Meggon, the wildness and badness of the man was a kind of food which she took eagerly after Caroline's constant but bland nurture.
Meggon stepped out from the warm living room to the doorstep, wrapping herself in a heavy green sweater with saucer buttons and a sailor collar. The evening was cool and had a touch of fragrance; spring had only just begun and snow still lay in the hollows and deep in the woods.
She could hear the sounds of Ben, in the barn, filling the mangers. He must have gone to the back door for the slops - the two fat hogs were crying for their dinner. They were both soon to have litters, little, round, pink pigs, most of them to be fattened and slaughtered. Meggon pitied them in their stupidity. Each spring the two sows that were allowed to live would drop some piglets; they would lay bloated and greedy and obligingly getting fatter, thinking they were some sort of gods, only to be sent without mercy to the butchering shed.
Ben closed the sliding barn door and came over to Meggon, his boot buckles clinking faintly.
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