Jeremiah and Mildred

FICTION Jeremiah and Mildred Gretchen Tremoulet THEY LIVED IN A PART OF THE COUNTRYSIDE that was as barren as they were old. Well, not barren, exactly—marginal, hardscrabble. In late fall it took on a pale silvery green with dark shadows where the woods began. It seemed like there wasn't much in the way of leaves and growing things, although that's more what it felt like than what it was in reality. You tended to forget the hot, weedy summers. One morning, he stood on the porch studying the hill across the field when something bad happened. The porch served at this moment as a sort of blind, concealed only in that it was always there. He held to the hope that something would take his bait. Three days ago, he'd put some hay and a salt block just into the field from the woods. It wasn't that he was lazy. He had a blind—several, actually—out in the woods. But when fate was rough, you had to cover all bases, or so he'd been known to say. He expected fate to be rough. Porches out here were big—made for living on in the summer. Mildred stood a good six and a half feet behind him, staring at his back. She was as taciturn and determined as he was. They matched. Both wore broadcloth—she a dress tied at the waist and a white canvas apron over it. Her hair—long, gray, tied back in a rubber band— looked like it didn't see a comb often, which it didn't—morning and night was about all. She considered it her hair's job just to stay out of her way. It'd probably been five decades since she'd thought of it in terms of decorating herself. He wore a blue plaid flannel shirt over his broadcloth. It'd begun to pill from going through the wash so often. He didn't care. He noticed that it was warm, and that was the practical side of it—the only side that mattered. Jeremiah and Mildred didn't take much time out for relaxation. Of a Sunday morning, they went to church. That was a break from the week's routine. And on Tuesday evenings, they listened on the radio to the Christian Hour. Missionaries from all over the world told sad stories of people in need. Some from places Jeremiah and Mildred barely knew existed. They looked up the ones they didn't know. 63 Looked them up in the 1954 World Book Encyclopedia that stood on the bottom shelf in the kitchen. They keptjust about everything they used in the kitchen because it was warm in winter and busy in the summer. But that morning, as Mildred stared at Jeremiah's back, the rifle he was holding in the crook of his arm went off and shot her dead. Bang! And the profound silence after the bang. Jeremiah whipped around, of course, and his eyes caught Mildred just as she was almost finished sinking to the floor. Part of a grimace twisted her face. Pain and mystification together. Like she needed a better brain to understand what was going on. He moved to grab for her in slow motion—or it seemed so to him. His mind became stuck—useless—and all he could do was physical things, like catch her. Things that didn't require mind work. By the time she was on the floor, she was unconscious. Probably dead, actually, they'd tell him later. He stared at her, still holding the arm he'd caught her by. "Mildred?" He knew what had happened. He didn't believe it, but he knew it. Never, not even, as it turned out, until the day he died, did he let himself say, even to himself, that he'd killed her. Of course he hadn't on purpose. But the gun had been in his hands. "Mildred?" He stood over her staring. Then suddenly he picked her up like she was a kid, ran to the truck with her, laid her on the seat, draped with part of her on the floor...