Marked

FICTION Marked Claude Lafie Crum The sun sank low over a western ridge, and the porch railings cast long, pencil-thin shadows across the floor as Jenny watched Granny Hopkins dozing in her rocking chair. The old woman's head rolled forward, her glasses sliding down to the end of her nose as she snored. Jenny rose, raking the bean strings in her lap onto the floor and steadying the porch swing so that the rusty chains wouldn't creak as she stood. She paused a few seconds, cradling her swollen belly and hoping that Granny Hopkins's sleep was sound. She crept across the porch and through the screen door, easing it shut behind her. Rushing into the kitchen, she took a sharp knife from a drawer in the counter and slipped it into her apron as she hurried out the back door, checking the setting sun over her shoulder as she followed the footpath down past her garden and stopped at the walk log that spanned the creek. She sneaked a glance at the front porch to make sure the old woman was still asleep, Granny Hopkins's warning about crossing water still ringing in her ears. "Crossing a stream will break your water, bring the baby early," the old woman had scolded when she first came to stay with Jenny and Luke, limping along dragging a tattered suitcase by her side. Jenny had rushed out to meet her, and Granny Hopkins stopped her halfway across the walk log, "If you have to cross over water do it backways and don't look down." Now Jenny listened to the slosh of rushing water as she stumbled across the footbridge backwards, steadying herself on the handrail and feeling her way with each step until she was safe on the other bank. Jenny hurried down the gravel road, pausing every few seconds to listen for approaching cars that might be traveling up the hollow. The sun was at her back, and her shadow stretched out before her, its spindly legs mirroring her own as she plodded along, scuffing her feet over the hard-packed clay. She stopped to rest and turned her side to the sun, examining the curve of her belly in the shadow. In the distance, the sound of tires crunching on gravel and the sudden roar of downshifted engine caught her attention, and she moved to the side of the road, parting the brush with her hands and crouching beside the 52 creek. She pulled a limb aside and watched her cousin Marty bounce up the hollow in his pickup. For a moment she thought she might reveal herself and flag Marty down, ask him to drive her to the cemetery. Then she remembered that Marty and Luke were working the same mine, Marty on first shift and Luke on second, and she knew that the two of them had probably passed at the mine face during shift change, knew that Luke might have mentioned how worried he was that she might slip away this night. As Marty's truck roared up the hollow, a cloud of dust boiling up behind it, Jenny glanced down at the creek and saw a water snake slipping along the surface in a fluid sway, its head bobbing in the current. She tensed, ready to claw her way up the bank, but she remained hidden in the brush. The snake slithered up through the grass on the creek bank and out into the clear. Road dust caked on its moist belly as it paused in the road, its flicking tongue sensing the air as Marvin's truck approached. Jenny watched the snake, and Granny Hopkins's words came to her again, "Awoman in the family way can't be around where an animal's killed. When I was a girl I had a cousin that was new-married, and she went home to see her mommy and daddy not knowing they was killing a hog. She walked right up on it, a shoat she had raised herself hanging there by block and tackle while two men quartered it with a crosscut saw. When it came her time, her baby's fingers...