A New World

FICTION A New World_________________________ Rhonda Strickland Elizabeth met her future husband at a corn husking in 1826. Outside the barn, the men formed a circle around the piles of corn, while the women went into the house and prepared a feast. Elizabeth was only eight, so she stayed with the men. She watched their hands move like lightning over the ears of corn, stripping the husks and tossing the leaves to the ground. Without interrupting their quick motions, they slipped William Burke's bottle from hand to hand, and spat to the side, joking and laughing about who would be the first to find the red ear. There was always at least one of these bizarre mistakes of nature: an ear of corn with a few ragged red kernels instead of the smooth rows of yellow. William whooped and held up the shining ear. The women brought out baskets of baked sweet potatoes, and plates of cold ham. They laid the feast on a long board supported by thick oak stumps. The bottle disappeared. Elizabeth expected William to kiss his German wife in front of the others, make a scene with everyone laughing . Instead, he called to Elizabeth, and sat her on his good leg. She breathed in a syrupy smell of rum. It reminded her of butterscotch candy. He kissed the top of her head, and put the freak ear of corn in her lap. She picked it up, touched the silk threads and rose-colored kernels. His smile was kind, his hands huge and strong, his German accent enchanting. Although she felt too big to be sitting on a grownup 's knee, he began telling her the fairy tales he'd learned from his grandmother, and she couldn't pull herself away. Later, she watched him put on his crumpled hat and leave with his wife. The heavy woman hung on his arm with puffy, blue-veined hands, making his limp worse. In the dark, Elizabeth listened to the crooked leg drag against the earth—the leg everyone said was full of cannonball shards from the war with the British in 1812. She wished the wife dead. Rhonda Strickland teaches at George Mason University in Virginia, but lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. She won an award for fiction the firstyear ofthe Denny C. PlattnerAwardsfor Excellence in Writing. That story, "The CScO Canal, 1832," wasfrom a novel in progress; this story is also from that source. 28 Four years later, the woman died in childbirth, along with the son she was bearing. Elizabeth remembered her wish, and felt guilty. But she wasn't surprised. Her wishes always came true. When she was thirteen, Elizabeth longed for a man to take her away from the elderly, strict parents, and he did. Walking home from the mill, carrying a heavy sack of flour she'd picked up for her mother, she tried to cross a spring-flooded creek, her bare toes turning blue. William threw down his rifle and string of rabbits, ran to her, and said, "This is my red corn girl, all grown up?" Then he swept her into his arms, and carried her across the creek. He didn't limp or stumble. They were married four months later. She believed good things would come to them, like magic, like the fairy tales he told her—and three years later, they did. A German stonemason for the new Chesapeake & Ohio Canal recommended William for the lockkeeper, and their tenant farming days were over. They moved with their healthy son into a two-story stone lockhouse on a whole acre of fertile river land, and they planted a garden, raised livestock, and learned how to operate the lock, moving boats upstream toward the Maryland mountains, or downstream to Washington City. On the Fourth of July, the official grand opening of the canal, Elizabeth and William stood by their lock, watching the superintendent on a banner-draped company packet welcome lockkeepers and boat captains. Leaning over the rail, he held up his hand and smiled at the farm families who'd traveled miles to see the wonderful waterway, bringing carts stacked with watermelon, cider, and ham. Gathered in noisy bunches, they peered...