Horse People: Stories

Seven Sons

41 Seven Sons I I n April 1908, Nelle Scott Fenton, pregnant with her first child, felt a fist of pain in her stomach, discovered blood like roses on her underclothes, and realized she had miscarried. She recovered rapidly. Within three weeks, she once more rode daily, and by Thanksgiving, she knew she was pregnant again. This time she passed through the danger stage and delivered the child on the first of July 1909. She named him John. “Seven sons,” an old woman in India had told her when she traveled the world with her parents and brothers. The old woman held up seven fingers, the nails horribly long and whorled. “You will have seven sons.” The effort that will take. Nelle doesn’t want to think of it. Her husband, Richard Fenton, shows his pride in the way he carries himself, a short man feeling like the cock of the walk. Why hadn’t Nelle noticed, when he was courting her, how short he really is? To the mill he goes. Sometimes his father, Henry, aged eighty-one, still goes with him, spending all day chatting with farmers or napping, Richard tells her, in the oak swivel chair in the office. When Nelle visits the mill, that’s the chair that Richard or Henry offers her, with armrests carved like an animal’s paws. 42 Henry Fenton was born in 1828, a date that seems antediluvian to Nelle. Richard was born in 1874, and now he is older than his father was when he enlisted to fight in the Civil War. “The generations go long,” is how Richard puts it. It seems to Nelle, still a new bride in the Virginia countryside, that old Confederates are as common as crows, numerous and somehow pesky, their pants wrinkled, uncreased, uncuffed. Why should shabby trousers bother her? Yet they do. The men attend each other’s funerals and recite, on Nelle’s porch, the causes of comrades’ demise: pneumonia , heart attack, grippe. What they all fear is a fall down the stairs. Nelle hasn’t understood till now that a fall can be fatal. Old spines and bones and hips can crack like sticks, crazing the nerves and causing the whole body to fail. She and her father-in-law tend to circle each other warily. He and his wife, Fannie, Richard’s mother, live across the field from Richard and Nelle. Iris, Richard’s younger sister, is living with Nelle and Richard this summer, ostensibly to help with the baby, but Nelle knows Fannie asked Richard to introduce Iris to eligible bachelors. On baby John’s first birthday, Richard hires a photographer to come out to the farm and take pictures of three generations of Fentons . Henry, the old veteran, squints into the camera, looking hostile, Nelle thinks. Iris hovers at Richard’s side. The photographer clicks a picture and says, “What beautiful ladies in this family.” Iris blushes and slips away into the house. Nelle wants to say, He didn’t mean you. “Let me have the baby,” Fannie begs, and Nelle hands her little John. Fannie’s neck sags softly; she presses the child into its folds. Nelle knows that she has only to wait, and these people will pass from her life, this old generation of southerners who treat her with veiled suspicion, though Fannie smiles and Henry offers a joke now and then. The thought of their deaths moves across Nelle’s mind as the photographer clicks the shutter. A dove casts a tiny shadow, flying to the top of a magnolia tree. 43 She leaves the baby with Richard and his parents and ventures into the garden, which is taking shape according to her directions. Bricks have been laid for a terrace in the fashionable shape of a key. A gazebo with double benches has been built. She has had arborvitae planted and a sundial erected. A fish pond has been dug and lined with brick. She kneels beside the pond. Here and there she can see the cement bottom, which is painted green. Washtubs weighted with rocks hold water lilies whose thick flat pads make islands on the surface. Eyes: eyes meet hers. She draws in a sharp breath. A snapping turtle is braced against the side, its head above water, its narrow, judgmental gaze fixed upon her face. She blinks, and it’s gone. A fantail goldfish drifts beneath...