The Van Buren Ball

Words would not bring Lila Feldhaus's son home from Pelton. During his visit Abner had waited for their words with toothy excitement; knowing what they would say, he also knew how to answer them. A mother's power was and always would be in the elements, the things of the world. What would bring her son home? Only a giant Van Buren ball at the county canvass at the end of October, one big enough to dwarf that Whig John Washburn's Harrison ball and dwarf John Washburn, too, and remind Abner where he belonged and whom he belonged to.

The realizations woke her. Lila Feldhaus scraped the back of her hand across her mouth. Her husband Louis slept beside her, his thin lips laced with drool. Asleep, his breath snarled against the world like a hatchet against wood, but awake he was silent as a stone. She used to resent Louis's diurnal silences, but for the last few months, since Abner, only fourteen, left them to clerk for that Whig John Washburn, she appreciated them. What could Louis say that would change anything? Her husband was a decent man, a Methodist, a steady reader of agricultural journals, a reliable Democrat. Long ago he had nailed up a campaign poster for an Andrew Jackson rally in Pelton. In the poster, Jackson looked cruel, black-eyed, almost Cherokee. Sometimes Louis spoke to the picture. "Kill you any bankers, today, Andy?" But now Andrew Jackson was dead, and that Whig Harrison had the knives out for poor little Van Buren, and the world belonged to lawyers like John Washburn and not to farmers like them. Lila lay her fingertips on the jutting bone of Louis's cheek, not harshly, and he shook her hand away.

"A man's sleep is his only peace." Louis rolled over, facing the wall. Outside, the pigs scuffled, a goat whined, the tree frogs chirruped. Then, settled, Louis began to snore again, and the noises of the world fell farther away.

The moon rising behind them cut a lengthening yellow path from their bed across the oak table to the narrow mattress where Abner had, until the spring, slept. On top of the mattress lay the red diamond quilt Lila had sewn for him, and that he had not taken to Pelton town. And beside it, the old wooden chest with a busted latch that would not catch, stuffed with clothes that Abner also had not taken to Pelton.

Her son Abner had not snored. He breathed slowly, with casual confidence, as if he never expected to stop. Many nights Lila lay there, listening for Abner's breathing. Still she felt his presence in their house, a smell that did not belong to her or to Louis, a space that they did not quite fill.

Lila slid her feet onto the wooden floor, already cool in the October morning. Digging her elbow into the straw, she pushed herself upright, sat a moment at the edge of the mattress, her hands on her knees, her eyes steady in the still light of the moon. She was, she knew, not a graceful woman, but she was, in moments of calm, impressive, even fearful. Abner was the same way, smooth-cheeked but already formidable enough to impress a lawyer like John Washburn. The very things Abner inherited from her had drawn him away from her, too.

Walking past the table, Lila skimmed her hand over the white paint. When she reached Abner's side of the room, she grabbed his chest by the handles, tipped it forward and shook it until all the clothes he left behind, all the clothes that he was ashamed of, fell with soft thuds onto the floor. A buttoned shirt he once wore to Methodist service (the Washburns were Episcopalians), two perfectly good cotton britches with only small patches of repair, a black vest Abner saw in Elmer Woods's store and begged unaccountably for. His thin dark socks. His white cotton shirts. His underwear. None of it good enough for him now. Lila dropped the chest on the mattress.

Once Lila considered...