Eden Springs

Part 3

Part Three Benjamin talked to us and told us he was just like Jesus and had the right to have intercourse with us girls. ( Lena McFarlane, affidavit ) ( 79 ) T he way Ruth Bamford had long had an interest in playin’ the flute, Lena McFarlane had long had a daydream about a dress: It was a green satin dress with a row of pearl buttons down the back that stretched clear from the nape of the neck to the hem. In her daydream, she wore this dress with a broadbrimmed hat and, carrying a parasol, wandered about Eden Springs on the arm of Will Williams (a boy from town who had washed the windows of the Diamond House once, a boy she’d walked straight up to and introduced herself to on account of his big smile and strong-looking arms). In her daydream, she let Will Williams buy her a sugar cone, and Laura Kasischke ( 80 ) she ate it neatly, dabbing at her mouth with a square lace hankie, laughing loudly at something Will Williams said. “Shall we take a stroll down by the duck pond?” she’d ask, and he’d say yes. No one from the Colony would have recognized her yet. Lena and Will Williams would walk a ways together, her in that satin dress and him in a nice pair of black pants and a clean white shirt, and then she’d see Myrtle Sassman or Estelle Kits or Elizabeth Stroupe looking at her from behind the ticket counter where they’d been standing on their sore feet all day, or looking up at her from their hands and knees in the roses where they were plucking weeds. “By gosh. Lena. Is that you?” Lena would turn in her daydream then and smile and say, “Yes, it is. Why, I didn’t even notice you there!” “Lena McFarlane. Where have you been all these years?” “Oh, didn’t you know? I’m Mrs. Will Williams now. I moved to town, and now Will and I are living in a house in St. Joe. I’d like you to meet my husband Mr. Williams. He now owns the Whitcomb Hotel.” And just as Will Williams was bowing to the girls, who were gaping at him with their mouths open, Benjamin would appear from behind the shadow of a leafy tree. He’d catch his breath when he saw Lena, put his hand to his heart. All that green satin. And her hair (maybe it was bobbed) in wisps around her face beneath the broadbrimmed hat. “By God,” Benjamin would say in a choked hush. “It’s Lena McFarlane.” He’d see that she was a lady then. Eden Springs ( 81 ) Maybe he’d wish he was her father then. (There were plenty of people who said he was her father . Lena knew that. But she also knew he wasn’t. She knew that Brother Macintyre was her father. She could tell by the way he stared at her in the chapel with eyes just like the ones she saw when she passed her own reflection in the mirror. Fatherlike, and very sad.) Maybe he’d wish he was her lover or her husband, or simply that all along he’d taken more notice of her. He’d wish he’d bought her a flute instead of Ruth Bamford and that he’d made sure that Otto Kepler had given her lessons on how to play it. Then he’d be a happy man. Now he knew that, but now it was too late. This is the daydream Lena McFarlane dreamed, as she so often did, as she walked the two miles down the dusty road in her stocking feet into town, while the sky glittered over her like the inside of something—a smashed-open jewel, a daydream—and the sweetness of blossom time was in the air. In the gardens and along the road were mostly peonies and daisies, but Lena’s favorite flower was the poppy, and when she passed a clapboard house on the way into town that had a wall of them around it, she stopped and stared. She watched them dance in the breeze. Or squirm. Their faces were on fire. Their tongues were black. All that heat and brilliance, swimming. An old lady peered out at her from behind a lace curtain , and Lena lifted her hand to wave...