The Regrets of Cyrus Dodd Read online

You might think with Virgil having the upper hand in this feud, things would go better for him but they didn’t.

  A rock hard ball of resentment settled in Bethany’s heart. For the first time in all their years together, she saw a mean-spirited side of Virgil that she hadn’t noticed before. It began the afternoon he refused to take Ruth Dodd home. In the days following the incident, Bethany started remembering her own pregnancies.

  Jeremy had kicked and poked at the inside of her stomach until she was too weary to stand, never mind walk seven miles to the Dodd place. Elroy had been easier, but even then the weariness had been crushing. In that last month, she’d had to have a girl come in to do the cooking. With each of the thoughts that came to her, she grew more sympathetic to Ruth Dodd’s predicament.

  Two weeks after the incident, which is how Bethany now referred to the afternoon, she lit into Virgil as soon as he came in from the field. He was washing his hands at the kitchen sink when she said, “You obviously have no idea how difficult carrying a child is!”

  Virgil turned thinking someone else had come into the room. Seeing that he was the only one there, he said, “Are you talking to me?”

  “Of course,” she answered curtly. “No one but you would expect a pregnant woman to walk seven miles when she’s already exhausted!”

  He gave a look of annoyance and rolled his eyes. “Are you still harping on that thing with the Dodd woman?”

  “Harping? That’s what you call it when somebody has a difference of opinion?”

  “No. Harping is when you gotta remind me of your opinion ten times a day.”

  He turned and with his lip curled into a sneer said, “I don’t give a cow’s turd about your opinions, so keep them to yourself and quit bothering me.”

  They went at it for a good half hour until Virgil slammed his hand down on the table with such force the butter dish bounced off and fell to the floor.

  “That’s it!” he screamed. “One more word about me giving Cyrus Dodd my water, and you’re gonna get a fist down your throat!”

  Virgil grabbed the platter of fried chicken sitting on the table, heaved it across the room then stomped out.

  Seeing the greasy chicken and chunks of earthenware spread across the floor, Bethany realized Virgil was never going to come around to her way of thinking. No amount of arguing would change that. He simply was who he was.

  After that Bethany quit talking about Ruth Dodd, but she didn’t quit thinking about the incident or that evening. She began speaking in short snipped words that had barbs of anger and resentment poking through them. Before the year was out she had developed an argumentative attitude that peppered every conversation with Virgil.

  Once she learned Ruth Dodd had lost the baby, it got even worse. True, she was Virgil’s wife, but she was also a woman who had borne children. That was something she wasn’t willing to forget. On nights when he’d slide across the bed to reach for the tie on her nightgown, she’d smack his hand and say she was dead tired.

  “Being a mother is exhausting,” she’d say, and although she never again mentioned Ruth’s name Virgil knew what she was thinking.

  There were even times when she thought about leaving him and going to live with her sister in Richmond, but then she’d see four-year-old Jeremy looking more like his daddy every day and decide to stay.

  * * *

  In late August of the following year, the pond took on a strange smell and a layer of thick green moss covered one side of the dam. It started along the bank on the north end and quickly spread to the center of the pond. In the second week of September, dead fish began bobbing to the surface. At first it was only a few, three, sometimes four, but within days the number increased dramatically. That’s when Virgil began to suspect foul play.

  The day he found twenty-eight bloated fish floating in the pond, he convinced himself it was Cyrus Dodd’s doing. That afternoon he stormed into the house ranting and raving about how Dodd had poisoned his water.

  “It’s his sneaky-ass way of getting even,” Virgil said then threatened to take a rifle and blow Cyrus’s head off.

  “You’re laying blame where blame doesn’t belong,” Bethany replied. “It’s probably just algae from all the rain we had this spring.”

  Virgil gave a look that warned her not to take Dodd’s side. “You got no idea of what you’re talking about!”

  “Well, I do know the water in the pond is higher than it’s ever been, and that’s something you ought to take into consideration.”

  Although she was tempted to say it was a problem he’d brought on himself by damming up the water flow, she turned away hoping to end the discussion. Virgil could be pushed to a point but no further.

  “The pond’s been high before,” Virgil said. “That ain’t it. This is Dodd’s doing and I’m gonna see he pays for it, one way or another.”

  Jeremy’s face lit up. “Are you gonna blow his head off, Daddy?”

  Before Virgil could answer Bethany jumped in.

  “He most certainly is not!” she said. “Now hush up and eat your supper.”

  When the boy went back to spooning peas in his mouth, Bethany glared at Virgil.

  “See what you’re doing,” she said, reproaching him.

  “Yeah, I see.” Virgil grinned. “He’s a chip off the old block, like his daddy.”

  Unfortunately, that was true. Jeremy was like his daddy. He had Virgil’s sharp nose, pinched eyebrows and penchant for meanness.

  Bethany began to notice it the year Jeremy turned five. Elroy was only three then and way smaller than Jeremy. She’d hoped the boys would be playmates, but if she left them alone for more than a few minutes Elroy would end up wailing. When she came to see what the problem was, Jeremy would be missing and Elroy would have a bruise that was already turning purple.

  That’s when she began keeping Elroy close by her side. Before long he was trailing after her every minute of every day. When she hung the wash on the line, his chubby little fingers handed her the clothespins one by one. When she made biscuits, he stood on a chair wanting to stir the batter. Whatever she was doing he’d be there with his round face, smiling and saying, “Me help, Mama.”

  The next day Virgil scooped the dead fish from the pond, put them in a sack and went to see Sheriff Bradley. He walked in, and without a word of explanation emptied the sack of fish onto the sheriff’s desk.

  Bradley jumped up. “What the hell?!”

  “This is what Dodd did to my pond,” Virgil said. “You gotta arrest him!”

  “I don’t gotta do anything!” Bradley replied angrily. “Now get these fish off of my desk before I throw your ass in jail for disturbing the peace!”

  Virgil made no attempt to remove the dead fish. “I’m here to file a complaint, and these fish is evidence!”

  “You got three seconds to get them out of this office! One. Two.”

  Virgil scooped up the fish, stuffed them back into the sack, then took the sack and set it outside the door. He returned and took up where he’d left off.

  “Dodd did this! He’s put something in my pond that’s killing off the fish!”

  By now everyone in Kanawha County knew there was bad blood between Dodd and Jackson, so the sheriff took Jackson’s complaint with a grain of salt.

  “What proof have you got?”

  “The fish! If that ain’t proof enough then I don’t know—”

  “All that proves is you’ve got dead fish in your pond.”

  “Yeah, and it’s ’cause of Dodd. I heard tell he had two dead cows. He’s taken whatever they got hold of and put it in my pond!”

  Sheriff Bradley leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes. “Go home, Virgil, and stop bothering me. You ain’t got a shred of evidence. All you got is some dead fish and a bad attitude.”

  That year the pond overflowed twice and flooded the north field, causing Virgil to lose an entire crop of corn. Then he found four of his best milk cows dead with no clue as to why. It seemed to be one disaster a
fter another, and he found a way to blame Cyrus Dodd for it all. He swore Dodd was out to get him and began looking over his shoulder at every bend in the road.

  The day he discovered an infestation of blister beetles on the potatoes, he came home with his shoulders sagging.

  “How can it be that I got the worst luck of any farmer in Kanawha County?” he said. “It’s gotta be that Dodd brought a handful of them beetles over here and set ’em loose in my field.”

  “I doubt that,” Bethany said and turned back to the pan of peas she was shelling.

  “That’s all you got to say?” Virgil replied.

  “What do you want?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, expressionless as the pan of peas she held.

  “You want me to feel sorry for you? To say poor Virgil has all the bad luck?” She turned away again. “Well, I’m not going to do it. You’re a man with no sympathy to give, so how can you expect to get any?”

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit!” he snapped. “I’m sick of hearing about all the faults I got. Ever since that Dodd woman came running over here with her tale of woe, you been riding my ass and I had enough.”

  The mere mention of Ruth Dodd infuriated Bethany, and the anger she’d curtailed for over two years came flying out.

  “So what are you going to do, Virgil, punish me the way you’ve punished the Dodds? What, you’ll make me go without water? Make me walk seven miles in the blistering heat of summer?”

  “Shut the hell up!” he yelled and started toward the door.

  Bethany’s voice followed him out. “You don’t have to worry about Dodd. You’re your own worst enemy!”

  Virgil stomped back to the barn and spent the night there. He laid back against a pile of hay but couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of Bethany’s words, and the more he thought about them the more he became convinced that she’d taken Dodd’s side over his.

  Once the thought settled in his head, Virgil became meaner than ever. He was certain Bethany turning against him was Dodd’s doing. With no other way to vent his anger, he took to drinking. Night after night he sat at the kitchen table and poured himself several glasses of whiskey. When one jug was empty he’d head back up the mountain and get another. A free jug every now and then was payment enough for telling the revenuers he had no knowledge of a still on this particular mountain. After two or three hours of drinking, he could set aside thoughts of Dodd. When that finally happened he’d flop down on the living room sofa and fall asleep.

  A few weeks before Christmas Bethany told him if he was going to sit there and drink all evening, he should do it out in the barn.

  “I don’t like the boys seeing you this way,” she said.

  “Well, ain’t that too damn bad,” Virgil replied. “I got plenty of things I don’t like too. You wanna hear about them?” At that point he’d already had three, maybe four drinks and had started slurring his words.

  Figuring it useless to try to reason with a man in his condition, she gave him a look of disgust then turned and started for the bedroom.

  “What?” he called after her. “You don’t want to hear what I got to say? You ain’t got no smart remark? No speech about how Dodd’s a better man than me?”

  Bethany stopped halfway up the stairs, turned and looked back.

  “A better man?” she repeated. “Virgil, you’re no man at all.”

  He stood at the foot of the stair and watched as she turned into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. The anger and rage he’d felt for the past several weeks began to bubble up inside of him. He returned to the kitchen and poured himself another drink. He downed that one quickly then started up the stairs.

  Bethany had just pulled her nightgown down over her head when he burst through the door.

  “You got no right to talk to me that way,” he said.

  He crossed the room in two long strides and grabbed her arm. “You wanna know how much of a man I am? Well, I’m gonna show you.”

  He grabbed the front of her gown and ripped it open. Bethany stood there for a second, too stunned to move. Then she grabbed the flap of her torn gown and tried to cover herself.

  “Get out of here,” she said. “You’re acting crazy!”

  Virgil grabbed her bare breast, shoved her onto the bed and laughed.

  “Only crazy thing here is you thinking you could talk to me that way.” He dropped his pants, stepped out of them and climbed on top of her.

  This night there was no slapping his hand away.

  “From here on in, I’ll take you whenever I want,” he said.

  Bethany closed her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the smell of whiskey as he pushed himself inside her. When it was over he lowered his face and tried to bring his mouth to hers, but she turned away.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “Fine!” He gave a cynical laugh then climbed off of her and reached for his pants. “Hate all you want. There’s nothing I like better than a feisty woman.”

  The next morning Virgil sat down at the breakfast table as if nothing had ever happened. He gave Bethany a slanted smile and said, “I’m feeling pretty good today; think I’ll take my boys hunting.”

  Bethany knew by the sound of his words she was now a prisoner. The previous night he’d said she could leave if she wanted, but she would not take his boys. Today he was reinforcing the message.

  That Christmas Virgil gave her a brand new silver locket and said he was sorry for the way he’d acted. Bethany nodded and set the locket aside. By then the hate had already taken root in her heart.

  From that day forward they each went about their life with little regard for the other. Virgil took what he wanted when he wanted it, and Bethany never resisted. When he climbed atop her she was emotionless as a dead woman. The hatred she had for him remained in her heart, but she never again gave him the satisfaction of thinking he’d conquered her.

  Before the weather began to turn warm Bethany missed her monthly for the second time, and she knew she’d be having another baby.

  A Year of Change

  Cyrus Dodd sat in the chair with his head lowered and his hands clasped between his knees. He looked back on all that had come to pass and considered what the future might hold. He thought about the choices at hand, and they seemed pitifully few. One by one he narrowed them down, and in the end there were only two: stay or go.

  He was a strong man, a man who could deal with many things—flooded land, failed crops, hard winters, even humbling himself to a man like Virgil Jackson—but the one thing he couldn’t deal with was seeing Ruth too weary to stand and colorless as a shadow. Her shoulders had grown narrow as a child’s, and her hands, once plump and nimble with a needle, were now stiffened and shriveled to little more than knuckle and bone.

  The decision was not an easy one. He had cleared the land for the farm, dug stumps from the ground and carted off countless wheelbarrows of rock and stone. He’d grown attached to every blade of grass and found contentment in walking behind the plow, inhaling the scent of newly-turned earth and feeling the flow of sweat carve a pathway down his back.

  By the time Sunday dawned gray and dreary, Cyrus had made his decision. He sat on the side of the bed and put a broad hand on Ruth’s shoulder.

  “I’m truly sorry for all the hardship you’ve been through,” he said, “and I’m going to make it better.”

  Ruth stretched out a bony arm and laid it against his thigh. She smiled, but even her smile had the look of frailness.

  “There’s a railroad company laying track end to end across Virginia. They’re hiring able-bodied men with strong backs for a dollar and sixty cents a day.”

  Cyrus saw the interest in her eyes and grinned. “A dollar-sixty a day,” he repeated. “That’s almost ten dollars a week!”

  Ruth pushed herself up on her elbows. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I saw it in the newspaper when I was in town.”

  “A dollar-sixty a day?” She raised her brow in a look of skep
ticism. “That seems hard to believe.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Cyrus said. “Booger Jones told me his brother got a job as a grader. Three months later he was laying track and bumped up to two dollars a day.”

  Ruth’s skepticism stayed stuck to her face. “This job is in Virginia?”

  Again Cyrus nodded. “A town called Wyattsville.”

  “Wyattsville, huh?” She gave a sigh and lowered herself back onto the pillow. “Sounds like a nice place to live.”

  “I thought you might say that.” Cyrus lifted her hand to his mouth and dropped a kiss into her palm. “I been doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks, and I’ve decided to sell the farm and move on. You know how much I love this place and this land, but, Ruth, honey, it’s not half as much as I love you.”

  When he bent to kiss Ruth her eyes were filled with tears. He had told her of the love in his heart but said nothing of the sorrow.

  In the weeks that followed, Cyrus sat by her bed as they talked of the things they would do and the places they would see.

  “We’ll have Bud Thompson ride us over to the Shenandoah Valley Station where we’ll catch the train,” he said. “You can sit by the window and watch as we pass by villages and towns…”

  As he spoke she clung to every word. It was as if a new magic had come into their life. Something sparkling and filled with excitement. A reason to live. A reason to be happy.

  “And when we get to Wyattsville,” he said, “we’ll find us a nice little place to live. A place in town, a street where one house is less than a stone’s throw from the next. You’ll have neighbors close enough to visit anytime you want and…”

  A new vision came to Ruth’s eyes, and she could once again imagine them growing old together. After months of having no appetite, she suddenly grew hungry, ravenous almost. The day Cyrus went into town to post a notice saying the farm was for sale, she took the sugar he’d bought and baked a full tray of sweet cakes with a swirl of blackberry jam inside.