Judy said.
“There is no luck for the African man,” he said.
“Well, at least you remember your mother. Mine died bearing me. My father put me out for bond when I was but seven and I never saw him or my sister again.”
Cornelius looked down at his plate for a moment and then reached over to her. He touched the side of her face with one finger, running it from her forehead to her cheek to her chin. So startled by the unexpected tenderness of his touch and so moved by the unmistakable sympathy in his eyes, Judy dropped her fork with a clatter that made them both jump.
He spent that night in her bed and returned after sunset
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the next, and the next, all that spring and summer, into fall.
Sometimes he arrived so late that Judy would have fallen asleep waiting for him, naked under her skirt.
Startling awake, she would find him staring at her. On moonless nights, his eyes were the only light in the pitch-dark room. And then he would kiss her, and she saw nothing more.
Cornelius taught her how to kiss. Lip on lip, teeth on teeth, mouth on ears, neck, wrist, thigh. With velvet tongue, gently, urgently, slowly, hungrily. He presented her with bouquets of kisses, some heavy with need, some light as dandelion fluff.
She had been with a man before. She knew a little of the unnamed release and rush between her legs, the odd sense of power in getting a man to cry out in spite of himself. But not kissing. She had known nothing of kissing.
The fullness of Cornelius’s lips was her delight, a silken press that calmed her, then roused her, then freed her to try and return the pleasure. He repaired her roof, dug her root cellar, built and set the bedposts, but none of those gifts compared to Cornelius’s kiss, the memory of which made Judy weep and fume during the long winter months when he visited no more.
For after the first freeze, Cornelius disappeared. Judy worried that he might be sick or injured, but soon learned that he was healthy and working odd jobs her
e and there.
Then she wondered if she’d given him some offense and tramped the main roads in and out of Gloucester hoping to find him and ask. But their paths never crossed. When she learned that he was sleeping on Ned Crawford’s floor, she stopped by with an extra potato or to ask for a pinch of tea.
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But she never found him in. Judy shivered all that winter, unable to get warm.
Cornelius returned to her early in the spring, bearing four scrawny rabbits but no explanation for his absence.
Judy had been too grateful for the sight of him to ask why he had left her or what had brought him back.
For five years that was his pattern. Cornelius would vanish for the winter, like a bear, returning to her with the spring. The cold months were hard to endure, but the prospect of April kept Judy alive.
And then came a spring without him. She waited night after night, startling at the hooting of owls, wakened by the scamperings of mice. She mended her quilt and scrubbed her floor until the knots in the boards were bleached white.
She asked Easter if she’d heard any news of Cornelius Finson and learned that he was working in a Gloucester fishery and sleeping in a warehouse there.
May passed and Judy grew thin. Easter Carter made her drink a double dose of her lively tonic, thinking she was just springish. But Judy got so skinny and pale, Easter began to suspect something else was afoot and started to ask questions.
In September, Judy finally found Cornelius on the Hutting farm, where he’d been hired to butcher a hog. But there was no talking to him, not with Silas standing by, his two sons watching as well.
“Don’t you go witching on our property,” said the younger one, a boy of seven or so.
“We’ll throw you in the water, and you’ll melt,” said the other, who had a harelip and was never seen in town. Silas crossed his arms and nodded at his boys’ nasty fun. Judy walked away, furious. Carrying herself as tall as she could,