Pamela Morsi (4 page)

“We’ll have to crowd here in the south section of the cabin for now,” the husband-man told her. “Once I get a new roof on the shed we can move the grain in there and you-all can have the north space.”

Eulie nodded It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she and her youngers would be happy to put on the new roof. But their only experience in such was some poorly done patching that was essential just for keeping the rain out.

“It will be kind of close for a while,” he said. “But it will only be temporary.”

“We don’t take up much room,” she assured him. “And it’s kind of family-like to be all bunched up together.”

He met her good humor with stark stoniness. Glancing toward the old man for a moment, he turned his attention to her, his eyes boring into her, his tone of voice stern.

“Uncle Jeptha ain’t used to children and don’t feel well enough to tend them.”

Eulie turned to Uncle Jeptha, intent on assuring him that he was just going to love her younger brother and sisters. The old man’s expression was so slit-eyed and cold, it caught her up short. Indeed, he did not appear to be a man interested in the care of children or even in their existence.

“Keep your youngers out of his way,” the husband-man added.

Eulie couldn’t imagine how that would be possible in such a small place, but she indicated agreement anyway.

“They are all well-behaved and easygoing,” Eulie boasted optimistically. “I’m sure we’re all going to get along just fine.”

Moss Collier looked as if he’d just eaten something extremely disagreeable.

“Is that them coming?” Uncle Jeptha asked.

Eulie turned to see Clara, Rans, and the twins coming up the path. Clara was pretty as a picture, even from this distance. And the twins were neat and well groomed, as always, and looked like they’d grown a couple of inches since the last time she’d seen them.
Rans was dragging a flat skid behind him with all their possessions loaded upon it. Eulie was momentarily grateful for Clara’s stow-it-all, hoarding ways. The wheelless pull might be piled high with all the useless things her sister couldn’t part with, but at least it didn’t look as if Eulie’s family was coming to Barnes Ridge empty-handed.

“Look how full that skid is,” Eulie pointed out to the husband-man. “My brother must be about as strong as any young fellow on the mountain to be able to drag it up here that way.”

At that very moment, Rans apparently complained to his sisters, and Eulie watched as Clara grabbed up one of the ropes to help him with the task.

Eulie swallowed the bad taste in her mouth.

“Course, my sisters are nearly as strong as boys themselves,” she added.

Moss Collier said nothing. He didn’t even look in her direction.

Uncomfortable in the less-than-happy silence, Eulie tried to involve little Minnie in conversation.

“Here comes your brother and sisters,” she said, trying to get the child to loosen her grip on the back of Eulie’s skirt.

The child showed no interest.

“I don’t suspect you’ve seen all of us together in some time.”

“I don’t like them nasty Toby children,” her sister said. But she peeked out from behind Eulie at last. While Minnie was uninterested in the arrival of her siblings, she seemed morbidly curious about Uncle Jeptha. She even screwed up her courage to question the old man.

“How’d you come to have no legs?” she asked, her chin raised in courageous defiance.

Jeptha’s eyes narrowed in anger and he glared at her.

“The bogeyman come and chewed them off, and if you don’t leave me be, he’ll come and chew yours off, too!”

Little Minnie began screaming.

B
ABY-MAKING
was not the only thing that Moss Collier’s new bride could lie about, he decided. She’d stood at his porch and proclaimed herself a good cook and described her brother and sisters as easy to get along with. It was perfectly obvious within hours of their arrival that neither pronouncement was true.

The eight of them crowded around the tiny square table in the far side of the kitchen building. There were only two chairs; Moss and Jeptha had never required more. So the children were forced to eat standing up, and plates were squeezed into every inch of space.

Supper consisted of hocks burnt black on the outside and not even warm in the middle. And cornbread, minus the leavening, that lay thick at the bottom of the pan and could have been better utilized as a cultivating disk. Even the old hound waiting expectantly in the doorway wouldn’t have anything to do with the bread, though he certainly got his share of the blackened hocks.

Moss would not have described the meal as a pleasant occasion. The youngers, as his bride called them, were hateful, backbiting, and filled with complaint. The little one set up to screaming again every time
Uncle Jeptha so much as glanced up from his plate.

“I’m unaccustomed to your kitchen,” Eulie explained sheepishly about the food she set down in the plate before him. “Once I get more used to it, things will be better.”

Moss couldn’t imagine how cooking on one fireplace could be much different than any other. But he picked at the inedible offering and held his peace. He’d already decided that he was not going to spar with her in front of Uncle Jeptha or the children. That was not the way he would exact his revenge. He intended to see that she suffered, all right. His deceitful young bride was going to learn to be sorry for the day she was born. But she was his wife, for better or worse. Her lying trickery was between them alone and he was not about to have the whole family involved in it.

Besides, he didn’t need to offer any complaints of his own this evening. Her brother and sisters seemed to have taken on the task with a vengeance.

“I don’t eat hocks and side meat anymore,” Minnie explained. “Mrs. Pierce says that there should always be a bit of ham for a pretty little girl like me.”

“Pretty is as pretty does,” Clara corrected the child gently.

“Well, there ain’t a dang thing pretty about burnt pork,” Ransom pointed out, plopping the unappetizing meat back onto his plate.

“Don’t you be cursing at this table!” Eulie scolded him a little more harshly than was required.

“'Dang’ ain’t cursing,” the boy answered with a surly sneer. “And I ain’t even at the dadblamed table. I’m having to stand in the middle of the room.”

The twin girls were equally unhappy, though they
at least had better manners about it than their brother.

“Miz Patch can cook up hocks to melt in your mouth,” one said.

The other nodded her identical head in identical agreement. “And her cornbread is near as light as biscuits,” she added.

Even Clara, the mature and attractive older girl, couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

“I had a big kettle of mixed greens and fat back simmering at the fire since after breakfast,” she said. “I suspect Mr. Leight is eating mighty fine this evening.”

The children sighed wistfully at the thought. Moss’s own mouth was watering.

“But he’s not as happy as us,” Eulie pointed out with a broad smile and complete conviction. “He’s eating all by himself, and we are a family, all together for supper.”

Moss failed to see the advantage, and from the looks on the faces of those around him, he was not alone.

Uncle Jeptha snorted with disagreement.

Eulie appeared undeterred in her enthusiasm. Determined in her cheerfulness, she picked at the unappetizing dinner long after the rest of them had given up.

Moss watched his new bride in wonder. She was apparently undaunted by his most unfriendly welcome and his stern demeanor. She continued to flit about the kitchen as if everything were perfectly fine and they were all living happily ever after.

There was nothing happy about the way he was feeling. And it was clear that he was not the only one who felt that way. He took stock of her siblings more critically.

Clara was pretty. Much more so than his new bride. Her hair, which was bound neatly into a bun at the nape of her neck, had more golden hues among the wheat color. Even in her sacklike work dress she showed ample evidence of a fine figure. And her face was positively heart-shaped with a pair of large, luminous blue eyes as her most memorable feature.

The boy, upon close observation, appeared exceptionally strong and sturdy for his age and size—evidence, no doubt, that he was very familiar with hard work and long days. His tow-colored hair was bowl-cut and ill kept, and the sprinkling of freckles across his nose did nothing for his surly expression.

The twins had yet to be sorted out in his mind. Nora May and Cora Fay were their names, though which was which, Moss still was uncertain. They were identical girls, tall for their age and pleasingly soft-spoken. Their hair hung in long braids down the middle of their backs. The only way to tell them apart, they had informed him, was the mole on the right cheek of … on the right cheek of one of them. From his seat at the table, Moss found the mole easily enough, but he couldn’t remember which twin it belonged to.

The two had an uncanny way of simply glancing at each other without word and somehow communicating. Moss watched this nonconversation with a strong sense of wonder.

Little Minnie was the baby of the family. Typically, that position had led to her becoming somewhat spoiled. And she was fast approaching the age when brattiness stopped being cute and commenced becoming annoying.

Minnie showed every potential of one day being as
pretty as her sister Clara, but Moss was fairly certain that she would never have the older girl’s pleasing temperament. There was a high-pitched undertone to her voice as if she were forever whining with every word she spoke.

All in all, they were not bad children. Moss looked them over with some sense of admiration. To have been raised catch-as-catch-can on the mountain, they had not turned out so badly.

Now, of course, they were Moss’s responsibility. And the memory of that made a bitterness well up in his throat that he tasted unpleasantly. His deceitful, lying bride had forced these hungry mouths upon his good nature. And he was not about to forgive or forget the injury done him.

But with his own stomach still rumbling at the end of the meal, Moss took pity on the innocent youngers. He was not a man to send five children to bed hungry, even if they were the siblings of his lying bride.

Moss got up from his chair. The boy, Ransom, immediately sat down where he had been. Moss glanced back at him. The young fellow’s defiant, upraised chin almost dared him to comment. Moss didn’t even bother.

In the far corner of the room, stacked upon open shelves, was his supply of airtights. The store-bought canned goods were expensive and rarely utilized for an ordinary meal. Moss plundered through until he found a can of peaches.

He carried it over to the table. The children were hushed in expectation. Moss dug his Barlow knife out of his pocket and set the point at the very edge of the can’s lip. Using the heel of his hand as a hammer, he
punched through the tin and then moved the knife tip, repeating the gesture until he had cut the top off completely. He set it aside and, utilizing both his thumb and the knife blade, he routed out the top quarter section of peach and laid it without fanfare in the center of Uncle Jeptha’s dish.

He dug into the can once more and fished out another piece. He glanced at the faces around the table before settling on the little one with the fine dress and the carefully tended curls.

“Hand me your plate,” he said to Little Minnie.

The child complied eagerly, never taking her eyes off the dull yellow fruit swimming in sugary nectar.

He served the twins next and then Clara, as silence gave way to the excitement of a special treat.

Ransom looked steely-eyed and mutinous, as if he fully expected to be passed over and had no intention of suffering in silence. Moss doled out a peach quarter for the boy. The fellow seemed momentarily disappointed. Almost, it seemed, he would have preferred a fight to the fruit. But only almost. After a brief hesitation, he dug into the sweet fare with as much enthusiasm as his sisters.

As Moss fished out the next section he saw that it was the very last. One piece of peach for two people. Himself and his bride. Everything that he knew, everything he had been taught about duty and charity and honor extolled him to sacrifice his own needs. To give the last to the young woman who had so gamely provided the most inedible meal in his experience. The woman who had publicly humiliated him with her lies and had ruined what was left of his chances to get off of this mountain and out West where he belonged.

Moss plopped the last peach into his own plate, black-hearted and unmoved. He handed the can to Eulie. It was empty except for a jigger or more of nectar in the bottom.

“You can have the juice,” he said simply.

Eulie smiled at him broadly as if he’d done her a great honor.

“My favorite part,” she told him.

Eulie lingered over her peach nectar, savoring the inestimable pleasure of having her family together once more. Of course, it hadn’t been a perfect dinner. She had been near to shame over the unpleasant outcome of her cooking. The hocks were the worst effort she could recall. And it had been a coon’s age since she’d forgotten an ingredient so necessary to cornbread as baking powders.

Her youngers had been out of sorts and complaining. You’d have thought they’d never had to take their dinner standing up. And the husband-man was still looking like he could spit nails and would gladly use them to pin her ears back.

Eulie drank the last drop of peach nectar from the can. The sharp, metallic taste of tin nearly overpowered the sweetness of the peaches. The children had begun to horse around the room and play. It was time that she commenced clearing the meal. Still she lingered.

She had thought he was going to give her the last peach. Just for an instant, a brief, blissful instant, she had thought it. Of course he should take it for himself. They were his peaches, after all. And sharing them with the youngers was a kind, decent thing to do. She wasn’t wrong about him. He was going to be good to
her. He was going to be good to the youngers. And they were going to be good to him, she vowed. She would see that they were all good to him.

“Here! Stop that, bring that back!”

It was Uncle Jeptha’s voice raised in anger. Eulie glanced up to see that Ransom and the twins had appropriated the old man’s cart and were intent upon taking rides in it across the length of the kitchen.

“Get out of my cart and bring it back to me this instant.”

Eulie hurried to her feet. The strident command had worked with the twins, who were obliging and quick to obey. It was just the tone, however, that was guaranteed to set Ransom’s teeth on edge and get his back up. He did not like being told what to do.

She saw her brother draw himself to full height, hold his arm out to stop the progress of the twins and set his jaw mutinously. Eulie wished herself across the room to put her hand over his mouth to stop his words. But she could not.

“You want it, you old cripple,” he spewed out, “then you come and get it.”

The instantaneous silence in the room was as thick as spring fog in the valley. It was followed by such an inhuman cry of rage and impotence that Eulie feared the old man might throw himself upon the floor and drag himself across the room on his hands to get at Rans.

Such action was unnecessary. The husband-man took two steps and was by his side. He grabbed her brother by the nape of the neck and jerked him off his feet. Moss Collier tossed him toward the door, where he easily regained his balance.

“You’d best keep a respectful tongue in your mouth around this place,” Moss told him. “Now get up to the cabin before I get a mind to take a strap to you.”

“Ain’t nobody taking a strap to me,” Rans shot back. “I’m leaving.”

With that he was out the door and heading down the path at a run, as if he thought somebody would actually follow him.

In the uncomfortable moments after his departure, the twins rolled the cart back over to its position just at the left side the old man’s chair.

“Sorry, Uncle Jeptha,” Cora Fay told him sweetly.

“I ain’t your Uncle Jeptha,” the old man answered, his voice still rough with anger and frustration.

“We didn’t mean no harm,” Nora May assured him. “We was just playing.”

“It ain’t no plaything,” Jeptha insisted. “And it’s mine. I don’t want not one of you to touch it. Don’t even touch it.”

He glared meaningfully at each of the children in turn. They all lowered their heads in shame, except for Minnie, who commenced screaming like the demons of hell were after her once more.

“For lawdy sakes, cain’t you shut that child up?” the husband-man asked Eulie impatiently.

“Hush, Minnie, there’s no need in carrying on so.”

The little girl modulated her tone but continued to make an unappealing amount of noise.

The old man’s face was dark with fury. Grasping the right edge of his chair with both hands, Jeptha rolled over onto his stomach and lowered himself into the cart. With one of the wooden blocks in each hand he easily negotiated the turn and headed out the doorway.
To Eulie’s surprise, the twins followed in his wake, apparently determined to be of some sort of assistance to the silent, angry amputee.

“Do you want Minnie and me to help you clear the table?” Clara asked.

“No,” Eulie assured her quickly. “I can do it.”

Clara nodded and then shot an anxious look toward the husband-man, who was standing thoughtfully hands upon hips and looking a little bit dangerous.

“Come on,” Clara said to Minnie. “And stop all that fussing foolishness.”

“He said the bogeyman was going to chew off my legs,” the child complained.