Pamela Morsi (9 page)

The threatened rain held off until late afternoon. Moss came down from the field, as both he and the mule were soaked. He tended his animal and his wet tack, grateful for the time alone. His stringy-haired bride was nowhere in sight. But her whole eat-him-out-of-hearth-and-home family was up on the porch. He did not look forward to spending the afternoon trapped in close quarters with them.

But that was better than being alone somewhere
with his wife. He’d handled it badly. He knew that. It was important that he talk to her. But he hadn’t any idea of what he would say. He’d handled it very badly. First he’d taken her off to the kitchen with him and had been on the verge of consummating their marriage. Then he’d blamed her for the whole thing. Of course, most everything was her fault. But not the kisses. For that stupid error in judgment, he had no one to blame but himself.

He’d hurt her feelings. And he’d done it on purpose, with clear intent. He wanted to punish her, take her down a peg, wipe that cheerful grin off her face once and for all. It was mean and it was beneath him. But he’d done it and he couldn’t quite conjure up being sorry.

He hung the oiled lines on their tack room peg and headed for the door. There was no way to avoid his new family indefinitely. From this distance it was hard to see exactly what they were doing. Clara appeared to be sorting seed. The boy was whittling pegs of some sort. The twins were staving willow strips for Uncle Jeptha, who sat weaving a chair seat. Everybody seemed busy except Little Minnie, who was dancing across the porch.

Moss sighed, knowing he’d just have to get used to the worthless bunch. He’d teach himself to tolerate them. People could learn to put up with anything if they sincerely put their minds to it. He’d seen plenty of folks with body lice or a bad tooth who lived just as content as anyone else.

He would have to give up his dream. That was the rub, of course. His dream had been in the front of his mind for most of his life now. It was hard for him to think of a future without it. The whole plan of his life
had hinged upon it. Now it seemed that with one fateful falsehood, everything had swung out of control.

He would have to live here on this farm with these people until he drew his last breath. It was with that less-than-serene thought that Moss pulled together the neckline of his shirt and loped from the barn to the cabin porch. His clothes stuck to him clammily and water fell from the brim of his hat in rivulets. But the drenching invigorated him.

He jumped up onto the far east corner beneath the protection of the overhang and shook the excess water off his arms and legs.

He slapped his hat against his thigh twice and straightened the brim before tossing it on a porch peg to dry.

The activity he had spied from the barn had subsided somewhat. The whiny one, Little Minnie, was holding her doll and glaring at him as if he had disturbed her afternoon.

The boy, Ransom, no longer leaned against the porch post as he worked, but stood straight, hands still, in his own way daring Moss to make some comment.

There was a lull in the young Clara’s effort as well. She came to her feet and hurried into the house to get him a towel. He was surprised and pleased at her eagerness to see to his comfort. That’s how it should be, he reminded himself. He was the one wronged here, and this whole family of young beggars should spend the rest of their lives trying to make it up to him. He was less than delighted when what she came back with was a tattered portion of an old oat bag that he often used in winter as a hearth rug for Old Hound.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, demurring to wipe his face on what was undoubtedly a flea-infested cloth. “A little damp never hurt me.”

“We’re making chairs so all of us can sit at the table,” one of the twins told him proudly as she dipped the cut willow strips into the bucket of brine at her side.

“If we can make just one a day,” the other piped in. “Not counting Sunday, we’ll all be able to sit together for vittles in less than a week.”

Uncle Jeptha made no comment, but Moss watched as he wove the soaked strips in a square pattern over a seat frame. His hands moved in a sure and steady rhythm, and with each completed strip he ran his palm across the work, smoothing it with pride.

It had been a long time since Moss had seen the old man so industriously engaged. He worked hard to do his share, of course. But he rarely showed any enthusiasm for his chores. Perhaps he simply enjoyed the task. Chair weaving was not a typical everyday activity.

“Well, I guess we needed the rain,” Moss said, by way of conversation to nobody in particular.

“Yes, we sure do,” the boy said in a mature manner that was so ill-tuned to his youthful soprano voice. “Rain is mighty welcome this time of year. Even if it does get us all holed up here on the porch.”

“Where’s …” He hesitated, somehow reluctant to use her name. “Where’s your sister?”

“Eulie’s down at the kitchen,” Clara answered. “She said she wanted to put some limas on to boil and get the place straightened up so she could find everything.”

Moss nodded, grateful not to have to face her again just yet.

“Did you get much done on your garden?” he asked.

Nobody answered, and Moss glanced around at them curiously. They all appeared somehow almost guilty.

“We … we got a good deal accomplished before the rain set in,” Clara assured him, but there was a strange uncertainty in her voice.

“We all helped out,” one twin said.

“It makes the work go faster,” the other added.

Moss nodded agreement and gazed out through the rain to the far side of the kitchen. He could see that the boy had successfully moved the fence posts to a further perimeter and that the soil in the new area had already been turned. He was pleasantly surprised they had managed to get so much done. That surprise turned to puzzlement when he noticed, to his complete amazement, what appeared to be an attempt to dig some kind of ditch right through the middle of the existing planting.

“What in the devil happened to the garden?” he asked.

Nobody said a word.

He asked them again, more forcefully. “What in the blue blazes happened to the garden?”

“It was your dog that done it,” Little Minnie told him, her lower lip poked out stubbornly. “It weren’t none of us.”

Moss tutted at the child in lieu of scolding. “That old hound couldn’t a done anything like that,” he said with certainty.

“He could with a plow hitched to him,” the boy, Rans, answered.

“A plow?”

Uncle Jeptha cleared his throat and commenced the explanation.

“The children borrowed that old goat harness you got for me,” he said. “They used it to hitch the plow to the dog. It actually works pretty well. ‘Course, the dog did get away that once.”

Moss shook his head, not quite sure whether to believe what he was hearing.

“You hitched the dog to the wheel-hoe?”

“It actually worked pretty good,” Uncle Jeptha repeated.

Moss gave his uncle an accusing look and then whistled for the dog. Old Hound came crawling out from underneath the porch. He squatted down and petted the dog, running his hands along his back and shoulders checking for gall marks or injury. He found nothing but one fat brown tick inside the dog’s ear that he promptly disposed of.

“He seems all right,” Moss admitted finally.

“Of course he’s all right,” a twin said.

“We wouldn’t never do anything to hurt an animal,” her sister chimed in.

“My hunting hound dog was never meant to pull a plow,” he stated firmly. “I don’t want to see him doing that.”

“Well, he
can
do it,” Clara told him. “And he did it very well.”

“The stock on a farm need to earn their way same as the people,” the boy pointed out.

“Old Hound earns his way out in the woods.”

No one could argue that, and didn’t.

“What about that big red horse?” Rans asked him.
“Seems to me he does nothing but eat oats. If you trade him in for a cow, we’d have butter and cheese to put on biscuits. And children need to drink milk.”

“You want me to trade Red Tex for a milk cow?” he shouted. “That is the finest saddle horse in this corner of Tennessee.”

“He is?” The youngster considered that very thoughtfully. “Then perhaps you could get a couple of hogs as well,” he said.

“Hogs! I will never get rid of Red Tex,” Moss declared adamantly.

The words had barely left his mouth when he realized how foolish they were. Red Tex was part of the dream he was going to have to give up. The horse was his saddle pony, his way out West. A cold chill of disappointment swept through him.

His stringy-haired bride had lied about him, and now all was lost.

Without glancing in either direction, Moss stepped past her brother and sisters on the porch and into the dark confines of the cabin.

Behind him he heard the murmurs and questions.

“Did you see the look on his face?” the boy said. “What made him so upset?”

“He sure sets a fine store by that horse,” one of the twins said.

“It is prettier than some old milk cow,” the other pointed out.

“What’s he up to in the cabin?” Little Minnie whispered.

“Mind your own business,” Clara scolded.

The little girl made a noise of distress signaling a soon-to-come dismal wailing.

It never came into being. It was Uncle Jeptha who called for the girl to fetch something to him. The old man was obviously growing accustomed to having the mewling brat around.

Moss walked over to his bed and knelt beside it. From beneath the corner he pulled out a wooden box. Part strongbox, part trunk, he had made it himself from strips of fine walnut, ash, and hemlock culled from the cabin and outbuildings. It was his piece of home and heritage that he meant to take with him on his journey to the rest of the world.

He ran his palm across the flattop lid. He wasn’t much of a carver, but he’d etched his name,
COLLIER
, deeply into the wood, varnished it with pine resin, and shined it to a high gloss. He had been saddened when he’d made it, thinking of how he would feel when all of the people and places here would be in his past. But for years now it had gladdened him when he opened it. It was solid, graspable evidence that someday he was leaving this place. Often it was all he had to hold onto.

Moss unhitched the latch and opened the lid. He gazed with love and longing at the contents inside. The little pamphlet he had sent away for was frayed and tattered from much handling. Carefully he picked it up and read the title aloud: “The Emigrant’s Guide to Texas Settlement and the Far West with Maps and Statistical Information Relative to the Same.”

He perused the handbook as perhaps he had a million times, plotting his route, weighing his alternatives. He could head down the mountains toward Charleston or Savannah, get a job shipboard, and work his way around Florida and across the Gulf. Or he could go west to the big Mississippi, take the river
south to New Orleans, and go by paddle boat across to Galveston harbor. But his preferred plan was to ride Red Tex, continue across Arkansas to the Indian Territory, and follow the south-leading cattle trails into Fort Worth or Abilene.

As Moss stared at the tattered pamphlet, he tried to come to grips with the reality that he was not going to get to go. She had ruined that for him. He would live his life and be buried on this mountain without ever having a chance to see what life was like anywhere else.

He lay the guidebook upon the bed and took out a hefty cotton sack filled with coins. His life savings. He weighed it in his hand, but he had no need to count it. Every extra penny he had ever come upon had gone into the sack, every cash-paying job he could come up with, every hand of poker he’d ever won—twenty-seven dollars and forty-two cents at last count. It was a fortune in cash money meant to give him a good start on a new life in the West. It had no more value to him at this moment than a sack of nails. If he was staying here in Tennessee, not even a fortune could make him happy. He set the money aside.

From the box he withdrew his shiny single-action .44 Frontier. He stroked the shiny blued nickel finish admiringly. He pointed it toward the fireplace and scoped down the sites. It was a fine, expensive side arm. Much better than any man on the mountain had ever owned Handguns, inappropriate for hunting, were a luxury most Tennessee farmers weren’t willing to sacrifice for. But then, they weren’t going West, where a side arm was as much a part of a man’s gear as his hat and his saddle bags.

The Colt had cost him twelve dollars and was
worth, to his mind, every penny. Like Red Tex, it was purchased for his future. Now he had no future. Just more days, more days just like this one. Working his life away on the only plot of land he’d ever known. And he wasn’t even going to have the serenity of silence and solitude. His stringy-haired bride and her whole sorry family were to be a boil on his back forever.

“Whew, lordy! Where’d you get a gun like that ‘un?”

Moss looked up, annoyed, to see his wife’s brother hurrying across the room toward him.

“That’s the prettiest gun I ever seen in my life,” Rans said holding his hands out as if expecting Moss to hand it to him.

He gave the boy a dismissing look, irritated at the interruption.

“You’ve never even seen another like this one,” Moss told him. “And you’re not likely to.”

Abruptly he put it back in the box, followed by the bag of money and the guidebook pamphlet. He shoved the carved wood trunk back under his bed.

“A Frontier .44 ain’t no gun for a boy,” he said. “I don’t want you even so much as looking at it.”

The boy paled as if he had slapped him. Then his chin drew up high and his eyes narrowed in fury.

“Butthole!” he screamed.

Turning, he ran out the cabin door, across the porch, and off down the mountain as the rain poured down on him.

I
T
was Cora Fay who spotted them first. It was nearly dusk, and the rain had stopped; in the distance she spied a flurry of activity coming sidehill from across the river.

“They’s folks coming,” she called out to her sister.

Nora May took up the cry.

“They’s folks coming!”

Eulie, who’d spent most of the wet afternoon sweeping the kitchen’s dirt floor until it was tight and packed as stone and scrubbing down the walls with ashes was in no mood for company. She was hot, sweaty, and dirty-faced and her hair a fright.

But sure enough, when she gazed in the direction that her sisters pointed, below the house on the second rise, there were people coming. And not just a lone neighbor or pair of travelers. It looked like every man, woman and child in the Sweetwood was headed their way.

“Everybody in the cabin,” she said anxiously. “We’ve got to get cleaned up.”

Clara hadn’t even waited for the order and was already inside, flushing Uncle Jeptha out onto the porch.

“Where’s Rans?” Eulie asked.

“He took off in another snit,” Little Minnie told her. “And he ain’t wandered back yet.”

“You twins will have to tote the water, then,” Eulie said.

The two hurried quickly to the buckets hanging under the kitchen eaves. They were full of rainwater, and the two girls began dumping it into the covered barrel reserved for drinking. The twins then hurried with the empty buckets in the direction of the river, which would furnish what was needed to wash.

“Little Minnie can help you,” Eulie said, reaching inside the kitchen door to grab the smaller scrub pail to hand the youngster.

The child’s jaw dropped open in surprise, and then she stuck her lip out stubbornly.

“Mrs. Pierce don’t make me tote no water,” she said with breathy certainty. “I’m her princess. They’s plenty of folks to work better than me.”

“You need to watch how you’re talking, missy, or I know a princess who’ll have a switch taken to the back of her legs,” Eulie warned.

“I ain’t afraid of you,” Little Minnie declared. “If you want me screeching and bawling when company comes, then go ahead and take a switch to me. I ain’t toting no water,”

To prove her point, she abruptly seated herself on an the old hickory stump that was used to split firewood and gazed up at her older sister defiantly.

Eulie maintained her patience with some difficulty. Her family could certainly be a strain on her good nature.

“All right, Little Minnie,” she said quietly. “Don’t tote
any water. But those who don’t tote it, don’t wash with it. With a crowd like the one coming, more likely than not Mr. and Mrs. Pierce are among them. I suspect they’ll be surprised to see that in one day their
princess
has turned into a dirty, ill-kept cracker.”

Little Minnie didn’t answer, but when Eulie held out the scrub pail again, this rime she took it.

Eulie hurried up the slope toward the cabin. The husband-man stood on the ground near the edge of the porch holding a flathead adze and talking to Uncle Jeptha.

“Your sister done run me out of my own house,” the older man complained to Eulie.

“She’s got to wash up,” Eulie answered. “We’ve all got to get washed up.”

Moss Collier gave her a hard look.

“I wash regular,” he said disdainfully. “That way the sight of a crowd headed my direction don’t send me in a panic toward soap and water.”

Her family kept themselves as clean as he did—and a good deal cleaner than his Uncle Jeptha. But Eulie refrained from pointing that out. She smiled at him instead.

“I guess we’re just excited to see folks,” she said. “I guess they’re coming for a pounding.”

“What?”

Both men spoke simultaneously. Neither looked pleased.

“Well, we did just get married,” she pointed out. “It’s right and neighborly that folks would want to wish us the best and give us a little something to help get us started.”

The expression on the husband-man’s face indicated
clearly that he was not in any way pleased by the notion of an outpouring of good will.

Eulie suffered a great pang of guilt. These were his friends and neighbors as much as her own. But he didn’t want to see them because they thought ill of him.

She glanced over at Uncle Jeptha, whose attention seemed to be upon the distant invaders.

Quietly she addressed her words to Moss alone.

“If you want me to tell them the truth, I will,” she told him. “It’s right that folks should think I’m a liar, since it is so.”

The husband-man looked down at her, but there was no real forgiveness in his eyes.

“Since I have to be married to you anyway, I guess it don’t matter that much how it came to pass.”

The hardness of his words were hurtful. Eulie looked away, not wanting him to see how easily she could be wounded.

“Here come the girls with the water,” she said with determined cheerfulness. “You don’t want any of it?”

He hesitated only for a moment.

“Give me a towel and my good shirt,” he told her. “And I’ll wash down at the river.”

She smiled up at him, pleased.

“Do you want a clean shirt, too, Uncle Jeptha?” she asked.

The older man turned back to look at her. There was something in his expression that Eulie thought might be near panic.

“I ain’t got no other shirt, nor do I need one,” he answered. “I’ll be in the barn till every last one of them has been and gone.”

His tone was so angry and adamant, Eulie glanced over to the husband-man with concern.

Moss Collier apparently didn’t see anything amiss in his kin hiding out from company.

Eulie didn’t have time to worry about it now. She helped the girls get the water into the cabin. They hastily hung their bonnets on the peg.

Clara was already stripped down to her petticoats and was bent to the waist brushing a pinch of cornstarch through her long blonde hair to freshen it.

“How far away are they?” she asked anxiously. “How much time do I have?”

“We have time to get everybody washed and dressed, but only just,” Eulie answered.

She quickly grabbed up the husband-man’s good shirt. A towel was more difficult, but Clara pointed one out to her that was hanging in the mantel corner.

Eulie gave it an unappreciative glance. It looked more like a worn-out, flea-ridden rug than a towel. But she took her sister’s word for it and hurried by outside and tossed both hastily in Moss Collier’s arms.

She glanced up toward the new arrivals in the distance, to see that they were already near the falls crossing. There would be barely enough time to get the children clean.

“What the devil!” she heard the husband-man call out, but she didn’t even stop to reprove him about cursing.

Clara had already poured water in an enameled basin, and she and the younger girls were taking their turns. Eulie hurried to the peg where they had hung their Sunday best.

Eulie had, of course, worn hers yesterday, and Little Minnie had several to choose from. She shook out the matching blue calico dresses that she had made for the twins. Neither girl had shoes, stockings, or a decent petticoat, but at least they would have the confidence of a pair of well-made flour-sack drawers under their clothes.

An argument broke out when Little Minnie tried to keep all the water for herself; surprisingly, it was with Clara.

Eulie hesitated to scold the younger girl, remembering her threat to pitch a fit in front of company.

“Let’s get the little ones ready first, Clara,” she said. “Then well have some time for ourselves.”

“You’ll have to tend the children,” her sister answered. “I have to look my best.”

Eulie glanced at her, puzzled. “Whatever for?”

Clara handed her the hairbrush, and unthinkingly Eulie began to run it through the long length of blonde tresses as long and thick as a horsetail.

“Mr. Leight is with them,” Clara said in a furtive whisper. “I can recognize him on that gray mule even at that distance.”

Eulie rolled her eyes. “Why do you care about him anyway?”

Clara didn’t answer.

“You can do a whole lot better,” Eulie told her.

“Better than a kind man who owns his own farm and seems to … seems to care for me?” Clara was downright indignant. “I’m not sure there is anything better.”

Eulie didn’t have time to argue about it.

She was too busy inspecting the cleanliness of a
half dozen ears, three necks and more fingernails than she could count. She didn’t want to embarrass Moss; she didn’t want to make a bad impression. Her family had never had such a fine reputation, and now she’d besmirched both her own name and his with her devious lies. If she ever intended to win back the approval of her neighbors, a clean family and a neat homeplace were absolutely essential.

“They are here! They are here! I can hear people!”

Little Minnie was jumping up and down in her enthusiasm.

In another minute, she, Clara, and the twins were racing out the door. Eulie was still as sweat-stained, dirty, and haggard-looking as the moment she’d walked in.

She jerked her dirty dress over her head and ripped the pins out of her hair. The sound of folks hailing the husband-man, who was apparently standing some distance from the cabin, could be heard clearly.

Eulie washed quickly and nervously, wishing that summer did not require removal of the front door.

She bent toward the enamel basin. Cupping the water in her hands she brought it up to her face.

“Eulie! Folks is here.”

She startled at the husband-man’s voice. Her eyes were full of water and she jerked backward, attempting to modestly pull down the tail of her josey, the basin spilled, she slipped and landed hard upon her rump on the pine floor.

Moss Collier was standing in the door way, eyeing her curiously.

“You’d better get your dress on and tie up that hair,” he told her. “Everybody we ever knew is here and
most of them have brought us something.”

Eulie didn’t have a chance to say a word. An angry voice called out from the doorway.

“What’s going on here? I heard a big thump.”

Protectively, the husband-man tried to block entrance to the door, but Miz Patch was not so easily kept back. She pushed right past him as if he weren’t there. She was a slight woman of middle years. But there was nothing frail or indecisive about her. The widow of Ezra Patchel, Miz Patch, as she was called, was a formidable human being. Like a bantam rooster, her small, delicate beauty disguised a ferocious tenacity and a will of iron. When she said “frog,” the whole room would start hopping. She had a soft spot in her heart for Eulie’s twin sisters, and her concern extended to the rest of the family.

“What are you doing on that floor?”

Before Eulie had a chance to answer, she turned accusingly to the husband-man.

“Keep those people out of here, Mosco. Cain’t you see that your bride is upset?”

Since that was exactly what he’d been trying to do, his expression was clearly puzzled.

Eulie didn’t feel upset, she didn’t think she was upset. She had no reason to be upset.

Inexplicably, she burst into tears.

“Oh, no.” The husband-man’s words were almost a groan.

Eulie knew she shouldn’t cry. She didn’t even want to cry, but somehow she just couldn’t stop.

Miz Patch grabbed a quilt off the bed.

“Here, tack this over the door,” she told the husband-man. “Tomorrow she can be hanging a curtain.
There’s got to be some kind of privacy for a family with five females.”

Somehow they managed to get the quilt over the door, and then the woman shooed him out.

“You go say your howdy-do to the folks and I’ll take care of your Eulie.”

And she proceeded to do just that, helping her off the floor and onto the bed.

“Now what’s wrong, gal?” she asked.

Her question brought on a new spate of tears, but Eulie bravely tried to answer.

“I had to get the children clean and Clara was no help and I slipped and I burned the hocks on the best day of my life and he fed them peaches and he kissed me, but the dog dragged the plow through the garden and I wore my dress yesterday and I ain’t aired it and I don’t got no drawers.”

The last was almost a wail and Eulie covered her on mouth with her fist.

“There, there now, Eulie,” Miz Patch comforted. “We all got days like that and lots of them are right smack-dab in the beginning of our happily-ever-after.”

Eulie couldn’t get control of herself. The more she tried not to cry aloud, the more the tears came down.

“I just want to be happy,” she sobbed. “I just want us all to be happy.”

“More than likely it’s your nesting nature,” Miz Patch told her. “I heard talk coming up here that you’ve done swallowed a watermelon seed.”

“Oh, Miz Patch, oh, Miz Patch,” Eulie moaned.

“Don’t give a thought more to it,” the woman said “They’s plenty of gals got married in the selfsame predicament.”

“It’s not true,” she confessed sorrowfully. “I lied about it. It’s not true.”

Miz Patch gave her a long look and then shook her head. “They’s a lot of gals got married in that predicament as well.”

“I lied about him and forced him to marry me,” Eulie told her. “I thought he was lonely and me and the children, we need a place and … oh, it was a terrible thing, wasn’t it? I should never have done it.”

“Well, he would have never wed you otherwise,” Miz Patch pointed out. “These Barnes and Collier men aren’t real partial to marrying. And he is lonely, though I don’t suspect he knows it.”

“He said no more kissing and no babies ever,” Eulie admitted sadly.

Miz Patch chuckled.

“Don’t worry about that, darling,” she said, speaking with wry understanding. “A man can get mad enough at you to stay away from your bed for two, maybe three, days. But after that, well … truly, it don’t matter what you’ve done, they always find a way to forgive.”

Her assurance was comforting. It did not, however, ease Eulie’s guilt.

“But it was very wrong, what I did.”

“Of course it was,” Miz Patch agreed. “Sometime we get to thinking we’re cornered, we don’t see no other way but the wrong. It’s ‘cause we’re human.”