The Mountain and the Valley (32 page)

“Well, thanks,” Chris said. He hefted the package, smiling. “Did she send the whole pig?”

“No, hell, we got lots,” David said.

“I planned to come over and help with the pigs,” Chris said. He discarded the smile. “But, well, Charlotte had kind of an upset …”

“That’s all right,” David said quickly.

Chris’s glance wandered to the scar on David’s face.
“How
ya feelin
, Dave?” he said.

“Me?” David said. “I’m all right, I guess.”

“How’s everybody else?”

“Oh, fine,” Ellen said.

“Hear from Anna?” He seemed to be asking about people he
used
to know.

“We had a letter this week,” Ellen said. “Thursday, wasn’t it, Dave?”

“I guess,” David said.

“She’s fine,” Ellen said. “You remember Toby—” (Do you remember the day we left you behind, hoeing? David thought.) “He was away for a long time, you know—but he’s back in Halifax now. She sees
him
quite a bit. I think that’s about all. How are you … and Charlotte?”

“Oh, I’m all right. Charlotte’s none too good right now, but …”

“That’s
too
bad,” Ellen said.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Everyone was thinking about the baby.

“Well …” David said, “I guess by the time we get to town …” He gathered up the slack in the reins. Chris took his foot off the wheel hub.

“I planned to git over and help ya with the pigs,” Chris said again, “but that was the day Charlotte …”

“That’s all right,” David said. “Want anything in town?”

“No, I can’t think o’ nothin. She … well … she lost the baby.”

“Oh, Chris!” Ellen exclaimed.

“Yes.” Chris nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I’m
sorry.”

“Yes.” His face began to break up. “Tell Mother, will ya?” He turned toward the house.

David couldn’t find a word to say. His only thought was: Chris, Chris, you needn’t have married her at all. You could still be home.

He started the horse. Then he glanced back at Chris walking up the path to the house. He stopped the horse again.

“Sure there’s nothing you want in town?” he called.

“No, I can’t think o’ nothin,” Chris said.

But he didn’t turn away at once, and David didn’t start the horse.

There was a minute of silence. It seemed as if there was something more that must be said. Then when it couldn’t be found, an acute self-consciousness made it impossible for either of them to summon the physical movement to break apart.

“Thank em fer the pork, won’t you,” Chris said at last.

“I will,” David said.

He started the horse. Chris turned again toward the house.

“You wouldn’t remember,” Ellen said, “but I remember one day, you couldn’t have been more than five years old, you cried to go for the cows with Chris. He felt so bad because they wouldn’t let you that he went out and broke the handle of your cart … so you’d hate him so you wouldn’t
want
to go with him.”

“I remember,” David said.

II

Chris took the pork into the kitchen.

Rachel’s kitchen was as bare as ever. The floor was clean, but without covering. The wooden lounge had a grey woods blanket spread over it, but no cushions. The chairs stood about the room, uncompromising as sentinels. The stove was like Martha’s: a low square firebox, with the barrel-shaped oven rising on a long neck. But its animacy was annulled by the bleak square of zinc beneath it and the blindness of the
front drafts. They were always closed so the wood wouldn’t spend itself in excess. A slop pail held the dirty water. There was no sink. The clock stood nakedly on the mantelpiece. There were no envelopes tucked behind it. No basket of remnants (twists of yarn, short pencils, old buttons …) softened its relentless tick. It shared the shelf with a bottle of ink only. The bottle was still in its carton, a pen thrust rigidly upright beside it. There were no cupboards in the pantry. All the dishes could be seen from the kitchen, naked on the bare shelves.

The whole house was like that. The mechanics of living seemed exposed. It had the hollow echo of a house you are staying in for the night, after your things have been packed to move away.

Rachel sat by the front window, rocking. Charlotte stood before the mirror. She was rolling her long hair over one wrist, then twisting it into a knot like her mother’s.

A subtle change had come over Charlotte’s appearance since she married. The richness of her hair and her flesh seemed to have passed their ripeness. Now it was heavy and musky. The small black hairs at the corners of her lips were more evident.

Chris put the pork on the pantry shelf.

“They sent us over a piece of tenderline,” he said. (His family was never mentioned except as “they.”)

“I wish they wouldn’t
do
things like that,” Rachel said. “They know we got no pig, to pay em back.”

“They don’t want nothin back,” Chris said.

“Maybe not,” Rachel said. “But I guess I’m funny. I hate to be beholden to anyone.”

“Oh, Mother …” Charlotte said. She spoke as if she weren’t quite sure whether it was impatience she felt or what.

“D’ya feel like fryin some fer dinner?” Chris said.

“I guess so,” Charlotte said. “Would you like some fer dinner, Mother?”

“Don’t cook any fer me,” Rachel said. “I never slept a wink the
last
I et.”

She was still rocking and staring out the window.

“They didn’t grieve long fer
their
mother, did they?” she said abruptly.

“Who?” Charlotte said.

“The Bains. Ain’t that Milledge Bain comin up the road?”

Charlotte glanced out the window. “It looks like him,” she said.

“They said both of em was to the dance Friday night.”

“Their mother’s been dead a year,” Chris said.

“Ten months,” Rachel said.
“I
suppose it’s all right fer them to dance, I don’t know. They might as well dance as feel like it.” She sighed. “Young people don’t grieve very long nowadays. They’re just waitin fer the old folks to go, so’s they can git their hands on the property.”

That’s one for me, Chris thought, but he didn’t say anything.

Charlotte opened the door and went out to the shop.

“Had I better take the paper off this meat?” Chris said to Rachel.

“Lottie’ll see to it when she comes in,” Rachel said. “It’ll be all right fer a
minute
er so.”

Charlotte came in with a few sticks of wood in her arm. She dropped them into the box by the stove.

“Lottie!” Rachel exclaimed. “What are you
doin
, draggin in wood!”

“I just got a few sticks, means I was out,” Charlotte said.

“You know you shouldn’t be draggin in wood, in your condition.” She sighed. “I’d git it fer ya if I was able.”

“You didn’t say you wanted wood,” Chris said. “I’d a gut it.”

Rachel glanced meaningfully at the empty box.

“I know, Chris,” Charlotte said. “I never asked you to.”

She puckered her face at him, to let it slide. She brushed off the front of her dress and got the broom. A particle of bark wedged itself in a crack of the floor. She pried it out with a hairpin.

“We should git a piece o’ oilcloth fer front a the stove there,” Chris said.

“It’d be nice, all right,” Charlotte said.

“I wonder how much it’d take,” he said.

He spoke generally, but his glance addressed Rachel. He was opening the way for her to say, “Oh, it shouldn’t take much,” or “It’d save the floor,” or something; to join them in a minor plan. She said nothing.

“Do you know how much it would take, Mother?” Charlotte said.

“I’ve no idea,” Rachel said. “We always had enough ways fer our money to go without thinkin about oilcloth. It was all I could do to keep you clothed.”

“Well, that’s not now,” Chris said heatedly.

“No.” Rachel sighed. “You’re right, that’s not now. But, git it if you like,” she added quickly. “It’s up to you two. I got nothin to say about it one way er the other.”

Charlotte turned suddenly away from Chris.

“I guess we should git you a new coat,” she said, “if we think about gittin anything.”

“No, dear,” Rachel said. “I got lots a clothes to last me out, fer all I go. I won’t he here
too
many more years.”

Charlotte had just filled the stove, but Chris opened the cover and put in another stick. His hands shook on the holder.

Rachel got up. She took the floorcloth from its hook by the slop pail. She got laboriously down on her knees and began to wipe up the sickles of muddy water that had puddled from Chris’s heels.

“Chris,” Charlotte said wearily, “I
wish
you could remember to wipe off your boots outdoors. You know I don’t feel much like scrubbin every day, and you know Mother ain’t able.”

“Don’t …” Rachel whispered to her. “Don’t …”

She looked up in a mime of supplication: Bear anything … bear anything … just so there’s peace …

“Oh … Jesus!” Chris shouted.

“Chris,” Charlotte said, “if you don’t stop that swearin I don’t know what I’ll do. It goes all over me.”

Chris started outdoors, but Rachel was in his path. He moved like someone dizzy. He turned to the cellar door and stumbled down the steps.

He circled around and around the cellar. He looked ludicrously into the potato bin and the vegetable bins. He aligned a stick of wood on the pile. Then he reached down into the apple barrel. The apple was wilty and half rotten, but he bit into it and chewed it the same propulsive ludicrous way.

“A
bout here?” Joseph said. He nicked the pig’s leg with the saw.

“No,” Martha said. She drew her fingernail across the pig’s leg, up nearer the body. “I think about there. I like the legs cut off as high as you can. So I can make stew pieces out of them.”

Joseph sawed off the leg where she indicated, then sawed it twice again.

“How’s that?” he said.

“That’s fine,” Martha said.

She put the pieces with the pile that was to go into the barrel last.

They took out the flap of spareribs next. She kept a steady tension on it while Joseph nicked it from the fat beneath. Then she indicated the contour of the ham with a quick circle of her finger. Joseph followed the circle exactly with his knife. He separated the ham from the body precisely at the glistening hip socket.

He set the ham aside. She picked up the bloody trimmings and scrap-shaped pieces and put them in the pan with the head. They’d be soaked out for head cheese. She put the backbone in the pan with the ribs, to be kept fresh.

“What about the shoulders?” she said. “Will we cut them up or leave them as they are?”

“Whatever ya say,” he said.

“Did we cut them up last year?”

“I think we did.”

“Well then,” she said, “I guess … or what do you think?”

“I like em pickled and smoked, myself,” he said, “but
I
don’t care.”

“The only thing,” she said,
“pieces
come in so handy for a boiled dinner.”

“Well, how about cuttin
one
up then, and leavin the other one whole?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s what we’ll do.”

It was a trifling agreement to reach, but somehow it gave her an odd glow.

Cutting up the pig with Joseph, she didn’t know why, was one of the mutual undertakings that seemed to give them a curious closeness. One of the times when the husband-and-wife feeling became explicit.

He didn’t know exactly how she wanted it done until she told him; but after she’d told him, he did it more exactly that way than she could have done it herself. She knew just the smooth boundary she wanted on the ham, but if she had taken the knife herself it would have come out haggled and botched.

“I hope Dave don’t forget about Chris’s tenderloin,” she said.

“He won’t,” Joseph said. He paused.

“You shoulda put in the toenails,” he said, “fer Rachel to scratch her old ass with.”

“Joseph!” A clap of uncontrollable laughter struck Martha.

It was one of those outrageous things Joseph came out with sometimes in a moment of savagery—not trying to be funny at all. They’d strike her so funny she’d laugh until she was weak. She’d had hysterics once. He’d been chasing a frolicking heifer and come back into the house, shouting, “Git her, no! I wish the hell I had a hot poker to stick up her …” and when she looked at him he had had David’s cap perched on the top of his head instead of his own.

She forced herself into abrupt seriousness, trying to sober up.

“I wonder if Anna’s tenderloin went all right,” she said.

“I imagine,” Joseph said. “Is this all right fer the strips of bacon?” He scored off the belly pieces with his knife.

“Yes, I think that’s about …” She went off into laughter again.

Joseph glanced up. “What are
you
gittin into such a gale over?” he said.

He pretended ignorance, but he was half smiling. He’d recognized his own joke now and was a little amused with it himself.

She shook her head. “Keep quiet, Joseph,” she said, “or I’ll get foolish …”

II

The package of tenderloin had been waiting for Anna when she got home from the office last night. She knew what it was. A spot of grease from the butter it was fried in had struck through the package. She didn’t open it then. She was late, and Toby was taking her to a party.

Anna’s face still held the prettiness of a softly brown-haired, softly brown-eyed child. She talked and acted like the city people now; but there was a little wistfulness about her eyes as if she might be someone going without her glasses. Her face seemed always to be in a precarious balance. If the balance were broken it wouldn’t shatter, but go small—like the face of a disappointed child who doesn’t cry. But sometimes some special thought would illuminate it. Then it would slip right past the other faces that were almost exactly like it in physical detail, and become really beautiful.

It became like that now, with the thought of Toby.

His face struck her with such clarity it was like a blow. His eyes were so clear a blue they seemed exposed, like a nerve. He had a tic of good nature at the corners of his mouth. Recklessness and shyness and quickness to be crestfallen were all mixed up in it together.