The Run for the Elbertas (15 page)

BOOK: The Run for the Elbertas
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Sula's mouth hardened. “I want none o' your pity pie,” she blurted. She took a step toward Loss, the sinews of her long arms quickening. When Loss retreated she turned to Mother, who had just climbed onto the wagon. Sula and Mother were now at an eye level. “You were a help when my chaps died,” Sula said. “You were a comfort when my man lay in his box. I hain't forgetting. Wish I had a keepsake to give you, showing I'll allus remember.”

“I'll keep you in my head,” Mother assured.

“I'll be proud to know it.”

We were ready to go. “Climb on, Son,” Father called. I swung up from the hindgate to the top of the load. Over the heads of the men I could see the whole of the camp, the shotgun houses in the flat, the smoke rising above the burning gob heaps. The pain of leaving rose in my chest. Father clucked his tongue, and the mare started off. She walked clear out of the wagon shafts. Loose trace chains swung free and pole-ends of the shafts bounded to the ground.

“Whoa ho!” Father shouted, jumping down. A squall of joy sounded behind us. Cece Goodloe had pulled this rusty; he'd done the unfastening. Father smiled while adjusting the harness. Oh, he didn't mind a clever trick. And he sprang back onto the wagon again.

Loss Tramble spooled his hands, calling through them, “If you don't aim to take this widow along, we'll have to marry her to a born fool. We'll have to match her with Hig Sommers.”

We drove away, the wheels taking the groove of ruts, the load swaying; we drove away with Sill Lovelock's last warning ringing our ears. “You're making your bed in Hell!” he had shouted. Then it was I saw the gold locket about Mother's neck, beating her bosom like a heart.

I looked back, seeing the first rocks thrown, hearing our
windows shatter; I looked back upon the camp as upon the face of the dead. I saw the crowd fall back from Sula Basham, tripping over each other. She had struck Loss Tramble with her fist, and he knelt before her, fearing to rise. And only Hig Sommers was watching us move away. He stood holding up his breeches, for someone had cut his galluses with a knife. He thrust one arm into the air, crying, “Hello, hello!”

One Leg Gone to Judgment

I
T was quiet on that day, and the willows hung limp over Troublesome Creek. The waters rested about the bald stones, scarcely moving. I had walked along the sandy left bank to Jute Dawson's homeseat, and in the soundlessness of afternoon young Clebe had not heard me enter the yard and climb the puncheon steps.

He sat at the end of the dogtrot with a rifle-gun sighted into the kitchen, his crutch leaning against a knee. His eyes were closed to a bead. I watched without speaking until he had fired, and the sound of a bullet striking pots and pans rang from the room.

Clebe hopped inside on his one leg, fetching out a fox squirrel by its grey brush. As he came out he saw me and held a quivering body aloft in greeting. There was a purple dent in the furred head, and red drops of blood trickled across the glassy eyes and twisted mouth. Clebe tossed the squirrel into a wooden bucket and hopped the length of the dogtrot for a chair.

“Fox squirrels are taking the place,” he said. “We had a pet one and he drawed the rest out of the hills.”

He laughed, his thin face spreading. “Nothing puts the lean in your muscles like squirrel gravy. When I spy a bowl of it on the table I have to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from shouting.”

We settled into white-oak splint chairs and looked out on the untended patch before the house, now thick-growing with purple bonnets of stickweeds. Field sparrows were working among the slender stalks and the dark blossoms shook in the windless air.

“Poppy and Mommy are swapping work today,” Clebe said. “Lukas Baldridge holp us lay-by our crap, and they're helping him stirring-off his sorgham to pay back. And I reckon they'll fetch us back a jug full of molassas.”

Our chairs were leaned against the log framing and I sat there thinking of the wooden leg Jute had ordered for Clebe. The word had gone up and down Troublesome and its forks that a store-bought leg was coming for him, but the weeks had gone by and he had not been seen at either the horse swapping court, or the gingerbread election.

“I figure Lukas Baldridge is a clever man,” Clebe said, “but Poppy says he's a straddle-pole of the worst kind. Poppy says he's got one foot that's a democrat and the other one a republican. And he can skip either direction, depending on who's handing out the money. He tuck a sled full of gingerbread to the last election and sold it near five times over to the candidates before he told folks to come and eat till they busted. He saw to it every candidate paid in.”

The sparrows set up a clatter in the field patch. Their dull chirps were hollow and rasping, and their grey bodies blew dustily through the weeds.

“Even a sparrow-bird's got two wings,” Clebe said at length, watching them work among the brown stalks. “A pure pity I hain't got two legs.” He drew the palms of his hands tight and bloodless over the posts of the chair.

“Poppy ordered me a wood leg and it's an eternal time a-coming. A leg drummer come and measured me up careful. I reckon he counted every toe of mine and measured them before he got done, but I'm of a mind Poppy's been beat out of the fifty dollars he paid him. My opinion, he's tuck off like Snider's hound with Poppy's money.

“Oh, that fifty dollars will go hard with my pap if that leg don't come. If'n it don't, Poppy will shoot him till he looks like a rag doll does he ever get up with him. He'd had that money 'tater holed for a spell before he turned it loose.”

Clebe drew a knife from his pocket and began to whittle the round of his chair. “Hit's been a heap of trouble I've give my Poppy,” he said. “He was against the doc cutting off my leg when I had blood pizen but Mommy talked him to it. Aye, I can look up yonder on the point and see a yellow spot where I'd be buried now if they hadn't.”

He stopped suddenly and pointed the blade at me. “I figure you never heard about the funeral occasion for my leg. Hit was buried just like folks are. My brother Tom fotched it from the doctor's house in a box and tuck it by the schoolhouse before books were called.

“All the scholars they come out to the road and looked at it. Before Tom left they were daring one another to touch it. They wanted to know what Tom was going to do with my limb, and Tom said he was going to have a real funeralizing on the point.

“The teacher he run Tom off because he couldn't get the scholars inside with my dead leg out there to look at. When he left, a bunch of the scholars tuck right along after him. They aimed to be in on anything that took place. They dug a hole right up yonder on the point. Well, now, Amos Morris preached the sermon and they tell me it was a scorcher. They tell me that if they was any devils around they'd a sneaked off with their forked tails between their legs. Then everybody took a last look and piled the dirt in.

“Then—you know what? Tom recollects that a fellow is liable to have the rheumatiz all the days of his life if his leg is buried with the toes a-curling. So up they dug my leg again and tried to pull the toes straight and they couldn't. What they done was to get rocks and beat the toes till they did straighten out. Tom done that for me. They buried the leg again and piled big flat rocks on the grave place to keep the dogs and varmints from scratching it up.

“O hit's a quare feeling to get one piece of you buried and gone to judgment before the rest of you dies. I'm afraid I might have a busted hard time getting myself together on resurrection day.”

The Quare Day

T
HERE had been no rain during the whole of August. At the month's end the winds came and blew through Little Angus valley, drying the creek to a shallow stream, and now it lay without motion like a long thin pond. Under the banks the waters were stained with shedding willow leaves. The wind had settled before the dew dried on the parched grass. Nothing stirred in the cool air pocketed in the damp hollows.

The sun was high above the hills when the sky beyond the ridge took on a yellow cast. There were no clouds other than a scattering of horsetails. At first the yellowness was only in the west, then it advanced, enveloping hilltop after hilltop until the sun-ball shone dully as through a saffron veil. It spread swiftly east, the hue of sulphur. It came without shape or sound bearing the molten glassiness of a sunset. Flaxbirds settled into the thickets. The dark hollow birds that warbled seldom in late summer sang not at all. Chickens went to an early roost in the sycamore trees, the prickly seed-balls hanging on twig-strings about their heads. They settled without sleeping, pale second lids opening and closing.

Shridy Middleton looked down the valley from the porch of her house. She polished her glasses with a fold of her sleeve and watched the yellow sand in the drying creek bed, the grey-yellow limestone shelved above the bank, the yellow-green of the chestnut oaks on the hills. She brushed her hands nervously over her hair, wondering at the color of the day. The mail hack had passed, and the wheels had rutted their tracks in the creek road. Willa Dowe, their neighbor's daughter, had brought a letter as she came to help with the apple
drying, and now Shridy drew it out of her bosom, glancing curiously at the envelope without opening it. In a moment she thrust it back, brushed the meal dust from her apron, and stepped into the kitchen where Willa was paring apples.

“Hit's no use trying to dry fruit today,” Shridy said. “The sun-ball has a mote in its eye. The slices would mold before they could cure.” Willa was the same age as her son, Rein. Rein, the youngest of eleven, the most cherished, was the “ 'possum baby,” as the saying went. Willa and Rein had in infancy been cradled together when the families visited. To Shridy and her husband Jabe, Willa was the daughter they had hoped for but never had. Although related, the kinship was distant.

Willa stuck the knife into an apple as a holder and went to the door. She stood there a moment, rolling the plaits of her flaxen hair into a tight ball. She made a biscuit of it on her head. “As quare weather as ever I've seen,” she remarked. “Mommy says fruit has to get direct sunlight or it'll lose sugar.” Then, “I'd better get on down to home, for a bunch of things there need doing up.” She paused in her leave-taking, recalling the letter. “But first I'll read what I brought from the mailbox. I'll say it to you and you can tell Uncle Jabe what's in it.”

“The letter will keep until later,” Shridy said, gathering the peelings into a basket for the chickens. “Hit'll endure till I set my mind to hear it.”

Shridy watched her hurry along the path. Reaching the willows at the creek's bend, Willa began to run, her gingham dress flowing about her bare legs. When she had disappeared Shridy went around the house and peered up the hill toward the burned-over patch of new-ground on the second bench of the mountain. Jabe was leaning against a stump he had pulled with the help of his mule. He was staring toward the sun, hat in hand, and with no need to shade his eyes. The mule waited, brushing his nose over the charred earth.

Shridy called to him and the shrillness of her own voice rang in her ears. Jabe did not hear, her words being
smothered by the redbud thicket between. She brought the fox horn from its nail by the mantel and blew into it with all her strength. Jabe turned and looked down, cupped his hands and blew an acknowledgement. Although it was not yet noon, he loosened the mule and started out of the field.

On coming from the barn Jabe heaped a turn of stovewood in his arms. Shridy met him on the porch. His face was butter-yellow like the air, his eyes the color of rain water drained from an oaken roof. And he noted her face, the sulphur hue of dry clay. Her hands appeared more leather than flesh.

“Hit's a plumb quare day,” he said, going into the kitchen. “Must o' been a storm somewhere afar off to the west. My opinion, the wind has picked up dirt from a mighty spindling country where the ground is worn thin. Hain't the healthy kind like the wild dirt in my new-ground.” He threw the turn of wood into the box beside the stove and kneeled to thrust splinters to quicken the coals.

“I'm baking an apple stack cake for dinner,” she said, as if that were the reason for calling him in from his work.

Jabe arose slowly from his knees. “You're not baking a cake on Wednesday, shorely. We don't follow having Sunday cooking on Wednesday.” He was puzzled. “Sort of uncommon, hain't it?”

She poured the stewed apples into a pan, and began to prepare batter for the layers. “Fruit won't dry on such a day,” she explained. “Got to do something with the apples we've peeled.” The letter was like a stone in her dress bosom.

Standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, Jabe viewed the ragweeds marching along the fencerow of the meadow. They seemed yellow as bolted mustard. A golden carpet spread across the pasture which had been lately mowed.

Shridy called to Jabe from the stove, “You ought to put on a clean shirt if we're to have apple stack cake for dinner. Hit's sort of an occasion.” Jabe went into the front room, closed the door and pulled the latch-string inside. He lifted
the great Bible from the maple highboy. It was weighty and he sat down and opened it upon his lap. The pages turned familiarly under his hard thumb. He squinted along the double columns, leafing slowly through the chapters, pausing to scan the revelations and miracles. Every page knew his finger, every sentence his eye. The Book was the herald of the past, the prophecy of the future. After a spell he put the Book away, washed himself and donned a fresh shirt.

The sun was poised overhead when he returned. Dinner was spread upon the table. The pole beans, the salt pork, the beet pickles and sliced onions were in the new dishes Rein had sent from Ohio in the spring. The cornbread on its flowered platter was as golden as the day itself. The tablecloth had come from Rein's wife whom they had never seen. They stood by the table and studied the dishes, rimmed with laurel buds. The linen tablecloth was stark white, cold and strange; it was as if the plates rested on snow. Unspoken were the words that Willa had read to them from the note pinned to it when it arrived:
To my dear Father and Mother.

BOOK: The Run for the Elbertas
6.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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