Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  “No, ma’am. You see, Miz Abbott, Lige is gittin’ old. He ain’t, to say, stout no more. He’s slowin’ down a heap nowadays. Hadn’t you taken notice? Why, he was puny most all the winter! Had that pleurisy pain in his chest, an’ was down in his back several times. I’ve not never been sick a day in my life, Miz Abbott. I’m stout, an’ I’m used to hard work. You know that! I could hold out to do it!”

  She was setting there on the other side of the room in her little rocking chair, making pleats in her apron, thinking. She didn’t say nothing for a time, and Rady watched her, setting there with her head bent down. All at once it come over him that she wasn’t a old woman at all He’d always thought of her as old as Methuselah. She might of been seventy for all of him. But when he was looking at her setting there, rocking back and forth just a little bit in her rocking chair, the wind from her rocking making some curls on her forehead blow away from her face, and her hands busy with her apron, he felt a kind of surprise to notice that her hair was shiny and black and soft-looking. And her face was smooth … smooth like new cream and just about the same color except for two red spots high up on her cheekbones. Why, she’s a good-looking woman, he thought to himself. And not old at all There was a kind of wilting down in his legs and his breath commenced quickening.

  “I dunno, Rady,” she said, then, and her tongue licked out at her upper lip, and her tongue was red and pointed, and it left her lip wet. Rady’s hands were sweating now, but not about the tobacco crop.

  She looked up at him, and his face went hot and he could tell it was getting red. For she’d caught him eyeing the neck of her dress which was turned in at the collar and went down low between her bosoms. They were big and full and where the dress laid between them was like a soft, white valley. Rady wanted to run his hand down that valley, and he was thinking how it would feel, when she looked up. Her face turned red, too, and she put up her hand and buttoned the dress up higher.

  “Don’t,” Rady said, and he started towards her.

  But she got up quick-like and went over to the water shelf and dipped out a drink of water. She stood there with the dipper in her hands like she was afraid to turn around. Rady went up behind her and slid his arms around her and cupped his hands under those full breasts. They were just as soft as he’d thought they’d be. She took a quick breath when she felt his arms, and kind of choked and let the dipper slide back in the water. He could feel her heart beating hard and strong under his hand. He commenced turning her around, and as he turned her he commenced working on the buttons of the dress. She sort of leaned up against him, curvey and soft so that he could feel her flesh giving under his own hardness, and then she sighed.

  The way a ridge man approaches a woman, commonly, is just that neat and direct. He don’t waste no words asking. He don’t fool around being nice. He don’t act like he wants one thing when they both know he wants another. He just gets down to work. Either a woman will or she won’t. And there’s just one way to find out.

  Well… Annie would. With Rady, leastways. When he left that morning he had her promise he could tend her tobacco, and whilst there was nothing said about it… that wouldn’t of been good manners … he knew he could have Annie too when he wanted. “Hell,” he told us, laughing about it, “she wanted a man. Harm’s been dead a year or more. An’ I wanted her tobaccer crop. You can’t beat a trade like that.” And then he kind of let his breath out long. “God, no, you shore can’t beat a trade like that! Take a woman growed … knows what she’s doin’! She’s … she’s …”

  “You sure you kin hold out, Rady?” one of the boys asked, snickering. “That’s goin’ to be a heap of night work!”

  Rady laughed. “That’s what I like about it! An’ don’t go gittin’ no idees I need any help!”

  Well, I said he was a horse-trader. And he always came out on top. The rest of us were pretty disgusted with ourselves for not thinking of it first. And knowing how he was set up that season we watched him with considerable envy. But I have to admit there probably wasn’t a one of us could of made the grade. Rady wasn’t the old man’s boy for nothing!

  The summer slowed along, hot and muggy, the best season we’d had for tobacco in several years. Everybody’s tobacco did well, but Rady’s did better than anybody’s. That patch of Annie’s was the prettiest tobacco ever I saw in my life Rady stole his plants from the old man’s bed, and he made sure to get the best ones. He got his manure from the old man’s barn, and the best rotted, the most aged, went to the widow’s. She’d sold her stock when Harm died, all but a milk cow and a few pigs and chickens, so she didn’t have nothing for Rady to plow with. He tried to get the loan of the old man’s team, but old man Cromwell wouldn’t lend the team. So Rady hired a team to break the land. But after that he tended the crop by hand. Late of the evening after he got through at his pa’s. For the old man let him know right off he wasn’t going to have him slacking off his work at home. And I reckon he saw to it Rady came up to scratch. But we never felt sorry for him hoeing out that tobacco clean till moonup. We knew what was waiting for him inside when he laid his hoe down.

  Many a time Annie got out there and helped him too. Hoed right alongside of him. Reckon when that tobacco got high enough to hide in, it could of told a heap of things went on besides hoeing. Looked like Rady and Annie enjoyed one another considerable. I’ve passed by late of an evening and seen them out there working together and they’d be laughing over something, the red high in Annie’s cheeks and Rady’s big shoulders dark with sweat bent over a hoe. He took to doing most of the chores around the place too. Fed the pigs for her, got in the night wood and water, mended the fences, kept the weeds out of the yard. And she took to cooking things he liked special to have on hand for him when he got hungry. Apple pie, and ham baked brown and crusty, and when the garden came on she kept tomatoes chilled for him by putting them in the spring house.

  “She’s a awful good cook,” he told me one time.

  And I said the thing that had been on my mind for some time. “You thinkin’ of marryin’Annie, Rady?”

  “I might,” he said. “I might. That’s a right nice farm she’s got there.”

  But for all that, they never went anywheres together like folks courting. She went to meeting by herself, like always, and Lige walked her home. Rady never to say paid her any attention out any place. I don’t think Annie liked that very much.

  One night at meeting—I reckon it was the first time Rady walked a girl home after his trade with Annie—he stepped up to Susie Bratton when the womenfolks filed out the door. Annie cut her eye at Rady and crimped her mouth. He didn’t ever look at her. Just stepped off with Susie down the road and into the night. They had words about it the next day.

  Annie was all bridled up when Rady went over to work in the tobacco. She never came out nor called to him when he cut through the yard on his way, and when good dark came on and he quit and went to the house she was setting on the porch, rocking. He set down and leaned up against a post and made himself a cigarette. “Lord,” he said, “it shore is hot tonight. Brewin’ up a storm, likely.”

  She never opened her mouth.

  “Got the last of the crab grass out today,” he said, drawing in a chest full of smoke. “Hit’s a sight the way that stuff gits ahead of you if yer not keerful.”

  He could hear her chair squeaking as she rocked but she still never said a word. He rubbed his back against the post to scratch an itchy place. “Wisht I was down on the creek right now. I’d like to git cooled off.”

  “They’s nothin’ stoppin’ you from goin’,” Annie snapped at him then.

  Rady looked over her way, surprised. “Now, what’s the matter with you! What you got yore hackles riz up about?”

  “I reckon you’d like to take that Susie Bratton swimmin’ with you down there in the moonlight!”

  “Now, listen, Annie …”

  “You listen! Walkin’ off with that little whore right in front of ever’body! Not a soul on the ridge
but knows what you went fer! An’ then you come over here as big as a gamecock Struttin’ around an’ makin’ me out a fool!”

  Rady was struck speechless for a minute, and then he lashed out at her. “I’ve not come over here struttin’ around like nothin’! I come over here, like always, to work that tobaccer patch! An’ if you feel like a fool it’s yer own doin’, an’ none of mine!”

  She was crying by that time. It’s a sad thing, but when a woman lets a man have his way with her she gives him the upper hand every time. She hands over to him the best that she’s got, expecting him to cherish it, and he don’t. She’s got nothing left to work with, except tears when he don’t do to suit her. And when the time comes she’s got to weep, it’s too late.

  “Rady, you like that Susie Bratton?”

  Rady went over and pulled her up out of the rocking chair and led her to the steps where he set her down and set down beside her. He put his arms around her and waited till she quit hiccuping. “Now, Annie, they’s no need fer you cryin’. I don’t like Susie Bratton an’ you’d ort to know it. Fer that matter what if I got myself in a lather over Lige walkin’ you home Mebbe I don’t like that!”

  “But I jist keep goin’ with Lige on account of folks mebbe talkin’. I can’t hardly jist break off of a sudden. An’ you know Lige ain’t never … an’ you an’ Susie Bratton last night… an’ I know you did …”

  Rady laughed at her real soft and snuggled her close up against him. She was a little woman, not to say fat, just a good armful. “You ain’t got a thing to weary about if that’s what’s on yer mind,” he said. “I never touched the girl. You think I would … after you?”

  “I know good an’ well you would!”

  “Why, Annie!”

  But she wanted to be persuaded. She wanted to believe he hadn’t. “Rady? Didn’t you?”

  “I told you. I never touched her. Jist walked her home. An’ only reason I done that was the same reason you let Lige come around. To keep folks from talkin’. I don’t want nobody givin’ you a bad name. An’ I’ve alius walked a girl home now an’ then, so it looked best to me to keep it up.”

  She was pacified then. She leaned against him, tired out, but at peace. “I never slept a wink last night,” she said. “I was never so heavy-hearted in my life. Jist couldn’t close my eyes fer thinkin’. Rady, you think a heap of me, don’t you?”

  No woman ought ever to ask a man that kind of question. There isn’t but one answer he can give, she’d ought to know that. What peace does it bring a woman to ask a man if he loves her and know she’s put the answer in his mouth. But they all do it.

  “Shore,” Rady said, just as quick as she’d of liked him to. “Shore, I think a heap of you. More’n anybody, fer that matter.”

  Like a kid that’s been given a stick of candy she wiped her eyes and straightened up. “You want anything to eat?”

  “Naw. Hit’s too hot. I tell you, let’s go swimmin’… me an’ you!”

  “Me? I can’t swim, Rady. I’m skeered to death of water!”

  “Well, you kin paddle around an’ git cooled off while I swim, can’t you? Moon’s up an’ hit’ll be bright enough to see. Come on!”

  Wanting to keep him sweet and tender like he was, wanting to stay happy with him again, wanting to convince herself this would last, she gave in, and like two kids, giggling, they set off down the holler to the creek.

  The moon wasn’t full but it was heavy towards it, and the sky was clean of clouds. Just a million stars dimmed by the moonlight, scattered like a hasty-spread pack of seeds. The creek lay like white ribbon in the night, and when they bent over it they could see theirselves give back, rippled and broken, but made whole when the waters stilled. Annie stepped out of her clothes, and her body looked white and cold in the moonlight, gleamy and shiny like a piece of china. Rady had never seen her so before, and he was struck with astonishment at how pretty she was formed. It was a false coldness the moon gave her, though, for Rady said Annie was always fire to touch, and fire to answer to … almost more than a man’s own heat could match. She went towards him, dragging her feet in the sand, laughing at the way it squinched up between her toes. She pulled him down and then she laughed at the way the sand was warm on her back, and the way it tickled and was hard under her hips. Then she quit laughing.

  Rady laid beside her, after, and he felt like she’d opened all the veins of his body and drained out the last drop of his blood. He remembered Susie Bratton and the night before. “God,” he said, laughing, “I don’t know what you want to weary about Susie Bratton for!”

  Annie sat up and shook her hair down around her shoulders. “I jist don’t want you touchin’ nobody but me!” She turned around and gripped his arms. “Nobody but me, you hear, Rady Cromwell? You hear me?”

  He slid his hands up under her hair. “I hear you. Nobody but you.”

  She pulled loose from him then and stood up, laughing again. “Come on.

  Let’s go swimmin’.”

  “I couldn’t swim a stroke right now. I ain’t got the strength to float, much less swim.”

  But she pulled at his hands and made him go in the water, and it was cool and clear and quiet.

  When he took her home the moon was southing, and the fires were banked for the night.

  Chapter Four

  He made Annie a good crop tobacco and it brought a mighty fancy price when he took it off to market. A fancy price for those days. We’d never heard of parity then and seventeen-cent burley was damn good. That’s what Rady got for his. And he split it with Annie. She was well pleased. “You done good as Harm,” she told him, “ever’ bit as good!”

  “You’re pleased?” he asked.

  “I’m well pleased Couldn’t be no better pleased. I don’t believe Lige’d of done anywheres near that good! Fer all yer jist a boy.” “Fer all I’m jist what?”

  A slow blush commenced way down on Annie’s throat and inched up over her face. “Well, in some ways … you know what I mean, Rady Cromwell! You ain’t had the practice of makin’ a crop on yer own, like a growed man would of, an’ you’ve done good fer a start.”

  A start. That’s the way he thought of it. And his mind was turning over several ways to go from there. I know he was thinking some of marrying Annie right off. We were shelling corn to take to the mill one morning when he spoke of it. His hands were broad and strong and they could strip an ear quicker than a rat. He kept busy while he talked, and the corn filled up in the bag. “I know I kin tend Annie’s crop agin,” he said, “but I’d ruther …”

  “You’d ruther git yer hands on the whole thing, wouldn’t you? That’s what you’d ruther do!”

  He threw a corn cob at me and laughed. “Well, why not? That’s a right nice farm she’s got. If I kin git it…”

  He slid a red ear off to one side and picked up a white one. “I’d like to git aholt of them pastures, an’ buy me up a dozen calves this fall to run on ’em. An’ put in about fifteen more acres of corn.”

  “You got it all planned, ain’t you? What does Annie have to say about it?”

  “I’ve not to say … well, I’ve not exactly talked over all of it yit…”

  “You’ve not said nothin’ to her yit about marryin’ her. Ain’t that it?”

  “Well, they ain’t no use of raisin’ the question till I know I’ve heared some talk that Harm left a will that if she married agin she’ll lose the farm. Some says his brother’ll heir it if she marries agin.”

  “I’ve heared it too. But I disbelieve it. How many folks around here leaves a will that you know of?”

  “That’s a fact,” Rady said. “Don’t recollect nobody that ever did. But I’d shore like to find out. Wouldn’t do me no good …”

  “No, hit wouldn’t,” I said. “Whyn’t you ask old Judge Morgan over at the county seat. He’d know.”

  “Reckon he’d tell?”

  “Dunno. But he might. Wouldn’t be no harm askin’. Worst he could do would be to tell you to git t
he hell out of his office.”

  We shelled a while without saying nothing and then Rady knotted the sack. “That’s enough,” he said and he pulled out a sack of Bull Durham and rolled him a cigarette. He handed me the sack and I shook out a paper full. “Rady,” I said when I had the cigarette made an’ lit, “would you like bein’ married to Annie?”

  He was leaning back against the side of the corn crib, his legs stretched out straight in front of him. “Would I like it how?”

  “I mean … bein’ married to her. Ain’t she a awful lot older’n you?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  I never said anything.

  “Shore I’d like bein’ married to her,” he went on after a time. “She’s better’n ary kid I ever was with, if that’s what you mean. But, hell, a man don’t spend all his time in bed. Anyway, bein’ married’s jist about the same to anybody, ain’t it? I ain’t wearied none about that!”

  “She’s not never had no kids, has she?”

  “No.”

  “You know why?”

  “No, I ain’t ever ast her.”

  “Reckon it’s her can’t have none?”

  “Well, what if it is? Be a God’s blessin’, looks to me!”

  “Don’t you never want any young’uns?”