Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  I don’t know about Mister Rowe, but Junie wouldn’t speak to me for several days over coming home so lit up, and Rady said Annie made him move in the back room for a couple of nights. A woman don’t never seem to understand a man’s need to bust loose once in a while. Women don’t seem to have the need. Or if they do they take it out in scrubbing the floors or washing the quilts or putting new paper on the walls. But anyways they don’t like it in a man, and I’ve never seen one yet didn’t get sulky and pouty when a man takes a night off thataway. Reckon it’s got something to do with it just being men. It kind of leaves the womenfolks out, and I’ve taken notice a woman don’t like her man leaving her out of nothing.

  But it was a night we had! A good one. Fox or no fox, and we told ourselves we’d do it again come full moon.

  Chapter Seven

  Annie didn’t like any part of the deal Rady had made with Mister Rowe. Of course she never knew about it for a time, it being men’s business and Rady seeing no need to tell her. But she threw a right smart fit when she learned about it.

  She all but screeched at him. “Are you losin’ yer mind, Rady Cromwell, or have you done an’ lost it? That place of his’n is big enough to wear out six men! An’ when, pray tell, will you have time to do ary thing to it? What’s goin’ to happen to yer own place, fer goodness’ sakes!”

  “I’ll tend it. Same as usual. I got it all planned.”

  Annie switched her skirt loose from a snag that was hung, and she yanked so hard on it she ripped a big hole in her skirt. “Wel l,” she said, jerking at her dress, “that’s good news. But it’ll take a heap more’n planning to take keer of two places!”

  “I kin do it.”

  Annie moved where he was and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Rady,” she said, “I wisht you wouldn’t. Hit ain’t as if we needed to rent from Mister Rowe. We got aplenty to do. We’re makin’ out good. What need of more?”

  He stood up and put both hands around the curve of her waist, which was some thicker than when he’d first put them there, her adding weight since they were married. “They’s alius need for more, Annie,” he said. “Jist don’t weary yerself. I got it all planned. An’ it’ll work out fine. Mister Rowe don’t know the first thing about farmin’. He’s got to have somebody do it right. An’ I kin make us twicet as much helpin’ him out.”

  Annie told Junie what she was too proud to tell Rady … that it was on account of Miz Rowe she had such objections to him renting from Mister Rowe. She said it was almost more than she could stand … the thoughts of Rady seeing Miz Rowe all the time. For he would. She’d always be around some place, and Rady’d be coming and going, and he’d talk to her, and he’d see her white face, and her proud eyes, and her silky, black hair, and her slim, long body. And Annie was short and given to fat, and her hair was streaking gray … and she was older … old …

  Annie watched Rady and there was a deep hurt and growing anger inside of her. Why would he want to tend Mister Rowe’s place? Why wasn’t he satisfied with his own place? What more did he want? Or need? And the hurt came from thinking of Cordelia Rowe, and the anger came from Rady not telling her. She’d heard the stories about Miz Rowe … about her white, pretty face and her heavy, coal-black hair. About the way she rode of an evening, and of how she never spoke or passed the time of day with a soul she ever met, but rode past like they were never there. About the way she’d sent that woman servant to the door the few times folks had gone to see her right at first. Sent her with the word that Miz Rowe wasn’t at home, when a minute before they’d seen with their own eyes she was. But very few had got up the nerve to go in the first place, and time she’d sent such word to them, nobody cared to venture there again.

  It was like I had known it was going to be. She was too handsome a woman not to be a thorn in the flesh to all the womenfolks on the ridge. Just the knowing she was there, hid behind the snow-white curtains that hung at the windows, or riding that big chestnut horse of hers of an evening, just the knowing was troublesome. The knowing rankled every woman on the ridge, Annie amongst them. They talked, when they were together, about her high and mighty ways, about her queerness, about how she must be poorly to be so white and thin. But they thought, when they were alone with their thoughts, about that white, handsome face, that proud-chested body, that thick, heavy hair, and most of them, looking down at their own paunchy stomachs and flat, saggy chest, must of felt hopeless and bedraggled, and must of eaten bitter gall with the looking.

  Annie oughtn’t to said no more, but her hurt and her anger prodded her on. “Rady,” she said, after a time, “I ain’t in favor of this trade you’ve got with Mister Rowe, an’ I ain’t goin’ to stand fer it!”

  Rady made no answer.

  “You hear me, Rady?” she yelled at him.

  “I hear you.”

  “I’ll not have it, I said!”

  He moved away from her, slow and careful. “What you aim to do about it?” he said, finally.

  “I’ll show you what I aim to do about it,” she screeched, hoisting up her skirts and flying at him like a cat with a coal of fire tied to its tail. “I’ll show you!” and she went flailing at him with both hands, clawing and scratching at his face and neck, drawing blood with every time she dug in.

  She took Rady by surprise and he was thrown off balance at first by the weight of her storming up against him, but then he steadied himself, spraddling his legs and planting his feet, and he got a tight grip of her hands and just held onto her. Rady had a grip that could paralyze a grown man and Annie was helpless as a kitten in it, but she kept on kicking and screaming at him a time longer. When she finally give up and quit struggling and was commencing to have some sense again, Rady slapped her … and it was no easy lick he give her. It cracked hard against her jaw and he had to turn loose of her to let her fall. When she got up he slapped her down again, on the other side of her face. She just sat there, then, looking up at him kind of dazed and un-understanding. She shook her head, like it was ringing, maybe, inside. Then she buried her face in her hands and commenced crying. Rady stood there and watched her cry a minute. Then he hitched up his belt. “Don’t never do that agin, Annie,” he said. “Don’t never, you hear? An’ you may as well git used to the idee! I’m goin’ to tend Mister Rowe’s place. Fer I am. Now git up.” And he went out the back door.

  Cordelia Rowe had something to say about the deal too. I don’t know when Mister Rowe told her Rady was going to tend the place for him, or whether he told her or not. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe she just took notice of Rady coming and going about the place and caught on. But anyway, one day a few weeks later when the ground had warmed and dried sufficient for plowing, Rady was putting up the team late in the evening after plowing all day. He’d unhitched and turned the mules loose in the barn lot and was hanging up the harness when she stepped in through the big door.

  She was dressed for riding, in those tight pants she wore and a white shirt with a dark jacket over it. Rady figured she’d come to the barn to get her saddle. She’d tied her hair back with a red ribbon and in the gloom of the stable her face, without the black hair around it, looked thin and bare and sharp-boned. She stood there in the barn door, with the light behind her, only her face and the front of her shirt shining white in the gloominess. She had one hand braced across the door and she stood there a minute, not moving, like she was getting used to the dimness in the barn before going inside.

  Rady moved and she looked at him, quick and sharp. “You? Cromwell?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You want me to catch up yer horse, Miz Rowe?”

  “No.”

  She stepped inside the barn and went over to the wall where her saddle hung on its peg and lifted it down. But she let it slide onto her feet and swung around towards Rady. “Tell that moonshiner friend of yours,” she said, the words coming steady but clipped, “that he needn’t bring any more of his stuff around here.”

  Rady walked over and picked up the saddle. “I’ll pack this out fer you
.” he said. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him.” He went towards the door and blotted out the light. As he passed her he spoke again, and his voice was soft and low. “You think that’ll do any good?”

  He went on outside and leaned the saddle up against the barn. She stood still inside for a minute, then she followed him out, walking quick and fast after him. “What do you mean?”

  “If he don’t git it from one feller, he will from another, won’t! he?”

  She raised her hand then and pushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead, and it was a weary motion, like she’d done it so many times before she didn’t even know she was doing it. And her wrist was tired in its droop. “I’ll take care of that,” she said. “You just tell him what I said.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you going to help with the place?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m tendin’ it.”

  “What kind of a contract have you got with Jim?”

  “Why, they’s not, to say, no kind of a contract, Miz Rowe. We jist worked out a deal. I’m to take keer of ever’thing fer Mister Rowe, on the halves.”

  She just stood there and looked at Rady. She was slim, not thin the way the womenfolks said, slim as a reed down by the river, and about as whippy, but they were right about her being proud-chested. Even with a jacket over her shirt the curve of her bosom was bold. And the red ribbon on her hair was like a thread of blood wound through the black. A cloud shifted just then and the sun came out like it does sometimes just before it sets, strong and, for a few seconds hard and bright. They both stood there in the light, blinking a little in its brightness, and Rady took notice that where the sun laid across the top of her head the hair was tinged with red. It surprised him, for he would of sworn it was black as a crow’s wing. Then the sun went under the bank of clouds again and the light went gray and there was no red at all left in her hair. She spoke. “I suppose,” she said, “you’ll cheat him out of everything but his eye teeth. He’ll be fair game for a smart man, and I take it you’re a smart man.”

  “I think so, ma’am. But I’m not aimin’ on cheatin’ Mister Rowe.”

  Rady’s overhalls were sweated and dirty, and some of the dust from the fields had settled on his face and grimed it, mixed with sweat and the burn of the sun. He’d taken off his hat and there was a line across his forehead that stood out white where the hatband came. His hair was kinked from not having been combed all day. But he gave no notice if he felt dirty and mucky before her, and he met her look straight and steady.

  “Why are you renting from us?”

  “Because Mister Rowe asked me to. An’ I kin make both him an’ me a good profit. That ain’t illegal as I’ve heared of.”

  She laughed, kind of ugly. “I don’t imagine illegality would bother you much.”

  “No, ma’am. But it won’t be necessary.” Then he broke her look and turned. “I’ll catch up yer horse fer you now, ma’am.” He whistled, a shrill, long whistle that brought the horse’s head up fast and made him come trotting towards the barn.

  “He’s never done that for anyone but me,” Miz Rowe said.

  “He does it fer me now, too,” Rady said. He laid the saddle blanket on and smoothed it, then swung the saddle up and cinched it. “He’s a fine horse.”

  “Do you like horses?”

  “Well, I’ve not never had none but work horses, ma’am. But I know a good one when I see it.”

  Miz Rowe swung up in the saddle and picked up the reins. The horse twitched its head like it knew she was in a hurry. Miz Rowe touched her forehead with her crop, like a man tipping his hat. “Thanks,” she said, and she dug her heels into the horse’s side. He plunged a time or two, then flashed through the gate and Rady stood and watched them straighten out in a hard run down the road.

  The woman could ride all right. And she was a handsome bitch, too. He wondered about a woman like that in bed. Steely and hard. He wondered what she was like melted and softened. Or did she melt and soften? Would a man just wear himself out against the hardness? When a woman as frozen as her thawed, would it be hot and enveloping and drowning … a full flood let loose and high tide a man could ride to its ebbing? Or would it be a thin, slack, puny little stream, a trickle that would leave him thirsty and dry? He licked his lips and he found that the saliva in his mouth had dried up and his tongue felt too big and suddenly he wanted a drink … a big drink of fiery likker to wet his mouth and slack the cramp in his groin.

  He went back in the barn, then, where he kept a jug hid in the hay, taking a nip now and then when he wanted it.

  The hay in the barn was dry and warm around him, and the cows made a little noise, lying in the straw in the stalls, stirring, not restless or discontented, but the way a cow with a full stomach and maybe a calf near time to be raised will stir. There was a sharp smell of ammonia from the stalls, sour and prickly, and it mixed with the dry, musty smell of the hay, and Rady stood there a time, smelling it and feeling the content in the barn all around him.

  He thought on the next day’s plowing and the work laid out for tomorrow. And he thought he’d best be getting the Pringles up on the ridge soon. And he thought on having to get Mister Rowe’s tenant house ready for them, and he thought on how he’d break it to Mister Rowe the Pringles were coming and how he was aiming on using the tenant house after all. Break it so’s Mister Rowe wouldn’t think nothing of it.

  And then all his thoughts blurred and ran together, and he could see Miz Rowe standing in the bright band of sunlight, the red showing her hair, and her eyes wide and black as night. Not saying anything. Just standing there. And just thinking on her made him have a cold feeling on the back of his neck and a tight feeling inside him. He thought how she was like a knife, with her white, tight face and slim body, a knife razor-honed, whetted and sharpened to a thin edge … a thin, cutting edge. He’d always liked the feel of a tempered blade in his hands, a corn knife, say, or tobacco knife. And he liked the way a corn knife slashed through dried cornstalks, leaving them guillotined and useless in the field. Or the way a honed tobacco knife slid through a tobacco stalk, like a hot knife slicing butter, no grain or jar to it, just smooth and clean and sure. Thinking of Miz Rowe and the way she was edgy and sharp and cold made him have a strung, fiddle-tight feeling inside of him. He wanted to feel the temper of the blade in her. See if she bent or gave. See if she … but he gave it over and took another swig from the jug. “The hell with her,” he said, stoppering the jug. “The hell with her.”

  Chapter Eight

  When you look back on the way things happen to a man, and the way his life goes, it sometimes seems as if he’d set himself a kind of goal and had headed for it all his life, everything happening with that goal in mind, and all his purposes and aims fixed by it. Like he never lost sight of it for a minute. Like he never thought on any other thing. Like he was besieged and obsessed by it. And with Rady Cromwell it seems more that way than with most.

  But when you take it all to pieces and look at it, you can see how he moved little by little, studying only one thing at a time, never fixing even to himself any particular goal in view, but watching sharp and making the most of every chance that come his way. If he was driven by one thing, and one thing only, he never knew it himself. He was just following his own instincts, looking out for himself, and with some pride in his way of knowing what would better him. You might say that always stood out plain in front of him. Bettering himself. Making more for himself. But that seems to be a common enough ambition in most men and nothing peculiar to Rady. On the ridge it meant working more land and working it better. Seeing every way to get the most out of every acre, and turning your hand to get more acres.

  Like he told Miz Rowe, Rady never had no intentions of cheating Mister Rowe, and as far as I know he never did. Of course he took an advantage when he made the deal with old man Pringle, unbeknownst to Mister Rowe, to work his own land, but it was not an advantage that would work against him. It was the kind of deal that had to be worke
d the way Rady worked it. On the quiet. But he knew he could give the Pringles a third of his half share, and still make money for himself. He knew what he could do, and he knew precious few men on the ridge could come close to it. He could get more work out of the Pringles than Mister Rowe ever could, and he could work harder and longer than most, himself. But he didn’t want his chances of proving it ruined before he got started. So he slid into it easy and cautious. The time had come, now, when he wanted to move the Pringles to the ridge. It was warming up considerable and corn needed to be in the ground. Pastures needed to be cut soon, and there was a mort of work on both Mister Rowe’s place and Rady’s needing done all at once.

  So Rady took a quart bottle out to his barn and filled it from the jug and slid it into his hip pocket, and then he set out like he’d been doing for a week or more to plow on Mister Rowe’s place. Mister Rowe nearly always came out sometime during the day to see how he was getting along, and Rady thought he’d likely have a pretty big thirst on by now, him having done as Miz Rowe said and told Enos Higgins to quit delivering Mister Rowe’s jug.

  I don’t know what time of day Mister Rowe wandered out to take a look at the plowing, but it was mid-afternoon when I happened by and he was setting in the shade of a chestnut oak making mighty good headway on that quart bottle of Rady’s then. I’d been fishing. Was plowing that morning when I saw the flying ants swarm out of an old stump and I never even finished the row. Just unhitched my old Beck mule and left the plow where it was at. When the flying ants swarm like that the suckers are on the shoals and a man’s losing time to finish a row of plowing. There’s always time to plow, but when the suckers are shoaling, there’s no time to lose. I caught me a string as long as my arm, too, running all the way from ten to eighteen inches.

  When I came alongside the field where Rady was plowing I yelled at him and held the string of fish up where he could see. He pulled his team around in the shade and came over to take a closer look. “Doggone,” he says, “them’s pretty. Where’d you catch ’em?”