Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  “This side the Beaver Hole,” I says. “Could of got twicet as many. Jist got wore out haulin’ ’em in.”

  “Man,” he says, “they shore make my mouth water!” Then he grinned. “Reckon these’ll cool Junie’s temper off some.”

  “That’s what I’m hopin’,” I says, grinning back at him. Junie’s a mighty fine woman, and I’d not allow nobody to say otherwise, but it’s a fact she’s quick-spoke, and being a hard worker herself she’s got little patience with them that ain’t. Liking to fish and hunt like I do, there’s been times when she’s been right put out at me. Rady’s about the only man could josh with me about it, though, and get by with it. But Rady’d known Junie longer than I had, and wouldn’t of been any use me trying to hide her notionness from him. Facts is, I’d kind of looked askance at that first young’un of ours more’n once, him being born a couple of months too soon the way he was, and me knowing it wasn’t on my account he come too soon. But after I knew Junie better I figured he was a seven-months young’un like she said, for if she was as hard to corner after it was legal and proper, I allowed not even Rady Cromwell could of got to her without. “I figger,” I says to him, “these’ll kind of offset me not gittin’ that cornfield done today.”

  “They might,” he allowed. “I been thinkin’ some of goin’ fishin’ myself come Sunday.”

  “Suckers’ll all be gone by then,” I told him. “You better take off an’ go this evenin’.”

  He shook his head. “Got too much to do.”

  Mister Rowe pulled himself to his feet then and walked over, kind of hanging onto the fence to steady himself. He was a handsome man, all right, there’s no denying. But there’s something about seeing a man drink himself into limberness of a daytime that’s never set good with me. I’ve been drunk my share of times, but it’s always been done decent-like, of a night when I was coon hunting or fox hunting, or out roistering around with the boys. I don’t hold with daylight drinking. Mister Rowe was mighty unsteady on his feet, but he pulled himself along the fence to where we were standing. “He’s got too much to do,” he said, solemn as an owl, his head wobbling on his neck and his eyes kind of glazed. “Rady’s a very busy man. Got too much to do to go fishing. But I can go fishing. I’ve not got too much to do. Rady’s taking care of everything and I can go with you. Just say when.”

  “Well, not right now, Mister Rowe.” I says, “I just been. I got to go on home now and do up the work.”

  “Just say when,” he droned on, “just say when. Now or then, it doesn’t make any difference. I can go. Rady’s got too much to do, but I can go.”

  “You better go set down, Mister Rowe,” Rady said. “Go on back an’ set down in the shade. You don’t want to git a sunstroke now with all that likker inside you.”

  Mister Rowe looked at Rady like a kid looking at a grownup, trusting and kind of puzzled-like. Then he put his hands up over his head like he was keeping the sun off and turned around and commenced backtracking. “No. I don’t want to get a sunstroke, do I? Not with all this liquor inside me. When I go fishing I can get the sunstroke too, can’t I?” And he leaned up against the tree and slid down its trunk.

  Rady laughed. “He shore was dry.”

  “How much has he had?”

  “Best part of that quart. He had the shakes all right.”

  “Liable to kill him!”

  Rady shook his head. “Naw. He’ll sleep it off.”

  I looked out across the field Rady was plowing. Like everything else he did, Rady did a nice job plowing. “How you gittin’ along?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he says, “jist fine. Fixed it with Mister Rowe today to let the Pringles have his tenant house, an’ I’ll be gittin’ them up here soon now. Git that old man an’ them boys to workin’ an’ ever’thing’ll move faster.”

  He was grinning and I knew then how come Mister Rowe to be limber. I couldn’t help laughing. “Looks like you fixed Mister Rowe.”

  “Jist a mite,” he says. “Figgered it wouldn’t hurt none. Make it kind of painless fer him.”

  He held his hand up to measure the sun. “Jist a coupla hours left. I got to git back to my plowin’.”

  I hefted my string of fish and pulled out and Rady swung his team around out of the shade.

  He finished up the day’s stint and left Mister Rowe with his bottle in the shade until he’d put up the team, then he went back to take him to the house. “Got any left?” he asked.

  Mister Rowe just blinked at him, not hearing what he’d said nor able to take in its meaning had he heard. “Come on,” Rady told him, “let’s go home.”

  He pulled him to his feet and commenced walking him along the edge of the field, but Mister Rowe was too far gone to walk, so Rady hoisted him like a sack of meal over his shoulders and took him in. At the back door he let him slide down in a heap at his feet, and knocked on the door. Miz Rowe came. She looked at her husband and then she looked at Rady. “He come by a bottle, ma’am. I’ve brung him home.”

  “I see,” she said. “Where did he get it?”

  Rady shrugged his shoulders. “A man alius knows ways, Miz Rowe. Hit does little good to forbid him.”

  “I haven’t forbidden his drinking, Cromwell,” she said. “The doctors have forbidden it. He isn’t allowed any alcohol at all. If he doesn’t stop drinking, it will kill him.”

  She wasn’t dressed in her riding clothes that day, and she stood in the door in a blue dress that tied around the middle with some kind of a sash that made her look more like a girl than a woman, banding her waist so that it looked small enough a man’s two hands could span it. And there was pink in her checks from the heat of the stove where she’d been cooking supper. Rady could see past her into the kitchen that was like no other kitchen on the ridge, with its brightness and color and shining cleanness. Everything about the house was like Miz Rowe herself, clean, shiny, in place, and the curtains that hung in the kitchen were as snow white as those in the rest of the house.

  Rady looked down at Mister Rowe, limp at his feet, and Miz Rowe looked too. “Bring him in,” she said then.

  Rady slung him over his shoulder again and followed her through the house into the bedroom. It was the downstairs bedroom and she motioned for Rady to put Mister Rowe on a tall, four-poster bed with a canopy of some thin white stuff spread over it. When Rady’d put him down he looked around, and he knew he’d never in all his life seen so pretty a bedroom. So quiet. So clean. So kept. Shiny floors, shiny furniture, white spreads and walls. Clean and uncluttered and uncrowded. He took a deep breath, for I reckon he was seeing it against what he’d been used to all his life, a straw tick on a loft room floor when he was a boy, and now an iron bedstead with a patchwork quilt of Annie’s making for a coverlid.

  We’re lucky on the ridge if we’ve got as much as a spare room to put a bedstead in. Mostly we’ve got to crowd beds into every room on the place excepting the kitchen, and mostly we don’t worry nor care. I reckon beauty inside a house is something we don’t know much about. The women-folks take a pride in their flower pretties in the yards, and the smartest of them are not content unless things are tolerably clean, but there’s few places not cluttered with a sizable brood of young’uns, and there’s no woman on earth can keep a house redd up good with eight or nine kids and a man to do for, in two or three rooms.

  Annie had got Rady used to something better than he’d ever had before, but Annie was a ridge woman too, and paper roses in a fruit jar on the mantel and bright pink curtains from the mail order were awful pretty to her. Rady’d not seen prettiness made out of space and order and whiteness and shine. But he knew the Rowes well enough by now to know that whatever they had; and whatever they did, had come from the ways of money and good living. The room looked empty to him, but he liked it, and he knew if the Rowes had it, it was right.

  “I can manage now, thank you,” Miz Rowe said, and she stood aside for Rady to leave.

  “I’d be glad to undress him fer you.” Rady said. “F
er all he’s thin he’s right hefty fer a woman.”

  She smiled at him, but it wasn’t much of a smile, just a shadow and gone as soon as it was glimpsed. “Do you think I haven’t had a lot of practice?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, I have. And I can manage perfectly well, thank you.” She bent over and commenced unlacing Mister Rowe’s shoes. Then she straightened. “By the way, don’t mention what I’ve told you. He doesn’t like for people to know.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  And she went back to tugging at Mister Rowe’s shoes.

  The next day Rady got Annie to go with him to clean up the tenant house. Not that it would of made much difference to the Pringles, for they were counted as slovenly and dirty in a house as folks could be and no matter how clean a place was when they moved in, it didn’t take them long to make a shambles of it. Nor did Annie much care about going over and helping clean for them. “Why?” she asked Rady. “They’ll jist have it like a pigsty in a month’s time. Jist let ’em move in the way it is.”

  “That ain’t my way of doin’,” Rady said. “Git you some soap an’ rags an’ come on.”

  She muttered around a time but she got her a kettle of soft soap and bundle of rags and made ready to go. “I dislike goin’ over to the Rowes’,” she said finally. “Supposin’ Miz Rowe come around!”

  “Supposin’ she does? She ain’t no witch nor nothin’.”

  “No, I reckon not!” Annie snapped at him. “Fur from it, facts is. But I got my pride, Rady Cromwell, an’ I ain’t keerin’ to have Miz Rowe seein’ me wash down a tenant house!”

  “Hit’s got to be done,” Rady said. “An’ what’s pride got to do with it?”

  “A heap,” she mumbled, but grumbling or no she went with him.

  It wasn’t in too bad shape and they cleaned it out and scrubbed it down and Rady said he’d come back the next day and whitewash. “When they aimin’ on movin’ in?” Annie asked.

  “Soon as we git the house ready. Next day or two.”

  “I’ve heared that the oldest girl is hired out over in town.” Annie said. “That’ll be one less hand you’ll have.”

  “I ain’t wearied none,” Rady said, “about the girls. It’s the old man an’ the boys I’m countin’ on. Never did hold with girls workin’ in the fields. Never seen one yit could hold out good.”

  “Well, they say Flary kin. I’ve heared it said she was as good as ary boy ever taken hold of a hoe. An’ she kin plow, too. Of course she ain’t, to say, real bright, but she kin work.”

  “They’s enough with the old man an’ the boys.”

  When they finished inside the house they raked over the yard and picked it up and Rady stoutened a paling or two in the fence. It was getting along towards midday when they quit. “I’d ort,” Rady said, “to go by an’ see how Mister Rowe’s feelin’, I reckon. He wasn’t very peart yesterday.”

  “Don’t count none on me goin’ with you! I’m headin’ fer home.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be there time you git dinner ready.”

  Miz Rowe was eating her dinner out in the side yard under a big mulberry tree grew there. She did things different like that, and she had a little table spread with a white cloth and a bouquet of crocus from down the side of the brook in the middle. She looked up when Rady came around the corner of the house. “Hello,” she said, and she waved her hand at one of those deck chairs stood on the walk close by. “Sit down.”

  “I got to be gittin’ on. Jist come by to see how Mister Rowe was.”

  “Still in bed. But conscious and moaning. He’s got a terrific headache.”

  Rady grinned. “I kin well imagine.”

  She was friendlier than she’d been before and Rady thought it was likely on account of him knowing now about Mister Rowe. It was like she’d kind of eased up on her guard a little. “Will you have some lunch?” she asked, but she made no move to get up. Like she knew he wouldn’t, which he wouldn’t of. Not for nothing in this world.

  “No’m. I’ll eat when I get home.”

  “What have you been doing this morning?”

  “Cleanin’ up the rent house. I’m havin’ a family move in this week. Mister Rowe said it was jist settin’ there empty an’ if I needed it to make free with it.”

  She was eating some kind of soup and she laid her spoon down dainty on the plate alongside the bowl and wiped her mouth. “I thought you didn’t intend to cheat.”

  “I’m not. I’ll pay the Pringles out of my half.”

  “How will you make anything for yourself that way?”

  Rady pushed his old hat on the back of his head and laughed. “Well, you’re right, Miz Rowe, a third never was as much as a half.”

  She laughed, too, then. “According to my arithmetic it’s not either.” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “Do you need anything for the house? There’s a lot of stuff around here still packed away.”

  “No, ma’am. Hit ain’t necessary to furnish a house with no house plunder. Jist the house an’ use of the garden patch an’ barns an’ sich. They’ll make out fine.”

  With her standing like that he felt like he had when he was a boy in school and the teacher had said class dismissed, so he told her good-day and pulled out.

  He felt pretty good about everything. Getting the Pringles up on the ridge and the way things were going. And it made him feel fine that Miz Rowe was thawing out a little. He allowed if she came to trust him as well as Mister Rowe he could come closer to running things to suit himself. Not that he wouldn’t of found ways to do that anyhow, but it made it easier to have both of them depending on him and abiding by his word. He figured Mister Rowe wouldn’t never argue the question with him, but Miz Rowe could easy be a right rough handful should she get her head set against him like it looked like she was going to at first.

  The Pringles moved their house plunder, their cows and their pigs and theirselves the last of the week, and it was a sight to see. They got the house plunder in one old wagon, and set the kids around any old place on top the load. They tied the cow to the back of the wagon, and the old man drove the pigs in front, the oldest boys helping him. Miz Pringle set in the wagon seat and drove the team. About as sorry a looking outfit as was ever seen going down the road.

  Rady put the old man and the boys to work first thing the next morning planting corn, and after he saw to it they were started good and had their understanding of the work laid out for them the next day or two, he went on home and commenced planting on his own place. He was aiming on putting out a right smart of corn that year, on account of going to buy some more calves that fall to run on both places. Regardless of how good a pasture you got, it does take corn to fatten beef, and he wasn’t intending to run short through the winter.

  Time went past the slow way it does when the days get hot and the skies get blue and faraway looking. There’s no prettier time in this world than May on New Ridge, when the timber takes on its dressing and the flowering bushes and trees bust out. I love the honey locusts best. In May the limbs hang heavy with sweet-smelling blooms and the bees swarm amongst the flowers and get drunk on the sweetness, and a man can stand under the limbs and have every sound in the air drowned out by the steady humming all around him. He can stand there until his head swims with the sound and nothing is real but the strong humming. And when he comes away, if he looks he’ll see his hat brim is snowed with the little waxy petal of the blooms that have fallen while he stood.

  May is the time for planting, too, and the ground is loose and ready for the seed, and the color is brown with gray and black mixed in. Little new tobacco plants are the lightest green you ever saw, and they’re fuzzy and proud-looking and tender. They look so little when you put them in the ground, and it’s hard to believe they’ll ever be as tall as a man’s head with leaves as broad as a foot ruler can measure. It’s hard to believe, too, the work they’ll take, but when a season comes in May and you commence setting tobacco, it’s like y
ou’d never done it before. You set with a gladness to be handling the earth and the growing green plants, not minding the hot summer ahead and the long days of hoeing and plowing and tending. Just with a springing up of something fine inside and a kind of singing that you’ve got a piece of land and something to tend.

  May is the best month for fishing too, and when Junie and me and the kids had the tobacco set I nearly fell over one day when she said she’d go along to the creek with me and wet a hook herself. When we were courting she’d gone with me some, and she was a good hand to catch sun-fish and red-eye. But it had been such a time since she’d had a hankering to go that I was real surprised at her. She fixed up a basket of stuff to eat against we might have good luck and stay out after dark, and the kids scampered around like a bunch of coon hounds let loose, so glad to be going.

  They scattered when we got to the creek and me and Junie set our poles alongside of one another in the shade. For a time we caught a few, and then the fish got lazy like they do in the middle of the afternoon, and I laid back down on the ground and dozed off. But not for long. Junie had something on her mind to say and she waked me up after a little. “Did you know that Annie is goin’ to the doctor over in town?” she said.

  I rubbed my eyes with my fists, not knowing why it mattered if she was. “Is she?” I said.

  “She is. I thought mebbe Rady’d said something to you.”

  “No.”

  “Likely she ain’t told him. I wouldn’t of thought she would.”

  “What’s she goin fer?”

  “Well, it don’t make sense to me. She told me in confidence, but I reckon a woman’s man keeps the confidence. She says to me one day last week, she says, T’m aimin’ on tryin’ to have me a baby, Junie, an’ the doctor, he’s helpin’ me.’ I says to her, ’Ain’t that goin’ agin’ nature, Annie? I’d be askeered of sich.’ She says, 1 ain’t askeered of but one thing. I’m askeered he might not fix me so’s I kin.’”