And she caught on. “You’re planning on handling the place next season, then?”
“Unless Mister Rowe wants to git somebody else.” Rady knew now he had them where he wanted them. He had them worried, helpless and depending on him.
Miz Rowe was too smart not to see some of that herself. She stacked the dishes in the sink and laughed. “That’s not very likely.”
“No’m. I never thought so.”
He watched to see if that shot went home. That there wasn’t anybody else. Just him. He watched her bent over the dishes, and when her shoulders kind of quivered like a little scared rabbit’s, he knew she had understood. “I’ll go now,” he said, and he went and got his gittar. Then he set off for home.
He didn’t feel like quite so much of a fool, now. He had found the way to get back his own feeling of pride and power. He was the one on top. They had to have him. He knew it, and now Miz Rowe knew it, and that was good.
Chapter Ten
The way Rady passed, coming and going to the Rowes’ place was through the patch of woods laid between his place and theirs. It was as pretty a woodsy place as there is on the ridge. Laid on a gentle slope, with hardly no undergrowth, and the trees were tall, old beech, chestnut, oak and ash which hadn’t been cut over in a hundred years. That had given them time to grow thick and heavy, so that the woods were a shady, gladey place, always cool on the hottest day. Down at the foot of the slope ran a narrow little branch, spring-fed so that it never ran dry, and it added some to the coolness of the woods. Lady’s-slippers grew rank on its banks, and wild ferns and water hyacinths. Up on the slope there was a fair stand of ginseng and goldenseal. And May-apple grew there in right smart quantity too. It was real sightly and always a pleasure to pass through.
Rady was following the path home that Sunday, when he heard a sound off to the left, down by the branch. He looked, quick, and there was a girl setting on a flat rock by the side of the branch, dangling her feet in the water. It was her had loosened some stones that fell in the water and had made the noise.
Flary Pringle was about sixteen then. She looked older, though, being as big and well-grown as she was. She was a stout, strong girl, big all over. Big-shouldered, big-busted, big-hipped and big-bottomed. Wasn’t a thing scrawny or pin-plucked about Flary. Her clothes always looked like they were about to bust their seams on account of being stretched so tight over her body. She was a good-looking girl without being what you’d call pretty. She was dark-complected like the old man, but she had a smooth skin, stretched tight across the bones of her face, and when she was clean she made a real handsome appearance. But she wasn’t given to washing too often and there was nearly always a kind of sour smell about her. Some said she wasn’t real bright, and it may be she wasn’t. She hadn’t gone to school but to the third grade, and they said she had trouble learning that far. But she didn’t look stupid. Just always had a kind of easy, good-natured look on her face.
Rady stood and looked at her and she stared back at him. She had big, round eyes, brown and soft and melty-looking, like a cow’s. “Who are you?” Rady said after a time, walking a little way towards her. I reckon he’d not ever seen her before.
“Flary,” she said, and she ducked her head like a kid that’s put out with being taken notice of.
“Oh,” Rady said, going on down to the branch. “You’re Flary Pringle. I thought you was hirin’ out over in town.”
“I am. I jist come home fer Sunday.” She tried to draw her feet up under her skirt, but the skirt was too skimpy. She was setting on the opposite side of the branch, but it wasn’t more than two foot wide so Rady just stepped across.
He grinned at her and looked at her strong, brown legs. “Don’t mind me,” he said, “go ahead an’ dangle ’em. Believe I’ll cool my feet too.”
He sat down beside her and took off his shoes and socks and stuck his feet in the water. “Feels good,” he said. “What you been doin’ here in the woods? Soakin’ yer feet all afternoon?”
She pulled her skirt down as far as it would go and cut her eyes around at him. But she didn’t say anything.
Rady reached down and splashed water on his feet, and then like it was an accident he splashed it higher so’s it got her skirt wet. He splashed it good and high, too. She stood up real quick and shook her skirt. Rady stood up and went towards her. “Now see what I’ve done,” he said, brushing at the wet skirt. “Got you all wet.”
But when his hands brushed at the skirt they lingered and it was like she knew what they aimed to do. She giggled a little and pulled away, but when he followed she made no objections and let him have his way without fuss or bother. Rady remembered Annie had said she wasn’t real bright, and he reckoned it must be so. But that never kept him from taking his pleasure. Nor from finding it good, either. A willing girl was a willing girl, whether she was bright or not.
When he was through he left her, saying no more to her. And he’d forgot her before he got home. The thought never once crossed his mind that he had taken out on Flary all of his feelings of the afternoon. His madness at himself for falling into the trap of his own pride. His madness at Miz Rowe for making him feel little and foolish. And his feelings of wanting to hurt and strike back at her. His feelings of hating her and wanting to make her know that it wasn’t him was little and foolish, but her. Her and that sick, puling husband of hers. But mostly her. Those kind of thoughts never entered his mind. All he knew was Flary was there and willing, and taking her had been good, and that when he left her he felt like a man again.
When he got home Annie was fretted. “You been a time,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Yer supper’s got cold.”
“I ain’t hungry right now.”
“Have you eat over at the Rowes’?”
Rady came close to saying he had before he thought. But Annie wouldn’t of liked that. So he caught himself. “No, of course I ain’t eat. I jist ain’t hungry right now. I’ll snack some after while.”
“Well, I wisht you’d tell me when you’re aimin’ to miss yer supper Hit’d save me a right smart work. The heat is bad now, to be buildin’ up a big cook fire, an’ then you not wantin’ nothin’”
“God’s sake, Annie! A man don’t alius know if he’s goin’ to be hungry or not. Hit’ll keep, an’ you got to eat yerself. Quit jawin’ at me.” And then he saw her eyes had filled up. “An’ don’t commence cryin’ agin! Is yer nerves gone bad that you’re alius cryin’ these days? Beats all I ever seen the way you tune up over nothin’.”
Annie wiped her eyes with the corner of her Sunday apron. “I wouldn’t call it exactly nothin’. Livin’ with you ain’t alius so easy.”
“How’m I different from ary other man?” Rady wanted to know. “I do my work an’ git along with you as peaceable as I kin. What more kin you ask?”
Annie didn’t say nothing, for there was nothing she could say without telling him what it was frashed her. How he’d gone against her renting from Mister Rowe, and the renting took him away from home and put him close to Miz Rowe. And every time he was gone longer than common it worried her for fear him and Miz Rowe were laughing and talking together, or maybe worse. Annie knew Rady too good not to worry, and if she hadn’t of known him that good, she knew the ways of a ridge man. But she couldn’t say so. She couldn’t say that she was trying hard to have a young’un to hold him tighter, thinking, maybe, then he’d never look past her again. And she couldn’t say that all of this was keeping her twitchy and nervous and easy to cry. And all Rady could make of it was that Annie was getting awful cross-grained of late.
He did up the work and when he had finished he set on the front porch and played his gittar and sung awhile. It was like he was trying to prove something to himself, for he sung “On Top of Old Smokey” twice. But at first dark he put up his gittar and went to bed. He laid there a time going over in his mind the work he had laid out to do. Tobacco had to be suckered and the corn needed plowing one more time before being la
id by. In spite of the rain he’d stayed ahead, and come fall he was going to have money in his pockets. He might even buy him a good bull and commence breeding his own calves. He could run might near fifty more over on Mister Rowe’s place next year. Thinking of breeding made him reach for Annie. But she was still mad with him over supper. “You’ve not eat yit,” she told him.
“My God,” he said, “you want me to git up an’ eat first!”
And because she couldn’t never stay mad with him very long, Annie snickered and made up with him.
When Mister Rowe got to feeling better he took his turn at having Rady learn him the gittar, but he didn’t take much interest in it very long. It was just a passing fancy and it passed fast. He pestered Rady to bring him a drink now and then, and Rady made excuses when he could, and when he figured he couldn’t, he took him a pint. Never more than that. He stuck to his story about the moonshiners being scared, although the hills were running likker all around. But Rady didn’t want to kill off the goose that was laying the golden eggs, so he was careful about it.
And for the most part Miz Rowe stayed right friendly with Rady. But she was chancey, some days friendly and laughing, some days paying no heed to anybody. She didn’t ride as hard as she’d done when they first came, for usually Mister Rowe rode out with her of an evening now, but there were still times when it was like the devil chased her and the only way she could spell him was to saddle her horse and outride him. When she was like that she was reckless and heedless and she lashed out with a quick tongue.
She came a cropper one day on account of being like that. She came out to saddle her horse and Rady could tell by one glimpse that she was feeling ugly. Her face was always pinched at those times, stiff like it had been frozen. “Get my horse,” she told Rady, speaking short and sharp.
It was early for her to be riding but he didn’t say nothing, just caught up her horse for her. Then he went and got the saddle while she stood and beat against her leg with the light crop she always carried when she rode. The saddle girth was tangled a mite and Rady took his time straightening it out, but Miz Rowe was of a mind not to be kept waiting. She walked over to where Rady was working on it and yanked it out of his hands. “For God’s sake,” she snapped at him, “must you take all day! Let me have it” And she jerked at it and slung it over the horse and tightened it, yanking at the straps and buckles and jerking at the saddle to get it straight.
Without saying no more she swung up and cut the horse a lick that sent him tearing out towards the gate. They hadn’t much more than got through the gate than Rady, who was standing watching, saw her give a lurch to one side and saw her grab at the horse’s head to keep herself from falling. He knew the saddle had slipped, and it didn’t surprise him none, the way she’d made haste with the girth and buckle. He saw her trying to kick her foot loose from the near stirrup, and trying to hang on while the saddle kept slipping further and further around. And the horse, scared by her grabbing and the saddle slipping and her weight hanging on one side, stopped running and commenced plunging and kicking. Rady took off on a run, but before he got there Miz Rowe sailed clean over the horse’s head and landed in the bushes by the side of the road. The horse, free of his burden, lit a shuck down the road.
Rady ran as fast as he could, not knowing but what she had broken her neck falling that way, and when he come up to her she was still lying in the bushes, covered with dirt and dust. And then he saw she wasn’t dead, anyways. For she was lying there, her face buried in her arms, crying. Crying hard, too, like a kid. Noisy and stormy and mad, her shoulders heaving, and while Rady was watching her feet commenced to kick in the dirt, fast and furious, raising a cloud of dust that blew away as fast as her feet stirred it up.
Rady got hold of her and tried to turn her over so’s to help her up, but she twitched loose from him and dug her head down in her arms again. “Get away,” she said. “Go on away and leave me alone!”
But he was afraid she was hurt, so he leaned down beside her and laid his hands on her shoulders again and tried to see her face. “You hurt, Miz Rowe? You hurt anywheres?”
She set up then and struck out at him, hitting at his hands. “I said leave me alone Goddammit, don’t you think I know how to fall? Get your filthy hands off me, Cromwell! Don’t you dare touch me!”
She was screaming at him and for a minute he didn’t do a thing he was so stunned. Then he got so mad he didn’t even know what he was doing. He jerked her to her feet and shook her so hard her teeth chattered. “Shut up!” he yelled at her. “You shut up that bawlin’ an’ quit actin’ like a damn fool! I ast you if you was hurt anywheres!”
She just stood there and looked at him. There was a cut on her face where she’d glanced a rock in falling, and her shirt was tore and she was all over dirty and dusty. Her hair had come loose from its ribbon and hung down over her shoulders, and it still swung a little from Rady’s shaking.
“Are you hurt anywheres … besides that cut on yer face?” He still had hold of her shoulders, and one hand laid against the bare flesh where her shirt was tore.
She kept on staring at him, and one of her hands made a motion towards her shoulder, but she let it drop. She looked at his face like she’d never seen it before, there bent so close to her own, sweated and browned and leathered and so close she could smell the sweat and the tobacco and the dust that had settled on his eyebrows and around his nose. She looked at his hands where they laid against her shoulders. Big, broad, strong hands, squared and stoutened with years of plowing and hoeing and milking, and with a grip that could paralyze. She looked at them and she looked all down the length of his stocky, heavy body, to his feet, planted hard against the dirt. She looked and she looked, and then, as calm as a pond on a summer day, unruffled and on its surface unbetraying of any stirrings in its depths, she laid Rady’s hands off her shoulders and stepped back, brushing the dust and leaves off her riding pants and straightening her shirt. “No,” she said, “I’m not hurt.”
Rady rubbed his hands against the sides of his pants. “Well, if yer not, it’s a miracle! You could easy of broke yer neck!”
“Yes. It was very foolish of me. I was angry.”
She looked around for her hair ribbon and they both had to laugh at where it was. Flung plumb over a blackberry bush and grafted to a thorn. Rady got it for her and she swung her hair back and tied it. “Thank you, Rady,” she said, “I’ll be more careful now.”
“When you’ve had a fight with Mister Rowe you ortent to ride this way. Hit’s plumb foolish of you. You’re liable to kill yerself.”
She looked at him, straight and without flinching. “So you know.”
“I ain’t blind. I figgered that was what made you ride so hard. You git rid of what’s bottled up in you, but it’s too resky. Couldn’t you git out an’ walk instead?”
“Riding’s better. I’m a good rider, Rady. There’s no danger as long as I keep my head.”
Rady laughed then. “Hit’s yore head you’re liable to lose you take many more falls like this’n today.”
There was a quick kind of glee inside of him when she called him Rady. Oh, he took notice of it fast. And it didn’t matter that she didn’t know. She would know. One day, she’d know. He’d not missed the look she’d given him either. That was the beginning of the knowing. And the reaching for his hand on her shoulder. She’d screamed out at him not to touch her. Not yet knowing that’s what she wanted. But she would know. And it would grow. All that fine, white proudness. All the sharp, tempered blade. All that riding of the wind. It would change … bend … lean. His way. Towards him and to him. Annie was one kind of woman. Miz Rowe was another. But all women were alike in one thing. They can be mastered. It takes one way with one kind of woman, another way with another. But in the end they bend and give to strength. They may hurt and they may weep and they may die of it. But it’s like they had all of it to do, to feel the strength that causes it. That was a thing Rady knew without giving it a thought. Knew like he kne
w the power in his own back and legs and arms and blood. Knew because it’s born in every man until he forgets it and scatters it in love. When a man loves he loses it, for he wants to please. But Rady wasn’t going to love any woman enough to give her the strength to make him weak. It was Annie who had given. And it would be Miz Rowe who would give … in time.
That was his first knowledge of what he could have, if he so wanted it. His first glimpse of what could be turned his way. And he knew he wanted it. “I’ll git yer horse,” he said. “He’s likely run down the road a mile or two.”
Miz Rowe looked down the road, but the horse was not in sight. “All right,” she said. Tm going to the house.”
Rady found the horse picking by the side of the road down by the mailboxes, and he straightened the saddle and tightened the girth and swung up astride the horse. He rode back up the road slowly, tasting what he now knew. Tasting it and liking its taste and already looking out over the fields with owning eyes. More pasture here. More corn there. More tobacco over yonder. Another barn or two. Another fifty head of beef cattle. And there was so much timber on the two places that a man had ought to do right good with a sawmill.
Like he already owned it, he rode. And like he knew this man astride his back owned him, too, the horse walked easy along the road, answering gently to the hand of the reins.
Chapter Eleven
It was in September, I reckon … yes, I know it was, for me and Junie were cutting tobacco, and I’ve yet to cut a crop before September.
I remember it was a hot, steamy day and the tobacco was higher than our heads and it was like being in a jungle to be hid down in between them close-growing stalks. Junie was cutting and I was sticking. Junie’s a good hand at cutting, though she keeps a man working sharpening her blade. She won’t cut a stalk with a dull edge.
We’d stopped for me to give it a turn or two and Junie was fanning herself with her bonnet, standing under the shade of a poplar tree waiting on me. Her dress was stuck to her with sweat and she kept pulling it loose to let a little breeze blow through, and I was just wondering if maybe I couldn’t take a quick one, down in the field like that amongst the tobacco, when she commenced talking. “Annie’s had good luck,” she said, blowing down the front of her dress, “if you kin call it good luck.”
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