Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  “Finally took, did she?” I said, the wish beginning to pass. I’d ought to of known better anyhow. Junie’s not one you can roll in the middle of the field, even if it’s a lawful roll. She’s got strong ideas of what’s decent and proper.

  The file was rasping across the blade and Junie had to raise her voice to make me hear. “Jist has,” she said. “She ain’t but two months gone.”

  “Mite soon to be shore, ain’t it?” I says.

  “No,” Junie said, and there was some bitterness in the way she said it. “You miss twicet an’ they ain’t no mistakin’ it.”

  “Junie,” I says, “they’s times when it appears to me you ain’t so glad you ever got married!”

  “Humph” she says. “Woman marries a man all she gits is breath an’ britches!”

  I would of liked to remind Junie that, admitting what a woman mostly gets in a man is breath and britches, what else is there for her to marry but a man! But I never. I let it pass.

  “Reckon she’s right tickled,” I says.

  “I can’t make out whether she’s tickled or not. She don’t act perticklerly tickled, I’d say. More like she’d done a thing she’d set out to do. More satisfied than tickled.”

  “Rady’s not named it,” I says.

  “Well, of course he ain’t! He don’t know it yit How would it be fer a woman to go talkin’ sich things!”

  It’s always been a thing past understanding to me how womenfolks never let on they’re in the family way. First a man knows there’s another young’un on the way is when his woman’s dress commences hiking up in front and her stomach commences sticking out. You’d think, him being the cause, she could name it at least to her own husband. “Hit ain’t fitten,” Junie tells me, her nose up in the air like I’d ought to have more sense than to wonder. It’s fitten to do, but not fitten to talk about, I reckon.

  I let it pass and commenced counting. Annie’d freshen, best I could figure, about April next spring. And I couldn’t help sniggering over the idea it would be about the time most of the rest of the cows on Rady’s place would be dropping their calves Wondered, too, what Rady’d think when he took notice. He was likely going to be some surprised!

  Rady’d been taking things slow and easy the rest of that summer, not pushing his wants or his knowledge. Just pondering and thinking and doing his work right on. And there was plenty of work to do. He kept in after the Pringles and stayed with it himself, not taking much time off for nothing. He was through cutting tobacco by the end of August, and had his corn laid by in good time.

  Mister Rowe helped a little with the tobacco cutting. Not much. He came out and helped stack sticks and haul them to the barn. The heat bothered him considerable and he wasn’t, to say, handy in the fields anyways. But it was more than he’d been doing to take a hand in any kind of work. Rady got along good with him, explaining like he would to a kid the right way to do things, and laughing at Mister Rowe’s awkwardness. He slipped him a drink now and then, not too much or too often. Just enough to let Mister Rowe know he was his friend. Fact is, Mister Rowe got in the way more than he helped, but Rady never let on. He always took time to oversee him and made out like he was glad to have him around.

  He never sought out Miz Rowe. He was polite and mannerly to her when she came around, which wasn’t often at first, but he never went out of his way to look her up. He was smart, Rady was. He let her feel out her own hunger and her own knowledge, and let it drive her to him. And it did, of course.

  She took to making little excuses to see him ever’ once in a while, like her hunger was driving her beyond good sense. Not real often. And it would be a right smart spell in between times, like she was mad at herself for giving in to it and promising ever’ time not to do it no more.

  It commenced a day that was sticky after a sudden shower of rain and Rady was working in the garden patch he’d laid off for them, the ground being yet too wet to go back to the fields. She came out like she never knew he was there, and acted surprised to see him. “I came to see if the late corn was ready,” she told him. “I thought I’d have some for supper if there is any. It’s been quite a while since we finished the early corn, and I got hungry for some, and I…” She talked too fast and too hurried, her words all running together, quick and not meaning anything, flustered like a young girl coming sudden on her beau.

  She had a pan with her to put the corn in, but Rady noticed she’d put on new lipstick and had combed her hair fresh. She looked neat and clean, everything she ever put on being ironed without a wrinkle. She was always finicky about her clothes. She had on a pink dress that day … real pale pink, about the color of the heart of a rose, or of a baby’s face when it first wakes up, flushed, from its nap. It was starched and shining from the iron and stood away from her hips like it had hoops in it. Made her waist look awful little. She wasn’t so white any more either. Her skin had turned kind of a goldy color from being out in the sun … all over gold, even and smooth like it had been spread on with a brush and no thinning or thickening. Glisteny. She stood there with her pan in her hands, her pink skirt brushing the tops of the tomato vines, a vein in her throat beating hard against the smooth gold skin, and her black hair tied back with a ribbon the same pink of her dress. And the sun, hazy from the rain, was still strong enough to bring out the red in her hair. And she was as fair as a picture drawn by a master hand.

  But for all her pink and black and gold prettiness, and for all her coming to the garden had made Rady want to laugh with something high and fine in his throat springing up—for all of that, he acted like it was nothing. Acted polite and mannerly and anxious to get what she wanted. “Best let me git it fer you,” he told her. “Them corn bees kin sting pretty keen. Yore arms is naked, an’ they’ll swarm all over ’em in no time.”

  He looked at her arms then, and like what he’d said had a special meaning to her, she looked at them too and then she pulled at the short sleeves which reached just to the elbow. “Ort to wear long sleeves when you come in the garden,” Rady said.

  He took the pan and went over to the far side of the garden where the corn was growing, and she stood where she was and waited. Had he looked back he could of seen her watching him, big-shouldered, stout-necked, flat-hipped, and he could of seen the little shudder that ran all over her before she took her eyes off of him. But he never needed to look back, and wouldn’t of. He knew she was looking, and he knew what he looked like to her. A man. All man. One that could take care of her any day she said so. And would. And he knew she was scared to death of her own self. And that as scared as she was, she was wanting him worse than she was afraid. She was commencing to bend … and he allowed she’d break inside another couple of months. If his luck held. And he aimed to see it held.

  He pulled a dozen ears and brought them back to her. “They’s not many ready yit,” he said, “but I reckon these’ll make you a mess.”

  She took the pan and when she took it, Rady let his hand touch hers, just in passing. Not really to say touching. Just kind of brushing, like a butterfly tips an open flower, dip and brush, so light it’s more like a flutter than anything else. Just his fingers brushed over her hand, like it was an accident, like it was nothing to him, like it had no meaning at all.

  But when he touched her she jerked the pan away from him and the corn spilled out at their feet. She ducked her head, but not before he had seen her swallow hard, and not before he’d seen the pupils of her eyes widen to show how quick her heart had beat up fast. And there was a kind of glory inside him to know what she was feeling … a leaping, springing kind of glory that could of shouted and sung and strutted his own power and man-ness. But he gave no sign of it. Not a muscle moved, nor an eyelash quivered, nor even the pull of smile at the corner of his mouth. He picked up the corn and put it back in the pan and she turned around and walked away from him, stumbling like she couldn’t see where she was going. “You’re trampling the cucumber vines,” Rady told her, and though he spoke but little above a whi
sper, her shoulders jerked and she pulled her feet back on the path again.

  Like he’d looked into her eyes he knew they were blind with wetness. He watched her hips swaying down the path as she went around the vines and plants, and he thought of her without the pink dress … her hips swaying … and like the dress had dropped from around her, he could see her, white where the gold of the sun left off, and he could of buried himself and died in that whiteness. He turned around of a sudden and heaved a big rock over on its side. Just to be lifting a heavy weight and so ease the tightness inside him. It wasn’t so easy to wait. But it was worth waiting for. All of it was worth waiting for, and there were rocks to heave aplenty, and there was always Annie and the big double bed at home.

  Better than two weeks went by then before Miz Rowe came around him again. She rode out to the far field where he was working, along about the middle of the afternoon, with a half-gallon fruit jar full of cold lemonade. She said nothing when she rode up, nor nothing when she handed it to him. No reason nor explanation. She just rode out where he was, handed him the lemonade and set there on her horse and listened to him talk and watched him drink it. “Mighty nice of you to think of this. Miz Rowe,” Rady told her. “Hit goes good on a hot day like today.”

  She made him no answer, just looked at him like there wasn’t no use her saying a word. Like the offering of the lemonade was a sign itself that the long, loose wire that stretched between her and Rady was tightening and had brought her, unwilling, where he was. Like it was, maybe, a sign of another offering she was commencing to know she was going to make. And like she was studying herself and Rady to know why.

  She set there a time, saying nothing, looking at him and listening to him. Of a sudden she broke into what he was saying. “What is your wife like?”

  It surprised Rady some. “Annie? Why, I don’t know … you mean what does she look like? Ain’t you never seen her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, whyn’t you come over sometime an’ git acquainted. It ain’t fur over there. She’d make you welcome.”

  “No.”

  Like he could see inside her he knew then she’d been thinking of him and Annie together, and it had been tormenting her. She had to know if Annie was pretty and young and if Rady was crazy about her. But she didn’t want to see for herself.

  “Well, I don’t know as I kin tell you about her,” Rady said. “Alius hard fer me to tell what anybody looks like. Annie’s kind of short an’ plump, kind of round … jist a right nice armful,” he grinned. “She’s got kind of crinkly curly hair, an’ she’s right pretty. We ain’t been married but a little better’n two years …” he said the last kind of shy, left it hanging in the air, like a man who hadn’t been married but a couple of years still found it so good he was a little bashful to be talking about it. What he left unsaid spoke more than what he said. It drew a picture of a pretty, plump woman, a right nice armful to love, and the newness of loving her still on him. That was the way it sounded. And Rady left it sounding that way. Adding nothing to it. So the words would stay, dull and blunt, not to be rid of, and to be heard over and over again. To be lived with and eaten and tasted. To hone the edge of want like a whetstone against a knife blade. To sharpen and thin and shine …

  Miz Rowe looked at Rady leaning against the tree where he’d stepped into the shade while he drank. She watched him lift the jar to his mouth, and she saw his throat swallowing, and she saw the way his hand, broad and brown, closed around the jar, and the way his shirt sleeve rolled back from his wrist and left the yellow, bleached hairs strong and wiry on the leather of his arm. Like the turn of his wrist, and the bleached wiry hairs, and the span of his hand were a snake to charm, she looked at them. And then she pulled her horse around and rode back across the field. She rode slow, but she set as straight in the saddle as she’d ever done, even though the clopping of the horse’s hoofs were like the words she’d heard being tramped steady and heavy against her ears, and the remembrance of the brown throat and hand and wrist was tied to the words, like a sickness jailed in the body, heaving and pitching, but not getting free. The throat and the hand and the wrist went with the pretty, plump woman, knew her and their pleasure of her … night after night after night.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miz Rowe had a pride that served her well and she called it up to serve her now. She quit making up piddling little excuses to seek Rady out after that. She quit trying to shun him. What ever it cost her to do it, she went back to her old way of seeing him around when it came easy or natural. She quit hiding behind Mister Rowe of an evening when she wanted to ride, or waiting for Rady to go home. When Mister Rowe wasn’t in a notion to ride with her, she went out, like always, whether Rady was around or not, and caught up her horse, or had him to, and rode. When Rady was at the house, talking to Mister Rowe, she listened or joined in with her own ideas. It was like she had made up her mind to something and had hewed her a course.

  Rady was just finishing up cutting the tobacco on the Rowe place, with his own still to cut, when Mister Rowe got sick. It commenced with him going on a rip-snorting toot one night along about the middle of the week. Rady’d been home and in bed long enough to be sound asleep when the dogs waked him up, barking. They were making a right smart fuss so he figured it must be a stranger, and he slipped into his overhalls and went out to the front porch to see. He didn’t light a lamp. A careful man’s not going to show himself to a stranger.

  “Dammit, get down” he heard somebody say, and he grinned in the dark. It was Miz Rowe. And then she called. “Rady Rady Cromwell!”

  “Somethin’ wrong, Miz Rowe?” he answered and went out to the gate to make the dogs shut up.

  “Jim’s got a real load on and he’s out of hand. He’s tearing up the place and I can’t do a thing with him.”

  “Wait’ll I dress,” Rady told her, and he went back in the house.

  Annie had waked and was up making a light when he went in the bedroom. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Hit’s Miz Rowe. Mister Rowe’s on a tear an’ she can’t do nothin’ with him. I got to go.”

  “At this time of night?” Annie peered to look at the clock, her eyes still half-shut with sleep. “Why, it’s nigh onto midnight!”

  “What difference does it make what time of night it is? If he’s crazy drunk he’s crazy drunk, an’ she’s skeered.”

  “Oh, shore,” Annie sniffed, mad even at the mention of Miz Rowe’s name. “When she crooks her little finger, you got to go!”

  Rady didn’t bother to answer, just went on dressing, and he went out without saying more to her. He was puzzled where Mister Rowe had got the likker, him not having give him any, but Miz Rowe told him a fellow had been down from the city all day, man Mister Rowe had gone to college with, and that he brought it.

  Him and Miz Rowe struck out in a hurry, her telling him what had happened as they went along. “I knew he and Tom were drinking a little all day,” she said, “but I never dreamed Jim had had enough to make him drunk. It usually makes him sick before then. When Tom left, I went for a ride and I got back just before dark. I meant to have dinner at once, but when I walked into the kitchen Jim was standing there in the middle of the floor, throwing plates at a target he’d drawn on the wall!”

  Rady couldn’t keep from laughing, and she kind of laughed a little herself. It was funny, Mister Rowe standing there solemn as an owl, heaving dishes at a big red bull’s eye he’d drawn on the white painted wall. But it hadn’t stayed funny. She’d tried to quiet him down and he’d just got worse, going hog-wild, breaking up the furniture and stomping around all over the place, threatening her and yelling he’d kill anybody tried to come close, like there was a whole army trying to get him. She hadn’t really got scared though till he commenced looking for the key to his gun cabinet. He’d forgot where he put it, but with a drunkard’s luck she figured he’d run across it, and with a gun in his hands he’d be a dangerous man. That was when she’d decided to come get Rady. />
  When they got there Mister Rowe was still rampaging around, cussing up a storm, looking for his key. Rady tried talking to him, begging him to go to bed, promising to find his key for him, pleading with him, but he couldn’t do a thing with him. So finally he told Miz Rowe, “I don’t know nothin’ to do but knock him out.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, as cool as a cucumber.

  Rady cornered him and put him to sleep with a haymaker where it did the most good. Then he undressed him and put him to bed and went on home.

  He allowed, that’d be all there was to it, saving Mister Rowe would be upchucking all the next day. And he was, but instead of getting better then, he just kept on getting sicker and sicker. Wouldn’t nothing stay on his stomach, and in a couple of days he’d quit trying to put anything into it. And he was nearabouts crazy with pains in his head and stomach and legs.

  It went on for three or four days, then Miz Rowe went out to the barn where Rady was racking the last of the tobacco. “Rady,” she said, “he’s not getting over this one. He’s awfully sick, and I think we’d better get him to a hospital. Where’s the closet one?”

  “The city, I reckon … Louisville.” Rady left the tobacco and crawled down from the tiers.

  They decided for Rady to go into town, the little county seat town twenty miles away, and make the arrangements to get Mister Rowe to the city. He was too sick to go in a car, even if the Rowes or Rady had had one, so they thought to take him on the train. But they had to get him to the train one way or the other. The town didn’t have an ambulance, so finally Rady hit on the idea of having the funeral home send the hearse out after him.