Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  She looked at them. “I don’t imagine we’ll go to Florida for the winter this year,” she said, and she kind of laughed.

  “Had you been thinkin’ of sich?” Rady asked.

  “Don’t be silly!” she said.

  Mister Rowe laughed then. “Cordelia’s sense of humor takes an ironical turn occasionally,” he said. “We used to spend all our winters in Florida.” He said it flat and even. Like it was so far past he could scarcely remember. Like it was so done with there was no use remembering. But there was a kind of homesickness in the words anyhow.

  Miz Rowe looked at him quiet and funny, and her mouth crimped a little, but she never said nothing. She just got up suddenly and left the room.

  Rady’d been waiting for her to go so he could tell Mister Rowe about his intentions of buying the bull. He explained what he aimed to do. “We kin raise a lot more beef thataway,” he said. “I kin pasture him an’ feed him this winter, but we’ll have to clear some of yore land come spring an’ seed more pastures to take keer of a bigger herd.”

  Mister Rowe just nodded his head. “Go ahead. Whatever you like. If it’ll make us any more money, go ahead.”

  So Rady bought him a fine, white-faced bull. It stirred up a right smart excitement, and all the menfolks in the settlement drifted around to take a look at him. He was a big-shouldered animal, weighty and powerful-looking, and about as mean-tempered a critter as ever I saw. Rady had him in the little pasture next the barn.

  “You goin’ to strengthen this fence, ain’t you?” I asked him the day I went over to look at the animal.

  “Yeah,” he said, “when I kin get to it.”

  “Better git to it soon,” I said, “hit don’t look none too stout to hold that critter.”

  But he was sure a fine-looking animal, and it was going to be right handy having a bull on the ridge. Save us taking the cows plumb across the holler to old man Smith’s place. I allowed we’d get a little better strain of calves, too.

  Junie was splitting cook wood when I got home, me having gone off and forgot to fill the wood box. She handed me the axe and the tight way she was holding her mouth I reckoned it would of been a pleasure to her to sink it to the helve in my brains. If she would of give me credit for having any.

  “Where you been?” she said.

  “Over to Rady’s,” I said.

  “Lookin’ at that brute, I reckon.”

  Not even to me would Junie of used the word bull. I don’t know why a woman thinks brute is nicer, seeing as they both mean the same animal. But they do.

  “You see Annie?” Junie said when I got the wood split.

  “I never went inside,” I said, “Why?”

  “Jist wonderin’ if she’s showin’ yit. I’ve not seen her in a right smart spell.”

  “How far along is she now?”

  Junie counted on her fingers. “Near six months, I reckon.” “You wouldn’t have to see her to know she’s showin’, then, seems to me.”

  “I dunno. Annie’s kind of chunky. Them kind goes right up to the last without showin’ much. Not like me. Take a beanpole like me an’ I alius look like a orange in the middle of a stockin’.

  “What difference does it make?” I says, “Whether she shows soon or late, or looks like a sack of meal or a orange in the middle of a stockin’. Woman’s got a kid inside her has got one, an’ one thing is sure as gospel. It can’t be hid but nine months.”

  Junie just looked at me over an armload of wood. There wasn’t no use her saying a word. The way she looked at me said enough. That men, and me especially, were the damndest fools God ever created and how a woman put up with them was more than she could understand Then she turned around and marched herself into the house, her back as stiff as a ramrod.

  Rady never stoutened his fence in time. He was in a hurry to get his winter wheat sowed and he allowed he’d get that done first before commencing to mend fences. The bull had broke out twice, on the far side, and Annie was plumb provoked with him. “I wisht,” she told Rady, “you’d git to that fence That brute’s goin’ to git loose some day an’ do some damage.”

  It hadn’t set none too good with her for Rady to get the critter. Anything that tied him up at all with the Rowes, she was against. And she hated the bull from the day Rady brought him home.

  “I’m aimin’ to,” Rady said. “Jist got a couple more days work. I’m aimin’ to git good, stout hog wire an’ fence him in.”

  “He gits loose in my winter turnips an’ I’ll take a scantlin’ to him!” Annie warned. “I’ll bust his old mean head in fer him!”

  “You stay away from him,” Rady said. “He’s ill-tempered an’ mean.”

  “I ain’t askeered of him,” Annie said, kind of scornful-like. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t never afraid of animals of no kind.

  “Jist the same,” Rady told her, “you stay away from him. Mind.”

  They’d been eating dinner and he went on back outside. He was sowing wheat on his own tobacco patch that day, not far from the house. Just a whoop and a holler away. He stopped by the barn for a little drink and then went back to his work. He allowed he’d finish up the tobacco patch that afternoon.

  He hadn’t been back at work more than an hour, though, till he heard Annie screaming for him, and he dropped the seeder and went tearing out across the patch towards the house. He had to cut through a little draw where the spring was at, and then up the slope to get to the house. He couldn’t see on account of the rise in the ground until he got plumb to the top.

  Annie was still screaming for him. The bull had broke out, this time on the near side of the pasture, and had got into her winter turnips just like she’d feared. She had a board might nigh as big as her, waving at him, and she was shooing her apron at him, and all the time screaming as loud as she could. The bull was pawing the ground and snorting and tromping around. Rady yelled at her but she was making so much noise herself she never heard him.

  The worst thing she could have of done, of course, was to shoo her apron and scream like she was doing. That just excited the bull that much more. Had she gone in the garden and made no noise and just whacked him over the rump, likely she could of chased him back into the pasture. But she was mad and she was doing what a woman thinks of first to do. Shoo and scream.

  Rady never had to say much for me to see the whole thing just like it happened: him, running for all he was worth, watching Annie dodging around, screaming and whacking at the bull, trying to make her hear him telling her to quit and cut and run for it. Before he ever got anywhere near the garden fence the bull charged, but he said Annie got out of the way. She was so mad, though, that she hit the beast on the rump as he went past, which only maddened him more so that he turned and charged again. I reckon a lot of Annie’s dislike for the brute was behind her fighting him that way. Not ever having taken to him, feeling like she did that he was one more tie to the Rowes, when she found him in her turnips she must of just boiled over and lost her head. It sure wasn’t a sensible thing to do to walk inside that garden patch with a board and commence beating the critter with it.

  Rady said when the bull charged at her the second time she acted like she’d come to her senses and commenced running for the gate; only the animal got between her and it, so she took off towards the back side of the garden. That was where Rady was the closest. He’d come from the field across the draw and up the slope on the back side. Annie saw him coming and she swerved towards him. She never made it.

  Seeing Rady she commenced screaming again and motioning towards the bull, which wasn’t more than six foot behind her, purely blowing his breath down her neck. Rady said he was winded from running up the draw, but he was churning his legs for all they was worth, and he wasn’t more than twenty foot from the fence, shouting and yelling ever’ step. That was when he had the bad luck to stumble into a mole run, and the soft dirt give way underneath his foot and he went down, creening his ankle. He said it was when he felt his foot turning that he thought now it w
ould be all over … nothing could save her now. And for a minute he had a feeling of its being meant to be. With Annie gone … it flashed into and across his mind that with Annie gone nothing but Mister Rowe stood between him and that fine farm, and Mister Rowe was a sick man. With Annie gone he’d still have all he’d ever had with her, and he’d be free to get the rest. Miz Rowe … the house, the timber, the acres. The picture of them rose up before him, easier to get now, closer to him and almost where he could reach out and take hold.

  But he heard Annie scream again and he struggled up and ran on, stumbling on account of his ankle hurting. He had to look at the end of it, no way of not seeing it. The bull gored her from the back, lifting her up and throwing her, and then she went down, screaming, turning, trying pitifully to protect the baby, her two hands covering and shielding. The animal was on top of her in a second, though, cutting with his hooves, digging and trompling, goring her and lifting and throwing her, then pawing and trompling again. It sure must of been a terrible thing to see.

  Rady grabbed a bracing pole in the fence corner and climbed the fence. On the other side he used the pole to prod and poke at the beast till he had it distracted from Annie, then he ran him off into the barn lot. Annie was still alive when he got back to her and he said she kept trying to crawl away, kept trying to protect her stomach with her arms, rolling, inching away. He picked her up and started to the house with her, sick to his stomach at the sight of her. She was already gone when he got there with her. He laid her on the bed, he said, and went outside and puked.

  Me and Junie went as fast as we could when we heard, and Junie helped wash Annie and lay her out. She wasn’t very nice to look at. Broke and crumpled and cut to pieces. Junie said she was one of the worst corpses she’d ever tended. But they did the best they could for her and when they’d finished and fixed up the bed nice she looked a heap better.

  I was setting by the fire with Rady when they called him. “You kin come look at her now, Rady.”

  And I went in with him to stand by him. “She looks real natural, don’t she?” Junie said.

  Rady nodded his head. “You all done good,” he said, “an’ I’m much obleeged.”

  Then the womenfolks set about to fix supper and me and Rady set down by the fire again. “Rady,” I said, “don’t grieve too hard. You done all you could.”

  He looked up from the fire. “I reckon so. If I’d not fell into that mole run I might of got there in time …”

  “An’ you might not of. You couldn’t help that mole run being where it was at, noway.”

  “No.” He kind of shuddered, and I knew he was seeing it all over again.

  “You got any likker?” I asked him, thinking a big drink would be the best thing for him right then, and to tell the truth I needed one myself.

  “Out to the barn,” he said.

  So we went out to the barn and got the jug down and took ourselves several good big drinks. The likker was fiery and raw, but it set good on the stomach. Especially when a man’s stomach was a mite queasy anyhow. Loosened your guts and made you feel easier. When we’d nearly emptied it Rady started to set the jug back up in the hay. It come over me then, and I said, “You kin keep yer jug in the house now, if you want. There won’t be no woman to mind.”

  Rady turned and looked at it, and rubbed his hand down the side of it, then he kind of grinned. “Reckon I better not git out of the habit.”

  If he’d said so his meaning couldn’t of been plainer. He was aiming to have Miz Rowe.

  We went back in the house and out of respect for Annie, set up the balance of the night. It was a long night. A watch with a corpse always is. But I will say for Rady that he never once closed his eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I reckon the first time Miz Rowe had ever laid eyes on Annie was the day she came over to see her a corpse. There wasn’t any flowers to be had, it being wintertime, but she’d picked some green vines, ivy I reckon it was, and made a kind of wreath of it, and she brought it along. Junie was there, and several other women of the settlement. Junie said Miz Rowe never said much. Just went in to look at Annie in the casket and laid her vines on it. It was Junie took her in to see her, and she said Miz Rowe looked at her a long time. Never shed a tear like most feeling people would of done. Just looked, and stood there white as a ghost, until Junie got afraid maybe she was kind of sick. Some folks can’t stand to look on death, and Junie didn’t know but what Miz Rowe was like that.

  Rady was in the fireplace room when she came out, but she never spoke to him at all. Didn’t, as far as Junie could tell, even so much as look at him. Junie misdoubted Miz Rowe had any great liking for Rady, but the whole settlement thought it kindly of her to come look at Annie. She never went to the funeral, but seeing as she’d already been as mannerly as she was called on to be, nobody faulted her none for that.

  Nobody knew, of course, of the meeting between her and Rady the next day after the funeral, when she had cried and cried and cried in Rady’s arms, not able to tell him why, and not able to stop. He’d held her until she got hold of herself and could talk. “I hated her,” she said, “until I saw her. Looked down on her lying there dead and still and gone. And then I loved her. It was like we were the same woman, loving and caring and feeling. And it was like part of me lay there, in her, dead and gone past caring. And part of her was in me, still alive, to keep on living and caring. Both being hurt by the same things. Both being hurt by you … and you not caring And I hated you!”

  “Why would you say I hurt you both?” Rady said, puzzled-like. “I never hurt Annie that I know of. I wouldn’t of, knowingly. I alius done the best I could by her. An’ I wouldn’t hurt you, neither.”

  Miz Rowe stared at him. “You don’t really know, do you? You honestly don’t know!”

  “Know what?”

  “That just by being yourself you hurt!”

  “What is a man goin’ to be but hisself?”

  Miz Rowe laughed. “Nothing. Nothing at all. And a woman just has to go on being hurt.” She was quite a time before she went on. “They say she was going to have a baby.”

  “I never knew that,” Rady said.

  “No. You probably didn’t. But it wouldn’t have stopped you, would it?”

  “Stopped me from what?”

  “From … from us …”

  Rady never knew what she wanted him to say, but he told her the truth. “No,” he said, “wouldn’t nothin’ on God’s green earth of stopped me … from us.” He waited a minute and watched her. He couldn’t tell from her face what she was thinking. “Would you of wanted it to?”

  Her mouth twisted. “I wish I could say I would have. I wish I were that kind of person. Honest and clean and honorable. No, you crazy, damn fool I wouldn’t have wanted it to stop you I would have hurt her as much as you would have I’m just as twisted and hard and ruthless as you are … in my way. I want what I want, and nothing to stop me. And in some ugly black hole deep inside me, I’m glad she’s dead And I hate myself for being glad!”

  She commenced crying again and wouldn’t let Rady touch her. But as she calmed down she turned to him and clung to him. “I’m scared,” she said, “Rady, I’m scared!”

  “No need to be,” he told her, smoothing her hair and gentling her. “No need to be at all. It’s over an’ done with now. No need to be feelin’ nothin’ about it. Annie’s gone, an’ ever’ thing’s goin’ to be all right.”

  Annie was killed right after the turn of the year. First week in January, facts is. I recollect it had been unseasonable warm till the day we dug the grave. Then the ground froze under a hard blizzard and we had a heap of trouble with the digging. We never had so much trouble with Mister Rowe’s for it was September then, and right after a hard soaking rain at that.

  Some was surprised that she wanted him buried in the graveyard on the ridge. Allowed she would of sent him back east where they came from. And she made no explanations. Not even to the sexton when she went over to see about a g
rave site. Just asked him if she could buy a lot. And when he told her they were all free, she went out and picked one and that’s where he was put away. Over in the corner at the far side. The funeral went the queerest of any we’d ever seen on New Ridge. Not no services at the church, with the opening of the casket and folks filing by to take the last look, nor any sermon, nor nothing we were used to at all. Just a gathering at the graveside, and a preacher saying a prayer, and that was all. Junie thought it went plumb heathen. She misdoubted Mister Rowe’s soul could get very far towards heaven with such a scant send-off.

  “Junie,” I says, “hit ain’t the kind of funeral a man has gits him to heaven, fur as I’ve heared tell of. Hit’s what he’s been an’ the way he’s lived.”

  “An’ what way is that?” she wanted to know. “Hit just goes to show,” she says, “an’ it’s jist as well she never wanted no preachin’, fer what man of God could git up an’ truthful say a good word of a man has drunk hisself to death!”

  To my mind there’s sins a heap worse than drinking, if it’s kept under control. A drink or two, or even a fine roistering drunk once in a while don’t do nobody any harm. But it was true, and there for all to see, that Mister Rowe had plumb drunk himself into that grave on the far side of the cemetery. It was common knowledge that since early spring he’d been drunk and sick and drunk and sick until that was all he was all the time. Drunk and sick. He never got over one till it ran into another, until time was when you might say he never drew a sober breath. It was a pitying thing to watch. And there was no keeping it from the whole settlement.

  He’d come home from Louisville after that sick spell, weak and trembly, and for a time during the winter he was housebound and ill. But it looked like he’d commenced getting better along towards February and March. I saw him out in the yard one day when it was warmer than common for that time of year. He was walking around looking at the snowdrops and first March lilies. He looked a little stouter to me. I stopped a minute to talk and asked him if he was feeling any better. He was white and shaky, but I thought he’d fleshened up a mite.