Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  “A little,” he told me, “I think I’m stronger. When it gets warm so I can get out I’ll have more strength, perhaps.”

  I allowed he would too, and passed on.

  I saw Rady that same day. He was burning his tobacco beds, and I passed the time of day with him.

  He’d been making out by himself since Annie died. Been doing his own cooking and cleaning and getting along as best he could. And as near as I could tell he was making a fair out of it. He could always turn his hand to nearly anything, though, and do good with it. But folks allowed it wouldn’t be long till he was casting his eyes around for another woman. A man don’t stay a widower long on the ridge. It’s too unhandy. I thought to joke him a little about it and asked him if he had anybody in mind yet.

  “Shore,” he said, laughing hearty, “I got her all picked out.”

  “Well, now, that’s fine,” I says. “I dislike to see a old stallion like you goin’ to bed by hisself of a night. Git out of the habit first thing you know!”

  “I dislike to do it,” he says, “an’ Fm some afeared of fergittin’ how myself. Fm aimin’ on takin’ steps jist as soon as it’s proper.”

  “Would it discommode you any,” I says, “to tell me who you got in mind?”

  “It would,” he says, “it would discommode me like hell. It ain’t none of yore damn business. Besides, you’d tell Junie an’ Junie’d tell ever’body on the ridge, an’ it would end up me not gittin’ to do my own proposin’!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, for that’s exactly what would of happened, had he already had one picked. People sure do have a habit of gossipin’.

  And then I recollected seeing Mister Rowe. “Jist seen Mister Rowe,” I told Rady. “He looks some stouter to me than he did.”

  “Outside, was he?” Rady asked.

  “Yeah. He was walkin’ around in the yard. Might be if he’d lay off likker fer a time he’d git all right.”

  “Hit might be,” Rady said.

  It was getting on in the evening by then and I had to get on back and help do up the work. I said so and got up off the stump I’d been setting on.

  “I see,” Rady says, grinning, “Junie’s still got you henpecked.”

  It always hackles me for anybody to accuse me of being henpecked. I ain’t. But a man’d be a fool not to take the easiest way he can to get along with his woman. Specially if she’s strong-minded like Junie. It even hackled me a little with Rady, who had a way of kidding a man could take. “You jist wait,” I says to him, more than half-way meaning it, “till you git yore next woman I hope she’s as ill-grained as a dominecker hen! I hope she jist tromps all over you an’ keeps yore nose to the grindstone till it’s whetted down I hope she’s got a tongue forked like a snake’s! An’ I hope she slicks the hide offen you with it! I hope she’s crosseyed, buck-toothed an’ got a wart on her chin!”

  Rady commenced laughing. “My, my,” he says, “mebbe I better stay single with all them hopes of yore’n!”

  “Jist don’t call me henpecked!” I says.

  “Why,” he says, “you know I think a heap of Junie. Ain’t no better woman on the ridge than Junie. An’ smart! She’s as bright as a tenpenny nail!”

  “An’jist about as unbendin’,” I says.

  And then we both commenced laughing and I went on home. Something about having a little set-to with Rady always made me feel good. He set as easy with me as a pair of old shoes. Common and comfortable and roomy. You could kid with him, or fight with him, drink with him, hunt with him, fish with him … and he fitted smooth and fine. Being with him always made me feel good.

  It wasn’t much after that, when the weather had faired considerably and we could all stir, that Mister Rowe commenced drinking again. I don’t know what Miz Rowe would of done without Rady. For he stayed by, much as he could spare the time from work, and helped with Mister Rowe, nursing him through the crazy, violent times, setting up with him nights when he was the sickest, waiting on him, doing for him. He stayed by right to the last, and was there when he died, in the midst of the craziest spell of all.

  I was there that night too, for Mister Rowe had got so bad one man couldn’t handle him, and Rady sent for me. He said Miz Rowe oughtn’t to see him like that. And he was a sight to see, without any doubts. Thinned down to a skeleton, and pasty white, his eyes sunk deep in his head, and his hands looking like picked bones. It was enough to scare a body the way he’d gone down. We had to hold him on the bed, and he kept screaming and trying to tear loose from us. He kept begging Rady for a drink. As crazy as he was, he was enough in his right mind to keep begging and pleading for a drink.

  “Rady!” he’d scream till you could hear him all over the house. “Rady!” And then he’d moan and grab at Rady and beg. “Rady, you’ve not ever let me down. You’re not going to make me do without are you? Just one, Rady. Just a little one. I’d have died, Rady, if it hadn’t been for you this summer. You aren’t going to let me down now, are you?” Over and over again, but keeping his voice down low except when a pain would hit him and he’d scream Rady’s name. It was like he was whispering something only him and Rady knew.

  Finally Rady got up and went to the clothes closet and got a bottle down. He give him a big slug. Mister Rowe got quiet right straight, and Rady stoppered the bottle and instead of putting it back in the closet, he put it in his own hip pocket, kind of absent-minded like. He stood looking down at Mister Rowe, and then he looked at me. “He would of died soon or late anyhow,” he said. “I figgered the pore sunovabitch might as well die happy.”

  It came over me when we’d laid him out later, and were keeping the watch the rest of the night, that I’d been wrong when I’d said one time that Annie couldn’t help Rady get old man Hall’s place. She’d helped him after all by dying. And it came over me, too, that the brown maid wasn’t the only one had a house and land. Fair Elinore had a house and land, too. But for once I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t allow this was a time Rady would want to be reminded of either one of them.

  It was a funny thing, too, that Miz Rowe never put a headstone for Mister Rowe. She planted a rosebush at the head of his grave instead. Junie was passing the day she planted it and stopped to help her. “Is it a climbin’ rose,” she asked.

  “No” Miz Rowe said, “it’s a hybrid. The name of the rose is Peace.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There were those that allowed Miz Rowe would sell out, now that Mister Rowe was gone, and go back where she’d come from. “What would she stay fer?” they said. “They’s nothin’ to keep her here on New Ridge now.”

  And when she lit out a couple of weeks after the funeral they nodded their heads together and said the next thing would be a sale of the property, and there was a heap of figuring what it would bring and who would get it. Most figured Rady would bid it in.

  But I never allowed that was the way he’d get it. And I figured, not that I ever named it, even to Junie, that there was a heap to keep Miz Rowe on the ridge, and I allowed she’d be coming back in a decent and respectful time.

  Facts is, if she’d had her way she wouldn’t of never left. That was Rady’s idea, not hers. “I don’t want to go,” she said to him. “Why should I go away and spend the winter?”

  “Hit’ll look better,” he told her.

  “I don’t care how it looks!”

  “I do. Besides, it’d be hard on you stayin’ here by yerself through the cold.”

  “There’s no place to go.”

  “Yer folks?”

  “I don’t have any folks.”

  “His folks, then.”

  “No! I hate that old man!”

  “All right, then, go to Florida. Like you used to do.”

  “And what would I use for money?”

  “They’s money.”

  “Yours?”

  “What difference does it make? It’s mine or yours, mine an’ yours, jist dependin’ on which way you look at it. It kin be spared, anyways.”

  “H
ow do you know I’d come back?”

  He grinned at her. “Well, I don’t, to say, know it. But I figger you would. Is they somethin’ you’d ruther do?”

  It was chilly for the last of September and the windows were closed and a little fire was burning on the hearth. Miz Rowe held her hands out close to the fire like they had got cold of sudden. “No,” she said finally. “But I wish there was!”

  “You’re jist nervous an’ upset,” Rady told her. “Go ahead an’ take the winter somewheres, an’ then come back next spring. We’ll git married along in the summer.”

  She walked over to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass and looked out. The leaves were already turning on the trees and the grass in the yard was bleaching. A few late flowers were still in bloom, but a gust of wind blew along the vines, and some petals shook down and fell. “I don’t know whether I want to marry you or not,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It would be a damn fool thing to do.”

  Rady had been setting by the fire, but he stood up then and walked over to the door. He stopped there with his hand on the knob. “That’s jist up to you,” he said. “You want to sell me this place an’ git shut of it an’ me at the same time?”

  When he’d stood up she’d turned to look at him, and she watched him now, his hand on the doorknob, ready to go. And it was like she knew he could and would walk right through the door and never look back. Could walk right out of her life and forget her and put behind him what had been between them. Could do without it, and without her, and no bother to him. It must be a terrible thing for a woman to have that kind of knowing inside her, and to know at the same time, because of her own weakness, there’s not a thing she can do about it. It must be pure galling. It was no wonder she stood there with her hands made into fists and her face white and the tears running down her checks and saying to him, “I could kill you! And I hate you, Rady Cromwell! I hate you!”

  Standing there looking at him with hate and madness. And then, when he turned his back on her and commenced opening the door, breaking, and running to snatch at him to feel him safe and solid and big and still there, not going and not forgetting. She flung herself at him, and when he closed his arms around her, she laid her head against his chest and cried. “And I love you, I love you And I can’t live without you!”

  So she went away for a time, I don’t remember exactly how long it was. Several months, though. And then she came back, and Rady commenced courting her proper. There was talk, of course. But it went natural. It was the kind of talk went the rounds when any man commenced courting a woman. Just a kind of curious gossip. “Seen Rady an’ Miz Rowe over at the county fair yesterday. Reckon they’ll be gittin’ hitched one of these days.”

  “Likely.”

  And if it was a man doing the talking he’d grin and add, “I shore would like to be in Rady Cromwell’s shoes He’s the luckiest guy ever I seen!”

  Wasn’t never no putting things together nor trying to add things up the way it had come about both him and her were free. There was just a watching and talking and nodding of heads, and mostly a wondering when they’d get married.

  It was in August when they went over to the county seat and had old Judge Morgan marry them. Didn’t nobody go with them, for they hadn’t named their intentions to a soul. They just went over and got their license and went to the judge’s office. He called in a couple of witnesses from the hallway and it was done in five minutes’ time. I did hear that when they’d left, the judge spit hard into his old brass spittoon and looked over his spectacles at one of the witnesses and said, “That boy shore likes widders, don’t he?”

  So Rady moved again. Him and his dog and his gittar and his gun. And he now was the owner of the best farm in the settlement, living in the best house on the ridge, and married to the handsomest woman. He had it all now. The fields, stretching wide and far. The timbered woods. The barns and the herds and the fine, good farm tools. He could saddle up Mister Rowe’s horse and ride half a day to bound his land, for with the two places lying side by side and thrown together he had more than a quarter of all the level land on top the ridge. All of the best. That was what he had now.

  And he lived in the big, fine house, with the electric all over and water in the kitchen. With the books and the guns and the big piano. With the shiny furniture and the shiny floors. With the fine dishes, and the thin glasses and the solid silver. And he hung his clothes in the bedroom closet, and he slept with Miz Rowe in the tall, four-poster bed. And there wasn’t a sign of a ghost to haunt either his mounting or his sleeping.

  “Don’t you never,” I asked him once, “think about Mister Rowe dyin’ in that very same bed?”

  “Naw,” he said, grinning. “Why would I?”

  “I dunno. I’d ruther have me a brand-splinter new bed, if it was me.”

  “Hit suits me fine,” he said. “I’ve alius admired that bed. Why would I buck agin the bed? Ever’thing else come from him too. From the land plumb down to the woman.”

  I could only shake my head. I’d still of rather had me a new bed, had it been me.

  It was that same day Rady named a proposition to me.

  “Whyn’t you an’Junie,” he says, “move over to Annie’s house?”

  “I ain’t got no reason to move over to Annie’s house,” I said.

  “You would have if you run my new sawmill fer me,” he said.

  It was the first I’d heard of a sawmill. “You aimin’ on startin’ you up a mill?”

  He nodded. “Got me a good engine over at town the other day. I was thinkin’ I’d commence cuttin’ in them woods that joins the two places. Heap of good trees in there needs cuttin’. An’ I’d ruther do it than to turn a crew loose in there to slash out the young stuff the way they do.”

  “Heap ruther make all the money yerself, too, hadn’t you?”

  He laughed. “Well, I got too much good timber now to go dividin’ the profits up amongst too many.”

  I had nothing to lose by moving over to Annie’s place. Wasn’t as if I was selling out. I could keep my own place till I needed it again, and live better at Annie’s, it being a sight better house. Junie liked the idea, too, except she never was very crazy about me working for Rady. But he was the only man I’d of worked a day for, me liking to be my own boss the way I do. And it would be a good way of making cash money all through the winter.

  So that’s the way me and Junie happened to move to Annie’s house, and the way me and Rady commenced, you might say, working together. I had in mind to work the winter and then go back to my own place and make my crop. But again the winter was over we had Rady’s timber cut and he’d got out and contracted for a heap more. “Stay on,” he said to me. “You’ll make more on wages with me then you would to raise a crop this year.” And I allowed he was right, so I stayed on.

  When spring came he had his hands full with the farm, so he got Duke Simmons to help me at the mill. Duke was a good hand, but the logs kept rolling in till it was more than the two of us could handle. So it wasn’t long till I had to tell Rady I’d have to have another hand. He sent the oldest Pringle boy down to help. “How come you kin spare Eddie from the farm?” I asked him.

  “Flary’s come home to stay,” he said. “She’ll take his place in the field.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “I don’t reckon you had ary thing to do with her comin’ back,” I said.

  Rady grinned too. “I never had nothin’ to do with it,” he said. “’Course, it might of been that the rumor Flary was carryin’ on with the woman’s husband right under her nose influenced her some in gettin’ shut of her.”

  “Was she?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I wanted the girl closer home.”

  “You been rollin’ her right along?”

  “Some … of late. She’s pretty good.”

  Things rocked along. Miz Rowe neighbored with Junie as much as it was in her nature to neighbor, I reckon. She’d come over several
times a month to set and talk, and seem like she got real fond of the young’uns. She had a sewing machine and she was real handy with it and she was always running up a dress for Junie or some shirts for the boys. Junie kind of unthawed towards her, gradual, and finally allowed that since she’d married Rady she was right nice. “She ain’t near so stuck-up an’ high-an’-mighty,” she said. “She ast fer my corn ketchup recipe the other day. Said she’d heared I made the best in the settlement.”

  As best she could Miz Rowe settled into the ways of the ridge. But a noticing person could of told by the end of the first year they were married, she wasn’t very happy deep down inside. She wasn’t cut out to be a ridge runner. Sometimes I think you got to be born here amongst these hills to love them, and the ways of the people have got to be your ways, bred into you from way back, before you can understand them. You got to know you come from a long line of folks that always had to be pushing ahead of the towns to places where they weren’t hemmed in and smothered, before you can know the feeling was a need in them and is still a need in you. New Ridge is a dark and lonesome place, and the hollers are deep and quiet. But if you were born here, there’s no other place in the world where you can feel at home and be content. The people are strange and queer, with their own ideas of right and wrong, and good and bad, unless they’re your own people, and it may be then you’re strange and queer along with them. I don’t know how an outsider could get to know and love the ridge ways, unless he could put behind him everything he’d ever known different, and forget there was anything more than the ridge in the world.

  Miz Rowe couldn’t do that. She’d been used to too much, and she couldn’t never forget it. She brought it with her to the ridge, and it set her apart. Mister Rowe had been different along with her, and they made a kind of world of their own together. But she was married to a ridge man now, and she might as well of butted her head against a stone wall as to set herself to change him or his ways. There wasn’t nothing for her to do but wear the harness where it galled the most. And it was the little things where it galled.