Like sleeping with Rady. It wasn’t the crazy, wild, hungry feeding of themselves any more. It was there now, casual, regular, still good but only middling good … lawfully good … and not very high-blazing. And after, there was the sleep. Rady snoring and thrashing the bed, being a restless sleeper like he was. Eight, nine, ten hours of sleep. Rady’s always laid down soon, and being wore out with the long days at the mill and on the farm, he’d want to get to bed by good dark. “My God!” she said, frashed beyond keeping quiet one night, “it’s only eight o’clock Can’t you stay awake one night? Can’t you talk? Do you have to sit there and nod and snore and drool? Turn the radio on, or read, or say something You’re just an animal Working and sleeping and eating!”
Rady got up and commenced taking his clothes off. “I’m tired an’ I’m sleepy, an’ I’m goin’ to bed. You kin turn the radio on if you want, or read, or set here an’ talk to yerself. I like to sleep when I’m sleepy.”
When she followed him into the bedroom she looked at his overhalls hanging on the post of the bed with disgust. She’d always seen him in overhalls. But seeing them hang on the post of her bed was something different. Rady was clean for a ridge man, cleaner than most. But you can’t farm and work a mill without getting dirty, and dirt that close to her was something Miz Rowe had never seen before. She couldn’t stand his overhalls and denim shirts and heavy work shoes. And she had to stand them right next to her.
And there were three meals a day to cook for him, which Rady always relished. Sometimes she’d set and look at him eating, the same way all us ridge folks eat, elbows sprawled out over the table, shoveling the food in fast, chewing three or four times and swallowing it down with a gulp. “You eat like a hog!” she told him once.
Rady never even paused or looked up. “You kin wait an’ eat by yerself,” he told her, “you don’t like the way I eat. Hit’s food, ain’t it? Whichever way you git it down.”
And times, the way he talked made her put her hands over her ears. She never said so, but it must of crossed her mind many a time that she’d drove her ducks to a bad market. Mister Rowe had been a drunkard, but he’d been a gentleman drunkard. He could stay up till a respectable bedtime without nodding in his chair. He could talk, and did so, about anything … books, music, the world and the times. And he could play his piano hours on end, making his own inside world come to light and shine. He’d had the polish and the ease that money and travel and breedin’ give a man … and that even in his cups he never quite forgets. He’d had the same things she’d had all her life. Liked the same things she’d liked. Their ways had been the same, their talk, their knowledge and their understanding. When she’d set a little table on the brick paving out under the mulberry tree, set it with thin linen and fine china and bring silver, Mister Rowe had known what she meant and had liked it with her. When she set the same table for Rady, it never meant any more than if she’d put crockery on an oilcloth in the kitchen for him. Mister Rowe had liked breaded shrimp, and green, herb-flavored salads, and old cheese and crisp crackers. Rady liked soup beans and corn bread and turnip greens. He wanted a square meal under his belt. He had no patience with her finickyness, and he let her see it. She had no patience with his ridge ways, and she let him see that.
Still, they made out. It wasn’t no worse marriage than many, and better than some. Miz Rowe was too much of a lady to do more than nag a little, and it never mattered a lot to Rady. He got just what he wanted out of the marriage. He hadn’t expected things to stay the same between them. He’d known what being married would do to that high-blowing flame. He’d known when he married her that he’d already had the best. He didn’t know or care that marriage could be different. You married, and then you had you a woman to do for you. Some women were stout and able and easy-going, like Annie had been. Some were nervous and twitchy and cross-grained, like Miz Rowe. It made precious little difference in the way of your days. It made handier to have a woman than not, but the land and the tobacco and the corn, and the herd of beef cattle and the sawmill … those were the important things. They were what counted.
He’d liked the free-giving, free-loving ways of Annie and he had taken them, but he’d liked her farm better. He’d liked the hard-tempered blade of Miz Rowe’s bending, and he’d used it, but he liked her farm better. Like he wouldn’t of cared had Annie been as old and haggy as his own grandma, he wouldn’t of cared had Miz Rowe been as spindly and spent-flamed as a guttering candle. The important thing about each woman had been what she’d owned and brought in solid value to Rady when she married him.
He counted it pure good luck that both women had been good in bed. What he never did see was that if they hadn’t of been good in bed, he might never of got either one of them. He counted on it and used it for a net with both of them. But he never saw that his net would of been full of holes hadn’t they both been of the nature to want and need a strong mating. And both been starved for it.
But Miz Rowe wasn’t starved no longer, and one day when Junie was over there she got her to help her take down the big four-poster bed and move it in the back room. And she moved two narrow beds in hers and Rady’s room. “Said Rady tumbled around so in bed she couldn’t sleep,” Junie told me. “Hit might be a good idee at that,” she went on, “hit would bear thinkin’ on. If I could git you in another bed, mebbe I’d skip a couple of years havin’ a young’un!”
“I’d jist like to see you try it!” I told her.
And she giggled. For all her fussing I allowed it pleased her for me to set my foot down. I never held with such foolishness. The place for a man and woman that’s married is together. They might sleep better apart, but they’d lose more than they’d gain. For there isn’t anything better in being married than the plain and simple act of sharing a bed. Outside the loving, it’s the knowing the other one is there. To lie in the dark and talk to, maybe. To snuggle to and get warm. To roll against in the night and feel good because they’re there to touch. Junie’s slept with one or the other of the young’uns when they were ailing, but it was always a lonesome time for me. I wasn’t about to have her getting in such an idea of making it lasting!
I don’t reckon it made any difference to Rady one way or the other. I allow he paid her a visit when he wanted to, and as often as he wanted. And there was always Flary if Miz Rowe wasn’t in the notion, or if she was, for that matter. That part of his life was the least of his worries those days.
They were sure fine, fat times. And Rady was making them count big. Looked like everything he turned his hand to turned out good for him. The seasons were right for two years hand-running, and he made big crops and got a high market on them. His hogs and beef weighed heavy and brought good prices, and he kept buying and buying. And he kept so far out ahead on contracts at the mill that I didn’t know as we’d ever get caught up and didn’t care. Rady was making money hand over fist, and I was making more along with him than I’d ever thought to make.
Rady never had no time nor thought to spare for nothing but work. Miz Rowe or Flary, he took them both when he wanted and it was handy, and one meant about as much to him as the other. He was riding a high tide, and he was as sure as sin it would keep on rising. He made bigger and bigger plans all the time, and he kept every dime he could get hold of tied up in more stock, and more pastures, and more tools and more timber to saw. And he loved every minute of it. To get, and keep on getting. Seeing no end to it. That was the way he came up to the winter of 1929. Walking big, riding high, straddling the world.
They’d been married a little better than three years that fall, and Miz Rowe got in the family way It was their first one, and not being ridge born, she talked about it right straight to Junie, and commenced making big plans for it. She bought up a lot of goods and sewed it into the littlest dresses ever I saw, and bought a thing she called a bass-i-net and lined it with pink silk. She got a little bathtub and painted it and put pictures of babies and animals all over it, and she even came home from town one day with a toy
rabbit, all white and woolly, with shoe-button eyes Junie told her it was bad luck to commence making plans so soon, but she just laughed at her and went right on. I’d not ever seen her as happy as she was those days. She was dead sure it was going to be a little girl. It did go the queerest to hear her talking right out about having a baby, and showing baby clothes and toys and things. Junie thought it was downright indecent, but I kind of liked it myself. Seemed like she was having a lot of fun anyways.
Rady never had much time to pay her any attention, although he appeared glad enough about the baby. He joked with her some about it, and just to see her get her dander up would say he’d throw a little old girl in the creek … he was aiming to have a boy. But funny things had commenced to happen on the market. He wasn’t, to say, worried when his hogs and beef brought a lot lower price, and he wasn’t too uneasy when the market on lumber fell off. “Hit’ll pick up,” he said, “jist keep on sawin’.” And he went on buying.
We sawed till we had a yard full. We were sawing a heap faster than it was moving, and it kept on stacking up till there wasn’t hardly any place to put it. Still Rady kept on making contracts, paying out his money for timber and not being able to move the lumber when it was sawed.
“Rady, you better pull in,” I told him, “you better take what you kin git fer what’s on hand, an’ go easy on new contracts.”
“An’ lose money?” he said. “Hit’ll pick up agin. Naw, I ain’t sellin’ on this market. We’ll hold it till it goes up agin.”
And on a low market he kept buying more and more stock, till he was having to buy feed, not having raised enough, even with all the land he’d turned into corn and pastures. It made me plumb uneasy, but it was like he had a fever to keep on getting more stuff. “Now’s the time to buy,” he said, “while stuff’s cheap. Sell high, later.”
“An’ supposin’ you have to sell cheaper?” I said.
“I won’t. Hit’ll pick up. Next year you’ll see. I’ll make so much money I won’t never have to do another lick of work!”
But I was still uneasy. There was talk of it lasting, this low market. Talk of a stock market crash and things going crazy outside. Talk of things getting awful tight. I wouldn’t of wanted everything I had tied up in something I had to sell. I would of rather had it in cash money myself. I was glad I had a little stashed away. Worst came to worst, it’d run us till I could get a crop made. But as long as Rady sawed, I’d run the mill, I reckoned.
Chapter Sixteen
In banking they’ve got a term I never knew much about, but I saw what it meant that spring. Rady was over-extended. He owed for timber he’d made contracts for, and he owed for stock he’d bought. And he had to count on the stock paying for both. He might have made it, and I don’t say he wouldn’t, if a thing hadn’t happened and turned the wheel in the wrong direction, and it came from a quarter he least suspected of ever giving him a minute’s trouble.
Miz Rowe was getting on towards six months, going around in kind of a glow, not knowing or caring that Rady was up to his ears in worries. Being kind of little and scant-weighted most times, she showed a heap, like Junie’s orange in the middle of a stocking. And it was getting harder for her to do up her work. She hadn’t been none too stout all along, the doctor warning her to keep her from having bad luck. Junie said she never had seen a woman have the morning sickness so bad. And when that was past there was something else made her ankles and legs swell sometimes. But she’d taken care all along, and she was still taking care.
She spoke to Junie one day about getting somebody to come in and help. Junie would of gone and glad to, could she have spared the time. But she always had her hands full. “Whyn’t you git Flary?” she said, trying to think of somebody close. “Looks like they could spare her fer a couple or three months.”
Miz Rowe knew, of course, that Flary was at home, and knew she was making a hand along with the old man and the boys. She’d seen her a time or two the first year she was home, but not of late. “Why, I hadn’t thought of her,” she said. “Can she do housework?”
“Well, she was hired out to some woman over in town. I reckon she kin make out, though I wouldn’t say how good she’d be. Leastways, she could do the heavy work fer you.”
“I’ll go over there right now and talk to her,” Miz Rowe said.
“You better see what Rady says first, hadn’t you?” Junie said. “See if he kin spare her.”
“It doesn’t matter whether he can spare her or not,” Miz Rowe said, kind of sniffing. “He can get somebody else for the field. Help’s too scarce for me to pass up somebody right at my door!” And she lit out to have a talk with Flary.
Had Junie known what I knew she would of died before she breathed Flary’s name. But she never, and Miz Rowe ran right smack into it.
She went over to the Pringles and made her way through the litter in the front yard. The old woman came to the door. “Is Flary home?” Miz Rowe asked her.
In a way it was like the old woman was glad to see her. She grinned. “She shore is,” she said. “Come in. She’s on the bed. She ain’t been feelin’ so good lately.”
And Miz Rowe went in. Flary got up off the bed. I don’t reckon anything could of hit more sudden and unexpected. Flary’s dress was hiking up in front just as much as Miz Rowe’s, if not a little more. She stood there and looked at Miz Rowe. And Miz Rowe stood and looked at her. Both bulged and out of shape, and both got that way by the same man. Miz Rowe just stood and looked and never said a word. Then she commenced laughing and she turned around and walked out of the house, never once looking back nor even faltering. Just walked off, turning her back on Rady’s bastard big in Flary, and carrying her own bigness awkwardly with her. She knew. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind.
When she got home she went straight to the barn and saddled her horse, and ungainly as she was, she got on him and headed like the wind for the road. She’d not been riding since she’d known about the baby. She’d been taking good care. But it was like she wanted a purpose now to ride the devil away, or to rid herself of something unclean and unwanted. It was like she went a little crazy, and wanted, maybe, to join Annie and her young’un over in the graveyard. Like they’d had the best of it, after all. Leastways that’s what I always made of it.
And she came close to it. Junie saw her pounding down the road and she came tearing over the mill to get me. “Miz Rowe’s gone plumb out of her head,” she said. “She’s on that horse agin, an’ she went past our place goin’ like the wind. She’ll lose that young’un, shore!”
I lit out down the road, Junie keeping up behind as best she could. But it was more than a couple of miles before we came up to her. The horse was cropping grass by the side of the road and Miz Rowe was setting in the saddle, her face white, her hands gripping the pommel and all bent over. It was easy to tell the jolting and pounding had started things.
“Have you done an’ lost yer mind?” Junie scolded when we came up. “Haven’t you got a grain of sense left in yer head!”
She looked at Junie and her eyes had a kind of dull look. “I don’t care,” she says, and then she kind of moaned and hung onto the pommel of the saddle again. “I don’t care! I don’t want it! I hate it! I hate it! Let it die. It ought to die! Let him have Flary’s!” And she shuddered. “Maybe we’ll both die.”
“She’s out of her head,” Junie said, but I knew about what had happened. I told Junie. And she looked at me with her eyes as big as wheels. “My God,” she said, “hit was me sent her over there!”
We got her down off the horse and Junie made her lie down on the grass and then she sent me for Rady. He’d bought a car the year before and could get there quick. He came as fast as he could, scared to death and as white as a sheet himself. I told him, best I could, what had happened. I wouldn’t of wanted to be in his shoes. I don’t know as I could of faced it. But he did. But like many another man before him, he took out his feelings by being short with her. “What in hell’s the matter with you?�
� he said, gruff and mad. “Ain’t you got no sense?”
She never said a word to him. Hardly looked at him, and when he touched her to lift her in the car, she pulled away from him, like his hands were dirty and filthy.
She lost the baby. And it was a little girl. But she never acted like she cared one way or the other. She never asked about it, or seemed to grieve. She just laid there sick and white, not talking to anybody. The only time she ever showed any life was when Rady would try to come in the room. She made them keep him out. She could storm and scream at him hard enough, and she wouldn’t have him anywheres close. “Keep him out of here,” she’d yell, and if he’d come in anyhow, she’d throw anything she could lay her hands on at him, cursing him and squalling and screaming. He didn’t try but once or twice to see her. After that he went his way and left her to herself.
She was a time getting over it. A month or two, as I remember. She was up and around sooner, but not stout by any means. Junie went when she could and helped, but things got in a right smart mess, and it was mostly Rady had to redd up himself. Miz Rowe never cared. Just walked through the clutter and around it like it wasn’t there. And I misdoubt she said a dozen words to Rady all that time. It was like he wasn’t there, either.
Then she seemed to make up her mind of a sudden about things. He came home one evening and she was packing her clothes. “What you doin’?” he asked her.
“I’m leavin’,” she said.
“Leavin’?”
She had her bags laid out on the bed and was folding things neat like her old way of doing. But she turned around to look at him. “I’m leaving the whole goddamned mess. You and the ridge and Flary Pringle and everything else I’m leaving it! All of it!”
It took the wind out of Rady and he set down all at once. “Fer good?” he says.
“God, yes, for good! Forever and ever good!”
Hill Man Page 18