by Kate Chopin
They wandered toward the south; the two vagabonds and the boy. He felt as if he had been transplanted into another sphere, into a native element from which he had all along been excluded. The sight of the country was beautiful to him and his whole being expanded in the space and splendor of it. He liked the scent of the earth and the dry, rotting leaves, the sound of snapping twigs and branches, and the shrill songs of birds. He liked the feel of the soft, springy turf beneath his feet when he walked, or of the rolling pebbles when he mounted a stony hillside.
Gutro, otherwise the Beast, drove his mules and talked to them, watered, washed and curried them; lavished upon them a care prompted by a wealth of affection and esteem. The boy was not permitted to touch the animals; he might not even think of them with their owner’s knowledge or consent. But he had plenty else to do, with Suzima shifting the greater part of her work and duties upon him.
“I’ve got some time to sew now, thank heaven!” she said, and with a coarse thimble upon her clumsy finger and a needle threaded long, she sat at the back of the wagon or on a log in the warm air and constructed, with bits of cotton cloth, awkward-fashioned garments for the boy to wear next to his skin that she might wash those which he had on.
They moved along while the days were pleasant. Suzima must have felt glad as they went; for often-times, as she walked beside the slow-moving wagon through the still woods, she lifted her voice and sang. The boy thought he had never heard anything more beautiful than the full, free notes that came from her throat, filling the vast, woody temple with melody. It was always the same stately refrain from some remembered opera that she sang as she walked.
But on moonlight nights or when resting beside the camp fire, she brought forth a disabled guitar, and to a strumming accompaniment sang low, pleasant things, popular airs and little bits from the lighter operas. The boy sometimes joined her with his fluty girl voice, and it pleased her very well.
If Gutro was sober he took a degree of interest in the performance and made suggestions which proved that he was not devoid of a certain taste and rude knowledge of music.
But when Gutro was drunk, everyone, everything suffered but the mules. Suzima defied him and suffered the more for her defiance. She went about wincing and rubbing her shoulders and calling him vile names under her breath. But she would not let him beat the boy. She had a tender feeling for helpless and dependent things. She often exclaimed with impulsive pity over the dead and bleeding birds which they brought in from the forest. Gutro was teaching the boy to handle a gun, and many a tasty morsel they procured for their sylvan feasts. Sometimes they picked nuts like squirrels, gathering pecans when they reached the South country.
When it rained they sat bundled and huddled in the wagon under the streaming canopy, Gutro driving and swearing at the elements. Suzima was miserable when it rained and would not sing and would hardly talk. The boy was not unhappy. He peeped out at the water running in the ruts, and liked the sound of the beating rain on the canvas and the noise and crash of the storm in the forest.
“Look, Suzima! Look at the rain coming across the hill, yonder, in sheets! It’ll be along here in three minutes.”
“Maybe you like it,” she would grumble. “I don’t,” and she would draw her shawl closer and crouch further in the wagon.
Often they traveled at night, when the moon shone; sometimes when it rained. They went creeping, the mules feeling their way cautiously, surely, through the darkness, along the unfamiliar roads. Suzima and the boy slept then in the bottom of the wagon on the folded “comforter.” He often wished, at such times, that the wagon was broader or that Suzima would not take up so much room. Sometimes they quarreled about it, shoving, elbowing each other like children in a trundle bed. Gutro, in a rage, would turn and threaten to throw them both into the road and leave them there to perish.
IV
The boy felt no little astonishment when he made Suzima’s acquaintance in her official capacity of a fortune teller. It was a sunny afternoon and they had halted at the edge of a small country town and stopped there to rest, to make ready for a fresh start in the morning. Their presence created no little stir, and aroused some curiosity. Small children assembled and followed with absorbing interest the boy’s activity in hoisting the sign, stretching the tent and setting forth the various and unique living utensils.
Gutro, robed in a long, loose robe of dingy scarlet and black, arranged, with much precision, upon an improvised table of boards, a quantity of vari-colored herbs and powders, unfailing remedies for any and every ailment which mankind had yet discovered or conceived. He was no faith healer, Gutro. He believed in the efficacy of things that grew, that could be seen and felt and tasted; green and bitter and yellow things. Some he had gathered at risk of life and limb on the steep ascents of the Himalayas. Others he had collected under the burning suns of Egypt; secret and mysterious, unknown save to himself and a little band of compatriots on the banks of the Nile. So he said. And the best of it, or the worst of it, was that those who listened believed and bought and felt secure in the possession of a panacea for their ailments.
Suzima, giving an extra twist to her yellow turban, sat at the door of the tent with a “lap-board,” such as housewives use, extended across her knees. Upon this she laid out in bewildering array a pack of cards covered with pictures and mythical designs: a key, a ring, a letter or a coffin, a fine lady in a train and a finer gentleman on horseback. Suzima could tell fortunes by the cards or without the cards, off-hand, any way. The dialect which she assumed was not alone indescribable, but, for the most part, unintelligible, and required frequent interpretations from Gutro. There was no native Egyptian in that Southwest country to challenge her say and it passed muster and carried conviction. The boy could not withhold a feeling of admiration for her resources and powers of invention.
Suzima was over-blunt in her occult revelations to the negroes and farm-hands who loitered to learn somewhat of their destiny. But later, when youths and maidens from the village began to assemble and linger, half ashamed, wholly eager, then was Suzima all sentiment and sympathy, even delicacy. Oh! the beautiful fortunes that she told! How she lifted the veil of a golden future for each! For Suzima dealt not with the past. She would have scorned to have taken silver for telling anyone that which they already knew. She sent them away with confidence and a sweet agitation. One little maid sickened with apprehension when Suzima predicted for her a journey in the very near future. For the maid was even then planning a trip into Western Texas, and what might not this woman with the penetrating vision next foretell! Perhaps the appalling day and hour of her death.
Together Suzima and the boy sang their songs. It was the only part of the programme in which he took any part. He had refused to wear any foreign headgear or fantastic garb, or to twist his tongue into deceitful and misleading utterances. But he sang, standing behind Suzima bending over her guitar. There was more color in his face and lips now than when he had sat dreaming in Woodland Park. His eyes looked straight into the hazy distance, over the heads of the small gathering of people. Some of them looking at his upturned face, thought it was very beautiful. There was a tranquil light shining, glowing rather, from within; something which they saw without comprehending, as they saw the glow in the western sky.
At night, when everything was still, the boy walked abroad. He was not afraid of the night or of strange places and people. To step his foot out in the darkness, he did not know where, was like tempting the Unknown. Walking thus he felt as if he were alone and holding communion with something mysterious, greater than himself, that reached out from the far distance to touch him — something he called God. Whenever he had gone alone into the parish church at dusk and knelt before the red light of the tabernacle, he had known a feeling akin to this. The boy was not innocent or ignorant. He knew the ways of men and viewed them with tranquil indifference, as something external to which no impulse within him responded. His soul had passed through dark places untouched, just as his body w
as passing now, unharmed, through the night, where there were pitfalls into which his feet, some way, did not wander.
V
Along in January the vagabonds felt that they would like to settle down for a time and lead a respectable existence, if only for the sake of novelty. Perhaps they would never have been so tempted if they had not stumbled upon a dismantled cabin pre-empted by a family of pigs whose ejection was but a matter of bluff and bluster joined to some physical persuasion. There was no door to the cabin, but there was part of a roof and a suggestion of chimney. And the wanderers were not over-exacting in their requirements, especially with no landlord at hand, to bow to his whims and fancies.
So they settled down to a domestic existence which some way proved to be not so united a one as their life on the road.
Near at hand was a big field where negroes were engaged during the day in clearing away stubble, some in plowing and others in bedding up cotton seed on the dry and unyielding parts.
Gutro, with the mules ever foremost in his mind, went out on the very first day and negotiated for their hire with the owner of the plantation, offering to throw himself in for lagniappe. A mule takes to the plow like the proverbial fish to water; then these were fine fellows with the brawn and muscle for freight hauling. When the planter took them for a month, Gutro followed and stuck to them and stayed by them. He sat on the wagon when they were driven to the landing. He kept his beady eyes upon them when they pulled the plow, and he was there at hand to note the quality and quantity of the provender dealt out to them. It would have been an evil hour for the negro who had dared, in his presence, to misuse or abuse one or the other of the animals.
Suzima and the boy went nosing about in search of bits of lumber with which to improve the condition of their temporary abode. But a stray plank was not easy to find, with everybody around patching fences, so they did not pursue their search with stubborn persistence, but went, instead, down the bank of the bayou and tried to catch some fish. The negroes told them that if they wanted fish they would have to go back to the lake; but they decided to drag crawfishes from the ditches along the field. The canvas-covered wagon marked them as “movers,” and no one questioned or disturbed them.
That first night, when it came bedtime, they were unable to dispute the possession of the cabin with the fleas and, vanquished, they returned to the shelter of the tent. Next morning Suzima sent the boy to the village, a mile away, to learn, if possible, something about the disposition of that particular breed of fleas, and to acquaint himself with a method by which they might be induced to temper their aggressive activity.
It was Saturday. The boy discerned that there was a church in the village, and a pastor, who, arrayed in cassock, happened to be walking through his garden adjacent to the parsonage.
He went and spoke over the fence to the priest, who looked approachable, who was surely more approachable for him than would have been any other soul in that locality whom he might have encountered and addressed.
The priest was kind, sociable and communicative. He knew much about fleas, their habits and vices, and withheld nothing of enlightenment upon the subject from the boy. In turn he expressed some curiosity himself and a desire for information touching the particular stamp of young vagabond who had come sauntering along the road and who addressed him so cavalierly over his own fence. He was gratified to hear that the boy was a Catholic. He was astonished to discover that he could serve Mass, and amazed to hear that he liked to do so. What an anomaly! A boy who liked to serve Mass, who did not have to be coaxed, cajoled, almost lassoed and dragged in to do service at the Holy Sacrifice! And so he would be on hand betimes in the morning, would he? They parted friends, agreeably impressed, one with the other.
The boy was well pleased to find himself once more and so unexpectedly brought in touch with the religious life and the sacred office. As he traversed the road on his way back to the cabin he kept rehearsing the service half audibly.
“Judical me, Deus, et discerna causam meam, de gente non sancta — ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me” — and so forth.
He told Suzima he was going to the village to attend Mass the following morning.
“Go on,” she said, “it won’t hurt you. I’ve known people that were helped a sight by prayer-meeting. I’ll go along too.”
A part of her present scheme of respectability was a temporary discontinuance of the “Egyptian accent” and a suspension of professional performances. The yellow sign was not unfurled. She determined to contribute nothing during that restful month towards the household expenses. When she went into the village to church the following morning, with the boy, she had laid aside her yellow turban and wore a folded veil over her head. She looked not unlike some of the ‘Cadian women who were there. But her carriage was freer and there was a vigorous vitality in her movements and in the gleam of her eyes that the milder ‘Cadians did not possess. The little church, with its mixed congregation of whites and blacks interested her, and as she sat uncomfortably on the edge of the pew, her hands folded in her lap, she shifted her eyes constantly from one object to the other. But when the boy appeared with the priest before the altar, clad in his long white vestments, she was spell-bound with astonishment and admiration and her attention was not once again diverted from him. How tall he looked and how beautiful! He made her think of the picture of an angel. And when she saw him go through the maneuvers of serving with skill and ease, and heard his clear responses in a language which was not familiar to her, she was seized by a sudden respect and consideration which had not before entered into her feelings for him.
“Oh! it’s out of sight!” she told him after Mass. “You got to wear one of them gowns on the road and talk that language: the Egyptian ain’t in it.”
“That’s Latin,” he said with a little bridling pride. “It only belongs in church, and I ain’t going to talk it on the road for you or anybody. What’s more, the vestments belong in church, too, and I wouldn’t wear ‘em outside to save my life. Why, it’d be a sin.”
“A sin,” marveled Suzima, who knew no delicate shades of distinction in the matter of sinfulness. “Oh pshaw! I didn’t mean no harm.”
They took their midday meal with the priest, who felt an interest in them and kindly offered them a share of his plain and wholesome fare. Suzima sat stiff and awkward at table, staring, for the most part, straight out of the open door, into the yard, where there were chickens scratching around and a little calf tied under a tree.
The boy feared for her own sake that she might forget herself and drop into the careless, emphatic speech which was habitual with her. But he need not have feared. Suzima spoke not at all, except in monosyllables, when she was politely addressed by the priest. She was plainly ill at ease. When the old gentleman arose to procure something from a side table, she winked at the boy and gave him a playful kick under the table. He returned the kick, not as a confederate, but a little viciously, as one who might say, “be quiet will you, and behave yourself in the company of your betters.”
For a whole half day and more Suzima had been eminently respectable — almost too respectable for her own comfort. On their way back to the hut, as they passed a desolate strip of woodland, she gave a sudden impatient movement of the shoulders, as if to throw off some burden that had been weighing upon them, and lifting her voice she sang. There was even a ring of defiance in the vibrant notes. She sang the one stately refrain that had grown familiar to the boy and that he heard sometimes in his dreams.
“Oh!” he exclaimed impetuously. “I’d rather hear you sing than anything in the world, Suzima.”
It was not often that she received words of admiration or praise and the boy’s impulsive outburst touched her. She took hold of his hand and swung it as they went along.
“Say!” she called out to him that night, as she flung him his comforter, “it’s good the Beast wasn’t along. He don’t know how to behave in company. He’d a’ given the whole snap away, damn him.”
V
I
Suzima’s approval of the boy in sanctuary robes was explainable in view of the contrast offered by his appearance in everyday habiliments. She had done the best for his shabby garments with clumsy darns and patches. But what was her poor best, with himself doing the worst for them with broadening girth and limbs and hardening flesh and swelling muscles! There was no vestige of pallor now in his cheeks. Suzima often told him that he was not worth his salt, because his voice, which had been girlish and melodious, was no better now than the sound of a cracked pot. He was sometimes sensitive and did not like to be told such things. He tried to master the waverings and quaverings, but it was of no use, so he gave over joining Suzima in her songs.
The priest at the village did not mind so trifling a thing as the breaking of a boy’s voice — a thing, moreover, which could not be helped — but he was concerned over the shabbiness and general misfit of his attire, and thereupon grew compassionate. He found employment for him in a store of the village and the boy, in exchange for his services, received a suit of clothes, taken down, brand new, from the shelf and folded in sharp creases. They were not of the best or finest, but they were adequate, covering his body completely and offering ample room for a fair play of limb and muscle.
He walked away each morning to the village, leaving Suzima alone, and he did not return till evening. His dinner he took at noon with the priest, and the two grew chatty and intimate over their soup. He confided to his venerable friend, when questioned, that he knew nothing of his companions of the road, absolutely nothing, except that they were Gutro and Suzima, who wandered across country in a covered wagon selling drugs and telling fortunes for a livelihood.
A shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders can be very expressive and the boy read disapproval in these involuntary gestures of his old companion. Within his very own soul — that part of him which thought, compared, weighing considerations — there was also disapproval, but, some way, he was always glad to find Suzima sauntering down the road at evening to meet him. Walking beside her, he told her how his whole day had been spent, without reserve, as he would have spoken in the confessional.