Nancy Culpepper

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  Artemisia’s enthrallment with the fortune had been a corrective, Nova observed. Lately, her sister had not had any of the fits that had started several years before, after she got a lick on the head from a wagon tongue that knocked loose and flipped backwards. Her fits were like those of dogs in August, when the heat crazed them and caused them to dance in circles and froth at the mouth. The Renfroes, who had been good enough to take Artemisia in because she and Nova were inseparable, wouldn’t acknowledge that there was anything wrong with her. It was just temperament, they said. “She sure has got a wild temper.” “She knocks herself out sometimes just a-busting her head on a wall.” “What makes you that way, Mezhie?” Bealus and his brothers scolded her after her spells. But Nova wouldn’t join in. She believed that her sister had a demon she had to get out of her, that she had to slam her head on something in order to release the offending spirit. Artemisia never seemed to remember the falling and flailing and frothing. When anyone mentioned mad dogs, she changed the subject.

  “Beware of false rumors about this case,” Mrs. March warned. “People are trying to horn in or discredit the true claimants. Don’t speak of this to outsiders!”

  Mrs. March wrote that it would take a long time to get the case to the Supreme Court. She begged for patience—and another dollar or two donation to keep the effort going. The sisters were desperate with longing, their frustration tangled like yarn, spinning out in knots. The potato crop came in short, with nothing extra to sell. In the fall, the children needed shoes. A calf died.

  All through the farm community of Locust, word had circulated about the Edwards heirs. Several of the pamphlets had turned up, stirring excitement like a gathering storm. A good number of the community could claim some Edwards kin, but few could afford the fee to support a claim. Nova heard Bealus scoff at talk of the inheritance, and she feigned indifference. Early Otto brought word that he had found proof of his Edwards connection all the way back to New Amsterdam. His grandmother Novella Wyatt remembered her grandmother talking about some land in New York. He had not saved up his fee yet, and his anxiety had affected his driving. He ran into a ditch twice.

  Bealus Renfroe was a proud man, a rationalist who thought his pretty wife flighty, but he often indulged her whims—even when her outbursts of passion appeared daresome, unheard-of among the men of his acquaintance. He did not share details of his privilege with the congregation of men behind the barn or at the stockyard, where they routinely reviewed the intricacies of the female anatomy along with wheat prices and the mating habits of bulls. They spoke of women’s bodies in an abstract way. They told jokes. (“They call Bessie a washerwoman.” “Why’s that?” “Her face is long as an ironing board; she’s got a chest that’s flat as a washboard, and a bottom like a wash kettle.”) Bealus, suspecting his wife of some secret, worried that Nova had a loosened flap in her brain and might be in danger of developing the same malady her sister had. He feared Nova’s collapse, even though Nova had never lost consciousness, had never banged her head on a fence post, had never slobbered, even on the pillow. She awoke bright and alert, like a wound-up cock-a-doodle-do, bounding out of bed and romping through her morning work with a fervor that seemed to parallel her energies in bed the night before. They had produced their three children effortlessly (“with our eyes closed,” he said), but despite Nova’s passion, her fertility seemed to have halted in the prime of her productive years. He sensed that this knowledge liberated her. She could dance a jig and bake a cake and set a hen almost in the same breath. But he worried that her infertility might also have the opposite effect; it might work a fever upon her brain.

  Still, her lust flooded him, just to think of it. When he was plowing a field with an old mule he called Sidey-o, his mind was dancing with visions of Nova’s soft flesh.

  Out of the blue, she had begun to perform special, unmentionable acts upon him—things he’d never been able to get her to do before. She rendered him helpless. Afterwards, she would ask him for a quarter, or occasionally a dollar. She said she was saving the money for a surprise for him and the family. Christmas was coming, she said, although she couldn’t promise the surprise in time. She made the secret seem irresistible, as orgiastic as the pleasures she offered now. Normally strict and thrifty, now Bealus grew easy and profligate. He could give her a few quarters after a trip to town. He could spare a dollar after he hauled turnips to the market, wheat to the mill. Bealus was known around the courthouse square in Hopewell, where he went to trade. Everyone knew he indulged his wife, but he let that be known in such a way that he would be seen as proud and fair and benevolent—like a good master, not a hen-pecked weakling. Of course, he would not reveal the secrets of Nova’s special new gifts, because he did not want anyone else to get any ideas. He plowed the fields in a daze, forked hay to the cows while in a dream. Not since his early youth had such passion invaded his whole being; her new skills caused paroxysms to shout through his being, and in the fields he throbbed until night fell and he could bring a quilt over her head again, holding her until she came up for air.

  In a year and a half, the sisters saved the fifty dollars for the two membership fees. It was enough money to provide a year’s worth of store-bought goods for the household. They did without dry-goods such as muslin and sacking. Bealus was not able to buy new overalls or shoes for himself, but he did not complain. He did not know that they were dipping into the church tithe. The sisters sent in their applications just after Christmas, drawing upon some of their Christmas allowance by refraining from buying oranges and nuts for the holidays. To the howls of disappointment, Nova smiled sweetly. “These are hard times,” she said.

  Mrs. March sent a handwritten letter, acknowledging the memberships and enclosing receipts.

  One early-spring day Nova told Artemisia what she had done to get those dollars from Bealus. Artemisia was an old maid, over thirty, and no man would have her. Nova told her story with great pleasure and animation. When Nova elaborated, in some detail, on what it was like—the proper procedure, the way she built up to the pleasure—she anticipated that Artemisia would simply not believe her. She expected merely to amuse her sister. She had innocently wanted to share her delight and to reveal the source of the savings, but she had not imagined Artemisia’s reaction. Soon after Nova had exhausted her lively description, Artemisia commenced to staring at a knot-hole in the pine wainscoting, as if she were a cat watching for a mouse, and then she began that familiar guttural moan, like an animal trapped in a deep well. She slid against the pine wall into a heap, with her tongue catching her bonnet strings. As she wallowed and began to throb, the bonnet strings curled around her tongue.

  “Mezhie!” Nova squatted next to her. She pulled the bonnet strings from her sister’s mouth and removed the bonnet from her head. By then Artemisia was thrashing, quietly during the prelude, then building to a crescendo.

  “Mezhie!” Nova began to moan herself, her voice rising until she was bawling like a cow, moaning with the deep anguish she often felt for her sister.

  Artemisia’s thrashing reached symphonic proportions, and after an eternity she began the slow subsiding, the diminuendo, the hush of her music. With a sorrow that squeezed her soul, Nova remembered how Artemisia had ached to learn the piano. But there had been no one to teach her after Mrs. Bledsoe took palsy.

  For months, no word came of the inheritance, except four short notes asking for more donations. Mrs. March suggested one or two dollars per month, each, for expenses for the lawyers to press their case to the Supreme Court. They needed five hundred dollars for their trip to Washington. Any month now, the results of the case might be known. The sisters sent in what donations they could afford, and they waited, with growing apprehension, for news. Although Early Otto could not send in his own membership dues, he had already made plans to buy some acreage and livestock as soon as the inheritance arrived. Early Otto believed firmly in the Edwards claim, and he itched to gab about it more freely, but he kept his word and didn’t reveal t
o Bealus that the sisters had applied. Artemisia, drained by the sheer effort the dream of riches required, decided that all she wanted out of the estate was a piano, and she spoke incessantly of it to Nova and the mailman.

  Bealus said to her, “I heard you talking about a pi-anner. Is that what your sweetheart’s bringing you? I imagine we’ll see him hauling it up the road any minute now.”

  “I never said any such thing,” Artemisia said, every notion of music plunging into hiding.

  “You’d come nearer a-building one out of kindling sticks yourself,” Bealus said.

  Later, when they were sorting dress pieces to start a quilt top, Nova sought to reassure her sister about Bealus’s ways. “Nobody would ever hope there could be a piano if we didn’t have this reason to believe,” she said.

  “I’m just weary with a-waiting,” Artemisia said. “Purely weary.”

  On a bleak December day, when the weather had begun to turn and the leaves had fallen and hog-killing day was imminent, a letter arrived from Mrs. March, apologizing for the long silence. She was writing from a hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. “I have distressing news,” Mrs. March wrote. One of the principal lawyers employed on behalf of the claimants, she explained, was in prison, having been indicted for fraud—charges not related to the claim. “This development means that we cannot proceed at present. However, our organization is not dissolved, and we hope the claim can go forth soon, when we can replace Mr. Worth. Meantime I know you have been very eager to complete your genealogy, which would need to be done before any claim could be verified. The regular fee of any genealogist is twenty-five dollars, but I’m prepared to do the work for you for ten dollars each—since your trees will be the same. I have a special interest in your line, because the information you have given is similar to other records of Edwards claimants who can trace their interest back to our Robert Edwards, shipwrecked sailor. Please let me know if you want me to get up your family tree for you, so that when the case resumes you will be represented and can take possession of your share of the estate more quickly.” Mrs. March enclosed two family-tree forms to be filled out with what names they knew.

  The sisters were despondent, and no amount of coming Christmas cheer would raise their spirits. Nova was afraid that Bealus was expecting something extraordinary to come of all the money he had given her. She knew he had little cash to spare. And yet she and Artemisia needed more, so that Mrs. March could verify their connection to the original property owner in New York. The sisters’ disappointment was like the emptiness left by a stillbirth.

  They heard from Mrs. March a month later, the day the hogs were killed. She had been called to Memphis, on urgent business. She wrote, in handwriting, “We are proceeding with claims. Mr. Jack Hopkins has joined the team, and all preparations are being made for the journey to Washington. Please let me know if you decide to have me go ahead with your family tree. There is much work to be done on your family record, but I feel sure we can take care of you, in case of further success. But please keep your business on this matter strictly to yourself, as you know some people do not want us to have success. Refuse to show anything or talk to strangers and outsiders.”

  Nova squeezed Artemisia’s hand silently as they read over this letter for the fourth time. It was late at night, and Artemisia’s garret was chilly. Their hands were raw from handling sausage and chitterlings and other hog parts all day. Two butchered hogs hung in pieces out in the smokehouse, while a hickory fire smoldered beneath them.

  Artemisia said, “We can’t stop now.”

  In the autumn of 1932, Nova fell ill and was confined to her bed. For some time, she had felt lassitude and loss of verve, which she blamed on disappointment about the inheritance, for nothing of substance had been learned. A knot that had been in her breast for a year had grown larger, and another appeared under her arm. At first she thought the knot would go away, but when the second one formed, she was filled with dread. A poultice did not shrink the knots. Nor did prayer, although Artemisia scoured the Bible for pertinent passages. Nova hadn’t called attention to the knots, but Bealus found one. The discovery made her worry that he might suspect she had hidden some secret pleasure from him. She had withdrawn her intimacies. She thought perhaps he would take the knot as a sign of some betrayal, but he did not accuse her. So she decided the knots were her punishment for hiding the secret of the inheritance, for wheedling his dollars and quarters out of him in such an un-Christian way. Bealus didn’t suggest having the doctor until the knots began to sap her strength, like pregnancies requiring extra nourishment. Artemisia said they were mad-stones, the same as sometimes found in deer stomachs and used for divination.

  “Mad-stones are harder than this,” Nova said. “And I can’t divine a thing from them but suffering.”

  When the pain began, she couldn’t help gather the corn at harvest. Her older daughter, Betsy, quit school to help cook for the men. She did the patching and some of the housework.

  Artemisia, suffused with melancholy, sat by Nova’s bed. “If we heir that fortune, we can carry you to a famous clinic, and they can fix you.”

  Artemisia continued to meet Early Otto every day, waiting for news of the inheritance, but little came. They had sent in their twenty dollars, most of it earned by peddling dried-peach fried pies to ladies in town. Mrs. March had finished the family trees, establishing their straight line to the shipwrecked sea captain, and the court dates had been delayed.

  When she felt she might be dying, Nova said to Artemisia, “I want you to ask Bealus for anything you need. Bealus will take care of you. And Betsy will help.” Nova had difficulty swallowing, and her speech was broken into uneven phrases.

  “I’ll be all right,” Artemisia said. “When we heir the money, we’ll be all right. I can set up housekeeping. I’ll buy myself a mansion and new pots.”

  “Keep after the fortune,” Nova said. “Don’t let Bealus . . .”

  She fell asleep, and Artemisia tucked Nova’s hand under the quilt, out of the draft.

  When she knew for certain she was dying, Nova said to Bealus, “I want you to do one thing for me. Just one thing I ask and that is all.”

  “Anything.” Bealus was half-crazed, primed for reckless promises.

  “You’ll be needing a wife. I want you to marry Mezhie.”

  Bealus jumped, as if he had been kicked in the face by a mule.

  “I don’t want her to go to the asylum,” Nova said, her voice a harsh whisper. “I don’t want her to end up by herself and no family.”

  “I can take care of Mezhie,” Bealus said. “She can live right here— but marry her? I couldn’t think it.”

  Nova said, “You need her to take care of the children. If she’s in the house, sooner or later there will be temptation. It won’t be right. So you have to marry her. The mad-stone’s working now, and I can foretell the future. I can tell you I’m going to die, and I have to make plans: what to do about you and what to do about Mezhie. So I figured it out, and that’s it. That’s what you have to do. You’re a man, and if she’s under your roof and you have no wife, you’ll want her.”

  “But—”

  “She’ll love you, even though she doesn’t know it now, and she’ll remind you of me. You won’t know the difference after a while.”

  In the end, Nova resigned herself to the Lord’s care, and when the pain made her scream, she imagined she was having one of her sister’s fits, sharing with her that excruciating agony she had witnessed so many times and which now, for far too long, she kept expecting to turn into oblivion.

  Out of Christian duty, Bealus Renfroe meant to honor his wife’s dying request—in his own way—if he could figure out a suitable plan. But his fear of Artemisia throttled him. His grief was at odds with his sense of honor. A man wanted to bring out a certain amount of frenzy in a woman, it was true. But not unconsciousness and a slathering tongue caught in the strings of her nightcap. Artemisia’s fits frightened him with their supernatural depth. Her spasms re
minded him of a religious exercise in the old days when penitents fell over from the church benches and jerked themselves senseless, until they lay stiff as boards.

  But then Bealus slowly opened his mind. On a spring afternoon, Artemisia rounded a corner of the house, unaware that he saw her. Her mouth was moving, as if she were pantomiming a conversation; she threw her hands up in surprise, although she hadn’t seen him. She was deep into her pantomime. He saw that she was pretending to talk to her sister. He recognized the way the two sisters chattered together. She was taking both sides of the conversation, going back and forth. He recognized Nova, her expressions, her modest “Aw, pshaw!”—as well as the flirtatious dips and tosses of her head, her hand brushing the wings of her hair. Artemisia was playing both parts, as though she had two personalities, as though she had Nova in her.

  He didn’t reveal that he saw her at her game. He had believed Artemisia to be a stray mooncalf, possessed by enigmatic visions. Now he saw that Nova inhabited her, and memories of Nova rose unbearably in his mind.

  When he went to Artemisia in her garret, he meant to do so tenderly, without impertinence or dishonorable intention. He wanted to know if Artemisia had any liniment.

  “I didn’t know where Nova kept the liniment,” he said. “She always had liniment. She rubbed my sore back with liniment.” His tongue caressed the word, drawing it out long.

  “I’ll show you the liniment,” she said, catching her nightdress around her feet, holding it up as she descended the stairs. With the lantern, he went ahead of her, half turned to catch her if she stumbled.

  Bealus observed her gathering the hem of her nightdress, squatting to fetch the liniment from a cupboard it shared with the bluing and the starch. She held the hem bunched around her feet. As she searched for a rag, her hair fell across her eyes like a shadow, and she seemed to peek from behind it, wary of him, but perhaps beckoning. He was aware that his trousers were held up by only one gallus.