Or in the afternoon, he would wander about. There would be other men like himself, “mill daddies.” His old woman was slovenly, a bad housekeeper. It might be that, in the end, he would begin working about the house, doing women’s work, making beds, sweeping, helping with the cooking.
The wagon went its painful way along the road. There had been a dry time and there was dust. The wheels made crazy tracks in the road. Three or four older girls walked behind the wagon. The caravan passed, young Tom standing and staring, no word, no sign passed between him and the man, between him and the girls. It went down the sloping road, the crooked wheels catching on protruding rocks. Often the wagon came to a dead stop. “Why doesn’t he make that fat old mother get out and walk?” There was a little creek to be forded and beyond a little rise just before you came to the Halsey house. The team struggled, the man slashing at them with a whip, Tom staring. “They’ll never make it.”
And how did the team manage to get up hills, up the sides of mountains? There were a hundred miles of such mountain road to be covered before the caravan reached the cotton-mill town.
Tom turned to go back to his work and then stopped. There was still another girl, belonging to the family, a slender pale woman child of fourteen or fifteen. She was coming along the road alone, stumbling along. She did not see Tom standing there.
She was bare-legged, bare-footed. She was ill. She stopped by the fence near the spring and struggled to get over, still not seeing Tom. Her cheeks were flushed, as with a fever, and she appeared as though drunken. Had the others forgotten her? She had become ill and had stopped beside the road to rest and was now trying to overtake the wagon, but she had noticed the spring just inside the field and was trying to get to it.
In such a family, one child would not be missed. She looked very ill. She might die. Something in Tom was touched.
Why, how pretty she was! Her illness had made her more pretty, even beautiful. She had got to the top of the rail fence, had one leg over — what a clear-cut lovely little face, now drawn with pain, lines of suffering showing on such a young face. She had yellow hair, a mass of it, fallen down over young shoulders. “She will fall,” Tom thought. He sprang toward her.
It may have been his sudden appearance that startled her, threw her off balance. There was a little cry from her and she fell. She lay still on the grass under the fence.
And now something else happened. Tom had run to the girl under the fence, had picked her up, was holding her in his arms, and had faced about... she was unconscious, had perhaps struck her head in falling... he was facing the road and the Halsey house, and the wagon had struggled up the little slope and was before the house.
It broke down. There was a crash. One of the wheels had come off and the wagon with its contents, the few sticks of furniture, bedding, assortment of girl children of all ages, the fat old mother, the defeated mountain farmer, all were dumped in the road.
There were screams. There were cries. Tom, as he stood holding the unconscious girl child, saw his mother run out of the house to the road. At that time Tom was alone at home with his mother, a strong, rather mannish-looking woman. He laid the unconscious girl as tenderly as he could on the fence top, her arms and head hanging down on one side and her feet and bare slender legs on the other, and bolted over. With her in his arms he went, half running, along the road to the house.
It was Tom Halsey himself who afterwards told Kit Brandon of what happened to his young wife, the mother of his son Gordon who became Kit’s husband.
He got to her house that day, and afterwards for several weeks she was ill there. It was not thought she would live and several times Tom rode off to a distant town to bring a doctor, sometimes at night. As for her family, the wagon again patched, they went on their way, having spent the night and a part of the next day at the Halsey place. To the fat mother and perhaps to the father she was just another girl child. Such a woman could drop another. It was easy for her, and Tom’s mother, although she looked mannish, had a woman’s heart. She was glad enough to get the girl. “If she lives, she may be a comfort,” she thought.
She did live and she became Tom’s wife, but she was never strong. Tom told Kit the story of his short life with her and of her death.
He had got his own place and already he had got into the liquor business in a small way. He had got his neighbors, who were liquor makers... there were enough of them, all small makers, little groups of men going in together, buying a still... he had got them all to bring the stuff to him.
He told Kit how it was with him at that time. His son had been born and his wife was again ill. She had begun nursing her child but one of her breasts had caked and he had to take her off to a distant town to have it lanced. He had wanted to take her to a big town, perhaps to the very cotton-mill town that had swallowed up her family... she had never heard from them again after they disappeared down the road... there was a hospital at that place... he hadn’t the money. He had got a mountain doctor who had done his job crudely. His wife’s breast became infected and there was high fever.
Tom was in a fix. He was worried. He was frightened. The doctor who had lanced the breast told him that it would be dangerous to try to move her. He had come with his young wife into a new neighborhood, some thirty miles from his father’s house and had bought a little farm there. He did not know his neighbors very well yet and already he was in debt to some of them. He had taken their liquor to handle, had begun to build up a trade in distant towns. He had taken several trips with his loaded wagon at night but some of the money that should have gone to the liquor makers had been spent.
He told Kit of calling his neighbors together. “This is how it is with me. My wife is dying and the doctor says she cannot be moved, but I intend to move her. I must have money.”
Beside the cotton-mill town there was another industrial town, some thirty miles away, but there was no hospital in that place. Tom had been there several times. There was a man of the town.
A note of bitterness, of contempt, crept into Tom’s voice when he spoke of that man.
It wasn’t a pleasant picture. He was a man of fifty-five. There may be more such men among successful Americans than we other Americans care to realize. He had made money rapidly after a long early struggle... a big man, with a big head, big shoulders and body. Once he had been a laborer in a lumber camp. Often such men, when they succeed... they have done hard, heavy manual work during youth and early manhood... they are inclined to eat hugely, drink hugely.
Later they sit all day and every day at a desk. They go on with the heavy living and while they still appear strong there is a gradual breaking down of something inside. Tom said that this one had got hold of some invention. It was a tool, widely used and useful to farmers, not of the hills but of the Northern plains, and was built largely of wood. He had understood how to get money from banks, how to advertise. Perhaps he had come South, into a Southern industrial town, because wood was cheap there and labor cheap. He had been married but had no children and his wife had died.
He prided himself on being a sport, on living flashily. His mind had taken that turn. He drove a big sport motor car and wore heavy homespun clothes imported from England. He had got him a big house, at the edge of the town where he had set up his factory and had guests down from Northern cities. “You must come down to my place. It is in the mountains, in the Blue Ridge.
“If you want to bring a woman along...” Laughter. He poked the man in the ribs or slapped him on the back. “You know... make it a vacation,” he said. This was before prohibition but there was local option in the county and he had built a bar in the basement of his house.
The Southern industrial town was a county seat and before and after the coming of prohibition, the jail there was constantly filled with violators of illicit liquor laws. They were all poor men or the sons of poor men, laborers in the factories in the town, sons of laborers, mountain farmers, caught at the still, sons of these men bringing moon whiskey in to serv
e the town. The rich and the well-to-do and the sons of these did not get into jail. The whole town knew of the bar in the rich man’s house. He gave money to charity. He helped support the churches of the town.
Tom told Kit, speaking bitterly, stories of how the man lived. He loved getting the sons and daughters of the town people, sons and daughters of merchants, lawyers, successful doctors into his house and getting them drunk. He had become somewhat jaded about women but still loved touching them, the young ones. He wanted to put his hands on them, stand close, run his hands over young female bodies. There are such men. Once perhaps they had something to give a woman. It got lost, was petered away.
“I’d do anything for you, little girl. Do you want a fur coat?”... his hands on her. Hands creeping down over hips, over breasts. Men of the town, the respectable women of the town, older women, leaders in the churches, knew of these things. The town was filled with whispers. Nothing was done. The young people continued to go to the parties at his house. It was a little hard to refuse. “Be careful. Do not offend this man. He has power.”
He wanted to be known as a sport, a dashing figure of a man, but he was also frugal. Men who grow rich are frugal and careful in small things. For his bar he brought in liquors from Northern cities.... “You see,” he said... he put on a white apron, became a bartender for his guests.... “You see, it is good stuff. It is the real stuff.”
But at the same time... you understand... when people have become a little drunk... how do they know? It is really foolish to waste good liquor. Mountain moon may be had at a low price. It may be colored with prune juice. A bottle of imported liquor costing, I assure you, enough, may be refilled.
Tom Halsey drove at night... it was a Saturday night... in at the man’s driveway and on past the brightly lighted house to where there was a big brick garage. There was room in the garage for several cars. Tom drove his team — the wagon well loaded, and it made racket enough. It was no wonder that, later, when he became a successful illicit liquor man, making plenty of money, he insisted on big powerful, silent cars. The house of the successful manufacturer was surrounded by several acres of land and was outside the town limits.
It was a summer night and the house and yard were filled with young couples. Some of the young men, seen by Tom, as he drove in... they strolled along paths, past lighted windows... were in evening clothes. Young women were in light summer dresses. It is so nice, with your hands, to feel the body of a young woman, under a light summer dress.
Tom was in a hurry. There was a negro man, dressed in uniform, who came to him when he had stopped the team near the garage and Tom spoke to him. He didn’t waste words. “Look here, nigger, I’m in a hurry. You tell your boss. Goddam your black soul, you get him out here, and quick.”
He said no more. The man went and presently there was the big man, the rich man, the flashy one.
He was angry. He was upset. “Why, yes. I have bought stuff from you but for God’s sake, man... haven’t you any sense?”... he made a sign towards Tom’s team... bringing that in here. There are people here.
“I’ll have nothing more to do with a man who is such a damned fool.”
The two men were walking in a path near the garage. There was a light over the garage door and they went along the side of the building and stopped. Tom tried to explain. “But my wife is very ill. She may die. I must have money. I could unload it back here.”
He even pleaded, but as the man did not at once respond his voice grew harsh. However he did not shout. He was sizing up his man. “He is pretty big.” Tom was himself a small man. “He has led a certain kind of life for a long time now. He’s probably soft.”
“That nigger of yours, in that uniform... there are 150 gallons... I want you to take it all... it is a hurry up matter with me... I tell you my wife is ill... I’ve got to have money and right now... It will be $300... I know damned well you always have cash, plenty of it... you are the kind.” His voice was growing more and more harsh. “You are the kind that likes to pull a big roll, flash it before people. Goddam you.”
He was astonishing the man, throwing him off guard. “There are some bushes here.” He pointed. They stood near the wall of the garage. “I’ll unload it quickly enough. Your nigger can put it away. While I am unloading you will go into the house and get the money.
“If you haven’t it on you. Have you?”
The man laughed. After all he had once been a lumberjack. If he had only taken care of his big body through the years. The man before him was after all small. “Why, you impertinent little runt!”
He got no further. Tom leaped and had him by the throat. He was like a wild cat fastened on to the throat of a horse. After all, the man would not shout. He would not dare. “Oh, these big bugs,” Tom said, long afterwards, telling of the moment.
It didn’t last long, a short struggle, the man’s arms flailing about, hitting nothing, his breath going. Tom was close in where the big fists couldn’t hurt him. His rather small hands were very powerful. “Will you or won’t you? If you shout and they come I’ll kill you and them.” He let go the man’s throat. He knew he had him. “If you go in there and don’t come out with it, at once, I’ll come in after you.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “my wife’s dying.” The man went.
Tom drove home. He told Kit that he forgot about the liquor, did not remember to unload it. The way home was over very rough roads and the liquor was in glass fruit jars. They kept breaking, he said. There was a drip, drip, drip of mountain liquor in a mountain road. He lashed his team, nearly killing the horses. When he got to his house there were several men, mountain men, neighbors, loitering in the dark road before his house. Their-women were inside. They were the men who had trusted him with the liquor but they were not there to collect. Their wives were trying to save Tom’s wife, but it was too late. She died that night, just as he stopped his team before the house... steam arising in clouds from the half-dead animals... they breathed in gasps, nostrils vibrating... it was a pretty good team, young horses. His wife died but his son lived.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIT THOUGHT THAT Tom Halsey must have seen the woman Kate before his wife died. She and her husband, a mountain preacher, lived in the same settlement in the mountains where Tom had his farm. At the time Tom’s wife died, on the same night, a tragedy also happened to Kate. She was laid abed of her first child and it died. Tom may have heard of her loss. Almost every day he had been driving to a distant town. There was trouble in getting a food his babe would take. He had consulted doctors, had, at their advice, bought certain patent baby foods that were tried unsuccessfully. When he went hurriedly off to town thus, his way lay past a certain mountain cabin. It sat back from the road on the side of a hill, a flimsy little one-room structure built of unpainted boards. For some reason, unexplained, Kit telling Kate’s story, knew that there were great masses of tiger lilies in the yard before the door and she thought that Tom might have noticed the woman, having heard her story, and after she had got out of her bed of illness... the husband would be away from home... he always was... he was a God man and terribly serious, even fanatic about it and would have been off somewhere working in God’s vineyard, herding the strayed sheep, lifting the fallen. The woman would have been seated in the doorway of her little house, behind the masses of tiger lilies, head in hands, gazing off toward the distant blue hills, sunk in the terrible sorrow that comes to the woman who loses the first fruit of the womb.
Her husband was an uneducated man. He could just read and write. In the mountains there are many such men. They are not called to God’s ministry by the church. God calls them directly. He had been, before God called him, a rather quiet, somewhat sensitive and frightened boy, and was one of a large family. His name was Joseph Lawler and his father, Ike Lawler, was a man well known and a good deal feared in all that section of the mountains. He was a big man, tall and with small shifty eyes and was notoriously lazy but, although he himself did no work, he worked brutal
ly the few poor horses that came into his possession and he did the same with his wife and children.
The mountains were full of stories about Ike Lawler. His wife, a heavy fat woman, like Tom’s mother-in-law, was always having children. As with the Indian woman, the mother of Tom’s wife, they dropped almost casually from her. It was said that she once dropped one in a field where, under the eye of her husband, she had been kept at work until the last possible moment. There were fourteen of the children, twelve of them boys, and when a new one was born Ike Lawler did not waste time on sentimentality but made his wife get out of bed and get back to work at once.
He was, in a small way, successful. Although he owned little land, he was always arranging with others for the working of land on shares and often the fields, so worked, would be a long way from his house and Kit said... she must afterwards have spoken to some man, perhaps one of Tom’s later rumrunners, from that neighborhood... that he would be seen by neighbors herding his family along a road to their work. He himself would be astride a horse, a long horsewhip in his hand, a whip he was passionately fond of using on his wife or one of his children, the procession going along a road or across fields. He was also, in a small way, a thief and was in the habit of going at night with two or three of the sons to rob his neighbors’ hen roosts. He did not work, when so occupied, in his own immediate neighborhood, but started in the late afternoon and went many miles, often into some mountain town. He himself did not approach the hen roosts. He stayed hidden in some near-by wood and sent the sons. If they were caught and arrested it would be they who would have to serve the jail sentences. In the mountains there was a story that, once, when he had no horse or when the horse he then owned had been beaten until it could not work, he hitched his wife and two of his sons to a plow, himself for once taking the plow handles, and that he thus plowed a field.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 187