Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

  Preacher Jarvey was standing at the base of the brick house. He saw clearly the clumps of columns supporting the roof of the verandah, and beyond that a dull red mass of walls. He breathed heavily; his breast swelled up as if it would burst with the anguish of a wish that had no name. This wish tore him with fury and anger; he opened his mouth as if to give voice to it.

  A sound pierced his ears, at first muted and reedy, then swelling to a trumpet blast and ending in a harsh wail of amorous fury. Male laughter volleyed. Feet scuffled. A gate creaked.

  In confusion, Preacher Jarvey turned and ran. Along the path of his flight the garden started into life around him. Naked women with sightless eyes stood suddenly from nooks of shrubbery. Blurred shapes of bulls, archers, chariots formed and faded on waves of lawn.

  Harried by scurrilous laughter and scuffling feet, he ran through the gates and stopped in the road. The noises had lessened to a murmur. He peered at the garden from which he had just been driven in confusion. What had he come to do there?

  Once more dull fury burned in his chest. Against the old walls of his blindness a thousand stridulous noises beat, surf of an oceanic world beyond his grasp. He was sad as never before. His breath labored. The hot sun smote him without mercy. He knew the anguish and sorrow of the one god who may not be loving of beautiful mortals.

  Now he held his eyes up to the yellow light that blazed directly above him. It entered him with splendor, destroying all vision but itself. It poured hot gold and frenzy into his breast. He staggered west, incarnate with a radiant god. . . .

  . . .

  —Jupiter is his name, Mr. Jacobs said in answer to the Senator’s question. Won first prize at the State Fair last year.

  —Young? The Senator asked.

  —Just a boy. Three years old.

  The Senator and his entourage had stopped for a while in Mr. Jacobs’ front yard. Now they walked past the barn on their way to the bullpasture.

  —John, the Senator said, raising his voice and spreading abroad his eloquent arms, were it not for my obligations to the people, I should have asked nothing better than to be a tiller of the soil of Raintree County. What better life is there, gentlemen, than that of the simple farmer? Who is closer to God than he who gathers by his toil the fruits of the earth? Sturdy, honest, industrious, independent, the farmer is the backbone of the Republic. Without his matchless virility, how many of her wars could America have won? Without his manly valor, what freedom would she possess?

  —And without his manifold vote, the Perfessor said, catching up from the rear, what President has she ever elected?

  He took a flat bottle from his pocket as he and Mr. Shawnessy fell somewhat behind the others.

  —Your farmer, he said, is a poor brute. But I acknowledge his usefulness. Without him there would be no corn. Without corn, there would be no corn whiskey. And without corn whiskey, there would be no sacred frenzy.

  The Perfessor put the bottle to his mouth. Mr. Shawnessy watched the antic, tall figure tilted against the green earth.

  —I trust you all perceive, the Perfessor said, catching up with the Senator, the object which I hold in my hand. It is, as you see, a bottle, a plain, ordinary, everyday bottle. But this bottle, friends, contains the wonderworker of our age. Here, Senator, have a slug of this.

  —To please an old friend, the Senator said.

  He lipped and pulled.

  —My God! he said. Is this the stuff they fuel the Muse with?

  —The Heliconian fount, said the Perfessor, whence all my verse proceeds.

  The bottle went around and came to rest in Mr. Shawnessy’s hands.

  —First liquor I’ve touched in months, Mr. Shawnessy said. The good ladies of Waycross are teetotalers, except for the annual vintage of the dandelion.

  He tasted sun, noon, and the summer earth. The cornjuice throbbed slowly through him as they turned east beyond the barn and started down a lane running parallel to the National Road.

  —Well, where’s this bull, boys? the Senator said. I haven’t seen a heifer heeled since I was a kid. Whose house is that?

  —Mrs. Brown’s, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  The lane led them straight toward the round brick tower of Mrs. Brown’s house.

  —Good corn crop, the Senator said. Kneehigh by the Fourth of July.

  —Mooooooooooo—uh!

  The white bull had seen them coming and had made a cry half-human with rage and desire.

  —Jove, he’s big! the Senator said. I trust that fence is strong. He might be a Democratic bull.

  Male laughter volleyed. Feet scuffled. The crowd stopped at the long plank gate giving on the little bullpasture wedged into the cornfields next to Mrs. Brown’s yard. Dense shrubbery and trees concealed all but the top of a brick tower. Apart stood the Perfessor and Mr. Shawnessy.

  —Jupiter! the Perfessor said. A classic bull. But where is lo?

  Mr. Jacobs and another man had stopped at the barn, and were presumed to be bringing up the heifer.

  —He reminds me of someone, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —’Tis a senatorial bull, the Perfessor said. Judging from current models, it hath the congressional cut.

  The corn was an ocean of softly brandished arms, in which, islanded, the bull was a great strength formed for love and strife. From tight rump to mounded shoulders brutely propulsive, he stood, love-tortured, staring at a world without depth.

  —Maybe, said Mr. Shawnessy, he remembers his epic past, the white flanks of the beloved of Minos—that was a sweet begetting—or Europa, who bestrode his shoulders, and her naked calves teased his little pricked ears, or lo, whom ox-eyed Juno envied. Argos of a hundred eyes couldn’t prevent his jovial rage. Does he know that he was Dionysus, god of the wineborn frenzy of love and creation? The celebrants hung garlands of flowers on the thick column of his neck; he walked like a man on his hindlegs. He was not always a prisoner in barbed wire where love is rationed to him in brief allotments while lecherous mortals lean on the gate and laugh. He was a god once and loved a beautiful mortal. . . .

  . . .

  Rear protrudent, the Widow Passifee was at the back of her yard, cutting away a load of flowers with her yardshears. Colossally voluptuous in a white dress, she bulged silently on Preacher Jarvey’s vitreous world still stricken with the sun.

  Mrs. Passifee’s yard had none of the studied formality of Mrs. Brown’s. It was tangled and frenzied. The old picket fence surrounding her little frame house sagged with unpruned vines. The outhouse behind was both visible and odorous.

  —Sister Passifee.

  She squealed and whirled.

  —Brother Jarvey! You plumb frightened me.

  He glared fixedly at her broad, heartshaped face, green eyes, young wide mouth, small pointed chin. She was flushed in the noonheat. Her neck and the white roots of her breasts were shining with sweat. Her arms were full of torn flowers.

  —Won’t you come in, Brother Jarvey?

  —I will, Sister, I will.

  He followed her into the dark cool parlor. She started to put up the shades, which were drawn to within a few inches of the sills.

  —Just leave them drawn, Sister. The light hurts my eyes.

  He sat on a horsehair sofa and closed his eyes. Instantly, his inward vision swam with golden splendors, splintering afterimage of the sun. Women with great white glowing limbs and golden hair stood in nooks of green, twisting ropes of flowers.

  —Make yourself to home, Brother Jarvey. It’s hot, ain’t it?

  —It is, Sister.

  She bit her lip and studied the floor with a frown.

  —Maybe you’d like a little refreshment. To cool you off.

  —As you please, Sister.

  A waning gold gilded a garden of clipped lawns, beds of tossing flowers. Flinging their golden hair, whitebodied, with musical cries, the bare nymphs ran.

  Returning, Mrs. Passifee had a stone jug from the earth-cellar. Clear yellow wine guggled from stone lips. She filled two glass
tumblers.

  —Just a little dandelion wine, she said. Practickly no alcohol in it. It’ll cool you off. If you don’t mind.

  For answer, Preacher Jarvey leaned forward, picked up a tumbler, drained it.

  He leaned back again and closed his eyes. There was a sharp sweet taste in his throat, of summer lawns, of the sunwarm faces of dandelions.

  —Goodness! Mrs. Passifee said. You drink fast, Brother Jarvey.

  Giggling nervously, she filled up his glass on a little table beside the sofa and then sitting down beside him sipped at her own.

  —It is good, she said. A body’s a right to a little nip now and then on a hot day, don’t you think?

  For answer, Preacher Jarvey leaned forward, picked up his tumbler, drained it.

  —Goodness! Mrs. Passifee said, filling it up again.

  She studied her glass.

  —I got news, Brother Jarvey, she said. I mean about him and her. Something that happened last night. Be perfectly frank, I don’t think we had much to go on before. But if you really mean to accuse ’em of sinnin’ together tonight, why, I seen something that will int’rest you.

  —Sister, he said. You may speak to me without reservation. Don’t let your feminine delicacy prevent you from givin’ a full story of what you saw.

  —Well, she said, putting down her glass, he come past here about seven o’clock in the evening, and he had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He turned in at the gate there and went up to her house. I could see plain from the corner of my yard.

  —Yes, the Preacher said.

  A sweet sadness throbbed in his veins. Sipping the cool wine, he leaned back and shut his eyes. Blood of the dandelion drenched his throat.

  —He went up to the house there, and they was there all evening. I come out to my gate again and again, and I knowed he hadn’t left. They was no one else in or out of that there gate all evening. They was hardly any light at all in the house—I know because I walked down the road once to see more clearer, and they was only a little low light burnin’ in a front room. I says to myself, I bet I know what’s a-goin’ on in there.

  Preacher Jarvey felt his hand squeezed. He opened his eyes. The Widow Passifee was talking fast. Strands of loose yellow hair had fallen around her heatflushed cheeks. Her eyes glittered, and her wide young mouth made sounds that were husky and musical.

  —Of course, I hadn’t no proof of it, she said. Just what I suspicioned. But a course I never dreamed what was a-goin’ to happen. Well, it was about eleven o’clock at night, time for any selfrespectin’ body to be in bed, and I crept up to her fence and got in among some sumac bushes that was right by the fence so’s I could have a good view of the house. I was even figgerin’ maybe I might climb over and see if I could have a real good see. I guess curiosity got the better of me. But just then, I heard their voices, and the front screen opened and shut, and here come Mr. Shawnessy walkin’ down off the porch, he never looked back once but just went right down the path and out into the road and toward town. I was just about to climb out a there and go home myself when I seen it.

  The Preacher filled his own glass and the Widow’s from the jug. Heartshaped, the wide face of Mrs. Passifee was very close to his own. His thick lenses were washed with yellow waves of light. He watched her soft mouth trembling with excitement.

  —Go on, Sister, he said.

  —So then there I was ready to go, when all a sudden I heard the screen door open again—mind you it wasn’t ten minutes after he’d left—and all a sudden here she come right down the steps of the verandah and out on the lawn. Well, she was nekkid as the day she was born. Her hair was all let down. The woman’s plumb crazy, I said to myself.

  —Praise the Lord! the Reverend said. Go on, Sister.

  —She was just a little slim thing, hardly nothin’ to her, compared to a woman like me. Well, she took out and begun to run around the lawn and to throw back her head and dance. She went here and there all over the yard and threw up her arms, never sayin’ a word or makin’ a sound. It was warm or she’d a caught her death a cold. After a while she run to that there fountain down in front a the house where them two nekkid children is and stepped right down into it. She’s goin’ to drownd herself, I says. But no, not her. She puts her face right up in the spray a the fountain and stood right there and let the water run over her nekkid body. She looked jist like a statue, Reverend, white and still in the starlight. There I was—not more’n twenty feet away, a-layin’ there sweatin’ and scared I was goin’ to make a noise. It was so close I could see a birthmark she had on her body. Then she ran out on the grass again, her body a-shinin’ from the water, and she run and threw herself on the grass and rolled back and forth like a child, and then she begun to cry or laugh, I couldn’t tell which, and then there was some kind of a noise from that field next to her place where Bill Jacobs keeps that big bull a hisn, and she heard it, and she jumped up and run like she was shot up to the house and went in.

  —Sister Passifee, lust is a dreadful thing! O, hit is a terrible thing! Praise the Lord!

  —Praise the Lord! Sister Passifee said, sipping thoughtfully at her glass and allowing the Preacher to squeeze her hand.

  —Sister, the Lord means for us to chastise these errin’ creatures. But let us not be too hard on them, Sister. Judge not that ye be not judged. A man may be tempted by too much beauty, Sister, and the Devil may rise in him. Alas, I have known what it is to sin, Sister.

  —Me, too, Sister Passifee said, sipping thoughtfully. More wine, Brother Jarvey?

  Brother Jarvey’s eyes were closed. He was beginning to wag his big head. His voice had become loud like a horn, monotonously chanting.

  —Let us pray for these sinners. They were sore tempted, Sister, and they sinned. Down on your knees, Sister. Hosanna!

  —Hosanna, Sister Passifee said, obediently going to her knees. Maybe you can’t blame ’em too much. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to resist the Devil.

  —Let us pray, Sister, the Reverend said, dropping to his knees before her and winding his arms around her.

  Sister Passifee nestled meekly in his embrace.

  —Lord, you have placed this poor weak woman in my arms, Preacher Jarvey said. What shall I do with her?

  —Just go on and pray as hard as you want, Brother Jarvey. My daughter Libby’s down at the school and nobody’ll bother us.

  —I lift up my eyes unto thy hills, O Zion, he shouted.

  His eyes, opening, perceived the triumphant twin thrust of Sister Passifee’s bosom in the white dress.

  He felt a momentary sadness that left him stranded and deprived of strength. He waited. Thin sap of the earth smitten into bloom by the sun flowed in his veins, a soft fire. He closed his eyes.

  An island of white sands and trees darkfronded enclosed his vision. A tall stone column stood in Cretan groves, and the young women gathered at the base to pelt the shaft with petals. Light hands and flowery lips made adoration and ecstasy at the base of the column in Crete.

  The hour has come. Lo! it is here! Now I will prepare for the feast. I will make myself known unto you. It is the joyous noon, and the celebrants dash flowers and wine on each other’s faces. Naked, they run on Cretan lawns. They do not know that the god himself is waiting in a green wood. His large savage eyes have selected the whitest of the nymphs, whose lips are wet with the wine of festival. He shrugs and lowers his wrinkled front, the loose folds of his breast are shaken with desire. He rakes the ground with great feet. He is amorous of the most voluptuous nymph, her of the twin disturbing hills. He has remembered his ritual day, the noontide rites of the wine, the flung flowers, and the shaken seed. He is approaching, he will make himself known in the form of a . . .

  . . .

  —Bull is worth more than man in the sum of things.

  The Perfessor lit a cigar and leaned on the fence, looking over at the white bull with a happy expression.

  —Where’s this heifer? the Senator said. Let’s have some action around here.
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br />   —The Greeks, the Perfessor went on, addressing his remarks to Mr. Shawnessy, were right to make a god of bull. Christianity debased God by making him a grieving and gibbeted Jesus. Fact is, man may well envy bull. Bull is pure feeling, has no silly moral anxiety, exists entirely for the propulsion of life.

  —Bull doesn’t know love, Mr. Shawnessy said. Look at him. He’s just a phallus with a prodigious engine attached.

  —Love? the Perfessor said. What is love? Why, John, your bull is your perfect lover. His sexual frenzy is much stronger than man’s. Man’s a popgun to him.

  —Love is moral, Mr. Shawnessy said. Passion’s a form of discrimination. From among a thousand doors, it chooses one. There’s no great love without great conscience. But your bull’s no picker and chooser. To him, one cow’s as good as another. Jupiter erectus conscientiam non habet.

  —Let’s have some action around here, jocundly bellowed the Senator. Where’s this heifer?

  —It’s true, the Perfessor said, that love and sex desire have nothing in common. The sex impulse is a vicious appetite like hunger. We brought it with us out of the jungle and put some clothes on it, that’s all. In its pure form, i.e., anywhere below the human level, sexual congress is always a criminal attack. The female of the species is coerced with hooves, claws, horns, and anything else necessary. The male’s bigger for a good reason—he has to whip his snatch before he can have it. The female submits, hating it. Wolves love snarling, cats clawing, horses biting. Female spiders eat the male after the sex act, to get even. All mammals without exception use their teeth when they love. The human kiss, that remarkable perversion of Nature, is descended from the love-bite. By the way, did I ever show you my scars?

  The Perfessor shook soundlessly.

  —Bring on this heifer, the Senator said. Professor, how about another drink?