On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  Jealous is more like it, I thought, but I held my tongue and looked the other way until that Sunday in early September when a circumstance arose which I discovered by accident but could not then ignore.

  I was wading in the creek with the little Badger girls when Molly ran down the path to join us.

  “Lord, it’s hot!” She peeled off her good ruffled blouse and tossed it onto the laurel, then gathered up her petticoat and waded in to join us, delighting Caro and Jane who were building a “dam” out of rocks.

  “Look, Molly! Look, Molly,” they chanted. “We’ve got a gang of minnows.”

  “Say ‘a school of minnows,’ “ I instructed them almost automatically, for just then I noticed that Molly was very pink — back and shoulders and arms and legs as well as her glowing face. “Oh, Molly.” I couldn’t help saying it. “Just look at you. What have you done?”

  “Well, I went swimming, Agnes,” she announced defiantly, “over at Elk Creek Shoals with Henderson. So what? Don’t sound so tragic. You wouldn’t want me to ruin my Sunday clothes now, would you?” She tossed her head, eyes flashing.

  “Oh no.” I decided to make light of the situation in view of the little girls, who had stopped their play and were looking back and forth between us curiously, surprised by Molly’s tone.

  I was surprised too and found myself filled with conflicting strong emotions as she continued to spend more and more time with young Mr. Hanes whose high-handed manners and imperious bearing endeared him to no one. He never even bothered to speak to me these days, for instance, since I was apparently so uninteresting and he clearly felt he no longer “needed to.” Was this, then, what I had rescued Molly for, at such great cost to both of us? Molly was moody and absentminded even in school, staring out the window, starting violently when a child asked her a question. Was this her idea of love, then, I wondered, to be miserable? And what had really happened — or had not happened — to her so long ago, back at Agate Hill? I was consumed by questions I dared not ask, for I had never once spoken to Molly about “country matters” — nor did I have any advice to give on the subject. Though I feared for her virtue, my more practical concern was that she would finally shock the community so much that she would get us both “turned out,” and then what would we do? Where would we go?

  There came that October morning — a Sunday — which told the tale. It had been a glorious fall, the leaves more colorful than any I can ever remember, even now — the dark red dogwood, the flaming maples, the yellow hickorys and orange sassafras. The gusting wind was filled with leaves as I stood out on the Badgers’ porch in an old dressing gown drinking my coffee. The horseshoe bend of the New River shone below. The sky was a fierce bright blue. I sighed, wanting to stay right there, not wanting to go back inside to dress for church. But we were all running late. One of the Boykins’ daughters had married at the stone Methodist Church down in Jefferson the evening before, followed by a party at the Academy where even I had danced. I had just turned back toward the door when Chattie emerged to whisper in my ear that Molly had not come home.

  “What?” I dropped my cup on the porch.

  “Hush,” Chattie said. “She’s not in the lean-to,” cutting her eyes at the little boys, who sat on the porch steps making Jacob’s ladders. Chattie went back inside.

  I stood there gripping the rail and looking into the long blue distance, shading my eyes from the sun. The wind came up from the gorge with a moaning sound while hawks made big slow circles in the air. I had finally resolved to speak to Molly once and for all when she emerged suddenly from the forest like a forest sprite herself, on the old Indian trail from the Bobcat School. Henderson must have let her out there to save time. The air all about her was thick with whirling leaves; the wind whipped her hair around. She wore only her thin yellow dress from the evening before — no wrap, where was the blue cloak? — and carried only a handful of black-eyed Susans.

  “Molly.” I stumbled, coming down the steps.

  “Agnes,” she said simply, “these are for you,” handing me the flowers, then hugging me. “And I have something to tell you.” She pushed me back and held me out at arm’s length. “I am engaged to be married.”

  Though I have been an English teacher all my life, I have never found the words to describe Molly’s expression as we stood out in the steep swept yard that morning. Her face was so odd — so dire, so intense, yet in a strange way wiped completely clean of all emotion at the same time. She appeared calm, even stricken, yet fully, terribly alive. A blowing red leaf stuck to her cheek momentarily; she laughed as it blew away.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I declared honestly.

  “Then don’t say anything.” She wound her arm around my waist as we walked back to the house where Chattie waited nervously on the porch steps, her apron gathered up in her hands.

  “Oh, Lord, I knowed it!” she declared when Molly told her. “Ain’t it just wonderful?”

  To my surprise, the whole community shared this reaction, even Vina and Ocie Reedy who pinched their lips together and merely said they were glad that Molly had “made a good thing of it at last.” All was forgiven, all impropriety overlooked. Gone were the snide remarks, all the objections to Henderson’s imperious personality. Even Henderson himself seemed determined to do his part, actually attending church with us all, for instance, and visiting once to bring old Granny Took a brand new red blanket with a white stripe down the middle of it, from the blanket factory. (Chattie grabbed it up to examine and strongly criticize, the moment he had left.)

  Molly was driven down to Salisbury in the buggy for a visit to his family; she reappeared wearing a magnificent engagement ring which all approved, a round, fiery opal surrounded by little diamonds. It had belonged to Henderson’s grandmother.

  Only once did I dare ask Molly about her true feelings for Henderson Hanes. We were cleaning up the schoolroom at the end of the day. “Do you actually love him? Can you love him?” This just burst out of me.

  Molly stopped wiping off the desks and stood stock still before the globe. She reached out to whirl it on its axis, round and round, biting her lip. The opal flashed in the light. “Listen, Agnes, Henderson is a lot of fun. And I want . . . I want . . . “ She hesitated. Suddenly she stopped the globe’s turning and pointed to the continent of Europe. “Look,” she said. “This is Paris. This is where Henderson’s grandfather bought this ring for his grandmother, fifty years ago. I want to go there too, Agnes. I want to go there — and there” — she jabbed at the globe — “and I don’t see why I can’t. Oh Agnes, I want a lot of things.” Abruptly she ran out of the schoolhouse.

  Later I watched Molly hold out her pretty hand again and again, showing off her ring, as she walked down the main street of Jefferson, while Henderson stood just behind her, showing them both off, just as if Molly were a prize horse, or so I felt, observing this spectacle.

  I simply could not bring myself to like him.

  Here I was in the minority.

  Everybody was on their side now, endlessly hungry for details of the wedding which was to take place down in Salisbury, not here, to their dismay — but also, in a strange way, I think, their approval, as Molly appeared poised to ascend into another realm altogether. Even Martha Fickling refused to criticize the engagement, handing me a glass of her peach brandy, which I had become quite fond of, and saying only, “Hell, marriage is always good experience for a girl,” with a wink of her eye and a flash of her gold tooth. “It ain’t going to hurt her none, and it just might teach her something.”

  So I resolved to quit worrying, for I was also relieved, in a way. Truth to tell, by then I had a little secret of my own.

  Now I give this piece of fool’s gold one last turn in the rays of the setting sun, then place it on the windowsill.

  Reader, can you guess?

  I married Cicero Todd within the year, despite the difference in our ages and what was to happen to Molly. I married him anyway. And we are still married thirty years
later living here on the side of Pisgah Mountain which remains as beautiful to me as Heaven, in the fine house he built for me after our third child, John, was born. Whoever imagined that I should find such happiness? See, here he comes now, walking up the holler. Cicero has never learned to read nor write, nor needed to, staying at home with our children to make his furniture and such while I kept the Bobcat School, and he still calls me Miss Rutherford, and he treats me like a queen.

  December 14, 1882

  Dear Mary White,

  This is the biggest news yet and it is about ME. But it is not a love story.

  I am engaged to be married to Henderson Hanes from Salisbury, a rich boy who says he will give me the world. And guess what, Mary White? I want it. I want the world. He is a bad boy, like I am a bad girl, so I don’t mind to take it from him. Henderson likes bad girls, he says, though he does not believe me when I say I am one. He thinks I am kidding. He thinks I am just a poor girl, like Cinderella, and he likes this too, for he is also marrying me to spite his mother. He hates his mother. Henderson has had everything he has ever wanted, and now he wants me, and do you know what, Mary White? I am enjoying it. We ride around and drink whisky and kiss and do other things too. Oh Mary White do you think I am awful? I can tell no one else. Henderson is very conceited — Chattie says he is “like something on a stick” — but he is fun too. It would have been wrong of me to marry Ben Valiant, who is a nice man, but it is not wrong of me to marry Henderson Hanes, who is not.

  For I will never give all my heart away, as I told you so long ago. I know all about that.

  But I have always wanted something, so bad I could taste it, and Henderson has a lot of things. His family house at Salisbury even has a name, Willowsmere, as in an English novel, and leaded windows with little diamond-shaped panes of glass, and a library with book after book which Henderson has not read. He is not a scholar, having left several universities. I don’t care, Mary White. I am going to do this. I want to have fine sheets with HH embroidered on them like the sheets at Willowsmere. I want to go to Paris France Europe which is where we are going on our honeymoon. Henderson says we will stay in a hotel on the Île de la Cité in the middle of the Seine, he says we will eat rabbit, and drink fine wine, and go to the racetrack, and I will wear a hat with a feather in it. Why shouldn’t I go, Mary White? Why shouldn’t I have these things?

  For I will never go to my benefactor, Simon Black, who has had the nerve to come up here, after all this time. He is crazy, Mary White, and he scares me, saying those things about destiny, and stars, and speaking wildly of battle, and Brazil, and my mother, years ago. He swears he does not mean to scare me, but to help me.

  “I do not want your help,” I said, “now or ever.” I said, “Please go away.”

  But in truth I don’t want to sleep in a leanto with sifting snow on my face for the rest of my life until I look like Granny Took Badger, spitting tobacco juice into a cup. She scares me as much as he does. Simon Black is a crazy old man. I have told him that I do not wish to be benefacted, or benefited, or helped in any way, that I am going to marry Henderson Hanes no matter what. So I will be happy, and rich, and that will be the end of it. Perhaps I am La Belle Dame Sans Merci after all.

  But I remain your

  Molly

  January 26, 1883

  Dear Mary White,

  A lot has happened since last I wrote.

  Henderson’s father died and he took me home with him for the funeral, we drove it straight in the freezing rain stopping only for the horses. He is not very good to his horses. I sat close to him all the way while he drove and drank from his silver flask and the land flowed past in a foggy gray blur. “Don’t you think you had better quit drinking that now?” I said once when we were nearing Salisbury, but he got mad and squeezed my leg so hard it hurt and said, “Leave it alone, honey,” giving a sort of sob. I believe he loved his father, a hard man, after all.

  We arrived just in time for the funeral which was immense, held in a huge cold Episcopal Church which his family has attended for over a hundred years and even built, I think. Everybody had long black coats and long white faces. Instead of preaching you read the service out of a book which I liked very much, the words were beautiful. I am determined to get the hang of this, Mary White! I even liked Henderson’s mother, at least I liked her better than he does. She is fierce but frail, falling asleep in the middle of her sentences. I had to stay in a room off her room which was her idea of chaperoning. Agnes would have been very pleased.

  Coming back we did not stop at his aunt’s house as planned but drove on through the dark, Henderson did not say where we were going. It was still raining. I waited in the carriage while he got out and knocked on the door of a fair-sized house set back from the road in a grove of trees. He had said it was an inn but it was a bootlegger’s, I knew it immediately. The door cracked slightly, a messy head poked out. Henderson leaned down close and spoke, gesturing to the carriage. The door opened more widely, throwing light out onto the muddy yard. The bootlegger’s wife was a merry soul who showed us up to a large bedroom overlooking the front door then told us to come right on down for supper if we wanted any. Henderson dropped our bags on the floor and threw his overcoat across the bed but I moved it so it wouldn’t get the bed wet and then we looked at each other and then he kissed me, hard. He is a good kisser. I had never been to any place like this before, though clearly Henderson was no stranger here.

  We went down to a long messy table in a smoky room with a big fire in the hearth at one end. Five men were present drinking and smoking including the bootlegger. All talk stopped when I appeared. The men stared at me as if I were a ghost.

  “Can a lady get a drink around here or not?” I said, and then they laughed, and toasted me. Henderson was grinning from ear to ear. I have noticed that in general he prefers the company of his inferiors, what do you make of this? Anyway our dinner was brought in by the innkeeper’s daughter who was plainly furious, flouncing around, cutting her eyes at Henderson who would not look at her. She is a big pretty black-haired girl with a rough manner and a ready laugh. Damn him, I thought. I determined to have a better time than anybody.

  We drank and joked with the rest — though I couldn’t eat the greasy mutton stew — while all the while I thought of the big bed in the room upstairs, for Henderson has his strong points. He can be a lot of fun, but he was not fun that night, stumbling by the time we finally climbed the stairs, too drunk to take off his own clothes much less mine. He fell across me in a dead stupor like a tree going down in the forest. Though I had had a fair amount of whisky myself, I was wide awake. I pushed him off me and went over to the window, pulling back the curtains and pushing it up to let the cold air flow over me. It was long past the middle of the night. The rain was gone. I saw the Big Dipper and Orion’s belt. The Milky Way stretched down the sky. A bright half moon sailed in and out of the dark fast-moving clouds, reminding me of that verse we used to love so much

  Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night

  Sailed off in a wooden shoe, —

  Sailed on a river of crystal light

  Into a sea of dew.

  It made me feel so strange to remember this as I stood in my shift in the open window of the bootlegger’s house with Henderson snoring on the bed behind me. I never went to sleep at all that night but lay as if electrified, and I am electrified still.

  The next morning I got him up and going as best I could though he was sick as a dog, hanging his head out the door to vomit as I drove the carriage away from the house where the bootlegger’s daughter had come to stand outside with her arms crossed, to watch us go. To my surprise she put her hand up suddenly, not exactly a wave, but something else, almost as if she would stop us — would stop me. She had the strangest look on her face. She opened her mouth as if she had something to say, then closed it, then turned away.

  So now I am back up on Bobcat, and Henderson is back in Salisbury, and our wedding trip to Paris must be postponed i
ndefinitely while he takes over his father’s business. But the wedding will be in the spring as planned though I will not see Henderson beforehand, suddenly he is very serious and says he has to work all the time.

  Our wedding will be very simple as his mother says it does not pay to advertise it.

  I feel like I am about to jump out of my skin. I am going crazy here waiting, you know I have never been good at waiting for anything.

  Oh my God how are you? Are you dead? I wish you could write me back and tell me what you think. For I am still your

  Molly

  Saturday, April 12, 1883

  Dear Mary White,

  Last night I rode up to Red Hill with Martha Fickling because her niece’s husband was clearing a new ground and they were having a house party afterward. “It’ll do you good,” Martha said. “Get you out some.” Also, I have always liked Roxy, Martha’s “niece” — just one of the girls she has hired and taken in and raised over the years.

  Martha rode out ahead on her big gray horse Valentine with me following on Chattie’s little white mare. You would be surprised how well Martha sits a horse, even at her age, upright and light as a girl, skirts thrown up, riding astride. “None of this sidesaddle shit for me!” she said, and I had to laugh, for I feel the same way about it. I thought of Eliza Valiant as we rode along through the dripping woods, remembering how she looked in that race, up out of her saddle leaning forward as she came around the turn with pink cheeks and hair flying out behind her. I wondered what her life is like now, and what mine will be like from now on. I wonder if Ben is happy.