Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  But I am as big and as strong as he is, and I toppled him into the starry flowers where we laid face to face and leg to leg and toe to toe. He is just the same size as me. In fact I think he is me, and I am him, and it will be so forever and ever. What I did, I did it out of awful longing pure and simple. I did it out of love. Say what you will, and I don’t care what anybody said then or might say now, it could not have happened otherwise. I had to do it, I had to have him. And even now I can close my eyes and see us laying naked in the flowers on the grassy bald, all tangled up together till you couldn’t tell who was who. He reached down and grabbed my foot. Then he said, This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had root beer, this little piggy had none. This little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home. Then Honey rolled me over in the grass.

  Speaking of home, he said, don’t you forget about it.

  Oh, I aint a-going home, I said. Then, that first time, he thought I was kidding.

  He spread my hair out around me on the grass. You are the sweetest thing I ever saw, he said.

  Sweeter than honey?

  He was ticklish. Sweeter than honey, he said.

  The sun had moved down lower in the sky over Bethel Mountain.

  He was doing things to me with his tongue.

  I said, I hear tell you’re a ladies man.

  What is that, a ladies man?

  You know what a ladies man is.

  Honey sat up then and I was sorry. I guess if the truth be told, I am more of a back door man, he said.

  What do you mean, a back door man?

  It is why you don’t want to love me, Ivy, Honey said. A back door man is always going out the back door while the husband comes in the front.

  What if she aint got no back door? I asked.

  Ah, Honey said, grinning. Ah then, you are caught up Shit Creek! I’ll tell you another story.

  Is this story about you? I asked.

  No honey, this story is not about me, Honey said. It is about a back door man, though. You will see what I mean. He got comfortable and started.

  There was a man named Josh Raines that fell in with a married woman named Evangeline Matney, and he went home with her, and he was loving her up pretty good when they heard somebody pass the gate. Lord! this Josh Raines said, What’d I orter do? And she said, Hide in the scalding barrel. So he done it. Pretty soon in come the other feller, but it weren’t her husband! It weren’t no Mister Matney. It was a man named Long John Cates, is who it was, and he commenced to hugging and kissing and lollygagging all over Evangeline Matney. Then all of a sudden the gate slammed again, and this time it was her old man, Herman Matney. And so Long John Cates jumped back in his clothes real quick-like and did some fast thinking, and when Herman Matney walks in the door, he says, Well, hello there Mr. Matney! I just come over to borry your scalding barrel, we are aiming to butcher tomorry.

  And Herman Matney didn’t like the looks of things much, but he said, Well, there it is then, take it along.

  When Long John picked it up, it was so dad blame heavy that he liked to couldn’t handle it, but he managed to roll it off down the road a ways, and then he stopped to rest.

  He was congratulating himself some too, saying, Well, Long John, you sure did get out of that mess mighty slick, when all of a sudden Josh Raines pushed the top off the barrel and crope out! You sure did, Long John, he said, And I didn’t do so terrible bad myself!

  I got to laughing too hard to quit. It seemed like I had heard that story, or one like it, from Daddy—years and years ago. Honey Breeding was as good as Daddy or the lady sisters for telling tales. I rolled over laughing on the ground.

  Then I thought of something and sat up. I just want you to tell me one thing, I said to Honey Breeding.

  He said, What is that? His hair glowed gold in the sun.

  Did you know me when first you saw me? I asked him. For I’ll swear it on a Bible, I knew you.

  What do you mean, he asked.

  I don’t know, I said.

  He stared at me. Yes, he said. I watched him awhile longer. You put me in mind of something, I told him, for it was true.

  What? He was picking the little starflowers and laying them out one by one in a row on the mossy ground.

  I can’t remember, I said. It is a poem.

  A poem? He looked up. Sure enough?

  I used to know a lot of poems, I said. I told you I took up with a schoolteacher that they had here one time, when I was young.

  Shoot, Honey said. He was making a flower chain.

  It was coming back to me then, or part of it. I said, Let us be—something—of soul, as earth lies bare to heaven above, how is it under our control, to love or not to love? I think that’s it.

  I said for you to quit that talking about love, Honey said. It aint nothing in it.

  I won’t quit, I said, and laid down in the grass while all the poems I ever knew came rushing back over my body like the wind. It was like they were all still there someplace, they had just been waiting. I felt I had got a part of myself back that I had lost without even knowing it was gone. Honey had given me back my very soul. But I knew better than to say it. I laid there with my eyes closed and acted like I was asleep. But I was not asleep. Sometimes I opened one eye a little, to see him. The way he was turned, I could see the line of his cheek and his jaw, how brown the skin on his arms was, his square strong back. He had golden elf-hair curling in his ears. His legs and his ass were real white, like I was real white all over. He set there whistling a tune through his teeth and fooling with the flowers he had gathered up. I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen a grown man before that would fool around with little flowers. And here I was, on top of Blue Star Mountain, finally!

  All of a sudden I thought, I could of climbed up here by myself, anytime! But I had not. I remembered as girls how you and me would beg to go hunting on the mountain, Silvaney, but they said, That is for boys. Or how we wanted to go up there after berries and they’d say, Wait till Victor can take you, or Wait till Daddy gets home. Well, I’ll bet you made it up there yourself sometime or other, Silvaney, in all your wanderings, I feel sure you have been there too. And I had got up there myself at long last with a man it is true, but not a man like any I had ever seen before in all my life. Even his back was almost covered with little bitty golden hairs. He is like one of his own bees, I thought. I reckon he goes from woman to woman like a bee goes from flower to flower. I knew even then that I was only one of a lot of women that Honey Breeding had had or would have. But he was the last thing left to happen to me. So it didn’t bother me a bit. I laid there and laughed to myself.

  What’s so funny? Honey said. I thought you was asleep.

  I am sort of asleep, I said.

  Well, wake up now. He leaned down and kissed me. It’s time to go.

  No, I said.

  Get up now, I’ve got you a present, he said.

  So I sat up. What is it?

  He stood up and came over and put it on my head, a double starflower crown. You look real pretty, he said. Now stand up and walk, you will be a Queen. I stood up and did as he said, and the wind blew all over my body but my crown stayed put, caught up in my hair which is real heavy.

  Here now, Honey said. He handed me my clothes. We’ve got to get a move on, if we want to get back before full dark. You can say you got lost, I reckon.

  Why, what time is it? I asked.

  For the sun still shone up there.

  It is going on seven, he said, and it will take us two hours walking back. The sun has set already down below. I looked out over the cliff. The hawk had disappeared. I felt the cold wind coming up my body to my face. I’m not going back yet, I said.

  Now Ivy. Honey grabbed my elbows from behind, hard. Put on your clothes.

  I will put on my clothes, I said, but I am not going to go back down there yet. I am not ready to go. I have not had my fill of you yet.

  He laughed shortly. There is plenty that has
had a bellyful of me already.

  I expect so, I said.

  Oh Ivy, Honey said. I am bad news. Anybody will tell you that. We can’t stay up here.

  We can stay awhile longer, I said, and I turned around and kissed him, and so we did. This is exactly how it happened that I ran off from home with a bee man and lived up on the mountain with him for a while, and would of stayed longer if I could have, if he hadn’t gotten tired of me finally, and I hadn’t of gotten sick. It was not his fault so much as mine. I was the strong one then. There is an old song Revel used to sing, He is just a heartbreak in pants. Well, this is true of Honey Breeding, and I reckon I knew it all along, but I didn’t care. When I stood on the cliff with him that day in the last of the sunshine, I couldn’t see nothing but him, nothing. I couldn’t see the valley below, nor any part of the world. I was blinded and dazzled by his shape.

  Come on then, he said, and we got dressed. We got dressed, but I knew we weren’t going back. Something had passed between us. He walked me back across the grassy bald to the path which we followed still further then, along the ridge till we came to a cropping out place of big huge rocks, like a giant’s toys. In here, Honey said, and I follered him in between two of the rocks to a cave that was big as a room. I couldn’t see. Honey grabbled around in the dark and then I heard a flinty scratch and a match flared up red, and then he lit a candle. There was several candles laying on a rock ledge at the back of the cave, and an old blanket in the corner, and you could see where there had been some several cook fires in the floor.

  You have come here before, I said.

  Yesm. Honey’s eyes were winking in the candle light.

  Did you bring a woman here with you? I asked.

  Nope, he said. And I am going to kick this one right out on her hiney if she don’t quit asking me questions and get to gathering wood.

  I started laughing. We went out and got up all the wood we could find around there, and it was full dark when we got back with it. Honey had some dried apples and jerky and journey cakes that we ate for our dinner.

  I remember looking across the fire at him that first night. I know what I’m doing, I said.

  Naw you don’t either, he said flatly, but he grinned at me, and he was right, but it did not signify. Nothing did. For I had to stay with him awhile. It could not be long, I knew that. We would have to go down off the mountain before long, I knew that too. But right then I didn’t care. Can you understand this? I didn’t care. We drank right out of a spring. We washed ourselves off in a little creek. We ate huckleberries and blue berries and nuts and greens and whatever Honey could catch—a squirrel, a rabbit. It was cold up there at night and a white mist covered the whole world in the morning. One time Honey was gone for a while and came back with some jimson weed and squeezed the juice right into his eyes—me screaming for him to stop, mind you, all the while—and died his eyes black for a couple of hours! I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen anybody do that before, nor ever heard tell of it. But Honey Breeding was full of tricks, full of stories, full of songs. One that I remember was real funny. Here’s your chitlins, fresh and sweet, who’ll jine the union? Young hog chitlins hard to beat, who’ll jine the union? Methodist chitlins, just been biled, who’ll jine the union? and such as that, to make me laugh, and Poor Wayfaring Stranger to make me cry. I can’t stand that one, it’s so sad. I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger, travelling through this world of woe, but there’s no sickness, toil nor danger in that bright world to which I go. I’m going there to see my mother, I’m going there no more to roam. I’m just going over Jordan, I’m just going over home.

  Honey Breeding sang this song on the third day we were up there, late in the afternoon as we set by the mouth of the cave looking out on the rocky valley. It was misty, drizzling. It had been raining a little bit off and on all day. Don’t sing that one, I begged him. It makes me cry.

  Well then I won’t, Honey said, and stroked my hair.

  We set there together. He didn’t sing. By then I knew all about him, he had told me the story of his whole life. How his parents had both died and he had lived for a while with a family where the old woman went sweet on him and he got run off, and then how he joined the Army and went to war and saw terrible things there, and came on home. And how he could not stand a city or a town, how he had to have mountains, and roam. If he got around too many people, he said, he heard them talking in his head. So he had give up one good job after another in order to roam, until he had hit on the bee business which suited him. He said he knew it was no kind of life for a grown man, but he couldn’t help it. He said he had tried to live in a house with a woman twice, that is with two different women, and he said that they were real nice women and in fact he had married one of them, but in each case there come a morning when he woke up and looked around and knew it was time to leave there. That is just the way I am, said Honey Breeding.

  I didn’t even have to say, I know it.

  I knew, he knew.

  There would come that morning, and it came. It was hot and bright. We had got up early. I didn’t have any idea how long we had been up there, I had kind of lost track of the time. The skirt of my dress was ripped and hanging by then, I remember that, and I was skinny as a rail. I could not keep a thing on my stomach. I could feel every one of my ribs and my hipbones were sticking out. I felt hot, dry, like I had a fever. Maybe I did. I kept drinking water but it didn’t help.

  We stood in the cave looking out at the day.

  I reckon we will go on back now, Honey said. It is time.

  No no, I said, or I think I said. Then I fainted or fell, down to the floor of the cave. Honey came over and pulled me up and kissed me and took me outside to sit on the rock that we always sat on, but when I felt well enough to look at him good, he was staring off down the rocky valley with his eyes set hard on distance. He had already left me, in his mind. The rest of it wouldn’t be nothing but follow through.

  And I’ll tell you something else, Silvaney.

  Something awful.

  I would of stayed up there. I would of stayed with him until I starved to death and died, I reckon, living on love. I would have stayed right there with him if he hadn’t of made me leave, and that’s a fact. It doesn’t even make me feel bad to say it. There has got to be one person who is the lover, and this time it was me, and one who is the beloved which was Honey. And I will tell you the truth—may be it’s best to be the lover, some ways. Because even if it don’t work out, you are glad. You are glad you done it. You are glad you got to be there, anyway, however long it lasted, whatever it cost you—which is always plenty, I reckon. We’ll get to that. We’ll get there. But right then me and Honey sat on a warm gray rock with little shiny pieces of mica in it, and I was glad I was me. I picked at the rock with my fingers.

  Fools gold, I thought. Well all right. I remembered mining in the creek with Molly so long ago. And now it felt natural to me to be here, to have come up this mountain with this man. I guess that the seeds of what we will do are in us all along, only sometimes they don’t get no water, they don’t grow. Other times, well—you see what can happen. All of a sudden I felt my age. Forty. I thought about the old dry seeds that I found in the gourd up in the attic when me and Oakley moved back up on Sugar Fork, years ago. They were still there, still in the gourd, still in the attic. Who put them up there? Granny Rowe? Momma? It all went a long way back. Honey stood up. Come on Ivy, he said. And even though I cried and pitched a fit, I finally went.

  I follered him down the mountain that morning, which was harder going than I expected. I was real weak. I was sick, as I said. I had to keep on stopping to get my breath, which caught in my side with each step. Honey walked ahead, light-hearted it looked like, sure-footed, whistling a little song. We went down a different path from the way we had come up there, it put us down off the mountain that afternoon by the hard road that goes from Majestic to Pound, where I didn’t know anybody.

  I stood by the road clutching at Honey’s
shirt. It was so hot—bees buzzed in the clover and the Queen Annes lace by the side of the road. A couple of cars went by, faces turned plum around, staring at us. I thought then about what we must look like, what they must think. I thought about Oakley, whose face came clear in my mind for the first time since I had been gone. Somebody blew their car horn at us. Dust hung golden in the air after each car passed. I would of given my life for a cocacola. A green truck passed us, then stopped and backed up. The man got out. Sir I am so glad you have had the kindness of heart to stop, for we have been in a big accident and—I heard Honey saying. Bees buzzed in the weeds. My ears were roaring. There was a taste in my mouth, sour and sweet. White honey comes from white clover, Honey said in my mind, amber from tulip poplar. But the best of all is the sourwood honey, pale yellow and sweet and light. That is all I can really remember. I can’t remember the truck ride back to Majestic at all, nor Honey leaving, nor Victor and Ethel driving me back up on Sugar Fork. I don’t know if I spent the night with them or not, but it seems to me now that I must have.

  Because it seems to me that it is morning again when I come back home. I am surprised at all the cars parked below—Oakley’s family is up here, it looks like, and the Rolettes, and another car and a truck that I don’t know. May be it is somebody from Oakley’s church, I said right off the top of my head.

  Ethel looked at me. She looked real tired. Why would you say that, she said.

  I don’t know, I told her. I reckon it just come to me. Oakley goes to church all the time now, I said. You just don’t know the half of it.

  Victor parked Stoney’s car and we got out. Victor was huffing and puffing. He is a big man, and it was hot, and it seemed like he was building up to some kind of explosion. Sister! he said finally, pulling hairs out of his big thick beard which is what he does when he gets too wrought up. He always calls me sister. You hadn’t ought to’ve done it! he said. You ought to’ve stayed at home!

  Ethel turned on him in a fury. You crazy old man! she said. Don’t you reckon she knows it? Ethel can be a spitfire sometimes. When Stoney Branham passes, which will not be long, Ethel and Victor will have themselves a time. You can see it coming.