This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4)

by Brainard Cheney

  Adam kept his face set and his tone rough til he finally got rid of Kiger—though he thought he was going to have to knock him down to do it. When he was gone, however, Adam didn’t know whether he was madder, or scareder! Kiger had come with him all the way to his yard and stood there at the pump, under the big oak and argued. He even went so far as to threaten Adam, in a way. “Look here, Adam,” he said, “all these white men are against you. You done made ‘em mad. They’re worked up ‘bout this Land Deal. They think hit ain’t goin’ through. You kain’t tell whut Paley and Slappy might tell ‘em ‘bout you, if’n you don’t play ball!”

  “Kiger,” he had said, at last, pointing down the lane, “that the shortest way back to Slappy’s place. You got my word. Git goin’!”

  But when Kiger was out of sight and his ma spoke up behind him, he jumped like he was shot.

  “He a-totin’ trouble, son?” she said.

  Adam shrugged. “Look like h-hit’s on my trail!” he said. He turned away, leaving her standing there, and walked off through the gate and down the lane, his eyes walling around as if, indeed, trouble were following him. It did not seem to him a thing his mother could speak to and he did not know where to turn. He walked all the way to the Wyche field. But he could not think of anybody he could talk to. He could not take it to the widow. Not til he could decide whether there was any truth in anything Kiger had told him. He did not really believe Kiger. But he couldn’t make up his mind as to what actually had happened with the Yankees. He wouldn’t talk to the widow til he had some idea how to handle it.

  Adam leaned on the rail fence and gazed at the rich, dark-brown earth, stretching in straight rows across the field. He would still make a corn corp. And likely it would be his last one! Shaking his head, he looked to the right and left about the level expanse anxiously. He spoke aloud, as if he might be addressing the field. “Well, you kain’t never treat with the devil!” He beat with his fist on the top rail. But who could he treat with? Who could he even talk to? His staring face tightened in horizontal lines til his jaw broke loose with a convulsive jerk. “W-who?”

  The view grew misty and a current rose up through him, as if from the ground. A current from the old field itself—their experience together—of hunger and fulfillment, of high water and waiting, of sweat and strain and anxiousness, but at last the warming sight of a snowstorm of open cotton bolls. Till now. He turned his back on the field and wiped his eyes with his hand.

  The Colonel had told him if he brought the field back, he could keep on tending it. But the Colonel wasn’t here. His word didn’t count any more. . . .If he could only talk to the Colonel!

  Adam started back along the dim three-path road out of the swamp. Maybe he was going a little strong on it, about the Colonel’s word. It still counted with the widow. Hadn’t she always been straight with him, Adam? He slowed his pace thoughtfully. But wouldn’t she like to sell out everything and get out? She might have agreed to something about the field, not really knowing. His step quickened again. She wanted to sell out. Didn’t he see that in her face now? Adam halted a moment, in stillness, to watch, at a distance, a wild turkey hen cross the road, followed by a half-grown brood. No, he decided, no! She only thought she wanted to quit. He counted seven of the young turkeys. . . .The widow sometimes prayed over her troubles. His anxious feet were hurrying him on again, in the gathering dusk. It couldn’t hurt, he told himself, slowing, it couldn’t hurt! Again he halted. And he muttered aloud, a wry twist coming over his uplifted face, “Old Marster, Adam need help!”

  That night Adam was tormented in his sleep. He dreamed that he was drifting timber down the Altamaha on high water. It came night, and he couldn’t find a place to tie on the mainland, so he tied up his raft to an island in the river. After he had made camp, it came to him that this was Hannah’s Island and supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a whore that a company of soldiers did to death during the War. And it seemed that he had no more than realized it when the ghost appeared to him out of the cane brake, naked, the color of a scraped pig, with smoke pouring out of her belly. And she ran toward him, crying, “The lighthouse! The lighthouse!”

  Adam laid his frying pan down and tried to run and found that he couldn’t run!

  It was then that his mother woke him up, beating on his shoulder. She told him that he had been yelling out loud.

  But he was heavy with sleep and in no time he was back, back on the Island, in the same dream again.

  Adam could not see the ghost woman, but he could hear her crying out for help in the dark island jungle. And he thought that a strange fearful hardihood took him, scrambling along the water’s edge, toward the voice. Finally he came upon the tall black shadow of a lighthouse and there stood the ghost woman, at the base of it, in a baleful glow, staring off into the canebrake.

  He followed her gaze, and saw that there the soldiers were, creeping up through the vine-tangled brake toward her—only they were pale and jack-o-lantern-looking, like she was. And it seemed suddenly that he had his Winchester rifle in his hands and he started shooting at the soldiers. But he found that the bullets went through them, without any effect. And they kept coming. And he was cold with sweat.

  Suddenly Hannah was beside him, whispering in his ear. “Find the lighthouse lever,” she said. “That’ll stop them.”

  Then it seemed that he clambered over uncertain footing to the lighthouse and fumbled around the wall, to see what he could feel out with his hands. On the back side of it, he came upon his mother, without feeling any surprise, and he called out, asking her where the lever was. He could somehow see in the dark that she was reading from a big black book, reading out loud from back to front. And she never paused. But as he stood, listening to her babble, not understanding her, he picked up the words, “On the other side, by the big gum stump.” And he ran back around the tower, found the lever and pulled it back.

  There was a great glimmering and whirling of shadows high above them, and the island began to spin. And suddenly he was seeing, not jack-o-lantern soldiers, but black men, in a great drove, running toward him up a street that he recognized to be Lancaster—and it seemed that he knew what he had never seemed to know, that these were the niggers who rioted there thirty years ago, and they were after him!. . . .But then the dream changed and he was staring into a big empty hollow, from which rose up a dead white city—Lost Mountain Prison!

  Then the spinning slowed to a halt and the lighthouse was there before him again, with a strong light pouring forth from the top of it, in all directions. Yet it did not reach the island, but blazed out into space far above the tree tops. And the place seemed deserted. But in a moment he heard a woman’s voice. It seemed familiar to him, though he couldn’t recognize it. She was crying, “It’s because I’m a widow!”

  And he clambered around the foot of the lighthouse again and found Mrs. Hightower on the other side—only it didn’t seem like her, for she was pale and transparent, too. She was pointing out into the brush and he could see jack-o-lantern men, but this time they weren’t soldiers, but the landowners in on the Deal. “Light!” she said, “If we could turn the light on them! If we could find the other lever!”

  Then he dreamed he began a new search of the base of the lighthouse. He went back to the big gum stump, but there were no levers there at all now. He scrabbled about in the half-light, thinking maybe he had got the wrong tree, but he could find no tree with a lever behind it. Then he heard Mrs. Hightower’s voice, crying, “I’m going to sell out lock stock and barrel!” And, it seemed, he looked up, and there she was, climbing up the outside brick wall of the lighthouse. And he was scared. And, it seemed that he looked across the water to the mainland and saw eyes shining from a tree. On a second look, he recognized the eyes to be those of Bo’s little pet coon. And the coon spoke to him.

  The coon said: “The right lever to the lighthouse is over here on this side of the river, in the dark.”

  And he said, “But how kin I git over there?”r />
  And the coon said: “There is a green boat hid under the bow oar of your raft. Get in that boat and paddle over here. But beware of the boat! It belongs to the men on the island.”

  And it seemed that he got in the boat and paddled it, without any trouble across the cut to the mainland, until he stood up to get out of it and all of a sudden it bucked up, like a Texas pony, and pitched him in the river.

  But it seemed that by the time he came back up, the coon had him by the wool, pulling him out of the water. Then the coon took him by the hand and led him along a crooked path, slippery with mud, and overswung by vines. But they dodged this way and that way and got by everything and, at last, they were standing before a big iron lever, like the brake lever on a locomotive.

  The coon pointed to it and he, Adam, took hold and heaved it forward. And, over in the lighthouse, the light swung downward and flooded the whole island. And from where he was Adam could see the Land-dealers pop, like soap bubbles, as the rays hit them—and Banker Littleton, the biggest of them all, popped like a paper bag.

  Then the coon said to Adam, “Come on home!”

  And he was grateful to the coon and went along with him, the coon leading him by the hand through the swamp. And as they made their way toward home, the coon gnawed tenderly at his hand, on the part between the forefinger and the thumb. And he knew that this was a friendly rebuke to him, it seemed. So he asked the coon why for.

  And the coon said: “Trouble with you, Adam, is you went to the island without a boat. If you don’t have a boat to get back to the mainland, we can’t help you. You tried to desert us!”

  And somehow, Adam knew that the coon was speaking for the whole creation of dumb creatures.

  19.

  LUCY HIGHTOWER looked up from the writing board of her secretary in surprise. She saw, through the window entrance, Marse, on the porch, coming toward her. A smile smoothed out the lines in her face and she lifted her voice. “What are you doing here, at such an hour, on a hot afternoon like this?”

  Reflecting her good humor with only the barest glimmer of it, Marse said noncommittally, “I didn’t go swimming this afternoon.”

  This astonished her even more, but simultaneously it occurred to her that Marse could take the letter she had written to Mr. Lincoln down to the post office, and her voice swept on to the second stimulus still bearing some of the tone of the first. “Didn’t go, well that’s good!” she said, “I want you to mail this letter for me.” Her wry lips straightened. “You remember how to register a letter, don’t you?” She picked it up. “It’s important.” Then she glanced at the page of paper before her on which she had written only the salutation, “Dear Edward.” She had started it first and it had given rise to the second letter. And she had been staring at it in frowning frustration again, when Marse appeared. She sighed and turned it over as he drew nearer. As he extended his hand for the envelope she was holding, however, she suddenly lifted it out of his reach and stood up, another impulse now evident on her bland countenance.

  “On second thought, there’s no rush about it,” she said, glancing at the clock, “the post office will be open for another hour.” She faced the veranda again. “I see a breath of air, stirring the leaves of the rose vine. Let’s go sit in the front swing!”

  Marse, his nostrils spreading, bridled a little and seemed about to resist, then he nodded abruptly and faced about.

  They walked alongside and around to the front of the house, her hand lightly placed on his nearer shoulder, in her usual restrained affection. Lucy, however, did not take the occasion to be usual. She had been back home nearly a month and she had never been able to tell Marse that she intended to marry Edward. She could have told him, of course! But she had never been able to establish the sympathy, to feel close enough to him to lead up to it properly. It was amazing: he had put forth a new personality under the strain of their nameless tension. She had decided to shift her ground.

  “I have been thinking,” she began, when they were in the swing and she looked back into the green gloom of the ivy-shaded corridor through which they had come. “I have been thinking, Marse, that we should really go ahead and move back to Charleston now. . . .” A cloud covered the sunset and brought twilight upon his silence. “I mean, of course, when the land deal is finally closed!” She turned toward him, a breeze lifting a strand of hair at her temple that had escaped her pompadour. His face was both questioning and noncommittal, but at least it was not sullen, she decided. Examining, at the quartering angle, the soft seamless surface of it—made barer by blind, almost invisible eyebrows—she was suddenly struck with the look of his father in him. Strange. It was neither his forehead, nor his nose. She had always thought he had none of his father’s physical features. What was it? Perhaps it was the numb expression. You could not tell what was going on inside a Hightower! She used to call it the ancient Greek in her husband.

  She lifted her nose lightly to command his attention. “You see, if we wait til you are ready for high school, why, you won’t be able to get in Boys High in Charleston from this school!”

  Marse looked away abruptly, wrinkles of resistance gathering under his freckles at his cheekbone and his mouth, but after staring out into the yard awhile, he responded submissively, “Yessum.”

  Mrs. Hightower went on, meaning to dwell on the topic, “And, of course, there’s Elinor. It would do a lot for her to have a couple of years at Meminger, my old school, before she goes to college.”

  “Yessum,” Marse said again.

  She was not sure why, but she felt surprised at his meekness. For one thing, he usually protested any mention of school during vacation-time. She pressed on the floor with the ball of her foot and the swing moved, with a squeaking of its chains. The motion made her aware of his clean and still-fresh blouse. And she saw that he was wearing a pair of his good knickerbockers, too. Oh for Goodness sake! She reached out automatically and took hold of the chain, in a balancing gesture. He had been to the afternoon revival services! How could she have forgotten about the revival?

  Mrs. Hightower gave more official endorsement to these summer evangelical purges of Riverton’s spiritual life than she really felt. She was a Methodist, but it was not her idea of religion. Of course, God works in mysterious ways. And it seemed that Riverton had to take its religion, like everything else, raw, sensationally, and fitfully. The Hightowers, of course, had to attend a Methodist revival, but she did not encourage her children to be active. She had been astonished at Marse’s manifestation of interest this season. And, she must confess, a little disturbed. He was not a demonstrative person and really pretty serious-minded for a boy. She wanted him to experience Christian conversion, certainly—if he hadn’t already. But at a revival! That would not be like a Hightower!

  She placed her other arm on the back of the swing, behind his head. “Boys High in Charleston,” she said, “has always been known for its high standards. And Mr. Edward has kept scholarship above athletics there.” A glance from the corner of her eye disclosed no visible reaction in Marse to the mention of Edward’s name. “Not that they don’t have fine athletic teams, too. Edward, himself, used to be a good oarsman. And really expert at tennis!”

  Doubling up a leg, the heel of his bare foot resting on the edge of the seat, Marse wrapped his arms about his knee. “What is an oarsman, Mamma?” he said diffidently.

  Mrs. Hightower’s face brightened. “An oarsman?” She looked about her helplessly, then tightened her mouth and began. “Well, we don’t have rowing here on these rivers. We use paddles. But on the coast they have row boats and rowing races, with oars—you’ve seen oars! An oarsman mans one of the oars in such a race.”

  He nodded his head positively, but she wasn’t at all sure she had made him understand. The revival meeting was probably responsible for some of Marse’s recent strange behavior! She supposed he was, what the preachers call, under conviction. She gave him an uncomfortable glance. As his mother and a practicing Christian, she should
be able to give him comfort and help. But he had given her no opening. Lucy frowned into space and swallowed. Do! An eleven-year-old boy! And her own son! She ought to be ashamed of herself. But he was certainly Hightower, not Riverton, in the way his conscience affected him. He took it dumbly and alone. She would not actually have known what was happening, if their neighbor, Mr. Wilson, the blacksmith, had not tried privately to return to her the dollar Marse gave him for watermelons he had stolen out of his patch. Mr. Wilson said that, of course, the boy was welcome to them and, anyhow, all six of them would not be worth more than half that sum.

  She turned toward Marse. “It’s a great sport on the coast. They have regattas. Edward rowed for the College of Charleston.”

  Again he did not react to the name! She could feel, on the seat beside her, the automatic shifts and muscle tensions of his body that registered his interest. But he looked at her guardedly. “Did you ever row a boat?”

  “Heavens, no!” She laughed. Then, her eyes brightening, she said quickly, “I was in the cheering section—cheering for the College and for Edward.”

  He looked away, with his jaw clamped in an obvious effort at self-control, but he did not take fright, or get the dumb swelling, and she was inspired to go on. “I often went boating with Edward, back there when we were young, but I never rowed the boat.”

  He nodded, still gazing into space and, after a pause, said, “That must have been nice.”

  The encouragement was not great, but she would try to make the most of it. “I rode a sea turtle once!” she said dramatically.

  His small, deep-set eyes turned on her like a shotgun. “You mean, out to sea?”

  “Well, we were on the beach of an island.”