The Devil's Dream

by Lee Smith

  “Jeremiah! Get me some water, honey!” Kate said, and the eldest boy run up to the spring with the bucket. They loved their mamma. You could jest tell it, and they was never any back talk nor squabbling amongst them. Them and Kate was all kids together, hit appeared.

  Jeremiah come back with the bucket, and Kate doused the fire. She licked the end of the sassafras stick she was stirring the apple butter with, and grinned at me. My heart liked to leap outen my chest. “This’ll eat real good,” she said, “come on over here and try it,” and I rose up like I was in a dream and went over there where she was. I felt like my legs was lead, but my heart was a-beating double time, and she helt out the stick and giggled, and I licked the apple butter offen it, and then I dipped the stick down and helt it fer her whilst she licked it. It was real hot and real sweet. It burned my tongue. I looked at Kate in the old black coat, and I looked at her raggedy younguns barefoot despite of the cold, and I listened to the wind a-moaning and a-sighing through them cedar trees, and a resolve took aholt of me.

  “Kate Bailey,” I says, “how come you to stay over here this-away when yer man ain’t never home? You ought to have better,” says I, all hot in the face, and to her credit, Kate did not laugh at me.

  “Why, Ira Keen!” she says. “Why, Ira.” And fer just a minute she laid her hand upside of my face. Fer just a minute she stopped stock-still and stared straight in my eyes. We stayed like that fer a while. The cold wind blowed her hair around.

  Then, “Moses needs me,” she says, real soft-like. “He needs me so much,” she says. Now I didn’t know nothing about that then, being nought but eighteen, but I do now. For need is the powerfullest tie that they is, it seems to me now, fer a woman in particular.

  But at the time Kate said it, it fair broke my heart. I reckon I got on my horse someway, and made it back acrost Paint Creek someway, but whether I carried Mamma any of that apple butter or not, I couldn’t tell ye. I do know I got knee-walking drunk that night out in the smokehouse, where Pappy thought he had hid his liquor so good, and Pappy whupped me fer it. To tell you the truth, I didn’t keer iffen he whupped me or not. I wanted him to whup me, iffen I couldn’t have Kate Malone. My heart was broke fer sure.

  Now this was what? Sixty, seventy year ago? And yet I can see her still a-standing by that cookfire in the wind, her skirts and her hair a-blowing, giving me that sassafras stick to lick. I see her rosy cheeks. And yet hit weren’t long after that that I taken Piney Wilfong down to Bee fer somebody’s wedding, and the axle broke and the horse run off, and there we was, out all night long, and hit was said I ought to marry her to make it right. Which I done. And brung her up here, and she was as good as gold to Dummy, and give me nine children to boot. Which is all gone now, finely and fectually. Two boys dead in the war and two more I have done lost track of, and another boy and four gals that lives here and there. They bring their younguns up here to see me infrequent. I ain’t got no use fer younguns. And Piney dead in the ground these twenty year. It seems to me a quare thing that I lived with that old woman nearabout fifty year—and she was a good wife, mind ye—and yet I cannot now recall her face, fer the life of me! Not the way I recall Kate Malone the day she made the apple butter when we was young.

  Anyway, I had done been caught and trussed by Piney when all the trouble started up over there in Cold Spring Holler. Hit commenced when Kate’s ma took sick at Cana and they sent fer Kate, so Moses Bailey had to let her go. She taken Jeremiah with her, leaving Mary Magdaleen to watch little Zeke and do fer their daddy, who prayed over them out in the yard afore they left, riding on two white mules. Well, hit was two days a-riding over Lone Bald Mountain in those days, and when they got there, come to find out that Kate’s mamma had took a up-turn. So Kate and her mamma just fell on each other’s necks a-crying, it is said, and they was muching over Jeremiah, that they had not seed since he was a babe. So Kate and Jeremiah stayed on a few days to visit.

  And one night Jeremiah noted a fiddle hanging on the wall and said, “Grandaddy, what is that?” and Pink took it down and played it fer him. And Jeremiah fair loved it! He took to the fiddle like a duck to water, and when they got back home, hit was the first thing he told his daddy about the trip.

  “Now you hark me,” Moses said, his voice deep and terrible. “The fiddle is a instrument of the Devil, and iffen you ever take it up you will have to leave home. Fer you won’t be my boy no more, you’ll be the Devil’s boy.” And then he put both hands on Jeremiah’s head and prayed on him.

  So that was the end of that, until the follering summer, when Kate’s mamma took sick again, and this time Moses was off a-running a raft of logs down the Monongah River fer a feller, so Kate just up and lit a rag fer home without so much as a by-your-leave to Moses, and got there just in time to see her mamma buried.

  Now I don’t know but what this might of made Kate kindly reckless, fer when Jeremiah axed fer the fiddle again, Kate allowed it, and she allowed Pink to play it fer him. And then it is said that Kate herself took her own little fiddle down from the wall where it had been hanging ever since she went off to Cold Spring Holler. She took it out on the porch of her daddy’s fine big cabin over at Cana, and set out there all night long a-fiddling. Everything she had ever knowed come back to her—“Barbry Allen,” “Cripple Creek,” “Shady Grove,” “The Devil’s Dream,” “I gave my love a cherry that had no stone”—Jeremiah, he couldn’t get over his mamma a-playing thataway. But come morning, she put her little fiddle back up on the wall and busted out a-crying.

  “I tell you what,” old Pink Malone says to Kate when they are saddled up to leave, “honey, you take this fiddle, it is yourn, on home with you, wrapped up in these here gunny sacks, and you teach the boy to play whenever his daddy is away. The boy has got a ear fer it,” Pink said. “Besides, hit’s a sin to put your talent under a bushel,” Pink said. You know a feller can quote Scripture to make it come out however suits him.

  Well, Kate she looked at the fiddle, and she looked at Jeremiah’s face, and she looked at the fiddle again, and her whole heart was filled with longing. So she taken the fiddle.

  And from then on, every time Moses was away, why we could hear them out there making music on the porch. Even the littlun was learning, that leetle Zeke. And Mary had the sweetest high thin voice. “Down in the valley, valley so low,” she’d sing, “hang yer head over, hear the wind blow.” They didn’t have no way of knowing how good the sound carried up here, I reckon, since they hadn’t hardly ever ventured offen that place.

  Well, hit used to give Mamma the all-overs and Piney, too, that singing. “No good will come of this,” Mamma said. But Dummy loved it. He used to tap his foot and pat his knee in time.

  Winter come, and we didn’t hear no fiddling, and then spring come, with a big early thaw. Now Moses’ garden never done much, and the previous summer wasn’t no exception. So by spring they was about out of everything that Kate had put by to eat, they was living on apples and taters, so Moses he resolved to run a raft of logs down the river fer old man Higgins, and get him some cash money. Hit was a lot more water around here then. The Monongah was a big mighty river in them days.

  “Hit might take me longern usual to get back up here,” Moses warned Kate. “I might have trouble crossing them little streams on the way back, fer some of them is all swole up now and busting over their banks. I’ll be aiming fer about six days,” Moses says. So then he kissed her, and set out afore the sunrise.

  Well, that day, don’t ye know, Kate and Jeremiah took the fiddle outen the hidey-hole in the corncrib where they’d been a-keeping it, and tuned it up, and that night they set out on the porch a-fiddling and a-singing. They sung and sung. They sung the moon up.

  They didn’t have no way of knowing that Moses’ raft had broke into smithereens right soon after he set out, when he come to a big curve with some sharp rocks over to the left of it, that he was aware of, but this year the Monongah was so high Moses couldn’t get his bearings. So he run right smack into the
m rocks and the raft busted all to pieces, throwing Moses into the river and the logs ever whichaway. Moses was lucky not to drown. In point of fact he liked to of drowned, but he managed to cling onto one of the logs fer dear life, and come around. He stopped at a house to dry hisself, and set out walking fer home.

  Now who knows what Moses was a-thinking on that long dark walk home? Fer his pretty wife and his children had nothing but taters to eat, and he was coming home with nothing in his pockets, and it must have seemed to him that God, who Moses had been looking fer all his days, was just a-mocking him. God had flung him in the river and left him fer dead. Is hit a sign? He must have wondered. Is hit a test? So Moses was a-walking through the dark dripping trees alongside of Paint Creek, and pondering on God and His ways, when all of a sudden he heerd the Devil’s laughter on the wind.

  Now what hit was, a course, was his own wife Kate, a-fiddling a frolic tune and singing, “Good-bye, girls, I’m goin to Boston, ear-lye in the morning.”

  Moses hastened on.

  And when he come to the edge of the clearing he could see them as good as anything, in the light of the risen moon. They didn’t even need no lantern. Hit was Kate with Mary Magdaleen and Jeremiah gathered round her. Little Zeke had fell asleep on a pallet at her feet.

  Then Kate handed Jeremiah the fiddle.

  “Saddle up, girls, and let’s go with em, saddle up, girls, and let’s go with em.” Jeremiah had a fine, light touch.

  Now who knows what went on in Moses’ head whilst he stood there a-listening? Who can say what drives a man to do the things he does? Fer what Moses done was awful. He come busting outen them woods like God Hisself, a-hollering, snatched that fiddle and broke it over the front porch rail, then beat all of them, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Mary and Kate, too, until the children run off in the woods to get away from him. At the last, he throwed hisself down on the floor and cried like a baby the rest of the whole night long, or so Kate told it to Mamma, who went over there the next day and larned the whole sorry story.

  One side of Kate’s pretty face was black and blue, and her eye was swole shut. But Moses was the one in torment, Mamma said, gnashing his teeth over what he had done, and moaning deep moans, and a-praying out loud to God. Kate never left his side, Mamma said, nor took a thought fer herself, and it appeared to Mamma that Kate loved Moses more than ever, despite of what he done. She said Kate’s face gave off a light that calmed all who come around her that day, and so before long, Moses hisself calmed down, and Mary and Zeke come back and Moses kissed them, and then Mamma come on home. Hit fair broke my heart to hear what she had to say.

  But Jeremiah never come back home.

  One, two days passed.

  “He was right there with us,” Mary and Zeke said. “We was all together in the woods,” they said. But he never come back home. Moses felt awful about it, fer Jeremiah was his eldest son, and if the truth be told, his favorite.

  And then Kate remembered how Moses had told Jeremiah he’d have to leave iffen he ever took up the fiddle, and they determined that Jeremiah must of gone over Lone Bald Mountain by hisself to stay with Kate’s family at Cana.

  So Moses saddled up his horse and went over there to get Jeremiah and bring him back. But when he got halfway up the mountain, Moses seen all these ravens around the rock cave, wheeling and dipping in the sky. He rode over there to take a look. And sure enough it was his own son Jeremiah, two days dead, having fell down the rocky clift in the dark a-trying to get to Cana. And the ravens had et out his eyes.

  Well, a course Moses put his son’s body acrost his saddle and brung him back, and we buried him there under the cedar trees, for Kate would not let us taken him back up the mountain where the Bailey burying ground lays. “I want him home,” Kate said. She said it real calm, too calm, and her eyes was too big in her head. But everything was done as she desired. And then she appeared to go on as usual, cooking and churning and gathering eggs and such-like, and speaking reasonable to all the neighbor folks that come by bringing this or that to help out. Kate never said nothing about Jeremiah whose grave you could see from the porch, nor yet about Moses who had gone off again, wandering the mountains, it is said, praying out loud and mournful at all hours of the day and night. Some said they had seed him down on the Monongah, or over at White Oak, or at Bee. Two fellers swore they heerd Moses a-praying as they rode through Flat Gap going toward Sisterville, but they couldn’t roust him outen the forest.

  Well, time passed, and hit was full summer, and finally Moses come on back home. But he come home only to die. We reckoned hit was the pneumonia, fer he laid there thin as a rail with a rattle in his chest and coughed hisself to death. But whenever he weren’t coughing, Moses continued to pray aloud.

  I questioned Kate on this.

  “Oh no, he has not lost his faith,” Kate said, bright as a new penny. “He has bent hisself to the rule of God, which we cannot hope to fathom,” she said. “He hopes he may hold out faithful to the end.”

  Now as you might imagine, word got out, and folks come from all around to hear Moses pray and to see him thataway, and they was some several folks converted on the spot. But they wasn’t nobody present excepting Kate when Moses coughed his last and died. Or as Piney used to say, “when he crossed over to the other side.” Piney was a good old woman. I wish I had loved her better, I wish I hadn’t give her such a time. I reckon she’s on the other side now, old Piney is, iffen they is one. I don’t reckon I’ll be joining her over there, neither. I tell ye, I hold with old Sid Bailey on that, “Ye’ve got to walk that lonesome valley by yerself,” and I ain’t looking fer company.

  Now I’ll admit to ye, I might of had some idea of going around Cold Spring Holler and seeing what all I could do fer Kate after Moses died, but the pure fact was that Kate died too, finely and factually, when Moses went. The Kate that I had knowed and loved, I mean, that Kate so merry and spiritous, that sung on the porch whilst she churned, and danced with her babes in the yard.

  Kate Malone went plumb outen her head then, hit is sad to say.

  You couldn’t get her to speak a word of sense, she was so busy a-talking with them people in her mind, Moses and Jeremiah and Lord knows who else, and singing little bitty snatches of songs. Sometimes she’d wrap up her head in a shawl, and say the ravens was after her. Sometimes she’d be laughing and laughing. Sometimes she’d shush you, and say the ravens was a-whispering in her ear. Well, hit weren’t long afore they come over here from Cana, some of her daddy’s people, and taken her children away. Seemed like she didn’t hardly miss em, neither. Now they tried to take Kate, too, but she refused to go. She would not leave that cabin.

  I seen Kate one more time afore she died. She’d been a-living all alone fer a year or more, and hit was summer again, jest about dusk, when I walked over there.

  Kate set on the porch in her rocking chair where I had seed her so many times, rocking and singing just like she used to, “Go to sleep, little baby, fore the booger-man gets you! When you wake, you’ll have a piece of cake, and all the pretty little horses.” Her hair had gone plumb white, but her voice was as sweet as ever. She looked real peaceful.

  “Kate,” I says. “Hit’s Ira.”

  “A black and a bay and a dapple and a gray,” she sung.

  “Kate Malone!” I says.

  “So go to sleep, little baby,” Kate sung, and I seed hit was hopeless. I don’t think she even knowed me. I left her there whilst the lightning bugs was a-rising from the tall grass that had growed up all around the cabin, and a leetle wind was a-singing through the cedar trees. I thought I heerd a whisper in the breeze. And when I looked back at the cabin from the edge of the forest, I couldn’t even see Kate there on the porch, I couldn’t do nought but hear her, a-singing in the dark.

  I believe I will take a leetle more of that there. Jest a drop, iffen ye don’t mind.—What’d I do? Well, I’ll tell ye.

  I left there that night with my heart like to busting, fer a young man is a sorry wild thing,
truth to tell, he don’t even know what he wants, but he wants it so bad hit is like to kill him all the time. Nor did I go home to that good wife of mine. No, I walked down the creek past Bee to Reece Stiltner bottom, where a woman I knowed named Becky Trent lived, and she was glad to see me. She was allus glad to see me. But she weren’t nothing like Kate Malone.

  That’s why hit don’t bother me none to stay up here the way I do now, hit don’t bother me having that hanted cabin acrost the way there. Hell, that fiddle music don’t even bother me, most times. Now I won’t go over there, mind ye, on a bet, but I kindly like to hear that music. Most times hit’ll start up about now, jest about dark, and iffen hit’s a dance tune, why sometimes I’ll lean my head back and close these old eyes and listen, and them times hit’ll seem like I can fair see us, Kate and me together as we never was in life, a-waltzing in the dark.

  2

  Ezekiel Bailey

  Small wonder, then, that Zeke grew up so muley-hawed and closemouthed, a big boy with a face as fair and blank as the full moon. It wasn’t that he was obstinate or contrary. It was simply that he had nothing to say. And he could sit still for hours, and not do a blessed thing. It was unnatural. Everybody said so. Zeke was passed around his mamma’s family at Cana like a hot potato, staying with first these cousins, then those cousins, then his lonely old Great-aunt Edith over at Honey Camp, but nobody would keep him long, not even Edith. They’d make some excuse and pass him on.

  For the pure fact was, Zeke spooked them. He spooked them all. They were not used to a big old boy that wouldn’t say a word. It made them feel bad, like they ought to do something about him, but they couldn’t think what. For he wouldn’t work, he wouldn’t play, he didn’t even want to shoot a gun! Finally they got tired of thinking up things for him to do. Finally they grew to hate the very sight of him sitting hunched on the floor thataway, staring into the fire. Ain’t nothing to see, in a fire. And they couldn’t stand the way he kept his head cocked like a robin all the time either, like he was listening out for something. For what? It wasn’t natural.