The Devil's Dream

by Lee Smith

  Daylight come and the whole cabin was a wet bloody mess and Mamma was going, she did not know us. The baby whined in its cradle but Mamma did not appear to hear it. For a long time her hands was still clutching and clutching at the air, but then she stopped that. Her hands closed up, her fingers curled like fiddlehead ferns. Her eyes was wide and staring until Granny Horn closed them. Granny Horn stood up then, finely. She must of been six feet tall.

  “Claude, where is yer likker at?” she said, but Daddy would not leave Mamma, he was laid acrost her bosom weeping like a child.

  “Claude!” Granny Horn said sharp.

  “I’ll git it,” I said then, for I knew where he kept it in the loft, and I clumb up there and found a jar and brung it down to her. Granny Horn took a big swig of it, it was white likker, and looked at me directly for the first time.

  “Honey, you go and lay down now,” she said, and I done it. No sooner did I hit the bed tick than I was fast asleep, the soundest sleep in the world, I reckon, for I slept all that day until night again, and when I woke it was dark and the fire was going and Mamma was not there, nor Daddy, and Granny Horn was cleaning with a great pot of water and the baby was crying hard. Granny Horn gave me some johnnycake then and said to eat it and then said to go back to bed, and I done so, and when I woke again it was morning, another day, and the sun was shining offen the snow all around, but it would be some several more days afore you could get in or out through the gap.

  I do not remember these days too good, to tell the truth. They seem to me now as a blaze of light, sun offen the snow. I know what happened, though.

  Granny Horn laid Mamma out on a plank they rigged up in the springhouse, and we kept her there until it thawed enough to bury her. So Mamma was laid out and froze, finely and fectually, in the springhouse.

  When it got to where Granny Horn could get through the gap, she done so, taking the baby, as Daddy would not leave Mamma. Granny Horn took the baby to a woman that had one, so it could get some titty, and while Nonnie was gone, I played like she had never been borned. I played like I was the baby.

  Then Granny Horn come back, which I hated, for she was so big and rough, she was the furtherest thing in the world from my sweet mamma.

  Sometimes I would go out to the springhouse and see my mamma, although they had said not to, but I had figgered out the latch and sometimes I’d steal out there and talk to Mamma laying on the plank. They had covered her face with a camphor rag which smelt terrible; in fact you could not stay in the springhouse long because of it, you’d start choking. Once I helt Mamma’s hand, but it was so cold I let go of it directly.

  I don’t have no memory now of exactly how long Mamma stayed in the springhouse, but it was a good long while. I got used to having her there, and was sorry when it thawed enough to where the neighbor folks come up and buried her.

  Now Daddy acted awful all this while, he would not look at nobody, nor talk to them, and when the neighbor folks left, he would not talk to me either, not for the longest time. Then one time when I brung him some food, he said, “Well, Zinnia, I reckon you will have to be the little wife around here now,” and I said I would, and I have done for him the best I could, ever since. Nobody could have done better.

  But now it seems to me that the one who is there all the time, the one who is cooking and mending and fetching water and just doing in general what needs to be done, well, that one gets precious little attention. It is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease every time. And I have gotten mighty little appreciation over the years, all because of that hateful little Nonnie.

  I say hateful. And she was hateful, but she had everybody fooled but me. She had them all eating right out of her hand, by acting so sweet. I know acting when I see it. And I was the one that had to go around picking up after her and saying, “Did you eat yer supper, Nonnie?” and “Don’t play in the rain, Nonnie” and such as that.

  For Nonnie was the silliest, mooniest child you ever saw, not one grain of sense in her head! She would of starved to death or killed herself a hundred times if it hadn’t of been for me. She would have killed herself over and over doing the crazy things she done, such as swinging on grapevines and playing with snakes. She never had a thought in the world for what might happen to her.

  And was lazy to boot! If you asked her to churn, she might start out a-churning, then she’d be churning and singing, then she’d just be singing, and wander off singing, and allow the cream to clabber in the churn. Many’s the time she done that, and many’s the slap I give her for it. Oh, I done my duty, rest assured of it, but I just couldn’t get through to her, so it done no good in the end. As a littlun, Nonnie was all the time a-singing. She used to go off down the road by herself to the Bevins sisters’ house and learn songs offen them, and I’d have to fetch her home.

  I could not carry a tune in a bucket myself, and don’t give a damn to. For what good does it do you in the end? What good did it do Nonnie? When she was a girl, her favorite song was that crazy little cuckoo song. And to this day, it reminds me of Nonnie and how silly she was. But Daddy was plumb fooled by her, and when she was little he used to carry her to town on the front of his saddle and then set her up on the counter in the store to sing for folks. Daddy never took me to town on his saddle, I might add. Of course I would not have cared to be displayed thataway nohow, but you ought to treat children equal, I say, and not favor one over the other so.

  Well, in all fairness, I know that Daddy did not favor Nonnie because of Nonnie her ownself. No, he favored Nonnie because she was the spitting image of Mamma. Everybody said so. So it was not Nonnie’s fault, in a way, but she got spoiled rotten all the same. And she was not all that pretty neither, never mind what folks said. She was kind of dreamy and dish-faced if you ask me. Not to mention contrary. Now we all know what a woman’s lot is, but Nonnie wouldn’t have no part of it! We’d be sitting by the fire of a night, for an instance, and I’d be doing piecework on my lap, but Nonnie she’d of flung herself flat down on the floor and be a-staring and a-staring into the fire, and not doing a blessed thing with her hands. When you’d call her it was like she was off in the clouds someplace.

  “Nonnie,” I said one time, then, “Nonnie,” real loud and sharp. Oh, she looked up then.

  “Nonnie, what air ye a-looking at, anyway?” I axed her, and do you know what she said? She said she’d seen figures a-dancing, dancing in the flames!

  Of course later I remembered her answer real good, in light of the awful thing that would come to pass, but at the time it just hit me as more of her foolishness.

  And as she got older, she got worser. She started in a-wanting to go to play-parties with the big gals and fellers when she was not but about twelve years old, just ragging Daddy to let her go, and of course he done it finely, for he always let Nonnie do exactly what she pleased.

  “Zinnia, you go with her and watch out for her,” Daddy told me the first time he let her go, but I would not do it.

  “I don’t care to go,” was all I said. Hadn’t Daddy seed that I hadn’t never gone to a play-party myself in all them years? For I am no fool. And I knowed them boys would pass me by, a-stepping Charley, and I refused pint-blank to give them the satisfaction.

  I didn’t care for boys then, and I don’t care for men now. They are nothing but a vexation and a distraction, and can’t none of them hold a candle to Daddy anyhow.

  But Nonnie, she’d go or die, and then she’d be mooning around over first one and then another. She used to sing this little song, “Oh I wonder when I shall be married, oh be married, oh be married, oh I wonder when I shall be married, or am I beginning to fade?” It was the dumbest little song I ever heerd, and she was the dumbest little girl I ever saw to sing it, and I said so. Didn’t faze Nonnie, though. She’d swat away my words like they was flies.

  And when we would go anyplace, if it was meeting or the store or anyplace at all, why she would flirt with the boys till it was shameful. But didn’t none of them come up here, for Dad
dy had said that they was not to, and most folks was kindly afeared of Daddy. Daddy thought none of them boys was good enough for our Nonnie, she had really pulled the wool over his eyes.

  “Anyway, Zinnia must have a husband first,” Daddy said at the table one night just to devil us. Since I knowed he didn’t mean it, I just laughed and said, “The last thing in the world I need is a husband. I need a husband like I need a hole in the wall,” I said. “And whatever would you all do without me, anyway, if I was to leave?” I axed them, for we were eating supper which I had cooked, mind you. “You-uns would starve to death,” I said.

  And do you know what Daddy done? Why, he reached over acrost the table and took Nonnie’s hand. “Why, Nonnie will be the little housewife, then,” he said, grinning. He was just funning her, because he would not have let me go for the world, mind you, but silly little Nonnie busted into tears and ran out of the house a-blubbering.

  “Oh, I will never get married,” she wailed. “You all won’t let me,” she wailed. “If I have to wait for Zinnia, I’ll be a old maid,” she wailed out in the yard while Daddy and me sat on at the table and finished eating supper.

  The truth of it was, Daddy wanted Nonnie to stay in school as long as ever she would. I believe he had kindly a hankering for Nonnie to make a teacher like one of Daddy’s aunts done, over in Tennessee. Oh, he wanted the world for our Nonnie! And she could of had it too; it was hers for the taking. And it was all right with me, mind you, for Nonnie to get all that schooling, as I couldn’t get nothing at all done with her mooning around underfoot day in and day out. I was plumb glad to see her go flouncing out that door to school. She used to ride her little pony down to the schoolhouse every day, this was a white pony Daddy had bought for her over in Sparta, which she named Snowy. I had not took to school too good myself, truth to tell. It seemed like a waste of time to me. But Nonnie, she liked it fine, and the schoolteacher, Mister Harkness, set a big store by her. She had him wrapped around her little finger too.

  I recall one time when our preacher, Mister Cisco Estep, was questioning Daddy about Nonnie’s schooling and what did Daddy mean by it, for the Bible itself says that too many books is a sin. I will not forget what Daddy answered him.

  “Cisco,” he said, putting his hands on Cisco Estep’s shoulders, “Nonnie is a soft girl, like her mother. I do not want her to get all wore out by hard work like her mother done. I feel real bad about her mother,” Daddy said.

  This is the only time I ever heerd Daddy say anything about Mamma, or saw him look so mushy in the face.

  “I want Nonnie to have a better life,” Daddy said.

  But Nonnie, she didn’t care nothing about that, all she wanted was a feller. Nonnie was just a fool waiting to happen.

  And one day, sure enough, she came back from going down into Cana with some of the neighbor people, looking like she had a fine mist of moondust laid all over her. Her black eyes was as shiny as coal.

  “Well, who is he?” I axed straightaway, for I knowed immediately what was up.

  Nonnie would always answer you right back, and truthful too. She was too dumb to do otherwise. “Oh, Zinnia,” she said, “I was just standing in the road talking to some folks when this man rode in on a gray horse. He was a man that none of us had ever seed before, and not from around here. He is real different-looking, real handsome, like a man in a song. Anyway, he looked at me good as he rode past,” she said. “I looked at him and he looked at me,” Nonnie said all dreamy, and I said, “So?” for this did not sound like much to me. “Well, then he got off and hitched the horse up at the rail there and come right over to where I was standing in the road talking to Missus Black, and he takes off his hat and kindly bows down like a prince, you never saw the beat of it. Then he says, ‘What is yer name?’ and I told him, and, ‘Where do you live?’ and I told him that too.”

  “Oh, Nonnie,” I said. “He can’t come up here. You don’t know a thing about him.”

  Nonnie flashed her eyes at me and bit her pouty lip. “He has got some money from a previous venture,” she said, real highfalutin. “And he aims to settle in these parts.”

  Well, sure enough, here he come, and sure enough, Daddy run him off. He met with the man, whose name was Jake Toney, in private afore he run him off. Nonnie sat on a chair out in the yard, just tapping her foot, while Daddy talked to Jake Toney. Then she saw fit to keep quiet for the length of time it took Jake Toney to get back on his gray horse and ride out of sight, but as soon as he was gone, she just throwed herself on Daddy like a wildcat from Hell, crying and clawing at his eyes and hitting at him, and Daddy just helt her out at arm’s length and let her fight.

  “Now listen here, girls,” he said, when Nonnie had finely quit fighting. “That man there is a Melungeon, and he won’t be coming up here again. I knowed it as soon as I saw him,” Daddy said.

  “A what?” Nonnie said, and then Daddy told us about the Melungeons, that is a race of people which nobody knows where they came from, with real pale light eyes, and dark skin, and frizzy hair like sheep’s wool. Sure enough, this was what Jake Toney looked like, all right.

  “Niggers won’t claim a Melungeon,” Daddy told us. “Injuns won’t claim them neither.

  “The Melungeon is alone in all the world,” Daddy said, and at these words, Nonnie ran off crying. She was so spoilt by then, she couldn’t believe she couldn’t have anything she wanted.

  Well, Nonnie cried for some several days after that, but then Daddy made her go back to school, and just about as soon as she started back, she cheered up considerable. In fact she cheered up too fast, and I don’t know, there was just something about her that made me feel funny, not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. They was something there that did not meet the eye. So one day when Nonnie rode off to school, I determined to ride over toward Cana myself, not an hour behind her. I told Daddy I was going to the store.

  I can’t say that I was surprised when I come riding around the bend there where that little old falling-down cabin is, that used to belong to the widder woman, and seed the gray horse and the little white pony hitched up in front of it. I got off my horse and tethered her back there in the woods and then walked kindly tippytoe over to the cabin, but I need not have gone to the trouble. For they were making the shamefullest, awfullest racket you ever heerd in there, laughing and giggling and moaning and crying out, and then he’d be breathing and groaning at the same time, and then he hollered out, and then she did.

  School, my foot!

  You had better believe I told our daddy what was going on in that cabin!

  So he was waiting on the front porch that afternoon when Nonnie came riding home on her little pony. He did not let on, though.

  “Evening, honey,” Daddy says.

  “Evening, Daddy,” says Nonnie, as sweet as ever you please.

  “How was school?” Daddy axed, and Nonnie said, “Fine, sir,” and when he axed her what did they do today, why she commenced upon some big lie about geography, but before she got halfway done with it Daddy had struck her on the shoulder with his riding crop and knocked her on the ground, and then he beat her acrost the back with it until she cried for mercy with her hands before her face. I did not lift a finger to help her neither, for she deserved it. Nor did I comfort Nonnie when she lay crying in the bed, not until way up in the night when finely I brung her some tea and some biscuit. Which she did not touch, hateful as ever.

  And in the morning she was gone.

  She had lit out in the dead of night on her pony, gone down to find her Melungeon at Missus Rice’s boardinghouse, where he stayed, and I couldn’t tell you what passed betwixt the two of them when she got there, but the next day he was up and gone before daybreak, alone. And then what did that silly Nonnie do? Why, she locked herself up in Jake Toney’s room all broken-hearted, wouldn’t come out for nothing. Missus Rice had to send up to the house for me to come and get her.

  Jake Toney left owing money all over town, as it turned out, one jump ahead of the law. H
e owed a lot of people due to the poker game he had been running regular in the back of the livery stable. Missus Rice was fit to be tied, as he left owing her considerable, also old Baldy McClain that ran the livery stable and was supposed to have gotten a cut on the game.

  They all liked to have died when they found out that Jake Toney was a Melungeon to boot, which I told Missus Rice first thing when I went down there to get Nonnie. Missus Rice’s jaw dropped down about a foot. The news was all over town inside of a hour.

  As for our Nonnie, she was mighty pale and mighty quiet, riding home. For once she had nothing to say. She was not a bit like herself after that, and would not go back to school for love nor money, but stayed at home not doing a thing but crying and looking out at the mountains from time to time. This liked to have killed Daddy, for deep down in secret, he is real softhearted. He brung Nonnie everything he could think of to cheer her up, including a silver hairbrush and a silk scarf.

  “Iffen I was to go off in the bushes with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that come along,” I axed Daddy, “do ye reckon I could get me one of them scarves?”

  Whereupon Nonnie turned right around and gave it to me, of all things. I was not too proud to take it neither. In fact I felt gratified to take it, after all the trouble she had put me to. For Nonnie owed me, and that’s a fact.

  Well, we never seed hide nor hair of the Melungeon again, but Nonnie continued grieving him for weeks on end, and laying up in the bed all day long doing it. Then one day I looked at her good, and all of a sudden it come to me that she was going to have a baby.