Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

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  brain. Roan led the way and set the pace, and Marsh was glad his mules were big and young.

  The fourteen mile ridge trail was well broken with the three trips he had made to High Pockets Armstrong's cabin with a load of pelts as his excuse, but Delph the real reason. If trouble came she was to send word there. High Pockets lived less then ten miles from a telephone. Once out of Left Long Branch Holler the road ran flat and fairly smooth along the twisted back of Kittle Pot Ridge. Roan rose in his stirrups, tickled Charlie's left ear, dug hard into his flanks with a ten penny nail, held fast while he bucked, then eased his grip when Charlie broke into a long swinging lope that made Marsh call from the now loping Ruthie Ann, "Roan, we'll kill these mules."

  And Roan answered with no looking back, "Listen to that roar."

  Marsh heard it then, a curious, muted thunder rising above the thud of the mules' feet; the sound of heavy, big-dropped walls of rain driving hard into thick layers of melting snow. A moment after they were in the rain, a lashing downpour that drove through their clothing, and made the snow under the mules' feet grow first gray and sodden, then form into pools and rivulets that flooded the way, as if the world had turned to water that could not race fast enough into the creeks and rivers.

  Marsh could see nothing except Roan's hunched shoulders and Charlie's streaming sides. He called again, but Roan continued to ride like one who could not hear, and seemed not to care that the hard pace would in time wear down the best of mules. They came to a low spot in the ridge where white snow water rose knee deep on the mules, and Roan took advantage of the slackening in the pace to turn to Marsh and explain, "We've got to go while th' goin's good, 'fore ice starts comin' down the creeks." He fingered the bridle a moment and looked down at the rising snow water and asked, "Know anything about floods, Marsh?"

  Marsh nodded and called above the thunder of the rain for Roan was galloping again, "Yes, once on th' Ohio. It was awful, everbody had to start movin' out soon as they were warned, had to be out in three days."

  Roan only seemed to ride the harder, and as Marsh followed he slowly understood that the Cumberland was not the Ohio, and that there would be no three days warning. Once he heard a man call as

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  if from a long way, "Marsh, Marsh, you'll kill that mule," then angry cursing and "God, God, he's lost his head.Th' neighbors will get her out."

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  The sound of the rain awakened Delph. She arose early, glad that the cold did not hurt as she went down to build a fire. She aroused Vinie, and sent her early away, for the spring branch was rapidly flooding the road, and told her if the rain continued not to walk through all the mud and wet to come again in the evening. She'd been laying off to visit Lizzie Higginbottom, stay the night and have a bit of cookery not her own. Now that the snow was going and it wouldn't be so slippery, she'd like to walk out and get a breath of airthat is if the rain slacked; a good warm rain like this wouldn't hurt anybody, and she was sick of staying so close inside.

  Vinie didn't know what about it and urged her for a time not to do such a thing in her shape, then remembered that she'd been wanting to visit a girl friend in Hawthorne Town, and thought that she would go with Mr. Elliot if he drove in that day. However, as she went away she warned Delph whatever she did not to stay alone. "Marsh would kill us both," she said, "if he ever heared a you bein' by yourself a single night."

  "Pshaw, if I decide not to go up to Lizzie's I'll tell Sober an' he'll get somebody to stay with me," Delph answered, and directed Vinie to buy her some peanut brittle in town. Lately she'd been craving it, and Uncle never kept it in his store.

  Sober came late to milk the cows and feed. He hurried with his work, stopping only long enough in the kitchen to say to Delph, "Ah don't know how general this rain is, but if'n it keeps up you'd better have that Vinie to tell Mr. Elliot or somebody they'd ought to bring a car or somethin' for you about tomorrow, an' git you up on th' hill."

  Delph laughed at the worried look in his eyes. She would not bother to move. On the kitchen wall there was a mark above the door near the ceiling for the highest flood that had ever been, and that was twenty years ago. If the river came up, she would with Vinie's help move her bed clothing and such to the upstairs, and go

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  up to the brick house. Mrs. Elliot had already suggested many times that she stay there while Marsh was gone.

  Sober went away and she was left with Caesar and the sound of the rain, hours and hours of it, lashing the roof and the bottom lands, long sheets of water under descending walls of rain, the river bluff giving voice with a thousand tongues of gushing, foaming water. She liked itfor a little while. In the rain there was a life and a noise that made her feel less dead and drugged with loneliness and hurt that Marsh should go away, leave her with scarcely a word of good-bye, only solemn old-man talk, advising her to take care of herself as if she had no more sense than the addle-headed Prissy. She even sang a little under cover of the tumultuous sound, and the sadness that crept now into all her songs was smothered in the rain.

  She sat all day in the kitchen with the lamp lighted against the heavy twilight the swiftly falling water brought to the valley. The clock stoppedMarsh had always tended to its winding and she had forgotten itand though she listened all during the day, she could hear no mill whistles or any other sound she knew. She read a good bit, mended a suit of overalls, and cooked some food which she fed mostly to Caesar. And the day was very long. So long that many times she went to stand in the door and see if Sober had come to do the barn work. He was a black man, but he was a human being, something that lived like herself in a gray world of threshing beating rain. When he came she would have him go for Vinie or if she were not home, one of Lizzie's children, or any one to spend the night with her.

  She never knew when twilight fell. She raised her head, and the windows had changed from gray to black, and the sound on the roof seemed less a voice of the rain than a roaring tongue of darkness and loneliness and misery.

  She took milk buckets, lighted the lantern and started to the barn; and when she at last reached it she seemed to have come a long way. The path to the barn had seemed less a path than a creek bed where muddy, ice-cold water swirled sometimes over the tops of her galoshes.

  She milked and fed, and it seemed to her that the cows and even the smallest calf and the lazy sows were kind, gazing at her with tender, troubled eyes. She half thought of climbing above them in the

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  hay, rather than try the cold wet walk to the house. But she remembered the baby. It might not be good for it if she slept in the hay with her damp clothing and wet feet.

  She knew it was foolish to try to reach the brick house. The rain and the darkness made it seem miles away for her feet, slower and less light than they had ever been. The rain slackened as she went to bed, though as she fell asleep the cascades on the other side of the river and the rivulets in the bluff above the road, roared and trickled and cried.

  Sometimes in the night a troubled whimpering, broken by short excited barks awakened her. Caesar was at the kitchen door crying to be let in. He sounded frightened, terrified by something that was neither beast nor man. She pitied him. There was in his cry the same quality of blind, unreasoning terror she had struggled against at times through the week of her loneliness.

  She went down and opened the door. He sprang into the kitchen, circling about her and whimpering still. Whatever had frightened him was just beyond the door. The night was light with a full moon thinly veiled with cloud. She glanced outside, took her eyes away, looked again, and then without moving her eyes walked into the yard, but stopped when she had gone a little way. Water, black under the white light of the moon, reached beyond her, one strange twining sheet, animated by a hidden snake-like motion, stretched as far as the river, farther; there was no river, only the creeping, crawling blackness. She watched what looked to be a shed go riding down, clutched a litt
le by the tips of the willows that had marked the course of the river.

  Her feet felt cold and strange. She looked at them, and saw that now she stood in the gulping blackness. She watched a moment, held by the life in the water that rose about her shoe and swallowed a pebble by her heel and made no sound. Caesar snapped at her ankles and backed away. She wondered with a cold numbness like the water on her feet how it was she could be so calm, and think of nothing except the drama of the water that was so silent and so ugly, and yet more powerful in its way than all the men in the world.

  She thought of Marsh, and came to sudden life and tried to think what he would do if he were here. She stood a moment then went to the barn, wading in spots, and with Caesar helping her, herded all

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  the animals into the lane and opened the gate into the big road. She opened the doors and windows of the chicken house so that the hens, if they were sensible enough, might fly into the sycamore tree. Caesar returned from driving the cows, and started with her to the house, and she remembered that by the time she had carried her bed clothing upstairs, and was ready to go to the brick house, the water might be too deep for the dog. It seemed to be rising rapidly.

  She bade him go after the cows, but he only looked at her, the brown spots above his eyes dark, like the heavy eyebrows of some wise old man, filled with a wisdom that made him stubborn. His foolish wish not to leave her alone wrung her heart, but in spite of that she caught up a bit of rope and struck him across the back and sides, and he stood dignified and patient under the blows. She struck more fiercely and cried to him until he lay on his back with his paws in the air, baring his tender chest and belly to any blow she might give. She threw the rope away, and tried a last, "Please, please, you fool, go away." He arose and shook himself and laughed in her face and called her the fool.

  After that his nose was ever by her heels. She packed the dishes in the wash tubs so that they would not float about and be broken, carried the bedding upstairs, and could do no more, for now she worked in water to her knees, and the walk across the yard to the hill would be long and slow and cold. She blew out the light and stepped through the door, remembering as she stepped that the floor of the house was higher than the ground. The water reached her waist. She took a few steps, and stopped to look at the river hill. It seemed strangely far away, and all the walk that lay between held treacherous low spots, hidden and secret under the dark water. Still, she thought she could follow the fence, and did so for a little space but stopped again to look at Caesar. He swam awkwardly behind her, and his fur was soggy now. She told him to go back and go upstairs, but even as she said it she knew it was no good. The dog was an out-and-out fool, or maybe she was the fool in trying to get away. The water could go no higher than the mark on the kitchen wall.

  She returned to the house. There, it was strange to feel a floating chair bump against her knees as she groped in the darkness for the stair door. Upstairs the moonlight made the place bright with a ghostly shadowless light that seemed to rise from the water and hold

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  its silence and its darkness. She noticed for the first time that she was numb and cold, drenched with muddy, icy water that had lodged twigs and blobs of mud and flakes of ice on her skirt. She changed clothing, but shivered still, even when she lay in bed with blankets wrapped about her She felt the child move in her body, and for the first time was afraid. She could maybe harm her baby with all this carrying of things upstairs and being wet and cold. She called Caesar and bade him lie by her feet, and rubbed her arms and legs, but the cold seemed more in her blood than her skin.

  Sometimes she looked out the window. There, it was always the same; the long stretch of black water, writhing and coiling, sprinkled with foam and chunks of white ice and dark shapeless nothings riding away in the night. She lay she did not know how long and heard a noise as of someone knocking softly on the floor. She listened and heard it againrepeated with soft uncertain taps all through the rooms of the house like the ghosts of those dead in the flood asking for shelter. The coldness in her body seemed to reach her hair. She looked at Caesar, watched him as he listened, and understood, and sat bolt upright clutching the bed covering. She heard a sheet tear under her twisting hands, and felt them then, the fingers of one twisting the fingers of the other, and it hurt but she could not stop her hands. The sound she heard couldn't hurt her; the chairs and other furniture, floating higher now, tapped against the ceiling.

  She listened, and the tapping grew fainter, and not long after the dark stain of the water appeared on the floor. She watched the stain darken; then thicken, first in dusty pools, and then the thin quiet sheet. She thought of the attic and looked toward the trap door. The opening was small, and there was no ladder, and the child had made her body clumsy and bigit was no good to think of the attic. When the water was ankle deep she took Marsh's papers and government bulletins she had brought upstairs, and tied them in sheets and hung them on the highest nails she could reach by standing on a chair.

  Then there was nothing else to do, but sit and watch the water. She called Caesar, and they walked to the window that faced toward Burdine. Near it there was another bed, never used, but higher than the other. She took the two chairs and put them on the bed, and coaxed Caesar to stay on one. He was quiet now and obeyed her in all things. She looked at him and wondered if she would watch him

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  drown. She thought she'd sit and make her head no higher than his own. Either way it didn't seem to matter. Whether she lived or died the flood would most likely destroy her child. Her feet were wet again, and her hands too cold to feel each other now. She got out of bed, and brought the lamp and lighted it and set it on the window sill. She could see the water now, watch it on the wall. She'd papered the room with odds and ends of this and that. Under the window there was a strip of pink and yellow flowers with buds and narrow leaves, and it was strange to see the water swallow a leaf, slowly, so that it was only by taking her eyes away that she could tell what happened to the leaf. She looked once and there was the whole of the leaf, again and there was no more than half, and then it was but a thread. She tried to look at the leaves and flowers and not think of herselffirst her toes and then her ankles.

  She glanced sometimes at Caesar, and pitied him. He was such a fool. He looked steadfastly through the window, his forehead wrinkled a little, his ears pricked with listening. Once she said, ''It's no good listenin', Caesar,'' but he only looked at her a moment and turned back to the window.

  She watched a small barn go floating down, and wondered if the house would float. Sometimes it shuddered slightly, but most often it was very still, as if it held its breath so that the river might not know it was there. Sometimes she listened to her own breathing and that of the dog, and wished for a great wind or a mighty roaring wall of wateranything to break the silence of the creeping water. Once across the stillness there came the sound of screaming as from Burdine. The screams came again, and again, grew fainter then and died. She wondered at the foolishness of those who screamed. In her there was nothing left for screams; no strength for either hope or terror.

  Sometimes she had a thought for little things; Piper would be safe in the barn, but Ebony, the young colt might catch cold as he wandered about in the weather. Marsh would not like that. She spent long moments in staring at her hands. She frowned a little sometimes in trying to decide if they were her own. Her other hands had been brown and warm, quick to do her bidding in all things, whether it be lying still in her lap or moulding butter. These hands were cold with the palms yellow white and the finger nails blue, and they were slow in doing the things she wished, and it was

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  troublesome the way they would not be still, but quivered even when she held them tightly clasped above her quivering knees.

  Sometimes she petted Caesar, buried her hands in his thick black fur, but he would only glance at her briefly, then turn to the window again and sit on the chair, still list
ening like a dog cut in stone. The whole of a cluster of leaves and flowers was gone, when he sprang and flung his paws against the window pane, and sent a wild barking roar crashing out through the stillness. He barked again, and whimpered and howled and pushed with his paws on the glass.

  She sat and watched him, and once said, "It's no good barkin', Caesar." No one would come this time of night. All the boats would be chained under the flood before any one knew there was a flood. Mrs. Elliot and Perce and the others most likely slept and did not know. Sober and his whole family were maybe caught sleeping in their beds.