Gap Creek

by Robert Morgan

  “Shhhh,” I said again.

  When Hank put his lips to my ear it felt so odd and good it made me shiver. And when he put his finger on my nipple it felt like funny bones all over my body had been touched. When he run his hand over my shoulder and under my armpit and down to my belly, I thought little sparks must be jumping off my skin in the dark.

  I felt something pulling my nightgown up over my knees and over my thighs and over my belly. I giggled and the bed creaked as Hank moved over me. And then I felt something hot and wet in my belly button, and I knowed it was Hank’s tongue going in and out and round and round the navel. He licked the little hairs around my navel and stuck his tongue in the hole. I hoped there wasn’t any lint in there.

  It was all so strange and different from what I had imagined. I didn’t hardly know what was happening. It was like the world had been tilted and turned in some way. And time had stopped, or slowed down. Time had been turned on its side and moved in a curve. When Hank got on top of me and rocked the bed, I felt numb with his weight, and I heard the headboard of the bed knock on the wall. I thought of Mr. Pendergast below listening. I wondered if this was it. Was this what everybody talked about and thought about so much?

  Stop, I wanted to say. You stop that. But I couldn’t. You quit that, I thought of saying, but I didn’t. As Hank rocked faster the bedposts scooted on the floor a little. What he was doing hurt a little, but it felt good too. A sweet hurt, a hot sweetness.

  “Oh,” I said. And I thought, You’ll have to stop this. We can’t go on like this, for I was getting short of breath. And Hank was getting short of breath. Stop that, I thought. Or maybe it was: Don’t stop. Don’t stop now. Don’t stop.

  All the colors started running through my head in the dark. Purples and greens and yellows and blacks. They blended into each other and poured over each other. And the colors was like milk, so soft and warm and pouring over and into each other. And the colors was swelled, bigger than I had ever thought they could be. The colors was melodies, like shaped note singing.

  Now quit this, I thought. We’ve got to stop or we’ll wake up old man Pendergast. We’ll wake up the chickens in the henhouse and we’ll wake up the horse and the hog in the pen. We’ll even wake up the stars over the mountains, and the birds roosting under the eaves of the barn. But the colors poured on behind my eyes, the purples and blues, the salty colors like orange and yellow. Yellow is salty as butter and popcorn. Yellow was swelled up and buttery. And there was a golden brown that was saltiest of all.

  And I felt a sneeze coming down there. It was the best feeling, of a sneeze coming right out of my middle and swelling through me to get rid of what I was holding back. And I sneezed quick, and again. It was the sweetest cachoo, and cachoo, so deep and full it hurt too.

  Hank was shoving too and pushing with his feet against the foot of the bed like he was running while laying down or dancing while laying down. And there was a wrench of boards and a squeal of nails pulling out. We fell and slammed onto the floor. It sounded like the house had fell down, but I knowed what had happened, even though it was dark and I couldn’t see. That old bed had pulled apart and the footboard had fell away. The springs and mattress had slid onto the floor.

  I was laying on the floor, and I knowed Mr. Pendergast must have woke up beneath us. But I giggled a little and Hank put his head on my neck and giggled too. We was both tired out, and it felt good just to lay still. I listened to see if Mr. Pendergast was moving around below. But all I could hear was my own breathing, and Hank’s breathing. And then something crashed, and I could tell it was the headboard of the bed falling over on the floor.

  “Lord a mercy,” I said in the dark. I thought I heard somebody laughing below, but I couldn’t be sure. It might have been a screech owl off in the woods, or wind in the eaves.

  MY FIRST TROUBLE with Mr. Pendergast come the next morning when I fixed his breakfast. Hank got up early to go to the mill at Lyman where he was helping to tend the brick kilns. I fixed him some biscuits and butter and jelly to take in his lunch pail. After he was gone I went ahead and boiled a saucepan of water to fix Mr. Pendergast’s poached egg. Hank had said a poached egg was just a slightly boiled egg. Rosie would know how to do it.

  When the water was bubbling and rolling I put an egg in for what I figured was a minute. But I didn’t have an egg timer or clock with a sweep hand. So I just had to guess. And then when I took the egg out of the water and put it on the table beside Mr. Pendergast’s plate, he had still not come out of the bedroom. I kept waiting and finally eat my own breakfast of grits and gravy and drunk a cup of coffee. I finished and still Mr. Pendergast had not appeared. I got up and heated more water to wash the dishes, and after I had finished washing and drying the plates there was still no sign of him. I put the biscuits back in the oven and soon the grits was cold and getting a skin. Could Mr. Pendergast have died in the night? A chill went through me down to my tailbone. Had he heard the bed fall down in the night and was too embarrassed to come out? Had he got up early and left? Or could he be expecting me to serve him breakfast in bed?

  I put the dry dishes on the shelf and got the broom and swept the kitchen floor. The fire was dying in the cookstove and I put a couple more sticks in. By then it was daylight and I could see the early sun turning the tops of the mountains copper. I heard a noise behind me and turned. There was Mr. Pendergast with his hair uncombed and his overalls with only one gallus buckled. He drug his feet as he walked to the table.

  “I’ll pour you some coffee,” I said. I got the pot off the stove and hoped the coffee was still hot. The fire was blazing up again, but it might not have heated the pot yet.

  Mr. Pendergast took a sip of the coffee and put it down. “This coffee is cold,” he said.

  “I’ll heat it up again,” I said. I took the cup and poured the coffee back into the pot.

  “A man can’t drink cold coffee,” Mr. Pendergast said.

  I took the pot of grits off the stove and put it on the table beside his plate. He took the serving spoon and dug into the grits and seen a skin had dried on them. “When did you make these, last night?” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I made them for Hank at six.”

  “I wouldn’t feed them to a hog,” Mr. Pendergast said.

  “I can make you some more,” I said. I got more sticks of wood out of the box and put them in the stove.

  “Don’t bother,” Mr. Pendergast said. “I’ll just have biscuits and an egg.”

  I took the biscuits out of the oven and put them on the table. The jam and molasses and butter was already on the table. Mr. Pendergast looked at the egg and said, “I thought I said a poached egg.”

  “I can make you another one,” I said.

  Mr. Pendergast cracked the egg on the edge of his plate and started peeling it, then stopped. “It’s not half boiled,” he said.

  “I tried to boil it for a minute,” I said.

  “I can’t eat this,” he said. He looked at me like he blamed me for everything wrong in the world. He dropped the egg on his plate like he had touched a rotten tater.

  When the coffee was hot I poured Mr. Pendergast another cup, but I couldn’t hardly stand to look at him. He hadn’t told me when he was going to get up, and he hadn’t told me how to poach an egg. But I didn’t want to argue with him, because it was his house and I was going to have to live there.

  I put more water on to boil, but Mr. Pendergast said, “Forget about the egg. I’ll just eat biscuits and molasses.” He set at the table like he had been offended and he didn’t even want to look at me. I stood by the stove wondering where I could go. It was his house, but I had to take care of it. I didn’t have anywhere to go except up to the bedroom to make up the bed. But the bed had fell apart and would have to be put back together. And after that I could sweep the front room and the porch.

  I left Mr. Pendergast at the table eating hot biscuits and drinking coffee and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. The bed was in pieces, and th
e quilts and sheets all tangled up. To let in the light I pushed back the curtains. Everything was going wrong. Except for the memory of the night, I wished I was back home on the mountain. I almost wished I could go out and work in the fields or woods, like I was used to doing. At least Mama and Rosie wasn’t as hard to please as Mr. Pendergast.

  I thought of packing up my things in the cardboard box and lighting out for home. It would take all day to climb the mountain to North Carolina and then on up to the ridge. It was a pleasing thought, except when I got there I would have the same old work, and the shame of a failed marriage. Rosie and Lou would laugh if they seen me trudging up the road with my things in the box. And Mama would shake her head at the sadness of it all. And I would have to go back to cutting firewood and planning to butcher the hogs.

  It was the thought of the work that cleared my head a little. If I was going to have to work so hard anyway, I might as well be working for Hank and myself. I might as well work where I was, now that I was down on Gap Creek.

  I set the headboard up against the wall and got the sides out from under the mattress. I seen the bed could be fitted together again, but where the post had cracked it was going to have to be nailed. If it wasn’t nailed, the bed would just fall down again. I looked at the crack in the light from the window and seen it had been made a long time ago. Whoever had set the bed up had knowed it would come crashing down as soon as the frame was shook. And I was certain it was Mr. Pendergast who had set it up without nailing the crack. He must have been waiting in the night to hear the bed crash. And it was him laughing I had heard after we fell on the floor and everything was quiet.

  I marched down the steps and turned toward the kitchen table to ask where there was a hammer. But Mr. Pendergast was gone. His coffee cup and greasy plate and knife and fork was there, but he had disappeared.

  “Where is a hammer?” I called, but nobody answered. I looked on the shelf at the back of the kitchen, and then on the back porch where all kinds of tools hung on nails. I didn’t find a hammer, but discovered a hatchet that had a hammer back. And after a little more looking I found a half-rusty nail under a ball of binder’s twine.

  AFTER NAILING THE bedpost so it would hold the side, I put the bed together. It was an old bed and would creak no matter what you done to it. But I made it as firm and tight as I could. Since Hank and me would be sleeping there every night, I wanted to make it as quiet as possible. Mr. Pendergast might be downstairs listening every night, but at least the bed wouldn’t fall again.

  When I got back to the kitchen Mr. Pendergast was setting beside the cookstove whittling on a stick of kindling. He shaved curls off the piece of pine into the kindling box. He scratched with the knife on the white wood and hollowed out with the tip of the blade. It was a little figure of a person he was cutting. I didn’t want to speak to him again, because I thought he would say something short. He would take advantage of anything nice I said and give me an order to do something else. He seen I was just a young girl that had never been away from home. He seen I was at the disadvantage of being married and in a new place for the first time in my life. I figured it was better not to say anything.

  “I got some clothes that needs to be washed,” Mr. Pendergast said. He opened the door of the stove and throwed shavings into the fire.

  I hadn’t thought of doing a wash on my first day on Gap Creek. At home we had just washed on Mondays. And then I remembered that this was a Monday. We had got married on a Saturday and walked down to Gap Creek on Sunday.

  “Where is your clothes?” I said.

  “In the bedroom, behind the door,” Mr. Pendergast said.

  It was already nine according to the mantel clock. When I washed clothes I liked to heat water early in the morning. I’d have to build a fire and carry water from the spring. I looked in the front bedroom where Mr. Pendergast slept and you never seen such a mess. His clothes was scattered everywhere. The room looked like a rag pile. The bed probably hadn’t been made up in months. Clothes was piled on the bureau and on the nightstand. The room smelled of pneumony salve and camphor. I reckon Mr. Pendergast had rheumatism and rubbed the liniment on his joints. But there was a smell of dust also, and clothes that hadn’t been washed in a long time.

  I looked behind the door and there was a pile of clothes up to my waist, overalls and shirts, underwear and socks, heaped up and spilling over when I pulled the door back. Mr. Pendergast must not have washed clothes in months. It would take three armloads just to carry the clothes out to the backyard.

  I marched out of there and right back to the kitchen. “Where is the washpot?” I said.

  “I like a little starch in my shirts,” he said.

  I stepped out to the back porch and looked in the yard. Like in any backyard, there was a woodshed and a smokehouse, a clothesline, a path to the toilet on the right, and a path to the spring on the left. And further out there was a barn and hogpen. The washpot was on the trail to the spring. And there was a table and a wooden tub on the trail next to the pot. I looked around the porch and found a washboard and a bucket. And by the water bucket was a cake of Octagon soap.

  I grabbed that bucket and carried several gallons of water from the spring and poured them in the pot. And then I got some kindling and wood from the shed and started a fire under the pot. There was a little wind, and the fire whipped around from side to side. But I put on more pine to make it blaze up.

  It took me four trips just to carry Mr. Pendergast’s clothes out to the wash table. With my arms loaded I tried not to smell all that sour cloth and soiled long handles. But when you have a filthy job the only thing to do is jump in and get it done. Won’t hurt your hands to get dirty; you can always wash them. The quicker I got the clothes in the boiling water the quicker I would be done. I tried not to even look at the dirty clothes, but dumped them on the table and went back for more.

  “Don’t boil my linen with the overalls,” Mr. Pendergast said as I passed through the kitchen. I could see now he was whittling the figure of a naked woman from the piece of pine. He was picking with the point of his knife at the rounded shape of the buttocks. “Don’t want the linen to fade,” he said. I didn’t even answer him. He lived in such filth and never washed or cleaned up, and here he was worried about his clothes fading. Anything I said would just show him how angry I was, and I didn’t want to quarrel on my second day on Gap Creek. It was not what I had thought the beginning of married life would be.

  As soon as the water was boiling, I dumped in underwear and light-colored shirts. I heated the water extra hot to scald away the filth and grease in the clothes. Nothing will purify and sterilize like boiling water. The water bubbled and churned up into foam and flattened into spreading scars. I dumped the dirty long handles in and stirred them with the troubling stick, then let them boil for a minute and lifted them out with the stick and dumped them smoking on the wash table. I dipped two buckets of boiling water and mixed it with cold water in the tub. And then I took the washboard and the cake of Octagon soap and started to scrub every piece of underwear and every shirt. I rubbed them up and down, up and down, on the washboard, and the soapy water steamed up into my face. My hands got red from the soapy, hot water.

  There is something chemical about the heat of washing, like the fire burns away filth and the soap turns the dirt into something clean. The bitter soap melts grease and soil. The slick soap eats away filth and oily stains. Much as you hate it, doing washing makes you feel you’re starting out new. You have put your face in the smoke and steam, and your hands in the dirty slick water. And then you lift the pieces out and rinse them in fresh water and wring them out in the wind.

  I took each piece of Mr. Pendergast’s clothes out of the rinsing tub and twisted it hard as I could. The water squirted out and the cloth was merely damp as I hung it on the line, in the cool breeze. The line run along the trail to the spring, and I hung the clean underwear and shirts and socks along the big thread. And after that I hung the overalls so they looked like
people walking as they flapped in the breeze.

  “Have you washed my socks?” Mr. Pendergast called from the back porch.

  “Done washed them,” I said.

  “Don’t you lose none,” Mr. Pendergast said.

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” I said.

  When the washing was done I felt a little better. For even Mr. Pendergast and his grumpy manners couldn’t keep me from getting things done. I didn’t know what to say to him, but if washing his stale clothes was part of my job, then I had done it. If waiting on him was part of my married life, then I had got it started that morning.

  I LET THE FIRE die down and emptied the two tubs in the grass by the trail. The washing hung on the line like a whole army marching in the sunlight. Where the underwear hung and the shirts hung it looked like angels and not soldiers. But they didn’t make any noise. The sun behind the cloth made them blinding.

  I carried the bucket and soap back to the porch and Mr. Pendergast was standing on the back steps watching me. With the tip of his knife blade he was putting the finishing touches on the sharp little breasts of his naked woman. I glanced at the figure and looked away. I didn’t want him to see me studying the carving. He held the pine woman up to the sunlight, and I could see how rounded her behind was and how big her breasts was. The face was still rough, but the shape of the body had been smoothed by the knife to look like real sculpture. When I glanced at the figure I seen Mr. Pendergast was looking at me and grinning. His face had flushed a little. I hurried past him. It was time to fix dinner.

  MY HANDS WAS soft and water-sobbed from the washing. I wished I had some lanolin to rub on them, but I didn’t. The skin on my fingers felt tender as a baby’s as I loaded wood into the cookstove. I wanted to bake some cornbread and sweet taters for dinner. But first I would have to ask Mr. Pendergast where the sweet taters was kept. I hated to ask him anything, since my best idea was to avoid him. I was pretty sure the taters was in a hole or cellar somewhere, but I didn’t have time to go searching. Not if I got everything done by dinnertime. Once I got the fire snapping in the stove, I looked out on the back porch and seen Mr. Pendergast still holding his doll and scratching at the face with his knife.