Gap Creek

by Robert Morgan

  “You’ve been bossing him around all his life,” I said. “He’s a good man or he wouldn’t have put up with it.” I figured I might as well tell the truth while I was at it. “You are the cause of most of his troubles.”

  “What troubles?” Ma said.

  “The way he gets discouraged, and can’t find a job,” I said.

  “Now you want to blame me for the way the world is?” Ma said.

  “I blame you for the way Hank’s world is,” I said.

  “You have got on a high horse all of a sudden,” Ma said.

  She reached for another diaper to fold, but I picked it up before she could touch it. “You’re not used to people telling you the truth,” I said.

  “I ain’t done nothing to be ashamed of,” Ma said, “at least nothing to you.”

  “I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “It’s the way you run over Hank that riles me.”

  “Hank has told you that?” Ma said.

  “He didn’t need to,” I said. “I’ve got eyes in my head.”

  “Some women get afraid they can’t hold a man, and that makes them mean,” Ma said. “I reckon you’re one of them.”

  Tears come to my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Suddenly everything in the room blurred and melted. It seemed Ma was smirking at me. “I just wish you would mind your own devilment,” I said.

  “It’s a common weakness to blame other people for our own shortcomings,” Ma said and laughed a dry laugh.

  “You’re mighty used to having the last word,” I said, my voice rising toward a scream.

  “Maybe that bothers you because you’re afraid of everything,” Ma said.

  “It’s my house!” I screamed. But even as I screamed I wished I hadn’t done it. I had gone too far. I felt like Ma had tricked me into getting mad and screaming at her. Even though she had helped with the baby while I was recovering, she had tricked me into losing my temper.

  “Julie, I don’t know what’s got into you,” Ma said. But she said it like it was for somebody else’s benefit. I guessed that Hank must have come into the kitchen while I was screaming. I turned around and there he stood in the door with a look of surprise. Even with my tears stretching and swelling everything, I could see the fear on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Hank said, like he was short of breath.

  “Julie is upset,” Ma said.

  “I have a right to be upset,” I said. But I wished I hadn’t. For it wouldn’t do no good to try to set Hank against Ma. He would never turn against her, and she would make it look like the quarrel was all my fault.

  “Has the baby got worse?” Hank said.

  “I’ve done everything I could to help,” Ma Richards said.

  I seen what a mistake it had been to let myself go. But there was one last breath of rage left in me. “You’ve done everything you could to make me look bad,” I said to Ma.

  “I’ve done everything I could to help you,” Ma said. She has beat me by sounding meek, I thought.

  Hank looked at Ma and he looked at me. He stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder, and he put his other hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Let’s get right down on our knees and pray about this,” he said. “We’re a family and we’ve got to live like a family.”

  The fizz and bite of rage was going out of me. The boldness that had took over my tongue melted away. I sunk down on my knees to the kitchen floor, and Hank put his arm around me and his other arm around Ma Richards.

  “Lord, help us to love each other,” Hank said. “Teach us to put aside our spites and grudges, our slights and hurt feelings. Teach us to put away our vanity and our pride. Help us to be the decent people we are deep inside.” He pulled me closer on the left side and Ma closer on the right. I couldn’t look Ma in the face, and I don’t reckon she could bear to look me in the face either. I stared down at the floor.

  “I want you all to kiss each other,” Hank said.

  I didn’t make a move and I didn’t say nothing. I reckon my lip was trembling.

  “We’re going to have to get beyond this,” Hank said. “There’s no hope for a family that quarrels all the time.” I had never heard Hank talk so dignified and wise. It was usually him losing his temper and me holding mine. But here he was sounding like a deacon that led in prayer and was the head of the family. His calm moved me more than anything else had. I felt proud that he was a man I could rely on and trust. He was not only the father of my baby, who had took care of the baby, but he could show me what to do when I got all worked up and beside myself with disappointment and resentment. It was like Hank had got a lot older.

  I reached over and put my arms around Ma Richards’s bony shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Another sob rose and broke in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I love you, Julie,” she said, and I seen the tears streaming down Ma’s wrinkled face. I felt she meant it, that she was telling the truth. There was no sass and no edge in her voice.

  I sobbed again and snuffed up my nose and wiped my eyes. My cheeks was wet like I had been out in the rain. I felt wrung out inside, but scrubbed and sweetened too. The world was firm again. That’s when I heard little Delia crying the faintest cry.

  “I’ll go see about her,” Ma Richards said.

  “I’ll go too,” I said.

  THE BABY WAS getting weaker instead of growing. It appeared she was losing weight. Her skin was so white it looked clear. Blue veins showed through like ink marks under her skin.

  “She’s awful weak,” I said.

  “Bless her little heart,” Ma said.

  “Ain’t there no medicine for an early baby?” I said.

  “The doctor just said to give her milk and sugar and a little barley water,” Hank said.

  “Her belly’s too young to take anything,” Ma said.

  “They give babies paregoric for colic,” Hank said.

  “I’d hate to give one so little paregoric,” I said. Delia wasn’t squealing like a baby usually does with colic. She just laid there fretting and whimpering, and she didn’t have a temperature either. There was no sign of a fever. There’s nothing that makes you feel as helpless as a baby that’s sick. It’s your job to do something about it, but you don’t know what. I was just getting back on my feet and I couldn’t think clear.

  “Maybe a little liquor will stimulate her heart,” Hank said. It still surprised me that he had learned to take care of the little baby. Most men are scared of new babies and don’t want to hold them the way they do bigger children. But Hank had had to take care of little Delia when I was sick. And he was as worried as I was. He kept the fire going in the fireplace all day and all night, even though it was late spring. Since Delia couldn’t eat much, it was like she was living on the warmth from the fire.

  “I’d be afraid to give a baby that little any liquor,” I said.

  “I’ve heard of giving babies mint tea with a drop of brandy in it,” Hank said.

  “We don’t have no brandy,” I said.

  “A drop of liquor will serve just as good,” Hank said.

  There was some peppermint out beyond the washpot on the way to the spring. I sent Hank out to pick a pan full and I put the green leaves in the oven to dry. The leaves filled the house with the smell of mint as they cured. It was a kind of medicine smell. I took them out before they could burn or bake. As soon as I boiled the tea I asked Ma Richards how much liquor I should mix in.

  “Just a few drops,” Ma said, “in a tablespoon of tea.”

  I fixed up the tea and put it in the eyedropper Ma had used to feed Delia milk. I held the tip of the eyedropper to the baby’s lips and squeezed out a drop in her mouth, then another. She twitched a little but didn’t open her eyes. Her lips was pursed for nursing. It made me ache that I couldn’t nurse her.

  “The mint will soothe her stomach,” Ma Richards said.

  I dripped several more drops into Delia’s mouth, and a little color appeared in her tiny cheeks. Maybe the tea was working to make her stron
ger.

  WHEN I GOT up in the middle of the night to look at the baby, I didn’t think anything was wrong at first. The baby was usually quiet and still. I had thought of warming up more of the tea. I thought of mixing a little liquor with sugar water to give her. I brought the lamp to the mantel of the fireplace and set it down. The baby was quiet in the shoebox. I looked closer and seen her eyes was closed and there was no color in her cheeks. She needs some more tea, I thought. I put my hand on her forehead and it was cold. I need to build up the fire, I thought.

  And then it come to me that Delia’s little forehead was really cold. I pulled back the blanket and took her little hand, and it was cold as an icicle. And I knowed she was dead.

  This is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, I said to myself. If you live to be ninety this is the saddest moment you will ever know. It was so sad I couldn’t really feel it. I would feel it later, maybe. Now it was happening to somebody else. It was sadder than when Masenier died, and when Papa died, but I couldn’t feel a thing.

  I set down by the fire and looked at my baby. In a few seconds I would have to go tell Hank, and he would go tell Ma Richards. But I wanted to wait a moment. If I didn’t tell nobody, it might not be true. Maybe Delia would start to breathe again. Maybe my life wouldn’t come to a stop the way it seemed to have.

  Jesus, don’t let this be true, I prayed. I thought how helpless and innocent Delia was. I thought how cruel it was to bring a little person like her into the world to suffer and then die, never knowing anything else. What kind of world would let such a thing happen? But I put it out of my mind because I had to go tell Hank. I couldn’t bear such grief on my own. There was a numbness in my belly that reached out toward my toes and to the tips of my fingers.

  AFTER PREACHER GIBBS come to the house and preached a little funeral in the living room for Delia, and after we buried her in a corner of the orchard in a little oak box Hank had fixed from planks he found in the barn, I felt different from what I expected. I felt like nothing was real, and I was so light I couldn’t hardly touch the ground. I scrubbed the floor of the house to make things seem real, and I carried water from the spring and washed all the bedclothes. I hoed out the tater patch, making myself sweat. The harder I worked the lighter I felt. When I talked it didn’t sound like my voice talking. And when I thought, it seemed like somebody else thinking. Finally I just set down on the porch in a rocking chair and waited for my weight to return to myself.

  “Do you want me to start supper?” Ma Richards said.

  “You can if you want to,” I said.

  “What would you like me to fix?” Ma said.

  “Whatever there is to fix,” I said.

  THE NEXT DAY Hank drove Ma Richards back up the mountain. I hugged her before she climbed in the buggy, and I told her I loved her. There wasn’t nothing else to say, after the way she had helped out with little Delia, and after the way she had acted after our fuss. What she had done had showed her love for Hank, and me. But even so, it relieved me that she was going. I felt better because she was leaving and I would have the house to myself.

  Soon as the buggy drove out of the yard I got a bucket of warm water and a rag and washed the steps. I scrubbed the front steps and the back steps until they sparkled. And I scrubbed the front porch and the back porch until the planks was raw. Then I swept the yard so clean the dirt glittered like sandpaper. I took a bucket to the creek and got some fresh white sand and sprinkled it over the front yard and the backyard. The ground looked frosted with sugar. I tightened the clothesline and washed the outhouse. Then I washed the outside walls of the house high up as I could reach.

  That evening I started cleaning up the house inside. I washed the floors and the walls and the windows. I polished the windows so clean they looked like they wasn’t there. It seemed I didn’t have control over nothing in the world except the work I done. I couldn’t make nothing right, but I could make the floor and the dishes shine. I washed off the cookstove when it cooled and polished it. I want to make one little place in the world as bright and tight as a crystal, I thought. I want to make one tiny place as fit as it can be. After I polished the stove I shined the silver. And then I polished Hank’s Sunday shoes and my own with saddle soap.

  By the time Hank come back that night I was wore out, but the house sparkled. I had even washed the ceilings and the backs of the doors.

  LATER THAT MONTH, after I had recovered my strength a little, I planted every seed I could find on the place. And in the South Carolina heat, and in the moist soil along the creek, they sprouted and growed fast. I planted bunch beans and half-runners, greasy backs and Kentucky Wonders. I planted peas and lettuce and okra, bell pepper and red pepper. I planted squash and eggplant and turnips. The summer squash growed like little yellow geese and the winter squash swelled like pincushions. I planted watermelons and mush melons in the soft loam along the creek.

  The more I worked the more I had to work. I would give the preacher potatoes and carrots instead of any tithe. And I would help anybody else I could. I would give people that passed on the road new taters and squash.

  Every time I thought about Delia I worked that much harder. I mowed the grass on the bank by the road with the sling blade, and I trimmed back the briars and brush and big weeds. We didn’t have enough money for shoelaces, but everything I done was free. The sweat was free as water from the spring, as air and sunlight. But the greatest free gift was time that kept coming day after day. It seemed that time couldn’t go on after the death of little Delia. But it did. Every day led to another night, and night to another day. Time kept spilling down on me, and the only way I could take hold of the minutes and make sense of them was to work.

  “You’ll kill your fool self,” Hank said. But he didn’t say it ugly. He hadn’t been able to find a job. He had asked in Tigerville and he had asked in Pumpkintown. I guess word had got out that he hit the boss at the cotton mill in Lyman, as he had feared, because nobody would hire him. Hank worked on the place as hard as I did. He put in a big field of corn and a field of sweet taters. He set out a row of tobacco he got from George Poole on credit, and he plowed around the trees in the orchard and did some pruning. The watermelons we growed by the creek was better than any watermelons I had ever seen on the mountain. He carried rocks on the sled and lined the branch in the pasture so the banks wouldn’t wash away. He patched up the fence with pliers and pieces of wire found in the barn. He cleared out the hayloft and the corncrib. The fact that he didn’t have money to buy nails and paint made him work even harder.

  In late summer I helped Hank cut tops in the August heat. We stacked the corn tops in shocks in the field to cure, and in the September heat we pulled the fodder and carried it in bundles to the barn. The fodder made the barn smell sweet as green tea. We gathered apples and made cider in an old mill found in the toolshed. I cut up apples and dried the slices on sheets in the sun, to make pies in the winter.

  While we worked that summer we attended every prayer meeting and church service, every singing and dinner on the grounds. I carried taters and cider and canned preserves to shutins and old folks. I made jelly and canned beans and peaches and tomato juice. I canned blackberry juice and grape juice. The days was thick and cluttered with grief, and I fought my way through every minute with work. I wrestled with every job like it was a demon, or an angel, and I picked my way like climbing from rock to rock on a tricky path. It was my sweat and my effort that made time possible. When I seen another woman with a baby, I turned my face away, and then I took hold of myself and tried to be glad for her.

  I WAS DOWN on my knees weeding the okra when I heard somebody holler from the road. It was a voice I recognized quick. My knees hurt from the sharp clods, but the pain the voice drove through my chest was worse.

  “Piieendergaass!” the voice called.

  I hoped Hank didn’t hear him. Timmy Gosnell had left us alone since Hank throwed him in the creek. Timmy was only trouble when he got bad drunk. I had seen him
walk by on the road from time to time, and I doubt he was ever cold sober. But he only got to thinking about Mr. Pendergast and the ginseng money when he was terrible drunk. I kept working, bent over where I was hid by the sweet corn and tomato plants. Maybe Timmy would go on down the road if nobody paid him any mind.

  “Piieendergaass!” he hollered again, and I heard a rock bang the side of the house. I prayed he didn’t break a window, because we didn’t have money to buy a new one. Another rock rung on the porch, making me wince.

  “You owe me moneeeeyyyy!” Timmy yelled.

  I feared what might happen if Hank got riled again. Since the baby died Hank had been in a quiet mood. But I didn’t know what he would do if Timmy made him mad. I knowed I had to get Timmy to leave before Hank heard him. Hank was down in the patch by the branch hoeing sorghum cane.

  I stood up and seen Timmy Gosnell standing at the corner of the house. He leaned over with his hands on his knees to steady hisself. And then he reached down for another rock. I was dizzy from being bent over so long and I took a deep breath.

  “You owe me moneeyyy!” Timmy called out to the house.

  “You know Mr. Pendergast is dead,” I said as calm as I could.

  Timmy whirled around and almost fell over. His shirt was unbuttoned and he looked sunburned, as if he had been laying asleep in the hot Gap Creek sun. He shaded his eyes to look at me. “Piieendergaass owes me money,” he said.

  “Can’t you understand, Mr. Pendergast died last fall,” I said, trying to sound quiet and reasonable.

  “Then you all,” he said and pointed at me, “you all owe me money.”

  “If I had any money I’d give it to you,” I said.

  “You have to,” Timmy said and took a step toward me. I backed away. I didn’t like his smell, and there was sores around his eyes. He looked both confused and angry.

  I held out my hands covered with dirt and weed stains. “See, I ain’t got any money,” I said.

  “You will pay meeeee,” he said and stomped his foot on the baked ground.