by Stephen King
within touching distance of the dark angel that had flown silently over Egypt, killing the firstborn of every house where the doorpost wasn’t daubed with blood. That frightened her most of all. She became a child again in her fear and knew that while others knew of him and were frightened by him, only she had been given a clear vision of his terrible power.
“Welladay,” she said and popped the last bite of toast into her mouth. She rocked back and forth, drinking her coffee. This was a bright, fine day, and no part of her body was giving her a particular misery, and she offered up a brief prayer of thanksgiving for what she had got. God is great, God is good; the littlest child could learn those words, and they encompassed the whole world and all the world held, good and evil.
“God is great,” Mother Abagail said, “God is good. Thank you for the sunshine. For the coffee. For that fine b.m. I had last night, You was right, those dates turned the trick, but my God, they taste nasty to me. Ain’t I the one? God is great. . .”
Her coffee was about gone. She set the cup down and rocked, her face turned up to the sun like some strange living rockface seamed with veins of coal. She dozed, then slept. Her heart, its walls now almost as thin as tissue paper, beat on and on as it had every minute for the last 39,475 days. Like a baby in a crib, you would have had to put your hand on her chest to assure yourself that she was breathing at all.
But the smile stayed on.
Things had surely changed in all the years since she had been a girl. The Freemantles had come to Nebraska as freed slaves, and Abagail’s own great-granddaughter Molly laughed in a nasty, cynical way and suggested the money Abby’s father had used to buy the home place—money paid to him by Sam Freemantle of Lewis, South Carolina, as wages for the three years her daddy and his brothers had stayed on after the States War ended—had been “conscience money.” Abagail had held her tongue when Molly said that—Molly and Jim and the others were young and didn’t understand anything but the veriest good and the veriest bad—but inside she had rolled her eyes and said to herself: Conscience money? Well, is there any money cleaner than that?
So the Freemantles had settled in Hemingford Home and Abby, the last of Daddy and Mamma’s children, had been born right here on the home place. Her father had bested those who would not buy from niggers and those who would not sell to them; he had bought land a little smidge at a time so as not to alarm those who were worried about “those black bastards over Columbus way”; he had been the first man in Polk County to try crop rotation; the first man to try chemical fertilizer; and in March of 1895 Gary Sites had come to the house to tell John Freemantle that he had been voted into the Grange. He was the first black man to belong to the Grange in the whole state of Nebraska. That year had been a topper.
And little by little he had brought his neighbors around. Not all of them, not the rabid ones like Ben Conveigh and his half-brother George, not the Arnolds and the Deacons, but all the others. In 1897 they had taken dinner with Gary Sites and his family, right in the parlor, just as good as white.
In 1895 Abagail had played her guitar at the Grange Hall, and not in the minstrel show, either; she had played in the white folks’ talent show at the end of the year. Her mother had been deadset against that. “I know how it was,” she said, weeping. “You and Sites and that Frank Fenner, you whipped this up together. That’s fine for them, John Freemantle, but what’s got into your head? They’re white! You go hunker down with them in the backyard and talk about plowin! You can even go downtown and have a spot of beer with them, if that Nate Jackson will let you into his saloon. Fine! But this is different! This is your own daughter! What you gonna say if she gets up there in her pretty white dress and they laughs at her? What you gonna do if they throws rotten tomatas at her? Huh?”
“Well, Rebecca,” John had answered, “I guess we better leave it up to her and David.”
David had been her first husband; in 1895 Abagail Freemantle had become Abagail Trotts. David Trotts was a black farmhand from over Valparaiso way, and he had come pretty nearly thirty miles one way to court her. John Freemantle had once said to Rebecca that the bear had caught ole Davy right and proper, and he had been Trotting plenty. There were plenty who had laughed at her first husband and said things like, “I guess I know who wears the pants in that family.”
But David had not been a weakling, only quiet and thoughtful. When he told John and Rebecca Freemantle, “Whatever Abagail thinks is right, why, I reckon that’s what’s to do,” she had blessed him for it and told her mother and father she intended to go ahead.
So on December 27, 1895, already three months gone with her first, she had mounted the Grange Hall stage in the dead silence that had ensued when the master of ceremonies had announced her name. Just before her Gretchen Tilyons had been on and had done a racy French dance, showing her ankles and petticoats to the raucous whistles, cheers, and stamping feet of the men in the audience.
She stood in the thick silence, knowing how black her face and neck must look in her new white dress, and her heart was thudding terribly in her chest and she was thinking I’ve forgot every word, every single word, 1 promised Daddy I wouldn’t cry no matter what, I wouldn’t cry, but Ben Conveigh’s out there and when Ben Conveigh yells NIGGER, then I guess I’ll cry, oh why did I ever get into this? Mamma was right, I’ve got above my place and I’ll pay for it—
The hall was filled with white faces turned up to look at her. Every chair was filled and there were two rows of standees at the back of the hall. Kerosene lanterns glowed and flared. The red velvet curtains were pulled back in swoops of cloth and tied with gold ropes.
And she thought: I’m Abagail Freemantle Trotts, I play well and I sing well; I do not know these things because anyone told me.
And so she began to sing “The Old Rugged Cross” into the moveless silence, her fingers picking melody. Then, picking up a strum, the slightly stronger melody of “How I Love My Jesus,” and then, stronger still, “Camp Meeting in Georgia.” Now people were swaying back and forth almost in spite of themselves. Some were grinning and tapping their knees.
She sang a medley of Civil War songs: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Marching Through Georgia,” and “Goober Peas” (more smiles at that one; many of these men, Grand Army of the Republic veterans, had eaten more than a few goober peas during their time in the service). She finished with “Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground,” and as the last chord floated away into a silence that was now thoughtful and sad, she thought: Now if you want to throw your tomatas or whatever, you go on and do it. I played and sang my best, and I was real fine.
Then someone in the middle of the audience—her father told her later it was Gary Sites—began to applaud. Someone else joined him. And then they were all applauding (except for Ben Conveigh and his half-brother) and she stood there with tears sparkling on her cheeks as they stood up, applauding fit to raise the roof.
That was the proudest day of her life.
Later, she paused in the middle of the yard, looking out at the sea of corn, broken only by the dirt road going north toward Duncan and Columbus. Three miles up from her house it went to tar. The corn was going to be fine this year, and it was such a shame that no one would be around to harvest it but the rooks. It was sad to think that the big red harvesting machines were going to stay in their barns this September, sad to think there would be no husking bees and barn dances. Sad to think that, for the first time in the last 108 years, she would not be here in Hemingford Home to see the time of the change as summer gave in to pagan, jocund autumn. She would love this summer all the more because it was to be her last—she felt that clearly. And she would not be laid to rest here but further west, in a strange country. It was bitter.
She shuffled over to the tire swing and set it to moving. It was an old tractor tire that her brother Lucas had hung here in 1922. The rope had been changed many times between then and now, but never the tire. Now the canvas showed through in many places, and on the inside rim
there was a deep depression where generations of young buttocks had set theirselves down. Below the tire was a deep and dusty groove in the earth where the grass had long since given up trying to grow, and on the limb where the rope was tied, the bark had been rubbed away to show the branch’s white bone. The rope creaked slowly and this time she spoke aloud:
“Please, my Lord, my Lord, not unless I have to, I’m old and I’m scared and mostly I’d just like to die right here on the home place. I’m ready to go right now if You want me. Thy will be done, my Lord, but Abb’s one tired shufflin old black woman. Thy will be done.”
No sound but the creak of the rope against the branch and the crows off in the corn. She put her old seamed forehead against the old seamed bark of the apple tree her father had planted so long ago and she wept bitterly.
She had a great deal to do in the next few days, because she was going to have company. Dreams or not, tired or not, she had never been a one to slight company and she didn’t intend to start now. But she would have to go very slowly or she would get forgetting things—she forgot a lot these days—and misplacing things until she ended up chasing her own tail.
The first thing was to get down to Addie Richardson’s henhouse, and that was a goodish way, four or five miles. She found herself wondering if the Lord was going to send her an eagle to fly her those four miles, or send along Elijah in his fiery chariot to give her a lift.
“Blasphemy,” she told herself complacently. “The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs.”
When her few dishes were washed, she put on her heavy shoes and took her cane. Even now she rarely used the cane, but today she would need it. Four miles going, four miles coming back. At sixteen she could have dashed one way and trotted the other, but she’d not see sixteen again.
She set off at eight o’clock in the morning, hoping to reach the Richardson farm by noon and sleep through the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon she would kill her chickens and then come home in the gloaming. She wouldn’t arrive until after dark, and that made her think of her dream of the night before, but that man was still far away. Her company was much closer.
She walked very slowly, even more slowly than she felt she had to, because even at eight-thirty the sun was fat and powerful, but still she had to rest a bit by the time she reached the Goodells’ place. She sat in the shade of their pepper tree for a bit and ate a few fig bars. Not an eagle or a taxicab in sight, either. She cackled a little at that, got up, brushed off her dress, and went on.
She hunched more and more over her cane as she went, even though her wrists began to be a misery to her. She wanted a drink of water, she wanted to be home in her rocker, she wanted to be left alone. Now she could see the sun glinting off the henhouse roof ahead to her left. A mile, no more. It was quarter past ten, and she wasn’t doing too badly for an old gal. She would let herself in and sleep until the cool of the evening. No sin in that. Not at her age.
In 1972, when she had turned one hundred, her picture had been in the Omaha paper and they had sent out a TV reporter to do a story on her. “To what do you attribute your great age?” the young man had asked her, and he had looked disappointed at her brief, almost curt answer: “To God.” They wanted to hear about how she ate beeswax, or stayed away from fried pork, or how she kept her legs up when she slept. But she did none of those things, and was she to lie? God gives life and He takes it away when He wants.
The Richardson place was closer now. Lord, how she wanted to lie down and take off her shoes and have a nap!
Abby shuffled slowly on.
The sun was shining in the window of the guest bedroom where she had lain down and fallen asleep as soon as her brogans were off. For a long time she couldn’t understand why the light was so bright;
it was much the feeling Larry Underwood had had upon awakening beside the rock wall in New Hampshire.
She sat up, every strained muscle and fragile bone in her body crying out. “God A’mighty, I done slep the afternoon and the whole night through!”
If that was so, she must have been tired indeed. She was so lamed up now that it took her almost ten minutes to get out of bed and go down the hall to the bathroom; another ten to get her shoes on her feet. Walking was agony, but she knew she must walk. If she didn’t, that stiffness would settle in like iron.
Limping and hobbling, she crossed to the henhouse and went inside, wincing at the explosive hotness, the smell of fowls and the inevitable smell of decomposition. The water supply was automatic, fed from the Richardsons’ artesian well by a gravity pump, but most of the feed had been used up and the heat itself had killed many of the birds. The weakest had long ago been starved or pecked to death, and they lay around the feed-and droppings-spotted floor like small drifts of sadly melting snow.
Most of the remaining chickens fled before her approach with a great flapping of wings, but those that were broody only sat and blinked at her slow, shuffling approach with their stupid eyes. There were so many diseases that killed chickens that she had been afraid that the flu might have carried them off, but these looked all right. The Lord had provided.
She took three of the plumpest and made them stick their heads under their wings. They went immediately to sleep. She bundled them into a sack and then found she was too stiff to actually lift it. She had to drag it along the floor.
The other chickens watched her cautiously from their high vantage points until the old woman was gone, then went back to their vicious squabbling over the diminishing feed.
It was now close to nine in the morning. She sat down on the bench that ran around the Richardsons’ dooryard oak to think. It seemed to her that her original idea, to go home in the cool of dusk, was still best. She had lost most of a day, but her company was still coming. She could use this day to take care of the chickens and rest.
Her muscles were already riding a little easier against her bones, and there was an unfamiliar but rather pleasant gnawing sensation below her breastbone. It took her several moments to realize what it was . . . she was hungry! This morning she was actually hungry, praise God, and when she had parted these three chickens from their heads, she would see what Addie had left in her pantry.
Grunting and puffing, she dragged her towsack around to the chopping block that stood between the barn and the woodshed. Just inside the woodshed door she found Billy Richardson’s Son House hanging on a couple of pegs, its rubber glove snugged neatly down over the blade. She took it and went back out.
“Now Lord,” she said, standing over the towsack in her dusty yellow workshoes and looking up at the cloudless midsummer sky, “You have given me the strength to walk up here, and I’m believin You’ll give me the strength to walk back. Your prophet Isaiah says that if a man or woman believes in the Lord God of Hosts, he shall mount up with wings as eagles. I don’t know nothin much about eagles, my Lord, except they are mostly ugly-natured birds who can see a long ways, but I got three broilers in this bag and I should like to whack off their heads and not m’own hand. Thy will be done, amen.”
She picked up the towsack, opened it, and peered down in. One of the hens still had her head under her wing, fast asleep. The other two had squashed against each other, not moving much. It was dark in the sack and the hens thought it was nighttime. The only thing dumber than a broody hen was a New York Democrat.
Abagail plucked one out and laid it across the block before it knew what was happening. She brought the hatchet down hard, wincing as she always had at the final mortal thud of the blade biting through to wood. The head fell into the dust on one side of the chopping block. The headless chicken strutted off into the Richardsons’ dooryard, blood spouting, wings fluttering. After a bit it found out it was dead and lay down decently. Broody hens and New York Democrats, my Lord, my Lord.
Then the job was done and all her worrying that she might botch the job or hurt herself had been for nothing. God had heard her prayer. Three good chickens, and now all she had to do was get home with them.
She put the chickens back into the towsack and then hung Billy Richardson’s Son House hatchet back up. Then she went into the farmhouse again to see what there might be to eat.
She napped during the early part of the afternoon and dreamed that her company was getting closer now; they were just south of York, coming along in an old pickup truck. There were six of them, one of them a boy who was deaf and dumb. But a powerful boy, all the same. He was one of the ones she would have to talk to.
She woke around three-thirty, a little stiff but otherwise feeling rested and refreshed. For the next two and a half hours she plucked the chickens, resting when the work put too much misery into her arthritic fingers, then going on. She sang hymns while she worked— “Seven Gates to the City (My, Lord Hallelu’),” “Trust and Obey,” and her own favorite, “In the Garden.”
When she finished the last chicken, each of her fingers had a migraine headache and the daylight had begun to take on that still and golden hue that means twilight’s outrider has arrived. Late July now, and the days were shortening down again.
She went inside and had another bite. The bread was stale but not moldy—no mold would ever dare its green face in Addie Richardson’s kitchen—and she found a half-used jar of smooth peanut butter. She ate a peanut butter sandwich and made up another which she put in her dress pocket in case she got hungry later.
It was now twenty to seven. She went back out again, gathered up her towsack, and went carefully down the porch steps. She had plucked neatly into another sack, but a few feathers had escaped and now fluttered from the Richardsons’ hedge, which was dying for lack of water.
Abagail sighed heavily and said: “I’m off, Lord. Headed home. I’ll be going slow, don’t reckon to get there until midnight or so, but the Book says fear neither the terror, of night or that which flieth at noonday. I’m in the way of doing Your will as best I know it. Walk with me, please. Jesus’ sake, amen.”