Daniel nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. There was an anger inside him that he had never felt before. An anger that left the inside of his stomach tied like a knot on a hangman’s noose.
Jeb looked at the big man. “Come down to the house, Mr. Fitch,” he said. “Miz Huggins must have the coffee ready by now.”
***
“Don’t know what the country’s comin’ to,” Mr. Fitch said, the steaming mug of chicoried coffee in his hand. “Business the way it is, people movin’ off the land because they cain’t pay their rent. You don’t know how lucky you are, Jeb, ownin’ your land free an’ clear the way you do.”
Jeb nodded. “We kin thank the Good Lord fer that. But I don’ know. Nine mouths to feed. With the drought an’ poor crops, it ain’t easy.”
“Ever think of comin’ down to town to work?” Mr. Fitch asked.
Jeb shook his head. “I’m not a city man. Never will be. If’n I cain’t git up in the mornin’ an’ look out over my land, I’d rather be dead. Besides, what kin I do there? All I know is farmin’.”
Marylou came into the room and touched a match to the kindling in the fireplace. “There’s a chill comin’ to the air.”
“Miz Huggins.” Fitch smiled. “You suah do know how to make a man feel good.”
Marylou blushed and smiled. She looked down at the floor. “Thank you, Mr. Fitch,” she said, and left the room. But she stayed near the doorway, just inside the kitchen, so that she could hear every word that was said.
Fitch took a sip of the hot coffee. “Ever think of sendin’ the two oldest kids down to work?”
Jeb was surprised. “Dan’l and Molly Ann?”
Fitch nodded. “The boy’s fourteen and his sister’s older, if I recollect rightly.”
“Fifteen.”
“I’m good friends with the men who run the mills and glass factories. They’re always lookin’ for good young kids to work. I kin put in a word for them.”
“I don’ know.” Jeb was doubtful. “They seem mighty young to be outta the house to me.”
“They kin make four, mebbe five dollars a week. Room and board at a respectable house will cost ’em on’y a dollar and a half. That leaves five, maybe seven dollars a week they kin send home. It could go a long way to feedin’ the others.” Fitch looked at him. “You could even make some improvements to the house here. I understand the electric company will put in lights if you kin guarantee them five dollars a month.”
“I don’ like them electric lights,” Jeb said. “It ain’ natural. It’s too bright. It ain’ soft like the oil lamps.” But at the same time, he wondered. His would be the first house on the mountain to have electric lights.
Daniel came into the room. “All finished, Paw.”
Mr. Fitch stuck his hand in his pocket and came out with a shiny new nickel. “You’re a good boy, Daniel. Here’s a little somethin’ fer you.”
Daniel shook his head. “No, thank you, Mr. Fitch. Ain’t no cause for you to do that.” He hurried from the room.
“That’s a good boy you have there, Jeb,” Fitch said.
“Thank you, Mr. Fitch.”
Fitch started for the door. “Better be on my way. Ol’ mule don’t see too good in the dark on these country roads.”
“Still got another hour of daylight at least,” Jeb said. “Be in the valley by that time. Won’t be so bad.”
Fitch nodded. He raised his voice, knowing full well that Marylou was just inside the kitchen door and could hear him. “Please express my appreciation to Miz Huggins for that delicious rabbit stew an’ her gracious hospitality.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Fitch.”
Fitch went down the steps and climbed back up into his wagon. He bent over the side and spoke to Jeb still in a loud enough voice for Marylou to hear. “An’ keep in mind what I said. Four, five dollars a week for each kid ain’t chicken feed. Anytime you want, jes’ send ’em on down to me an’ I’ll find a place for ’em.”
Jeb nodded again. “Thank you, Mr. Fitch. Evenin’, Mr. Fitch.”
“Evenin’, Jeb.” Mr. Fitch clucked to his mule as he snapped the reins sharply. Slowly the mule began to pick his way out of the yard. Mr. Fitch began to hum to himself in satisfaction. Jeb was right. It was the best ’shine he had ever tasted. He ought to be able to get a dollar a quart for it. That was sixty-eight dollars’ profit right there.
And he also had a feeling that the Huggins kids would soon show up on his doorstep. That would mean money too. There was no reason for him to tell Jeb that the companies paid him a twenty-dollar recruiting fee for every kid he sent them.
Chapter 3
The flickering yellow light of the oil lamp cast a wavering glow over the table, and the silver coins heaped in front of Jeb seemed to turn to a dull gold. Slowly, laboriously, he counted them. After a moment, Marylou came in and sat down silently opposite him. She didn’t speak until after he had finished his count.
“How much is there?”
“Seven dollars and forty-five cents.”
“That’s not much,” she said. There was no complaint in her voice, only a sad acceptance.
“We owed him four fifty-five,” Jeb said defensively. “An’ prices is down. Times is bad, Mr. Fitch says. There is a war in Europe.”
“I don’ rightly see how a war that fur off kin be o’ bother to us.”
“I don’t either,” Jeb confessed. “But if a man like Mr. Fitch says so, I guess it’s so. I reckon all we kin do is hope that Mr. President Wilson kin git things straight. He should be able to do it ’f anybody can. He’s an eddicated college perfessor, y’know.”
“I know,” she said. “But things ain’t been gittin’ better in the time he’s been President. It’s 1914 an’ it’s worse’n ever.”
“Things take time,” Jeb said. “Women don’t have the patience or the understandin’ that men have fer those things.”
Marylou was silent, accepting the rebuke without comment. Sometimes she wondered why the Good Lord had given women a brain if they were not supposed to use it. But that was a thought she kept only in her own head; it was a Devil-inspired thought and not a proper one.
“Scarce enough money here to buy seed fer another plantin’,” he said.
She nodded. It had always been like this. Each year they seemed to fall deeper into debt. “I need some cloth to make the children some clothes. They growin’ so fast, I cain’t keep up with ’em. An’ soon it will be fall an’ they’ll need shoes fer school. It’ll be too cold for ’em to go barefoot. An’ besides, it don’t look proper.”
“I didn’ have no shoes until I was goin’ on sixteen,” Jeb said. “An’ it didn’ hurt me none.”
“You didn’ go to school, neither,” she said. “Things is different now. Kids have to be eddicated.”
“I learned ever’thing I had to know from my paw,” he said. “I don’ see where readin’ he’ps Dan’l any to be a better farmer. Now that he finish school, he ain’t no better off ’n I was.”
Again she was silent.
“An’ goin’ to school didn’ he’p Molly Ann none. She ain’t foun’ a husband yet, an’ by the time you was sixteen we was already married.”
“It ain’t her fault,” Marylou said. “She’s more’n ready to git married, on’y all the young men have gone down to the towns to work.”
He looked at her. “Mr. Fitch says he can git ’em good jobs if’n we want him to.”
She didn’t speak. She had heard Mr. Fitch’s offer, but it wasn’t her place to acknowledge it.
“He says they can get mebbe four, five dollars a week.”
“That’s good money,” she said.
He nodded. “An’ mebbe Molly kin fin’ herself a man down there. That girl’s ripenin’ so fast I cain’t believe my eyes.”
Marylou nodded. She saw the way Jeb’s eyes followed his daughter as she moved. She knew her husband. Jeb was a good man, but he was human and he had a lot of the Devil’s earthy lusts in him. She also knew th
at sometimes the lusts could get too much for a man. There were enough incidents in the hills around them to prove it. Many the girl was sent off to live with relatives because her paw had given in to the Devil. And it had been a long time before the preacher had come and purified them. “It mought be a good thing fer ’em,” she said.
“I don’t have much fer Dan’l to do ’roun’ here,” he said. “What with the drought an’ the earth doin’ so poorly. The north field’s ’bout wasted.”
“Rachel could he’p me with the little ones when she comes home from school,” Marylou added.
He looked down at the coins on the table. “We mought even be able to git electricity up here.”
She stared at his hands as he touched the money. “Mebbe we could git some chickens, a sow or two, mebbe even a cow. The little ones could sure do with some fresh milk.”
“Callendar, over the hill, is willin’ to let me have his other mule fer five dollars,” Jeb said thoughtfully. “It would suah he’p with the plowin’, an’ on Sundays we could hitch ’im up an’ go visitin’ kinfolk.”
They fell silent, separately thinking their own thoughts. After a moment, he began gathering up the coins and putting them in a soft leather pouch drawn together by thongs. “Mebbe we ought to do it,” he said tentatively.
“Mebbe,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
He got to his feet, and he placed the money on a top shelf high over the fireplace. He turned and looked down at her. “You kin use two dollars o’ that there money fer what you need,” he said.
“Thank you, Jeb,” she said. It wasn’t near enough, but it was better than nothing. “I think I’ll have a look in on the children before I go to bed.”
She went to the door. “Will you be comin’ to bed soon?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “I think I’ll jes’ set a spell an’ smoke my pipe.”
“Don’ be too late,” she said. “’Specially since you ’n’ Dan’l are plannin’ to clear the west field tomorrow.”
He sat down heavily and began to fill his pipe with tobacco from the jar on the table. They both knew why he was coming to bed late. This way she could pretend to be asleep and he didn’t have to ask and she didn’t have to refuse.
***
Daniel lay quietly in the bed he shared with his brother Richard. Richard slept on the inside against the wall, curled in a tight ball on top of the rough cotton sheet. From across the room, he could hear the soft sounds of his sisters’ sleep. Molly Ann shared her bed with the youngest girl, Alice, and Rachel shared her bed with Jane. The baby, Mase, still slept in a crib in their parents’ room.
He closed his eyes, but sleep still would not come. There was a vague discontent within him. Unformed, unshaped, the source unknown to him, but it was still there and still disturbing.
It wasn’t that they were poor. He had always known that, and they were no worse off than any of the other families he knew. But somehow, today made it seem bad. Mr. Fitch was so sure and confident. And his father’s hidden fear had suddenly been so plain to him. It just wasn’t right.
The white mountain moon stared in the window, and Daniel turned to look at it. It had to be about nine o’clock, he reckoned, from where it hung in the sky. He heard the sound of footsteps through the thin walls separating his parents’ room from their own. Those were his father’s footsteps. He heard the clump of the boots dropping to the floor, then the creak of the bed as his father lay down. Again there was silence. A strange silence.
It hadn’t used to be like that. Only since Mase was born. Before that there were always rustling night sounds. Warm and loving sounds, sometimes cries of pleasure and laughter. Now there was always the silence. It was almost as if no one lived in the room next to his.
Molly Ann had once explained it to him. His father and mother didn’t want no more babies. But that didn’t make much sense to him either. Did that mean they weren’t going to have any more pleasure with each other? Why couldn’t they? Sex was no mystery to him. It was always around him. Farmyard animals were always at it. He just assumed his parents were too. There was something not natural about them stopping just like that.
He turned on the bed so that he was head to toe with his brother, and lying on his stomach so he could look out at the moon. On the night wind he could hear the faint sound of distant, running dogs. Vaguely he wondered who would be out hunting coons when everyone knew that the coons had gone farther north to be near the water.
Quietly he crept out of bed and went to the window. The sound of the baying hounds seemed to be coming from the hill west of the house. He thought he recognized one of the dogs. The big yaller dog that belonged to Mr. Callendar, down in the valley.
He heard the soft rustle of clothing behind him. He turned.
“Cain’t you sleep neither?” Molly Ann asked.
“No,” he whispered.
She stood next to him at the window and looked out.
“I been thinkin’,” she said. “You heered what Mr. Fitch said to Paw?”
He nodded.
“I allus wondered whut it would be like to live in town,” she whispered. “I heered said—”
There was a creaking sound from one of the beds. “Shh,” he hissed. “You’ll wake the kids.”
“Want to go outside?”
He nodded, and silently they went out into the yard, closing the door softly behind them. The bright moon made it seem almost like day.
“The night smells so sweet,” she said.
“It do smell good,” he agreed.
“An’ quiet, too,” she added. “The night is very different than the day. Ever’thing seems so calm an’ restful.”
He led the way to the well and filled the dipper with water and sipped at it. He held it toward her. She shook her head, and he put it down. The baying of the hounds faded into a thin yapping.
“Think they treed somethin’?” she asked.
“Fool hounds,” he said scornfully. “Mebbe a hoot owl, nothin’ more.”
“You heered Maw talkin’,” she said. “If’n we go down to town, they kin git some chickens and mebbe even a cow. Paw says he kin git Callendar’s ol’ mule fer five dollars.”
Daniel didn’t answer.
“What you thinkin’?” she asked.
His words came slowly, almost reluctantly. “I don’ like that Mr. Fitch. They somethin’ about him I don’ cotton to.”
“That mean you won’t go if’n Paw sends you?”
“I didn’ say that,” he replied. “I jes’ don’ lak that man.”
“He seems nice enough to me,” she said.
“Don’ let his fancy ways and highfalutin manners fool you,” he said. “He’s a very hard man.”
“Do you think Paw will send us?”
He turned to look at her. After a moment he nodded. “I think so,” he said. “Paw ain’t got no choice. We need the money, and they ain’t no other way to git it.”
A note of excitement crept into her voice. “I hear tell they have dances ever’ Satiddy night in town after they git th’u work.”
He looked at her for a moment. “That’s the Devil’s thoughts you’re thinkin’.”
She laughed and pointed a finger down at him. “You’re a fine one to be talkin’, standin’ there with a hard pokin’ out the front o’ your union suit.”
The hot flush crept into his face. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice in the night. “It gits lak that when I got to take a pee in the night,” he said defensively.
“Go take a pee, then,” she said, flouncing her head and starting back to the house. “On’y don’ be too long about it, or I’ll know what you’re doin’.”
“Molly Ann.”
She turned and looked back at him.
“Why are you so anxious to leave here?” he asked.
She stared at him. “Don’ you really know, Dan’l?”
He shook his head.
“There’s nothin’ here fer me,” she said quietly. “On’y to grow up to
be an ol’ maid. Down there, in town, mebbe I got a chance. Mebbe I won’ feel so empty an’ useless.”
He didn’t speak.
“It’s different fer boys,” she said. “They kin do what they want. They don’ have to git married if’n they don’ want to.” She came back toward him. “Dan’l, I’m not a bad girl, really I’m not. But I’m not a girl anymore, I’m a grown woman, goin’ on sixteen, an’ they’s things inside me, things I feel I should be doin’, lak havin’ a family o’ my own afore I git too old.”
She reached for his hand and took it. Her hand was cold to his touch. “I love Maw and Paw an’ you an’ the kids, but I got my own life to live. Do you understan’ that, Dan’l?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I guess so,” he said hesitantly.
She dropped his hand. “You better come to bed soon,” she said. “You gotta be up early to he’p Paw clear the west field.”
“I will,” he said. He watched her go into the house and then went over behind the woodpile to take his pee. By the time he was back in their room, there was only the soft sound of the sleeping night.
***
He could smell the fried grits as he went into the kitchen. “I was out in the west field,” he said. “But Paw didn’ come.”
Marylou turned to look at him. “Yer paw left early this mornin’ to see if’n he could borrow the Callendars’ mule to he’p out. Should be back any minute now.” She handed him a plate. “Set yourse’f down an’ have a mite o’ breakfast.”
He pulled a chair up to the table and began spooning the mushy food into his mouth.
“Yer paw an’ I been thinkin’ ’bout mebbe you ’n’ Molly goin’ down into town to work,” his mother said. “Would you like that?”
He shrugged. “Never give it much thought.”
“Mr. Fitch says you kin make four, mebbe five dollars a week.”
Memories of Another Day Page 5