I shivered from the cold. A heap of fresh hay stood in an empty stall and I went to it, burrowing deep, but with the animals still in my sight. It was nearly midnight. I craned my neck and waited for the slow sinking of the heavy animal bodies. When the time came I was sleepy. The rustling of the cows and mules as they went to their knees, and the sighs that escaped them as they shifted their weight, seemed to me to be the voice of God.
One windy night in March there came a pounding on our door. I had been sound asleep and didn’t quite wake up. I heard someone say, “mortal ill.” Later Daddy carried me to Aunt Becka’s bed.
“They’s a sick boy needs to lie beside the fire,” Aunt Becka whispered.
“M-m-m,” I answered, turned over, and slept again.
I saw the boy the next morning, before I went to school. He was wrapped in quilts like a cocoon so that only the top of his head showed. All I could tell was that he was black-haired. His breathing was slow and raspy. Aunt Becka made an onion poultice.
“Is he going to die?” I asked.
“Hush,” she said, and nodded toward a man sitting forlornly at the table. “We aim to do everything for the poor youngun we can.”
“Who are they?” I whispered.
“Drummer and his boy. Now you go on down to the Aunt Jane Place. She’s making your breakfast. And you go there after school, too.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll say me a prayer.”
I dreamed about him all day, a black-haired waif like Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights. He would be handsome, dashing, and I would be his Cathy.
Flora came in the next morning after sitting up with him through the night.
“I’m afraid the pneumonia is going to carry that boy off,” she said wearily. “His fever aint broke yet and he’s hot as a stove. Hit’s got to wear him out. He’s a fighter, though. Hit pains me to hear how hard he tries to breathe.”
I was so distracted in school that Ben gave up on me and sent me back to the Aunt Jane Place. Flora was asleep and Aunt Jane was gone, so I walked to the Homeplace. Aunt Jane stood at the well.
“Help me fetch some water,” she said. “The fever appears to be breaking.”
His name was Albion Freeman, and he was fourteen years old. He was to stay with us all the spring and summer. His daddy was bound for Ohio and back to sell his wares—drumming, we called it. But the doctor from Shelby said Albion must stay in bed at least a month, maybe longer, to guard against a fever of the heart. Albion’s father decided to come back through Kentucky in the fall and get his son. He gave Aunt Becka a new cooking pot for the boy’s keep, and promised Albion would be a good hand to work once he was better.
Albion cried when his father left. I was disappointed, because it did not seem brave of him. Heathcliff would not have cried. Nor was Albion handsome. He was slight of stature to the point of scrawniness. Aunt Becka guessed that he had often been hungry. His hair was unkempt, “nappy,” Aunt Jane called it. He had a gap between his front teeth, and one was the color of used dishwater. When he grinned I was put in mind of a chipmunk. But his eyes, at least, were fine, brown and warm as coffee.
He was shy with us for a long time. Flora was the best with him. We sat and listened while she drew him out to talking, her voice low and gentle. He said his mother had died only a few months earlier, also of a fever. They buried her on a hillside. No, he didn’t know where exactly; it was in Harlan County. They had been on the road since he was eight years old. His daddy lost a farm on Blackberry Creek in West Virginia.
“Daddy cant afford no land of his own. Says he cant work for nobody else. So, he’s a drummer.”
“How do you go to school?” Flora asked.
“Aint never been.”
“Cant read at all?” asked Ben.
“No, sir.”
“I can teach you.”
Albion traced a quilt pattern with his fingertip.
“Dont know as how I’m anxious to learn.”
“Why ever not?” Aunt Becka said sharply.
He ducked his head. “I’m afeard I’ll learn so much new things I’ll forgit what I know. I know lots of stories and all. Got em stored in my head. New things might run em clean out.”
“Aint you wanting to learn about new places?” I asked.
“I been lots of places,” he said softly. “I want my own place. Maybe then…” His voice trailed off.
“I reckon that’s enough questions,” Flora said. “We’re a-wearing this poor fellow out.”
He smiled at her gratefully, sank back onto his pillows, and closed his eyes.
He stayed in his bed until barefoot weather in May. Then one day he wobbled outside, sank down onto the front stoop and turned his face up to the sunshine. Soon he was walking around, and by June he was helping with the chores. Mostly he worked with me, caring for the animals and thinning the corn.
Our cornfield covered five acres of bottom land between the Homeplace and the Aunt Jane Place. I moved ahead of Albion along the rows, stooped to pull the smallest shoots and toss them aside. I paused often to wait for him because hoeing was slower work. Albion put me in mind of the scarecrow spread-eagled on its high post. His shirt was too big and slipped off one shoulder as he hoed. His bony, pointed elbows punched the air. He sang as he hoed about a noble lady who left her rich husband to run off with the gypsies. I wont go back, my dearest dear, I wont go back, my honey, for I’d rather have a kiss from gypsum’s lips than all your land and money. He sang of Barbry Allen and how she spurned her lover so that he died brokenhearted, and how Barbry died soon after. Daddy, Daddy, dig my grave, oh dig hit deep and narrow, young Jemmie died for love today, and I shall die tomorry. A thorn grew from Barbry’s grave, and a rose from her sweet lover’s, and the two twined together. That’s how the rose got thorns, Albion said.
“Florrie loves roses,” I said. “She grows them rambling roses all over the front porch. But I like weeds best. They’re all wild and tangled up.”
He grinned. “I like weeds, too. Whole big fields of ironweed.”
When we finished in the cornfield, I sat down and stuck out my legs. The dust was high up on my calves and gritty between my toes.
“Aint time yet to git the cows,” I said. “Let’s go fishing.”
Albion was the only boy I knew who apologized to the fish he caught. He smiled at the first tug on the line, took an uneasy pleasure in hauling in his catch, then crooned, “Poor thing,” at the fish flopping on the line. Once he caught a fish that had swallowed the hook and bled from the mouth. He cried out and dropped it.
“Kill it! Hit’s a-suffering terrible! Wont you do something, Carrie?”
I tugged, but the hook was caught solid. “Lay it out and it will die by and by,” I said. But he was still upset and fretted so about the pain it was in that I began to cry. I pulled again and the hook came out with another gush of blood. I tossed the fish back into the river and it swam feebly away, trailing a pink stream behind it. I wiped my slimy hands on my overalls.
“Maybe hit will live,” I said.
He told me I was brave, brave enough for ten men, and I felt better. It was clear to me now that he wasn’t Heathcliff. But I liked him anyway.
We fished a lot that summer, and swam in Grapevine, and called the cows home in the gentle evenings. Albion and I became inseparable. I even coaxed him into starting school in August when the corn was laid by. He expected his father in October, he said. There was no sense in starting school. Ben promised he would be reading by then. Still he was reluctant, until I pointed out that if he didn’t go to school we wouldn’t have nearly so much time together. He agreed then.
“I dont reckon I’d mind learning to read the Bible,” he admitted. “I heard it read out loud and hit sounded fine.”
One day after school in late August we walked the creek, our dinner pails filled with apples we had gathered along the way. Aunt Becka had promised to bake apple pies. The rocks were slippery beneath our bare feet and we fell often, usually on purpose, and sat d
own backwards in the middle of the stream. Sometimes we spilt our pails and chased the apples down little waterfalls on our hands and knees. We managed to salvage most of them, and swung full pails as we followed the path that skirted the cornfield and crossed the fallow field behind the barn.
Then we heard a distant cry of “Mad dog! Mad dog!”
We froze and Albion clutched my arm.
I saw Miles near the barn. He held a shotgun and waved his arm wildly. “Run for the trees! Climb a tree!”
Albion pointed. “There!”
A yellow dog trotted toward us from the riverbank. It snapped at the air.
“Oh, lordy!” I dropped my pail and ran. But I stopped, for Albion was not with me. He stood rigid and watched the dog.
I ran back to him. “Come on!” I screamed, and tugged at his arm.
“I can’t!” He sounded about to choke. “I’m scairt to turn my back on it!”
The dog was so close I could see the white flecks about its jaw.
“Run, damn it!” he whispered fiercely. He was crying. He broke away from me, walked toward the dog. It saw him, broke into a loping run. Miles’s gun cracked, the dog’s hind legs kicked the air, and it lay still.
Miles ran up, knocked Albion down, stood over him.
“You durned fool! You nearly got my little sister kilt!”
Albion stood up. Miles pushed him down again.
“Miles, you stop that!” I yelled. Flora and Aunt Becka ran out of the house. Aunt Becka gathered me into her arms and Flora helped Albion up.
“You aint being fair, Miles,” she said. “He put hisself between her and the dog. I seen it from the window.”
Miles trembled all over. “What if I’d missed? I’d never have forgive myself. Hit’s been a year since—”
He broke off and turned away. It was a year since he’d been hunting, I knew.
When Daddy came home from helping Clinard Slone build a fence, he praised Miles to the high heaven. He examined the carcass before he burned it, said, “You took him clean, son. Couldn’t have done better myself. We’re a goin to miss you around here.”
Miles looked frightened instead of pleased. He was to leave for Berea in a week.
“Maybe I should stay here,” he said feebly.
“Dont be silly,” Ben said quickly. “Hit’s only school. Aint like you wont never be back. Besides, I’m here now. We’ll be just fine.”
At suppertime, Albion was nowhere to be seen. Aunt Becka set his portion back in the warming closet, and I went to look for him. I found him beside the river, seated upon a rock, his head buried in his arms. When I spoke his name he turned his face away.
“We had a good supper,” I coaxed. “Trout and fried taters and cornbread. And apple pie with cream. Aunt Becka saved yourn still yet warm if you come on.”
When he did not answer, I was uncertain what to do.
“You weren’t no coward,” I whispered. “You was brave. Miles was just het up is all. He was scairt to think hit was all on his shoulders.”
I eased up behind him, slipped my arms beneath his and wrapped them around his chest. I felt him stiffen and nearly let him go, but when he moved, the ribs of his thin chest rubbed against my bare arms and I felt the hurt in him. I tightened my hold and rested my cheek against his back.
“That poor old dog,” he said. “He couldn’t help it if he were mad. I looked him right in the eye. He weren’t hating us. He was suffering. How could God let it be?”
It was not in my nature to chide him for questioning God’s purposes, as Aunt Becka might have done, so I said nothing. He rubbed the back of my hand with the tips of his fingers.
“I was scairt,” he said. “Hit was like if I turned my back, he’d be on me right then. But if I kept a-staring at him, I might see where he hurt. I didn’t want him kilt.”
“Florrie says you got a tender heart.”
He sighed. “Florrie is good to me. I wisht I could stay here all the time.”
We watched the river. Mosquitoes teased the surface of the shallows and minners flicked back and forth, chased by their shadows. Albion tore open a milkweed pod and scattered the soft white insides. Some of the seeds were borne away on the water. Others flew on the wind like pale fairies and settled in the brake to take root.
In October, Farrie Whitt called for a corn shucking. Already the women of Scary and Grapevine were putting up their fruit, vegetables, and apple butter. Now the corn would be shucked and stored for the animals and for grinding into yellow meal. In November the hogs would be killed, strung up by their hind legs and slit down the belly, the bloody carcasses festive against the gray mountainsides. The slabs of meat would be salted and hung to smoke, and the winter could be faced with security.
Of all the shuckings, I liked Farrie Whitt’s the best because he lived at the head of Scary Creek and so the journey was longer and more adventurous. We set out in the wagon just after noon. Halfway up Scary, shadow swallowed the sunlight. Here the mountains closed in and smelled strong and damp, like a wet animal. At the head of the holler, they gave way grudgingly, offering Farrie’s family their bit of earth. Until then, for the last mile and a half, there was no bottom land, only the creek and the rutted road twisting side by side, finally merging into one. The sun did not touch this place save when it stood directly overhead, and in winter the ice grew thick on the rocks even during the thaws. This was my favorite part of Scary. I turned on my belly when the wagon rode the creek and watched the churning water through the cracks between the floorboards. The mountains hovered close and sheltering, like a quilt upon my back.
When we arrived at the Whitt’s, I took Albion to the molassy making. This was the province of the old men. Their hands were too stiff with the rheumatism to shuck corn, so they sat on their chairs beside the sorghum pan and wielded their skimmers, pausing to stoke the fire. The green juice, squeezed from the cane at the wheel, was poured into one end, where it grew a thick skin like the scum on a stagnant pond. Clyde Baisden skimmed the top and sent the foaming juice on its way through the labyrinth of the pan. By journey’s end, the sorghum was a thick golden syrup helped along by old Homer Whitt’s wooden paddle.
“This uns a light batch, younguns,” said Homer. “Have a taste.”
We stuck our fingers beneath the pan where the molasses dripped slowly into a bucket. It was warm, sticky and light as Homer promised, sweet with a tangy green flavor. Mighty fine, we agreed. We lingered, for the fire beneath the pan warmed the whole area, until supper lured us away.
The women set out the food on tables inside the cabin: fried chicken and salty ham, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans cooked with hunks of fatback, hot pickled corn, biscuits, yellow cornbread, boiled cabbage, sweet potatoes, green poke sallet in bacon grease, fresh kale, squirrel meat with dumplings, venison steaks, groundhog, red-eye gravy, milk gravy, stack cakes, apple pies. Albion piled his plate several inches high, a look of reverence on his face. He followed me outside and we sat down against Farrie Whitt’s watering trough. When we were done eating, it was difficult to stand up.
Afterwards the older women cleared away the food and washed the dishes, and the old men returned to the molassy making with a jug. The rest of us went to the bonfire near the heaps of corn and set to work stripping the silk and parchment shucks from the ears. The boys worked especially fast so that they might be the first to find a red ear and steal a kiss from the girl of their choice. Amos Preece, a boy from Scary School, pulled so hard and carelessly at the shucks that he sometimes snapped the ear in two. He was sweet on Ila Mae Slone and had never declared himself, but everyone knew it, and Ila Mae neglected her own shucking to watch the cobs as he uncovered them.
“Red ear!” Vance McCoy called, but he did not have it. It was Albion, sitting astraddle a milk bucket, who turned the dark thing this way and that in his hands.
“Hit’s the drummer’s boy!” They laughed and teased. “Who’s your girl here, drummer? Reckon you got one in every holler.”
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He looked around briefly and ducked his head. He was shy with girls; they laughed at school about how quiet he was, how homely. He daydreamed often, so that he did not hear when Ben called upon him. He was not good at the games the boys played. He was a stranger to Scary Creek, he came from beyond, bearing some taint of misfortune, and everyone knew it.
“Kiss Clary Leach,” someone yelled. “That’s Miles’s girl. That’ll fetch him back from Berea.”
“Kiss me,” Ila Mae Slone said. She made a face to show how distasteful she would find it and broke into gales of laughter. Albion stared at the ground, frozen to his seat, holding the ear out at arm’s length as though it were cursed.
“Kiss Florrie,” I whispered. “Hit don’t matter that she’s married. Ben wont mind.”
He stirred, set the red ear at my feet.
“I dont want to kiss Florrie,” he said.
He leaned over and brushed my cheek with his lips. I shivered, folded my hands in my lap and tried to look like a lady.
Everyone except Ben and Flora hooted with laughter.
“Carrie’s a LITTLE girl! Cant you kiss nobody but a little girl?” Amos Preece taunted.
Albion stood up. “You’re just jealous,” he said. “That girl you was going to kiss has got more mouth than a bullfrog.”
He picked up his bucket, gathered an armload of corn, and walked away.
“Big for his britches, aint he?” Ila Mae said. “And him ugly as a mud pie.”
I hesitated before I followed him, for it seemed to me a choice from which there would be no retreat. They belonged and he did not, and to leave their circle and the warmth of it would mean that I possessed the power to cast myself into the outer darkness where moved the misfits, the lost, and the brave.
But I followed him. His kiss had marked me, and I was called out. I found him near the smokehouse, sat beside him and spread my skirt daintily around me. We shucked corn by ourselves for quite a while, never saying a word. Then Ben came and sat with us.
Storming Heaven Page 5