“What did the doctor say about that?” asked Bud.
“He judged hit might do me a power o’ good, and he hoped how soon I’d go.”
November spilled the year’s wealth upon the land in wild frost-sweetened fruits and mast and chestnuts, and Bud’s hearth-fires grew in glory, fed with fat knots and roots of pine—flowing over logs, licking round the kettle, whirling against the soot-mossed back of the fire-place, displaying rainbows of strange colors, and pouring finally into the black throat of the chimney as a waterfall disappears into a sunless gorge. No stranger can ever know the real beauty of this red heart of home, which mocks the old north with its low, cheery music—with soft roar of burning, with laughing sparkle, with flicker and blue flutter, with the fusillade of hickories, and the “treading snow” of brands half-consumed, and the last clink of the falling ash at sleeping-time.
Into this radiance came Prentice one evening, his lungs and his garments filled with the breath of the keen clear night.
“Hit’ll frost to-night,” he said, nodding all round. “Like a young snow.”
“I make ye no less welcome, Prent,” complained Dad Farris, “but hit’s a on-disputed fac’ that I aint had a drap o’ good whiskey sence the last you give me. This here boughten stuff’s a sin to the lizards. I cayn’t drink hit.”
“Sorry,” laughed the young man. “I’ll show Raldie how to make persimmon beer, and we can all drink some. But I got shut of that business in a good time,” he continued, seating himself in one of Orphy’s new chairs. “You’ns aint heared about the raid?”
“We never hear anything ’thout you or Bud tells us.” Dad’s tone was still aggrieved.
“Well, they sure made one to-day. That marshal must be a devil-yarker! Went right down Caney alone, and slipped up on ’em in the still—ketched ’em makin’ a run, and slipped between them and their guns and covered ’em. They got rattled and run spang into his arms. Got ’em both.”
“Oh, I’m proud you was out of hit long ago,” breathed Zaraldie.
“I am, myself. Orphy she’ll be glad to hear about hit. You can write her.”
They told the thing over and over, and discussed all its aspects again and again, fixing it well in mind. Afterward the conversation turned to Orphy; where was she, and when would they see her again? Was she growing too fond of staying in town? Or was she, on the contrary, unhappy with homesickness?
Bud and Prentice were upholding one balance of probability and Raldie and Dad another, when again the door swung open, and Orphy herself appeared.
“I was hopin’ you’d all be settin’ up together!” she cried joyously, before any of the startled occupants of the room could frame a question. “Dad, here’s Uncle Ed come to see you. We walked out from town together.”
A tall man stooped through the doorway behind her—a man browned with many summers and grizzled with many snows, yet in appearance younger than Dad.
“Why, how’re ye, Jesse?” he rumbled, genially. “You’re gray as a rat. What y’been a-doin’ to yerself?”
“Are you Uncle Ed? Are you Dad’s brother?” screeched Man in delight, dancing on one leg all round the hastily quitted circle of chairs.
The two men shook and shook both each other’s hands; then the Westerner caught the mountaineer by the shoulders and shook him; then they fell to shaking hands again, Dad reiterating all the while that he was indeed “powerful weak, powerful weak, Ed, but hit does me a world o’ good to see you.”
“Well, I aint so surprised,” said the newcomer, standing back at last, “not when I look at your family, and think Ann’s been dead this many years. This Bud? Howdy! Man ever’ eench. Orphy’s been a tellin’ about him as her and me come on. Raldie, honey, come and give your ol’ uncle a kiss. They been skase things in my time. Like sis Betty, aint she, Jesse? Here’s the boy that’s goin’ home with me? Looks to me you must have growed too fast, Man. They ortn’t to have give ye sech a name to live up to, and then ye might have took your own time to hit. You can read and write, can’t ye? That’s right. I always ’lowed there ought to be a few scribes in amongst sech a bunch o’ Farrisees.”
Dad slipped his word edgewise. “This here’s Prentice Roark—old Arch’s boy, Ed. He’s e’en-aboyut one o’ the family,” with a nod toward the fireside where the two sisters stood.
“Howdy, boy. I’d a-knowed you was Arch’s by your looks. So you and Orphy’s promised? Well, well—she never named you to me, and I was jist a-fixin’ to tell her what Mart said. You recomember him, do ye? He ’lowed if she wasn’t married he’d be glad to hear from her. He’s in with me on the sheers.”
“Mart!” breathed Orphy. “Is he—how is he?”
“He’s all right. He’s turned out well, honest and stiddy, and smart with hit; jist the man for any gal, be she free. Good thing for Mart he don’t know ye like you air now, or he’d be powerful disappointed.”
They fell to planning for Man’s going away; then Uncle Ed must hear the news of old neighbors, and the others must be told of the wonderland West. But Prentice sat silent, drawn back into the corner. He looked from one sad girl face to the other, and bethought himself of a way to lighten the shadow on both.
But like the Indian who inhabited his forests aforetime, the mountaineer moves with caution until the moment to strike. The hickory log had burnt to a bed of coals ere he finally spoke the word that freed them all from a false position.
“You’re mighty right I aim to be one o’ the family,” he stated abruptly, “the first chanst I git, but you’re mistaken in the gal.”
Uncle Ed, unaware of the sensation aroused by this seemingly innocent explanation of a very natural mistake, talked on.
“I had good luck takin’ one boy to raise; I feel considerable encouraged to try another. And if so be you aint promised to nobody, Orphy—well, I wouldn’t let Raldie put me to dance in the kettle if I was you.”
But all the young people, at least, knew what Orphy meant by her murmur as Prentice took his leave:
“I might have treated you better, Prent.”
“That’s all done and forgot about,” he answered.
The light of the embers reddened moment by moment on the group of happy faces, and the brave housegear that Orphy’s service had introduced. A hoarsely jubilant chorus of cock-crow arose from the chimney shelter outside.
It was Zaraldie who flung open the door for Prentice; and they two stepped forth to say good-night beneath the black-diamond stars.
eight
Flyaway Flittermouse
From Harper’s Monthly Magazine 121 (July 1910): 229–35; illustrated by W. Herbert Dunton
Though Miles is known for her love and concern for children, “Flyaway Flittermouse” is her only story in which a toddler is the main character. Flittermouse epitomizes innocence and trust as she wanders by herself along a country road. She charms each local traveler she meets and brings about good will, all without effort, guile, or awareness on her part. This story had its origins in an actual event. On a hunt for huckleberries in July 1909, two-year-old Kitty, Miles’s youngest daughter, became separated from her siblings. When the child was discovered missing, her family and neighbors launched a search. According to the account Miles recorded in her journal, Kitty’s eventual savior was a neighborhood lad headed out to see his girlfriend. Hearing the child crying in the berry bushes, he delayed his journey long enough to carry her home. Kitty’s adventure served as inspiration for the story of “Flittermouse,” Emma’s pet name for her baby girl.
. . .
Ever since the first of the week, when the elder children started for school, with a basket of biscuits and fried pork and a First Reader among them, Flittermouse had been lonely. To-day it was worse than ever; for not only had Pappy left to work before she waked in the morning, but even Mother was almost inaccessible through the malignance of a headache. As for little Man-alive, the only playmates that interested him were his own seashell feet and hands.
Aunt Libby, having “
drowned the miller” in making up her bread, came to borrow flour, and stayed to help with the churning; but now she was gone back home across the field, and Mother lay with tight-closed eyes on the bed. Flittermouse tried for a while to keep store, in imitation of her brothers, on the plank shelves they had arranged in the fence corner; but after pouring out the cans of water which represented barrels of oil and sorghum, and dismantling the rows of patiently moulded mud loaves and red-velvet oak tips, galls, and acorns which made up the rest of their stock, there did not seem to be much to do here; besides, she had an uncomfortable conviction that the boys would not approve her activities when they came home.
Across the fence, in a great airy cavern of shade beneath an oak, was a playhouse of more domestic character, all aglitter with broken china and upholstered in plushy moss. She had so often slipped between the rails to play here with sister that the fascination of forbidden fruit was absent from its neat and pretty housewifery, and the two little bare feet did not linger, but only printed the ground lightly as they pattered past.
Along the dew-damp sand broad shadows lay invitingly, though the day was not yet too warm. A cardinal flashed between the trees as she looked, and, “Birdy,” she greeted him, with an indescribable circumflex; adding immediately and regretfully, “Flyed away; gone wa-ay off-in-woods.” She heard the Song of the Open Road as plainly as it was ever sung. The iridescence of wings in the azure air, the happy z-z-z-ing of gnats and honey-lovers—it was all a siren lure. She was drawn down the road’s green, sun-shot vista irresistibly even before her Great Idea took shape; but once having glimmered into consciousness, it speedily became evident to her mind that Pappy was coming, somewhere yonder, probably just round the turn.
“Go’n’ meet him,” said Flittermouse, firmly.
Forthwith her toddle quickened to a trot. The little checked cotton frock she wore would have been for a time distinctly visible, flickering in and out of the bands of sunshine that lay across the road; but the eyes of the housemother were so dimmed with headache that even had she roused herself to look from the window she could hardly have seen. Besides, had not Libby said that she might take the child home with her for the day?
So, all unchallenged, unhindered, a little gipsy went dancing down the green-arched lane like a butterfly drifting on the breeze. The road as it ran away seemed to laugh back at her over its shoulder; she followed it on and on. From time to time she was tempted aside by a shining cluster of berries; she stopped to gather her hands full of flowers, and to splash and wade in a rivulet rutted by passing wagons; she poked in an interesting hole, and was startled by the appearance of an exasperated toad; she squealed in delight at a jewelled dragon-fly; and once, absorbed in a phenomenon which she afterward described as “two bum’lebees rollin’ a mobble,” she came near forgetting her purpose. But after the minute of wonder, she got to her feet and went on, looking eagerly down the road where she expected, every moment, to see Pappy appear.
Ah—there he was! She ran forward with a shout; then her footsteps lagged and faltered as she saw that it was not Pappy, but a stranger. Out of sheer interest she came to a halt and stared. The newcomer was so bristly gray, and had such fierce eyebrows!
She kept her soft dark gaze steadily and gravely on him. That he was grim and surly she did not know, any more than she knew that she herself was the most enchanting bit of human perfection the old fellow had beheld in many a day. This was a Man, and her experience of men had not been at all disconcerting; the whole race was typified, of course, by Pappy.
But such a funny man! He was about to pass her, when she giggled, showing all her little teeth like grains of rice. The man stopped and stared in his turn, as if he had not seen her until that moment.
“Huh!” said he. Then, “Whose little gal air you?” he asked, in a queer husky old voice that matched his bristly gray hair.
She knew the answer to that question. “Pappy’s.”
“Huh! Where you think you’re a-goin’?” came the next query.
“Go’n’ meet Pappy.”
He looked at her a moment, made as if to laugh, and went striding on. But his face had perforce relaxed a bit; and as he went he muttered: “Little dickens—watch them feet o’ hern! Jest like Cinthi’ said, young critters sca’cely knows whether they dancin’ or walkin’. Eh—law—Cinthi’.”
She had scarcely watched him out of sight when a murmur of voices caused her to look the other way. The two now approaching were deep in some altercation; they were, indeed, quarrelling, not with loud words or angry bluster, but in the mountaineer’s way, with a growing tension of distrust. Behind their immobile faces thoughts were gathering that might separate them for life. But at sight of the little girl they dropped, for the time, whatever they had been talking about.
“D’you reckon she’s lost, Jeff?” said one, using his companion’s name in a kinder tone than he had employed since the question of that misplaced fence came up.
“I’ll see,” the other answered, peering at her from under a green corduroy cap. He bent upon Flittermouse a pair of very pleasant gray eyes. “Want to come?” He held out his hands, broad, brown, flexible, the palms calloused with field work. “Lemme tote ye home, pretty. Where is hit you live? Where’s Pappy?”
“Down road. Go’n’ meet Pappy,” exclaimed Flittermouse, confidentially, liking the man’s voice and manner. “Uh-huh; go’n’ tell him—dot—szschicken for zupper.”
“Oh,” the man smiled, drawing back a little, “is Pappy down the road? You waitin’ for him?”
She nodded. “Go’n’ eat a szschicken bum’tick.”
“Come on, Jeff,” urged the truck-grower. “The baby’s all right—ain’t ye, sweetness? She knows what’s she’s headed fer.”
Flittermouse accepted this with dignity. Here was a man who recognized ability when he met it.
The man in the green cap hesitated. “Well—I guess it’s all right, and I—I ain’t got much time.” He appeared to be apologizing to the little stray before him. “But I declar’ you do look like Clay’s kid; and if that’s so, you’re a right smart piece from home.”
But as Flittermouse continued to back away, step by step, not suspiciously, but as one who is sure of the course of duty, he decided that the child’s father could not be far distant.
“If she is lost, we’ll be apt to hear of hit a ways on.” And returning to contemplation of his own thrice-vexed affairs, he made haste to overtake his companion.
They did not take up the quarrel exactly where they had left it. Instead, each cast about for something to say which would conceal from the other the fact that he was thinking deeply.
“Who was that went on in front of us?” inquired the man in the green cap.
“Old Provine, goin’ down the creek to see after his sawmill,” replied the truck-grower. “I looked for him to say somethin’ to me, but he took it out in glowerin’. Old man’s got it in for ever’body since him and Aint Cynthi’ Macklin had their last set-to over her granddaughter’s church trial. That was the masterest argu-mint I ever heard.”
“She whupped him out, though.”
“That’s what she done. ’Lowed the Good Book says there’s a time to dance, and Orphy should choose her own time about hit. They let the trial go over for decision, didn’t they?”
“Yes; but I look for ’em to turn the pore gal out next month.” He spoke with his mind centered on something else, which sharpened into utterance in the next few steps. “Look a-here, Jeff; tell ye what I’ll do. Let your fence stand, and I’ll sell you the ground as fur as the mistake occurred, and take the cow in part payment. Now, that’s fair, ain’t it?”
“Why, yaas, that’s—why, that’s fair enough; and I’d be willin’ if hit was any other cow, but—Well, tell ye, Riley! I’ve got a heifer in the woods, fraish in Feb’wary; how about her and, say, five dollars cash?”
The tension had disappeared. A play of emotion almost boyish came back into both bronzed faces; their speech was once more
interspersed with chuckles. Just before they passed out of sight one glanced backward to where a little checked cotton dress gleamed against the dusty briers.
Flittermouse had forgotten them. She was intent upon a streak of black ants, hurrying to and fro on a narrow trail of their own pioneering, on mysterious, alien business. “Free, four, five-six-seb’m-eight-nine-ten-leb’m-eightnine-ten-leb’m-eight-nine-ten,” she counted. At this point she was, by the similarity in sound between seven and eleven, invariably betrayed into a circle of four numbers. When she tired of it she began building a wall of sand, and placing chips inside it. “Pigs in a pen; a-a-all fensh op. Sooey, pig! Soo-oo-ey!”
She tucked one foot under her, and grasping the other, rocked herself to and fro to the rhythm of a tuneless song: “Bat, bat, come un’er mine hat, an’—when I bake—” She forgot the rest, but the idea of baking reminded her of a certain promise of chicken for supper. She was about to rise and resume her quest for Pappy, when a shadow fell on the ground beside her, and she looked up with a start that ran all the way from her top braid, the size of an ear of wheat, to her brown toes.
A shock-headed boy of twelve stood there, grinning. He carried a pole and line in one hand, and in the other a string of four perch. He was clad in a pair of homespun breeches and a man’s shirt that, through various rents and a buttonless front, let the sweet wind flow all over his sunburnt body.
“What you think you’re doin’?” he inquired.
In a country where two or three youngsters count for no more than a nest-egg, and a man’s mother is likely to be only fourteen or fifteen years older than he is, children lack the opportunity, among the overlapping generations, for acquiring self-consciousness. Flittermouse was accustomed to take herself very much for granted as the next-to-youngest in a considerable family—neither the trusted eldest nor the petted baby, but just an extremely small girl whose duty was to keep out from underfoot and not meddle with hatching weedies. Her world was a child’s world; she was used to being fed, played with, scolded, kissed, occasionally upset and run over by Joe and Orrion and Susy. It was only by accident that she stumbled to-day into the grown-up’s country.
The Common Lot and Other Stories Page 14