The Common Lot and Other Stories

by Emma Bell Miles

  Byron was outside, drawing a bucket of water for the sorrel. Seeing Fan at the window, he came and folded his arms on the still.

  “Well,” he said, “I reckon you won’t need me any more.” The depth of his voice, the entreaty in his eyes, made her think twice of the words, though he tried to speak them lightly. “Not any more—ever.”

  She laid her hand on his head. “Why, Byron,” she answered, “I’ll need you more than ever now.”

  eleven

  At the Top of Sourwood

  From Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 89 (March 1912): 393–402

  “At the Top of Sourwood” features a storekeeper, Noah Chadwick, whose marriageable daughter is pursued by both of his young male helpers. Rosabel clearly has a preference, but as is typically the case in mountain culture of this era, the father’s word is the final one. When he refuses to approve the match, the young people take matters into their own hands. The plot is complicated by a theft of the proprietor’s capital, but the would-be bridegroom saves the day. As Miles so often does in her fictional settings, she describes the actual general store on Walden’s Ridge, which sat at the top of the “W road” that runs down the mountain to Chattanooga. In her journal and other writings, namely “Thistle Bloom” in this collection, she portrays the open-air dance pavilion that sat beside the store and the festive activities that occasionally took place there. This story was reprinted in the August 1915 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Whether Miles received additional money for the second run is unknown, but doubtful.

  . . .

  The log house that was the Chadwick homestead as well as the general store sat perched like a cliff-eagle’s nest on a jutting shelf of rock just where the old corduroy road went down a break in the mountain wall. By those who dwelt above its level, no less than by the five or six inhabitants of the sweep of mountainside that fell away sheer from its back windows, it was called the Top; and few were the articles required by their daily living that it did not carry in stock. The summer population whose residences gleamed white along the “brow” heights bought provisions for the season here; girls native to the coves and ridges came hither in search of print and ribbons for weddings and frolics, and young bucks in quest of the girls, as also of knives and ammunition, gathered on its cluttered stoop to exchange tales of prowess; grandmothers from remote cabins here bartered eggs and hominy for quilting thread and knitting needles; the housewife obtained here her salt and spoons, her spider and hearth-oven, and an occasional “chaney” dish to be cherished all the way home like a captive bird; men bought leather for half-soles in autumn, axe-helves in winter, and hoes in spring. The steadiest of staples was tobacco, which sold the year round to both sexes and all ages. Next in importance came powder and lead; coffee followed a close third; after them the salt pork and corn meal that were the mainstay of existences too thriftless to support a shoat or a patch of corn.

  As the business throve and old Noah Chadwick found his hands overfull, he insured himself good service by taking on, instead of a single clerk, two youngsters of the same surname, Cairo and Cephas Plank. These boys were supposed to be cousins, although, in fact, no native of that intermarried district could say exactly what kin he was to any of the others.

  “Sort o’ half-Brindle to Buck, as your mam used to say about my yoke o’ steers,” old Noah remarked to his daughter Rosabel. “And so nigh the same age that whenever Cephas dies of old age Cairo can burn his hat. But they ain’t no more alike ’n a sourwood and a black-jack. Cephas don’t kill the timber a-bein’ pretty, though he’s some peart and soople when he’s dressed up; but that there long-legged Cairo—he’s ugly as home-made sin.” He wanted Rosabel to say so, too; but she merely arranged the budding comeliness of her features to an expression of preternatural composure. “And works around here with his head up like a steer in a cornfield, as if he owned the store!”

  From the first day of employment the boys had thrown their weight into the collar like a gallant team; but Chadwick’s satisfaction in his advantage was moderated by some uncertainty as to his daughter’s possible interest in either of the helpers. As a precautionary measure, he took to ridiculing both lads in her hearing. It ought to be easy, he thought, to show her that there were better and more prosperous men awaiting her notice. His hope was that she might incite them to continue the rivalry by favoring neither beyond his fellow, maintaining an even balance of smiles and friendly words from day to day.

  On a morning when the sweet keen breath of the first frost was in the air, and the gold and azure of September was inclining toward the rich October purple and scarlet, Cairo was sent to the valley for a load of freight from the way-station. As the wagon came rumbling and clanging forth from the lot, Rosabel threw on her sunbonnet and ran out on the porch, calling to the driver for a ride as far as her uncle’s house at the foot of the mountain.

  He bent down and drew her to the high seat beside him; and Cephas, sorting late potatoes by the window, watched them ride away through the dreaming shadows that lay across the corduroy road.

  When in the afternoon they returned, Rosabel’s hat wreathed in flame-colored vines and her lap full of tart wild grapes and sugary persimmons, he became sullenly furious.

  “Ol’ man’ll be apt to fire you, Cairo, ’f he ketches you takin’ Rosie with ye round the country,” he warned his yokemate.

  “That’s all right!” Cairo’s voice was half friendly, half derisive. His steel-gray eyes held a genial light, but his chin was like the point of a flat-iron, and there was something square and grim, possibly from a far-away Cherokee ancestor, about his wide mouth. “You can stay and court the old man whilst we’re out, and maybe beat my time a’ter all.”

  Cephas glowered across the crates they were unloading and found nothing to say. As for the girl, she had run into the house the moment she alighted, and sought her own room. She had something to tell her father—something that required all her resolution.

  The next day Cairo was not surprised at being summoned to the back room, where the kerosene and sorghum barrels, the tubs of lard and sides of pork, the bags of feed and salt, lay in dim rows along a windowless wall. He entered with quickened pulses; but the old fellow only adjusted his spectacles and motioned his clerk, salesman, driver, and factotum to a seat on a bag of cotton-seed meal.

  “Cairo,” he began, “you’ve worked around this store a right smart while, off and on.”

  “Yes, sir; goin’ on two year.”

  “And I’ve been a-payin’ you regular, over ’n’ above your board.”

  “I ain’t never complained about that,” said the young man, wondering whither this oblique approach might be tending.

  “Now, then,” challenged Chadwick, “I want the truth out o’ you—how much have you got saved up in that time?”

  Cairo’s eyes narrowed, and he thrust his hands deeper in his pockets. “How much do you expect a man to save out o’ three dollars a week?”

  “I ain’t sayin’. Though I made out to save on less, when I was a youngster. I’m wantin’ to know how much you got, and where hit’s at.”

  “Why, hit ain’t a great deal, but hit’s in a good safe place,” Cairo countered, grinning.

  “You’ve e’en-about butted your horns off, if ye did but know it!” Noah admonished him sharply. “I’m axin’ because Rosie told me last night—something I’d as leave not a-heard for a good while yet. Anyhow, I aim to know something about the fellow that gits her.”

  “Don’t ye know enough about me yit?”

  “Not till I’m satisfied whether you’re able to take keer o’ my gal. I do know there’s ne’er a foot of ground your’n, nor a stick o’ timber. There’s room in my house for the man that’s good enough for my Rosebud; but you, Cairo, you’re a-makin’ too pore a start.” He was silent a moment, and then repeated a mountain proverb: “‘There’s more marries than keeps cold meat.’”

  “Well, Mr. Chadwick,” replied Cairo, sobered, “I don’t aim to give ye a sho
rt answer, but looks to me that’s my business. I never inquared round what you was worth nor what you was liable to give her.”

  Noah drew himself up. “You didn’t hafto ax what everybody knows.”

  To this Cairo seemed to have nothing to say. He opened his knife and began whittling—a tacit admission that the argument might reasonably be prolonged. The dim and dusty room, lighted only by two thin rays of afternoon sunshine through the chink of the heavy oaken door-hinges, was still—so still that they could hear the high squeak and chatter of a bat incensed at the wasps that circled over the drip of the vinegar barrel.

  Noah’s eyebrows began to work up and down on his forehead. “You dad-limbed cymblin’-head!” he burst out at length. “Got the imperence to marry my gal and set round waitin’ for the old man to leave ye well off, have ye? You’ll see in a minute where ye drapped your candy! Not a cent have you got only what you was lookin’ to git from me; now, ain’t that so?”

  “I’ve got a right to say I won’t answer! You’ve knowed me, Mr. Chadwick, ever sence I was as big as your fist. That ought to be enough.”

  “Well, hit is enough!” retorted Noah, now completely antagonized. “And you can leave my store if I ketch ye talkin’ to Rosebud a’ter this.”

  “All right. I aim to wed her, though—and then if you give me and her ary thing, I’ll be jist as good as you air, and give hit back to ye.” Cairo shut his knife, and, getting to his feet, turned away.

  “She’ll never have my consent to wed ye!”

  “She may do without it,” was Cairo’s parting shot, as he quietly left the room.

  A few days later Rosabel’s mother, a meek, hard-working woman who did as her husband bade her on all occasions, approached the assistant thus cast into disfavor while he was preparing to take his place in the store after breakfast, and began hesitatingly: “Cairo, I hate to tell ye, but pap, he ’lows I cain’t feed ye no more.” She wrapped her worn hands in her gingham apron and stood regarding him almost sadly.

  “Cain’t? What for? I know I hide white beans and biscuit as if my laigs was holler, but Cephas eats me a match every meal—or did until right lately,” responded the young man, laughing.

  “I—I reckon pap’s afeared you and Rosebud’s a-makin’ it up to run away,” she explained, trying to smile in response to his jovial bearing.

  “He better watch closeter than what he’s been a-doin’,” chuckled Cairo. “Well, that’s all right, Mis’ Chadwick. I’ll go and talk to him a’ter a while. Maybe he’ll decide to keep me around.”

  In the slack of the afternoon he came out on the high back porch overlooking the valley, where in the shadow of the house two buckets of spring water sat on a puncheon shelf, and a pair of gourds swung gently in the breeze, since neither Noah nor his wife liked to drink from a dipper. The old man was standing before a second shelf that upheld a tin basin, a towel, and an eight-inch square of “bubbly” mirror, laboriously removing from his countenance a week’s growth of gray stubble. He prided himself on shaving regularly once a week, “whether his face needed hit or not.” He was contorting his features into more extraordinary grimaces than a school-boy behind his teacher’s back, and took no notice of Cairo’s advent except by grumbling to the mirror, “Dad-limb this old razor! If I cain’t hone it into better shape again’ next time, I’ll hafto give up and grow a beard.”

  “You aim for me to leave, Mr. Chadwick?” asked Cairo, closing the door softly behind him.

  “Hafto board somers else!” was the gruff reply.

  Cairo, being disposed to grant the naturalness of his employer’s resentment, would not make too much of this. “You mean you don’t want me to work here no more?” he pursued.

  “I ain’t anxious either way.” In truth, Noah could ill afford to lose his most wideawake assistant, but was in no humor to say so.

  “Then,” the young man continued, under his voice, “I’ve got a thing to tell you afore I leave.”

  “More out o’ your sass-box!”

  “No, no; hit’s somethin’ you ought to hear, and nobody else.”

  “Dad-limb this here razor! Hit’s dull as a frow! No, I’ve heared enough about ye and out of ye, you high headed Two-by-Four!”

  “This here’s different; hit’s about—”

  “I’ve done told ye I don’t want no words with ye.”

  “About the store—”

  “You’ve made me cut myself three-four times a’ready. If you stand there a-jowerin’, you’ll have me scored, ready to be hewed. May do for Planks, but I’ll be limb-juggled if I—”

  “Well, I’m a-leavin’; but there’s a word to say. Hit’s about the store; and I miss my guess if hit don’t find ye where you’re at home,” Cairo maintained with significant firmness.

  “I’ll run my store without any ad-vice. There! Cut again!” Chadwick turned, brandishing the offending razor. “Now, you git!”

  Cairo flushed darkly as he turned away. “Well—if you was to happen to want me for anything next week, I’ll be down at sis’ Marthy’s,” he remarked as he went forth.

  No sooner was the storekeeper alone than he began to regret his “tetchiness.” This was not what he had intended. He wondered, and wondered again, what the boy could have meant to tell him. Some impertinence about his daughter, perhaps. Let him go!

  “Shoo! Thinks he’s a whole dime’s worth o’nickels. With the town folks gone down for the winter, and trade gittin’ below profit mark, me and Cephas can certainly mind the store without him. He’ll be ready enough to come back again’ the summer trade commences,” Noah declared to his chin-lathered reflection.

  Yet he could hardly eat his supper. He preserved a dignified and stubborn silence, as befitted the proprietor of the only store in that quarter of the country; but night fell with the clouds riding swift and low, across the sky, and found Noah in an unapproachable temper, Rosabel in tears, Cephas unaccountably absent, and the mother going heavily and silently about the evening tasks of the household.

  An hour after dark Cairo stood on the platform of the little valley way-station, just out of reach of a cold drizzle that was beginning to fall. He examined, without appearing to do so, each member of the group that here awaited the coming of the south-bound train. Two loafers and a drummer, besides an old lady whose daughter kept reassuring her as to the safety of travelling by rail, he let go by with hardly a glance; a country preacher carrying a hand-bag, and after him a mountaineer with a jug, he regarded most closely as they passed under the dim and smoky wall-lamp; and at last his attention became fixed on a kerchief-muffled individual who stepped un-ostentatiously on to the extreme end of the platform a few moments before train-time. There was nothing remarkable about this newcomer, although the home-woven basket of oak splints, bulging with clothing and tightly roped, might in other regions have occasioned some amusement.

  Cairo sauntered to and fro, softly whistling “Texas Rangers” between his teeth, and finally came to a stop directly behind the other and looked him over from head to foot, staring longest at the fringe of hair that remained visible above the coat-collar turned up to meet a low hat-brim.

  The traveller, feeling the scrutiny, glanced furtively around, started at sight of Chadwick’s employee, and moved nervously away from the dim light that struggled through the door and the window.

  Cairo greeted him without receiving a reply, and added: “You’re uncommon skeered of the toothache. Look like you had a bad cold and was afeared to ketch another on top of hit.” As the other still made no answer, “You didn’t ’low you could fool me, did you?” he continued, following a step. “Why, Cephas, I’d know your hide in the tan-yard.”

  The discovered Cephas, finding retreat no longer possible, faced the situation with a stuttered “W-what you—what you want, then?”

  “Jist whatever you got in that basket.”

  “My—my clo’es?” Cephas glared, and involuntarily tightened his grasp on the stout receptacle.

  Cairo laughed a little. �
�The money’s in there, sure ’nough, then! I won’t be hard on ye,” he persisted. “I’ll let ye have thirty dollars o’ my own—enough to land ye safe in Florida, or Texas, or wherever ye was aimin’ to go.”

  “You—you jist better let me alone, now—”

  “Make up your mind quick,” urged Cairo in the old half-bantering tone. “I seed the sheriff in the saloon as I come on by there. ’F he was to ketch ye with all that on ye, hit’d be all-night-Isom.”

  The train, after a long preliminary rumble rising to a roar, dashed out of the tunnel. The whistle screamed aloud; the two notes of its cry, falling one into the other, were caught up by the crags of Sourwood, echoed and reëchoed till the night was filled with its floating, flying tremolo, blown with the rain through the dark—a sound unwonted and disquieting to a country boy with senses already guiltily perturbed. Cephas stood confused and reeling.

  Cairo advanced, holding forward three ten-dollar bills. And half still seeking a possible alternative, Cephas accepted them and gave up the basket. Then, realizing his mistake too late, he broke into wild and incoherent cursing.

  “All abo-oard!” sang the conductor. As the fugitive obeyed the suggestion, he saw Cairo diving rapidly through the contents of the basket, making sure of his capture. Cephas sank into a seat and did not look up when the train began to roll slowly forward, until some one knocked on the open window, and there was his late comrade running alongside.

  “Here! take your clo’es,” cried the same half-friendly, half-mocking voice. “You’ll need them shirts afore you git another job.” And the runaway snatched the basket-handle just before the gathering momentum of the train swept home and friends out of his ken forever.

  Next morning on the store at the Top consternation fell like a blasting wind. It was found that Cephas, their dependence, had not slept in his room, and, further, that the key of the strong-box which held the store’s and Chadwick’s available capital was missing. The same little boy whose untimely purchase of snuff and boss-ball thread for his mother’s quilting precipitated the discovery was despatched in haste to Cephas’s aunt, who recalled that the missing man had borrowed a basket of her the previous noon. She quitted her house immediately with a square of homespun thrown over her head, and in an incredibly short space of time, considering the distance between neighbors, rumor was abroad and active.