The Common Lot and Other Stories

by Emma Bell Miles

  Now and then, across the sunny loneliness of the orchard, he heard the new voice in laughter or song, and was glad, too, that he had absented himself from the house. He had heard of Seretha Massengale as a girl who accounted everything worthless except as it yielded her pleasure.

  As he abode the time of her stay and his sprained foot’s disability, he put over the hours whittling on the pieces of an oaken box, planning his care of the farm for next year, reviewing his chances of getting his stock through the winter, and playing with the four kittens. Today as the shadows lengthened, he hobbled on his rude crutch across the floor and seated himself on the doorsill. A thistle, rank and glossy amid the wirey autumnal growth, stood by the door in the sun. He reached out his knife to cut it before it could seed, but paused as a sulphur-winged butterfly floated out from the shadow and hung trembling like a flame, having unerringly discovered for itself the one bit of empurpled softness and sweetness among all those forbidding spines and prickles. He left the harsh thing to grow awhile—its visitant might return. Oran was not tired of going his own lonely, hardheaded way, but was fain to grasp eagerly at every gleam that fell across it.

  The black kits leapt and tumbled over each other round his coarse shoes. Suddenly they sprang forward with a chorus of mews as their mother returned from hunting; and then he heard someone calling: “Kitty? Kitty-kitty-kitty-puss? Where you gone to, Kitty Blue?”

  The stately Maltese only switched her tail and purred as Oran stroked her, but the kittens, with tails erect, went trotting towards the call along the faint path tangled with asters and overreached with bending goldenrod.

  “Oh, oh, you cute things!—but not one as pretty as your mammy. Kitty Blue, I didn’t know you was keepin’ such a secret from me!”

  Oran listened, frowning deeply behind his screen of yellow plumes. There was a light swift footfall, the swirl and flicker of a ruffled skirt among the green, and a girl stepped into view close by him, the four fluffballs cuddled in her arms. An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; wavy masses of dark-brown hair; clear deep eyes—why, it was the visitor!

  Whether he liked it or not, here she stood, her eyes bright with surprise. In the next moment the restless kittens slipped to the ground and scampered toward their mother. She met them halfway with the soft trilling coo that a cat makes only for her babies, and all together walked sedately to the hem of Seretha’s dress. The girl stooped to stroke the arching cat. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” was her first remark. She put back a stray curl and smiled in face of Oran’s frown. “I never could see where she went to, till just now, when I was after some of these here blooms.” She came a step nearer, having already decided that she liked him—liked his clear though rugged features, his length and strength, his brown face with its sombre eyes. “You’re Oran, Libby’s brother, ain’t you? When’d you git home?”

  He replied to but one of her queries.

  “Yes, I’m Oran.”

  The cat climbed to his shoulder and purred round his head, then capriciously leaped down and returned to the girl, who, seating herself on the weedy tangle, took the favorite into her gingham lap.

  “Did you ever in your life see such a tangle of kits!” she laughed, revealing a dimple and a glimpse of delicate, even teeth. “Do they sure ’nough fight?”

  For answer Oran picked up a bit of string baited with an acorn, and swung it over the kittens, who rushed after it tumbling and growling. As their fun grew furious he tossed the string over an apple-weighted bough, to dangle just within claw-reach.

  “They’re a-boxin’ one another somersets!” She shook back the curl as she laughed up at him again.

  Oran’s face had lightened; but as one of the lithe, furry little bodies bore too ruthlessly on a weaker brother, he scowled again and snatched up his rude crutch to part them. The girl’s face, too, grew grave as she looked on.

  “You’re lame! Does Libby know that? I’m so sorry!”

  “Hit’s a’gittin’ well now,” he replied ungracefully.

  “Why don’t you come to the house?”

  “’Cause I’d ruther stay here alone.” Seretha got up gracefully. “And she stays with you? She’s the nicest old pet I ever saw. Ain’t you comin’ to the house none?”

  “No.”

  “Then she won’t stay with me a-tall. I’ll jist come to see her, now I know where she lives. And I’ll tell Libby I seed you,” she smiled retreating along the path.

  “Don’t ye tell ary another one,” he called after her.

  Seretha was still puzzling over the encounter when she reached the house with her arms full of goldenrod. “I reckon your brother Oran’s foot must a-hurted him bad,” she said to Libby.

  “How’d you hear about Oran’s foot?” cried Libby, her good plain face changing with consternation. Was her brother ordained to break every earthborn butterfly on the iron wheel of his intolerance?

  Seretha explained. “He looked so cross and soberlike, I ’lowed he must be hurtin’. Whyn’t he stay here, Libby?”

  “He’s cranky, honey. Jist leave him alone.” The motherly maiden turned her smooth dark head to smile at her adored guest. “I wish’t you hadn’t a-seed him; he didn’t want you to find out he was ther—’feared hit would spile your good time whilst you’re with us.” she added, trying to soften the rudeness.

  “Hit won’t do that. He’s got a right to his ruthers,” replied Seretha, wonderingly. “I ain’t a-keepin’ him there, I reckon. Maybe, like my old dog, he wants to be left alone when he’s hurted. I always think that’s because he’s cross then, and he’s afeared he may bite if he’s about where he’ bothered.”

  Libby let it go at that. She could not help smiling at the aptness of Seretha’s conclusion, although her private belief was that Oran liked to bite. She had seen him grow from a strange, silent, almost surly boyhood into a manhood soured by disapproval of trivial insincerities. He was industrious and saving, a young man still, though an older bachelor than is usual among the mountain people, for who would marry such a churl? Least of all could his own family bear with him.

  The next day Old Blue was missing oftener than usual from the shop. It seemed to Oran, brooding in the doorway, that she was absent most of the time. The second morning she was gone when he waked, and at noon, when he had decided that something must have happened to his pet, Seretha came trippling along the path with the blue cat in her arms.

  “She’s bad company to leave you all alone by yourself, ain’t she?” was her greeting. “I told her to scat back to her babies, but she let on not to hear, and hung around as if she wanted me to bring her; so I come.”

  The man shook off his abstraction by degrees. “She’s all right. She goes out huntin’, often,” he replied slowly. He was thinking that the purple rays in the sun-illumined iris of Seretha’s eyes were like those of the wayside asters.

  “Have you ever named the kittens?”

  “This,” said Oran gravely, tapping a black velvet head, “is Matthew; this here’s Mark; this ’n’s Luke–’n’–John; and I ain’t found ary name for the blue-eyed one, she’s the prettiest.”

  “Maybe I’ll think of a name. Is your foot-a-hurtin’ much?”

  “No.”

  “I must be goin’,” she told him. “We are all a-goin’ chestenuttin’.

  “I ’xpect we’ll find wild grapes and persimmons, too.”

  “They ain’t ripe yit,” protested Oran, in the unwonted process of groping for a last word.

  The next day, just after his hermit meal, Seretha came.

  “What you makin’?” she asked, seating herself on the grass.

  “Box.”

  “What for?”

  “Somethin’ to do.”

  “Why, hit’s goin’ to be nice enough for a keepsake box!”

  Oran carved away in silence.

  But with deliberate kindly intent, to enliven his solitude, she lingered, talking of good times past and hoped for—of rides and play-parties and church yard baske
t-dinners, of fortune-tellers and young folk’s “singin’s,” and all the simple feasts, frolic and fun of the mountains.

  That afternoon the rude relief-pattern on the oak slab took on more elaborate curves as he worked and all unknowing dreamed. Sometimes his hands fell idle and he sat motionless, plumbing the purple distance with thoughtful eyes.

  She appeared in the morning while the fairy napkins of cobweb in the grass were still gemmed with dew.

  Oran was thinking of something. “Libby and Taylor aimed to have a play-party whilst you was here, and I wouldn’t let ’em.” He made the confession shamefacedly.

  She put the confession tactfully aside.

  “We wouldn’t a-wanted one whilst you’re laid up with that foot.”

  “Hit ain’t too late now. We can let ’em all know—”

  She shook her head, looking away from him. “No—I was aimin’ to tell you I got to go home.”

  “What—right away?”

  “Mother’s ailin’ and wants me. Jim Reedy brought the word this morning. Taylor’s ketchin’ out the mules now, to take me over.”

  They found themselves stranded, as it were, unable to talk after this announcement.

  “I hope you’ll git all right soon—Oran—Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” answered Oran dully.

  A month later, returned from his postponed hunting, he learned that Seretha’s mother was dead, and that her father, embittered with grief and shaken with drink, was making her life a burden because she did not know [how] to keep house. Libby had been over to help her, but Massengale had almost asked her to leave the place and he would not let Seretha out of his sight.

  “He’s got the right idy,” declared Oran. “She’d ought to been made long ago.”

  “Hit was her mother’s doin’ that she was brung up like she was. Her bein’ the only child to live, Mis’ Massengale spiled her, and the’ old man never seemed to notice till his wife was gone,” sighed Libby.

  “Well, she’ll learn now,” was Oran’s last word.

  But he was glad to see her face again, that winter, at the Lowrys’ dancing party. Lowrys’ always had the best music and a good crowd, because the sawmill boys would be there. Libby and Taylor were looking after the farm and stock, and Oran was at the mill; so the party required him to call the figures, for dancing was his one dissipation.

  “You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” Seretha asked, as he and a partner stood near her while the set was forming. “I come with Susy.” She did not say how she had dared fate in so doing. “You love to dance, don’t you? How’s Kit Blue and the kittens?” She put the troublesome curl aside with the gesture he remembered.

  “All right.” His eyes softened as they rested on her. “I’ve done named that kitten Aster.” He turned to take his place in the “square” circle.

  Seretha watched him as he danced, his perpetual frown lightened by the glitter of his eyes, but no softness reappeared. It was not the company he enjoyed, but the rhythmic movement. He called in a clear level voice, with only an occasional lift in the one. Between dances he stood by the fiddler and his banjo seconds, urging them on, suggesting the wildest melodies they knew. He was there to dance; he asked nothing of his partners but that they dance also, for the part’s sake, with no pauses for dalliance on the long shadowy porches or in the moon-drenched yard.

  All the fibres of his being were pleasurably loosened and quivering with the music. He danced mountaineer fashion, all over, with solemn intense enjoyment, swinging his elbows and shoulders no less than his feet. It was not the languid, bending, sloping dance of the negro, nor the leaping and skipping of northern races, but a loose-jointed, swinging, tossing, bounding movement distinctive as the music to which it kept time. The figures wheeled and swung and eddied; coats flung off, feet stamped heavily. Seretha, sitting motionless with two or three church-going girls by the wall, watched the fun grow wilder as the evening advanced, and shivered at thought of the cold hearth unswept at home. Clapping and stamping increased; the whirl grew more rapid as feet caught the swing; periodical backsliders forgot all exhortation, and joined the rout, laughing. And faster and faster rang the banjo; the merriment ended at last with a shout as one, outwearied, laid his hand across the strings.

  A great oaken basket heaped with russets, winesaps, and Limbertwigs was brought in and munched in the firelight; then came farewells, and the melting away of the gathering by twos and threes into the frost-edged night. Oran approached Seretha and asked to walk with her.

  “I’m just goin’ to Susy’s tonight. That’s on your way, ain’t it?” she replied.

  “Git your things,” he bade her.

  “Oh, Seretha,” called Susy Reedy as they left the porch, “you-all ain’t goin’ to your place?” She came closer, and added hurriedly, “you be sure and stop at our house; your dad would settle you, like he said.”

  “I was aimin’ to stay with you till morning, Susy,” was the answer.

  “Why—don’t your dad know you come?” asked Oran after a quarter of mile of silence.

  “If he did, I wouldn’t be here. I left him a note to say I was goin’ to Susy’s and I’d be back in the morning.”

  “You hadn’t ort to do that way!”

  She winced from his tone. “If I ast him I wouldn’t never git out. I think long o’ the time; and seems like I must git away oncet in a while.”

  “Git your work done and then go.”

  “That’s what he says; but I don’t know how.”

  “Learn.”

  “Ain’t I tried and tried and tried—and it’s no use! I cain’t neber get things the way mother used to have ’em. She always said I was good help; but I had lots of days besides, to be goin’ and to have fun.

  “I think so long o’ the time! I don’t want to dance; but she always liked me to be with people and to have a good time, and I know if I could ast her about it she’d say go.”

  Oran found no more to say, as they walked the rest of the distance to Susy Reedy’s home. And there stood Massengale before the gate.

  “Come home!” he commanded, taking Seretha’s arm in a grasp that made her catch her breath sharply.

  At that, Oran shivered. And though he knew that he could not interfere, and saw that the old man was sober, he followed the pair to the edge of the Massengale place.

  At the house door the father paused. “Git to bed,” he ordered, almost throwing Seretha through the doorway.

  Then he closed the door and put his back to it. “You out there—git! Don’t you ever set foot on my land again. Hear me!” His voice was a discordant squeak of fretfulness on the mountain night. “I given you five minutes to be out o’ sight and gone afore I shoot.”

  II.

  [Oran left as bidden,] but the more he thought it over, the more he felt compelled to have an understanding with Massengale. When asked to go to meeting [next morning], he told his young host that he would rather go on to the mill and be getting some rest against the week’s work. But he did not speak of his intention to pass Massengale’s place on his way.

  The house was closed and silent as he viewed it from the fence, not even a curl of smoke ascending, though there were chairs on its porch as in summer; and he recalled the saying that her father took Seretha to church. It was a colorless, quiet little home, regarding him wistfully through two small windows, from its brown clearing outspread in the pale sunshine and the gray transparent woods carpeted with brown leaves. The tap of an ax led him down the barn-lot lane. But it was not Massengale he came upon; it was Seretha, cutting brush into stove lengths.

  “What you doin’ here?” she stammered, her face pale with consternation at sight of him.

  “Where’s your dad?” he asked in return.

  “Gone to preachin’.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Don’t do it, Oran,” she urged. “He ain’t spoke a work nor eat a bite since last night. Didn’t even tell me to git ready and go to preachin’. Like enough he faults you
for my doin’, and he may make you trouble.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said again. And taking the axe, he cut the wood while she stacked.

  “Oran,” she kept pleading, “I do wisht you’d go—hit won’t do no good for you to stay. Dad’ll ketch you—and besides, there’s work in the house I got obleeged to git done afore he comes.”

  “Come on in, then. I’ll help ye.” said Oran. And help he did. Used to doing for himself in camp and for his home folks from childhood, he knew just how. Together they washed and scalded, swept and straightened, and soon had the house in order.

  “I wisht I could turn the work off that way all by myself,” sighed the girl, looking round on the tidy kitchen.

  “Learn,” repeated Oran unsympathetically; but he was sure he would like to help her always.

  “You must take a hand-bit with you now and go, Oran. Dad’ll be a-comin’ back and see you. You’ll haf to go, Oran—” and the start of tears in her eyes persuaded him that the encounter had better take place on the road.

  “Show me the way to the Gap and I’ll go, then,” he assented.

  “Let’s stop at the big rock and see if he’s a-comin’,” she temporized as they crossed the clearing.

  All round the stark head of the cliff was a sighing cloud of dark pine boughs, whose purr undertoned the shriller music of a rivulet spilling over some hidden ledge. The lonely steeps were drenched in the pure light of the sky; below they discerned the cabins and little farms, cradled ever so softly by dreamy hills and ridges feathery with treetops. Faint and small and far, sounds rose to the winter-hushed summit—a pinpoint cockcrow, the lowing of cattle, herd bells in varying tones. The vast expanse lay still and dim as a vision, bathed in the gentle afternoon. To the left the Blue Springs road straggled through the woods; but there was no sign of Massengale on its tawny ribbon, and no sound of his coming reached them where they sat on the high point. Oran lingered while Seretha talked of how she missed her mother all the time.