—I’ll cover it, Flash said, or if I can’t, my sidekicks will before the Fourth of July.
—I’ll take some of that, myself, Garwood Jones said. Friendship is friendship, John, but a bet on Flash Perkins is a sure thing.
Johnny began to put on his clothes. He fixed his tie in the plateglass window, where the suncreated images of the crowd mixed incessantly. The hard, high nasal talk rasped in his ears.
—I’ll see you racetime, Jack, Flash said. I promise not to beat you more’n a city block.
Flash Perkins walked straight into the batwing doors of the Saloon without bothering to put out his hand. The doors slapped back and forth. Johnny could hear the high, goodhumored voice yelling for a drink, the sound of obsequious laughter.
It was three o’clock as Johnny walked down to a door that had a sign over it reading
PHOTOGRAPHS, DAGUERREOTYPES, and AMBROTYPES
Entering, he climbed a rickety stair to a hall on the second floor. The old building smelled of tobacco, urine, chemicals. Johnny had never been up this stair before, and he didn’t know which way to turn for the photographer’s. He was half expecting to meet Nell Gaither, as she too had an appointment. Through an open door on the left he saw a dimly lighted gallery, hung with oval pictures. He walked in toward a closed door at the far end, watching his own image grow larger and larger in a full-length mirror hung on the door. He laid his hand on the knob and opened the door.
Light drenched him, a white radiance without warmth, as if he were inside a camera whose shutter had just been opened. He blinked and narrowed his eyes.
The room was bathed in light. A skylight of milky glass slanted almost to the floor on the left wall. The young afternoon flooding in bathed each object in shadowless purity.
A young woman stood posed for a picture. Her jetblack hair was shaken out over her shoulders and down her cloudy white gown, which resembled a nightdress. She leaned against a cardboard column, holding an artificial lily in her left hand. The backdrop showed a riverscene: a landing in the foreground piled up with cottonbales, a steamboat in the middle distance, and in the background pillared ruins beside the river.
The photographer had just slipped the cap over the lens. The girl relaxed from her pose and turning looked right at Johnny. Instantly she gave a little shriek and clutched her throat with her left hand.
—O, it’s you! she said.
Her olivecolored skin blushed scarlet and she began to laugh.
—O, hello, Johnny said, and backed out and closed the door.
The girl had spoken as if she had recognized him or had even been waiting for him, but he knew that he had never seen a face like hers before. Seen bare and sudden in the white light, the face in the studio had burned its image so brightly on his memory that it was more like an afterimage than a recollection as he paced in the dark little gallery.
In this face innocence was strangely confused with sensuality. The upper part of the face, the patrician brow, the delicately limned eyebrows and the great blue eyes, childlike and almost unnaturally vivid, suggested purity and romantic sadness. But these qualities were lost in the barbarously lovely lower face. The cheekbones were wide. The jawlines swept in to a precise little chin. The nose flared from a fine bridge to wide nostrils. The mouth though not big was deeplipped and protrudent, and challenged the eyes for dominance. It was in a perpetual pout, as if about to offer itself for a kiss. Yet it too, this savage little mouth, when he had first seen it, had been touched by an expression childlike and tender.
Later, the door opened, and the girl came out. She was dressed in a white satin gown, chastely high at the neck and completed by a scarlet neckband, matching her parasol. Her hair, bound up to show her ears and brushed down in bangs over her forehead, emphasized the sensual breadth of her face. Her skin was a beautiful smooth olive, firm and free of blemish. Johnny couldn’t help thinking that the same olivecolored skin covered her whole body, including the breasts, which had been admired by the local experts. They did indeed command admiration, tilting steeply under the white satin.
—I didn’t mean to scream, she said. I saw you all down in the street getting ready to run, and I didn’t expect to see you in the studio. Why didn’t you run?
Her slight drawl was pleasantly Southern and vaguely querulous.
—We’re going to postpone it until the Fourth of July, Johnny said.
—Are you a fast runner?
—Pretty fast, ma’am.
—I’m a good runner myself, the girl said.
—How about a race sometime?
—You don’t believe me, do you? the girl purred. You’d be surprised how fast I can run. I’m as quick as a cat.
She gazed candidly into his eyes, her face turned up just at his shoulder, her eyes drinking his. Her lashes were long and coarse. The whites of her eyes were veined with little violet lines.
—I wouldn’t be at all surprised, he said.
He would not have been surprised. Doubtless, this olivecolored softness could be curved and sudden with catlike muscles.
The girl was still looking at his face when the voice of the photographer broke in.
—Come in, young man.
Johnny went in and had his picture taken. When he came out ten minutes later, the girl was still in the gallery, posing in front of a portrait with both hands on a femininely thrustout hip.
—Hello, she said.
—Hello.
—You’re John Shawnessy, the girl said.
—Thanks for letting me know, Johnny said, grinning.
To his surprise, the girl didn’t smile at all.
—You’re Susanna Drake, he said.
—How’d you know?
—From Uncle Garwood.
This time the girl laughed. Her laughter was like that of an excited child. While she laughed, she put her left hand on her throat.
—What did he say? she asked.
Johnny began obediently to recite what Garwood had said, omitting certain personalities. They walked down the stair together, and it was natural for Johnny to ask her if he might take her home.
—I’d be hurt if you didn’t, she said.
Outside in the Square, her scarlet parasol bloomed suddenly into a taut dome. Johnny was aware of hundreds of eyes turning to watch him. She took his arm, and they walked past the Saloon. She had a cute, bouncy way of walking, moving her shoulders with little thrusts and swaying her hips.
—Hello, Uncle Garwood, she said archly.
Garwood pursed his lips and nodded his head approvingly like a judge at the County Fair appraising a well-proportioned heifer. Cash Carney unlipped his cigar and delicately tipped the ash.
—I think I’ll go in and get my picture took, Garwood said. They give away such nice prizes.
—That boy is definitely ready to graduate, the Perfessor said.
—By the way, how did you know my name? Johnny asked.
—O, I’ve heard of you, the girl said. You write for the newspapers, and you’re very shy around girls, and you’re the most gifted boy in this County, and you’re very idealistic.
—Who told you?
—A friend of yours.
—Ah, the Professor, Johnny said.
—He’s the funniest man!
Susanna Drake began to laugh again, touching her throat with her left hand. Then suddenly serious, she said,
—I’m very idealistic too. Have you read St. Elmo?
—Yes, I have.
—Don’t you think that’s just the most wonderful book! I think it’s just marvellous the way she works for the redemption of that man’s soul! I could really love a man like that marvellous St. Elmo. Isn’t Mrs. Evans about your most favorite woman writer?
—I prefer Mrs. Stowe, Johnny said.
The girl stopped short and thrust him away with a violence that shocked him.
—That dirty slut! she hissed.
Fury poured up and down her body as if a big angry snake were coiling and uncoiling inside the
satin. Some of his amazement must have shown in his face, for this voluptuous fury subsided as swiftly as it began, and the girl leaned against him affectionately.
—Don’t pay any attention to me, honey. I just can’t stand to hear that woman’s name. It makes my flesh crawl. It really does.
In fact, her whole body went through a quick convulsion beginning at the knees and flowing up through her back and hunching her shoulders. She shivered violently and shook her head. That appeared to end it, for she emerged from her fit smiling sunnily and talking about other things.
—This is where I live, she said, when they had walked a block south of the Square.
They were standing at the bottom of a steep flight of stone steps that led up a high lawn to a house. Johnny thought he must have noticed this house before, as it looked vaguely familiar. It was not like any of the other houses in town. It was three stories high, and the front had five windows on it in the pattern of a five-spot in a deck of cards. The corniced roof had one little round window under the peak. There was a long, low verandah with small pillars.
—I just love this house, Susanna said. I always have ever since Aunt and I came to live here when I was a little girl.
—Do you live here all by yourself?
—I have two Nigro girls to do the work, she said. I’ll say good-by now.
She held out her small hand, and he took it, supposing that he was about to say good-by. But she allowed her hand to stay in his and remained standing on the first step, so that her head was on a level with his own. From there, she candidly studied his face, her mouth pouting.
—Where did you get that nice smile? she asked.
—That’s my St. Elmo expression, Johnny said, embarrassed.
That was just the beginning of it. It was half an hour before he had trailed her step by step all the way up to the door. Meanwhile they talked of a hundred things, Johnny listening for the most part, enchanted by this alien speech that flowed into his ears like a music vaguely remembered. Every word that she spoke and her manner of speaking, he reflected, was a legend of an alien way of life. This girl had been ferried through languorous days and nights and now stepped down into Raintree County, a barbarous creature with a stately name.
—You must come and visit me sometime.
—I’ll do that, Miss Drake.
—I’m Susanna to special friends.
—May I count myself among that select number, ma’am?
—You may.
—Susanna. It’s a beautiful name, he said. By the way, people call me Johnny, though it’s not special like your name.
—Johnny, she said, pronouncing the name in a special way. It happens to be a name I love, Johnny.
He watched her go in and saw her face a moment looking out ’at him through the glass doorpane, the pouting mouth touched with an expression of tenderness. As he walked back toward the Square, he remembered the measures of an old tune, racy, yet vaguely unhappy.
I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee,
I’se gwine to Louisiana,
My true love for to see. . . .
O, Susanna,
Do not cry for me;
I come from Alabama,
With my banjo on my knee.
He found himself thinking of those steep breasts nodding a pointed invitation from below the Mason and Dixon Line.
But his yearning wasn’t directed toward the girl he had just seen. Those days, all beauty reminded him of Nell. He was entirely faithful to this love that was entirely faithful to him by remaining in the image of unattainable beauty. Soon his innocent love-communion in the polysyllables of an antique tongue would end. Graduation Day was near. And besides there was a report abroad that Garwood Jones and Nell were going to be married.
As for Johnny Shawnessy, he had that day thrown off a garment of shyness. He had stood stripped to the waist in the Court House Square, shoulder to shoulder with the fastest runner in Raintree County. Who could say
WHAT IMMORTAL GARLAND WAS TO BE RUN FOR,
NOT WITHOUT DUST
AND
HEAT of the sun filled up the valleyground of the river. Mr. Shawnessy, climbing out of the surrey, carefully laid the Atlas facedown on the seat and covered it with a copy of the Free Enquirer.
—Might glance through my article, Pet, while I run over here and have a look at things. You children can amuse yourselves hunting for relics of Danwebster.
He opened a copy of the paper to an inside section. Sunlight on the white sheet smote the fine print into a mist under the headline:
HISTORY OF RAINTREE COUNTY, INDIANA
by Prof. John W. Shawnessy
He took a sickle and a covered cardboard box from the floor of the back seat, opened the gate, and stepped into the deepgrassed field.
In my best historical style, a language of inscriptions.
The origin and early development of Raintree County . . .
He stepped over the ribbed and rotten skeleton of a picket fence. Flies whirled from dried cowpads. Weeds boiled rankly from a filled-in cellar. He walked through a tiny stonehenge, the still vaguely human arrangement of a foundation. He picked his way through tufts of marsh grass approaching the river bank. In a far corner of the field, some cows gazed tranquilly at the intruder.
Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, disturbing this earth? In the marketplace of Rome, we ruminate the summer grass. We drop peaceful dung on the memory of Caesar. Hie jacet the noblest Roman of them all.
Among the earliest settlements in Raintree County was a community in the great south bend of the Shawmucky, a thriving town on the eastern approach to the County Seat, quaintly called Danwebster, in honor of the greatest name of the Ante-Bellum Republic. The swift decline and disappearance of this little town during and after the War is perhaps attributable to . . .
A pig thrust snogging and snorting from a hole under the remains of the mill.
Who goes there, bearing a sickle and a box of cut flowers? Where feet of lovers trod, our snouts grub roots.
He walked warily out on the remains of the dam and leaping from rock to rock crossed the river. He climbed the low bank on the other side, pushed into the river’s fringe of trees, and plunged through nettles and horseweeds, unsettling mists of mosquitoes. He broke from the cool shadow of the river-bordering leaves. Heat and light dizzied him. The waisthigh weeds clung to his clothes. He leaped a marshy ditch, wetting his heels. He paused for breath at the base of the railroad embankment.
Who goes there with a hook of iron and the damp corpses of flowers?
Historian of a vanished culture. Who lies here, sleeping by the river?
Here lies the memory of a little town, of golden and agrarian days and sainted elders on the porches in the evening talking of the Union. Here lies the white republic, founded foursquare on the doctrine of universal law. Here lies a preflood name, Danwebster. Who goes there, with memorial flowers?
A maker of inscriptions. Ave atque vale! Hail and Farewell! What path is this, cutting through the cornlands of the County?
Here lies the clean bright knife that slew an old republic. Here lies the sickle-armed castrater of the elder gods. Tread warily, crossing the pathway of new gods.
He scrambled up the embankment. The slight elevation raised him cleanly above the river-valley. The railroad was a long line rising in a gentle grade from the east to the point where he stood and waning in a gentle grade to the west.
Who goes there hunting for memorial stones?
An archeologist of love. I hunt old mounds beside the river. Who lies there sleeping in a hill of earth?
Level with the railroad, south, some fifty yards away, rising from the waves of a vast cornfield like an island in the corn, was a mound of grass and flowers.
Here lies the enduring bone, more lasting than historians of cultures. Here lies a white bone held in a bracelet of bright hair. Who goes there, bearer of a golden bough?
The hero of a lost inscription, the guardian of a
talismanic name, an answerer of riddles. Who lies there buried in the earth of Raintree County?
He saw the stones grayly protruding from the grass and weeds, some nodding to the ground, and on their tranquil forms frail lines of
June 1—1859
LEGENDS IN A CLASS-DAY ALBUM IN MEMORY OF HAPPY DAYS TOGETHER
at the Pedee Academy marked the close of Johnny Shawnessy’s schooling in Raintree County. The Graduation Ceremonies were the occasion of much sprightly newspaper comment. But no newspaper was ever to record an interesting thing that happened to Johnny on Graduation Day.
That spring, in nights of feathery leaves and sweet odors, Johnny lay awake thinking of the coming Graduation Exercises, the Class Picnic, and the Fourth of July Race. Waves of languor succeeded by waves of tumultuous energy made him mad with a springtime madness, and during these days, he decided that he would reveal to Nell Gaither that he was in love with her.
The way he did it was undoubtedly in the purest Johnny Shawnessy tradition.
The Graduation Exercises were in middle June. Everyone agreed that the write-up the following day in the Free Enquirer expressed with unusual felicity the spirit of the occasion. The article went in part as follows:
YOUTH FACES THE WORLD
(Epic Fragment from the Free Enquirer)
Frankly, we were touched at the sight of the blooming and blushful company of young academicians gathered for the final exercises in the yard of that little Parnassus of the West, Pedee Academy. We felt our own wasted boyhood resurgent in our breast as we looked upon those faces steeped in the immortal dreams of youth!
Before the conferring of diplomas, each graduate stood up and delivered an original composition. Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy, Valedictorian and Class Poet, recited by heart a long ode in which he bade farewell to classmates and academy. Friends and relatives of this upright young citizen were pleased to perceive that his poetical maturity has in no wise belied his early promise. Garwood Jones, Class Orator, delivered a bang-up oration in which he promised that the future of the Republic could be safely entrusted to the graduating class of Pedee Academy. Miss Nell Gaither, the Salutatorian, than whom no fairer flower ever adorned with its cernuous and supple stem the bedded banks of the Shawmucky, read an original composition entitled ‘A Rose of Remembrance in the Faded Garden of Love.’ This verbal bouquet, ornamented with some of the most odorous peonies of rhetoric, acquired no little of its charm from the circumstance of its being uttered by a young woman who unites in her person all the blandishments of beauty with all the witcheries of wit. At the end of this composition was a poem, which, we later learned, had been unexpectedly added by Miss Gaither. As we consider it a flower that ought not to blush unseen, we secured the author’s permission to print it.
Raintree County Page 21