Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge

  —Is it wrong to be pagan, Johnny?

  —I hope not, Johnny said.

  —Oft was I weary when I toiled with thee, Nell said.

  Her large, lovely mouth moulding and murmuring these words was itself a legend, a series of plastic attitudes. What she said no longer seemed important. But this flowerlike mouth, against which he wished to press his own mouth with undissuadable hunger, seemed important.

  —I feel so strange. Johnny, did you ever see the river so beautiful?

  The air seemed filled with a mist, through which nevertheless all things were seen with peculiar distinctness. Johnny Shawnessy felt islanded in languor, as the river flooded past on its journey to the lake. Somewhere far down on the greenwalled waters, boats were floating in a gay procession. He could hardly open his eyes against the greening brightness. He was tired with rowing on the river. He had dipped white oars a long time in the pale stream of the river.

  —My hair keeps falling down, Nell said, pushing it back. Did you mean to sit here a long time?

  —We might go ashore, Johnny said.

  —We’ll have to wade, Nell said. But I don’t mind. I feel so funny, Johnny.

  They took off their shoes and stockings and left them, along with Nell’s bonnet, in the boat. They stepped out into shallow water close to the right bank of the river and made for shore, where they sat for a while on the bank under Johnny’s oak, their feet trailing in the water. They talked in half sentences about the picnic and graduation. The afternoon ebbed and flooded around them in waves of warmth and stridulous sound. The murmur of the river was constant on its shoals and among its rushes.

  It was Nell who suggested that they walk over and see the Indian mounds.

  —I’ve never really gone up on them, she said. I guess they’re so close to our own land that they never interested me.

  —The two on the river here, I’ve seen often, Johnny said. And there’s another, isn’t there, across the field there?

  SCENIC VIEWS ALONG THE SHAWMUCKY

  (Epic Fragment from the Free Enquirer)

  The banks of our own not unclassic river vie with any in the world for scenes of historic and poetic charm. To those who celebrate the Tiber, the Euphrates, and the Nile, we say: When Rome first rose in templed splendor on her many hills, this river ran as now upon her centuried pathway to the lake, part of a mighty system of waters going to the gulf. Before the Parthenon was, this river was. When Babylon rose and fell, this river was. Its shores were dense in summer with crowding vegetation. Green frogs and greatwinged birds, more ancient structures than Egyptian columns, peopled its water and the circumambient air. What is older than the antiquity of life itself? We know not what ancient empires rose and flourished on these banks, or how often the syllables of lovers mingled with the vocal passion of the river running in the shallows. This river, too, has its human shards, and we dare to suggest that the true archaeologist of beauty will feel a deep, peculiar charm when he beholds the twin mounds upon the river’s banks, lonely undulations, mysterious hummocks, sole relics of races that flowered and faded on the Shawmucky without a Bible or an epic poet to keep their names alive. . . .

  Barefoot, they walked downstream to the twin mounds. The mounds were fifty feet apart and almost perfectly round—smooth humps fifty feet in diameter and ten feet high.

  —Think how long these have been here! Nell said. Hundreds of years maybe.

  A curious light hid living in her narrowed eyes. Pinpoint pupils burned in green pools, fringed by her lashes, each lash shiny and distinct. Scrambling up the slope of the mound, Johnny took her hand. It was warm and responsive. The odor of her hair and skin was in his nostrils.

  Thick grass covered the mounds. The dirt on top was brown and looked somehow old and pulverized. As they stood on top of the left mound, Johnny had a feeling that it was slightly resilient, as if roofed. The ticklegrassed earth was warm to the palms of his feet. He watched the river, a shining sheet of greenness.

  He started a little, hearing a train on the branch line. For a moment he felt like an anachronistic ghost from the antiquity of human days. He remembered suddenly the County, its fences and its boundaries, its sickleshaped railroad, its orderly farms, and its thousands of figures in suits and bellshaped dresses. He felt faintly sad and uneasy as the train made a quavering, distant cry. The cry expired slowly, drowned in vistas of afternoon. Frogs shouted from the shallows, the rushes swayed, the waterbirds were crying.

  When they left the mound, they walked out upon the bulge of a neighboring clover field. The hay was newly cut, but the fresh stubble didn’t hurt their feet. It was a small field, and on the far side, tufted with flowering weeds, was the third mound.

  They never quite got there.

  When they reached the haypile in the middle of the field, they stopped. Johnny was panting as if he had been climbing a steep hill. Absurdly, he felt as if it was the grass and clover-stubble on the bottom of his feet that took his breath.

  —My hair keeps coming down, Nell said.

  She stopped and plucking out a pin let the whole left side of her hair down around her face. She put the pin in her mouth and started to bind the hair back up again.

  —Let it fall, Johnny said.

  His voice was husky with the heat. Nell leaned back against the hay.

  —I don’t know what to do with it, she said. It’s such a nuisance.

  She looked directly at him and slowly took the pin out of her mouth. Her lips were parted.

  —I haven’t played in hay since I was a kid, Johnny said.

  —Me neither.

  He put his arms around her to lift her up and his hands sliding down to get a better hold felt her smooth flesh in the Raintree County dress. He touched his mouth to hers as she leaned deeply back in the hay. Her mouth was warm and alive. Her eyes were half shut, watching him, and her breath came and went in little quick gasps, drinking his. He put his arms clear around her and squeezed her hard, feeling her go limp. Suddenly, she was slipping away from him. He saw her bare feet and legs under her dress as she scrambled halfway up the new soft stack of hay.

  —Come on up, Johnny, she said, shaking out her hair.

  He sprang up and caught her and put his arms around her again. Her hair was all shaken down now, it touched his cheeks and shook around his face. In this dense hair was the warm, kissing mouth of the river girl, her white powderscented skin, her vivid eyes. He was amazed by the passion of her kisses.

  She still breathed with the quick little breaths, but when she lay back and shook the hair out of her face and looked up at him, she was strangely serene.

  —O, Johnny, she said. This was a long time happening. I thought you didn’t care for me.

  —I thought you didn’t care for me.

  —Who wouldn’t care for you, Johnny?

  She put her warm, bare arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers She knew ways of kissing that had never occurred to him. He didn’t know how long they lay in the warm sunshine. Much later, Nell said,

  —I feel so funny, Johnny. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. I want to do crazy things.

  —Like swimming in the river with nothing on? Johnny said.

  —Yes, Nell said. I’ve done that a lot. I always liked to swim that way.

  —Were you mad when I wrote that thing in the Enquirer?

  —I should’ve been. But I wasn’t. I wondered if you liked me.

  —You were beautiful, Johnny said. You don’t need to feel embarrassed.

  —It’s all right, Nell said. Besides I saw you too.

  —Me?

  —Yes, Nell said, blushing, with eyes averted. Two can play at that game.

  —When? Johnny said, blushing furiously.

  —O, several times, Nell said.

  —You mean—uh—before I saw you?

  —O, don’t ask so many questions, Johnny.

  Later when they left the haystack and walked back to the river, the sun was far down over the western bank, b
ut the air seemed moister and warmer than before. Johnny’s face felt swollen with heat, his body itched, he was covered with haystems.

  They sat at the river’s edge again and dangled their feet in the water.

  —It’s so hot, Nell said. Doesn’t the water feel good to your feet?

  The riverpool was a depth of green and clear. He leaned over the water, aching to plunge his hot face into the river, to hide a thought that was too bold for Raintree County.

  —If we could only have a swim now, he said.

  —It would be sinful, Nell said. What if someone saw?

  The way she said it, he knew that she had said yes.

  —No one ever comes down here but us. Everyone else is way down the river by now. We could just go in for a little while and get cool.

  —I wouldn’t do it with anyone but you, Johnny, Nell said.

  When they undressed, she stood on one side of the great oak by the river, he on the other. Undressed, he wished he hadn’t done it.

  —How are you, Nell?

  There was no response behind the tree.

  —If you’d rather not——

  —Here I go, Nell said.

  She stepped down the bank and into the water. And before he himself plunged desire into the cold pool of evening, John Wickliff Shawnessy, the budding bard of Raintree County, intently watched a rippling mark like the stain of a pressed flower on a page of verse, a signature of mortal beauty

  ON ONE OF RAINTREE COUNTY’S

  MOST EXCITING

  TWIN

  MOUNDS and a mound and lettered stones, the Danwebster Graveyard was a formal garden of death, which life was slowly reclaiming to formless fecundity.

  Mr. Shawnessy listened—he had heard a distant sound and at the same time a rush of voices by the river. Perhaps the children had cried out, but he had thought that the voices called his name, not as he was called today but as he was called in the old days before the War.

  —Johnny!

  The name had formed suddenly from mixing sound. It had been uttered in a warmly personal way, with a touch of sadness and even of alarm. He listened, his ears still troubled with the sound.

  He had remembered love, bare arms embracing, nakedness and young mouths kissing; he had remembered a mythical and seldom remembered boy.

  He listened to hear if the imagined call would be repeated, to hear if some voice speaking from the lost days would say again the talismanic, youth awakening word.

  But instead there was a troublous sound, a rhythmical and rapid sound across the land.

  He watched for the first appearance of the train. Standing among the stones of the Danwebster Graveyard, he was in the attitude of one who listens, a little fearful, for a necessary thing. His heart beat quick and hard, he felt as though the visual impact of the train would be an unendurable violation. He listened, hearing from the archaic valley of the Shawmucky, voices of urgency and faint alarm, calling

  June 18—1859

  TWO CREATURES PLAYING WHITELY IN A RIVERPOOL BY THE TWIN MOUNDS

  stopped and held themselves half-submerged, listening. Great birds plunged squawking into flight from feeding places near shore. Frogs sprang among reeds in quick flat leaps.

  The name ‘Johnny’ echoed between the walls of the river, up and down the milelong valley, ebbing and dwindling, renewed, insistent.

  The two white ones now swam and waded from the river to the shore. The voices calling ‘Johnny’ called also now the name ‘Nell,’ and the names mixing and blending reverberated on the twilight river.

  The two from the river now asserted their fundamental difference, the one by pulling a pair of trousers up his legs, the other by pulling a dress down over her head. There were a few moments of panting speechlessness while Johnny Shawnessy and Nell Gaither resumed the garments of Raintree County. Johnny had a brief view of Nell bending over and pulling up pantaloons beneath her gown while from the unfastened top of her bodice, her left breast spilled out silkily. Then for the first time, though almost clothed, she looked to him naughtily nude.

  —O, dear! Johnny! she said, in a forlorn small voice, my hair’s soaked.

  —Get out to the boat, Johnny said. Get yourself wet on the way. We’ll upset it and say we couldn’t right it.

  They waded to the mudded boat, grabbed out their shoes and stockings and Nell’s bonnet, pulled the boat off the bar, and tried to upset it. It wouldn’t upset.

  The calls were close. Johnny recognized the voices of his brother Zeke, Garwood Jones, and Cash Carney. Three figures were barely visible in the fading light walking along the left bank.

  —Here we are! Johnny yelled.

  He helped Nell into the boat, took the oars, and rowed toward the three boys, who stood waiting on the far shore.

  —Where’ve you been? Garwood said. We thought you were drowned.

  Johnny said something about walking back from the river to find the mounds, getting lost, and upsetting the boat.

  —We got all wet, Nell said.

  She laughed, nervously touching her soaked hair. But Johnny could see that the boys on the shore were not amused.

  —Better come out of there, John, Zeke said. Just leave the boat tied here.

  —What’s the matter? Johnny said.

  He heard voices over by the road, men talking, boots in the underbrush.

  —What’s the matter, anyway? Johnny repeated. What’s everyone excited about?

  —Come on out, Garwood said, and we’ll tell you. I can see you don’t know.

  —You better take Nell home first, Zeke said.

  —We better get out, Nell said.

  They had been putting on their shoes and stockings and now climbed out of the boat. Lanterns were flashing in the underbrush. Several men were crashing down a path to the river. A strange voice called out,

  —Did you find ’em?

  —Here they are! Cash yelled back.

  —We better tell ’im now, Garwood said. Nell might as well hear too. Before these guys get here.

  However, the men were already there, at least a dozen in the dim light, and they all had guns. A heavy, blunt-featured man thrust a lantern from face to face. Johnny shrank back from the blazing light, hair dripping. He didn’t remember ever having seen this man before. He couldn’t identify the other men. He blinked sheepishly.

  —Is this young Shawnessy? the man said.

  —What’s the matter? Johnny said.

  The man thrust the hot lantern in Johnny’s face while the other men all crowded in close, breathing hard.

  —Listen, young Shawnessy, the leader said menacingly, if you know anything about this, you better come clean.

  Johnny felt the flesh on his face crawl. His fists knotted.

  —I haven’t told him yet, Garwood said.

  —Listen, Shawnessy, the man said, if you had anything to do with this, you’d best tell, or by God, we’ll beat the livin’——

  —Say, what the hell! Zeke said, shoving the man back with an openhanded blow on the chest. What makes you think the kid had anything to do with it? Lay a hand on that boy, and I’ll smash hell out of you.

  —Take it easy, Zeke, the man said, angrily, but he stayed back.

  —What’s the matter? Johnny said.

  —It’s the Perfessor, Garwood said. He’s run off with Lydia.

  At first Johnny felt a wild desire to laugh. Then he went all weak in the knees.

  —How do you know?

  —They were seen, Garwood said. They tried to catch the train at Three Mile Junction. You two disappeared, and some folks thought you might be in on it. We said no, but they had to know for sure. What were you doing anyway?

  —I told you, Johnny said. We upset in the river.

  —It looks funny to me, the man said. Young Shawnessy, they say you’re a good friend of this bastard’s. You have any idea where he might’ve gone?

  —If you mean Professor Stiles, Johnny said, no, I haven’t the slightest idea. Maybe it’s all a mistake.
r />   —It’s a mistake all right, the leader said. Nobody can come into this county and run away with a preacher’s wife.

  —They have sinned, a mournful voice said, and they shall be made to pay for it.

  The Reverend Ezra Gray was standing to one side. He had a shotgun on his arm. His eyes glowed with a cold, determined light. He looked strangely happy.

  —I don’t think this boy knows anything, another man said. Let’s git out of here.

  The men went away from the river toward the road.

  Garwood, Cash, and Zeke stayed with Johnny and Nell.

  —The Perfessor’s gone and got himself into a hell of a mess, Garwood said. There’s at least a hundred men out looking for him.

  He listened until the footsteps of the posse were faint.

  —You got any idea where he is, John?

  —No, Johnny said. Honest.

  —I got a plan, Cash said. Let’s get another horse at John’s and see if we can find him. If he’s in the County, he’ll be killed sure unless somebody helps him. The Reverend’s out for blood.

  —They’ve got every road around Freehaven covered and men planted in the train stations, Garwood said. The Perfessor hasn’t got a chance in a hundred of getting out alive. He and Lydia missed the train at Three Mile Junction and went back east from there. That’s the last anyone’s heard.

  —First we got to get Nell home, Johnny said.

  —Please don’t bother, Nell said. I know the way.

  She turned and plunged into the bushes, running.

  —Wait, Nell! he cried.

  He ran after her and caught up with her.

  —Please, he said. I’ll take you home.

  She whirled around facing him, breaking his hold on her arm.

  —Let me go, Johnny! Don’t touch me!

  The small face with the wet hair plastered around it had an imperious, tragic look, though it was hardly more than a pale stain in the darkness and the eyes pools of shadow.

  —I can get home by myself. Good-by, Johnny.

  The words were a command. He could hear her running and running in the forest fringe of the river. He rejoined the three boys on the bank.

  —Let ’er go, Garwood said. This is serious. We got work to do.

  —What’ll we do if we find them?