Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge

  He held her hand in both of his, and some of his strength and bigness came into her. His big bearded face was serious, proud, a little flushed from the drive in. He was a handsome, powerful figure of a man, and being a man, felt no weak, womanly fear.

  —I’ll do the best I can, Pa, she said. I wish you weren’t going away.

  —I’ll stay right here, he said. I’ll be just outside the door. I’ll get a chair and wait. Now go right in and do your best, Esther.

  She left him then and went in through the door and took a chair at one of the tables brought in for the examination. The Court Room occupied most of the second floor of the building. Tall windows let in light from two sides on the gilded ornamental walls. Esther was so scared that she hardly dared look around. It would have been better had she stayed at home on the farm to tend the garden and help Pa in the fields. There were so many things that she didn’t know.

  Her friend, Ivy, a tall blackhaired girl with an aquiline nose, a big expressive mouth, and vivid brown eyes, came in and sat next to her.

  —I’m scared to death! How about you, Esther?

  They squeezed each other’s hands and waited. Several men were there, looking supernaturally intelligent. One had spectacles, greased black hair, and a bowtie. He talked with a loud nasal twang and was very sure of himself.

  —It’s nothing to be afraid of, girls. It’s a mere formality for a person of intelligence.

  There was a fluttering of dresses, pens, and papers as a man came down to the front of the room bearing the examination books.

  Esther started violently. It was Mr. Shawnessy. She hadn’t seen him since that single year long ago when he had taught the school near the Farm. In the flood of emotion that came over her, she felt as though she were a little girl again, and she was ashamed for Mr. Shawnessy to see her here, a pretender to knowledge, presuming herself able to take the school that he had once taught.

  Standing at the front of the room, Mr. Shawnessy said a few words about the examination and began to distribute the books. After that he wrote the questions on a large, moveable blackboard at the front of the room.

  Mr. Shawnessy had changed very little, it seemed to her, since the year 1866, when she had seen him last. His temples were a little higher, but his hair had no gray in it, and despite his heavy auburn eyebrows and mustache, his face had a youthful look, much less than his years, which she thought must now be about thirty-seven. His eyes, she saw, had the same remote, sad expression that she had remembered of old.

  She was so excited at this revival of an old emotion that she couldn’t hold her hand still to write her name on the outside of the Examination Book.

  The examination lasted for four hours. After her first panic passed, she found that she could answer most of the questions. From time to time, she looked up at Mr. Shawnessy. He was reading a book most of the time, although often he went over to an open window and stood leaning on it and looking at the Square. Once or twice in answering a question from a bewildered candidate, he smiled a little, and his face was so kind that she forgot her fear and wondered how it was that she had ever been afraid.

  Once when she glanced up, she found him looking at her, and she wondered if he remembered her. But his eyes were remote and sad, and she hurriedly looked back at her paper.

  As the examination drew to a close, several of the girls went up to hand in their papers. They giggled and joked with Mr. Shawnessy. Some of them, Esther noticed, were wearing earrings in the fashion then sweeping the County. Their round eyes, white teeth, and sharp, whispering voices, their jeweled heads, powdered faces, summerclad bodies assaulted the shy, lonely form at the front of the room as if to overwhelm him and bear him off a prize. Esther felt her face flushing with envy as she thought of her plain dress and her hair chastely bound over her ears.

  Around five-thirty in the afternoon, Esther was the last one in the room with Mr. Shawnessy. She was violently excited as she took the paper up to the front of the room and handed it to him. She was going to turn away and leave without looking at him, but he smiled and said,

  —Pardon me, but aren’t you Esther Root?

  —Yes, she said.

  —You were a pupil of mine at the Stony Creek School back in ’66?

  —Yes.

  —You had forgotten me?

  —O, no, Mr. Shawnessy.

  —Well, he said, it’s nice to see you again.

  She held out her hand gravely, and his strong hand closed around it for a moment.

  —I hope you get your position, he said. Was the test hard?

  —I think I passed it, she said. I don’t really know a great deal. I think I learned more the year with you than I have ever since.

  —You were a bright student, he said, the best in the school. I have no doubt you’ll pass the examination.

  They talked a little of the school system and the examination, as Mr. Shawnessy began to gather up the papers. She turned to leave. It was late afternoon, the light in the Court Room was changing, and the air held an odor of cigars, varnish, ink. She was very tired now that the examination was over. She said good-by and went to the door.

  When she stepped out, Pa was there. She had completely forgotten his promise to stay for her. She was so glad to see him that she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

  —I think I passed it, Pa!

  —I been here all the time, he said, thinkin’ about you, knowin’ you was makin’ out all right.

  —I was the last one through, she said. I stayed to the very last.

  They were both strangely moved.

  Esther’s voice was low, sweet, and fast as she and Pa walked down the stair to the lower floor of the Court House.

  All that day on the way home and that evening, she felt an unnatural calm as if some great thing had happened to her and passed before she had had time to appraise it.

  She had come up from the country in the June weather. A slim and consecrated maiden, she had gone into the place of examination, the masculine place. In the New Court House, she had found again one whom she hadn’t seen for ten years. She had seen his face and had touched his hand, she that was now a mature, comely girl with smooth red lips and budded breasts and jetblack hair.

  But she had noticed a sad hunger in his eyes at the coming and going of all the girls in their flowery dresses. She was thinking that perhaps she ought to take more pains with her person, and perhaps adorn herself with some kind of jewel as the other girls did.

  At night she stood before her mirror and looked at herself unclothed, at the slender outline of her body in the mirror, the dark shower of hair around her shoulders, her shining black eyes. She was thinking that she might be taking in the eyes of a man if she had an earring, a little globe of brightness just under each ear. Then with her hair bound back she might raise her face to that of Mr. Shawnessy (if she ever saw him again) and the light of his long blue eyes would flow over her face and catch the sophisticated glint of the earrings. Yes, she would have to get her ears pierced for earrings.

  She wondered if it would ever be possible in this world that she would one day hold her face up to his and they would look directly into each other’s eyes. It seemed to her that his eyes would look at hers with such a warmth and brightness that she would faint away, being as someone who had emerged from a dark place into a flood of sunlight.

  As she lay in the bed, she repeated the long afternoon in the New Court House, the questions that had been asked on the examination, the way the rooms and corridors looked and smelled. She repeated with infinite care the details of her brief conversation with Mr. Shawnessy. Then she thought of how she had come out of the examination room, and how in a sudden fit of wildness she had thrown her arms around Pa, finding him there, and had kissed him, and how his hands and voice trembled.

  It seemed to her that she still smelled on her smooth arms the odor of the New Court House, and that she held upon her spirit the whole mass of the building with its terrific ornamental t
ower. And it was peculiarly right that she had found, in the very quick and core of this stately building in the civic center of Raintree County, the living form of her teacher, Mr. Shawnessy, who had been away from her life for ten years.

  Asleep at last, she dreamed of the New Court House. She was wandering through its brown corridors hunting for the room where the examination was to be held, but something was wrong. The New Court House was not as it should be. It appeared that the tower had collapsed, and the wreckage had exposed once more the walls and corridors of the Old Court House, which had been hidden all the time within the New. Vaguely, she remembered the wonderful tower which had risen above the County in some earlier, happier time. She had gone there for a special purpose then. But more timeless, more enduring, musty, dirty,

  SMELLING OF TOBACCO AND URINE, THE OLD

  DETESTED RAMPARTS ENCLOSED

  HER

  —Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

  Preacher Jarvey removed his glasses. He was beginning to breathe hard.

  —Brothers and sisters, behold the Serpent! Hit is no ordinary serpent which I am about to describe to you. Hit does not go upon its belly like the common run of snakes. God had not yet cursed it down. This serpent is as big as a man. Hit has the arms and legs of a man. Hit has a long dartin’ head. Hit makes a hissin’ music with its tongue. O, there is somethin’ remarkable familiar and delightful to the eye about this serpent. Hit is a huge, charmin’, and deceitful creature, and here it is lyin’ in wait for the Woman.

  The Reverend Lloyd G. Jarvey had undergone a remarkable change. His body was beginning to writhe voluptuously behind the pulpit, his head made rhythmical darts and withdrawals, his eyes glared fixedly.

  —When did the Woman first see this damnably beautiful serpent? Maybe it was when she was swimmin’ alone in one of the beautiful rivers or lakes of Paradise, and all of a sudden there it is! Hits green eyes smile at her, hits tongue plays in and out, hit slides through the water beside her. When the Woman touches it with her hand, hits great back shoots up out of sheer pleasure. The Woman is charmed by this talented serpent, and it becomes her constant companion and plaything.

  Alas! little does she know what it is. Hit is no ordinary serpent.

  And now brothers and sisters of the congregation, we are approachin’ that fateful moment which plunged the world into darkness. For the Woman and the Serpent find themselves one day beneath the Tree. And the fruit is hangin’ low, a-temptin’ the Woman. And the Serpent beguiles her. O, he beguiles her and he seduces her with soft talk about the Tree. Look at it! he says. Hit’s wonderful fruit. Why shouldn’t you eat of it? But the Woman still has some slight stirrin’ of conscience. She is not yet completely seduced and corrupted. The Lord has forbidden it, she says. But let us see what the Book says upon this subject:

  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was

  July—1876

  PLEASANT TO THE EYES DURING THE CENTENNIAL SUMMER

  were the earrings worn by the young women of Raintree County.

  —Esther, Pa said, I absolutely forbid you to git any.

  —But why, Pa? All the girls have had their ears pierced.

  —I don’t want any daughter of mine gittin’ herself cut up so she can hang gimcracks in her ears.

  Pa spoke with an energy unusual even for him, and Esther didn’t pursue the subject further. But inwardly she felt a violent rebellion, such as she had never felt before. She was nineteen and ready to support herself with teaching. She felt that she had a right to be attractive.

  On a Saturday two days later, she saddled a horse and rode into town and went to a back room of a jeweler’s shop where the girls got their ears pierced.

  While she sat waiting for the operation, panic seized her. For the first time in her life, she was openly rebelling against Pa’s will. None of the other girls had ever dared to do it, and now she, his favorite, dared to do it.

  She watched the jeweler, a small uncertain man, fumbling in a drawer for his instruments. The back room was dark and cluttered with bottles and boxes. Esther began to feel that she might have fallen unawares into a nest of iniquity. The silence of the man hunting in the drawer became unbearable.

  —I don’t know whether I want my ears pierced after all, she said weakly.

  —This will hurt only a little, he said as he bent over her.

  His plain, drab face over her shoulder became, she thought, fiendishly intent, his eyes glowed, he seized her ear and touched it with a cold instrument.

  At the touch, she began trembling violently, and the courage all drained out of her. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. She shut her eyes. It seemed to her that she had fallen into the hands of a fiend who was about to plunge an infernal weapon into her and rob her of her purity, her religion, perhaps her life.

  At the same time, she foresaw Pa, the blackening skin of his face, his terrible anger.

  Suddenly and forcibly a hard point of pain pressed against the lobe of her ear. The ravished flesh stung under an implacable assault. Instantly, the pain was unbearable, and she screamed. But already, it was hurting less. She felt unwashably polluted, as the thin, warm stream of her own blood ran down her neck onto the linen cover he had tied there.

  A second time the hot pain stabbed her, and again there was the hot flow of the blood. The man dabbed at her ears with a cloth and tied a gut string in each ear to keep the apertures open. She was sobbing uncontrollably with pain and fear.

  —There, he said, a little alarmed. It doesn’t hurt now, does it?

  Suddenly she stopped crying. She felt that if she didn’t get out of the man’s office she would swoon.

  —How much is it? she said nervously.

  She gave the man a dollar and, dabbing at her ears with a handkerchief, walked hastily to the street.

  —Esther! someone said.

  It was Ivy Miller. Esther didn’t know whether she was glad to see Ivy or not. But she stopped and told her what had happened.

  —That’s nothing, Ivy said. I’m engaged to be married, and you must be my bridesmaid.

  She told how she was going to marry Carl Foster, and she began to run on about the arrangements for the wedding, which was to be in two weeks. One thing that she said came clear to Esther Root, whose ears sang with confused tongues.

  —Carl wanted to have John Shawnessy for his best man—you know, Mr. Shawnessy, the famous teacher. But he’s gone off to New York, and won’t be back perhaps ever.

  —Mr. Shawnessy has gone to New York? Esther said.

  Her ears stopped singing, and she felt cold and quiet.

  —Yes, Ivy said. He’s gone clear to New York, to be a great writer or something. I reckon the County ain’t fast enough for him. We’re just small shucks around here to a man like him. He went about a week ago, and there ain’t any certainty he’ll ever be back.

  Esther began to untie the horse. She climbed up and said something about having to go on home now because her ears were beginning to hurt. She rode off in the direction of home. She no longer thought of her pierced ears. Her stomach had a queer hot feeling, and her heart was very high in her chest. If he’s gone to New York, she was thinking, then I’ll probably never see him again. We’ll never see him again back here. It seemed to her as if all joy and promise had gone out of Raintree County.

  A half-mile from home, she decided to leap the fence and ride the path along the creek. The horse barely cleared the fence, stumbling a little, but she held him up and, tearing a limb from a tree, switched him into a gallop. Along the creekbank, tree branches brushed at her face, but she hardly noticed. Then she was almost torn from the horse by a violent jerk at the left side of her head. She kept her seat, but her left ear burned wit
h pain. A branch had caught in the tied gut and had jerked the earlobe open, so that the flesh hung trembling warm.

  When she got home, she went upstairs crying. There was no use trying to conceal the affair from Pa, and somehow or other she didn’t care.

  When he learned what had happened, he was angry even beyond what she had expected. He had never spoken to any of the girls as he now spoke to her.

  —See what you’ve done, Esther Root! he thundered. I told you not to git your ears pierced! What in the devil has got into you? There must be some young man meetin’ you in secret, like a common whore, and he must have put you up to it!

  She had got over crying now and kept her eyes lowered and said nothing. The rest of the family looked on in silent anguish. Even Sarah was abashed by the torrent of passionate language that Pa gave vent to. After a while, however, he shifted his attack to the jeweler.

  —What is the name of this goddam butcher of young girls? he said.

  Sarah told him who it was.

  —He’s done a lot of girls that way, Pa, she said.

  —By God, I’ll have his heart’s blood, Pa said.

  He fairly burst through the back door. Esther’s mother and several of the children went out and tried to stop him but there was no use.

  —I’ll cut the bastard in two for this, he shouted, so help me God, lurin’ young girls up to his place and cuttin’ ’em up! I’ll give ’im a cut with my whip he’ll not soon forgit. I’ll whip that bastard till he hollers for mercy. See that Esther don’t leave the house.

  He thundered off in the buggy, leaning far forward in the seat, his face flushed, his black eyes set hard on the road and glittering like obsidian. The whip went crashing over the horse. James and Ransome, the oldest of the boys, both saddled horses and rode after him.

  Before the day was over, it was known all over the County how Gideon Root strode into the office of the jeweler and cursed the man by every oath he could lay tongue to and how the jeweler pulled a pistol out of a drawer and threatened to shoot his assailant if he so much as put a finger on him and how James and Ransome Root finally managed to get their father downstairs, and a big crowd gathered, and lawyers and policemen closed in on the thing, and both parties threatened to carry it to the courts. It was one of the big stories in the County papers for weeks.