Jan Karon's Mitford Years

by Jan Karon

  He nodded, unable to speak. Rosie dropped the newspaper and they threw their arms around each other.

  “Oh, law!” Rosie said, weeping.

  They were both weeping, both clapping each other on the back.

  “I thought you mus’ be gone to glory.”

  “Not yet.”

  “This th’ mos’ su’prised I been since Santy Claus showed up at Sunday School.”

  They stood back and looked at one another, marveling. “You haven’t aged a day, and that’s the gospel truth.” Rosie Ponder was the most beautiful sight he’d seen since coming home.

  “Get in out of th’ heat, an’ set down where it’s cool. Sylvie, run see who th’ Lord done brought, praise God!”

  “I have a dog in the car.” He hated to say that.

  “We got Zippy shut up in th’ kitchen, bring yo’ dog on in. It too blame hot t’ set in th’ car.”

  They walked to the road together.

  “You a sight for these ol’ eyes.”

  “Forgive me,” he said, “for taking so long to get here.”

  “Didn’t know if I’d ever see you ag’in on this side.”

  He reached through the open window and clipped on the leash and opened the door. Barnabas bounded out and gave Rosie a good sniffing.

  “Hoo-boy. My Sylvie gon’ be headin’ fo’ th’ county line when she see this booger.”

  But Sylvie Ponder didn’t head for the county line. Barnabas lay at her feet as the three of them sat in the living room and drank iced tea and talked over the hum of the window unit and Zippy’s occasional outbursts from the kitchen. He hadn’t known such peace in a long time.

  “How old you be, now?”

  “Seventy. On the money. You?”

  “Seventy-fo’. Three kids, two went t’ Rus’ College, one went out on ’is own, got a nice brick b’iness…”

  “Eleven grans an’ three great-grans,” said Sylvie. Sylvie was tall and slender, with white hair. She wore a red cotton dress and quietly tapped her foot as if to some inner music. He thought her elegant, like royalty. “They all live right aroun’ here, close by.”

  Close by. Hardly any families lived close by anymore.

  “An’ Rosie, he went back t’ school awhile, went t’ Rus’ College his ownself.”

  “Went to night class an’ took religion an’ American hist’ry. I learned a lot, yes, I did. People say, ‘Rosie, what you gon’ do with all that learnin’?’ I say, ‘Enjoy it, thass what!’”

  He loved Rosie’s laugh, it was Louis’s laugh into the bargain. In his youngest son, Louis Ponder had been immortalized, a two-in-one deal of a rare sort. “You’re your dad made over. I loved Louis, he was like a father to me.”

  “He was a good one, all right. I still got ’is ol’ gun. That’s it up yonder.”

  The Remington hung by a strap on the wall above the bookcase.

  “I been wantin’ th’ Antique Road Show t’ come tell me what kind of value t’ put on it.”

  But, of course, a value couldn’t be put on Louis Ponder’s sixteen-gauge shotgun. It was priceless…

  Tommy was in town with his aunt and uncle, and he’d taken Rosie down to the fort he and Tommy built along the creek. Just fifteen yards from what had been a Chickasaw trading path, the fort was a masterpiece, pure and simple. It was the single greatest accomplishment of his entire life.

  He and Tommy had cut four young beeches from the woods by the creek, and with a hatchet hacked a six-foot-long pole from each, reserving the brush. Even with the hatchet, it was slow going. They hauled the poles to an old beech and leaned them against the trunk at a forty-five-degree angle, one at the north, one at the south, one at the east, one at the west. They stood on boards laid across his Radio Flyer, and using cow rope lashed the tops of the poles to the tree.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ His mother examined the welts left by chigger and spider bites; between the two of them, he and Tommy sported one hundred and thirty-seven bites. ‘And these clothes. Good heavens! What have you been doing?’

  He shrugged, as if to say he didn’t really remember or think it worth discussing, and because she was busy, she didn’t ask again.

  Everything they did to the fort had to be perfect, because what if he got polio like Albert Hadley and had to live forever in an iron lung? He wanted to leave something behind that was wonderful, that people would discover and be amazed at. The thought of getting polio and living in an iron lung made him crazy, but Tommy didn’t seem to care if he got polio or even died.

  They thatched the openings between the poles with pine and beech brush, knowing the beech leaves would cling on through winter and provide cover. Three of the openings were so thickly thatched, the dim woods light scarcely penetrated. The fourth opening led out to a deep trench, engineered to trap any outlaws and Indians who tried to take the fort. The trench was concealed with brush, and looked so natural they’d once fallen in it themselves.

  Though the trench was dug only three feet deep, it took days to shovel out the black alluvial soil, which they hauled upstream in his wagon. At a spot with a small waterfall, they dumped the dirt down the bank and made themselves a beach. He named the beach Pass Christian in honor of the real thing, even though the dirt was too dark to be convincing.

  They spent several more days covering their muddy tracks and the ruts his beat-up Radio Flyer had made, so their fort would be harder to locate by scouting Indians.

  Then, suddenly, the whole exhausting and exhilarating business was finished. He had wanted it to go on and on forever, even while dreaming of the wondrous result. The summer had passed without his knowing it.

  On the first day of school, he was oddly jubilant, knowing that the fort was waiting and belonged only to him and to Tommy. He felt bigger, taller, stronger, smarter. He blew past the creeps who picked on him last year about reciting poetry, and in his mind dared anybody to mess with him.

  It was a huge honor for Rosie to be allowed at the fort, and Rosie knew it.

  They were huddled inside, in a solemn darkness that smelled of limestone and water, leaf mold and sweat.

  ‘You th’ only one b’sides me an’Tommy that ever gets to be in this fort.’

  Rosie’s eyes were big, very big. He thought he should remind Rosie of the rules.

  ‘You know you cain’t ever tell nobody this fort’s down here.’

  ‘I ain’t tellin’ nobody.’

  ‘You might think you could get away with tellin’, but you cain’t. If you tell’—he made the scariest face he could imagine—‘somethin’ awful gon’ happen.’ It was mean to threaten Rosie, but it had to be done.

  ‘Even if somebody chop m’ head off, I ain’t tellin’.’

  ‘Cross y’r heart, hope t’ die.’

  ‘Cross m’ heart, but I ain’t hopin’ t’ die.’

  Rosie wasn’t like Tommy. Tommy would do anything, say anything, Tommy totally got it.

  ‘Okay, here’s th’ deal. T’day you get t’ do somethin’ you ain’t never done b’fore.’ He chewed his bubble gum really hard. ‘You git t’ kill Indians.’

  Rosie froze.

  ‘I gon’ climb that big tree out yonder an’ look fo’ th’ Chickasaw warriors. You know they still roam all over this place.’

  ‘They does?’

  ‘All th’ time, everywhere. On spotted horses, wantin’ their land back.’ Cold chills broke out on his legs; his scalp felt electrified.

  ‘Yeah, but what happen when they come an’ you up a tree an’ me down here?’

  ‘I can look out over th’ whole state, an’ soon as I see ’em, I’m gon’ holler they’re comin’, then I gon’ come down here an’ help you shoot. We’ll poke th’ guns th’ough th’ brush toward th’ path out yonder, that’s th’ warpath they’ll be ridin’ in on.’

  ‘Don’ see no guns t’ poke nowhere.’

  ‘Look around,’ he snapped. ‘We got guns all over th’ place. Use that muzzle-loader yonder, there’s th’ powder. Let ’em
have it.’ He could see the powder horn plain as day, and the rifle standing on its stock against the tree trunk. He wanted to say don’t shoot the horses, but when he said that to Tommy the other day, Tommy called him a fairy.

  ‘How ’bout if I climb th’ tree an’ you does th’ shootin’?’

  ‘I always climb th’ tree, I’m th’ lookout. It’s official.’ It was obvious that Rosie didn’t get it.

  ‘This tree sho take up a lot of room in here,’ said Rosie. ‘You chop it down, y’all have mo’ room.’

  Rosie didn’t get it at all.

  He slapped his rear pocket to make sure his slingshot was still there. ‘Cover me,’ he said to Rosie.

  Halfway up the beech, behind a full curtain of leaves, he leaned back on the branch he always leaned on; it was his certified station. He could see beyond the woods that bordered the creek, and across the field to the tree line where wild turkeys often appeared.

  He could see out, but nobody could see in. It was his favorite place.

  Every time he climbed the tree, he expected Indians. He would always expect Indians; it was the right thing to do, to believe with all your heart they were still out there.

  His mother said there were no Indians anymore. His Grandpa Yancey said the same. Miz Conroy said all the Indians had been converted and were living in trailers with radios and curtains. He didn’t believe this. How could a red Indian riding a spotted horse and carrying a bow and arrow go live in a trailer with curtains? It would be shameful.

  The scream was like ice in his blood.

  Indians could scream like that, he’d seen it in movies. His heart thundered as he reached for his slingshot.

  “Rosie!” he shouted. This was the real thing, and the guns in the fort existed only in dreams.

  The scream came again, and yet again. It was moving through the woods along the other side of the creek, a kind of running scream.

  And then he saw them in the clearing—two men, one fat and one scrawny, and a dark woman racing ahead of them as if everything under heaven depended on it, the screams not stopping.

  The dark woman in a torn dress was running for her life, and the woman was Peggy…

  Sylvie was in the kitchen; something smelled good, smelled like home.

  “Have you seen what’s going on at Whitefield?” he asked.

  “Oh, my, ain’t it beautiful!”

  “I don’t think I ever knew it was such a wonderful house. It was just where we lived.”

  “Always had plenty to eat, worked a big garden, had butter an’ milk an’ cream, right on th’ough th’ war. We saw some hard times out at Whitefield, what with things bein’ rationed an’ all, but I don’ recall ever feelin’ pore.”

  “The war was a scary time,” he said. “I was thinking the other day about your daddy, how all during those years he kept looking up at the sky, looking for enemy planes. I remember I started doing it, too. Long after the war ended, I’d catch myself looking up. You remember Rufe singing, ‘The biscuits that they give you, they say they’re mighty fine’?”

  “‘One roll’ off th’ table an’ kill a pal of mine!’ Rufe could sing, all right. Had a good voice. An’ he sho wanted t’ go off an’ fight. I remember he went to th’ courthouse t’ sign up, but you know he was blind in one eye, they wouldn’ take ’im. Daddy killed four or five squirrels—to celebrate, I guess you’d say. Mama made squirrel dumplin’s, you remember her squirrel dumplin’s?”

  “I do!”

  “An’ us settin’ there spittin’ out buckshot?”

  “Yessir! I’d give anything for a bowl of those dumplings, buckshot and all.”

  “Ever now an’ again, I dream about that little house at th’ edge of th’ field—Mama tryin’ to keep us boys in line, Ol’ Damn Mule bustin’ th’ough th’ gate an’ runnin’ off.” Rosie smiled and nodded, then looked sober. “An’ sometimes I think about that day you aks me down to yo’ fort. I was a kid when I went down t’ shoot Indians, but seem like I come back t’ th’ house a man.”

  “Yes.”

  “You done as a good a job that day as any man ever done.”

  “Grace,” he said…

  ‘Rosie!’

  ‘Who that screamin’?’

  ‘It’s Peggy! Git yo’ daddy’s gun an’ bring it quick, God A’mighty, hurry!’

  He saw Rosie break from the fort and streak like a rabbit toward the house in the upper field. Louis and his boys were working at the far side of Big Field, his father was in town at the law office, it was just him and Rosie.

  He was trembling so hard he could scarcely breathe; a crushing pain jarred his chest. Peggy was still running, and the men were catching up. She slid down the creek bank, splashed into the water, fell, and scrambled up the bank on the fort side. He found the stones in his pocket, he never carried his slingshot without stones, and tried to load one in, but it plummeted to the ground. Peggy was streaking his way, not screaming now but saving her breath, and one of the men caught her and knocked her down and fell on top of her.

  He loaded the slingshot again and pulled the strap back with all his might, and without thinking yelled, ‘God help me an’ help Peggy,’ and let the stone go and saw the man roll off Peggy, clutching his head, and she tried to get up, but the fat one forced her down and was tearing at her dress. He loaded the last stone and fumbled it into the branches below.

  His legs were water, yet he shimmied down the tree, desperate to run home to the safety of his mother, but he wouldn’t leave Peggy, he couldn’t leave Peggy. He screamed silently for Rosie to hurry and an eternity passed before Rosie was racing down the hill and he ran to meet him. Gasping for breath, Rosie shoved the sixteen-gauge shotgun into his hands.

  ‘Mama say it loaded.’

  He’d had two short lessons from Louis on his old Remington pump, one on how to hold it, one on how to fire it. He’d fired only four shots in his life, and the blast had kicked him so bad he landed on his butt every time, but now he had to do it right and he prayed again, begging God for help as he crept closer to the place where the hideous thing was happening. Still in the cover of the summer woods, he dropped to his knees at a fallen tree and sighted the thrashing head of the man on top of Peggy and knew that if he missed his mark, Peggy would be a goner and he and Rosie would have to run for their lives. The one holding her down would be a closer shot, and maybe he could get some pellets in the scrawny one at the same time. Anticipating the kick, he tensed his body so he could shoot straight and true and knocked off the safety and steadied the gun against his right shoulder and fixed the bead on his target, and fired, praying the shot would be directed by God and no pellets would hit Peggy. He was knocked onto his back and was up in an instant, seeing the fat man clutch his left arm, howling. The men had leaped up startled, and he pumped in a second shot and fired again as they turned and broke for the creek, one holding his arm and bleeding, the other one trying to yank up his britches as he ran. Now that he had the hang of it, he pumped in a third shot, aimed at the one yanking up his britches, and pulled the trigger.

  Peggy lay in the stubbled field naked and weeping, he had no idea what to do about Peggy being naked, he was burning with shame and fear, his heart pounding in his throat. Still clutching the shotgun as he ran toward Peggy, he heard the blast and felt the searing burn on his right foot. He saw the hole in the ground and how the right side of his high-top was blown away. Then everything went black…

  “What about Rufe?” he asked Rosie.

  “Rufe was nine years older’n me, he went out huntin’ turkey one Christmas an’ stepped in a hole, broke ’is leg. He laid out there in th’ cold for two, three days ’fore they found ’im. He was goin’ on seventy-some when it happened.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Lef’ a nice wife, three kids, nine grans, an’ five great-grans. Washin’ton, some fool hit ’im when he was walkin’ along th’ road. They never found who done it.” Rosie wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “We lost Link to alcohol, alcohol go
t ’im ’bout fifteen years ago. Th’ Lord lef’ jus’ me, th’ baby, with no brothers a’tall.”

  “I’m your brother. Just not a very good one. Do you remember?”

  Rosie rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and grinned. “Law, I was scared t’ death of that ol’ knife you cut my finger with, that knife you carried wouldn’ hardly cut butter. You was bound an’ determined we gon’ be brothers. Then you went an’ done it with Tommy Noles. Daddy say, ‘That boy be brothers with half of Miss’ippi.’”

  They laughed, and Sylvie joined them. Their laughter was profoundly moving to him, he wanted it to go on and on…

  ‘You th’ luckiest little weasel I ever seen,’ Peggy said. Her face was bruised and swollen, greenish in places; there was a bad cut on her arm that his mother had bandaged, and a gash hidden by her head rag.

  ‘Show me th’ place on your head,’ he begged.

  ‘I ain’t showin’ you no such thing.’

  Tears welled in her eyes as she swabbed Mercurochrome on his foot. ‘You my angel from heaven, thass what. I gon’ make you apple pie, ham biscuits, an’ lemonade ’til you old an’ gray.’

  His own close call had drawn blood, but nothing serious. He wanted to wear the shell-blasted high-top everywhere he went, but he couldn’t, because word might get around to the criminals and they’d know who did it. Every night, he took off his shirt and looked in the mirror at the bruise in the cup of his right shoulder, the sore place where the butt of the shotgun had kicked him—it was constantly changing color. He thought it beautiful and wished it would never go away.

  Louis brought the news from the square. Somebody at Whitefield had shot a man in the arm and put a wound on another man’s head. Some speculated they were the tramps living at the railroad tracks, and it was too bad the people at Whitefield hadn’t finished the job and fed them to the hogs.

  A rumor circulated that the duo had turned up at the door of old Doc Jamison, who, though he was said to be going on a hundred and hadn’t used a scalpel in years, obliged the fat man by gouging pellets out of his hide with a kitchen knife.