by John Ehle
“Which Belle is that?”
“Uncle Tinkler’s wife.”
“She your sister?”
“Why, I say she is. She’s the oldest.”
“I never heard that told,” he said, but it was so, he realized; there was a resemblance, though Belle was more round-faced than the other girls, was plumper. He supposed she got more to eat and had even less to do than the average Plover.
“My papa says he’s going to make a shed that—”
“Oh, hush that,” he said, aggravated.
She left at once, put out with him; she always left when he began talking gruffly to her. He told himself he was glad to be alone for a change, but a few minutes later he was off following after her, intending to show her home. “Mina,” he called. It wasn’t safe in the woods alone and he worried about her. “Mina!” He stood at the edge of his clearing and shouted for her, but she wouldn’t answer.
He came back to the cabin and crouched by the fire. A panther might get her, out there by herself. She had a charmed life, though, all those little blonde girls from that Plover brood did. Ernest Plover never set a guard on his stock, never kept his children in close to the fire, yet he rarely lost anything. Mooney had to bring his pigs into the house on many a night to keep the bears from them, and even so he had lost a few of the spring litters. He should build a stronger pigpen, he knew, but he hadn’t, he just hadn’t. Lord, he had meant to do so many things.
Damn her, he murmured.
Yet even as he complained about her, he wanted to be near her. He could hardly stand to be away from her. She was a spike driven into his heart, he told himself.
But he had to stop being so free and easy with himself, he thought. He had to work out some plan for his life.
He could go away. He could take her with him. But he wouldn’t have more in ten years than he had tonight. He didn’t want to leave, anyway. He guessed he couldn’t leave. Imy’s death had marked this spot for him, and the idea they had had of making a farm here was still his best thought. He could stay and marry Mina, but in ten years he would have nothing more than one pot in the hearth and maybe one in the yard, one horse, one cow—and, no doubt, a brood of children standing in every corner, all tow-headed girls, singing songs and beating on the walls, knocking the chinking out.
He paced and considered. He was occupied in such worry when he heard a beast up on the roof. He crept to the fire and got a small log that was burning at one end. He went to the door, unlatched it, and with a leap he went through the doorway, turned to the roof, the stick raised to throw.
There was nothing up there.
Then behind him, behind the cowshed, he heard Mina giggle.
He threw the log down. “Git,” he said to her, exasperated.
She came out from behind the shed, her palm laid aside her face, her tongue flicking over her lips, a comic sigh in her voice. “Why, I never saw the like of a door being opened so fast in my life. It was opened afore I even knowed it was going to be, and if there was a panther standing up there on them roof slabs, he’d a slipped and busted a leg from surprise. If I never see another door opened as long as I live, I’ll at least know how it’s to be done.” She sauntered on down to the house and stopped before him. “I come to be walked home.”
He fetched his gun. He put the pigs in the house for safety. He started across the clearing with her. But near the edge of the field he stopped, meditative yet, and looked off across the river valley. “Look at that land,” he said. “Think of what can be built there.”
The treetops were heavy with leaves, and the moonlight was shining on them as they moved.
“Clear that land. Haul and cut, burn and grub. Make a place here. A big house, spread out like the Martingales’. Another room on that cabin, or two rooms for youngins to sleep in. Floor in the loft besides. Put a kitchen house right where we’re standing with a big table. Drag rock down to the spring and build a springhouse. Put a privy in a shady spot. Make pigpens that not even a bear can break into. Get a flock of sheep. Get a big flock of chickens and geese. Have an orchard there above Imy’s grave. Have fields down in the river valley, growing hay and corn and such like. You hear me?”
“My papa says he’s going to make a springhouse—”
“A mill on the river with two great stones grinding like it did back home, people coming in from all over this valley to get their corn and wheat ground—”
“Coming in from where?”
“Can you see it, Mina?” He turned to her, but she didn’t even look at him. He took hold of her shoulders and shook her. “Can you see it?”
She pulled free furiously and stepped away from him. “I don’t see nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing down there ’cept trees.”
5
Mooney locked up his place one windy morning, shedded his cow, housed his chickens, tied his dog and left the pigs in the cabin. It was the first cool time of that year, and he went down into the valley, the dog barking after him; he stalked a deer, which wasn’t hard to do in a river valley on a windy day, for the wind sounds covered what noise he made.
The hindquarters of the deer had been ruined by insects laying eggs under the hide, but the front quarters were clean. He cut off one quarter, bundled it in the hide and carried it down the valley to where Lorry and her two boys lived.
He felt awkward about taking this present to Lorry Harrison when he had never given a present to Mina at all, but he didn’t feel like giving Mina anything, that was the truth of it. She was too much on his mind now as it was. Lord, he guessed she was ready to move into his cabin come spring; to post their bonds on a tree near the trail and claim marriage.
He moved to the door of Lorry’s cabin and studied out how he might go about this. He decided to do it simply. He laid the quarter of meat on the step, moving nervously, for he wasn’t accustomed to courting; he turned at once and hurried away, but before he even reached the house corner, her door opened and she spoke to him.
He stopped and faced her; he supposed she knew why he had brought her a gift, which made him feel awkward in itself. She said not another word, so at last he spoke up. “I can kill a deer just about any day,” he said.
“Is that so?” she said.
“I had that piece of one left.”
“I allow,” she said vaguely, as if she were still trying to adjust to his presence. “That looks like the best part of the deer to me.”
“I noticed that you didn’t go often to your father’s place, and he never brought you much to eat.” He stood stolidly, looking at her wonderingly. He looked out over the great clearing to where, near the spot her father was starting a big house, the Negroes were working, pulling corn ears from the stalks.
She pushed the cabin door open with one foot. “Won’t you come inside?”
“I have corn-cropping to do at home,” he said, but he didn’t move away. He saw one of her boys peek out from behind her skirt. Those two boys gave her an advantage over Mina, he thought, for they soon would be up to grubbing age. “I might come in for a little while,” he said. He picked up the quarter of deer by the hoof and carried it past her; he tied it by the meat twang on the rafter. The quarter was long and lean when hung. It was moist, too, and began dripping onto the earthen floor. The two boys stared up at it, their mouths open.
He went back to the door, where she was standing, watching him speculatively. She didn’t have the ready burst of smile and humor that Mina had, he would have to admit that. Mina would be talking by now about that deer meat and how hungry she was and how her stomach was growling. Oh, she could talk as naturally as she could splash into a pool of water, but this woman wasn’t as ready-witted or as nimble of tongue.
She didn’t have much in the way of possessions, either, he saw, not to be a rich man’s daughter. She had a table made of hickory. She had a Bible. She had a skillet and a hearth pot. There was a gun hung over the doorway, and her clothes and the boys’ clothes were hung on wall pegs. There were bits of yarn and s
everal colored bags of seeds. She had the pieces of a spinning wheel lashed to a rafter, and maybe the metal parts and a few pieces for a loom. There was only one bed, and it was nothing more than rag comforted.
He went outdoors and sat down on the step. She came outside and stood nearby, folded her arms and looked off across the field toward the river. The boys came to the doorway and stood there looking at her. They were handsome boys, and quiet, as if they had been scared by something. He guessed it was their grandfather who had beat down their spirits.
He noticed she was moving her foot idly in the dirt, and even such a small sign of nervousness made him feel more at ease. She had a pretty foot on her; he took note of that. Probably all her joints would be neat. Her foot was big enough, too, not over-small like Mina’s, whose feet and ankles were so frail-looking it was a wonder she could walk about all day on them.
“I killed that deer in a short while,” he said. “I had a string of dried apples, which I put back after Imy died, and I slipped a piece of apple in my shirt. You boys know about that trick?”
The boys shook their heads.
“It covers your scent, so a deer can’t know you’re about, for a deer can smell for as far as a boy or a man can see. I put my dog in the house, too, so it wouldn’t be smelled, or wouldn’t bark and run the game. I knew within reason there’d be a deer down there this morning eating leaves at the canebrake. I went down there, crept onto the valley floor below my cabin, and soon I heard a deer breaking. I crept along and found a pretty buck with two little peaked horns. He had a nice-looking hide on him, so I aimed and fired at his chest, and he leaped into the air like a dancer in a show. There was no corner to the way he moved, it was all smoothed out and curved, and his neck was curved, and he took into the canebrake, knocking down cane. He run like he had lost his senses.”
The boys were staring at him, their mouths open, their teeth showing, and Lorry was looking at him now, caught up in the story.
“ ‘Hoa, boy,’ I said to him, for he didn’t have a chance now. He went on through, knocking down cane as he run. That takes strength out of any creature, especially a creature that won’t sneak and cower, won’t bend and scrape through. He knocked down. He cleared a path through that cane big enough for two men to walk side by side. He wanted to show how strong he was, how nothing ever born could take him away from there, for a deer thinks that way, as if he’s owner of it all, not in a lordly sense like a bear, for a deer can’t make other animals leave it be, but he’s always able to stay somehow. ‘Hoa, boy,’ I called to him again, for he was losing blood and I felt sorry for him. I thought, Lie down, boy, lie down; this is the way it is and it’s as good a way to go as with wolves biting at your neck, or a big cat waiting for you when you’re old. ‘Hoa, boy,’ I said to him, standing not far away from where he was bleeding down. His eyes were big like buckeye seeds, and were as dark, and he seemed to be so wise and proud, and the red mark was running fiercely on his white chest. ‘What have I done to ye, boy?’ I said to him. He was weak and was beginning to look weary, like he wanted to lie down. He was sorry for what had happened, I could tell that. I went closer to him and spoke to him, but I stopped that, for what right have I to pity what I’d done, and pity what I’ll do again. It’s a fool’s habit to kill a thing, then act gentle, for it was for myself I shot him and for myself that I acted gentle.
“Then suddenly his eyes changed and I thought I better get out of there. That deer ass-tailed toward me afore I could do more than take one step back, and his sharp hoofs come up, God knows how fast they come at me, and I run tearing down that road he had made. I run, I tell ye.”
Lorrie was spellbound, and the boys were caught up, too.
“When I looked back, the deer was standing down at the end of that road it had made, looking at me, its eyes like buckeye seeds again, all the fire and fury gone. He was curved again. His neck was low and his head was almost on the ground. He was dull of mind now, seemed like. I watched him kneel forward on his front legs, and his tail was sticking up in the air like a bunny rabbit’s.”
The younger boy came closer; his face was solemn as an owl’s.
“His eyes wasn’t looking at me now, but they was open, and they was open even when he tumbled over on the ground.”
He let the words settle in good time, for he was done. The younger boy stood so close now he could be taken hold of, and the older one, Fate, was still holding to the doorpost, staring at him, not sure Mooney could be trusted, but unable to leave him be. Lorry once more was looking out over the fields.
“I weren’t in the woods more’n time enough to boil water,” he said.
“I declare,” she said.
“I can do it most any time.”
He said nothing more. He was talked out. He got up directly and brushed off the seat of his pants. When in the world had he talked so much, he wondered. Take that, Mina, she was the one who talked, talked herself clean of air, going on and on about a subject until she killed it deader than a shot boomer. This woman was so quiet she made a man talk, which was all right, he decided, as long as a man had done something of a morning he could tell about. “I’d better go let my stock out,” he said.
That night he sat up and tried to whittle Mina a plaything out of holly, keeping his hands clean while he was working on it, for it was a white wood. The plaything was to be a deer, and he had seen the deer clearly in his mind when he started, but his hands didn’t carve it right. He found out soon enough that it couldn’t have but one antler, and he couldn’t get the neck to do like he wanted it to, either. It was all a failure, so he went to bed, made nervous by his little bit of futile labor. He never had been one for doing work on something smaller than his own hands.
Why did he feel he owed her a present, anyway? he wondered. He hadn’t wronged her. Taking a quarter of a deer to another woman wasn’t a crime. Somebody had to take care of this other woman, for it looked as if her father wasn’t doing anything for her.
Next morning he milked the cow, then shedded the stock and went along the mountain, went east to the pond Mina knew about, and he sat down there and waited for her. Mina didn’t come; she never did anything she was supposed to, he thought. Nothing was there to occupy him, except the water rippling, and it was a lonely spot without her laughter and singing and fooling around, so he left soon after mid-day.
He went down to her clearing and saw her near the place her father was planning for a cabin. She was tending to the children, clapping her hands, showing them how to dance and prance pretty.
The jaybird in the sugar tree,
The sparrow on the ground;
The jaybird shakes the sugar down,
The sparrow pass it round.
All those little girls laughing, as if it were the funniest song they had ever heard.
The jaybird and the sparrow hawk,
They fly round together;
Had a fight in a brier patch
But never lost a feather.
Like a child, like a little girl just now. Not like she was when he held her, for then a look of knowing came on her.
The jaybird died with the whopping cough,
The sparrow with the colic.
Along come a terrapin with a fiddle on his back,
Inquiring the way to the frolic.
Laugh, Lord yes, and giggle, jump and dance, youngins, he thought, learn to sing like she does and sleep in the lean-to tonight, covered over by the weather.
He went to a branch and rinsed the worry-sweat off his face. I should have staked the horse out to graze, he thought; the horse could protect itself. He thought he might have left the cabin door open. He wondered if he had.
Way off he heard Mina singing.
He went through the woods toward home, but when he approached Lorry’s cabin, he entered the woods again; he decided to stop by there. He had no story to tell today, but he would like to see her again.
She wasn’t in the yard anywhere. He saw that Tinkler Harrison’s cattle w
ere grazing nearby, pulling at dogwood leaves. The two boys were not about.
The cabin door was closed. The door was latched on the outside, too.
He stepped back, struck by that, as if the latched door in some way rejected him.
After all, she might have suspected he would visit her again this afternoon. Maybe she didn’t like him as well as he had thought. He got to worrying about that.
He arrived at his own clearing at dusk, crossed through a patch of weeds and threw open the horse’s shed door. He stopped short, for the horse was gone.
“Hey,” he said aloud, confused for the moment. He hurried down below the cabin. “Hey,” he shouted.
There it was, tied to a bush.
Mina must have stopped by long enough to stake the horse. Well, he thought, a sweet girl she was and handy to have around.
He came back up to the cabin yard, thinking about the change which must have come over her to make her do even so mild a form of work.
He stopped short again. There was smoke in the air from somewhere. There was, he saw with a start, smoke coming out of the chimney.
He hurried to the cabin door. It was fastened. Who had closed and fastened it? Mina never fastened a door in her life, or closed one.
He pushed it open slowly. A hearth fire lighted the room and a beeswax candle was burning on the shelf, near where his razor was kept.
The hearth had been cleaned that day. The bed boards had been scrubbed with soapy water, for he noticed how white they were, and a fresh supply of leaves had been brought in. The floor was swept clean for the first time in a long spell, and fresh clay had been packed in the worst of the holes. Beside the door was a broom somebody had made. It had been cut out of a hickory sapling; somebody had sliced one end of the sapling to make the strands and had left the other end uncut, to serve as a handle. Beside the hearth was a second broom, this one made of twigs bound with leather.
In the hearth pot, meat was cooking.