by John Ehle
As she poured the water into the fireplace pot, she said, “He was at the spring this morning.”
Mooney got out of bed at once and took his rifle from the wall.
“He’s the boys’ father,” she said.
He stared at her, seeking some sign of her deepest thoughts, then set the gun aside.
She put a handful of beans into the water, then took the pail and went out to milk the cow. All the while she milked, she watched the woods, wondering where Lacey was and when he would show himself.
She was working in the field when his shadow fell on the ground before her; slowly she straightened. She was as firm as flinted stone, he saw. Age had toughened her. Her eyes were a darker blue than he had remembered them to be. Her lips were thin now, and not as red as sometimes they got to be near the fire heat. Her hands holding the hoe were rough.
Beside her Verlin stared fearfully, his mouth partway open, his teeth showing.
Lacey smiled. He bowed in a courtly way, and said, his voice light and deceiving, showing none of the secret dark currents within him, “I was walking by and I dropped in to see how you are, and I see you’re getting on well.” His gaze scanned the hillside to where the cabin was. The big man was somewhere down there, but was not in sight now.
“You’ve been gone a long while,” Lorry said.
“Yes. How are you, Lorry?”
“I’m working yet.”
“I see you are. And this is Verlin, is it?”
“Yes. Say hello to him, Verlin.”
“Hello,” Verlin said, whispering.
“You look like your uncle Grover, did ye know it?”
The boy replied but so softly the words couldn’t be made out.
Lacey, embarrassed by his staring, turned to look at the crops. He looked about approvingly, speculatively at what he saw. “My, you got a nice place here, Lorry.” He started on down the hill. “I tell you,” he said, “you got a world of work already done on this homestead.” He stopped to gaze at the crib, as if he had never seen a crib before. “Why, it’s bold enough to hold corn for two families.” He turned to Verlin. “You make that, boy?”
Verlin stared at him, still unable to adjust to his presence.
“And look a there,” Lacey said, turning to gaze at the cabin. “It’s a house sturdy enough to withstand any sort of weather.” He moved to it, stopped at the door, stood there reflecting on the contents of it, this poverty home of his own wife and sons.
He turned suddenly, was about to speak when he saw the warning look on Lorry’s face.
“Why did you come here, Lacey?” she said.
“Is the man about?” he asked.
“I don’t know where he is. Maybe watching from the woods, where I expect you’ve been all morning. Maybe now you’re here and he’s watching. Or maybe he’s gone down to the river.” She walked past him and entered the cabin. She went to the fire and stared down at the hot-burning coals. “You’d best get away from here,” she said.
“It’s not so easy to leave, Lorry.”
“Go on and let us be.”
“You was fond of me once—”
She swung on him. “No, not now—”
“Maybe you’ll be again.”
“Lacey, for God sake—”
“I come to dinner,” he said. “You going to ask me to stay?”
A shadow fell on the floor and they both swung around.
“He can stay,” Mooney said.
17
The family sat at the table in the cabin, and Lacey told about a white bear he had seen near Watauga, which he and others had sought after for part of one winter, had trailed through cold and snow and ice and fog. When he finished the story, he commenced to tell about a creek beside an Indian village in Kentucky that rolled uphill. He told how the fallen leaves floated up hill in it, told it all with a light manner yet an honest voice, winking now and then at the boys, remembering for them every detail of the stories he had told about, even the color of the leaves in Kentucky and the ways the Indians talked.
The boys were caught up in his recitations as if they were prisoners to him, but Lorry looked on sternly. She wasn’t even eating; she was sitting there watching Lacey, remaining solemn when Lacey laughed, then looking at Mooney, who was cautious now and severe.
Lacey seemed to notice neither of them; his eyes were on the boys, his smile was flashing at them as he told them about an Indian he had known in the Cumberland who had carried three rifles with him wherever he went, and could shoot a pine cone off a tree from forty paces. He talked about the Watauga settlement, told them how the houses were located near the road, and where the two mills were, and how the men took to Indian fighting. He told about the food parties they gave, and how the pies were stacked one on top of another. A buxom woman would slice through the whole stack, take out a piece as tall as a man’s hand and put it on a tray, to be eaten by anybody who had a taste for pastry. This was after the chicken and turkey were gone, and the hams, which were eaten either cooked or raw, for he said cured hams could be eaten raw, and after the deer meat was eaten or fed to the dogs, and after the corn bread was cold. He told it all, and about the coffee steaming in his throat and gurgling in his stomach. He told about the white whiskey they drank, too, and the wine made from wild grapes, and remembered everything about a hunt he had gone on into Indian country.
Mooney sat across the table from him, eating little, watching him, and now and then noticing anxiously the way the two boys leaned expectantly toward him. Now and then Lacey would laugh, and Mooney would listen to the laughter as if seeking to identify it in his mind, as if trying to find out what reasoning there was in it or behind it.
“You boys go outdoors,” Mooney said suddenly, interrupting Lacey.
The boys looked up at once, surprised and baffled. Lorry stared down suddenly at the table top. Lacey, who had been stopped in the middle of a sentence, had his mouth open yet. A half-laugh started, and he said, speaking softer and more apologetically than before, “I’m not quite done with my story.”
“Go outdoors,” Mooney said.
The boys, still confused, backed away from the table. Suddenly Lacey reached out, caught Fate’s hand, held it as if he couldn’t afford to be parted from the boy just then, and Fate, not having been touched by his father before in his own memory, seemed to consent to be held.
“Go outdoors,” Mooney said, and when Lacey seemed about to object again, Mooney brought his hand down on the table, struck it a blow that scattered two bowls to the floor and so startled Lacey and frightened Fate that he ran out the cabin door.
Lorry awkwardly knelt and picked up the bowls, and without a word set them down near the hearth. She stood at the fireplace, looking down at the coals, her back to the two men at the table.
Lacey cleared his throat uneasily. He smiled. “I’ve not had a better meal in some time,” he said. He took a piece of meat from his bowl and chewed on it, the juice dripping down along his fingers. He licked his fingers. “You can cook just like always, Lorry,” he said in a relaxed, friendly way.
Lorry didn’t know how he could remain so calm in a situation swelled by animosities, one so complicated in relationships that she could sense a dozen currents. She wondered about Mooney, about what he might do, whether he could control himself for long. She wondered about herself, too, for, seeing Lacey again, she knew she cared for him, not in the full-hearted, girlhood way of years ago, but she loved him yet. Each man was the father of the two boys, each in a way, and each one mattered to her.
The baby inside her began to move, as if seeking life of its own now, as if reminding her of itself and its needs.
“You hunt much?” Lacey said.
“I stay here at the place,” Mooney said.
“You have a fine place,” Lacey said, glancing about at the uneven walls. Above them the loft floor had warped and had many cracks, and from above the loft, light filtered down through the roof boards, which had cupped, too.
“This
is only the start,” Mooney said.
“Oh, it’s got prospects, I see that,” Lacey said. “It should be worth a lot of money. I was thinking about that while I was eating.” He took another piece of meat out of his bowl and chewed on it. “I have some land in the Cumberland, there near the bend of the river where there’s a place called French Lick, which was a buffalo stand once, where there was thousands of white buffalo bones when I first come there, back when the place was Indian land.”
Mooney listened, not moving even in gesture.
“I have a piece of land there that’s flat as this table top, have a section of land bordering on the river. A man can float his goods down that river to the French trading places, the Indians say. It has big possibilities for development. I bought it from a man in Morganton and have it in my mind to move out there permanently with my family.”
He waited. Not a word was said. Lorry didn’t even whisper an answer.
“I was thinking yesterday that I could buy a work horse from old man Harrison, and a little cart, and I could put on it all the things that are needed for my family, and start out. The first night we would stop up on the ridge and make a fire and cook our supper, and the next morning we would walk on down to the river. We would cross that maybe afore sundown, then go on west, following its banks, not often leaving the banks until we got to Watauga. I know so many men there I could trade easily for stock. Then, after resting, we could move on to the Cumberland, to where the settlement is starting, where it’s well under way, where the land is rich and so deep a plow can never touch the bottom of it. We could be there in five or six days.”
Once more he waited. Nobody said anything.
“I went away to find such a place,” he said patiently, “and I wrote a letter once I found it.” He hesitated, for Lorry looked up at him, surprised. “Did you ever get it?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“I thought maybe you’d not, for I had no answer. I asked in the letter if there was need to come fetch you and the boys or if you could bring them on out there. I got no answer, so I came here to claim what’s mine.”
Again, as if resting to a stop, he paused. Mooney sat still and sullen, waiting.
The shadows of the boys came closer to the door. The fire burned lower in the hearth. Lorry stood nearby, glancing now and then at Lacey, but revealing no personal commitment at all.
“Mountain land can be good land,” Lacey said simply. “The trouble is that getting one’s stock to market is not the easiest journey in the world. A man can have a fortune in stock up here, but have it closed off from markets by the hills and by the wild things and by the rivers. So no matter what a man owns, he’s not wealthy, for a man can never hope to free himself from the place he’s in, from what the place is.”
“I’ll get the stock out when the time comes,” Mooney said.
“How many days of stock-driving, do you suppose?”
“I’ll get through,” Mooney repeated.
“They tell me that the piece of land I have on the Cumberland is the best one in the west. A new country is going to spring up out there, one far off from the old one.”
“We’re far off from the old one,” Mooney said.
Lacey studied the shadows near the door where the boys were, then looked up at Lorry, who gazed back at him unyieldingly. He grunted, showing slightly the irritation he felt. “Nothing better than sitting in a cabin thinking,” he said. He lapsed into quiet, and seemed to be considering deeply some friendly matter. “Would you care to swap?” he said, speaking so softly that the others could scarcely hear what he said. He leaned farther across the table. “I was thinking I could stay here and work this place, with old man Harrison once more close by. It’s not what I planned on, but I would rather be back within his shadow than off alone. And you could take my place alone.”
“I’m not anxious to move,” Mooney said.
“No, I thought not,” Lacey said. His fingers began tapping on the table top. His gaze moved about the room, from the gun to the powder horn to the shot pouch to the yarn to the bags of seeds, to Lorry standing at the fireplace. “Is there any other trade that might be made?” he said.
“No,” Mooney said.
The incident here in this cabin, with her standing so straight and unrelenting, closed off his hopes for the coming days, Lacey knew, and even ruined, like wine turns sour, his memories of the family, of the Virginia times spent with them. He felt a helplessness, as if his past were being robbed from him and his own future altered, and in a way denied him. He had lost his history, his children, his wife, his home, his hope, all gently gone, all taken by the orderly minded man before him and by his own and the man’s silent wife. “What are the boys to be? Farmers, too?” Lacey asked.
“So I intend.”
“In this country?”
“Yes.”
Lacey thought on that. “I’ll give you my farm on the Cumberland. Take them both there, and take Lorry. There’s more of a chance there.”
“I don’t accept. I’ll not take favors.”
“Favors for my own? Do I do favors for my own? I don’t do a favor for you, but let me do a favor for them.”
“We’ll keep this land,” Mooney said. “You work your own.”
“Work it for what? I have no need of it. Nobody farms for himself; it’s a family way to do.”
“You keep it.”
“I’ll give it to her, or I’ll give it to them—I don’t care. But let them have a chance at it.”
“No,” Mooney said, “we’re well set here.”
“Well set?” Lacey said, dismay rising swiftly, but he controlled it and said no more. A helplessness seemed to come over him, and after a moment he got up. He stopped before Lorry briefly, then went out the door, and the bright sunlight dazed him.
His boys stepped back against the cabin wall and stared at him.
“You all right?” he said, not expecting them to answer, wanting to speak to them, that was all.
When he was near Imy’s grave, he turned to look back at the cabin. He saw that Fate had come partway up the hill and was standing near the lambing pens, watching him. Lorry had come to the door and was standing in the shade. Suddenly anger came over him because of her, for not a word had she said in his behalf in all that brutal conference.
“My God,” he whispered, viciously angry with them, with her. “My God,” he said aloud, and turned and went up the hill and out of the clearing, and on up the rocky path to where his horse was. He mounted it and started along the path which went above the clearing, anger rising in him thickly.
Suddenly he stopped his horse and sat there, trying to get control of himself. When he felt calm once more, he nudged the horse forward, fighting to control his bitterness, uncertain what he would do to relieve it.
18
To Lorry the falling of the rain, the growth and drying and breaking of green things, the cooking and eating and washing of the arms and hands and necks of the boys, the laughter in the firelight, the growth of the baby inside her were part of a pattern, as routinely and consistently drawn as the daytime light cast on the cabin floor through the summer-open door. Birth was natural. She had no worries about it. The birthing would be a day or a night of pain, with the old Negro woman tending her, as she had helped with the other births in Virginia.
The work—digging and cutting away, lengthening the open spaces, felling trees and skinning logs, chopping bark for the tanning trough, the daily chores—helped take up her mind so that the baby due to arrive was a relaxing thought.
The lambs were gentle in the field, she thought, but no more gentle than the baby would be, clutching at her breast, enfeebled by youngness and the efforts of being born.
Waiting for the bread to brown was a time she liked to think about the baby, or waiting for the boys to climb the ladder to go to sleep, late of a night when weariness came over her, or the time when she lay in the bed and waited for the wolves to hush, or waited for the distant crow of
her father’s rooster and the answering sound of the German’s rooster from farther off. She would listen to the cabin creak and listen to Mooney breathe, listen to the boys turn on their pallets upstairs, and think about the baby.
Only when she thought about Lacey Pollard did she sense a tightening of the nerves. She and Mooney had not seen him in the weeks that followed their meeting. They did not talk about him, but he was in her thoughts, and in Mooney’s; she could tell from a tenseness and wariness in him, and the way he watched the woods around the clearing. Tinkler Harrison had come to Lorry’s cabin to tell her that there were those who said Lacey had gone away, to Watauga or the Cumberland, and others claimed to have seen him in the forest. Harrison added with full anger that she was setting all that valley out of joint. “When you choose the wrong man, you send the other man limp,” he said.
Harrison’s visit had been a brutal time. Mooney had come stalking down the hill, asking in a hard voice what Harrison had come to say, what he meant to try to do. Harrison mounted and left, frightened as she had not known him to be frightened for years past.
Mooney would put up with no hesitation; firmly he held the family unto himself, refusing to consider a contrary way. He had no patience with the idea that the law required her to go with Lacey; the law had sent him into a slavehood for twelve childhood years, he told her; what did he care about the law? There was no law here, anyway, except the ways of justice. The notion that the boys belonged to Lacey did not deter him either, for they were his by choice, by rights stronger than the happenings of an act of passion on a distant night. And wasn’t she bearing now a child of his own?
She was grateful for his sureness; she wanted him to decide the issue and to permit no doubts to arise. And now in the birth she must bear well, she knew, and permit no doubt there, either.
At the first series of sharp pains, Fate rode to his grandfather’s place. Harrison came outside, swatting at flies and cursing the heat. “Is she ready for the test?” he said.
“Yes,” Fate said.
“Ay, God,” he said. He sniffed of the sultry air. “She should a chose a nighttime, when it’s cool.”