The Moonflower Vine

by Jetta Carleton

  “Don’t,” said Matthew. “You’ll ruin my penpoints.”

  “I ain’t hurtin’ ’em. I’m just gonna show you what real writin’ looks like.” Aaron sat down at the kitchen table, shoved back a plate, and wrote out his name on a sheet of foolscap. “There you are, Deacon. Don’t need to think you’re so smart. I can write better than you and I don’t have to go to no school to learn how!”

  He was right. Aaron couldn’t spell—much more than his own name. But he had a natural way with a pen, and the letters came out round and flowing. It was as easy for him as spilling ink. He wrote even better than Ben Carpenter.

  Aaron expanded his big chest and scratched it. “Reckon I’ll just drop around to the schoolhouse tonight and win that dollar myself.”

  “You can’t,” said Matthew. “You’re not a member of the class.”

  “And ain’t you glad!” Aaron gave him a playful poke. “If I ain’t there, maybe you can win! Without you play out again, like you did last time. What come over you, anyway?”

  “He got scared,” said Bertie.

  “I did not.”

  “You did too. I’ll bet you do it again this time and let old Ben Carpenter win again.”

  “I bet a dollar I don’t!”

  “You ain’t got a dollar.”

  “I will have, when I win it.”

  Bertie gave him a shrewd look. “You willing to bet me a dollar you win?”

  Their father pulled his chair to the table. “We’ll have none of that talk in this house,” he said. “I’ll tolerate no talk of betting.”

  “I was only joking, Pa.”

  “ ‘Avoid the appearance of evil,’ ” he said and bowed his head for a long inventory of temptations from which the Lord should in His mercy deliver them.

  Matthew went back to work, bound around with weariness and futility. He was restored very little by the appearance of Phoebe Oechen, who had come down to the field, cutting through her father’s adjoining woods, in order to wish him luck. At least, that’s what she said as she poked her calf face through the underbrush and stood there grinning at him. He could always count on Phoebe. He put up with her because she liked him. But secretly he rather despised her. He gave her no credit for good judgment. Since he disliked himself, the very fact that she admired him was a mark against her. Certainly none of the pretty girls were guilty of such aberration. The pretty ones—small shiny girls, like the Grancourt sisters, with the tickling laughter and honey in their claws—such girls were so out of his reach that he hardly dared think of them. He held them in such awe that it was a fear and hated them out of shyness. But since he wanted a girl, there was left to him Phoebe, of whom he was not afraid because she was neither beautiful nor clever. She was a solid caryatid of a girl, under an entablature of dark auburn hair, and much given to stumbling over things such as heating stoves and little chickens. Matthew did wish that she’d look where she was going and that her gums didn’t show so much when she smiled. In public he was ashamed of the feeling her big firm body gave him in private. But the feeling was nothing he cared to control, and he liked being liked, even by her.

  On this particular day, however, Phoebe seemed to him a summation of disappointment. He wished she would go away. But there she stood at the edge of the woods, plump as a pawpaw, and a kind of desperation seized him. He needed in the most urgent way to prove himself at something. And there was Phoebe, waiting. He climbed down from the wagon and walked over to where she stood.

  “I sure hope you win tonight,” said Phoebe.

  He put his hands on her arms and a feeling like hot molasses began to run through him. He had touched her before and put his hands a few places where they shouldn’t have been, but not like this—out here by themselves in the woods, with the sun halfway down and the trees behind them in shadow. He pulled her up against him.

  “You hadn’t ought to do that,” she said.

  “Why not?” He pushed into the thicket, taking her with him.

  “You better stop. Somebody might see us.”

  If that’s all you’re worried about, thought Matthew. He guided her back into an open space among the scrub oak. His heart beat so hard he thought it would strangle him. Now that the time had come, he was scared to death and didn’t know how to begin. Phoebe conveniently stepped on a stick, caught her other foot under it, and went crashing to the ground. Instantly, he was on her, and they rolled over a time or two before he discovered that she wasn’t fighting. She was clinging to him with all her might, which was considerable. When he stopped threshing about, he lay on his back, Phoebe on top of him like a sack of corn.

  “You’re chokin’ me,” he said.

  She laughed and slid off to the ground. “Matthew Soames!” she said cozily. “You’re a sight!”

  He turned over and lunged at her with his big bony hands, and there began a steady rhythm of pawing and pushing, while the dry leaves cracked beneath them. All the time, Phoebe giggled. She was willing to play, all right, but not to get down to business. And the more she fought him—lazily, defter than he was—the more determined he was to go through with it and get the whole thing over. A man has to start somewhere. Over he went on top of her. Over she went, spilling him off. In the heat of the game, her skirts worked up, exposing bare white flesh. He took hold. But she was too solid; he couldn’t get a grip on her. She slid away, picking his hands off as if they were burrs, while all the time bumping her teeth against his, trying to kiss him. At last she planted a hand against his chest and sent him sprawling. He landed on his back and lay still, pulling the cold air into his lungs out of the far blue sky. It burned all the way down.

  From a safe distance, Phoebe made a soft snickering sound. “My goodness! I didn’t have no idea you’s so anxious.”

  Matthew sat up and brushed his clothes. Both of them were rolled in dry leaves like fish in cornmeal. “Let’s go,” he said and started out of the clearing without looking at her. He was sick of himself. He couldn’t do anything right.

  “Matthew?” She hurried after him. “You ain’t mad, are you? Just because I didn’t let you? You didn’t expect me to, right off, did you? You didn’t think I’s that kind of a girl, did you?” Matthew kept walking. “You know if I’s the kind that did that, I’d do it with you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You better get home,” he said at the edge of the field. “Somebody’ll come looking for you.”

  “Nobody seen me go,” Phoebe said with a smirk. She stood as if she expected him to kiss her.

  “I got to get back to work,” he said.

  Phoebe picked leaves off her arms. “Guess I’ll see you at the schoolhouse tonight?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “I sure am hopin’ you win.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Maybe she never would go away. Maybe she’d just stand there till she took root and put out branches and a squirrel made a nest in her head.

  “I sure do admire your handwriting,” she said.

  “You better go on, now.”

  “Reckon you’re goin’ over to Carpenter’s afterwards to the taffy pull?”

  “I was figurin’ to go.”

  “So am I. Well—” Still she lingered.

  “I got to get to work, Phoebe,” he said desperately. “I’m sorry I—well, I’m sorry!” He turned and plunged through the brush to the cornfield.

  He had no more than reached the wagon when a voice called to him from the woods. “Hey! Matthew!”

  It was a girl’s voice and it wasn’t Phoebe’s. He froze like a cornered rabbit as Callie Grancourt came out of the sumac close to the spot where he left Phoebe. Callie was his brother Aaron’s girl, more or less. She must have crossed the creek a little way down, where it was rocky and shallow, and come up the path through Oechen’s woods. Unless she was blind as a mole or a branch had hit her in the eye, she was bound to have caught sight of Phoebe.

  “Can I ride up to the house with you?” Callie called out. “I’m invited over for
supper.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Climb in.”

  She picked her way across the stubble. She was barefoot and carried her button shoes in her hand. As she reached the wagon she stopped and looked straight up at him with a cool quizzical look that all but chilled his blood. If she had seen Phoebe, he was in trouble. For nothing was sacred to Callie Grancourt. She lived with a feather on her nose and everything was funny. Her cool look turned into a smile. Yes, she had seen Phoebe and she would tell his sisters about it.

  “Get in,” he said.

  She wiggled a couple of times, like a fish flicking its tail, and nipped up over the sideboard. She sat down on a pile of corn and began to put on her shoes. Her feet were rusty and chilblained.

  “Mercy!” she said. “That water was some cold! I come across the creek down yonder at the ford.”

  “You should have come around by the road and wore your shoes,” he said, wishing to goodness she had done so and stayed out of his sight.

  “It’s closer this way. And I wouldn’ta wore my shoes, anyhow. I ain’t got only this pair and I got to keep ’em nice. I sure don’t want to get no taffy on ’em tonight.” She licked her finger and polished one toe. Then she wriggled herself deeper into the heap of corn, settled her shawl, and said quietly, “Your back’s just covered with leaves.”

  Matthew turned beet-red. He reached around and tried to brush himself off. “I fell down,” he said.

  “There ain’t any doubt about that! Here, let me do it. You can’t reach.”

  Now she’d wonder why he fell down. “I tripped over a stick,” he blurted out. “It was hid in the leaves.” And what was he doing out in the brush? “I heard something out there—something made a noise and I went in to see what it was.” For the life of him he couldn’t think what it was.

  Callie studied him for a moment. “Maybe it was a cow,” she suggested.

  “Reckon it was!” he said gratefully. “That must have been what it was! A stray cow.”

  “One of Oechen’s maybe.”

  His mouth snapped shut and he gave her a quick glance. She was looking up at him with solemn eyes.

  “I think I heard it myself,” she went on. “Something was trompin’ off through the brush as I come up from the creek. Must have been a cow.”

  “Musta been.”

  “I don’t know what else it could have been.”

  “It was a cow.”

  He slapped the reins across the mules’ backs. His face felt puckered; Callie was a green persimmon.

  “You and Phoebe going to the taffy pull tonight?” she said suddenly, and he jumped as if she had yelled at him.

  “I figure to go. Don’t know what she’s aiming to do.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he looked at her again. If he could be sure she had seen Phoebe, he might try to explain. But if she hadn’t, anything he said would only make things worse. There wasn’t much he could do about it one way or the other, except grit his teeth and wait. He looked forward to supper as to an inquisition.

  Mealtime was always a trial with Callie around, and she was around often, in and out like a household pet. She was a fystedog, little and sassy, always taking a nip at you when you weren’t looking. The rest of the family liked her, and with her in the house, everyone acted different. When she walked in the door, the rules they lived by went out the window. Her very presence said King’s X, and as long as she was around, they played her way. Matthew, too self-conscious to play, was swept into the game in spite of himself. He was always it—caught, discovered, left without a chair. No one made him more uncomfortable than Callie Grancourt.

  She was frivolous, she was irreverent, and she was arrogant. And who was she to be so proud of herself—an ignorant little girl who couldn’t write her own name, and her father as poor as an Arkansaw pig!

  At one time the Grancourts had had some stature in the neighborhood. They had come up from Kentucky a generation or so ago and settled on four hundred acres. Matthew could still remember the old grandfather, lean as Lincoln and wearing a tall silk hat. He used to drive down the road in a buckboard behind a black team, with his gold-headed cane standing up in the whip-holder and shining in the sun. He had a fancy attitude for this part of the country, the neighbors used to say. Still, they liked old Hugo Grancourt; he was kindly and lighthearted; and though he had too much pride for their comfort, there was not much providence with it, either on his part or the Lord’s. They were not obliged to envy him. Whether he had once kept slaves and no longer knew how to function without them, or whether initiative had been bred out of him, no one knew. At any rate, he had not done well. The four hundred acres crumbled away like hoecake, and all that his sons inherited were a few rocky acres and the light heart. Most of them had sold out and moved away. But Mitch, the eldest, still lived on his eighty with his second wife and five children, all of them threadbare, energetic, and hungry. It was no wonder they went visiting as often as they were asked.

  And no wonder at all, Matthew thought as he sat across the table from Callie, that she had come visiting on this particular night. Nothing good had happened all day. He chewed his food with a dry mouth, waiting for her to give him away.

  She sat on the long bench wedged among his sisters, eating with a quick and delicate motion, her knife and fork held just so and her elbows in, while pork and potatoes, apple preserves and hot biscuits vanished down her small gullet in astounding quantity. Conscious of her every move, even without looking at her, Matthew suddenly forgot his fear and lifted his head in amazement. How did she do it, he wondered—put away all that food, and her about as big as a minute! The look that met him was serene as, deliberate and ladylike, she ladled a river of gravy onto her plate.

  Matthew choked down the last bite of sidemeat and climbed out over the bench. “Excuse me, please,” he murmured, hoping to slip away unnoticed.

  “You’re excusable,” said his mother. “You didn’t eat much. You ain’t sick, are you?”

  “No’m.”

  Everyone looked up at him.

  “He’s nervous,” said Aaron. “He’s worried about the contest.”

  Silent under the fusillade, Matthew rolled up his pens and paper and took his lantern off the wall. It needed trimming but he couldn’t take time now. He wrapped a muffler around his neck and pulled the wool cap down over his ears, wishing that Callie would stop looking at him. He had almost reached the door when she spoke.

  “Matthew, reckon that cow got home by milkin’ time?”

  Aaron raised his head, catching the scent. “What cow?” A leer crawled over his face.

  Callie lifted one shoulder. “Ask him. He said there was a cow lost down in Oechen’s woods this afternoon.”

  Aaron snorted. “Yes, and I bet its name was Phoebe!”

  Everyone howled, his father shouted for order, and Matthew bolted into the frosty dusk. The rude sound followed him clear to the barn.

  Clutching his bundle, he ran through the pasture in the direction of the schoolhouse. The lantern squeaked as it bumped against his thigh. He ran blind and muttering until he reached the woods, where he slowed down and took deep breaths to calm himself. He wished he were already at the desk and the contest begun so this dread would be over. He had to win this time, he had to! And this necessity welling up within him, he began to shake. His hands were sweating and he felt sick. He knew that he would lose again. Flinging the parcel to the ground, he cried out, “I won’t go! Let him win, I don’t care!” And he pounded a tree trunk with his big fists until they hurt.

  After a while he gathered up his bundle and the lantern and walked on slowly till he came to the road. There was no longer any need to hurry. And so at Millroad Churchyard he turned off and sat down against a gravestone, trying to reduce the prize to its proper small place in a vast and timeless world. He would wait there until the contest was over.

  In the graveyard the silence was tangible, filled with sounds remembered, Sunday voices and the insects of summer, and it was c
omforting. He felt easy here. He did not have to compete with the dead. If there were those under the brown October grass who once wrote a finer hand or plowed a straighter furrow or sang notes better, it was of no importance. He was their superior, being alive.

  Matthew moved around from behind the tombstone, lighted the lantern, and spread out his sheets of paper. The grave mounded gently, like a fat man’s stomach as he lies asleep, and the matted grass made a firm enough surface to write on. He fitted a penpoint into the nib and began to make rows of marks on the paper. Left curves, right curves, upper loops and lower. He copied the inscription from the headstone. “Gabriel Soames, 1812–1890, Asleep in Jesus.” With his elbows resting on the grave, Matthew wrote it out carefully.

  “Amen!” said a hoarse voice above him.

  Matthew’s heart rose like a bounced ball. Peering down at him in the dim light was a crooked yellow face with a jaw like a growth on a tree trunk and an arc of white over the eyes.

  “Mercy goodness, Johnny Faust! You like to scared me to death!”

  The wild eyes blinked and a smile like the grimace of fear twisted the big jaw.

  “I come up quiet,” said Johnny Faust.

  He was small and bony and made Matthew think of a forked stick with a lopsided jack-o’-lantern on top. He was perhaps thirty years old, though it was hard to say. His mind was old in its slowness but young in its innocence and you couldn’t truthfully hang any age on him at all.

  “You a-prayin’?” said Johnny.

  “Not exactly.”

  “You’d ought to pray, every hour. Kneel with me now.”

  Old Johnny dropped to his knees and they faced each other across the grave. Matthew felt a cud of laughter form in his throat. The look of enormous piety spread over that witless face was as preposterous as butter spread on a board. The mannerisms of worship had fixed themselves on Johnny, along with the image of God as an old man with a blacksnake whip in one hand and a cherry pie in the other, the source of punishment and reward.

  “Almighty Father,” Johnny began, rolling his eyes upward.