Again Matthew felt hilarity forming deep inside. It was all so senseless. Down there at the schoolhouse, everybody was visiting and laughing, shaking Ben Carpenter by the hand, and having a good time—while he sat with an idiot in a dark graveyard, writing epitaphs on his grandfather’s stomach. He bowed his head, so as not to laugh in poor Johnny’s face. After listening a moment he sat back on his heels and put the cork in the ink bottle.
“Amen, Johnny,” he said kindly. “I reckon we’ve prayed enough for tonight.”
Johnny rolled his eyes down from heaven. “Reckon we have?”
“I think so. If you did anything wrong today, God’s already forgiven you. He can see in your heart.” It occurred to him that God could see in his heart as well as in Johnny’s and must have been well aware of what he’d had in mind for Phoebe. He profoundly hoped God did forgive him.
“What you doin’ with them papers?” Johnny said.
“Nothing.”
“There’s writin’ on them. What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Asleep in Jesus.’ ”
“Amen!” Johnny leaned over and peered at the paper upside down. “You write good,” he said.
“Not so very good.”
“You been to the schoolhouse learnin’ to write, ain’t you?”
“Now and then.”
“Why ain’t you down there now?”
Matthew rolled up the sheets of paper. “Why aren’t you, Johnny? Or maybe you write so good you don’t need any learnin’.”
Johnny laughed with pleasure. He always welcomed teasing in the beginning; it flattered him. He had learned, however, to be wary of it, since he was never sure where the teasing left off and torment began.
“Guess you’re on the way to the taffy pull?” Matthew said.
“That’s where I’m a-goin’. To the taffy pull.” He grinned. “You goin’?”
“Reckon I might,” Matthew answered, wishing he had the good sense to stay away. He was no good at parties, but he kept going, much as you keep looking into mirrors, hoping to find there something better than you expect.
“We better get on,” Johnny said. “We don’t want to be late.”
“Yep, I guess it’s time.” The class would be over now and everyone climbing into wagons to go to the party.
They rose and went down the slope toward the road. In front of the church Johnny stopped. “Had we ought to pray?”
“I don’t think so, Johnny. You can pray in your heart as you walk along.”
“Amen,” Johnny said reverently. “I shore like molasses taffy.”
Their shadows bobbed beside them, taking the shape and texture of weeds and the rutted road.
“Johnny,” said Matthew, “you’re my friend, aren’t you? I want to ask you a favor. Will you do a favor for me?”
“Sure I will, Matthew. I’ll do it for you. I’m your friend.”
“Well, then, don’t say anything about this. I mean about us stopping in the graveyard. Don’t say anything to anybody about it.”
“You don’t want nobody to know?”
“I don’t reckon it’s any of their business.”
“That’s right. Not any of their business.”
“If you and me want to sit and rest awhile by the church, that’s nobody’s business but ours.”
“That’s right, Matthew.”
“So you just forget all about it. Forget we’s there.”
“I’ll forget it, Matthew. I won’t say nothin’ about it.”
“Much obliged, Johnny.”
The bonfire was blazing in Carpenter’s yard and molasses bubbled in the big kettle. Matthew hoped to slip in unnoticed. But Johnny Faust liked to shake hands. He walked into the crowd with his hand out and crooked smile agape.
“Here’s old Johnny!” someone shouted.
Two girls joined hands around Johnny, as in a game of Needle’s Eye. As they danced around him, others joined them, and a howling, galloping circle formed, with Johnny, Matthew, and the bonfire in the middle. If the two of them had been tossed into the cauldron, Matthew wouldn’t have been surprised.
Someone yelled out, “Where were you tonight? Why weren’t you at the schoolhouse?”
Ben Carpenter yelled, “What happened to you?”
“Hi, Matthew!” Phoebe’s grinning face went by.
His brother Aaron and Callie Grancourt passed in a blur as the circle gathered speed. It broke at last, and the boys and girls pelted across the yard like beads from a broken string. They picked themselves up and came back into the firelight, laughing. The molasses had boiled down to a thick golden syrup. They rolled up their sleeves, buttered their hands, and began to pull taffy. Already Matthew was forgotten.
He hung back in the shadows, watching the others pair off and work the tawny mass together. They stretched it and looped it, shaped and slapped it, as the stuff grew whiter and whiter and firmed to satiny brittle bone. After a while Matthew moved over to the kettle and helped himself to a molten handful. It felt good in his cold hands, and it smelled good. He had forgotten he was hungry.
Johnny Faust also stood alone, working a handful of taffy. Now and then he pinched off a bite. The crooked jaw worked vigorously and the warm cane juices ran down his chin. He looked around for someone to talk to.
“Listen here now,” he began, walking up to one of the couples. But they had dropped their taffy and caught it in mid-air, shrieking with laughter, and they ignored him. Aaron passed him on the way to the kettle.
“Howdy, Aaron,” said Johnny, but Aaron went on by.
Johnny sidled up to another couple, grinning hopefully. “Say there, Virg!” he said.
The boy called Virg glanced over his shoulder. “Hi, Johnny.”
“Me and Matthew was down at the church,” Johnny said proudly.
“How’s that?”
“I’s walkin’ through the graveyard and Matthew was settin’ there by a tombstone—” He stopped abruptly as a piece of taffy hit him on the cheek. “Who done that?”
Matthew was making furtive signals at him.
“You throw that taffy at me?” Johnny asked mildly. At that moment another wad struck the back of his head. “Hey!” he said, turning around.
“What’s the matter?” said Virg. “Somebody pickin’ on you?”
Johnny pulled the taffy out of his hair. “They better watch out, that’s all I got to say.”
“You tell ’em, Johnny.”
Johnny dutifully raised his voice. “Whoever hit me with that taffy better watch out!” As he spoke, another lump landed on his ear. “Watch out, I said!”
“Come and get me, Johnny!” shouted a voice across the fire.
“Here y’are, Johnny, take a bite!”
Wads and strings of candy began to rain on him from all directions. “You-all quit that now!” cried Johnny. “Y’hear me? You better watch out.”
Matthew stood in the background guiltily. He had started it, but he never meant it to turn into this.
Pursued by his tormentors, Johnny retreated across the yard till he reached the smokehouse. He backed up against the wall, trying to laugh, and shielded his head with his arm as the sticky lumps landed—plssh!—all around him. Suddenly out of the crooked mouth came a wailing sound like a howl of pain. Johnny had begun to sing.
“This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Saviour, all the day long.”
It was all he knew to do, sing to the Lord for help, for the Lord hands out punishment and reward and His eye is on the sparrow. A lump of taffy the size of a dollar struck him in the mouth.
“Stop it!”
The crowd turned in amazement at the sound of Matthew’s voice.
“Stop teasin’ old Johnny!” he shouted. He pushed his way through to the smokehouse and stood in front of Johnny to protect him.
For a moment there had been quiet. Now a howl of pleasure went up as they took aim at a fresh new target. Taffy flew thick and fast, sticking to Matthew’s face and in his
hair. And out in front stood Phoebe Oechen, laughing like a lunatic, too foolish to know that this was no longer a game.
They had begun to throw other things—clods and wood chips—when Callie Grancourt darted out, coming toward him with such ferocity that Matthew thought she was coming to kill him. She seized him and Johnny by the hand, and standing between them with her head held high, she started singing. Her voice was small and thin, but she sang with all her might and its aim was as true as David’s. The barrage ended abruptly like hail in summer. The boys and girls turned away sheepishly, and nobody spoke.
“You’d all ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” Callie said in a quiet voice, and there wasn’t a person in the yard who didn’t hear her. “Come on now, Johnny. We’ll go and wash our faces. Matthew, you come, too.”
The three of them stood in the breezeway drying their hands when Callie spoke again. Looking straight up into his face, she said, “I declare, Matthew, don’t you like me? Why do you have anything to do with that old Phoebe!”
And she turned on her heel and walked off, swinging her little rear end in the fancy way she had. When Matthew breathed again, he felt he had come up from a long spell under water.
9
Matthew did not go to Sedalia with Mr. Kolb or think any more about it. After the night of the taffy pull, all he could think of was Callie. Her face moved before him day and night. It dazzled him, like the flash of a mirror in the sun, which prints its image so vividly that you see it with closed eyes. Never had a feeling so engulfed him as this one did. He was upside down and feathered with it, tall as a mountain or turned into air, so bewitched he was by being chosen.
And chosen he certainly was. Callie Grancourt had marked him as her own. When she ran out of the crowd that night pity and anger impelled her. All she had ever consciously felt for Matthew was a casual sympathy. But having rescued a person, one often goes on to love him. He has, merely by getting into trouble, allowed you to be heroic. Overnight, Callie’s pity kindled to passion. She woke up with her love for Matthew in full blaze. He was illuminated by it and, like a shadow thrown on the wall by firelight, enlarged to several times his size. He filled her world.
She had known instinctively that he suffered a good deal behind his sullen manner. Now she began to romanticize him. With no way of defining them, she gave him the dark humors, the tragic longings and melancholy of the romantic poets. She would have thought of him as Byronic, had she ever heard of Byron. He had the appeal to her of storms to one who is safe inside. Though she was by nature a very teakettle for being cozy, busy, practical, and merry, she took to suffering in sympathy and mooned and sighed as she pummeled the featherbeds and dug salt pork out of the barrel.
This sighing was for the most part pure self-indulgence. For Callie was shrewd, and she very well knew that far from being a tragic figure, Matthew Soames was a bright, industrious young man who would get ahead. He was probably the best catch in the county. It pleased her that she had been clever enough to find him out before anyone else suspected.
There were other sons of other families who had more money, land, and cattle. Even Aaron, whom she had thought of marrying, was handsomer; and almost anyone was better-natured. But Matthew was smarter than the others. And there were things he wanted. It was these things which Callie found irresistible; they were a symbol of his excellence. She had only the vaguest notion of what these things were; her knowledge of the world was too limited to tell her. But she knew without a doubt that they were the right things to want, and having Matthew, she would have them, too. She set out at once to get him.
This was not as easy as it might appear. Matthew, so accustomed to thinking himself unworthy, could not get out of the habit. Though starved for admiration, he refused to take it when it came. He couldn’t believe it was honest. It could not be that anyone so beautiful as Callie, so desirable in every way, could want him.
He had long since forgotten her faults. His love turned them all to virtues. What had appeared complacency in her he now saw was courage. She was not insolent but spirited. And her lofty opinion of herself he now recognized as healthy self-respect. Even her ignorance endeared her to him. She had gone through the Fourth Reader at Thorn School and that was the sum of her education. But hers was not wilful ignorance. It was merely the nature of girls. Their mothers kept them busy with housework; no wonder they had no time for learning. He felt sorry for the little thing. In this one way he felt superior and therefore worthy of her. But all her other virtues threw him into panics of awe.
Callie couldn’t for the life of her see why, if you loved someone, you couldn’t come right out and say so and act accordingly. But Matthew must hang back or skitter sideways, run for cover and dart out again, all the time so crazy for her that he didn’t know whether he was hitching a team or a brace of turkeys.
Callie coaxed him with the gentle wariness of a keeper in a cage. In a hundred subtle ways, and sometimes right out bluntly, she told him he was the inheritor of the earth. He wanted so much to believe it that he didn’t dare to. But when at last she persuaded him to see himself as she saw him, the vision entranced him. Not for all the world could he let go of that. He forgot about going away and getting educated. All he wanted now was money enough to marry Callie, a house to put her in, and some ground to cultivate so that he could feed her.
That winter he chopped wood, hauled it to town and sold it. He trapped muskrats and sold the skins. In the spring he bought a calf from his father and fattened it to sell. When summer came he hired out to a farmer in an adjoining county, for fourteen dollars a month, plus the keep of his mule. He milked and plowed and harvested flax. Every Saturday after sundown he climbed onto his mule, Pharaoh, and rode most of the night to spend Sunday with Callie.
Late that summer he went south and followed the broomcorn harvest. He was a cutter, whacking the broomcorn heads with a heavy knife. On good days he could cover an acre and earn a dollar. He often thought, as he followed the breaker down the rows, of the dollar he didn’t win. It would have been an easier dollar than this, if he’d had any faith in himself. But having faith was sometimes harder than swinging a broomcorn knife ten hours a day.
The following winter, when farm work slacked off, he found a job in Kansas City in a packing plant. He was put to washing beef shanks in icy water. The blood and the smell, the bawling of frightened cattle and the whack of axes on their skulls, horrified him. And he was afraid of the city. He stayed with it for two months, till he knew that down in the country, under the snow, rumors of spring were abroad. He fled the city in relief, glad to go back again to a world where he had at last begun to feel at home.
By this time, Matthew had amassed some sixty dollars and a cow, besides his mule, and had found a farm to rent. It was forty acres on Little Tebo, in the next county north. It had good pasture land for cattle, good bottom land for corn, and a two-room house. It rented for $1.50 an acre per year. He and Callie were married in March and moved in in time for spring planting
10
The seasons were good to them at first. Matthew bought another mule and paid the rent for another year. He tilled the fields with love, as if they were his own, and in his mind they were. He began to talk of buying the place. He found endless things to do. He cleared brush, patched fence, and diverted the branch to protect the bottom fields. He chopped great piles of wood; he butchered pigs and cured the meat over a hickory fire in the smoke house. In the mornings he went forth singing, singing for love and the glory of God, singing the roses on the fence. At night he came home to the warm kitchen tired and contented, so aware of his own happiness that it frightened him. Who was he that so much had been given him? He felt half guilty, as if he had come by it unfairly. It must certainly be deceptive and would be taken away.
Meanwhile, the nineteenth century came to a close and the twentieth dawned—on Little Tebo as on the rest of the world, though not much was made of it down there, except to ring the churchbells and set off firecrackers left from Chri
stmas.
Matthew thought about it, however, and about the passing of time. And he was comforted, in a way, when a vague discontent asserted itself again. Longing and discontent were familiar to him, and he felt safer. Through the haze of his happiness he recalled that there was something more he wanted than a tidy, well-run farm. There was something he wanted to be besides a good farmer. He wanted education, the kind you get from books and teachers in a real schoolroom, with maps and charts and encyclopedias, all the precious orderly receptacles of information.
The more he thought about all this, the more he desired it. But the time had passed. Mr. Kolb and Sedalia had been his last chance. Now he had forty acres and a wife and responsibilities. His lot was cast. He pondered the futility of his life: planting and harvesting, season after season, in a constant rhythm of depletion and replenishment, and all of it on a creature level—while away off somewhere things were happening and you couldn’t find out what they were. Worse still, you couldn’t find out what had already happened. Rumors reached you of ancient worlds and new planets, of voyages and wars. But down here in the bottom field, riding the A-harrow made out of logs from your own hedgerow, there was no way of learning about them.
He went about his work brooding in silence till one day Callie said to him, “I declare, Matthew, what’s the matter?”
She wormed it out of him, little by little. It took her nearly a week. “My goodness, honey,” she said, “I always figured on you bein’ a teacher. Why don’t you just go on and do it?”
“I can’t,” he said and gave her the reasons.
“Oh pshaw!” she said. “You can too.” She proceeded to tell him how. “For one thing, we can sell off the stock.”
“A team and two cows,” Matthew said sourly.
“Well, one of ’em’s calving. She’ll bring a good price. How much money will it take, anyhow?”
“More than we’ve got.”
“Couldn’t you get some work in town? Clerk in a store or something?”
The Moonflower Vine Page 18