“Well, what do you know!”
“He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of her since.”
“Walt?” said the farmer, leaning against the candy counter rolling a cigarette. “That boy of yours drives a little two-wheeled contraption, don’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“With a old bag of bones hitched to it?”
“You’re insultin’ a mighty good horse,” said Mr. Henshaw, grinning.
“For sausage, maybe. Well, I think I know where she’s at.”
“Pete sake, you seen her?”
“ ’Bout three mile south of town.”
“Three mile!”
In the brown gloomy depths of the store, bright daylight flashed as the back door opened and Clabber Dumpson shuffled in.
“Here y’are, Clab!” said Mr. Henshaw. “Looks like we’ve found your horse.” He turned back to the farmer. “Can you beat that! I reckon the old rascal just taken it in her head to go to pasture.”
“Nupe, I don’t think so,” said the farmer. “Looks more to me like she was stole.”
“Stole? Old Maude? Who’d want her!”
“For mercy sake!” said Mrs. Gunn, walking toward them. “Maybe we ought to call the sheriff.”
“Ah, nobody wants to steal old Maude,” said Mr. Henshaw.
“Looks like somebody did,” said the farmer.
“Who’d do a thing like that!”
“A hossthief.”
“Go on! Ain’t been a horsethief around here in twenty year, not since Ezzer Clark give up the trade and taken up preachin’!”
“I seen the culprit myself, plain as day, settin’ up there on the seat, holdin’ the reins.”
“I’ll call the sheriff,” Mrs. Gunn said firmly. “Anybody that would do a thing like that to Clabber!”
Mr. Henshaw looked worried. “I’d hate to think it was anybody around here. Didn’t recognize him, did you?”
“Nupe. Stranger to me.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Wasn’t a he.”
“A woman?” said Mrs. Gunn.
“Nupe,” said the farmer, “a little gal. Little dark-headed gal about the size of my thumb—wouldn’t hardly tip them scales of yours, Walt.”
“Well, what do you know!”
“Isn’t that disgraceful!” Mrs. Gunn, arms akimbo, blocked the aisle with her righteous bulk. “Some children are allowed to act just any way! Who do you suppose she belongs to?”
Back by the meat block, Matthew stood in shame, the bright day yanked from under him. Heaving a great sigh, he started up the aisle. “She’s mine,” he said. In the shocked silence he walked forward, avoiding Mrs. Gunn’s stare. “If you have some conveyance, Mr. Henshaw, that I may hire from you, I’ll go and bring them back.”
Angry, hungry, humiliated, he drove off in Mr. Henshaw’s buckboard, Clabber Dumpson seated beside him. Together they rode through the noon streets where people were walking back from dinner. Clabber hailed them all.
“Found my horse!” he called out left and right. “We found her. She was stole!”
Merchants and schoolchildren stopped on the sidewalks and housewives ran to the door, staring at the new superintendent of schools, who was, apparently, taking the afternoon off with Mr. Henshaw’s delivery boy.
They caught up with Mathy several miles from town.
“I was only going back home!” she insisted. Going home was not the same as running away.
“Your home is here,” said Matthew.
“Well, I was going to come back tomorrow.”
They jogged down the dusty road toward town, followed at a steadily increasing distance by Clabber and Maude and the two-wheel cart. Mathy sat beside her father, as erect and prim as he, each of them outraged with the other. Matthew’s mouth drew a pale line, like the seam of a wound, across his red perspiring face. If his reputation was not permanently damaged, he would be much surprised. How could the people trust him with their children, when he couldn’t control his own? On top of all else, Mathy was costing him money. Mr. Henshaw wouldn’t let him pay for the use of the buckboard. But Mrs. Gunn’s groceries were another matter. The stolen goods, though recovered, were hardly returnable. Under the soft midday sun, three pounds of lard had overflowed into sacks of soda crackers, coffee beans, and sugar. An astounding number of gingersnaps was missing, along with a quantity of sweet pickles. An oatmeal box had been broken open. Mathy had an inexplicable taste for rolled oats eaten raw. She still held a few grains clutched in her fist.
“In the name of goodness, child, throw that away! Wipe your hands. Not on your dress!”
“I’m going to vomit, Papa!”
“Not here!” he shouted. “Wait till you get home!”
“I can’t!”
A hideous gagging sound rose out of the little green face. He barely had time to tip her over the side, clutching the bottom of her sateen bloomers. She hung there heaving and gasping, while he tried not to look.
“Are you all right now? Is that all?”
“I think so.”
He wiped her face with his handkerchief. “I hope you will learn now,” he began—but she leaned against him limp as a lettuce leaf, her eyes closed, and he knew he was wasting his breath. She’d never hear him. By the time they got home she was fast asleep.
2
For a while after that Mathy behaved herself. Now and then she enticed someone’s puppydog to follow her home (Matthew allowed them no pets; an animal earned its keep or it didn’t live there); and along in spring he caught her wandering in the yard after midnight. (“I never saw a child that never would sleep!” Callie fretted. “She don’t even get sleepy in the daytime.”) But these were, for Mathy, minor infractions. Then in the fall she started to school and trouble began anew. Mathy was a born hooky player. Every few days the teacher had to report to the superintendent that his little girl was missing. Matthew would then send Jessica or Leonie looking for her or call Callie on the phone. Then came the spankings, followed by long lectures, which Mathy listened to soberly and forgot at once. She continued to escape periodically until the weather turned cold.
After that she settled down and did extraordinarily well. In fact, at the insistence of her teacher, Matthew allowed her to skip a grade—an indulgence which Leonie never forgave him and he himself quickly regretted. For no sooner had Mathy sailed into the third directly from the first than she lost interest and became a most indifferent scholar. “Things come too easily to her,” said Matthew. “It’s not good when they come too easy.” He sometimes made her sit in the office during recess till she had done the work to his satisfaction. Sometimes he had to spank her. Under such duress she managed to get through the year with “provisional promotion” to the fourth grade.
That “provisional” irked Matthew’s soul. What a condition for the superintendent’s daughter! As a penalty he set her a course of study for the summer, requiring that she do a little work each day and go over it with him on Saturdays. As he was away all week at the teachers college, Mathy had a tendency to leave her work till the last minute and do it all at once. Callie tried to keep her to the schedule, but Mathy pleaded to go outdoors and play and Callie felt sorry for her—she was only a little girl and it was summer. She wished Matthew would be a little easier on her.
It was probably for this reason, in recompense for his obdurate attitude, that she allowed Mathy to ride around town that summer with Clabber Dumpson. She let her make two or three trips each morning. It did no harm, she supposed. Clabber Dumpson was as good as gold, if not quite as bright. And as long as Mathy promised to do her lessons by Friday evening…
The two of them became a familiar sight that summer along Shawano’s leafy streets—the gentle halfwit and the little bright-eyed girl, creaking along in the two-wheel cart at the speed of moss. On their first trips, Mathy stayed outside while Clabber delivered the groceries. “So no one will steal old Maude,” she said. But she soon grew bored waiting for Clabber. Thereafter
, she jumped down and helped carry the sacks. She chatted in kitchens with all the ladies, gravely discussing the world and the weather, and accepted with pleasure all gratuities. They gave her strawberries or grapes, bread and butter and the season’s jellies, numberless cookies and drinks of water. She never wanted any dinner.
“I wish you wouldn’t eat all them things at people’s houses,” Callie said one day. “It ain’t nice—it’s like you was askin’ for a handout. You shouldn’t take things, even when they’re offered.”
“Clabber does.”
“That’s different. You and him’s different kind of folks—you’d ought to know better. I declare,” she went on, talking to whoever was in earshot, “seems like she don’t have any judgment at all. She’ll take up with anybody. Talkin’ to that tramp the other day that come here to the door! You’d have thought it was her uncle come to see her! If I hadn’t caught her when I did, she’d a-had him comin’ right in to spend the night.”
Mathy was pressing nasturtiums in a wallpaper sample book and paid no attention to her.
But next morning she did not ask to go and join Clabber. She played in the barn and pasture and Callie noticed her at the back door frequently. She had a half-gallon syrup bucket and kept pumping it full of water.
“What are you doing with all that?” said Callie.
“Nothing.”
“Now don’t you story to me. You’re doing something with it; now what are you up to?”
“Oh, I’m playing mudpies.”
“Where?”
“Behind the barn.”
Callie looked skeptical. She looked pretty clean to be playing mudpies. “Well, you stay around close. Don’t go running off somewhere. Dinner will be ready before long.”
At noon Mathy ate no more than if she had panhandled all morning. Callie supposed the child had filled herself up on sheep sorrel and pepper grass. As soon as dinner was over and she had dried dishes, she went out to the barn again.
Early in the afternoon, an elderly gentleman who thought highly of Callie came to pay a short call. Jessica and Leonie hid upstairs. Brother Cottrell had fought in the Civil War, and they had heard all they cared to hear about Andersonville Prison. They found his ante bellum witticisms very tiresome. On his departure, they tumbled downstairs full of giggles. “What did he bring you today, Mama?”
“Oh, plums!” said Callie in the same tone of voice she used for “Oh, foot!” “And dead ripe. If I don’t work them up right now, they’ll rot. What did he have to bring ’em on Friday afternoon for? We won’t hardly get ’em done before Papa gets home.”
“They’ll keep,” said Leonie, biting into one.
“I’m afraid not. Where are you going?”
“I have to practice my piano lesson.”
“You can do that after a while. You come on here now and help. It won’t take long.”
“It will too. It’ll take all afternoon, it always does.”
“No, it won’t,” said Callie cheerfully. “We can get these out of the way real fast, all of us workin’ together.”
“We’ve already got a whole smokehouse full of plum jelly.”
“I know, but Brother Cottrell would be disappointed if I didn’t work up his plums. I’ll give most of the batch to him.”
“Why couldn’t we just give him some of ours? He’d never know the difference.”
“I wouldn’t want these to go to waste.”
“We could give them away.”
“That wouldn’t be very nice.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, it just wouldn’t.”
“I think it would.”
“No, we can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Leonie, stop arguing!” Callie jammed her hands against her hips. “I never saw as stubborn a child in my life. When you get your head set, there’s no unsettin’ it. Now you march yourself out to the smokehouse and fill the sugar jar. And don’t slam the screen!”
Leonie went off muttering and came back with the jar half full.
“I told you to fill it,” said Callie.
“That’s all the sugar there was.”
“What?” said Callie, mildly surprised. “I thought I had more than that. I knew we were gettin’ low, but this ain’t hardly enough to do. You sure you emptied the sack? Did you jostle it down good?”
“That’s all there was, Mama. I guess I know whether a sack’s empty or not.”
“You don’t have to get so uppity about it. Well, I need some other things, anyway. I haven’t ordered all week. I’ll just call up the store.”
“Let me do it, Mama, please!”
“Oh, all right. Talk up good and loud…. Jessica?”
“I’m in here,” Jessica said from the front room.
“What are you doing?”
“Sewing lace on my ruffles.” Jessica hastily closed her book and picked up the needle and thread. “You want me to do something?”
“Can you come and fill the jug, honey? I don’t want to get coal oil on my hands while I’m workin’ with fruit.”
The three of them milled about the kitchen, washing the fruit, scalding jars. “I wish he’d come on with that sugar,” Callie said, glancing at the clock. “I reckon we’d better start with what we’ve got. We can get one kettle on and cook the rest when he gets here.” They divided the plums into two kettles and put one of them on the fire. “I really like to make jelly,” Callie said, dropping down in a chair for a minute. “It smells so good while it’s cooking. I just wish Brother Cottrell had brought these plums yesterday. But he didn’t know. My land, where’s that boy with the groceries? It’s been nearly an hour! Look out front and see if you see him. Oh, here he is!”
Clabber Dumpson appeared on the back steps, smiling and bobbling and saying, “Y’welcome, y’welcome,” before anyone had time to thank him.
“You’re slow today,” Callie said pleasantly, taking the sack of groceries.
“Yes ma’am, I’m slow today!”
“Well, it’s all right. It didn’t do no harm. Have a plum, they’re nice and ripe.”
“Take a lot,” said Leonie.
“No ma’am,” said Clabber, eyeing the basket regretfully. “I come afoot,” he added.
“Afoot?” said Callie. “Where’s your wagon?”
“It’s home.”
“What are you doin’ afoot? Is your horse sick?”
“No ma’am.” He smiled in unconcern as they stood looking at him, waiting for some explanation. “She’s gone,” he said at last.
“Who’s gone? Maude?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Where to? Did she get lost?”
“They was going to take her away!” Clabber burst out, suddenly coherent with feeling. “They’s going to take her away and shoot her!”
“Shoot old Maude?” said Jessica.
“Ah,” said Callie in sympathy. “Who was it was going to do that?”
“Some men come after her for her hide and bones.” Clabber’s pale eyes filled with tears. “Mr. Henshaw said he’s gettin’ me a new horse.”
“Well, what a shame! Did they come and get her this morning?”
A faint craftiness brightened his face. “They come for her, but they didn’t git her. She wasn’t there.”
“Well! Where was she?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Feller come with the dray, he’s mad.”
“I imagine he is. What do you suppose happened to Maude?”
“Ma’am?”
“I said what do you suppose happened to Maude?”
“I don’t know,” he said airily.
“Don’t you know where she is?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, smiling.
Callie studied him for a moment. “You didn’t hide her someplace, did you, Clabber?”
“She’s gone!” Clabber fluttered his hands, as if to dismiss the subject, and turned away.
“Well, thanks for the groceries,” Call
ie said.
“Y’welcome, y’welcome.” He shuffled off, chuckling to himself.
“He’s up to something,” said Callie, turning to the girls. She paused and looked at them thoughtfully. “Either of you seen Mathy since dinner?”
“She was out by the pump, last I saw of her,” said Leonie.
“Fillin’ that little syrup bucket again?”
“I think so.”
Callie took her bonnet off a nail by the door. “I knew I had more sugar than that!”
“What are you talking about, Mama?”
“Horses like sugar, don’t they?” she said. She yanked the bonnet over her ears. “You girls put the rest of them plums on to cook. I’m going down to the pasture!”
There was no trace of horse or child in the pasture. But just beyond the hedge she found them, old Maude tied to a crabapple tree and Mathy stretched out on a limb above her, idly fanning the flies off Maude with a leafy switch. At the sight of her mother she sat up screaming. “Don’t tell ’em, Mama, please don’t tell!”
“You get down from there, young lady!”
“Don’t let ’em find out!”
“Stop screaming,” said Callie. “I don’t know how you got here with this horse, but you’d better get back with her about as fast as you can.”
“Don’t untie her!” Mathy swung herself down and grabbed the rope. “They’ll find her—they’ll take her away!”
“Let go, Mathy. I reckon it’s none of your business what Mr. Henshaw wants to do with his horse.”
“It’s my horse!”
“What do you mean it’s your horse!”
“He gave it to me!”
“Who did?”
“Clabber.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Callie tugged at the knot.
“He did! We talked it over yesterday, and I said if it was my horse they couldn’t take it, so he brought it to me this morning and it’s mine!”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
“Why can’t I, Mama?”
“You just can’t. How in creation did you get this rope tied up like this!”
“I want to keep her!” said Mathy, her voice rising.
The Moonflower Vine Page 22