by James Still
“Oh, that fifty dollars will go hard with my pap if that leg don’t come. If’n it don’t, Poppy will shoot him till he looks like a rag doll does he ever get up with him. He’d had that money ’tater holed for a spell before he turned it loose.”
Clebe drew a knife from his pocket and began to whittle the round of his chair. “Hit’s been a heap of trouble I’ve give my Poppy,” he said. “He was against the doc cutting off my leg when I had blood pizen but Mommy talked him to it. Aye, I can look up yonder on the point and see a yellow spot where I’d be buried now if they hadn’t.”
He stopped suddenly and pointed the blade at me. “I figure you never heard about the funeral occasion for my leg. Hit was buried just like folks are. My brother Tom fotched it from the doctor’s house in a box and tuck it by the schoolhouse before books were called.
“All the scholars they come out to the road and looked at it. Before Tom left they were daring one another to touch it. They wanted to know what Tom was going to do with my limb, and Tom said he was going to have a real funeralizing on the point.
“The teacher he run Tom off because he couldn’t get the scholars inside with my dead leg out there to look at. When he left, a bunch of the scholars tuck right along after him. They aimed to be in on anything that took place. They dug a hole right up yonder on the point. Well, now, Amos Morris preached the sermon and they tell me it was a scorcher. They tell me that if they was any devils around they’d a sneaked off with their forked tails between their legs. Then everybody took a last look and piled the dirt in.
“Then—you know what? Tom recollects that a fellow is liable to have the rheumatiz all the days of his life if his leg is buried with the toes a-curling. So up they dug my leg again and tried to pull the toes straight and they couldn’t. What they done was to get rocks and beat the toes till they did straighten out. Tom done that for me. They buried the leg again and piled big flat rocks on the grave place to keep the dogs and varmints from scratching it up.
“O hit’s a quare feeling to get one piece of you buried and gone to judgment before the rest of you dies. I’m afraid I might have a busted hard time getting myself together on resurrection day.”
The Quare Day
THERE had been no rain during the whole of August. At the month’s end the winds came and blew through Little Angus valley, drying the creek to a shallow stream, and now it lay without motion like a long thin pond. Under the banks the waters were stained with shedding willow leaves. The wind had settled before the dew dried on the parched grass. Nothing stirred in the cool air pocketed in the damp hollows.
The sun was high above the hills when the sky beyond the ridge took on a yellow cast. There were no clouds other than a scattering of horsetails. At first the yellowness was only in the west, then it advanced, enveloping hilltop after hilltop until the sun-ball shone dully as through a saffron veil. It spread swiftly east, the hue of sulphur. It came without shape or sound bearing the molten glassiness of a sunset. Flaxbirds settled into the thickets. The dark hollow birds that warbled seldom in late summer sang not at all. Chickens went to an early roost in the sycamore trees, the prickly seed-balls hanging on twig-strings about their heads. They settled without sleeping, pale second lids opening and closing.
Shridy Middleton looked down the valley from the porch of her house. She polished her glasses with a fold of her sleeve and watched the yellow sand in the drying creek bed, the grey-yellow limestone shelved above the bank, the yellow-green of the chestnut oaks on the hills. She brushed her hands nervously over her hair, wondering at the color of the day. The mail hack had passed, and the wheels had rutted their tracks in the creek road. Willa Dowe, their neighbor’s daughter, had brought a letter as she came to help with the apple drying, and now Shridy drew it out of her bosom, glancing curiously at the envelope without opening it. In a moment she thrust it back, brushed the meal dust from her apron, and stepped into the kitchen where Willa was paring apples.
“Hit’s no use trying to dry fruit today,” Shridy said. “The sun-ball has a mote in its eye. The slices would mold before they could cure.” Willa was the same age as her son, Rein. Rein, the youngest of eleven, the most cherished, was the “ ’possum baby,” as the saying went. Willa and Rein had in infancy been cradled together when the families visited. To Shridy and her husband Jabe, Willa was the daughter they had hoped for but never had. Although related, the kinship was distant.
Willa stuck the knife into an apple as a holder and went to the door. She stood there a moment, rolling the plaits of her flaxen hair into a tight ball. She made a biscuit of it on her head. “As quare weather as ever I’ve seen,” she remarked. “Mommy says fruit has to get direct sunlight or it’ll lose sugar.” Then, “I’d better get on down to home, for a bunch of things there need doing up.” She paused in her leave-taking, recalling the letter. “But first I’ll read what I brought from the mailbox. I’ll say it to you and you can tell Uncle Jabe what’s in it.”
“The letter will keep until later,” Shridy said, gathering the peelings into a basket for the chickens. “Hit’ll endure till I set my mind to hear it.”
Shridy watched her hurry along the path. Reaching the willows at the creek’s bend, Willa began to run, her gingham dress flowing about her bare legs. When she had disappeared Shridy went around the house and peered up the hill toward the burned-over patch of new-ground on the second bench of the mountain. Jabe was leaning against a stump he had pulled with the help of his mule. He was staring toward the sun, hat in hand, and with no need to shade his eyes. The mule waited, brushing his nose over the charred earth.
Shridy called to him and the shrillness of her own voice rang in her ears. Jabe did not hear, her words being smothered by the redbud thicket between. She brought the fox horn from its nail by the mantel and blew into it with all her strength. Jabe turned and looked down, cupped his hands and blew an acknowledgement. Although it was not yet noon, he loosened the mule and started out of the field.
On coming from the barn Jabe heaped a turn of stovewood in his arms. Shridy met him on the porch. His face was butter-yellow like the air, his eyes the color of rain water drained from an oaken roof. And he noted her face, the sulphur hue of dry clay. Her hands appeared more leather than flesh.
“Hit’s a plumb quare day,” he said, going into the kitchen. “Must o’ been a storm somewhere afar off to the west. My opinion, the wind has picked up dirt from a mighty spindling country where the ground is worn thin. Hain’t the healthy kind like the wild dirt in my new-ground.” He threw the turn of wood into the box beside the stove and kneeled to thrust splinters to quicken the coals.
“I’m baking an apple stack cake for dinner,” she said, as if that were the reason for calling him in from his work.
Jabe arose slowly from his knees. “You’re not baking a cake on Wednesday, shorely. We don’t follow having Sunday cooking on Wednesday.” He was puzzled. “Sort of uncommon, hain’t it?”
She poured the stewed apples into a pan, and began to prepare batter for the layers. “Fruit won’t dry on such a day,” she explained. “Got to do something with the apples we’ve peeled.” The letter was like a stone in her dress bosom.
Standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, Jabe viewed the ragweeds marching along the fencerow of the meadow. They seemed yellow as bolted mustard. A golden carpet spread across the pasture which had been lately mowed.
Shridy called to Jabe from the stove, “You ought to put on a clean shirt if we’re to have apple stack cake for dinner. Hit’s sort of an occasion.” Jabe went into the front room, closed the door and pulled the latch-string inside. He lifted the great Bible from the maple highboy. It was weighty and he sat down and opened it upon his lap. The pages turned familiarly under his hard thumb. He squinted along the double columns, leafing slowly through the chapters, pausing to scan the revelations and miracles. Every page knew his finger, every sentence his eye. The Book was the herald of the past, the prophecy of the future. After a spell he put
the Book away, washed himself and donned a fresh shirt.
The sun was poised overhead when he returned. Dinner was spread upon the table. The pole beans, the salt pork, the beet pickles and sliced onions were in the new dishes Rein had sent from Ohio in the spring. The cornbread on its flowered platter was as golden as the day itself. The tablecloth had come from Rein’s wife whom they had never seen. They stood by the table and studied the dishes, rimmed with laurel buds. The linen tablecloth was stark white, cold and strange; it was as if the plates rested on snow. Unspoken were the words that Willa had read to them from the note pinned to it when it arrived: To my dear Father and Mother.
Jabe and Shridy were uneasy about the note which expressed a warmth they did not feel, sent by one they had yet to know. They had weighed the words, looking startled and speechless into each other’s eyes. This was Rein’s wife, their daughter-in-law, they kept reminding themselves. The spouse of their son’s choosing. But she was not their choice. They had chosen Willa, had counted on his return to claim her. But they must acknowledge Rein’s woman, accept her, stranger though she be.
Rein’s wife had written a letter after their marriage in June; in July there was another in her small, slanted script. There was none of Rein’s stubby scrawling on the pages. Willa had read the letters aloud, for Shridy could not read and handwriting confused Jabe. They had listened quietly. After the second letter Shridy had spoken her fear. “Be it Rein doesn’t write the next time, hit’s a sure sign his wife is going to do all the talking from now till Kingdom Come. He’ll be lost to us.”
Jabe drew back his chair and sat down. “We oughten to put these dishes away and just use ’em for company,” he said. “They won’t wear out before we’re gone from the world. They’re from him, recollect.” Shridy’s eyes followed the long pattern of the tablecloth as she sank into her chair and folded her hands into a knot in her lap. The letter with the small, slanted script was like a scorpion in her bosom.
In mid-afternoon they sat upon the front porch. The sun had swollen above the hills and now its yellow mask shone dull as hammered metal. The hound’s breathing came up through the puncheon floor in moist gasps. There was no movement along the creekbed road. Nothing except the mail hack had passed during the day. The silence and the yellowness swallowed the valley. A jar-fly fiddled in the maple shading the yard and buttery croaks of a frog sounded from the meadow.
“Hit takes a day like this to bresh up the mind and keep us beholden to the Almighty,” Jabe said. “Not many of them as gilded as His throne He lets us see in our day and time.”
Shridy swung back and forth in her rockingchair, her right hand resting upon her bosom. When it seemed the letter would jump out of itself she drew it forth and held it out to Jabe. “It’s from them,” she said.
Jabe jerked toward her. “Who writ it?” he asked impatiently.
“Hit’s from her,” Shridy said. Jabe sank back into his seat in sudden weariness. His hands clenched the chairposts.
The cows began to gather at the pasture gate. They waited without lowing. Jabe rose slowly from his chair and walked toward the barn. The path curved among the hillocks of earth, running before him into the hills. Little Angus Creek was molten gold. Not a wing stirred in the yellow air.
The Fun Fox
THE day I opened the Keg Branch School I rolled my sleeves to display my muscles, and I kept a pointing-stick handy.
Keg Branch was in the upper part of the county—’the jumping-off-place,’ some folk call it. The highway played out miles this side, and the creek bed served as the road. The behavior at the school was notorious; but I was eighteen, anxious to undertake my first teaching job, and the Keg Branch position was the only one open.
The superintendent of county schools had given me ample warning. “All sorts of chicanery will be attempted,” he had said, “even to riding you on a rail. Yet my rule is: a rail ride is a discharge, for a teacher must stay master. And an old citizen may plague this term—one I angered by my refusal to authorize a new schoolhouse. The building is in bad condition, I’m bound to admit. Still, I’ll not sanction another until the children mend their ways. He swore he’d bring a fool’s look to somebody’s face.”
“The children won’t wrap me around their thumbs,” I had boasted, “and I’ll get at the root of the trouble. I’ll stand shy of the old fellow.”
“They’ve run off even experienced teachers,” the superintendent had explained, “but I feel I should give you a trial, in spite of my doubt you can last. Prove me wrong if you can, and hang on at least until I find a substitute.”
The surprise that greeted me when I arrived on Keg Branch took me aback. The schoolhouse was brand-new! It sat on the foundation of the old one, upon a wedge of land between a cliff and a swamp and the creek, with scarcely space, as the saying goes, to swing a hungry cat. My surprise was so great that the lack of a playground didn’t strike me at once. At Argus Bagley’s where the teacher customarily lodged, I expressed my astonishment over the building.
Argus explained, “Up until a few sessions ago, the discipline of the scholars was fair, but for some reason it worsened. They’ve turned the school into a hurrah’s nest. We rebuilt in the expectation it might improve matters.”
I inquired, “Why was it done without the county’s support and knowledge?”
Argus chuckled. “Ever hear of Mace Crownover?”
I shook my head, wondering.
“Well, you’re in his territory,” Argus said. “The new building was his notion, and when the superintendent refused to help, the community humored Mace by providing lumber and labor. What Mace wants he usually gets.”
Then I knew. “I’ve heard mention of Crownover,” I said. “He’s got the superintendent fooled, certainly.”
“Confounding folks is Old Mace’s trade,” Argus said. “What that fun fox will do is beyond guessing. Still, he’s not so feisty as he used to be, not so ready with pranking and telling tales. Declares his wife is beginning to draw a tight rein and that he’s on the borders of swearing off tricks and tales for life. No matter. If ever you cross his path, keep your eyes skinned.”
“I understand he’s apt to make my job the harder,” I said.
“Oh, I reckon not,” Argus said. “Yet I doubt he’d let pass a chance to hocus any person. Always up to mischief, that’s his history. Why, right now he has a forty-dollar collect package in the post office and he vows he’ll clear it. He’ll clear it, says he, and I’d swear he hasn’t a cent to his pocket. A trick, I’d bet my ears.”
“What does the package contain?” I inquired, mildly curious.
Argus grinned. “He says it’s for him to know and for us to find out.”
Forty-eight children, ranging in age from six to sixteen, from tads in the primer to overgrown eighth-graders, attended school the first day, and they came with eyes gleaming. They acted as I’d been told to expect. Spitballs rained, erasers zoomed, tricks were rife. Antics were pulled under my very nose, though catch a body I could not. Unwittingly I wore a sign on my back: “Hello the rabbit!” They laughed when I flexed my arms, when I whistled the pointing-stick, when I threatened or scolded. A good thing Mace Crownover didn’t show up, for I already had my hands full.
The next day, I learned I was truly in for a bug race. A chair collapsed under me, soot blackened my fingers when I reached into a crayon box, the pointing-stick broke when I lifted it. Wasps in my lunch basket stung me, and the water in the well turned inky.
Again I caught nobody at mischief—none save a primer child sewing together the pockets of a coat I’d hung on a peg. Bad deportment to the contrary, the children were eager and bright at their studies, and they were respectful toward the new building, neither marking nor scarring it. At recess and at noon they jostled in the small area before the door. There was no room for even marble games or hopscotch, and I gazed covetously at Argus Bagley’s posted land across the creek. Argus was the principal landowner in the section.
They kept
me walking on pencils the week long, and such was my torment I almost forgot about Mace Crownover. Thorns were in my chair, cockleburs in my pockets, a fresh bouquet of sneezeweeds atop my desk daily. My hat was regularly glued to the wall, and a greased plank sprawled me twice. Yet the scamps were cunning enough to escape detection.
However, on Thursday afternoon I found a clue to their misbehavior. A student read a theme, which began: “A man bought a horse off Mace Crownover. The critter was blue or green or purple. You couldn’t tell which. You couldn’t learn till rain washed away the pokeberry and madder dye. The beast was gray. Gray as teeth.”
The children listened, eyes round and mouths ajar. At the completion one said, “Old Mace’s tricks are the best a-going.”
And another chirruped, “Ought to hear him taletell. He can spin them from now till Sunday, and every word the truth.”
I thought, Ah-ha, so it’s Crownover’s example they’re following. I hushed them abruptly and would permit no further mention of him. The children took it ill. They batted their eyes at each other and closed their textbooks with a snap. They acted as though the final day of the term had come.
And Friday morning, on opening the door, I discovered a fence rail leaning in a corner.
I knew by now I couldn’t fend off four-dozen children. The eighth-graders alone could handle me. But come what may, I’d not surrender without a tussle. I’d stick till the last pea hopped out of the pod. I ignored the rail, feigning not to see it, and I schemed to delay the reckoning. I conducted a three-hour spelling bee—spelling was their delight. I skipped recess and held the lunch period indoors, in the meantime reading to them from Tom Sawyer. I read all afternoon, and they could not tear their ears away. Thus I squeezed through till closing.