Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  Cean’s eyes greeted the shrubs about her mother’s cleanswept dooryard. She was glad to come back to the old place; it was secure and finished, somehow, as her own home was not. There were blanks in her new life, about her new house, to be filled in as time should come and go. Here around Pa’s place all the rail fences were split and laid years back; all the cribs were built and filled; the house and its surrounding earth were mellowed through many days of living together.

  Cean’s mother and father came across the thin sand of the dooryard to the side of the cart. Her father spoke welcome:

  “Git down and come in.”

  Her mother murmured in a pleasant silence:

  “We’re real glad ye brung her over, Lonzo, as well as yereself.”

  Her eyes rested on Cean’s face, loving her shyly. Lonzo said:

  “We thought ye mought like some fresh-killed beef. We butchered Cean’s yearling this morning.”

  He pulled out the piece of red meat from the cart, and they all went into the house and its quiet, hearty welcome.

  Cean’s father was a slow-spoken, heavy-minded man. He could beat his oldest boy, Jasper, pulling fodder any day, and Jasper was six feet two, and twenty years younger. When Pa was in the field they could hear him bawling at the oxen from as far away as the ten-acre field two mile off, if the day were still. Cean’s father ruled his house as he ruled his oxen; he gave commands and they were obeyed. His wife obeyed him as his children did; her only rebellion was mutinous silence as she spun or wove. Her husband knew no command that would open her thin lips closed against him, that would soften the still set of her eyes on the ends of her knitting-needles, pulling the length of the rough yarn between them with little jerks.

  His rough manner held all his children at a distance from him; they were ever shy of him and went to him only through their mother. It was so that Jasper and Lias had leave to go to the Coast that first time, years back. From their beds in the loft the children had heard their mother as she begged for them, when she thought they were asleep.

  “Vince, you a-aimin’ t’ take the boys with ye to the Coast?”

  There was a short silence; the boys held their breath; then the old man said:

  “I hadn’t thought nothin’ about hit.”

  “I expect they’d be proud t’ git t’ go. Not as I’ve heard ‘em say nothin’ about hit.”

  He knew she was lying, that the boys had begged her to get him to take them with him. He turned heavily on his side in the feather bed:

  “I’d take ‘em along if I thought they wouldn’t be a-quarrelin’ and a-fightin’ like some o’ them toughs.”

  They all knew that it was settled. Jasper and Lias lay still in the loft, hugging their stomachs that had risen up with joy. The father settled to sleep, grunting; the mother lay beside him, her arms along her sides, her face eased from its hard lines into something gentler than joy. Cean and little Jake in the other bed in the loft breathed long and deeply, their heads side by side on one pillow, her arms about his body. They understood that Jasper and Lias could go, and that they could not. Women and children wasn’t wanted on trips to the Coast.

  Lias, Cean’s second brother, came in from the lot as they were sitting talking of the crops and the weather. He said:

  “Howdy, Lonzo! Howdy, Cean!”

  He was bright-faced and shrewd-eyed. Vince said that he would drive the closest bargains of any of ‘em. Vince had always taken pride in Lias; the mother seemed to think the most of Jasper. Cean and Jake did not mind; it was just Ma’s and Pa’s way. Vince would give them all a piece of land and some stock when they stepped off, each one alike; but Vince always said that Lias would make the most of his. He was given to making fun of spindly-legged Jake, but Ma always said, “You was little once, yoreself, I reckon.”

  The family sat about the room, uneasy under the formality of a visit. Lonzo and Vince did most of the talking. After a while, her mother called Cean out to the cooking-shed built apart from the house at the back, and a silence fell upon the men. That was women’s talk and they were shy of it.

  Her mother showed Cean some little garments, cut and sewed with her fingers. There was one of each thing, to show Cean the size and the cut. Now Cean would make the other things; a woman must make her first child’s clothes, all to herself. The older woman gave sage advice to her daughter: she must drink sassafras tea for the blood; she must take care in lifting her arms over her head, and in lifting heavy weights; she should never have gone near the butchering—like as not the child might have a birth mark somewhere about it; she must remember not to grab herself when she was scared by anything, for that will mark an unborn child quicker than anything else.

  As she listened, Cean was afraid to tell her mother of her fears that were born out of the words and grew, all in a moment, to horrible, quivering things that would move as her child moved. She could not tell of the rattlesnake, nor of her feeling when the little calf was knocked in the head, a feeling of tears running bitterly down inside from her eyes and her throat, a feeling of bleeding slowly and helplessly inside herself. The thing that stirred within her might not be cute and cunning and pretty to see; it could be blood-colored all over. Godalmighty! it could be laid to her breast marked with a flat head and beady, black eyes and fangs for teeth. She could feel it there now…coiling…pulsating. She reached her hands blindly toward her mother as she felt herself falling.

  They were gathered about her; her mother had drenched her face with a dash of water. Cean saw Jake in the door, ready to run away and hide, his face a misery of fear. Cean’s mother said:

  “Jest rest easy fer a little and ye’ll be as spry as a cricket.”

  She turned to the men, her manner graced with the authority of womanly things:

  “The heat give her a turn.”

  Jake disappeared from the door and ran away to the crib, and burrowed his face into the rough, dry ears of corn. His heart was dancing in his throat because she was not dead.

  When they were ready to go, Cean walked around the house, calling Jake. He did not answer, and she went on out to the lot. He came shyly to the open crib door, and stood waiting for her to come up. She stood on the ground; he was in the door of the crib, his bare feet on the sill at her waist level. He was looking toward the house, his lips and eyes uneasy in embarrassment. She looked across the lot to where a flock of guineas pecked among scattered cornshucks. She said:

  “Hit weren’t nothin’, Jake. I’m a-goin t’ find a baby afore long, that’s all hit were.”

  She went back to the house, and his eyes followed the back of her head as long as he could see it.

  When she was gone from sight he ran back up on the slipping mound of corn, and found the farthest corner of the crib, and lay shivering, his face in the musty, dry ears.

  Major, his old, blear-eyed hound, came sniffing under the crib door, and whined. Jake spoke to him from the rough, sliding hill of last year’s corn:

  “Shet up, Major.”

  The dog lay down under the crib door, settled his drooping jaws carefully on his paws, and closed his eyes with a sighing breath.

  Chapter 5

  Lias thought up a plan of putting logs together on the river two miles from their home, and rafting their goods to the Coast.

  He put the plan to his father:

  “All ye’d have t’ do would be float, Pa.”

  But Vince couldn’t spare time from the crops long enough to fix up a new-fangled way of doing something.

  “But, Pa, ye could trade the raft as lumber.”

  Vince didn’t like argument from his children.

  “A tree ain’t never fed nobody. I’ve al’ays gone by oxcart. I reckon ye ain’t no better than yore pappy.”

  Lias’s jaw trembled as he set his teeth together. He was bigger than his Pa, but he was a-feared of him.

  “I reckon I couldn’t put a raft together and take hit down m’self?”

  The old man’s eyes flared.

  “Go feed u
p, Lias!”

  Lias went out the back toward the lot; his face was a little pale, his hands were a little trembly. He’d go down the river when he was his own man, so help him Almighty God! And it wouldn’t be forever till he was his own man, neither.

  In October the cotton had been stripped of its white puffs and stood in gaunt rows down the field; the fodder was pulled and the corn was gathered, and the cornstalks stirred drearily in the wind. The men about gathered up what they had to trade and packed it in the slow-going ox-carts—cotton, potatoes, brown sugar, wool, cowhides, comb honey. Some had hides to trade—black bear, gray ‘possum, shaggy wolf, red fox, and even little soft dun rabbits.

  Vince carried cotton and wool and cowhides. Seen sent a keg of lard and three hams that she wouldn’t need, a sack of dried peas, and clear honey and beeswax from her hives. This year she sent no goose feathers, because she was saving feather beds for the wives who would belong to Jasper and Lias. The boys would be stepping off any time now. Folks married young down here in the backwoods. She had purposes for all her cloth this year, too, with Cean like she was. She might put in a sack of dried peppers and sage for sausage seasoning, but Vince said that things like that wouldn’t bring nothin’.

  Lonzo and Cean packed their stuff in their own cart. He bragged a little, and she was overly shy in pride over this first trip to the Coast country with their own things. They had only cotton, piled high and covered over with some of Pa’s hides. In the corner was a sack of trinkets that Lonzo had covered over, things such as knitting-needles, hairpins, salt-and-spice sets, that he had carved from cedar and juniper wood at odd times when the corn and cotton were laid by; women took a fancy to such jimcracks; he might trade them for something, maybe, or he could bring them back home and nobody would ever be the wiser. Cean had nothing to send. Next year she would look ahead and have her own things for Lonzo to barter for her. She wanted a gold piece. She would get Lias to trade her things for a gold piece next year. Lias was the best trader for that purpose. Now Pa and Jasper were good talkers when it came to cotton or shoats, but they would not care to fool with women’s stuff. Cean wouldn’t mind asking Lias to trade her stuff for her. Each year she would send enough to trade for one gold piece. And the gold pieces would grow into a little pile. She would keep them in her chest. She would tie them into a little sack about as big as your hand…until it was full.

  On the way down, the men walked by the carts for part of the way to ease the loads of their beasts. They could make the trip in four or five days, given fair weather and moonlight nights. Allowing for three or four days there for trading and the Big Court, the trip could be made in about two weeks. Leaves were dropping during the time, and when they got back home it was soon time for cane-grindin’ and hog-killin’.

  Cean’s mother always spent the time while Vince was gone in quilting new cover and making winter clothing for her family. The work lightened with the menfolks gone; there was only the stock to feed and the house to look after. She would be alone this year, for Cean would need Jake to stay with her and help her. Jake was right pleased to stay with Cean, since he was still too young to make the Coast journey.

  The men were to gather at Big Creek at daylight on Thursday before the first Monday.

  The day before they were to go, Cean and Lonzo came to Vince Carver’s, and Cean braved her father’s rough impatience to say:

  “Pa, I ain’t the least bit a-feared to stay by myself. Jake wouldn’t be no extry burden to Lonzo. I could keep old Major tied up at our place.”

  She and her father were standing on the narrow piazza of his house. He looked away across the flat woods to where some of his cows were grazing. The sound of a clanking bell on a bent neck came across the woods. Vince watched the cows in the distance, and Cean could not know what he would answer. He kept his eyes on the cows and said:

  “I don’t like y’ bein’ by y’self.” Then he spoke roughly, “Tell ‘im he kin go.”

  He walked down the steps and off across the yard.

  Cean found Jake hauling manure from the lot to his mother’s sugar-pear trees in the far end of the cornfield, jerking on the rawhide lines passed around the head of the ox. He came by from the lot, geeing the ox around a clump of crepe myrtle. The manure was piled on a flat sled, and Jake walked beside it, shouting at the beast.

  Cean went out by the smokehouse to meet Jake. She leaned against the side of the smokehouse. There was always a pain between her shoulder blades now; her mother said that when that pain moved down to the small of her back, her time had come to lay her burden down.

  Jake’s eyes held to the edge of the sled, smeared with its foul cargo. The air all about was strong and heavy. She said:

  “Pa says y’ kin go with Lonzo t’ the Coast.”

  His glance started up and clung to her. Her face was bloated now, and liver-spots were brown on her cheeks. The warm brightness of her eyes was dulled a little. They looked at one other for a moment. She said:

  “I’ll tie up Major t’ keep the boogers off me.”

  His eyes went back to the sled heaped with manure. When he spoke, he tried to keep his voice hard and manly:

  “I wuz a-aimin’ t’ give Major t’ ye t’ play with the little un.” Then he bawled at the ox, “Giddup, y’ lazy old fool.”

  The ox plodded forward, Jake walking at the side of the sled. Cean called after him:

  “I doubt he’d stay ‘lessen we kept him tied up.”

  Jake did not answer; he went on walking across the long-turned furrows of the cornfield where a thin wind sang through dead cornstalks bereft of leaf and tassel and ear.

  It was eighty miles to the Coast through pines and palmettos, wire grass and occasional swamplands where the trees leaned upon one another and vines climbed to their tops, casting tendrils every way and knitting the upper air into thin green shadow. The trail forded shallow branches and sandy-bottomed creeks, crossed deeper fords where water ran to the axle even in dry weather, and mayhap crossed a river on a ferry tended by a talkative ferryman full of news.

  The men camped at night by oakwood fires. They fried their rashers of bacon and baked hoecakes over the coals, and roasted potatoes in the white ashes. They drank branch water out of a whisky-keg. The oxen were staked out to graze and the men lay about the fire, swapping yarns about bear-hunts, and rattlers with twenty-five rattles and a button, and balls of fire that roamed through certain swamps at night crying with a woman’s voice. The older men laughed over the stories, but those who were young lay spellbound under the words. Jake could not sleep until long after the others were snoring; his skin would creep when the dogs started off to run a rabbit or to tree a ‘possum. Old Man Cook from up the country told a story that there was a thumping every evening at dark in the ground under a rose bush in his front yard—thump-thump-thump–like a sledge hammer; and when night came, it hushed. Folks from miles around had come to hear it and would testify that it was so. Old Man Cook believed that there was a grave there, and whoever it was was knocking to get out, but he was a-feared to dig up the rose bush to see.

  Jake shivered under his quilt, and turned his eyes warily out into the dark. The stars were hazy far in the heavens, the moon was just rising behind the tree trunks. Jake wondered how Old Man Cook could live at the place with the thumping in the yard; Jake couldn’t, even if he was grown and not a-feared of anything....

  The nearer they came to the Coast, the plainer the road was to see. Jake’s eyes could follow it now until trees at a bend intervened. There were forks every now and then; one way went yonder to houses and clearings and fords, but this way went to the Coast!

  In the afternoon of the fourth day, Jake strained his eyes toward the clustering, one-storied houses of the Coast town. Live-oaks grew far as you could see all along the river bluff, and gray moss drooped low from the branches and swayed lazily in the wind. Chickens and pigs and cows wandered around the space between the rows of houses. The road went down between the houses to the river, and the ri
ver went down between the bluffs to the sea. Jake’s eyes followed the river’s course that was heaving a little with a fullin’ tide; then his gaze came back, retreating from too much wonder. He would walk out yonder to the edge of the bluff, when he got a chance, and sit and look as long as he liked; he would not hurry about seeing things....

  The men unhitched their oxen under the live-oaks and staked the animals to graze. Fires were going before dusk came down, and much loud talk and laughter went back and forth beneath the trees. There was a man there who had rafted down a load of cattle from away up the Alatamaha. He had a jug that circled here and yonder; some men passed it on quickly, others hesitated and tilted it to their lips. Jake listened, wide-eyed, to the rough greetings of the men who remembered one another from other years. Vince Carver was jovial; his lips, hidden in his heavy beard, parted over his big yellow teeth in laughter and loud fun-making.