‘I don’t want e’er charm.’
‘A quarter is all it takes, and she too close to spend it. Could have her man back for a quarter, and she too close. God knows!’
‘I don’t want e’er charm,’ Ellen said, ‘and I got no quarter.’ She held up empty hands.
‘In your pocket you got it.’
‘I got no pocket in this-here dress.’
‘In your petticoat then.’
‘I got no pocket in my petticoat.’
‘Le’s see. Got no pocket! Why ain’t you got a pocket? Le’s see.’
Ellen suffered dirty hands to fumble at her skirts and she shuddered while they felt for all the folds of her clothing.
‘Well, what you want then? What you come here for a-taken up my time?’
‘I guess I’ll go now,’ Ellen said.
‘Was it Prather you aimed to see there?’
‘Yes,’ Ellen said, speaking softly, looking at the woman’s face. ‘It was Jonas I aimed to see. Just a short spell I wanted to see him.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, you couldn’t see Prather now. You couldn’t see him now and I’ll tell you for why. He’s gone two days back and he won’t come this way no more. He’s gone away to a place in the north, a long way past Cornishville. He went day afore yester. He married Sallie Brown and went off to live in a place far past Cornishville, away to the north.’
‘Do you know it?’ Ellen whispered, leaning against the door.
‘He left Sallie here while he went on to Barnet’s to fetch his things and pack up to go. They married in town. Sallie, she didn’t want to ride up to Barnet’s while he got his traps and she waited here. It was the same body I see go by here a heap with Prather. Say, did you have bad luck with your sweethearten?’
‘But maybe it’s some other Prather,’ Ellen said, ‘some folks I don’t even know.’
‘You feel fainty-sick, don’t you now? Prather, when he come back, he had so much plunder and truck they had to sort it over and leave some behind. Mrs Prather, she set in that-there chair and sorted out the truck and made up a bundle to leave behind till some of their folks is to pass and take it. It’s that-there sack behind the door. I’ll open it up and no harm to see inside. I’ll open it up and you can see for your own self.’
‘No, no,’ Ellen said. She was unable to move as she leaned against the door. The woman dragged a sack from the corner.
‘You see this-here coat, and this-here old hat? Them’s Prather’s, I judge. I see ’em go by on him many a time. This-here is Mrs Prather’s old petticoat, and here’s her under-body, and here’s her old blue dress. Here’s his winter gloves. It’s a right full bundle, but it’s the quilts make it stand out. Help tie it up, will you? Tie a knot in the string. Are you satisfied now it’s the parties I named to you?’
‘I think I better go back now,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m right obliged to you for the rest and for the drink of water. I got a right far piece to go and I think I’ll set out. I’ll bid you good evening.’
‘How far you come, gal?’
‘I come right far, five mile, maybe.’
‘You come better’n five mile. I know all the folks in five mile and I never set eyes on you afore. How far, now?’
‘Better’n five mile, maybe. I guess I’ll be a-goen. Good evening.’
‘Wait now. Did you come from up around the Robinson country?’
‘On beyond that. I come from up around Wakefield’s. Pappy crops on Wakefield’s place.’
‘That’s ten mile, now. You couldn’t go a-walken back on foot this time of the day. Not a good looken gal like you. No. The country all full of road-menders and them that’s a-campen up the creek. No, no. Get in home away toward day or maybe not get in at all. It’s ten mile, nohow. Wouldn’t you be a sight by daylight!’
Ellen drew away from the door, putting on her hat.
‘The road-menders is a feisty set and there’s a fresh set a-campen on the river.’ The woman followed her out onto the road.
‘I’ll have to hurry on and so I’ll be on my way. Good evening.’
‘You couldn’t set out to walk ten mile now, and night right here at us. Dark would come afore you got two mile, now. Wait now, wench. Them road-menders is a feisty set. You better stay all night. I’ll give you a quilt on the floor right alongside my bed, and you can pay me with your shoes, maybe, or your petticoat.’
‘No, no, I’d have to go. It’s time I was gone now.’
The woman followed Ellen a few steps from the door, her bare feet making stiff prints in the dust. All the while she was taunting Ellen with the distance and offering her a bed on the floor in return for her shoes or her hat, or she was leering at her in depicting the lusts of the road-menders. She would picture and prophesy the night on the lonely road or she would whimper that if Ellen would pay her with the shoes she would take her home in a cart, but since the girl had no money how could one expect a lonely old woman with hardly a cent to her name to be hauling a big lazy girl around, and then she would sniffle at her tears. In the end she hurled curses after Ellen, who was hurrying up the lane toward the highroad, who turned at the corner of the lane hearing the last curse, but no maledictions fell heavily upon her because she was drugged with her own sorrow and physical pain. She walked quickly down into the shadowed roadway and fell to weeping, her tears flowing down her quiet face as from some wells of grieving. She gave little heed to the road, but her feet followed the ways they had come although night soon fell.
Now and then a vehicle passed her, but she made no effort to be hailed by any passer nor did she shun these encounters, but rather she set herself to the business of the road and to her tears. She did not know when she passed the camps although the moon arose soon after sunset and she was well lighted along the way. How, her tears were continually questioning her, how did she, Ellen Chesser, ever come to such a state of need that a person outside herself, some other being, not herself, some person free to go and come and risk accidents far from herself, should hold the very key to her life and breath in his hand? Her tears flowed anew for pity of such a device among men and they flowed anew at each recognition of her own loss. Sometimes a low moaning came with her sighs, but she walked steadily forward.
Once during the night a quick step sounded along the road behind her, but she did not look back nor did she in any manner change her pace nor take the sound of the coming footfall into her thought. The ground and the air were as nothing to her, for all her life had been plucked out and there was nothing left but the knowledge that it had been taken away. The step came very near and a man fell in pace beside her, making some remark of greeting, but she was scarcely aware of his words. That a person outside herself, another being separate in flesh, should be a part of herself and, withdrawing, could break her – she wept afresh. The man announced his intention, laying his hand on her arm, but she walked steadily on and his words scarcely entered the outer porch of her ears. His hand still upon her arm they came out onto an open stretch of road where the moon shone brightly, and her face was revealed in all its sorrow and its flow of tears. The man dropped his hand from her and moved on beside her, talking, asking questions, but she changed no detail of her grieving. After a long interval a low moan would come with her sigh. Finally the man fell back from her way and she went forward alone.
In the road beyond Turpin’s cabin she met one of the hounds, one of the large brown beasts from the Gowan farm that wandered masterless each night over the hills. It came toward her eagerly, licking her hands, and with the dog beside her she walked up through the lane. She could hear his stately tread on the road and feel now and then the rise and fall of his head as it brushed her hand. Thus they came into MacMurtrie’s land where the fence was torn away and thus they walked through the wasted field where MacMurtrie’s grain had once stood. They came down the pasture road, the dog making small half-circles about her, his step soft-padded and light, or he came back to walk beside her, licking her hand that was shed of its strength by the
force of her grief. The hound stopped by the cherry clumps and she went unattended through the gate and onto the stoop of the cabin, walking softly, hushed more by her sorrow than by any wish to enter unheard. Her steps were softly plodding as she passed through the lower room, and in the same pace she took the stairs.
Called from her brief sleep, Ellen milked the cows and brought the wood for the cooking fire. After she had eaten she went away slowly across the ploughed field toward the hill where the plant beds were set in the spring. The physical weariness which had followed the long walk had taken possession of her grief, and her thought was numbed, but the hills would ask her no questions, and a vague sense visited her that later she would know what to do. Now she must go from the cabin. Up in the hill where the MacMurtries had hunted the foxes she sat under the shade of some interlocking trees, and, as she sat among dry leaves looking down upon the hill of the plant beds where the cleared spots showed among the thick growth as rectangular patches, a faint dying wind seemed to blow over her and a faint phrase blow with it, dimly sensed with the fanning of the wind, ‘In the time of man, in the time of man.’
She eased herself among the dry leaves, her folded arm for a pillow, and soon fell asleep although these winds blew over her laden with faint phrases and were all but lost, coming now and then into the confusion of a dream. She lay there all the day, falling out of her deep sleep into a hurt dream now and then but gathering back into nothingness and numbness in the end. The hot sun of the midday did not trouble this high glade, and into her sleep came a sense that she had been flung to some high and remote place from which she could look down upon the time of man, the world, squares and rectangles cut upon a virgin hill, and pity it with a great grief which she would assume all in her season.
Toward evening, waking, she saw the slanting rays of the sun and her habit somehow knew or sensed its duty toward the turkeys so that she arose at once and came back to the farm where she went stiffly through her task, knowing dimly what she did. She was walking across the pasture calling the hens, but when next she was aware she was carrying water from the old well, stepping through tangled masses of morning-glories that had overrun her path. As she awakened from her stupor of sleep a sense of her loss grew each moment more acute, and a sense of some act impending.
She was in the small meathouse behind the cabin cutting bacon for the breakfast while Nellie cleared away the supper. She was cutting with a butcher knife, the great blade making stabs through the meat, cutting quickly and deep. An awful strength came to her arm; she stabbed deeper, driving the knife to the handle. She would kill Jonas. She would stab him with her knife, thus and thus! She hated him. Deep in her body arose waves of hate, and a strength beyond any she had ever known drove the knife into the dried flesh. He was ugly. She remembered all his ugliness. His work clothes hung flat on his body, which was thin and tall. His work coat had a patch on the elbow and his shoulder blades stood out under his shirt. There were little white marks on his teeth. She hated him. There was a rough spot on his hand above the wrist. There were black hairs growing on his chin when he did not shave, growing away from his mouth, a white circle left around his lips. She could see his body through his clothes and she loathed it, despised it. When he was tired he limped a little on his left foot. ‘Slashed that-there foot wide open with a corn knife when I was a youngone, laid the raw meat back to the bone,’ he had said. She had seen his foot; once he had taken off his shoe to show it to her and she had trailed her finger over the long scar. She loathed him for his mutilations and she cringed away from the pain that had been his. She hated him for the pain and her hate drove the knife at each thrust.
‘I’d kick him out. I’d kick him with my foot,’ she said.
Another wave arose out of her more inner passion, Jonas coming to her door at dusk after his day in the field. He would be sitting on the step when she came back from the milking lot, and his cigarette would make a little light in the dusk while he waited for her to come. His hands would be gentle upon her. She would sit beside him in the half-light and his shoulders would be drooping with weariness and his shoulder frame showing a little through the line of his shirt. His lips would curve around his cigarette and there would be the circle of white about his mouth before the dark began. His voice, wanting comfort, ‘Gosh! I’m monstrous tired tonight. Ploughed and grubbed all day.’ And she, ‘If I could I’d like to cure all that-there outen you by just a-layen on of hands. I’d charm all the tiredness away in the twinkle of an eye if I could by just a-layen on of hands.’
His hands would be gentle upon her. ‘You already done that-there, Elleen.’ It was autumn. ‘You didn’t tell me to go outen your sight… I been in torment ever since I knowed, downright hell… but I knowed you’d tell me what’s right…’ She wept softly, hanging up the chain of the meathouse door and turning the key in the lock. She carried the meat into the house, going up the steep back steps. She threw the meat onto the kitchen table with the knife beside it and went up the stairs to her room, her feet striking hard blows upon the boards.
‘I could kill Jonas with a knife,’ she said. ‘Jonas. I’ll kill Jonas. I hate the look of him. I hate him last fall, a-comen every day for a spell.’
An awful strength heaved up in her anger and hate. She jerked her bed before the window with one rough strong gesture and sat looking out into the dusk. Beyond the window there was nothing. Lines of fields were nothing and sky was nothing, less than foolishness. Strength pushed at her arms, unmeasured strength, closing her hand over a knife handle, and a great sickness arose in her abdomen and spread into her breast. There was nothing left but kill, kill, kill… Jonas bringing her the frost flowers gathered from MacMurtrie’s field and the last goldenrod. Jonas bringing her the biggest hickory nut. Jonas telling her how many shocks he had cut that day, and telling her when old Mr Chandler paid him off in the stripping room and called him trifling before all the other men and told him to get out. He almost cried when he told her. And then she was holding his head against her breast as they sat on the cabin step in the early cold, and telling him he was not trifling and that he would find another place… His words, ‘Me and you, Elleen. Before summer, Elleen…’ A great sickness came to her breast. She hated the white about his mouth and she hated his limping foot. She would despise him. She would strangle him with her hand, and a great strength came to her that made her hands tremble under their grip. Then words that were printed into her memory long ago began to run forward, and this hour lost its identity before the force of another, long past, until she swam back into the past as if she were an apparition, without presence of its own. The voices spoke aloud, voices of men, filling the room with their terror, speaking sharply, speaking with authority or fright.
‘…how to get ’er down…’
‘Cut the rope…’
‘No, don’t cut no rope. She might be still a-liven.’
‘Bring up that lamp, Ellen.’
One lamp, now, carried to the top of the hall. The stairs came up out of a dark hole and a long woman was hanging down into the hole, going down into the black.
She was running again through the night in a cold dark, slipping on the ice where it dipped down into the marsh place. The farm bell was ringing loud on MacMurtrie’s hill and the hounds were baying and running in the fields and woods, the yelping of the hounds flowing up and down and lying under the quick steady beat of the farm bell. One light shone out from MacMurtrie’s, from the hall door which was standing open. She was running up into the yard just as the woman came away from the bell rope, walking in uneven steps, her shoulder rising and falling with the limp. Then the light was coming out of the open door, falling on the lame woman and on herself, there present now, in the frost. Mr Al was running up the drive on a horse and coming into the light, and then Henry came out of the dark, the path she had come. The men were going up the stairs in the hall. The woman on the stone door-sill was moaning, ‘Miss Cassie, child…’
‘Bring up that-there lamp, Ellen.�
�
Herself going up the bare stair, a long way to the level of the high ceiling. A long woman hanging down from the banister rail, hanging still.
‘No, don’t cut no rope, she might be still a-liven.’
‘Lift her up easy now.’
‘Get a hold under her arms. Take a hold there, Ellen.’
‘Lift her back over the banister rail.’
‘Easy now.’
‘Get water.’
‘Shut her eyes for her.’
‘Fan her in the face.’
‘Stand back. Open that window. Where’s the brandy, now?’
‘Oh, fix her mouth decent, fix it for her.’
‘Put the brandy in her mouth. Rub her. Rub her hands.’
‘Shut her eyes, I’d say.’
‘Try the brandy again, just a leetle more, try it once again, why don’t you?’
‘Fix her mouth decent. Take the rope offen her neck, there.’
‘Try the brandy again. Keep on a-tryen. Let’s fan her. Where’s the fan?’
‘Oh, fold her hands crossways. Fold her hands and fix her decent. Quit a-worryen her, now. Poor soul!’
‘What made her look so lax, spread on the floor and given away?’ Ellen’s own voice questioned the old event. ‘What made her look so lax? She was like a long rope spread on the floor. Miss Cassie MacMurtrie she used to be, a-riden on a horse or in her backyard to call her chickens. Now she was on a dusty floor with people a-taken hold of her to pull her this way and that. She was just some more of the rope that was tied to the banister, under foot.’
The voices at the dialogue again: ‘Bring up that-there lamp, Ellen.’
Herself going up the bare stairs, a long way to the level of the high upper floor. A long woman hanging down from the banister rail, hanging still.
Another voice, an old hard voice, from far off: ‘Let Cassie do hit. She’ll drag Scott through fire and hell afore she’s done… Hit’ll be like throwen a lame rabbit in a pack of fifty starved hound dogs…’ A low voice: ‘There won’t be enough left of Scott MacMurtrie to wad a gun with. I know Cassie Beal… She’s made outen fire and hell…’
The Time of Man Page 19
