Where Father works, and Uncle Asaph.
Asaph? Dad blast these Yankee names!
Father’s fond of telling—how Uncle Asaph got his name. Twas a few days after his—birth—and they didn’t know what to call him. He was having his didy put on him, and he—kicked out, like babies will. Kicked over a pewter cup, and it—fell on plates and things. So they fell, all—a-clatter. And my grandfather said, It says in—the Book of Chronicles—it says, Asaph made a sound with cymbals. So we shall call him Asaph. You see?
I don’t see no way. What they make in that shop?
Coral, I’m—tired. Want to go to sleep.
Then get back in that brush, where you was when the hawk fell down. Here. I’ll help you fetch this stuff.
They staggered and mauled their way to the center of the thick-clad little island.
You—asked me something.
Oh, twas just talk.
Asked me what they make in the shop. And I—used to help. I—grew up in the shop. Ask me again, Coral.
Well?
Ask me—again.
I’m a-asking.
They make feet. And legs. Legs and feet.
Coral Tebbs crowed wordlessly.
As God’s my witness!
Oh, they do, do they? They make them any hands too?
Usually just—hooks. But Squire Barth lost his hand in a sawmill, and they made him—a hand. Just for show. Twon’t work. It’s got a glove on it, with the fingers kind of—folded. Natural as life. But twon’t work.
Coral Tebbs sat talking with Naz Stricker until the Yankee, a thin bent ragged seed within the pod of coat and comforter, became voiceless. His breath blew out noisily as he slept; Coral watched him; sometimes he gargled and groaned and gave little squeaks; once he said something about Uncle Asaph. Coral watched him for what seemed an hour, it might have been longer. Then Coral made his way home and dropped exhausted upon his bed and found his own sleep, disturbed by nightmares as was Naz Stricker’s slumber. One trip into the marsh, a trip home, the trip back to the marsh, laden with haversack and blanket roll, his crutches slipping and catching . . . he had fallen twice, with those burdens . . . the trip back home again.
But in the middle of the night he sat upright, eyes staring into gloom, ears hurtfully alert. Dogs. The dogs were out. That free running pack, bound to hunt Naz Stricker in his lair, the catch-dogs bound to seize him when trail-dogs had smelt their way to the island. Then Coral laughed hoarsely, and lay back, head cradled under his arms. The dogs were over east, winding and tracking and baying across the Claffey plantation. Some other escaped prisoner must be their immediate quarry, not Nazareth. And it sounded as if the dogs were a solid mile and a half away from that sacred island, and going farther all the while. Coral reached out, got this trousers, found his plug, bit off his chew, and worked the spittoon out from under the bed. He propped himself comfortably on the bed, wishing only that his shoulders would not ache so strenuously, gnawed as they were by merciless wooden jaws of those crude crutches. Faintly he heard the music box playing in The Crib, and smiled to hear it, but he could not pick out the air. Those were all old foreign tunes on that spindle—someone had said that they were German tunes—and Coral did not know their names because the list pasted inside the music box lid was long defaced, and anyway the list was printed in a strange higgledy-piggledy script, and anyway he could not read well.
Zoral woke up in the next room and said, Maw.
She ain’t here.
Mawwww!
She’s over to The Crib, you blame grasshopper!
Jink.
Well, if’n you want a drink you come get it your ownself.
Jink.
You heard what I said, you Zoral. I ain’t toting no water to you, not this night. You’re big enough to wait on yourself. I hain’t your nigger.
It was doubtful whether Zoral understood half of what was said, but finally he came into the room, trotting slowly, and made his way to the water bucket, and drank deeply, squinting over the gourd at his half-brother while he drank. Then trot, trot back through the shadows; and a train went past, and again Zoral started to make train sounds until Coral roared at him to shut up.
Coral considered the swamp, and considered Naz Stricker, and thought of the Union army coat and the green and white comforter, now touched with muck, but covering Naz Stricker, shielding his weak body, helping to keep warm the wizened stump of his left arm. He thought of Flory, and his grin spread. Flory would puke. Thirty dollars a head . . . Turner and his dogs, Harris and his dogs . . . Captain Wirz, sir, I got this here Yankee. Give me thirty dollars, please . . . Coral slept.
...But awakened once more (and long after the widow’s callers had departed, and after she was bugling in the next room) to take notice of his own confusions, recollections and the hard stolid body of a single ambition which stood like a segment amid these other riffraff. A foot. Nazareth Stricker—in awful weakness, but mumbling still the answers which Coral sought—had said that they used special kinds of wood. One kind came from some foreign land, and it was light but strong, not weighty to tote around. It was costly. Couldn’t find any wood like that around here. But— Gum, tupelo, oak, pine, magnolia, haw? Sure enough, what about haw? Coral could— No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t cut down a haw tree by himself. But he might go over to the Claffey place and say, Mr. Claffey, sir, it might be that you’re pestered with chicken hawks? Well, I aim to rid you of them hawks. Set out still as a stump until Old Hawk comes, and then blast the daylight through him. But— Mr. Claffey, sir, if’n I’m successful a-doing it, it might be that one of your niggers could cut down a tree for me? Teeny little tree, not much account? That’d be one way to get haw-wood, if haw-wood could serve. Maybe peach, maybe apple? Ma had a rolling pin made of apple.
The rolling pin took him on the trail of a more magnificent idea. He saw a kind of rolling-pin thing, sticking up out of grass. Saw it clearly. But where? . . . It was in dry grass and blackberry spines, over next door on the Granny Rambo place. Granny Rambo’s house had burned down, burned to smithereens, the winter before Coral went to the army. Folks thought she must have put hickory in her fireplace, and hickory sparked like mad, and maybe that was what caught the bedclothes afire, and Granny sick beneath them. Black smoke boiling high, and men flocking with yells from the railroad train when they came past and saw the smoke and stopped to fight the fire. There wasn’t much use a-fighting it. They dragged Granny out, what was left of her, and got out a few pieces of furniture; then the roof caved in, and the woodshed and old smokehouse burned up too. Nothing left standing on the place except the privy with blackened pines towering sad beside it. . . . It was there that Coral had seen that big kind of rolling-pin-shaped apparatus, sticking up out of the weeds.
And the privy.
Nobody went there; no longer was there a path; the fence was down, hungry whips of berry vines extended over the deserted soil and made new bushes like a barrier. And you couldn’t see the privy from the railroad, couldn’t see it from the Tebbs place.
You needn’t worry about black people straying in that direction, for all of them believed that Granny Rambo walked the jungle which had been her dooryard for twenty-odd years, walked at odd seasons and in odd guise. . . . Saw her in her bonnet. She had that old shawl a-folded across her shoulders. She had a basket on her arm. She walked young as once she had been, with golden curls showing, and in a white gown, and she carried her youngest child in her arms. She walked old, she leaned on her cane, her face was hateful and hating.
To tell the truth, Coral Tebbs had first heard these tales when he returned in the fall of 1863, and had more or less believed them. But his honest memory of Granny Rambo was of a gentle little body who made gingerbread men to give to hungry children when she had the wherewithal. He did not believe that she would actually harm a soul, whether she walked or whether she didn’t.
He wondered if Naz St
ricker was afraid of ghosts.
Nowadays Coral himself feared few things. Scorn or pity directed at himself: these he feared and resented. And he was afraid of bad dreams, echoes of nrrrrwhuck and himself hooting under the knife and saw.
Coral had another nap (brief deep rewarding nap, a soldier’s sleep). He went prowling round the yard in the first hollowness of dawn. Maybe it was warmer in the swamp than it was here, warmer where wind could not reach so easily. He searched in ordinary places: in the broken hogshead lying on its side; in a mouldering wagon box; he searched behind sheds and under dry vines, he peeked at nests of leaves and straw and pine straw. No one had gathered eggs the previous evening, or possibly for two previous evenings, so now he found eight eggs. Coral built a tiny quick fire under the kettle and boiled all of the eggs. Zoral awoke and came running out in his shirt, he dripped lather as a dog might drip. Coral gave him an egg, and gave him corn bread. Coral was kind enough to offer milk to this loathsome mite as well, but the milk had turned sour, and Zoral upset his mug on the floor. Coral struck at the child but missed. Zoral fled shrieking to his mother’s bed. The Widow Tebbs awakened.
What you doing up so early, Coral?
Going a-hunting.
What you going to hunt?
Just a-hunting.
What you cooking?
Hen-fruit. I collected— He looked into the pot. Collected five. I give one to Zoral. He spilt his milk, the little bastard.
Coral, don’t you talk so bout my baby boy. You saving an egg for me, sonny?
Saving two. There was five. I et two.
Well, thank you for a good boy, Coral, she said drowsily, and soon was raucous in her snoring once more.
Again Coral packed the haversack: three boiled eggs for Naz Stricker, more pone, the last of the cold potatoes, the last slab of cooked pork. He shook the empty canteen . . . the balance of that milk was no good, but wasn’t there some wine in that keg yonder? He remembered that his mother had bought a cask of wine for future hospitality. Scuppernong wine, but just about the worst ever made. Coral opened the spigot and tasted, and made a face. Sour and muddy into the bargain, but it would be better than nothing for the invalid Yankee, so he filled the canteen. He left the house finally, weighted with shotgun and ammunition. These he hid as soon as he was out of sight, he wasn’t going to lug them to the swamp, he had no intention of hunting. In highest excitement he made his way through the forest . . . it seemed that the gray world was grown immaculately bright, promising bounty, promising varieties of wealth. Coral chanted quietly as he went; he could not sing well, but he chanted. Only the few stark birds and field-mice heard him. O baby, O baby, I’ve tolt you before, just make me a pallet, I’ll lay on the floor.
Nazareth Stricker had built himself a house; he said that he scratched it together in the late afternoon after he came from stupor. He was not able to tell Coral that he had been nerved as much by unexpected charity from a foe as by the few nourishing juices which strayed into his body; no more would Coral have been able to countenance the thought consciously; yet in secret fashion each youth was aware of the benefit offered, the goodness prevailing and digested, the warm human treasure accruing to the pair of them. Naz Stricker had drawn light twigs and flakes of old moss into a pile amid which he’d nested in the quilt. Overhead hung the cowl of the torn raincoat, held aloft by broken sticks, serving as cape and shelter tent. Naz said that he had been truly cosy for the first time in— For the first time in a long time. He thought that he had never been so cosy before. He remembered—but, again, could not tell Coral—that in sudden frantic awakenings he had felt a horror at the soundlessness, the detachment from that race of noisy monsters amid whom he’d dwelt. And then, throbbing through lone blackness and past a twitch of branches and the night cry spoken by some bird or animal, Nazareth had heard the ticking of the mantel clock in the kitchen-living-room at home. On this first occasion of his long separation from home, he had heard it. He had heard a doctor’s buggy rattling away down Lilac Street, he had heard his eldest sister talking in her sleep in the next room as often she talked, he had heard and felt his shepherd dog Buchanan changing position under the bed. He had whispered, Buke. Good Buke. You want to go out? Go to sleep, Buke. Then he himself had gone floating, unhurt, unstarved, master of time and distance, loved.
Nazareth Stricker ate eggs and pone, he said that he would save the potatoes and the bit of meat and the rest of the pone, he drank greedily of sour wine.
Don’t you go drinking too much all to once’t. Twill put you flat.
I’ve been drinking this water beside the island.
Swamp water! No good for your innards.
It’s better than in the stockade—much better. Cepting for the spring.
You got a spring in there? I mean, you had—?
It busted loose last summer. They said God broke it free of the ground. It was good water, but I only had a little cup—practically doll-sized—and then I’d have to stand in line again.
Yank. You feared of ghosts?
Nazareth Stricker said judiciously, I never met any.
You mind dwelling in a privy?
Would it stink?
No, it’s mighty old, no smell left.
Couldn’t stink as bad as the—stockade. Whose privy is it?
Next place to our’n, but everything else got burnt; and tis told that Granny Rambo goes walking there, but I hain’t never seen her, and I don’t reckon she’d hurt a flea. Naz Stricker, you tolt me about that queer kind of wood they used for legs. What might be its name?
I can’t remember. It came by ship from some tropic port. Pa couldn’t always get hold of it.
Could you make me a foot?
Me with my one hand?
Reckon I could help. Reckon I could hold things, and turn them, and cut, and shave away, if’n I was showed proper.
Stricker meditated on this. Finally he said, It’s a question of tools and materials. Up home in Pennsylvania we had everything: Pa and Uncle Asaph have got a turning lathe they work with a treadle, and we’ve got tools galore. We fill orders from— Oh, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, places such as that. Guess Pa and Uncle Asaph are now rushed to death, what with the war and all.
He said later, Guess they think I’m dead.
Well, you hain’t.
Guess I could try to make a kind of peg-leg-foot, granted we had the proper wood and some tools. With you helping. Let me see your—leg.
On no other occasion had Coral displayed his stump to anyone as an exhibition, as a deliberate act. His family had seen the thing necessarily in their intimacy . . . his mother crooned about it until Coral shouted for her to keep still. Once the exasperated Flory called him Old Stumpy-Stump, and that time Coral’s crutch caught Flory between the shoulders and like to busted his back. Floral was nigh to knocked senseless. He blubbered in bed for a day and a half, and his back was lame for weeks. The Widow Tebbs beat Coral across the head and shoulders until she broke her broom, but he only sat laughing, saying repeatedly that he was glad he had not missed.
The amputation was effected about two inches above the nodule of his ankle bone at the narrowest portion of his left shin. Peel off the sock, you damn Rebel, said Naz Stricker. Meekly Coral obeyed, removing the dirty knitted woolen wrappings so that Naz might examine the stump. The flap had grown into place soundly. Naz Stricker pushed against the stump with his hand. Hurt?
Not too much.
Does it hurt, really? Sometimes my stump feels all a-quiver. Sometimes it feels like my hand—was still there. Then I try to grab something and can’t.
Reckon I know. Same way. Oft I feel like I got a left foot.
Ain’t it—funny? Both left? Funnier than if it had been me right and you left, or tother way around.
It’s just as blame funny as all hell, said Coral Tebbs. The two of them engaged in a tittering laugh; thus they wer
e no longer Entered Apprentices, they had taken the Second Degree of their Lodge. They were Fellow Craftsmen.
Coral, I’m no surgeon. But I’ve watched Pa fit feet—fit feet, and more often wooden legs. And he’s made some of cork-wood, cork-wood that comes all the way from Spain and places. But it has to be braced within.
God damn it, can you make me a foot or can’t you?
Guess I—we—could fashion a peg-leg-foot. Granted we had the makings.
Would it work?
Straps—would be hard to manage. The fastenings . . . twould have to be thickly padded where the stump fits in. . . .
I said, Can you or can’t you?
We’ll see. That was all that Coral Tebbs could get out of him.
That day Nazareth Stricker lived on potatoes, pone, wine and the scrap of fried meat. He regretted the waste of food on the previous day, but was too much of a philosopher to torture himself idly with unhappy contemplations. He kept looking ahead, Coral had made him able to look ahead. Naz had slept well and in comparative warmth. Inside his skeletal frame the values of milk, eggs and other nobilities were enriching him. This night he might sleep with a board roof over his head for the first time since he had been hauled from Richmond to Andersonville (albeit a backhouse roof). His shrunken face turned into a black smile at thought of Granny Rambo’s ghost. He had lain amid some thirteen thousand men while they died; many of them he had seen puffed to fierce proportions before they were removed from his sight; he had worked in the hospital, also he had been a patient there; he had worked Outside, he had languished Inside; and he should be afraid of Granny Rambo, he should recoil from fancied odors of an unused latrine? Were he not a philosopher he had never been able to crawl through the reek of the old hospital drain, to worm his cold wet way past shivering trigger-ready guards, to circle the stockade and embrasures so that folks might think he’d escaped to the east instead of to the west, to provide himself with pepper and to scatter it, to flounder in low places where the wet going was hard; and to collapse at last in wilderness, no matter how loudly the dogs sounded in other portions of this boundless Avernus; and then to have the hawk come toppling.
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