Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

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  Sleep had conquered him shoes and all. He had awakened to find himself in his father's arms with his mother walking beside them with the lamp in her hand. He had looked up to see the lamps; the one in her hands and the two reflected in her eyes, then fallen asleep again, powerless to fight for the privilege of sleeping with his shoes.

  Maybe he knew that with such shoes he could never be a baby anymore, or maybe because spring came on with a rush that year and he must be out helping his father plow the corn ground, but whatever it was it seemed that when he had marched up that high hill of his memory, the two lamps he saw that night seemed the last things he saw in his mother's eyes. He had seen so many other things in Delph's eyes, had learned to look at them and study their lights and shadows because the slow glance of his father often went hunting there as it hunted in the sky. But now he was too big to sit in her lap, and gradually the memory of lying in her arms and seeing himself in her eyes, of watching them change like the river from blue to gray and back again, of seeing them laugh and leap and quiver the way the high hill clover fields lightened and darkened when clouds raced under an April sun, grew dim.

  His world was high and deep and wide, too great to be centered in his mother's eyes. He was no longer a baby to stay playing in the yard. He must be out with Marsh, take a hand in the turning of the corn ground, sometimes riding Ruthie Ann who seemed old and gentle now. He must be squinting at the sun from under his hat brim, wiping his hat with a great red bandanna, must always be on hand to shove his hands into his pockets, clear his throat loudly and answer, "Yes Siree, Marsh," when his father said, "Burr-Head, reckin we'll make a hundred bushel to th' acre this year?"

  When Delph came with a quart of milk for Marsh, a pint for Burr-Head and stacks of meat and cornbread he must be on hand to eat and drink and say to Delph, "Look at th' corn ground we've turned."

  Delph would answer, "You're makin' out fine, Burr-Head." When Marsh had gone back to the plowing she and Burr-Head would linger a moment together. She would maybe say, "You're all sweaty an' covered with dirt, Burr-Head. Don't you want to come in an' be cleaned up?" or "Burr-Head wouldn't you like to play in th' yard by me a little while? I'd turn on th' radio.''

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  Mostly he would answer with a toss of his sweat dampened curls, ''Pshaw, Delph, I can't leave th' plowin'," and go running after his father.

  Delph would sometimes follow a step or so but stop when he went running on. She would turn then and go back, more slowly than she had come, and sometimes Burr-Head would turn to find her standing still a distance down the corn rows, just looking after him. Other times, if the press of her house and garden work were not too great, she would tempt him past his strength, "Come in out a th' hot sun, Burr-Head, an' I'll tell you a story."

  They would go together then into the living room and sit in the cool green light that filtered through the morning glory vines. They would sit in front of the empty fireplace with the maps that Emma had sent before them on the wall. While Delph talked Burr-Head was still, looking sometimes at the maps on the wall, but most often into his mother's eyes, talking eyes they were, where all the stories seemed to move and live. In her eyes he saw the sea and ships, finer than the pictures she showed him in books and magazines, and there were cities he could hardly see, bigger and finer, more wonderful than heaven and Hawthorne Town together.

  He would listen with round shining eyes, sigh with happiness when a story was done, and whisper, "An' is it true like you say, Delph? I'll go there some day?"

  She would nod and study him and smile. "Aye, Burr-Head, you'll go. You'll do an' see a lot of things before you die.You'll go to a college like th' one where Katy's goin' nowan' you'll learn so many things, how to be a great doctor or a chemist like Sam, or maybe an engineer like that Sloan boy from Salem."

  Burr-Head always forgot just what was an engineer, and would smile and say, "An' when I come down th' Greenwood down grade I'll play 'Jesus Lover of My Soul' on th' whistles th' way that Sil Marcum does."

  Delph would answer in patient explanation, "No, no, Burr-Head, not that kind of an engineer. Recollect I told you, one like th' Fitzgerald boy from Burdine.He's laid out bridges and railroads all over th' world."

  Burr-Head would remember again, and his eyes would darken and quiver with dreams. It would be wonderful to run a railroad

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  train and make the whistles sing, but building bridges like the Fitzgerald man was a stranger more wonderful thing. He knew because Delph said it was.

  When Delph had no more time for stories he would go running away, sometimes back to his father, but often calling Caesar for a voyage of discovery. They would go sometimes by the river, and sit in Marsh's flat bottomed skiff. They would sail under the trailing willow trees past the sycamores, down through the crooks and the bends of the Cumberland, down to the Mississippi. And down the Mississippi they would go, seeing cotton fields on either side, just as Delph had said, and past the Mississippi lay the ocean. It was endless and forever changing like the sky, so Delph had said. Sometimes storms rocked the boat, and he and Caesar were hard put to escape with their lives.

  One hot afternoon in July they were overcome by wild black savages found on islands in the ocean as Delph had said. Burr-Head escaped with nothing but his skin and shoes, and ran pure naked and screaming for help. But at his backyard fence he thought he heard voices and peeped through a screen of hollyhocks, and saw Mrs. Sadie Huffacre stringing beans and talking with Delph under the shade of the box elder tree. The fear of being caught without his clothes grew suddenly greater than his fear of the savages, but the path through the corn to the river stretched long and hot for him to go naked, his return unhastened by wild black men at his heels. So he slipped to the barn and found an old jumper of his father's in which he walked sedately past Delph and the visitor. The woman had looked at him through the holes in the jumper with her lips pinching tight together, but Delph had only smiled to see him go marching by without his clothes.

  "You'll have to tighten up on him one a these days," he heard the woman say, and then his mother answering. "I had enough of tight raisin' when I was growin' up without passin' it on to my own," she said. And Burr-Head was glad she never talked to him and Marsh in such a low hard voice.

  Delph, he knew, was mad at the woman, not at him. So a few days later when he went up to the school with his father to see that Ezrie and the children were all in proper order, and Violie, least of the Huffacre girls, slipped around the house corner at recess and

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  teased him with a crooked finger and a, "Shamie, shamie, I've heard Burr-Head Gregory goes without his clothes," he smiled at her and cried, "Look out for Solomon. He's a bad wild bull," and ran with a mighty roar and butted her hard in the stomach. She lay a moment and looked at the sky, too surprised to cry, and then she wailed with a mighty screeching that brought Ezrie with Marsh and half the school on the run. "Who hit her?'' Ezrie asked in his big slow voice.

  "Nobody. Solomon butted her," Burr-Head said, and smiled at Perce's Little Lizzie, ten years old and Burr-Head's sweet heart.

  Little Lizzie smiled back, then switched her braids and caught Ezrie's sleeve, for she was a good little girl, never afraid of the teacher. "She said Burr-Head went around naked an' made a 'nawful face an crooked her finger, th' great big thing on little Burr-Head," Little Lizzie said, and Burr-Head felt himself growing tall in the children's eyes. He had vanquished a foe, much larger than he and older.

  But as he and Marsh were going home he grew small again, felt like Sexton's new baby that blubbered and cried. His father said a few words about boys who fought girls, even when the girls were big and strong. He walked slower and slower, lagging behind his father and looking at the ground, and when Marsh turned about to see the effect of his sober, halting words there was no Burr-Head, only Caesar looking mournful.

  Marsh glanced among the lock thick cedar trees by the road, called once, and when there was
no answer walked on. Caesar watched him out of sight, and then went sniffing among the little cedar trees until he found Burr-Head weeping belly downward under one. Caesar licked his neck until Burr-Head lifted his head, and then he licked his cheeks and chin. They went then to their favorite spot, the top of a high sheer crag above the road where Marsh had forbidden them to go. The top was thickly screened by cedar trees, and mock orange bush, so that they could sit there and look over the country and down to the Cumberland with no danger of discovery. They sat a time and watched the river and Aunt Dorie's house on the next hill, but mostly they looked at the sky.

  It was filled with high white flying clouds, and Burr-Head knew the reason; it was Saturday in heaven and the clouds were going to the county seat market town driving white sheep and white cows

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  and white hogs to the city he could not see. But it was there. He knew: Aunt Dorie had taught him the days of the week in heaven, told him of the country there. When the sky was still and deep without one single fleck of cloud, it was Sunday then in heaven with the clouds all gone to church.

  Burr-Head studied the sky and wrinkled his brows over heaven as he did sometimes in Sunday School when Delph taught his class and talked of heaven. He saw it then; bright like Hawthorne Town on Christmas Eve, and flashing with red and golden light like the brick house windows when the sun went down. The streets there were made of gold and all day long the people sang the way his mother sang, and no one there was ever sleepy or tired or in pain.

  Still, that heaven for all its beauty and Delph's delight in it was empty and cold against that other heaven he had found one day. It was last year he thought summer when he had found it, the summer before he sang that Christmas song at school. He had gone visiting Mrs. Elliot, all dressed up in a red tie exactly the color of one Marsh had, and a new blue shirt and blue overalls exactly like Marsh's. He had stayed with Mrs. Elliot, picking out first one note and then another on her piano, and then he had heard the children come shouting out of the school house for morning recess, and he had wanted Little Lizzie to see him in his new red tie.

  Mrs. Elliot had taken him to school in search of Little Lizzie. But she was not playing lady visitor in the playhouses with the other little girls or jumping rope. They found her in a fence corner with her head against a post crying and crying. Ezrie stood behind her and shifted from one big foot to the other, and three of her brothers leaned on the fence and looked sad. "Captain Harlan died last night," one of her brothers said to Mrs. Elliot, and another one patted Little Lizzie on the shoulder and said, "Ah, honey don't cry over that little runty speckled pig. He'd never ha been any good anyhow."

  But Little Lizzie had cried on and Burr-Head had sat on the ground and cried, until Mrs. Elliot said she thought she'd better take him to his father working at pitching up hay in an upper field. Little Lizzie came along, for she wasn't any good in school, crying the way she was.

  They found Marsh all in a lather of sweat and mad because his pitch fork was loose on its handle. It was a good thing Caesar ran

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  before them or Mrs. Elliot and Little Lizzie would have caught him swearing, but as it was he only mopped his face and grunted when they came up. Burr-Head ran to him and caught his knees and wept like a river and Little Lizzie ran and caught his arm and began crying all over again, and Mrs. Elliot sounded none too happy when she told him of Captain Harlan, the speckled runty pig.

  Marsh had stood and studied them and stroked his three days growth of beard. "Was he a well behaved pig?" he asked Little Lizzie.

  "Better than all th' others," Little Lizzie sobbed. "He was never big enough or strong enough to be much mean. An' when I'd scratch him on th' side he'd lay down an' bat his eyes an' now," but she fell into such a fit of weeping she couldn't even talk.

  "You'd ought to be ashamed, you two," Marsh had said, "cryin' over a good little pig that's gone to heaven."

  Burr-Head lifted his head and studied him, and when Marsh nodded slowly and Mrs. Elliot nodded, he knew that he had heard the truth. Marsh wiped his neck and slung more sweat from his forehead, then looked out over the little mounds of clover that he was raking into big ones. "Your little pig's in clover now," he said, "an' when he sickens a clover all he has to do is walk into a cornfield an' help himself to corn. An' Lord such corn as there is in heaven, sixteen feet tall with th' ears so heavy they fall right off for little pigs."

  Little Lizzie had dried her eyes and Burr-Head laughed, and they all followed Marsh when he took a short cut over the hill, then back through the cornfields to the tool house to get his pitch fork fixed. Mrs. Elliot came with them, and they all walked together, each going down a row of corn. The first of the silks were showing, pale green and fine like bundles of silk, and overhead the wide plumed tassels waved. They came to a place where Delph had planted crenshaws and pumpkins, and their wide yellow flowers were bright through the field. Mrs. Elliot stopped and pondered with her chin caught between her thumb and finger, and then she turned to Marsh. "I guess Captain Harlan is in a place something like this, don't you think?"

  Marsh considered and pushed back his hat. "A good bit like this," he finally decided. "Of course no man on earth can grow such corn as grows in heaven, an' there th' punkin flowers are wide across as my two hands, an' th' punkinsLord, th' angels that wrestled

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  with Jacob can hardly lift 'em. An' of course up there," he went on after a time while he stood swinging Little Lizzie's hand, "th' fields are all divided differ'nt. It's like thisthis field where we're standin' now, it's summer, th' corn's too green for a little pig. Well, next to th' summer there's another onedifferent with th' corn hardly shoe top high. That's springnot good for a little pig either. He goes on, a twistin' his tail an' a squealin'. He's hungry now. Th' next field he comes to, th' corn's all cut, Just th' fodder shocks, nothin' in that field but th' angels' cows. But he runs onhe can smell it now an' he goes a gruntin'. Pretty soon he comes to a field where it's fall. Th' angels are cuttin' cornth' highest stalks an' th' biggest, whitest ears. They throw down one for him, an' he starts eatin' away. His sides get bigger an' bigger. He don't squeal anymore. He just grunts once in a while an' bats his eyesan' then he goes back to a clover fieldwhite clover with th' blossoms big as th' red that grows herean' he goes to sleepfor he picked a clover field in spring.Now, Lizzie, I'll bet you're ashamed you cried."

  And Little Lizzie smiled and Burr-Head laughed and Mrs. Elliot looked at Marsh until she caught his glance. They smiled and their eyes were like hands touching across the heads of the children.

  They all went on together and found Delph busy with dinner getting in the kitchen. Burr-Head never knew the reason or maybe there was none, but for some cause he did not talk that heaven over with Delph as he did most things.

  Now as he stood on the limestone ledge he thought of that heaven for a time and smiled on Captain Harlan, but soon the sky glimmered in his eyes and he was tired of searching. He went hunting then until he found a long straight stick. He took the stick and laid it on his shoulder, and then he found a large shag bark hickory leaf and laid it on his head.

  He crept stealthily back to the high rock until the toes of his brogan shoes were over the edge. He could look down and see his mother working in the garden, while in the farther field his father and the mules looked small in the waist high corn. "Indians," he whispered to Caesar, and dropped on his stomach and drew his gun, first rolling a pebble down its side for the shot that he knew had gone into the old gun in the attic, as Delph had said. He was not Burr-Head but Azariah, six feet four inches tall in fox skin cap with the tail dangling

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  wide between his shoulders and his deer-skin hunting shirt down to his knees, and he was ready to kill the Indians, the bear and the deer and the panthers creeping up on him from all directions.

  When he had killed his fill of game and explored the country from all angles he was suddenly conscience stricken by his lazy good-for-noth
ing ways. The hill shadow would soon be touching the river, and he had not helped Marsh with the plowing since noon.

  Through the summer he decided he would rather work with Marsh than play, especially during the hay making when there was such a deal of riding to be done, and Sober Creekmore, 'black pappie,' came to help. The hay that year was bountiful and hay making was a busy time. Many were the nights that Marsh and Burr-Head did the barnwork after sundown and came to the back kitchen porch tired and hungry with Burr-Head walking proudly in front of his father, always the first to push his hat back, sling imaginary sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand and say like his father, "Lord, I'm hungry. Supper ready, Delph?"