Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  Reckon I’m about ready for this evening. Can’t believe Jim Hawkins talked me into this. I got as much business keeping young’uns as I do growing sugar beets.

  Jim had shown up the previous afternoon wearing a worried look. His voice crackled as he asked a favor. Silas looked at him in pure disbelief. “Now let me get this straight, Warden Hawkins. You want me to keep your young’uns all weekend?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s a load of bunkum. I’m an old man, Jim. My heart was racy the other day. What if I was to up and die? What would they do with a dead man until Sunday afternoon?”

  “Silas, you’re too tough to die.”

  “Son, I ain’t been around young’uns in ages. Mary Carter’ll mind them for you.”

  “Aunt Mary’s not in her right mind, Nell says.”

  “But there’s Manson and Thomas.”

  “What do those old bachelors know about young’uns?” The look on Jim’s face made Silas fear he might drop to his knees.

  “Listen, Silas,” said Jim. “I know this is strange territory for you. It is for me, too.”

  “What in thunder do you mean?”

  “Nell’s unhappy. I have to do something.”

  “What do you aim to do?”

  “We’re going to Asheville. To the George Vanderbilt hotel.”

  “So how’s a spree in a fancy hotel going to help? No, let me rework that. I ain’t so old I don’t know how you think it’ll help you. But how would it do any good for her and you?”

  “We need time by ourselves. No kids. Lots of loving. If we’re not back in love by Monday…” Jim’s voice choked.

  “Catchy line. A man could build a song around that, maybe even get on the Opry.” Silas shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “Well, I’ll help this once.”

  He’d put the fire screen away after his children had grown up. He and Rhetta had used it when bedding sick children at the hearth. All childhood diseases demanded the same remedy—boiling water, brown sugar, and whiskey in equal proportions, with lemon or dried mint. The afflicted youngster drank hot tea as fast as his or her swollen throat would tolerate, then burrowed under a pile of quilts in front of the fireplace. By morning the crud would either be gone or preferable to the hangover.

  Silas had fetched the screen, along with a box of dusty wooden toys, from the barn. He figured if Jim brought the children after supper, he’d soon bed them before the fireplace. Then he’d have only Saturday and the first part of Sunday not to lose, sicken, or injure them.

  Friday evening Jim and Nell brought Mack and Little Elizabeth to Silas’s porch and knocked. When Silas answered, Jim shook his hand and Nell stood on tiptoe and hugged him—which did not hurt his feelings, for she smelled delicious.

  “I’ll just leave their bedrolls on the porch,” said Jim. He had shaved again that afternoon, leaving a small cut on his left jaw. When Nell patted Little Elizabeth’s head nervously, Silas caught the glint of a bracelet in the car lights.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  “We’ll go,” said Jim. “It’s getting dark, so we’ll play hell on that road. I thank you, Silas.”

  “You lovebirds get on. The rest of us’ll figure out what we’re up to, won’t we?” He winked at Mack, who wore a short jacket and an earflap cap the color of fried liver. Mack smiled and nodded. Little Elizabeth, nearly three, didn’t know so well about this. She held a cloth rabbit by its ears over a navy-blue pea coat, a sailor cap perched on her head. Silas opened his arms. “Come to Uncle Silas, little lady.”

  She looked uncertainly at her mother, who nodded. “Go with Uncle Silas, sweetie.”

  She sidled shyly toward the old man, who picked her up with a hug. “Me and you’s going to be fine,” he said. “You’uns go on before we decide to go with you.”

  After Jim cranked the car and drove out of sight, the children looked at Silas, who pointed toward the fireplace. “Want to bed down by the fire?”

  Mack nodded vigorously. Jim and Nell had never allowed the children to sleep by themselves before a fireplace. Mack had been sorely tempted to move his bed near the fire after Nell tucked them in, to watch closely the fire’s comforting journey from flame to coal to ember.

  Silas helped Mack lay out two bedrolls, built up the fire, then read the story of David and Goliath to them. Mack and Little Elizabeth knelt as Silas prayed over them: “Lord, watch over these children, tonight and forever. Let their folks come to their senses. And help me this weekend, while you’re at it. In Christ’s name, Amen.” He banked the fire, tucked them in, and blew out the lamp.

  He meant to stay awake most of the night, so he figured to reheat the morning’s coffee to counteract the dram of whiskey he deserved. Besides, a kitchen fire would help calm the fantods. Again he resurrected a fire and started the pot to boil. He sat at the table. No un toward noise from the front room. A picture of Rhetta, made at least thirty years ago, grinned like she thought she might be about to hear a good story.

  Me and her was married sixty-odd years, and never once thought of parting. “Till death do us part” was as natural to say as “granite is rock.” Young people today don’t think like that. Flighty, like skittish birds. I even heard of a preacher about to marry a couple, asked what if they had trouble. One said, “If it don’t work out, we can go our separate ways.” Don’t that beat all?

  As he listened to fires pop and the house settle, he sipped coffee laced with a liberal amount of whiskey. I’ll be up all night keeping this little flock. Not my first sleepless night. A few when I tended livestock, or watched after fever and sickness, or sat with corpses. Some nights of hard, senseless drinking, but those countable on no more than one hand’s worth of fingers. Coon hunts, I’d return with the sun, smelling like campfire and wild moonlight. A few nights courting Rhetta, when I came home wired like I was hooked to a battery, moonstruck so deep it hurt to breathe. One of those nights—here he smiled—I lit a dozen rich pine torches and split a winter’s worth of stove wood before sunup. Mama said, “What in the world,” but Papa just said, “The boy’s got it bad.” And he was right. I sure understand Jim’s need. God help them tonight.

  • • •

  Silas’s eyes opened to Mack, standing beside the kitchen table, gazing at his host with a worried air about him. “What, boy?” Silas said. “What time is it?” When he raised his head from the table, he immediately knew an old man should neither drink more than a dram of a night nor sleep sitting at a table. Neck stiff as a heart pine board.

  Mack’s hair was flat on one side, and a white knot of sleep rested in the inside corner of his right eye. “It’s morning, Uncle Silas.”

  “So ’tis, child.” Silas figured he’d be unkinked by dinnertime. “Is little sis all right?”

  Mack nodded. “I need to pee.”

  “They ain’t moved the outhouse. Need your coat?”

  Mack shook his head as he bounded down the back steps. Silas poked up the kitchen fire and went into the front room. Little Elizabeth still slept, thumb laid across her mouth. Silas was torn between staring at an advertisement for pure innocence and starting breakfast.

  The back door slammed and Mack bounced into the room. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he cried at his sister. “You’re going to fritter this day away.”

  “Who says that, son? Your papa or mama?”

  “Papa.”

  “I thought so. What would you say to some ham and eggs?” Silas welcomed Little Elizabeth to a new day by rubbing her head gently. “You young’uns get ready. I’ll put something on the table.”

  By noon they had worked up another appetite. Silas had cleaned the wooden toys—a locomotive, a set of blocks that long ago had been painted bright colors, a three-legged horse, two carts with wheels made of thread spools, and a race car. He had also found a rag doll he figured Little Elizabeth would like, but she cradled it for only a few minutes before stacking blocks, aiming to build a house.

  Silas was creaky, but if he sat on the floor and pushed
toys to Mack, they soon had a rousing back-and-forth game. Little Elizabeth joined them, so they triangled toys back and forth. By the time Silas needed to fix dinner, they were all laughing so hard their faces hurt.

  Dinner was cornbread, string beans, boiled Irish potatoes (which Silas pronounced “arsh”), leftover ham, baked sweet potatoes saturated with butter and brown sugar—pie without a crust. Mack wolfed it down while Little Elizabeth ignored all but the sweet potatoes, of which she ate two.

  Afterward the sky, lifting all morning, shone as blue as lapis, and Silas asked his charges if they wanted to try their luck fishing. Both children cheered for Uncle Silas, who made sure they wore their coats and caps. “Daddy took me fishing,” said Mack, “but we didn’t catch anything.”

  “What did you use for bait?”

  “Arty-fissil flies.”

  “Young’uns, I’ll show you how to fish.”

  Silas found an empty pint jar and headed outside. He asked Mack to lift some sticks of wood outside the shed, and plucked from underneath some sowbugs and two or three redworms. “Let’s see what’s out back,” he said, and handed the jar to Little Elizabeth. “Now, don’t drop it, sweetheart,” he said. “When I say so, hand it here.”

  In the hog pen a shovelful of wet dirt rewarded them with half a dozen fat nightcrawlers. “We’ll catch us some fish with these, yessir. Now let’s wet a hook or two.”

  He cleaned spiderwebs from two short cane poles pulled from the shed, then restrung them from a spool of heavy cotton thread and tied a hook to each. At the creek bend he baited up and handed one pole to Mack, the other to Little Elizabeth. “Now throw it out there. When you feel it pull, set the hook and bring it on in,” he said.

  Little Elizabeth’s first strike so excited her she threw the pole into the water. Silas laughed and fished it out, complete with a trout the size of his hand. “Good girl,” he said. “Want to try again?” She jumped up and down and giggled. Mack’s pole bent about that time, and he pulled in a fish a couple of inches longer than the first.

  For the better part of the afternoon they ranged the creek, relieving its hidey-holes of trout. Little Elizabeth’s hands would have looked proper on a mud baby. Mack could barely drag the stringer Silas had cut from a maple branch. Trout for supper and breakfast. On their way back they heard the Ford cross the rocky creek bed.

  It hadn’t occurred to Silas to worry about possessing enough illegal trout to put him under the jail, for Jim and Nell weren’t due for twenty-four hours. Whose automobile? As they turned toward the whine of four cylinders and gearbox, Silas put his hands on the children’s shoulders.

  Mack broke silence first. “Daddy! Lookit! Lookit!” He held the fish high, but tails still mopped the ground.

  Silas figured he was about as caught as the fish. He could not tell if Jim was alone, because of glare on the windshield. The automobile slowed and pulled even with the miscreants. The window rolled down to reveal Jim, hatless, wifeless, a lollipop stick dangling from his mouth. “What in the world?” he said, slow as Christmas. “Silas, you’ve led my young’uns astray.”

  “With all due respect,” said Silas, “I didn’t catch none of these here fish.”

  “Little Mack Truck, did you and Lizzy catch all those?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mack said proudly.

  “Lizzy, your momma’s going to keel over dead when she sees that coat.” He tried to look stern but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “Daddy, I love you,” Little Elizabeth said. “Where’s Mommy?”

  “Back at the house. Having a headache.” He looked at Silas. “Mind if I stay a little bit?”

  “Be my guest. We’ll have us a fish fry. You young’uns want to learn how to clean fish?”

  “Are they dirty?” asked Little Elizabeth.

  Silas laughed. “You just wait, little miss.”

  Later, as Mack and Little Elizabeth napped on their bedrolls, Jim and Silas shared a little whiskey. “I knew something wasn’t right when that Ford showed up a day early.”

  “I think maybe we were trying too hard,” said Jim. “Kind of like when two people knock heads when they bend over to pick up something.”

  “So—let me guess—she’s not staying.”

  Jim looked into his whiskey glass as if his future lay in the bottom of it. “Silas, I don’t know.” He glanced into the front room. “You know what hurts?”

  “You mean besides the general hurt of being a human?”

  Jim nodded. “I asked her to stay, if not for me, for the young’uns.”

  When Silas figured the woodstove was hot enough, he set a large cast-iron skillet loaded with congealed grease on top. He began rolling fillets in cornmeal. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “She’s taking them with her. So they won’t grow up here.”

  Jim sipped his liquor. “How’d you know?”

  “She’s a town girl. Ain’t no amount of here’s going to change that. First time I laid eyes on Nell, I thought it was a shame you and her got hitched. Because she wasn’t never going to like it here, and you were literally born to your job. And there’s considerable stubborn in both of you.”

  The first fillet popped like it had come alive, threatening to spatter both men with hot grease. “A woman like that don’t want her offspring talking like a hillbilly. Get an education. Make a name for theirselves. That ain’t going to happen here, much as I love it.” A dozen fillets in the pan somehow calmed the noise considerably. “How about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You going to stay, or go with her?”

  Jim downed the rest of his whiskey. “Sometimes I’m staying. Others I’m going. I don’t know, Silas. Any advice?”

  “Follow your heart, son. That’s about all I could ever say about such as that.”

  “It’s torn in three pieces, Silas. My job. My woman. My children.” He stood and looked into the front room. “I’d sure hate to give any of them up.”

  “A job’s just a job,” Silas said. “You could do that in Asheville and keep the rest.”

  Jim looked out the window. “It isn’t just a job to me, Silas. It’s where I came from. It’s where I need to stay.”

  “Can’t argue,” said Silas, turning fish. “These’ll be done in a minute. Fetch me that plate.”

  In a few minutes enough fish to feed a small congregation graced the table. “This look good enough to help a man with a heartache?” asked Silas, spreading his arms wide. “Especially when the cornbread’s done?”

  “Nearly. Want me to scare up a crowd? I’ll see if Nell’s feeling better, and ask Aunt Mary.”

  “Fine. Care for another snort?”

  “Nope. I’d hate to have to arrest myself for driving drunk. And then I couldn’t haul you in for having all these fish.” He picked up a piece of fish and ate it slowly. “I’ll have to say, though, if they don’t fry trout in heaven, I don’t much want to go.”

  “They don’t have them this good in Asheville, either.”

  “Good point. Nell says I don’t ever think with anything except my pecker. But sometimes my belly trumps it. I might just stay.”

  “Like I said, follow your heart. That’s a bit north of both of them organs.”

  “I’ll be back, Silas. Save me a few bites.”

  From the kitchen window Silas watched Jim. A man with a lot to lose, either way he went.

  CHAPTER 24

  Hen Upstairs

  “Never used to talk to myself,” Silas Wright said, running a file across the blade of his reaphook. “Never needed to—Rhetta, rest her soul, said enough for the both of us.” He extracted a red handkerchief and wiped his brow. Sweat beaded at the end of his nose. “Hotter’n a hen upstairs in a wool basket,” he muttered.

  His file smoothed two nicks, then he switched to a whetstone until he was satisfied with the edge. He mopped his brow again. “Might as well get on with it,” he said. “It ain’t going to cut its ownself down.”

  Spring had been dry. May’s hay cut had yield
ed only three ricks, and he despaired of a second cut worth messing with. But now, in late June, on the creek bank tall bearded grasses shot up among stands of poke-weed, rattletop, and fleabane. Silas meant to mow them by dark.

  Poke stalks sliced easily in any weather, but drought only toughened grass. He held grass tops with his left hand and swung the reaphook with his right. As he bent to his work, his back began to look like someone had doused him with a bucket of water. “Damn,” he said, and straightened. “This is too much like work. Specially for an old man.”

  A poplar on the opposite bank shaded a goodly spot ten yards away, a goal he reached before a break. He dipped his hand into the creek and drank. Taking off his boots and socks, he eased tired feet into the creek. The water was nowhere near bone-chilling, but its cold felt so good he did not notice nearby maple leaves turning silver side up. He looked at his twisted toes and thought how he’d look in a cartoon—squiggly steam rising from his scorching feet, sweat drops leaping from his head. His wiggling toes dislodged a baseball-size flat rock, from under which a crawfish drifted backward. “Better not pinch me, old feller.”

  Across the creek a mass of hairy vines on the terraced slope bore buds nearly ready to produce yellow flowers. Let’s see now, it was the year of the cloudburst, right about this time of year in 1916, me and Harrogate and them Hawkins boys cleaned and terraced this bank after that. Harrogate figured it for a dandy melon patch, and damned if it hasn’t turned out so. Too good, really—last year we sold two wagonloads, and still had so many that my niece pickled the dern rinds, and I hate such a sweet pickle. Might as well eat a spoonful of Karo syrup.

  We won’t have that many this dry season. And look at the field behind the house—dry as last year’s bird nest. He laughed to himself as clouds collected, unnoticed, over Spruce Mountain.

  Wonder where the old people are. I imagine Rhetta and her mother’s setting around in heaven talking ninety-leven miles a minute to anybody flying by, but my momma was one to set in the chimney corner and sew. I bet there’s different rooms there like Jesus said.