by Dot Jackson
I opened the door and said, “Cud’n Barz?” He looked like he was meeting a spook. “Miss Cud’n,” he said, taking a step back, “I wonder if I might could talk a little bidness wif ye?”
“Come in! Come in!” I said, all bright and chirpy. “Aunt Nam!” I said, “Look who’s here!”
“I done seen ’im,” she said, cutting her eye at the door. “You watch ’im.”
“Uh, could we talk private?” he said. He would not come in, so I went out. Very low and confidential, he said, “Miss Cud’n, I’ve got a trade to make ye for that machine down yander.”
I felt dumb. “Machine?” I said.
“At’n down yander in ’na branch. All tore up. Ain’t t’at the one you come here a-drivin’?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “But honey, it’s wrecked. It’ll never run.”
“Hit will when I hitch me some steers on the front of it,” he said. His eyes were gleaming.
Nam came out, drying her hands on her apron. “What you offerin’ to trade her?” she said.
Barz put a thumb to the side of his nose and blew; he did a little shuffle on the product and Nam glared at the nasty place it made on the porch floor. He was plainly discomforted by this extra presence. “Uh,” he said, “I got a fine animal at’ll get this young lady anywhere she wants to go.”
“Let’s see it!” said Nam.
We followed him around the porch. There was an old dark relic of a mule standing in the sun, with its bridle draped over its neck. It would not have had the strength to wander away. It stood there resigned, with its ears laid back and its sticky eyes closed against the gnats. Its neck was stretched, low and funny; it made a raspy grunt with every breath. One of its knees was very large.
“Nice of you to stop on yer way to the glue-works,” Nam said.
“Good worker. Best I got,” Barz said at me, ignoring her.
“Well, you got my sympathy,” Nam said.
“Peaceable, too. Womernses don’t gen’rally like to work a mule that acts too vygrous,” said Cud’n Barz.
“I don’t know what her car is worth but that mule ain’t worth thirty cents,” Nam said, flattening her mouth.
“Car ain’t wuth a copper brownie in ’na branch,” Barz said.
The mule lifted its tail and did its business. It swung its head around and showed me its poor old nubs of teeth, and looked embarrassed. I couldn’t help but rub its head. I said then to Barz, “I’ll trade you.”
“The Lordamercy!” Nam said. “Darlin’ girl, you’ll have to keep that thing in the house and chew for it. That’s the sorriest swap that ever come down the pike!”
“It’ll be a way to get around,” I said. It heaved a rattling cough as Barz led it off to the barn. “We’ll have to fix the fence around the lot.”
Nam said, “Looks to me before this day is out you’ll have a great big hole to dig.”
What was a wonder to my mind was that without thinking or planning any such thing I had made a commitment, flimsy though it might appear. It was a borderline thing to let Nam stock us with staples for a month. Neither she nor Ben Aaron seemed to have a solitary doubt that we had come to stay; that matter had been a question only to me. But it was like I had no control—or wanted none—over the answer.
We did around all day, putting things in order. In the afternoon Ben Aaron came by. He was on his way to Red Bank to record the purchase of six hundred acres in Wolfcreek Township from the family Harkins, at thirty dollars an acre. “All the timber worth a damn is down in an auger hole,” he grumbled. “Never get it out.”
I didn’t have the nerve to say, What did you buy it for? I had to show him the mule.
We went down to the barn and it was standing there slobbering over a pile of hay I had raked up from the grass-cutting. Ben Aaron looked at it and started to laugh. “Oh shit!” he whooped. “OH SHIT!” And it did.
When he came back from the courthouse we had supper. Afterward, he knotted his horse’s reins and climbed in the buggy with Nam, and they headed home, with Cy, that was what he called that one-eyed horse, trailing along. They had settled us in.
Early next day I took a bucket of gruel down to the mule and then let it out to gum a little grass. It eased my mind that at least it had lived out the night. I was back up at the spout coaxing the spider out of the washpot when here came Barz around the house.
He was leading the ugliest cow I ever saw. I reckon it was the only genuine ugly cow I ever saw; I didn’t know many cows. This one had long-hair places and short-hair places and no-hair places; it was red-spotted, and mud where it was supposed to be white. It had a sharp backbone and a slatternly expression and it was big as a barrel, right ready to calf.
I shamed myself. Before I even said good morning, I said, “Hold on, now—I’ve got nothing left to trade.”
“You don’t need no trade,” Barz said sorrowfully. “Ben Aaron Steele said I owed it to ye. He come down yestiddy a-pitchin’ and a-rarin’, said I done you wrong about your car. Said the mule wad’n wuth it, said I played wrong wif you cause you never knowed no better. That never set right wif me, I must say. But since it’s in the fambly…”
“Why, I had thought nothin’ of it,” I said. “I liked that mule just a whole lot.” Then I had to ask him, “Did Ben Aaron pick out this cow?” It was one of those things you just have to know.
“No’m, he never keered about that, he dist left that up to me. I went out early and kotched this’n. Two for one! Pretty soon you’ll see.” He laughed at last, a toothless, gaping laugh, rusty as an old hinge.
I stroked the side of her face and she licked me. I thought to myself, She would have bit me, but she has no teeth. And I laughed with Barz, I was so relieved that he had quit being scared of me.
We strolled the old cow to the barn and put her in a stall. However homely she was, there was a good feeling about her being there, and I couldn’t help but put my arm around her neck and lay my face on her and feel her good motherly warmth, sensible and solid.
As we started back to the house Barz asked me, “How do ye fare, Miss Cud’n? Are ye lonesome? Does this old place trouble you any?” He sounded tentative, like it had somehow troubled him.
“It is the happiest place I have ever been,” I said. I would have liked to say, I don’t understand everything about it. Sometimes it makes me a little nervous.
But then he said, “Well, it is—it was—the happiest kind of place. They done ever’thing good here. They worked hard. They loved one another. They birthed, and they died, I hope ready to go. ’Course, they done ever’thing bad here sometime too. Drunkered. Fiddled. Danced.” Barz had early joined the Baptists.
“Now they never made no whiskey, as I’ve heared of.” He spit a squirt of rusty juice and went on, “Never had to. Wilcoxes done that for ’em. A Steele never had no use for a Wilcox except for one thing: to make his whiskey. That was what a Wilcox allus done the best. It was no use to try to out-shine a Wilcox—their way with shine was somethin’ give to them by Nature.
“I’ve heared it said too that Wilcoxes used to be right smart of fiddle-players,” Barz said, wistful for the good old days of sin. “But they was so triflin’ they had done fell to banjer-pickin, long afore my time…”
11.
SECOND THOUGHTS
THE WAY THINGS GOT DONE AROUND THE PLACE, I WOULD HAVE put it all down for magic if I had not seen Coy Ray Wilcox at work. The fences got put back where we needed them. He fixed the spout so we had water to the back porch again, and into the spring box by the back door, and back out into the run-off branch. He cleared the weeds way down into the barn lot. And he built us a privy. I didn’t think to ask what had happened to the old one, but it had been a delicate matter, doing without.
I hated to see the meadow mowed before the spring flowers were gone. But it did look nice; we could see down into the birch grove then, nearly to the river. The kids had enjoyed being able to get lost a few feet from the house, but I had not enjoyed that at all.
Other days he had done his bit and got away while it was still soon. He went up to the sawmill and worked, it seemed, when it pleased him. And it was like Barz said, Coy Ray had a business venture of his own—that was simply understood—and sometimes it required his attention night and day.
But this day he worked on into the morning. He worked with a vengeance until nearly noon, and I went down and saw he had turned up a great brown patch already, and the birds were hopping along behind him, pecking in the dirt, and his clothes were drenched with sweat even in the cool. I made him come on up to the house and eat his dinner.
He washed on the back porch and came in mopping his face with his handkerchief, and we sat down at the kitchen table, just Coy Ray and me. The kids had eaten and gone about their business.
I liked him fine. He was a curiosity, he could do so many things—if, as Ben Aaron said, he was of a mind. It made me a little bit uneasy not knowing how all this work was going to be paid for; it was sure beyond the call of neighborliness. I still had that ’leven dollars, but I doubted it would cover what was going on here.
“Might as well be new ground down-nair,” Coy said, slicking back his hair. “Ain’t been worked in twenty-odd y’ar.”
“What we fixing to do?” I said.
“Plant corn,” he said. “You got all ’at fine livestock now, you got to feed it.”
“I don’t know how to thank you enough for what you’re doing,” I said. “I could never have asked anybody to do all this.”
“Thank the good Mister Steele,” Coy Ray said. “I don’t do nothin’ only what he tells me.” It was impudent as could be, how he said it.
“What all do you do for him?” He had put me off balance.
“Anything dirty, anything’ll make a body sweat,” he said. “Mister Steele ain’t one to strain hisself.”
I had hit a sore spot there so I went in another direction.
“Have you got your garden in yet?” I said.
“Corn ’nis high,” he said, measuring a couple of inches above the table with his little freckled hand. “Come up right atter the rain. Up any sooner, storm would of rurnt it.”
Safe subject. “How many acres you own up there?” I said making talk.
He sat there with half a potato suspended on his fork, looking at me. He looked at me so hard I was forced to look back, clear to the back of his eyes. Back behind that cool pale blue there was something fierce. I can still see it.
“Lady, I don’t own a goddam inch,” he said.
Well, I pressed another biscuit on him. I knew it wasn’t any of my business. But it was too. I said, “I thought you owned Wilcox Ridge. Some of your folks own it, don’t they?”
He jabbed his fork into the butter and mashed up a blob with his honey.
“Some of YOUR folks owns it, Missy. Ben Aaron Steele owns it. Owns it to the last tomb-rock and privy pit.”
“Why did you sell it to him?” I said. It was the dumbest thing I could think of to say.
“Did I say I sold it to ’im? For God’s sake, woman, since when do you have to sell Ben Aaron Steele anything for him to get it?” Coy Ray leaned across the table, glowering. “He gets what he damn well wants. Now you mark I said that.”
A couple of days later, I got up before the sun and went down and fed the mule and the cow—in good weather, at least, it was right pleasant to go down to the barn when the birds were just waking up. It was good to be welcomed by living things. And I came back up and went upstairs and dragged myself a chair out onto the porch, up there, and was watching the morning when Ben Aaron drove up, with Rose on the seat beside him, and the wagon bed full of freckled little boys. Coy Ray was somewhere about his own devices.
I leaned over the banister and waved.
“Hey-o Cud’n Sen,” Ben Aaron said, “You ready to go to town?”
“You going to Nam’s?” I said.
“Red Bank,” he said.
“Let me get the kids,” I said.
“No, Rose will stay with ’em, she’s brought hers here. They all just as well get acquainted,” he said. Rose sat straight as a poker and silent. She looked up at me, expressionless. The little boys, all of them toy versions of Coy Ray, sat still as mice until I said, “All right,” and Rose turned to them and told them they could get down.
Mine had just waked up and wandered into the kitchen. We had no milk yet; our miraculous pitcher in the barn was still dry, so Rose had brought a gallon jug. I had cooked a pan of sticky biscuits, rolled with cinnamon and sugar. I told Pet and Hugh I was going off for a little bit and they did not seem distressed. They stood on one side of the kitchen table looking at Coy’s kids lined up on the other side looking at them. Rose poured them all some milk and put the jug out in the spring box.
I left them and went and changed my dress and combed my hair, and pinched a little color in my face.
And we started out, Ben Aaron and me, alone, going south. Ahead the road sort of faded into the river mist. We went around the bend and headed directly into the morning; the sun was still behind the mountain, but the fog glowed. There were flowers along the road, and in the road. I had this eerie zingy feeling in my head. I put my hand on Ben Aaron’s arm to be sure this time it was real.
“Hmm?” he said.
“How are we going to get across the branch?” I said. “You know what I did to the bridge…”
“Some bridges we cross when we get to ’em,” he said.
And we came to one, some raw, sappy logs staked down and planks nailed across them. “You hadn’t seen this?” he said. “Coy put it back, oh, several days ago.”
“Coy’s been plowin’ lately,” I said. “He’s got half the world plowed up, down in the meadow.”
“Hope so,” Ben Aaron said. “We’re going after seed today. I’ve got us some tobacco plants coming, I hope they’ve got ’em. Tobacco’ll bring you in a little money. You can make money on just a little ground. It’s some work but it beats being a slave to a hoe.”
There had been a light drizzle of rain along in the night, and the woods were washed and tender and new. I had seen none of this territory in the light; my memories of it were nightmares. I was surprised to see it not murderous at all. Except, as we climbed around that mountain that shut us in on the south, the passage got narrower and there was only a steep clay bank on the right and a jump-off place on the other side.
“Ain’t you glad you couldn’t see where you were?” Ben Aaron said, reading my mind.
The river was green and frothy down below us. There were springs trickling over the bank above us, little waterfalls down into the ditch. The ditch was full of flowers. The mules would stop and drink and snort. There were ox and tire tracks in the road.
“You want to cut around by Barz’s and see what he’s done with your car?” Ben Aaron said.
The idea made me cringe. No, I said, I was not ready for that. It would be like seeing a mummy of a member of the family, or something. That business reminded me that I was going to have to write Foots that we were with Mackey’s folks and doing fine. To not tell him where the kids were would be wrong, whether he cared or not. I didn’t know what to say about the car. I decided I wouldn’t mention it. As far as Foots needed to know I had just misplaced it. But the thought put a damper on the perfect pleasure of the morning. I was annoyed.
We came down past a pasture fence and then a tended field. It looked awfully different in the sun than it had in that horrendous gray-yellow light, that day Barz ran away.
“Barz is got his corn up good,” Ben Aaron said.
“Has,” I said. “Real pretty. We got to catch up. Coy Ray says his is THIS high,” I said, holding up my hand.
“Hmp,” Ben Aaron said.
I knew better than to
go on, but I did. “Ben Aaron,” I said, “You didn’t tell me you owned Coy Ray’s place, too.”
He kind of hunched over, looking straight ahead. “Was I s’posed to?” he said.
“S’posed to what?” I said.
“S’posed to tell everything, for Christ’s sake,” he said in a tone I had never heard before. It poured over me like hot water. I shrunk up real small. I felt like a wart on the wagon seat.
“I really don’t care,” I said. “I was just makin’ talk.”
“What’s Coy been a-tellin’ you?”
“Nothin’ only he doesn’t own a damned inch. That’s what he said.”
“I bet. Listen, don’t be so free talkin’ with the help,” Ben Aaron said.
I made up my mind right that instant that I would go to the telegraph office at Red Bank and wire Louise to send me some money to come home. I would buy three train tickets and go get the children and we would not let another sun set on us in this strange place at the mercy of this awful man. In fact I would not ride with him to Red Bank, I would tell him to let me off and I would walk.
But I was too mad to speak. If I opened my mouth I would cry. We rode on.
And directly, he sighed a big sigh, and said, “He’s right. I own it. If you ever own something by holding the deed.”
“I don’t care. It’s none of my business,” I said. I might as well have been a fly buzzing.
“I bought it from him, just right recently,” he said, clearing his throat.
We went on a little way, very quiet. Then he turned around to me and said, “No. That’s a bald-faced lie. I never bought it, atall. I won it off of him in a card game.”
“You didn’t,” I said.
“Fair and square, oh, yes I did,” he said. “All the cards on the table. I laid him my note for four thousand dollars against it. Right there on a board across two sawhorses in his own barn.”
