Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  Somebody hollered “Blackberry Blossom.” It was something you’d remember. I remember watching. I was wondering about two people who hated each other being side by side like that—in that little space—without elbowing each other, or biting each other to death. There they were, sawing and picking and sweating and every little bit Coy Ray would look Ben Aaron full in the face. I didn’t know Coy Ray had a look like that in him.

  In a little bit Ben Aaron just laid down his bow and let Coy Ray go it a while alone. He just sat there and watched Coy Ray, with this funny little mesmerized smile. They looked like they had a case of the raptures. Of course there was thunderous yelling and clapping and stomping out on the floor; it was some kind of mass hysteria.

  They started to play some old tune, and the caller hollered, and there was a big rush to get in the circle. We didn’t know what was going on so the kids and I leaned against the wall and watched. I watched the dancing. It gave me a queer restless feeling in the bottoms of my feet. It gave me what was almost pain in my neck and collar bones. I could feel my rib cage lift; my breath got funny. I watched Ben Aaron. He was sitting on that barrel, fiddling; he might as well have been alone, against those old knotty boards, in that red checked shirt. My mouth got dry. There was a zinging in my ears. If I had not been leaning on the wall I might have fallen.

  I closed my eyes; I remember the drumming of the feet, shuffling and stomping, louder and louder. And all of a sudden a man—I never did know who he was—ran up and grabbed me around the waist, I remember him hollering to Pet and Hugh, “I’ll buy you a lemonade if you let me dance with Sis.”

  And the next thing, we were in that circle. I didn’t know what we were doing, but whatever it was, it sure felt right. Before we got back to the wall an old man grabbed me. I didn’t have time to breathe. I know he looked at me peculiarly the whole time. He was puzzled; he didn’t even know what it was he wanted to know. I patted his arm and thanked him when I went to the next one. Somebody, I saw, had bought the kids a lemonade. Somebody later got them in the circle. Though not with one another.

  I was not sure what Ben Aaron saw, or whether he would think I was acting scandalous and wish he’d left me home. It was his fault; the more I listened at him the worse it got. Such an odd feeling. I felt so giddy. I got this strange pain in my nose. My eyes went bleary, and when I could see again, I saw no one but him. Only he looked a little different, too. And he called out to me, in a different sort of voice. “Jig!” he said. And I stood there, with my feet tight together and my back and legs so straight I ached. I nodded him a solemn little bow. And he began to play. And as though we were one creature, he and I, I clutched up the sides of that skirt and apron, and I danced.

  Did you ever dream of flying? This was like that. It was freedom. I could feel my feet beating the floor, I could feel the speed. But it was no effort. There was no sweat, no breathlessness, no one but the two of us, nothing but the joy.

  When it stopped, I was in the middle of the floor alone. He was sitting on his barrel, staring, in the midst of the band. The walls were lined with people who had moved out of the way. There was this eerie silence. Instinctively, I did a little reverence to him and moved fast to the sidelines. While I was thinking if I ought to be embarrassed or what, the band started up loud and fast, “The Forky-Horned Deer.” And the crowd just sort of exploded, glassy-eyed, like people driven.

  They danced that way, one set and then another, and another. Until in the frenzy somebody got carried away and swatted somebody, back in a dark corner, and the next thing there was a fight all over creation, women hollering with children clinging to their skirts. An old man that had to be past eighty grabbed me by the shoulders and glared in my face. I could smell the homemade likker on his breath when he growled at me, “Yurr HER, I knowed it. What kinda hoodoo ARE ye, in the name o’ Godamighty?”

  The sheriff came between us. He had been there a good while anyway; he got a few sober people to help him knock some heads. The dance ended, Ben Aaron said later, as the dance always ended—in a rumpus. He ran us all to the buggy with that fiddle case hugged to his chest, gleefully dodging the melee. He cracked the reins and the horse did a little dance of its own and took off up the road. And he roared and laughed then, and said he had thought the fun would never begin. “A dance ain’t no good till the law has to come,” he said.

  Neither of us mentioned the other thing that happened there that night. To us. I really couldn’t remember. I doubted he could, either. There was lightning flashing over the mountain, as we went along; it began to drizzle on us halfway home. The kids went to sleep, exhausted, between us. Pet lay over on Ben Aaron’s arm and Hugh’s head sagged onto my lap. Ben Aaron smoked his pipe. I just thought.

  Finally I said, “I was sure glad to see you and Coy Ray get on so well for a change.”

  Afterwhile he cleared his throat and said, “Well, he’s a triflin’ sonofabitch, but he can sure flam hell out of a banjer.”

  I had forgot to leave a lamp burning. We had never come into that house in the pitch dark before, so Ben Aaron got down and went in first and made us a light, and then he helped the children in. I asked him please to stay, I said he could have my bed and I would crawl in with Pet. Or I would make him a pallet. But he said no, he would have to go on. And he didn’t tarry.

  Coy Ray had stayed behind to have a drink. I heard him coming up the road as I told Ben Aaron good night. I heard Coy Ray holler, sort of low, that he had a jug—somebody had traded him; somebody else’s likker was a novelty, like restaurant cooking.

  Coy Ray tied his mule behind the buggy and got in beside my Cousin Ben Aaron. As it seemed somehow like I should, I closed the door gently and left them to go on. Wherever they went from here, they were sheltered from the rain. I saw then that he had left the fiddle on my dresser; I don’t remember that he ever would play it again.

  After a little bit of a futile struggle I blew out the light and lay down in that dress. Pet would help me get loose of it in the morning. I closed my eyes but I listened to the rain a long time before I went to sleep. Even then I must have had lots of thoughts; I woke up in the morning with two ditches between my eyebrows that I tried to rub out with some butter on my fingers.

  14.

  SOPHIA

  IT RAINED ON THROUGH THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT. WE STAYED shut up inside, except that we would go out a couple of times a day to see what was coming up in the garden, and we had to feed the cow and mule and chickens. The kids loved to turn the biddies out; they would follow us every step we took, going chee-chee-chee, running between our feet. The notion that we would be expected to murder them one day got to be repulsive.

  We swept out the house and scoured pots and it felt good to keep the stove hot so we made strawberry jam by Nam’s directions she had written down. For a change it was good to be in the house; we had spent so much time working in the field that we had missed the quiet, unbroken days when you could just sort of sink in and be at home.

  Pet took the scraps from Rose’s dress and settled down to make herself an apron. Hugh found a shelf of Mackey’s books in the attic. He sat down in a little old cane chair by the fire and read The Water-Babies, oblivious to anything else going on. I sat across from him to do the mending and the fire shined in big tears rolling down his cheeks, he was so caught up in the plight of the poor little boy that swept chimneys.

  Rose came down one afternoon, in the drizzly fog, just to see how we were. Her chickens had got a bump or two of the pox on their combs, she said, and she brought us some sulphur and lard to doctor ours before that should get started bad. Chicken pox was a mess in the wet, she said.

  We showed her the dress. I don’t know when I was so proud of anything. She bit her lip and clenched her hands. “You mean you made that for ME?” she said.

  “I made that for you,” I said, not believing it either. She had to put it on so I could hem it. Her long legs and undershirt and flour sack bloomers showed through, of course. We would have to ma
ke a petticoat. I was grateful we had plenty of sheets in the attic. I would have to take in a couple of seams a little bit too, but it was all I could do not to cry, looking at her. It was like she shimmered. I wished Ben Aaron could be there to see, he was so really fond of her. I made up my mind to make more. I would get patterns. I would experiment. I had done something right.

  That bad weather was the first time I’d had, since we came up here, to sit and do handwork and think about things. I wondered about things I didn’t know. I wondered about Ben Aaron, how he managed for himself, alone up there in that side-show of a house, while that flashy vain woman was gone to Baltimore to spend money. The more I didn’t see her, the more I wondered about her. However tacky her taste might be, she must be beautiful, I thought. She must have some wondrous quality in her head, or under her skirt. Or somewhere. Ben Aaron had married her.

  I confess I dwelled on it. I bit a needle in two that I was holding in my teeth and had my funeral all planned by the time I caught the point end with my tongue and spit it out.

  We had decided we were in for forty days and nights, but it was only three or four, and there was one of those bright, hazy mornings that will restore your soul. I went out and gathered up sticks to put under the washpot. Stovewood cut to fit was too precious; there was plenty of deadfall up in the hemlocks and I dragged that down and broke it up. ’Course it was damp. Coy Ray had said you could burn anything if you started it with pine with lots of sap, so I broke off some boughs and shook ’em fairly dry, sacrificed a stick of light-wood and to make sure it all went I poured a good slosh of coal oil on the pile, and set the wash pot over it, and filled the pot with a bucket, from the spout. And then I struck a match to that handiwork.

  Well, Dear Lord, there has never been such smoke under the sun. That mess sputtered and popped and black night enveloped the earth. I went coughing into the house to round up the clothes. When I passed a mirror nothing looked back but the whites of my eyes, with pale tear-streaks under them. The only thing good about it was that my cousin Ben Aaron was not there to laugh. And just as I was yanking the sheets off the beds, I heard the horses coming.

  I wiped my face and hands desperately on my apron and ran to look out. Oh, it was a buggy coming. Saved. Aunt Nam.

  I went out on the porch. It was not Aunt Nam’s buggy, it was a carriage I didn’t know. There was a young boy in overalls sitting up front, driving, and two big ladies with parasols sitting in the back, dressed fit to kill. Mercy—who in the world?

  They pulled up, and I went down to meet them. The boy got down and gave his hand to one of the women, and she hiked her frock and stepped out. And in spite of the boy’s help she landed right heavily—Plunk—for she was pretty stout, though much constricted by her corset, one could tell.

  She was wearing a picture hat with a maline brim and pink silk flowers around the crown. Her hair was cut and frizzied in dark corkscrews around a face like a plate of dough. She had squinty eyes, and a little owl’s bill of a nose, and a tiny, thin mouth that she had transformed into a cupid’s bow with right much bright rose paint.

  Her dress was brown silk printed with pink roses. The rhinestone buckle of her belt was most prominent, for her stomach could not be restrained. That dress had a low neck, I remember, and her bosom looked like clabbered milk, spilling over.

  We greeted each other. Ordinarily I would have kissed anybody that came, but I was so dirty. I started to put out my hand, and then I saw that it was dirty. She made no move to touch me—I thought at first because I was dirty.

  “How do you do?” I said.

  She nodded politely. “I am Mrs. Steele,” she said. I thought, Which Mrs. Steele? Where did this one come from? I know I looked dumb standing there trying to figure. Then she went on, “I assume you are Mr. Steele’s cousin. But I don’t recall that he ever told me your name.”

  “Seneca Steele,” I said, not thinking.

  Her penciled little eyebrows shot up. “I had assumed you were married. My husband said you had children.”

  Her husband. Oh, this was not real. “Oh yes, I am married,” I said. “My husband’s name is Lamb. It is just sort of a Southern way,” I said shakily. “A Steele is a Steele…”

  “That is the way it was with the Orpingtons,” she said, with a flourish of her parasol. “I was an Orpington, when I married Mr. Steele.”

  I took a breath and said, “So-fie-a.”

  She tilted her head so as to look somewhat down her nose. “SOPH-ya,” she said, correcting me. “I see you have made yourself at home at The Birches,” she said.

  “Oh, quite,” I said.

  “For such a homely place it has so much romance behind it, you know,” she said, squinching her eyes and puckering her mouth to make a smile. “Mr. Steele and I spent the first two years of our marriage here—our honeymoon. You can understand why this is one of my favorite properties…”

  There was that other woman still in the carriage, a large person, in a dress with many pink organdie frills. She kept dipping and doodling her parasol and grunting distracting noises while we talked. I nodded at her, and I said to Mrs. Steele, “Won’t you ladies please come in? I shall put us on a pot and we’ll have tea.”

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Steele, “we are only out riding, on such a lovely day. We had not intended a long visit. I DID want you to meet our daughter—did Mr. Steele tell you we have a daughter? I expect not. Mrs. Lamb, this is our daughter Celestine.”

  I had not fully noticed Celestine, this other apparition had so devoured my attention. Celestine scooted across the seat, working her mouth sideways, trying to speak. Her eyelids drooped. Her face twitched as she reached out her big fair arms to me. My eyes were fastened on the pale, perfect skin and those gold eyes. I heard myself make an involuntary groan. I jumped on the step of the carriage and caught her in my arms, and kissed her face, and held her gold head to my neck. Oh, God, I thought, what next?

  “Celestine,” I said, “I am your cousin Sen. I am so glad to know I have you.” I held her by the shoulders and looked into her face. It was, spastic or not, a very pretty face. Her eyes were wet with tears. “How old are you, Cousin?” I said. Her jaw worked, but the words could not quite form.

  “Celestine is seventeen,” said Mrs. Steele. And then she proceeded to enlighten me. “You can see that she is an unfortunate child. She suffered a terrible accident at birth. She was born, in fact, right here in this house, Mrs. Lamb, during Mr. Steele’s absence. Mr. Steele was at that time given to long absences. And under those circumstances Celestine was born to me with no physician attending…” She rolled her eyes around toward the driver; he had sucked in his cheeks and was studying the heavens. Then she proceeded in a coarse whisper, “and I was alone here with only an ignorant servant girl who nearly let Celestine DROWN…”

  Hmm? I thought, clapping my hand to my mouth in sympathetic horror. I was really truly stunned. I was overcome. My heart nearly broke, right then, for Ben Aaron. Oh, Father, this would have to be only the tip of the iceberg.

  Having scored, Mrs. Steele moved on to other things. “I am surprised at your traveling without your husband,” she said. “I travel without Mr. Steele only when his work will not let him go.”

  “My husband is very involved with business right now,” I said. “That is why I wanted to get away for a while.”

  “Oh?” said Mrs. Steele, “What is his business?”

  “He is very busy disposing of an estate,” I said. And I didn’t add that it was mine.

  She called for the boy to get down and hand her back in. They both puffed a little from the exertion.

  “How many days do you suppose you will be able to stay, then?” said Mrs. Steele, playing her last card. She had a splendid talent for making herself clear.

  “Several,” I said. This was, after all, my grandmother’s house. The family’s house. Ben Aaron had said so. And I was beginning to love it.

  15.

  PERSPECTIVE

  I’LL TELL YOU, AB
SOLUTE FURY RUBBED OUT ONE WHOPPER OF a washing that morning. Righteous indignation cleaned out the chicken coop. Conviction went down to the field and chopped weeds.

  The kids had gone off with Coy Ray’s boys to set some rabbit gums. When I wound down a little bit I went back up to the house and made some tea and put some of those big old store-bought cookies in the warmer. They had lasted till they got limp because they were so awful.

  I had sat down in the rocking chair in the kitchen to consider recent events when Ben Aaron hollered at the door and came on in. I had not heard him coming down the road, nor seen him out the window. He had come in from the south, from a trail down by the branch, he said. He had taken a logging team down into Shiloh, that was the next big cove over west. He had started a lumber camp over there, he said; there were a few old houses over there already, and they would have to throw up a few more.

  He would be working maybe thirty men in Shiloh in the fall, he said. It was funny, but I hadn’t really wondered what was over there at all. All the world these days was The Birches, suspended on a strand of web anchored to Red Bank at one end, and the Forks at the other.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and I fixed him some tea. I could feel him looking at me while I busied around.

  “What you so red in the face about?” he said finally.

  I was about to bust. I opened my mouth to let it all roll off my tongue. I wanted to say, All right, now I understand ONE tragic thing, but there is something worse I will never understand. I wanted to say, Why?

  But I stood there and looked at him, slouched out like he was, relaxed as an old cat, with his face so concerned and trusting. And I said, “I have worked real hard all day. I put out a big wash, and I worked a while in the field.”