Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  Rose went with us, on that day, and stayed and ate with us that night. That was something she almost never did, and it was so good right then because the business of going back to school, and her so near grown, was weighing on her, I could tell. She said almost nothing, the whole time, but only worked and listened. I could almost feel her getting easier, though, as the day went on.

  I wondered when something like this was going to happen: while we were eating supper I noticed Hugh looking at Cole, and looking at him. Finally he said, just so innocent, “Cole, why did Ben Aaron say you were going to look like this?” And he pulled the corners of his eyes down with his fingers, and made his nose turn up. Well, we all hollered. Rose laughed till she almost cried.

  “He just wanted you to be prepared,” Cole said. “If you expect the worst you can’t be disappointed.”

  It was getting near dark when we realized how late it was. When Rose jumped up to go, Cole asked if he couldn’t take her, on his horse. I was surprised when she said yes; it wasn’t really like her.

  So the start of the school year was peaceful and secure and uneventful. Rose came by with her brood earlier than need be, on that first day, and off they all went. They came back with tales of who was old enough to have a beard, and who had wet the floor; as it turned out, Rose said she was not the oldest kid, at all. Two were already seventeen. One brought her little sister and brother who were not more than three and four. It was not the Latin School. The novelty would keep mine interested, until the love of Cole took over.

  The advent of Chick Aleywine on Wilcox Ridge was not as eventful as was expected, either. Rose said little about it unless asked. She did volunteer that she had given Chick her bed in a little makeshift alcove off the kitchen; and had moved herself into the loft, with the boys. Chick would never have made it to the loft, Rose noted. And if she had the boys would have thrown her out. If anything unseemly did go on, at least it did so out of sight of those it would have offended.

  A more material nastiness began to bother Rose. She was as exasperated as I had ever seen her, talking about the chicken doo in the butter. “The flies is bad enough,” she said. “She’ll let the doors hang open till the flies is so thick you’d think the walls is a-wigglin’. And course the chickens’ll come in. Come in and just he’p theirselves to everwhat they want off of the stove, or the table.

  “Whew!” she said, screwing up her face, “I don’t like t’ tell this, it makes us sound so cyarny.” (Rose’s word for really stinking rotten.) “But I wisht you’d seen Pap’s face the other night, when he set down at the table an’ the chickens’d done been there. Put his fork in the butter, an’ spread it on ’is bread an’ took a good-size chew. ‘This butter is gone bad,’ he says. And then he looked and seen what it was.” She broke down laughing. “Pore ol’ Pap, he liked to died,” she said.

  Whatever the attraction had been, it began to cool. I can only guess the high life of Caney Forks began to look real good to Chick, again. Cold wind whistling through the cracks of that pole cabin would have helped along with that. One morning that fall, Rose would come by on her way to school with all the boys, including Herman, and report Chick had taken her bosoms back to the Forks, unmourned and unlamented. Herman went along to school sometimes; he thought it was big. When it was very cold some days he would stay with me. Sometimes Coy Ray would take him off with him. At any rate life and learning both would go on.

  But in the meantime, the summer left us in the tobacco patch. Cole turned out school a week in September and Coy Ray and his kids came down and we cut poles and then we cut down the tobacco and skewered the stems, sort of, on cross poles all along the rows. It hung upside down that way a couple of days or so, till it had wilted and begun to fade.

  And then we gathered it into the wagon, and took it to the shed and hung it there, for it to cure. We had a real good crop. Coy Ray named us, all the while, the things that could go wrong between the field and the auction barn. A bad damp fall could make it mold. Or it could get too dry and brittle, or the color could go bad. I never took those things too much to mind. The ironweed and the joe pye were blooming along the fencerows, the richest purple, and a dusty pink. The little purple daisy things were blooming, and the black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s lace. There was nothing on this part of the earth to bode anybody ill.

  Anything ill would come from somewhere else.

  We went to a couple of old raucous dances, that September, at Red Bank. I don’t know why I liked them; they tended to end up bloody. Nothing as overwhelming happened to me those times as did at the first one. But there was something odd about it; some sensation long forgot, like the smell when we were cleaning out the springs. It made a current from my toes to the roots of my hair. Part of it, I know, was that every one we went to, Ben Aaron would have to play.

  I would go about the work at the house, hearing that in my head, one old rant or reel and then another, as if the very walls were full of them. Sometimes there by myself I would be moved by some unheard tune to dance, to go from room to room with that peculiar buck-dance gait of snapped-back knees and heels. The ring of it on those old boards was just about intoxicating.

  I had a kettle of applesauce on, one day, when that came over me. The house was full of the smell, which was provident, for I had not cleaned it up in quite some time. But I was just so happy. If the chickens of my deplorable deed were coming home to roost, I thought, they’re still way down the road.

  Well, I was clicking my heels from the stove to the kitchen table, and somewhere in the house another rapping echoed. My hair stood straight on end. I have courted the Devil, I thought, or I have fetched a haint.

  While I stood there frozen, it rapped again. And then it had a voice. “Miss Steele?” it said. “Miss Cousin?”

  I went trembling to the door, with my legs made out of water, and lifted the latch. There stood Cud’n Barz, hat in hand. “Them womernses wouldn’ get out o’ my rig till they knowed if you was to home,” he said, apologetically. I looked beyond him, to the road. Hitched to two oxen was the back end of an Auburn Phaeton, with TAXICAB, in sort of casual red letters, painted on the door.

  Ensconced in the back seat were two ladies. One gray-haired and at that point real pale, holding down her little black hat with one wan hand. The other had her head tied in a dew rag. In spite of her ordeal she had remained quite dark.

  “Oh, God have mercy, Barz,” I said. “Where did you get ’em?”

  “They come in last night on the train,” he said. “Nobody there to bring ’em up hyar, till I come down this mornin’.”

  I was absolutely mute. “You’d ruther me t’ take ’em back?” he said.

  “Only one of ’em,” I said.

  “Well some folks does feel quare about colored people in thur house,” he said, understandingly.

  “That’s the one I want with me,” I said. “It’s the other’n I could spare.” But I didn’t know how to tell Mit that I was home, and Miss Lilah that I wasn’t. So I gathered my skirt around me and went forth to do my duty.

  Tell the truth I don’t know what shocked me most to see, the “womernses” or the car. Miss Lilah’s suitcase was strapped on the running board. Mit clutched her carpet bag in her lap. Miss Lilah’s head lay back against the seat, her eyes rolled back like in a faint. She was too far gone to see me coming. “D’ Lawd done shown us mussy, Mary Sen!” Mit cried, holding out her arms. I opened the door and leaned into that embrace and kissed her over and over.

  “I-o-wa, how could you do dis to us, Mary Seneca?” Miss Lilah croaked feebly, half-reviving.

  “It wadn’ all that bad,” I lied, “it’s just a little hard and strange, the first time you come up.” I went around the car and kissed her, over the door, and Barz undid her baggage and gallantly helped her out, and got her up the steps. When we got to the door he showed me his palm. “That’s eighty cent, please mam,” he said.

  Miss Lilah fumbled in her pocketbook, half-heartedly. “That sounds like way too
much to me,” she said, regaining her sense of values. “I wish dey’d been anothah way.” I made speed back into the house and brought out the better part of our family fortune, and settled the account. As Barz tipped his hat and turned to go, I said, “This is my cousin, Mr. Peek. He’s the first friend we met when we came up here.”

  “Yes, mam. Howd-do. Well. Goodbye,” said Barz, making his retreat.

  “Where are de chirrun?” Miss Lilah said.

  “Dey—they’re at school,” I said.

  “Yo’ little visit sounds mo’ like an abandonment to me,” she said. Like the frozen viper the man warmed in his shirt, Miss Lilah was beginning to thaw.

  “I think we need some dinner,” I said. “I know you probably haven’t had a thing since last night.” I meant to keep the conversation to no consequence, till I could get my balance. I showed Mit the pantry, with all the stuff we’d put up, and got out stuff to heat up, and made a pan of bread. They ate like they were starved to death, and then thank God exhaustion took over. I fixed them two beds and tucked them in for a nice long afternoon nap so I could finish going crazy.

  This was something I had known was going to happen. I could not keep this place unsullied. It was sure as the rising sun that Foots or his mother would come and put a mark on it. There never would be peace.

  Despairing, I flew around and straightened up. Cleaned the lamp chimneys and swept and filled the reservoir on the stove with water to warm, and put out clean towels on the wash stand and picked flowers for the table.

  Things were in such order that when the kids came in the first thing they wanted to know was who was coming.

  “Better ask who’s here,” I said, I guess right unhappily.

  They stopped in their tracks. “Daddy,” Pet said.

  “No, his mother,” I said, “And Aunt Mit.”

  “She made Aunt Mit come so you’d let her in,” Pet said. “She’s goin’ to try to make us all go home. Granny Lamb don’t want to take care of Daddy.”

  “Just be nice,” I said. “Remember who you are and behave that way.”

  When she heard them Mit came in, all stiff from sleep on top of that journey, and they perked up a little bit then. They wanted to show her around. And she said to me, “Go now ketch yo’seff a nap. I’ll fix de suppah. Dese sweet chirruns, heah, dey’ll hep me.”

  The offer was too sweet. I went and collapsed on Pet’s bed, for Miss Lilah was in mine. And the sweet chirruns, what they did, they took Mit on a tour that got sidetracked at one point. I don’t know where they went, but I know they left Mit, and were out of sight. They had showed her, though, the pen with the biddies that had grown mostly into strutting young roosters, who passed most of their time in combat. They were sacred roosters, raised by Pet and Hugh. I jumped up when I heard ’em squawking and I looked out just in time to see two of ’em twirling by their necks in the able hands of Mit, while the others cocked their heads and clucked, astonished.

  We’d not sat down to such a table since we’d left Mit behind. When he had eaten a peck Hugh sighed over the litter of bones on his plate and said, “Aunt Mit, did you bring this chicken on the train?”

  “No, sweet baby darlin’. These be yo’ own you raise. Be so fat an’ good, ain’ you proud?”

  Well, the chicken parents looked at one another. “Herman and Arvey,” Hugh said, in a cracking little voice. “Fidel and Ned,” Pet whispered, not believing. Through four, the chickens were named for Coy Ray’s boys. And there on from the Bible. “Nahum and Hackable, they were the fattest,” Hugh said. Tears were dropping on the ruins. Pet got up very quickly and took the plates away.

  “I ’clare, you chirrun cry about a ol’ chicken, do you ever cry fo’ yo’ ol’ Granma Lamb, an’ yo’ Daddy, an’ yo’ po’ sick Aunt Louise?” Miss Lilah said, with her typical sympathy.

  Hugh sniffed. “I cried about Aunt Louise one night,” he said. “I dreamed she had an ice cream cone and Daddy took it.”

  “You say Louise is sick?” I said.

  “You know she’s sick,” Miss Lilah said. “You know about huh heart. An’ dese chirrun bein’ stolen off like dis has broke huh po’ cripple heart in two.”

  Mit got up and went to cleaning up. I said nothing. I just fumed.

  “By d’ way, I don’ see Hubert’s new car. Where is it?” said the inquisitor.

  “It needed some work,” I said.

  “He sho’ had his feelin’s hurt about his car,” she said.

  Somehow, we passed that evening without blows. By the grace of God the old woman went to bed early and slept late. Mit rose with the larks so we could have some time to talk.

  “Don’ you pay no mind to dis one minute,” Mit said. “Miss Louise, she tell me that ol’ woman fixin’ to try to git you back. She out o’ money, that’s why. Miss Louise she say, ‘Tell ’er pay no mind.’ Say, ‘Stay where you is at.’ Ol’ Foots, he gettin worse an worse. T’row tings. Sass peoples.’

  “It maybe be two year, yo’ mama say, befo’ she gon’ be home,” Mit continued. “Don’ you come back home, Mary Sen, befo’ she home to hep you. That be my rupinion…”

  I had lived the most of my life by Mit’s rupinions. Never had one suited me so well.

  Miss Lilah woke up while Coy Ray was throwing off a wagon load of sawmill slabs. ’Course he talked to his mules in words they understood, and when she came downstairs, she said to me, “The servants roun’ here shu’ly are profane.”

  “Ain’t no servants up here,” I said. “Coy Ray’s my friend.”

  To entertain for long I needed to go to the store. I didn’t think to tell Coy Ray.

  “Maybe Ben Aaron will come by,” I said, as an afterthought. I wished he would, somehow. I needed his moral support.

  There was a glimmer of recognition in Miss Lilah’s eyes, over her coffee cup. She frowned and thought. “Is he d’ one…?” she finally said.

  “Which one?” I said. I guessed I’d mentioned things he’d done for us, in letters to Louise.

  She looked sort of pale. “D’ one dat was in prison.”

  “In prison?” I said taken back.

  “Somebody tol’ me dey’d come to see about some land up heah, an’ d’ man was one of yo’ kinpeople, an’ he was in prison. Fo’ killin’ a po’ woman wid a rock.”

  “Oh!” I said. I was feeling much brighter. “Yes that’s the one I think, but that happened before we came. He wadn’ in jail real long I guess. It wadn’ very serious.”

  While I was doing about I noticed she was having a hushed conference with Mit. Then she called Hugh, and he came to me and said, “Mama, can I have the mule to go see Cousin Barz?” He had not been all that thick with Barz, as I knew of, but I said, why certainly. “Granny wants to go home,” he whispered in my ear.

  So early in the afternoon, in time to catch the evening train, our guests got ready to depart. As her parting soliloquy, Miss Lilah stood on the porch, watching the approach of the “taxicab” and recited on a scene I well remembered.

  “I can’ fo’get I stood there, in d’ room where I remembered yo’ daddy’s casket, an’ I heard you say to my son, ‘In sickness an’ in health, till death do us part.’ I can’t hep wonderin’, Mary Sen, what yo’ po’ daddy would think of d’ way you honored yo’ obligation.”

  No lightnin’ on this porch, dear God, I thought. Wait’ll the old buzzard gets out to the road.

  Mit came out with all their belongings and helped Barz load up. He lifted his hat and looked expectantly at me. I was embarrassed. “Can I settle up the fare when the crops come in?” I said.

  “Yes, mam,” he said gravely. “’Course hit’ll be a dollar, then.”

  I promised to put it on my book, in case I died. It was all I could do to say a cordial goodbye, to half of the departing. But then I thought how I’d miss Mit. “Give my love to Uncle Camp. Tell Louise I love her,” I said. “Tell her maybe we’ll see her Christmas, if we do real well.”

  Mit puckered her mouth and shook her head, as the
oxen started off. I couldn’t watch them down the road.

  It was not far behind them that Ben Aaron came. When I told him that his lie was now a legend in the Lowcountry, he stomped and hollered and whooped. What was more, I said, it had probably helped to keep me from murdering somebody, myself.

  I felt better then. Only that night I couldn’t help but think, why here? Will it follow every place I go?

  But then in the morning it had turned off bright and cool. When I looked out the window, it was October.

  21.

  BAT DUNG AND HIS DAUGHTER

  I HAVE CARRIED IN MY MIND A KIND OF MYSTICAL IMAGE OF THAT first October here on Big Caney, the way the color started in the sugar trees on the ridge tops and trickled down the mountains, and the air turned sharp and cool, full of strange rustlings, sweet with pinesap and curing tobacco and woodsmoke and fruit gone to wine.

  Even the wind in dry leaves still reminds me of how happy Hugh was, running wild in the woods with Coy Ray’s boys. You wouldn’t hear a peep out of that bunch of little cigar-store Indians when they came around the house. But they chased behind a litter of baying pups up and down the valley, flushing rabbits and great flocks of birds, being chased themselves by hoop-snakes and boogers and howling with joy.

  Pet clung to Rose, they brought in walnuts and hickory nuts and made apple butter and mothered flocks of half-feathered chicks. They liked to sing quietly together, learning songs from each other as though it was a personal thing, their fair heads close over the work Rose always had at hand.

  That October made me drunk. I felt something new I could not give a name to. Or maybe it was something old and always hidden. It was one of those times you knew right then, this is too fine and perfect ever to forget.

  But beauty was not all of it.

  The dirtiest old man on Big Caney lived up beyond where the river forks, up at the head of the valley. His name was Bat Dung Aleywine. Well, his name was really Luther; people took care to call him Luther to his face because he was awful quick to get mad and fight.