Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  But that was the end of the subject. The steam was vented and the lid came down.

  When we left the next morning, Nam went with us. It was turning damp and drizzly, a good time to hole in for a good visit. ’Course it was a sin just to sit with idle hands and gossip about others, so we found all these quilt pieces in an old trunk in the attic and justified ourselves.

  Daisy had been making this quilt, Nam remembered. Some squares had been pieced; it was a Dresden Plate. All the pieces were cut, and the blue squares that would join them. We decided we would finish it.

  We sat rocking in front of the fire, sewing and talking, and it was a warm kind of pleasure, working with little pieces that were left from dresses and shirts made here so long ago by my grandma, who loved this place so much.

  “She was hell-bent to stay on here,” Aunt Nam said. “The day Ivan was buried we got her to go home with me to the Forks—for one night. And even at that I had to watch her. Bedang’d if way in the night I didn’t hear her go out. By the time I got to ’er she was headed down the road. She was dazed, you know. In shock. I got her back in the house and made her lie down, but I kept my eye cracked, I’ll tell you, till I knew for a fact she was asleep.

  “And the next day bright and early she was up like a little bird, with her nightgown packed in her satchel. Arie and Aaron and all of us were sittin’ around the breakfast table and Daisy got up and said, ‘Well, Aaron, I am ready to go home.’

  “I can’t tell you why to save my life, but all of us were terribly uneasy. Her behavior was just so odd. She never seemed even sad. Aaron looked at his mama and me and we both shook our heads and give him the high-sign, no no.

  “And he said to her, ‘Aunt Daisy, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a good idee quite yet, do you?’

  “‘Well, I don’t know why not,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go sometime. And I think it’s just like wearin’ new teeth; if you wait till your mouth gets tough before you put ’em in, you just never do get used to ’em.’

  “She acted as chipper as if nothin’ had happened atall. ‘You goin’ to take me, or am I a-goin’ to walk?’ she said, finally.

  “‘Well I reckon if you’re goin’ in spite of us, I’ll take you,’ Aaron said. But we none of us liked it much.

  “I got to thinkin’ about her that evenin’ out here with the owls, and that fresh grave. You know she was plain foolish about Ivan. He was about her, too. So I got the buggy and I lit out down here, and when I got here, things seemed pretty much all right. She had put out a little washin’, ’course we had washed the bed clothes where Ive had laid, first thing, and aired the bed. But she had done up his clothes he’d wore, and she’d redded up the house, got ever’thing picked up, from so many people bein’ in and out. And she had a pot of greens cooked on the back of the stove, and bread made, and a pot of coffee a-boilin’—it looked to me like things were too good.

  “I stayed that night, and the next night. And by the third day gone, I don’t know what it was, but a quare feeling hovered over this house like a buzzard. That night I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I was sleepin’ in the bed with Daisy, and it came to me how quiet she was. I raised up to look at her and she was gone.

  “Now I never was one to be scared, Lord do, child, I’da never got through this life bein’ scared. But all at once a cold chill seized holt of me, I just got the shivers I was so panicky. I thought maybe she had got up to go to the toilet. You know that chimney closet up there, she kep’ her chamber pot and her wash pan back in there, always kind of dainty about herself.

  “Well, I called, and she never answered. It crossed my mind that she might have gone downstairs to the kitchen, she’d not eat anything to speak of all the while Ivan was sick, nothin’ atall while he laid a corpse. I hoped maybe she’d got hungry. I got up an’ put on my carpet slippers, I thought I’d go down and see if that was it.

  “Now, the moonlight was just a-streamin’ in the window. It was about light as day, outdoors, the prettiest I can remember. And I remember, because somethin’ told me to look out.

  “And there was Daisy. Not walkin’, mind, but runnin’ like a child. With her hair and her gown floatin’ behind her. Out there barefooted, and it cool, too, a-runnin’ in the dew. And her sixty-two years old.

  “At least I thought, well, Praise God, she’s not runnin’ to the cemetery. She was runnin’ down to the birch grove. I opened my mouth to call ’er, and all of a sudden, nothin’ would come out.

  “Now it wadn’t anything I saw. Mercy—even now when I think of it, it wadn’t anything I saw. But what I thought I heard. Even though I know good and well it couldn’t be so. And I’m not even goin’ to say—because you’re a-livin’ out here now and I shan’t plant any scary notions in your head. I’ll not say what it was…”

  I sewed on a few stitches. I was piecing something else together in my mind. Finally I said, “You don’t have to say. That’s all right. I’m not scared. I’ve heard it.”

  Nam’s rocker stopped. “Since you been here?”

  “Not here,” I said. “If it’s what I think, I heard it one night in Charleston. And that’s how come me to be here.”

  She stared at me. It’s the only time I ever saw her look afraid. “There are things about us I think we’ll never understand,” I said. Nothing horrible, I said, or anything of that sort.

  “No,” she said. “Just unspeakable.”

  We sat and sewed, quiet while fine rain fogged the windows.

  “What did you do then?” I said finally. “What did you do with Daisy?”

  “Well, I kept still, like my ear was glued to the air,” Nam said. “And then I fetched a scream, I heard myself screechin’, ‘Daisy! Daisy!’ She stopped stock still, I could see her white gown in the shadows sort of hovering. And then she turned around and come back up the hill, walking real slow, and tired, like a old widow-woman.”

  “Do you think she was walking in her sleep?” I said.

  “Well! I sure wanted to think so. That’s what I told her she was doing, she didn’t act like she knew. I got ’er back in the house, and dried her feet, and put her back to bed with a hot water bottle. And then I laid there the rest of the night, a-studyin’ what we must do.

  “The next morning I talked straight to her. I had to get back up to the Forks. Arie was awful poorly, she’d had kidney trouble all her life and she was failin’ right before our eyes. Ben Aaron was runnin’ the mill all by himself, he couldn’t afford help with the management, it was in such straits, and he was pushin’ and sellin’ hand over fist and havin’ to oversee the whole works. I’d been a-cookin’ for the hands, and keepin’ the books. Anyway, I said to Daisy, ‘Daisy, you’ve got to come home, now, you can’t stay down here by yourself another minute.’

  “And she looked at me, the gentlest, the sweetest, and she said, ‘Panammer, I AM at home. And I never am goin’ to be by myself.’

  “Well, the hair of my head practically stood on end. I told her, ‘I’ve got to go up to the Forks this morning, I’ve got to see about Arie and I want you with me; let’s get up your stuff and go.’

  “She said, then, well, would I mind if she stayed that day and sorted and put stuff away and strawed over her flowers and things she wanted to do if she was to stay gone awhile. I didn’t like it, but I said, well, if it would make her better satisfied, some of us would be back by dark, then, to get her.

  “She looked at me just as straight and sensible, and she said, ‘You mustn’t worry to get here till morning. I can come in the morning, ever’ bit as well. It’s you that’s scared out here—not me.’

  “I hitched up the buggy then and came home. When I got there, Arie was down. The doctor was there, he took me aside and said she was goin’ to have to stay off salt and meat and stay in bed, and what’s more, I was to watch ’er, for she would bait up on anything she wadn’t supposed to have, and then she would swell. Daisy was always impish and devilish and stubborn; Arie was just stubborn.

  “Along
late in the afternoon Arie took a terrible headache and her eyes got puffy. Ben Aaron had promised to go to Red Bank that night, he didn’t hardly get to go anywhere at all, but that little old Allie Tatum, I don’t know what become of that child but she was wild crazy over Ben Aaron, and she’d hinted and wheedled him to take ’er to that dance, and finally he had said he would.

  “When he saw how things were, he said well, he’d just back out. But I told him no, Arie would probably get better, it was Daisy giving me the jitters, and that I had said we’d get ’er, sometime that evenin’. I never let on about her roamin’ like she’d done. Well, then, he said he’d take the buggy, Allie would like that anyway, and goin’ down he’d stop and see about Daisy, and pick ’er up on the way back, that night.

  “He did stop, said she was just a-clickin’ her heels all about, coverin’ the furniture, packin’ stuff she wanted him to send a wagon for, and he said she told him please not to try to get back early, that it would be morning, at the soonest, when she’d be ready to come. He told her then that he’d look for a light when he come by, coming back, to be sure she was all right.”

  Aunt Nam rocked on a little bit. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes and snuffed into her apron.

  “While they were in Red Bank, there come up a tremendous rain, and wind. When they come back up the road, Ben Aaron said there was a light, all right. The front of the house was afire. He jumped down, there was a horsetrough between the corner of the porch an’ the road, and it was full, and he grabbed the bucket and commenced to run and fling water on the fire; it hadn’t spread but around the front door. And he got it out.”

  The bushes were tapping on the window, in the wind. We needed a lamp; it was most too dark to sew. Anyway I had quit.

  “Where was Daisy?” I said.

  Nam had to rock a little bit before she could say. “She was down in the river. It was the next day when they found ’er. And she looked just like a child.”

  24.

  THE BALLAD LADY

  THE COLD OF THAT WINTER WAS SOMETHING I WAS NO WAY READY for. The wind howled up and down these ridges day and night. The laurels huddled their leaves tight and mourned. Now, this house was built as sheltered as a house could be, up here, but a trip to the barn, or lots worse, to the privy, was something to put off as long as we could.

  When it would snow, that helped. Maybe it was insulation. Maybe it just covered up the bare and made the cold count for something. It was not just that it was terrible outdoors; going from room to room was awful, too. Everything we did had to be done within about three feet of the stove or the fireplace.

  It seemed to bother the kids a lot less than it did me. Oh, Pet could fuss about it, but she got up in the mornings and went on to school with the Wilcoxes and survived very well. I think the worst of my misery was in being forsaken. I even felt deserted when Hugh insisted that he wanted to go back to school. He felt perfectly fine and got very tired of being wrapped up by the stove. Ans Shuman said he could do anything but go swimming in the river. Of course he was well; I just liked to have some other soul in the house that I could talk to.

  At the heart of bad matters, Ben Aaron had not been here in several weeks. He had not been here since we went to cut the Christmas tree. I had not seen him at all since we all had dinner at Nam’s on New Year’s Day. I knew very well what had transpired. Nam had put the fear of God in him. She was right, I couldn’t deny that. And I loved her and needed her. But I had to watch to keep the bitter off my tongue when she and I would be with one another. I suffered. And I couldn’t talk about it.

  Coy Ray would come and bring anything from town that we needed. It was too cold to go to town on the mule, too much trouble, too; the poor old thing would follow the sun around the barn and that was as far as it would move. The weather never seemed to faze Coy Ray much though. He had a tattered old lumberjack he wore when it was a blizzard blowing or something but most times he went without a coat; he bragged that he slept on the ground many a time with no blanket, and thick frost on his clothes.

  Well, along the end of January I guess, Coy Ray had this little good luck. He won a pen of late-spring pigs from some old man in a card game at the Forks. It was good luck on top of bad; his sow had run off with this old bandit of a wild hog that roamed the riverside. The wicked thing had collected itself a real harem over the years. Somebody was always pretending to hunt it but I think they hoped not to meet it, for it was quick to take offense. Coy Ray said he had heard folks say it was big as a bear but he said, “I’ve seed the thing and that ain’t so, it may be MOST as long as a bear but half of that is its tushes.”

  Anyway, he brought his “winnings” home. And then he got to thinking about how he would feed three hogs through the winter. And he decided he would pen the two boar shoats and fatten them a few days, and he brought the pretty little gilt down to me. She was pinky-white with shadow spots, and she had a nice smile, and Coy Ray built a snug pen with a nice southern exposure. The day he butchered the other two I went up to his place, with a queasy stomach, to help Rose. Coy Ray killed ’em and put ’em in the scald barrel and Rose and I scraped ’em and cleaned the guts and the little boys got the bladders. Coy Ray tried to give me a bladder-balloon tied on a stick to take home to Pet and Hugh but I declined. It hurt my belly down low just to think about it.

  We had started real early, just when it got light enough to work. I got the kids up for school, although Rose and hers were staying home to help with the pigs. It had turned off a really lovely day, sunny and calm, really nice, one of the “take hope” days of February. It was along in the afternoon when I went home, time for the kids to get home from school. I stopped at the spout and washed off what I could of the hog blood and smell on my hands and arms but it was too cold for much; I figured I would heat up a tub and scour myself. When I went in the back door the stove was going and the kettle was on. I thought how nice, the kids had thought of me. I took off my muddy shoes and went barefooted through the house looking for them.

  There was somebody talking in the parlor. Not a familiar voice at all. A lady, plainly a Yankee, was saying, “While we are waiting for your mother, could you possibly sing a song for me? Could you perhaps sing a song your grandmother sang to you?” It stopped me in my tracks, out of sight. I wondered what they would do. I could hear them mumbling, consulting with one another. And then they started to sing. Or Pet “beed the piano,” as they used to say, she improvised the piano part, mocking every turn and trickle of the “brook.” And Hugh did the melody line: “Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust, das Wannn-dern! Das Wandern ist des Mullers Lust, das Wann-dern!” Forgive me, for they were my children, but they had beautiful little voices.

  I had to see that lady’s face. And I don’t know which was the biggest jolt, Schubert lieder back in this cove, or me with the hog blood all over me. I don’t think I even registered, right at first. Her mouth fell open. She stared from behind her big glasses from them to me. She dropped her pencil. “Schöne Müllerin,” she said, sort of breathless.

  “Do you want to hear the next one?” Pet said. They were beaming. They were enjoying it. “Yes yes,” the lady said, kind of weak. “Sing me the next one. No, wait!”

  I will not forget how she looked. She had very blond hair, almost white, done up in a knot at the back of her head. She had on some riding pants and a fine sweater. She was tall and refined, a gentle-looking person, not terribly young. Or some older than I, I thought. Her hands were trembling. She groped around in her pack and brought out a flute case, and put the flute together. And she said no more, but started to play “the next one,” she played the rushing brook part, very softly, and Pet commenced to sing, and Hugh picked up with her, and I stood there biting my lip. It was a kind of joy that can’t be put in words. At the end she and I looked at one another and dissolved into tears.

  Her name was Leonora Liebman. She was from New York. She had been teaching music at some little college in New England, and the school had met its la
st full payroll Christmas week, she did not want to go home and sit down on her family; they had pressed her to marry well and be secure. She had a friend, though, who had a little money and a dabbling interest in doing a book on ballads. And this friend had hired her to go about the country and pick up what she could, getting people to sing.

  She had found her way, by some error, to Caney Forks, where she inquired at the store and met a tall and attractive fellow there (in her words), a Mr. Steele. He had offered her “a dope” and some crackers, and they had sat by the stove at the store, and they had talked. He was not much at the old ballads himself, he had told her modestly. But, down at the old home place, he had a cousin. “My cousin and her kids know the oldest songs you’ll ever hear,” he said, and she reported, when she was sure I would not take offense.

  “Well, you just met the biggest liar you’ll ever see,” I said.

  She smiled a wide smile. That illegitimate, I thought. Sending that poor woman on such a wild goose chase. When Pet brought in the tea I excused myself and washed as quickly as I could and got on clean clothes. When I got clean I felt more charitable. I saw things a little better. Cousin Ben Aaron had done something he thought was kind. He had sent me somebody I could talk with, about things I had not yet heard anybody talking about in Caney Forks. He saw that this lady was lonely and weary; he knew she had been out batting about in the cold, among strangers, for weeks and weeks. Good heavens, how nice and thoughtful of him. I wished I could hug him. Oh, I did.

  We got us up some supper and sat down by the fire, she and I, after the kids went on to bed. She was naturally curious. “Where did your children learn…?” she started out, and I laughed, and I said, “From their granny.” They sang the stuff they did, as a matter of course, the same way a Baptist preacher’s children would sing “Bringing In The Sheaves,” I said. It was what they had grown up with; they were great little parrots, they didn’t have an idea in the world what they were singing. Or I don’t reckon they did. It was a sharp reminder to me, when I thought of it, how much they had stayed with my mother, and what a sparse little homelife they had had with me.