Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  Of course that part I didn’t go into, with Nora. Or not right away. She wanted to know what we were doing up here. Explaining that, I said, was a right big order. I said for the moment I would rather hear about the world outside and she told me things that were happening in New York, who was singing what and playing where, and dancing. Diaghilev had died that summer, she said; the ladies in white dresses, as I would always think of them, were fluttering about and lighting in other companies, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had died, too. We talked until she nodded off to sleep, in her chair. She was exhausted. She was a shy, sensible and sensitive creature, moving about in this foreign land lost and in the dark. I put her to bed with a warm brick at her feet and a feather bed for cover. And I went then and crawled in with Pet and I was up from the depths for the first time in weeks.

  We talked three days. Nora would never quite be satisfied that we were staying here. She was awfully concerned about the children’s future; she was pretty taken with them. And they were too, with her. She had not been a ballad collector long enough (and I thought never would be) to see the value in what this part of the universe had to teach. She showed me some notation she had taken, a couple of places where she had been. I read it as accurate to the last slide and whang but figured she had no more idea what the singing was about than the kids understood “Die Schöne Müllerin.” No, much less; at least the kids had caught the spirit.

  I wished with all my heart that Ben Aaron would come and play for her. That, I think, would have opened her ears. But he didn’t show; he had done his social part by sending her. So there was no way, I supposed, that I could make it clear. You had to hear; it had to breathe on some special nerve. And this, I thought, may not be a universal nerve. Maybe it is peculiar to us, and our kind, in this place.

  The last day she was here she said wistfully that she would so love to really earn her pay, small though it was. She wanted to bring back something that would thrill her mentor, even if it didn’t do much for her. I said well, I didn’t know much about these songs, for I had missed out on the whole lives of my ancestors who did know them. Or I guessed they did, who can be sure? “Have you heard this?” I said. And I sang to her about the unfaithful wife of the house carpenter, and the pitiful end she came to in her lover’s leaky boat.

  “Where did you learn that?” she said, going for her note-book.

  “I learned it in the blackberry brambles, early, early of a morning, in the fog,” I said. And I sang to her about the wife who ran off with Black Jack Davey, and the squire who came a-ridin’ after her, trying to get her to come home. I sang her things I learned from the river; from somewhere many years away, the river brought them back. And songs the bees sang to me, in my sleep, and songs the wind would sing on the stove pipe, when I would doze off in the rocking chair, sometimes.

  And it didn’t surprise me that she looked at me real strangely, but with more understanding than I would ever have hoped, from someone from outside. For she had stayed in this house three days, and she took down her notes quite seriously, and accepted.

  She left out for Red Bank; she needed to get to the post office to mail her notebook in before she started out again.

  I cried after her, as her horse went off down the road and out of sight. I cried for everything I had known and been and for delicacy and silk and perfume and people who wore tailed coats and played the violin. I cried for Mit to hold me, and to hear my mother sing. The chill closed in. I was lonely to the core.

  In just a few days though I had a note from Nora, written in Knoxville. She had heard from the man she worked for, she said. He had written as soon as he had got her notes. “He was positively elated with what I got from you,” she said. “He said, ‘This material is clearly very old, and uncorrupted.’ I must never tell him that you learned it from the berries and the bees.”

  She said, too, that somehow she had begun to feel differently about “the culture” around here. Maybe there was much more here than met the casual eye and ear. I did not tell her, when I wrote her immediately back, that I had begun to see things differently myself. She had been right. The children were bright and deserving. It was not fair to isolate them here, however happy they might seem to be at times. Or how happy I might have been, one time or another. As for that part, it was all past. The times ahead, the way things were, looked as bleak as these icy hillsides in the wind. She had been right. As soon as I could work it out, we would be gone.

  25.

  THE FOGGY DEW

  THERE WAS A CERTAIN PLEASURE IN NURSING THAT RESOLUTION through the cold of early March, through the misery of ice and freeze and lonesomeness. And then there was a thaw. The sun shined warm and the spring beauty budded, down in the woods. The bulb things and the violets poked up to see if it meant it. Certainly it didn’t; spring never means it, quite, before way into April up here.

  But there was something about it. There was a wave of restlessness that rippled over everything. The bare trees sighed. The mule brayed. The pig ran up and down in her pen; she would put her little feet up on the boards of her fence, and put her nose through, and squeal to get attention.

  One evening then a cloud swept down, on a gale of cold wind, and it rained in the night, and the next morning was clear and the rain had frozen on the bushes and brush and trees and the sun shined on it like it was millions of diamonds. It was magic. It made you feel like your eyes could not be big enough to see it all.

  It was a feeling, too; I moved about real slow, that morning early. We had a fire of cobs and little sticks because we hadn’t brought in wood. We needed to split some stove wood and everything was damp. We had just fire enough for breakfast. And I didn’t care. I flopped around, sighing; I didn’t go out to the barn until the kids were gone. And I dawdled around at that; I put on my camisole and step-ins and petticoat and cotton stockings, and looked at myself in the glass and fiddled with my hair. It was cold as Christmas in there but I had a sort of swelled feeling just below my ribs and it spread out warm, in both directions. I put on my dress and smiled. I thought I might ride into town.

  Well, I went flouncing out to the lot, going la-la-la, and the chickens came clucking and the mule snorted. But there was no pig. There was a hole under the wire. Signs of furious digging on both sides. Tracks all around. Piggy had rooted out, with some help. She had not gone by herself.

  There was a little stab of ice in the breeze. I went in the house and got on an old wrapper and a shawl to put over my head, and started up the river. I decided that was where I would go if I were a pig in a romantic condition. Oddly I was not mad at her at all. I smiled to myself; it takes a heifer, I thought, to take sides with a hot pig. The river was up and rolling. It was cold and cloudy with silt. I didn’t like to look at it.

  The narrows were roaring. Long before I could see them there was silty foam bobbing on the current. Patches of ice slicked the trail. As I went by the narrows on that little ledge of rock I pulled the wrapper around me and made myself tall and looked down at the river boiling and I said to it, I am not afraid of you. It was too extraordinary a day to be afraid of anything.

  It was good I had to mind where I stepped; right there on the rock there was a pile of pig-doo, untidy and still very fresh. I was walking along, then, as happy as ever could be, and I came up at the bridge on the road to Coy Ray’s.

  There was a meadow on the far side of the river; it was a field of mossy rocks over there and clumps of laurel and huckleberry bushes. I was standing there thinking what a nice place for a pig tryst when I heard a horse behind me. I turned around and there was my cousin Ben Aaron. He pulled up, there, and just sat looking. And I stood there looking. And finally he said, not terribly kindly, “What are you doing up here?”

  And I started to tell him. But I did not, right off. Instead I looked him long in the eye and said, “I am looking for you.”

  “Have you got nothing better to do?” he said.

  “I ought to be looking for my pig,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Where is your pig?” he said.

  “If I knew would I be looking?” I said. I stood my ground. He tapped Cy with the reins and rode on up on the bridge.

  “Lookin’ for a pig can be perilous business,” he said, a little softened.

  “Where are you going?” I said. He didn’t answer.

  “Here,” he said, “come on and I’ll help you if I can.” He got down and swung me up on the back of the horse, and got on in front of me. It was not very comfortable back there; Cy’s rump was as broad as a dinner table and there I sat behind the saddle with my legs sticking out. How odd. But I put my arms around Ben Aaron’s waist politely.

  “You looked on the other side, I guess,” he said.

  “Yes, and I saw sign,” I said. He lit a cigarette and sat there blowing smoke. Finally he nudged Cy’s ribs and started off down into that meadow. We went very slowly, and perfectly quiet, down the river, stopping to look through the bushes. We saw more sign. “It’s several,” he said, “or else that’s one shittin’ pig. ” We went along and directly we began to see rooted-up places. There was the head of a snake in one of ’em. There was a little dip ahead, a sheltered place warm in the morning sun. Very slowly we went to where we could look down. There were half a dozen grown hogs and some little ones, lying down there stretched out after breakfast. Mine wasn’t there. Ben Aaron leaned back and whispered, “Ain’t all of ’em. The old man ain’t home.”

  It suddenly dawned on me that I was where the saddlebag and rifle ought to be. If we met the old man, we didn’t have a thing to use to reason with him. I got bristles of my own, on top of my head. “Let’s just go,” I said. He eased Cy back up out of the pigs’ sight, and started back up the river.

  “I’ll get Coy Ray to come down with me and we’ll get ’er,” he said.

  We had gone just a few yards when Cy stopped and flung his head and snorted. There was this thrashing in the bushes and all of a sudden here came the ugliest creature I ever saw in my life. It did look big as a bear except it wasn’t as fat, it was just a mean dark wedge of ugly, with little bitty eyes and elephant teeth that crossed.

  “Woop!” Ben Aaron said, jerking straight up. Cy started jittering and dancing like I had never known him to have the energy to do. The thing was coming full speed. “Hol’ on, Sen,” said Ben Aaron. He cracked Cy on the flank with the flat of his hand and headed into the river. Without any doubt it was the best thing to do; a spavined horse carrying over three hundred pounds was not going to outrun that thing. A scared horse would throw off three hundred pounds and head for cover. Cy was terrified. He plunged into the water, it was about up to his belly, and started across. And he had got out into the current, and his hind feet must have slipped on the rocks. Or else he had a cramp; the water was so cold it burned. And down he went, backwards. I don’t know how I turned loose of Ben Aaron. I don’t know a thing about what happened there. I hit the water and the shock of it took my wind. I remember being tumbled about like a rag and being snatched up.

  The first thing I sort of knew was being held tight to Ben Aaron, in his arms, going by the narrows, going home. My teeth were chattering like a woodpecker. Ben Aaron was wet too, so he was not much warmth. Cy was so cold he moved in slow motion, shuddering: Every breath of the wind was misery. I remember getting warm and drowsy, as we passed the cemetery. I remember Ben Aaron shaking me, and rubbing my arms. I was vaguely aware of the barn, then, and coming up to the front porch.

  He left Cy there, in the sun and out of the wind, and carried me in the front door and back to Daisy’s sitting room; most times I had a little fire in there. There was not any, that morning. There was not any wood inside. He set me down in a chair and snatched up that quilt I had just taken off the frame, and wrapped me in it. He went to the kitchen and brought back the bucket of cobs, and lit them in the fireplace and plopped me on the hearth. He ran outside, then, and I heard him chopping like a mad man, and directly he came in with a great armload of wood and kindling, and he fed the fire and got it roaring.

  I guess I must have looked blue. He got down with me and took off that wet wrapper. That dress I had on was buttoned with a dozen little buttons, up the front. My hands were shaking so I couldn’t help myself at all. So he started under the chin and unbuttoned me like I was a child. And I held up my arms and he pulled off the dress, over my head, and he pulled off that sopping petticoat, and wrapped that quilt around me, and then he got down and took off my shoes. There I sat, in my underwear and stockings. He turned around to the fire and said, “I won’t look. You need to get ’em off.”

  Well, I managed to get rid of the stockings and he sat down there on the hearth and commenced to rub my feet. He was wet to the skin himself. The steam was rising off his jacket. “Did you swallow any water?” he said. “Get any up your nose?”

  I was real surprised when I thought of it. “No,” I said, “I think I must have quit breathing. But I got ice rattling in my ears.”

  “How do you feel?” he said. I remember how his face looked, with the firelight flickering on it. This was a different creature, all serious and intent. His hair was all rumpled. He had lost his hat. My own hair was stuck wet to my face. I pushed it back and pulled the quilt around me. I was about to quit shaking.

  “I feel really good,” I said. “I wish you would get that wet stuff off of you. You must be nearly dead.”

  He got up and took off his jacket; I remember he had on a red-checked wool shirt under it. And he took off his boots; they squished when he pulled ’em off. He sat back down, then, and took up rubbing my feet. He had the most marvelous hands of any human being I ever knew. There was a big vocabulary in those hands. He stopped and fished around in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. The pack leaked when he pulled it out. There was a little flat can of tobacco though, that had kept miraculously dry, and he got out his pipe and stuck a twig in the fire and lit it, and sat down, puffing away, and rubbed my feet some more.

  It was very quiet. The wind was scratching the window with the sweet bubby bush. Ive’s clock chimed ten. Finally, he said, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Ask me a little bit later,” I said.

  “Will you be all right while I go get some wood?” he said. And he went out and chopped some, and came back very quickly. When he sat down again, I put the quilt around him, too, for his shirt was still wet and cold. We sat very still, there, and very quiet, in the perfume of wet wool and wet leather, looking into the fire. I put my hand on his arm, once, and he was rigid.

  “Well,” he said directly, “if you are going to be all right I will go on.” He sounded hoarse. His voice was much too high and funny. “You are too wet to go anywhere,” I said. “You will be sick.” But he put off the quilt, and he got up, and started to get on his boots. “Don’t do that,” I said. He looked down at me with this soft look. And I got up and put my arms around him. “Don’t do that,” I said. He stood there stiff as a poker, not hugging back. I laid my ear on his chest and listened to his heart. It was like a gourd rattle.

  “I’ve got to go right now,” he said. I did something that I never in all my life would have thought I would do. I slipped my hand down the front of his shirt, and down under his belt. It was like I had shot him. He shuddered and let out this little cry; it was like the dying wail of a rabbit in the jaws of the fox. I thought, oh, God, what have I done? But he didn’t back off. He let his arms fall sort of limp around me, and laid his cheek down on my head. And I began to unbutton his shirt. Slowly, my hands were shaking so. And he did nothing but breathe, breathe, while I undid the buckle of his belt. I slipped up his undershirt and laid my face on that skin. I can’t say what it was like to put my mouth on him; it wouldn’t do. It was like moving in a dream; slowly and deliberately I undid the buttons and pulled away the wet clothes, and he let me. And when I had rid him of them all I could only look into his face; it was what I wanted, to look into his face, and I just held him like that, and looked up at him, and it was the tenderest face, it was
like he would melt and run down.

  The rest of it happened much too fast. I must not say too much about how it was, except that it was not easy. There was a minute or two that I wondered if I would live through it. And that didn’t much matter, I decided, at the time. But when he had done what it was he had been so determined he would never do, he rolled over and held me on top of him, and smoothed my hair. And he said, “Well, that is the second time today I guess you thought I was trying to kill you.” If it was so he was not very repentant; he lay there with his eyes half-closed, looking at me, half smiling. I traced his mouth with the tip of my finger and thought how perfect he was, and how gracious in defeat.

  “If you were, you did not do very well. You will have to try again,” I said. And, in a little while, he did. A lot more like somebody in love. There had never been (as far as I would know) anything quite like it. The thought flitted through my mind, like a mouse across the tea table, that he knew a great lot about women, somehow. I ran out my tongue wondering how much of it he learned from Sophier. And then I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he learned it from a monkey. My cousin, the prism, I thought, just drifting. Every way you turn him, some new light. Dazzling, mesmerizing, weightless, blinding. There was nothing in the world but his breathing, and that light. It seems like after that we must have slept a while. I know he raised up once and threw some wood on the fire.

  The next thing, the clock was striking twelve. There was something doleful in its tone of voice. Ben Aaron sat up and felt around for his pipe. He stood up then and got his tobacco and stuffed it and lit it solemnly. I watched him, every move. I was thinking, what immortal hand or eye had shaped something so lovely. He stood there bare as the day he was born, one foot cocked over the other, studying the wallpaper.