Refuge

by Dot Jackson

  “Pro’bly lookin’ for some unperteckted womern,” one said, to be reassuring. “Better lock up tight,” they said, when they had decided I was not hiding him. And they moved on. And I locked up, as best I could.

  That night I had hysterics into the pillow, till I wore out, and I hoped the killer would come on in, and it would be done with. The next morning I decided I would go to Nam’s. Something had to happen. As I started up the road I noticed hoofprints, big hoofprints in the dirt. It looked like a horse had stood there, and shifted around, a very long time. There were about two packs’ worth of cigarette butts on the ground. The sentinel was nowhere in sight; he had faded off with the night.

  I picked up one of the butts and put it ceremoniously in my mouth, just for the contact, however cold. For the first time in months I felt human again. I wasn’t scared. I went to the barn for a basket, I thought I’d go down in the orchard and pick up some apples. While I was down there rummaging around Rose came riding up the field. She wanted to tell me that Coy Ray had been out with a posse all night. They had caught a man in a laurel slick down the river a couple of miles. It was a man that liked to strangle women. We held one another and shivered. And then we took us some hampers and went down and got some apples.

  I had not seen her in a while; she was getting over a deep cold and a bad cough. She had about quit hacking and it was a good sunny day. Good for her to be out, she said. We figured we’d get some pie apples out to dry. Mainly for her crowd; I didn’t feel like I’d need many. We sat us down on the porch and peeled into our laps and sliced into a bucket between us.

  Rose was a creature of few words, sometimes, and my mind being right occupied we worked along, not saying much. Every now and then a yellow jacket would buzz around the peelings and she would shoo it and flip the corner of her apron. By instinct, I guess, I kept my dress and apron bunched up in front and my lap full of distraction. Rose bent down and handed us up more apples; she could hold two at a time in each hand, with those long fingers.

  She never looked at me, she was just working away on an apron full of fruit when she said, “I don’t want you to worry, Cud’n Sen.” I thought oh Lord, what now? She peeled on; the apple peeling made an S, on her lap, and she threw it over her shoulder to seal a husband whose name would begin with S.

  “Mark that,” she said, much too gravely for a matter so romantic. “I always helped Mama,” she went on, directly. “I helped bring Fidel and Herman. I’ll help you.” I had no idea what to say so I said nothing. I dropped my apple and it rolled down to the banister. Rose got up and got it. She sat down and looked at me then, eye to eye. “It IS my daddy’s. Ain’t it,” she said.

  No question mark to it. She was positive. I was aghast. “NO!” I said. There was no way in the world I was going to convince this child of the earth that she was wrong on the one count. But I had to get her out of the notion that it was Coy Ray’s. And that right then. I reckon it was a matter of low-down snobbery.

  She set her mouth and ducked her head and went back to her apple peeling. We rocked in uneasy silence while she thought. “I never meant it was Pap’s,” she said at last. “I know better than that. I said it was my daddy’s.” I shuddered and squirmed. My mouth got all dry. “I thought you would have figgered us out by now,” she said.

  “Figgered out what?” I said.

  “Pap and me ain’t kin,” she said.

  “Nobody ever said a word to me about anything like that,” I said. I was feeling kind of faint.

  “’Course they didn’t,” Rose said. “Pap’s not got the wildest idea that I know a thing about it. It was the longest time that I thought Pap didn’t know it hisself.”

  “Do you think he really does?” I said.

  “I think he does,” she said. “Else why would he hate Mr. Steele so bad?”

  Well, I thought, God in heaven give me breath. And I asked her then, “Who told you?”

  “Mama told me. That was the last thing Mama told me. She said she thought she owed it to me that I know.”

  I can look back now and see that gold head bent over a lap full of apples. “I favor him, don’t I?” she said. It was wistful and childlike, the way she said it, not looking up.

  “I always thought so,” I said. “I took it for us all just being kin. ’Course you certainly favor him more than I do.” The bugs bummed back and forth and hovered.

  “Celestine is my sister,” she said, after a while. “Can you believe that? I have thought, how ought I to act to her? I’ve not been even let see her, but a time or two, in our lives. Nobody hardly sees her.”

  I sat there wondering how much Cleone had told, about Celestine’s birth. And about Rose’s. It took on a new weight, so to speak, a new irony, with this new chapter hickuping in my belly. It was like Rose read my mind.

  “I think Mama, if she had lived, she would’ve kep’ it the rest of her life,” she said. “I think she troubled over it a lot, there at the end. I remember she was real sick, Pap was off someplace, he didn’t know how bad off she was. Her face was all rosy with the fever. I wanted to go after Uncle Ans but I was scared to leave. So I was a-settin’ up with her. I’d make her take a spoon of whiskey and honey, ever’ little bit, for the cough. I watched her, and afterwhile she seemed to get real calm, and sleepy. I guess I dozed off for a while too.

  “I remember, then, I heard her call me. Her voice was real strong, not a bit like she’d been. And I jumped awake and went and sat on the bedstead by her. She took hold of my hand and said, ‘Rosannah, I have got somethin’ I must tell you. I want you never, never to think ill o’ your papa, whatever he may do. Never speak ill. He has been good to me in ways nobody knows a thing about. He’s been good to you, too.’

  “She turned her face to the wall and she was real quiet. A great tremble went over me; I was scared she had died. And then she turned back and looked me in the eyes, the longest time. And she said, ‘Rose…Coy Ray’s not your daddy…’ I felt like she’d hit me with a wet rag. You would’ve had to know Mama. She was the most beautiful, the most right-livin’ person. I sat there with my mouth open, thinkin’ what do I say? And directly she said, then, ‘I want you to know, before I die, Ben Aaron Steele is your daddy. And I want that between you and me. And don’t think ill of him, either. Give me your word…’

  “Of course I did. I never asked her the circumstances. I just sat there thinkin’ how good Mr. Steele had been to me, how he had loved me, and brought me play-pretties when I was little that Pap would never have thought of. How he had allus treated me like, well, like I was a person. He considered me. I sat there turnin’ all that over, and I squeezed Mama’s hand, and I said, well, I reck’n that ain’t nothing to be exactly ashamed of.

  “And she got this sweet look in her eyes, and she said real soft, then, ‘Never sell it short.’

  “She was so tired. I laid down beside her. When the rooster crowed I startled and rose up. Her hand was still in mine, only it was cold.”

  For the longest time, nothing could be said, at all. Then Rose said, “I broke my word to tell you for I thought you ought to know. I think Mama would wish it.”

  When I was able, I said, “Thank you.”

  “What did he say when you told him?” she said, then.

  “I have not told him,” I said.

  “You mean he don’t know?”

  “If he doesn’t care enough to come about me, I don’t want him to know,” I said. “All I know to do is to let it be born, here. It belongs to be born here. And I will take it and go. We will never tell him.”

  She was cutting dutifully away on an apple. She reached up, still clasping that little old thin-bladed knife, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ll help you,” she said. The bucket was full. She got up and took it to the banister and poured off the brine, and she took the rack and knocked it and wiped the slatting on her apron and squatted down, then, to layer out the apples.

  “Where ought we to put ’em?” she said. We
looked around. “The chicken house roof?” I said. It was low and tin and I could climb up there.

  She laughed. “Law, the flies would carry ’em plumb away,” she said. “Let’s put ’em yander on that stump.” So we put ’em yander. And she said she reckoned she ought to go along home and get up some dinner, in case Coy Ray came home.

  “Somehow it’ll be made right,” she said. “Mama used to say, ‘The Lord takes care.’ The only thing that comes to my mind right now,” she said, draping her arm around my shoulders, “is it will be lots better if Pap don’t know. It really scares me to think, if Pap should know. He’ll have a fit. He’s goin’ to be mad as thunder. Do you understand me?” she said, looking very serious.

  “Yes, darling,” I said. And I did. Oh, how I did.

  27.

  THE FALLS

  THERE WERE A COUPLE OF LITTLE BRANCHES THAT CAME DOWN off Wilcox Ridge into the river, just below the narrows. It was a curious thing that they seemed to have dried up. I wasn’t up that way much, but I had noticed it one time before the kids were gone. We had walked up there when the river was up, full of a big rain, and there was nothing but trickles coming down the beds of those streams.

  Hugh had said, oh, Coy Ray and the boys are building them a pond. It was none of my business; my mind wasn’t on it anyway. But there seemed to be a lot of activity up on Coy Ray’s side, much more than common. He was down with me a good bit, working. But I could hear saws and cracking timber into the dark, in the evenings. This was his time of big whiskey business; the corn was good and hard and the weather was cooling off. Whiskey, I thought, never made that kind of noise. I thought I would ask him if he was looking for a long hard winter, or why so much firewood? But I forgot it.

  One day Rose came and asked me to wade the ford and walk with her. We went up the old road towards their place, and lo and behold, we had to skirt a brand-new lake. The road was gone, and the bottoms, all of it under water. What in the world? I said. Rose didn’t answer right away. The way she looked, I could tell there was more than stumps at the bottom of it.

  Finally, she said, “If you want to know somebody that their tail is in a crack, it’s me.”

  “How so?” I said.

  “You know Pap’s land belongs to Mr. Steele,” she said. “You know about that?”

  “I heard,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, drawing a big breath, “Pap’s a-timberin’ the ridge.”

  “You mean he’s going to sell the timber?”

  “He’s done done it. He’s sold it to some people that’s done business with Mr. Steele. He’s sold it for less.” We walked along and on the back side of a big laurel slick there were the log-piles, big poplar and hickory and chestnut and oak. We passed by a couple of men coming down the ridge with a team. Coy Ray had gone down to Red Bank on some kind of business, Rose said. That was why she had picked the time.

  “How’s he gon’ get it out of here?” I said.

  “He’ll pick him the right day, when it’s comin’ a good rain, and into the pond these logs’ll go, and then he’ll bust the dam,” she said. “If they don’t jam, or go to splinters in the sluice, way down the river there, the falls, you know, he’s got ’em clear to the railroad at Red Bank.”

  Well, I stood there weighing that, I didn’t see any way that Ben Aaron wouldn’t find it out. The next thing was what would he do when he did? “I’ve told Pap it’s low-down wrong,” Rose said. “I told ’im the nicest I could and he said to shut my mouth. I see nothin’ more to do. But to let it come to what it will.”

  I said yes, that was right. It was another thing that would just take care of itself.

  We had come to the time of cutting tobacco. We went through the field and cut it and poled it, and it was good sunshine, and a couple of days later we commenced to barn it. We had just about got it up one evening; Coy Ray had sent his kids home to do the chores and it was just him and me, then, to finish up. I was on the wagon and he was up in the rafters and I was handing up to him. I wasn’t feeling too well. I guess I looked sort of peaked. He kept giving me long, piercing looks. It made me uneasy. And then all of a sudden he hopped down on that wagon bed like a cat. Boy, he looked like a firecracker about ready to pop. He was too mad to do anything but draw long, shivering breaths, with his elbows stuck out and his fists made up. He was white as paste.

  “Well,” he said, finally, almost under his breath, “the righteous Mr. Steele finally got ye in the straw, eh?”

  I stepped backwards, speechless. And he moved forward. It was not what I had expected at all. He talked very softly, matter-of-factly. He clenched his jaw and with a sweet voice began to list all the creative things he was going to do to the glorified and elevated Mr. Steele. The awfullest things you could imagine. No, worse. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me with every threat. I thought he would throw me off the wagon but he did not; he only jerked me up and set me on the ground.

  “Git outta my sight, Mistress Goody-Britches,” he said. “In-na house. Go. Git! That (filthy-wordin’) bastard’ll never do this stunt again.”

  Well, I went. I flew. I wasn’t scared for myself, I was just scared. I ran in and closed the door and ran upstairs and hid myself in the chimney closet, panting. I slipped out directly and went to peep out the window, and Coy Ray was whipping the mules down across the field at breakneck speed, going to the ford.

  I didn’t know what to do. I leaned in the window, trying to gather my wits, trying to guess ahead of him. When I made myself think it came over me that Coy Ray was bad to pop off like that; that all that was threatened would never materialize. Lord, it couldn’t. How many times can you kill a man, no matter how many ways you have in mind? That was not consoling enough. My heart just pounded. The veins in my temples pounded. My knees shook. The sun was going down, and if Coy Ray was going to Caney Forks (like he said he was) he had a good start on me.

  I ran out to the barn and bridled the mule. I kept thinking I could walk a lot faster, but I was too faint, by spells, to walk at all. So I rode and the mule went picky-plod, and all the way I kept thinking what to do. What if I went to see Ben Aaron? How would I begin what had to be said? By the time I got in sight of the Forks it had occurred to me that I might get lucky and have to say nothing. It was dark. I would simply return a favor. I would simply stand watch. If Coy Ray had not already done his deed, please dear Lord, I would stand between him and Ben Aaron. He would have to chop me up into stew meat for the buzzards, before he got to the righteous Mr. Steele. And I didn’t think he’d do it.

  So that is what I did. I stationed myself in the shadows on the lawn of Sophia’s palace. And I watched. I did not blink. Every leaf that fell, every bird that stirred, I was ready to do battle. Time passed slowly. My seat on the mule hair was not the most comfortable, and I squirmed. I was curious too. Quietly as we could, I rode in closer, and looked in the windows. It made sense that if I were looking after Ben Aaron, I ought to know where he was. There was a racket coming from what I guessed was the parlor. Somebody was tormenting a piano. We peered in, the mule and I. Sophier was spraddled on the piano stool, plunking doggedly away. She was studying a new piece, it was “The Glow Worm,” with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. The same few measures, over and over, never quite right. Plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunky-plunk…

  Around the corner of the house light came from another window. It was a window with pink ruffled curtains. Against the far wall Ben Aaron was sitting on a divan, with Celestine curled up beside him, her head on his shoulder. He was reading to her. I don’t know what it was, but he would stop and show her the pictures, and she would smile, and once she clapped her hands and laughed a great coarse laugh, out loud. It was getting cool. When he had finished, he came to close the window. I almost spoke to him, he was so close. But I did not, and he drew the shades, and I only saw his shadow leave the room. And in a little while the house was all dark. And I was left to wait, and to wonder so many things, not all to do with murder, and to shu
dder over them.

  I remember I would doze, sometimes, and jerk up, and yawn, and watch some more. And the sky began to pale, and in my sleepiness I knew I had to get moving or risk discovery. Nothing was going to happen, anyway, in the light. Just to be sure something had not gone by me, unseen, I watched the damp and sandy patches in the road, going down, and there were no fresh tracks of mule or man but ours. I thought I ought to feel some relief. But somehow even the quiet and the fog were heavy with dread. The sun was just coming over the ridge when I rode around to the back door and got down off the mule onto the porch. I was most too stiff in the back and legs to creep but I itched too and I got a rag and soap and went to the spout and washed, and sat down, then, too tired to go inside, and watched the morning. I was asleep, leaned over against a post, when I heard the shot. It was just one shot, far off, but it might as well have been a cannon the way the echo bounced off Hogback and back and forth from every hill and crag coming down the river. Behind it, I knew I heard a woman scream. If I had been reasonable I would have known somebody was up there hunting squirrel. I was not reasonable. I was too weary. I knew better. There was a sort of resignation that went with it. With knowing.

  I sat there limp, listening to my heart thump slowly, like a dirge. I thought I heard men hollering, a long way off. Somebody came hollering, and pounding at the door. I dragged up and went through the house. When I opened the door it was some old rough boy I had seen once over in Shiloh. When I looked at him I almost fainted from relief. But he was white as cotton. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. “Was it you got shot?” I said. Obviously he was not dead.

  He didn’t answer me. “Miss Steele, have you got ary quilt to spare?” he said.

  “What is it?” I said. “Is somebody hurt?”

  “No ma’m,” he said. He looked sideways, away from me. “We need another mule,” he said. “You got ary mule to let us have?”