Then she stood stock still.
It wasn’t water voices she heard. A path wound here, worn by somebody’s feet. It led straight under the dark of the pines. Out at the other end where the sun shone golden on the river, somebody was lying on the brown pine needles. Now she saw it was a girl and a man.
Still as a deer she stood there watching. Then sober and silent-footed she went back to the cabin.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GENNY’S WIDE, WIDE WORLD
SAYWARD’S bare toes gripped the sill log as she stood in the doorway. The cabin looked to be empty. Wyitt must have gone after the cows. But she knew Achsa lay in her bed. She could see the loft boards, that never would lay quite flat, rocking a little on their joists.
“You a ailin’?” she called calmly, blowing up the ashes and laying on a stick or two so she wouldn’t have to make fresh fire.
Achsa didn’t give her an answer. She didn’t need to, for Sayward knew she was sulling. Achsa didn’t like it that Genny and Louie had gone off by themselves in the woods. Well, she would have to learn that two’s company and three’s a crowd.
Sayward let her body down on the wall bench. Once Mrs. Covenhoven had asked her if she wasn’t tired, and Sayward had puzzled over it a long time afterward. If ever she was tired, she never knew it. Sometimes it felt good to sit down. It did today. She told herself she must have tramped further than she thought. But all the time she knew what it was. They had run from the wolf into the bear, and now the wolf had caught up to them again.
You could easy tell, she told herself harshly, that God Almighty was a man. He had favored man plenty when He made him up out of a fistful of dust and spittle. A man had no apron strings for things to get tied to. No, a man could gander around and have his pleasure and then wander off free as a hawk wherever he had a mind to. He could forget it by tomorrow and deny it a few months hence. But never could a woman deny it. She had to stay at home and take what came of it. She couldn’t hope to outsmart God Almighty. No, it was the man who was usually “a willin’ ” and the woman “a sorryin’.”
“What day have you sot to git married?” she asked the pair when they came in later.
There was a quick sound from the loft as Achsa came down the ladder, and Louie shot a sharp look at Sayward with his blue eyes that could blaze up like a sheet of wildfire. Sayward looked back at him so steady he went for a coal to light his pipe though anybody with eyes could see it was smoking.
“I hain’t give it a thought,” he said, flushing up. “It hasn’t a squire or missionary nigher than the Ohio.”
“You mought boat Ginny down,” Sayward reckoned. “I don’t allow she would mind.”
Long afterward, Sayward was to remember the blinding look Genny flashed her and the cruel look from Achsa. No, you couldn’t please two at one time. And you couldn’t tell Achsa you’d rather it had been she. It wasn’t what you’d rather in this world. If Genny would have him fair or cloudy, she’d better have him fair.
She would have liked to say a word to Louie Scurrah before he went off with his taken bride. He must recollect that Genny was a girl of tender age while he was a grown man. Let him flare up at that all he liked. Let him say, “Who’s a doin’ this, you or me?” She was not scared of him. But maybe the littlest said, the less Genny might have to put up with. You could but make trouble for a girl once she was some man’s woman. From that time on she had to go it herself. When Sayward was a little tyke she thought the woods robins cruel for turning their backs on a young bird fresh out of the nest. Lonesome by itself in some strange bush they’d let it sit through the long dark of the first nights while the old ones roosted safe and high in the home tree. But when she got older Sayward reckoned the woods robins knew what they were doing.
Each day Genny was gone Sayward took herself down to the river. She told herself she wasn’t fretting over Genny. No such thing. She just wondered, where was Genny now, when was she coming back, and would she come “a singin’ or a weepin’?” What she went for was mostly to feel the breeze. The river was the only high road through the woods there was, and the wind knew it. Things with wings knew it, too. Ducks flew up and down like bullets. Forest beasts had to cross it. Once she saw a bear splash over and once a fawn with a black wolf after. All the time the river flowed calm and slow. Specks of foam were liver marks on its face, but it kept its mind to itself. You couldn’t tell what the river was thinking. Deep and shutmouth it was like most of these swarthy bodies.… Oh, but wasn’t drowning a pitiful way for a young girl to die!
Not many brides in this world got a wedding trip, Genny told herself as she helped pole the boat home. Her man stood up to pole it from its hind end. Genny’s pole was but light poplar that would callous her white hands no more than it had to. Louie’s was a long hickory pole stouter than iron. When he heaved it back through his hands, she could hear the water churn like a flood tide under the front end. Sometimes in deep water he laid down his pole. Genny could not help him then, for he had whittled out only one paddle.
They had floated light as a leaf down this river, down past the forks, down past where the little river came in, down past the stockade to the Ohio where water was plenty as at the English Lakes and the settlements thick as blackberries. She and Louie had need only to pole the five or six days back, for the river had carried them down.
They were almost home now. That sweet chimney smoke you could smell here on the water came from Buckman Tull’s cabin hid yonder in the woods. You couldn’t see from the trees that any humans lived on the upper reaches of this river. You could only hear Billy Harbison’s hounds baying and the guinea hens of Buckman’s younger sister, Idy, making like a rusty grindstone turning over and over and couldn’t stop.
They hadn’t far to go now. Never in her whole life before had Genny spent a night without her sisters and brother. Now she could hardly wait to see them again. Never had they laid eyes on Louie Scurrah’s wife. No, she was only plain Genny Luckett then.
She expected she had better lay down her pole and put on her fine green stockings and her cowhide shoes. They were getting mighty nigh to home now. Behind her were the pines and ferns of her secret place. This here pied old buttonwood she had surely seen before. And yonder waterlogged butt was the one she and Wyitt had once fished behind or her eyes were a liar. Her pappy’s cabin wasn’t far off from here. Just around the bend and yonder through the woods a piece it stood if it hadn’t burned down or been moved while she was off getting married. It wasn’t more than a whoop and a holler. If she let out her voice, they might hear her by the fire.
“Hesh up!” Sayward would turn on the young ones. “That sounds like our Ginny a singin’.”
She pulled on her fine stockings and her eyes felt bright as a coon’s. She didn’t know how Louie would take it. She better hum a little first. He might growl this was no way for a married woman to come home. But he paid her no attention, and her voice pitched out high and strong over the water.
Oh, the year was a risin’ so bright and clear;
And the young gal sot in the old woman’s cheer.
Some kind of body was up there by the landing log. It ran off and came back with another. They stood stock still as wild things watching this boat poling up the river. Genny’s eyes moistened. She would know them anywhere in this wide world. They were Achsa, her own brown girl of a sister, and that rascal of a brother with his shagbark hair falling down his shoulders in back and standing up in front like a corn shock. Better had he not go north into scalping country with a head of hair like that, for he was the only brother she had living and never now could she get another.
Where was her oldest sister? She hoped nothing had happened to that Sayward while she was away. Once she had thought it was Sayward was against her, for never did she hear her oldest sister say a word for Louie Scurrah. Then that day she had said, “You mought boat Ginny down. I don’t allow she would mind.” Oh, she wouldn’t mind would she! Why, she wouldn’t have missed this wedding trip for
all the skins in George Roebuck’s store. She had gone out of these woods. She had been to the settlements of the Ohio. She had seen the wide, wide world again, that’s what she had. And likely Louie wouldn’t have thought of it had it not been for that yellow-headed bouncer of a sister she could see now taking her time through the trees.
All she could wish for on top of this would be her pappy leaning on his rifle and little Sulie running down the bank hollering what had Genny fetched her. Only last night in their camp she lay feeling it a sin to be so happy married while her littlest tyke of a sister was still lost somewhere out in the woods like a young gabby bird that fell out of its nest and never could find its way back.
But she daren’t sniffle now. They’d expect something was wrong betwixt her and Louie. Here was Wyitt wading out to catch the front end and swing it up easy to the log so she could land dry-footed as a lady. And there was Achsa with a hard mouth staring at her fine, green, cotton stockings and her cowhide shoes. Now they all stood together on the bank, sisters and brother looking at her and she proudly at them. Never, Genny thought, had she felt so close as now when her man stood between them.
“Must say you’re a lookin’ good,” Sayward made cheerful talk.
“You’d reckon I’d break the way Louie took keer of me,” Genny said shyly, looking back at him.
“Are you married now?” Wyitt was watching her close.
“What do you expect they went off together for?” Achsa jeered, but her eyes were cool.
“Then your name ain’t like ourn. You’re Ginny Scurrah.” Oh, you could see she was more in Wyitt’s eyes now.
The path to the cabin was narrower than Genny remembered. They had to walk Indian file.
“Down to the Point,” she told them, “they’s a street so wide it has footpaths on ary side and a middle for carts. They even got the stumps out.”
“Ain’t the path good enough for you now that you went to the settlements?” Achsa mocked her.
Something flew up in Genny. She would show Achsa the path was good enough to race her back to the cabin. Even if she had shoes on. But she must recollect she was no giddy goosecap any more. No, she was a married woman now. When they got to the cabin, she sat down politely like it was a strange house and she, company. When Sayward started to get supper, she got up to do for her man. Her hands helped with the fire and lugged in fresh water and put it on to boil. When there was nothing more to do, she fetched in her and Louie’s plunder from the boat.
“You kin put it thar,” Sayward said, pointing to Worth’s unused bed.
Genny turned her face from Achsa’s hard stare. She could feel her face flush up at putting her and Louie’s things together on a bed in front of all.
Halfway through supper, Jake Tench and the bound boy came. Jake said he knew they were home. Somebody had seen what looked like a bride and bridegroom poling up the river. He kept them all laughing and Genny in blushes. He told Louie now was the time for him to come to the aid of his country. All he had to do was feed himself gunpowder and it would be a soldier boy. Oh, Jake played the fool from first to last. Even Achsa forgot got her sulling ways trying to keep her face straight. But the bound boy’s eyes, sad and brown as a hound’s, never stopped casting up across the trencher to Genny that she had gone off and given herself to another.
Genny had heard how great folks sat at the table long after their eating was done. Sayward would never stand for that before. If anybody wanted to talk, they could go somewhere else so she could redd off the trencher. But this was almost like a wedding night, and Sayward said nothing while Louie told what he saw down the river. He told it so good you could see the cabins at the forks as if you were there and the tavern where the little river came in. But these, he said, were only tomahawk settlements to the town on the point of the Ohio. It had cleared fields to make a good-sized prairie and houses in rows like an Indian village. He reckoned at first it must be a public day, for all the women and girls were sitting out in clean aprons on their street porches. He saw young ones with neats leather shoes and a bigwig taking the air in a scallop-rimmed hat, blue coat, yellow britches and silver knee and shoe buckles.
A stranger hearing him tell it would have thought Louie had boated down there all by himself. The only time Louie let on that another went along was when he broke off at some marvel to say, “You kin ask Ginny thar’.” But it was all right, for everybody knew what Louie had gone down the river for and who had gone with him. Genny was proud just to hear her name called by him and to say once in a while, “It’s true as gospel” or “God kin strike me dead on this spot!”
While he talked Genny kept her eyes from the two beds in the cabin. That had been her father’s bed and this one hers and Sayward’s. But she would not sleep with Sayward now. No, she was something in this house tonight she never was before. All evening it lay in the back of her mind, never coming out and yet softly pleasing as a piece of sorghum taffy tucked back under her tongue. She could forget about it and sit here and listen. And after while such a mortal sweetness would come out all by itself she could hardly stand it. Ever since she had been a little tyke she had liked to keep something pleasant back in the mind like this, something on ahead and still to come. But never had it tasted honeyed as this time.
Louie was telling how he wished he had fetched back a little gimcrack of quicksilver he had seen. It was painted with a fine brush so it would tell the heat and frost. It was no earthly use, for any human that isn’t daft can tell for himself if the day is hot or cold, but he could have traded it to the Indians when he got tired of it. What he’d liked to keep for himself was a brandy bottle with a ripe peach in it. How it got in nobody knew, for the peach was many times bigger than the neck of the bottle. A doctor kept it in the window of his chemist shop so all could see it when they walked by. Oh, that big peach in a bottle was too deep for most. But Louie figured it out on the way home. The sharp doctor had put the bottle neck over the peach when it was a little green fellow. Then he had tied the bottle to the tree for the peach to fill out inside the glass.
Oh, Louie could reel off what he saw when he had a mind to. Genny felt warmed by the drone of his voice. The firelight played over these home logs and faces. It was good to be off, but it was good to be home again.
The night turned late. Some of them were yawning. Jake and the bound boy climbed up with Wyitt to sleep in the loft. Sayward and Achsa went out in their shortgowns and back in their bedgowns, popping in bed quick as they could. While they were out, Louie had pulled off his buckskins and crawled under the light bedding where Genny showed him. But she was too shy to follow him right off for the first time in her pappy’s cabin. She kept down by the firelight mending the tears in his buckskins.
Between the slow stitches of whang she let her eyes fall soft on every chink and peg she knew so well.
Her father’s old hunting frock and Sulie’s little patched bedgown still hung with the other clothing on the pins around the logs. Yonder was her three-legged stool with the signs she had carved on it. And there was the five-round ladder she had climbed plenty times to the loft.
“Hain’t you a comin’ to bed a’tall?” after a while Louie flared out at her. “You won’t want to git up in the mornin’.”
Genny knew there was no putting this thing off any more. It was something had to be done. She could tell by their breathing that Achsa and Sayward were still awake. The others must be, too, for no snores came from the loft. She put her awl and whangs away. Stealthily she pushed the fire coals apart to make less light. Then she lit a splinter of candlewood, and when she came back in the cabin she was barefoot and in her bedgown. She set her shoes and stockings up on a stool off the dirt floor. Softly she nudged Louie to get over so she could lie at the outside, for she must be up and dressed before a man stirred. Now she wished she hadn’t had him make all this noise. She should have stepped over him tonight and slept yonder against the logs and chinking.
The whippoorwill kept calling to her all the night.
She reckoned it must be the whippoorwill kept her awake or else she had slept out in camp so long she couldn’t sleep under a roof again. When she closed her eyes, she thought she was still in the boat or standing back in the grand room they were married in. The floor was of shaved boards. Shaved boards and doors nearly covered the fireplace side of the room. The wood was stained brown, and polished till you could see the candles in it. It had a high desk in that room with an iron noggin of ink and a quill in it. It couldn’t have been either cooking or sleeping room, for there wasn’t a pot on the hearth or a bed to sleep in. Even Louie couldn’t lay his tongue on the right word to call that room. But they stood up in it just as big and pert as if they knew, Louie in his buckskins and she in her fine, new, green stockings and cowhide shoes.
She wished Sayward could have laid eyes on them then, for Sayward had never heard a bride and bridegroom say the solemn vows a dominie told them. She pitied her oldest sister lying over there in bed with nobody to sleep with but Achsa. Oh, Sayward never knew what it was to wake up at night with your man close beside you and maybe his arm slung over you in his sleep to tell you that if a bear or Indian came along no harm would befall you.
She pitied Wyitt and Achsa, too. Never hardly since they could remember had they been out of these woods like she had. No, they had never seen a blackamoor slave wench or Quaker with temple spectacles on his face. If they went in a house that had no logs inside, they would be dumfounded, that’s what they’d be. They wouldn’t know what to make of a room that had no joists or loft boards. The light from a whale oil lamp at night would mighty near blind them at first, so it would. And if they saw a house with real glass window lights, they would be liable to butt their heads against one like a wild pigeon, not knowing that anything but a hole was there.
The Trees Page 13
