The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  Sixth was the trivial task of making certain that nobody but pitiful Una of Clark, lost in her worship of her husband beyond all limits of decency, had been back of the mischief that had plagued Brightwater early in the year. Milk that came spoiled from the goats, mirrors that shattered, Mules that flew like squawkers drunk on fallen fruit fermented in the sun-and the one kidnapped baby, with no harm done to him. Responsible had no doubt this one was trivial, for Una of Clark had been too broken with terror the night she’d confronted her with her crimes not to have cried out the names of anyone that’d helped her-always excepting the husband. Una of Clark would have died unhesitatingly, plunged off the seacliff and into the waters boiling below her, before she spoke any word that might mean the smallest peril for Gabriel Laddercane Traveller the 34th.

  Responsible tried, briefly, imagining herself obsessed in that way with Lewis Motley Wommack, convinced the sun rose when he came in the door and set when he went back out it, trembling at his least frown and melting away when he smiled on her. She ran it round her head for a minute or two, checking, but it made no sense to her any way she viewed it. Praise be for small favors.

  Next to last on the pliofilm was the Bestowing of two acres of land on Flag of Airy and her husband, in recognition of their service to Castle Brightwater; and seeing that, the guilt did bite at her. Most of the things on the list she could truly say there’d been no time for; they required careful planning and ample time. But not this, this was an hour’s easy work. She had plain and simply forgotten about it.

  And finally . . . “See to the feuds on Arkansaw,” she’d written with the stylus.

  See to them!

  Responsible rolled over onto her stomach and struck the pile of pillows with her fist. See to them, indeed. How was she to “see to” the incredible antics of three Families, bent on feuding, set on feuding, bound and determined on feuding? Guthries, Farsons, and Purdys, bad cess to them all, and the poor Gentles right in the middle of it! Just what she’d been thinking when she’d scribed there so casually “See to the feuds” she could not imagine. Must have been after she crashed into the side of that dockshed and addled her head.

  It was a long list, and she figured that to carry it through she needed maybe a staff of fifty Magicians, and fifty more miscellaneous, and far all she knew an army wouldn’t be a bad idea, whatever an army might be like. She could begin with the Castle accounts, and throw in the Bestowing in a hurry, but the rest of it?

  She knew an assortment of words she was forbidden to use, and she ran through them as she’d run through the list, all the while she was rolling up the pliofiim and stuffing it back in its case to bury once more underneath the pillows. And she’d only gotten to the tenth of her prohibited pronouncements when there came the thundering at her door that she’d been expecting with half an ear for some time now.

  “Come on in, Granny Hazelbide, before you destroy my door for good and all,” she hollered, resigned to what could not be avoided and wouldn’t improve by being put off. “Come on in here and tell me all about my sins!”

  The Granny fairly flew through the door, and banged it to behind her. She had on a crackling crisp dress of shiny dark blue, caught at the neck with a brooch handed down in her family all the way from First Landing, if she was to be believed. Her feet were shod in high-heeled pointy-toed black pumps with a shine that hurt your eyes, and so narrow Responsible knew they hurt her. Granny Hazelbide prided herself on the neatness of her foot. And on her head was a black straw hat to match the pumps, and a black veil ready to be pulled down over her face in the latest style, with a cluster of dark-blue violets with velvet petals and velvet leaves and velvet stems wound round wire to top off the headgear. She was a regular fashion plate, was Granny Hazelbide, and she was in a fury.

  “Whatever are you doing lying there in that bed like the Queen of the Shebas?” she demanded, advancing on Responsible like a skinny tornado. “You make me late for the Opening Ceremonies, girl, and I’ll take a switch to your bare tailbone, for all you’re near fifteen and fancy yourself full grown! I’ll give you two minutestwo minutes, do you hear?-to make yourself fit to be seen and go out this door with me! Laws and Dozens, Responsible, we’re late this minute!”

  “Granny, Granny,” soothed Responsible, “you’ll have a heart attack if you go on like that, and I’ll have to call in a Magician to set you right, and for sure I want no Magician hanging round my bed on a beautiful morning like this! I suggest you calm yourself a tad.”

  The old lady’s lips drew tight, and her brows met over her nose, and she leaned over Responsible’s bed like she was ready to whack her with her pocketbook.

  “Calm myself!” she said. “When you lie there and face me down, cool as you please, and it half past eight in the morning? Have you taken sick, missy, or leave of your senses-which one?”

  “Neither one, Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible. “Neither one. I’ve just run into a sort of a snag.”

  Granny Hazelbide leaned over farther, and tipped the girl’s chin up to look into her face, turning it this way and that till it made her neck ache. And then she let her fall back, suddenly, and Responsible was grateful it was pillows she’d had to fall on. Even so, the resulting thump shook her some.

  “You call that a snag, do you,” said the old woman disgustedly. “A snag! What’d you go and catch yourself on it for, if you saw, it as such a hindrance, eh, Responsible?”

  “Granny, darlin’--”

  “‘Granny, darlin’!’ You mark my words, Responsible of Brightwater, there’ll be a few words from your Granny darlin’ about this, once she’s leisure enough to speak them. But losing your maidenhead, though it’s a disgrace to us all and a piece of foolishness the likes of which doesn’t come by often, it’s no excuse for you to lie in bed and miss the Second Day at Confederation Hall. Now get yourself out of there and into your clothes, and let’s us go, Responsible! Snag, huh! Who, pray tell, was it got past my wards on this room?”

  “I’m not about to tell you. Granny,” said Responsible. “Not about to, so you needn’t push it. Nor, I’m sorry to say, is that the snag I had in mind.”

  “What you have in mind doesn’t bear repeating before decent folk such as myself, I’ll wager!”

  “How you do go on!” said Responsible admiringly. “You’ll outgranny all the other Grannys yet, and think how proud I’ll be then! Seeing as how I had the raising of you.

  “However,” she added quickly, before the Granny could catch her breath and start on her again, “if you plan to hear the Opening Prayer you’d best go on, and I’ll explain later. It’s not a short explanation.”

  Granny Hazelbide stared at her, and set her arms akimbo. “Responsible,” she said, “is there really an explanation? Worth my being late for?”

  “You’d have to tell me that after you heard it,” said Responsible. “Depends on how much you fancy the Opening Ceremonies, I’d say.”

  Granny Hazelbide pulled up a chair and sat down in it without a word, as Responsible had known she would; and she listenedher mouth puckering tighter and tighter with every passing minute -while she heard a carefully edited version of the mistake made at Castle Traveller and this morning’s visit from Granny Leeward. And then she spoke her mind, and Responsible was glad she’d only made it a tale of giving all the staff at Castle Traveller toothaches. She’d been afraid that might be somewhat too mild to convince, since many an Ozark woman not a Granny and with no hope of ever being one picked up a scrap or two of Granny Magic, though few would dare use what they knew. Granny Hazelbide didn’t find the transgression a light one; that became clear in a hurry.

  “Stupid!” she said fiercely. “That’s the only word for you, missy. Just purely stupid! How could you let yourself be wrenched round to such a state--and the Travellers, of all Families to find yourself beholden to! So Granny Leeward called you a whoredoes calling make it so? Prior to this morning, that is! I reckon she used the word again when she was in here, and this time with good
reason!”

  “No,” said Responsible, “as a matter of fact the word she used this time was `fornicator.”‘

  “And how’d you respond to that? You put warts on all the Mules in the stables? Rashes on all the servingmaids and Attendants? Sink all the boats at the Landing? What kind of conniption fit did you throw over `fornicator’?”

  “Well,” said Responsible, “I don’t mind `fornicator’ especially. It lacks the little extra bit; it makes no claim that I sell my favors, you’ll note. I was able to restrain myself.”

  “And now there you are, barred from the Hall.”

  “So I am.”

  “Shame on you, girl!”

  “Want me to call her bluff and go, Granny?”

  “Great Gates, no! There’s no bluff to that woman. If she said she’d make a scandal of you before the whole world and its brother-in-law that’s exactly and precisely what she would do. You stay away, just as she bid you, and be glad she’s not made it worse.”

  “Well, then, Granny, what I need from you is not more tonguelashing. What I need is for you to go on along and be my eyes and my ears. I can watch on the comset, for sure, but it’ll give me only such scraps of what’s going on as the comcrews find interesting. Whoever’s speaking, and a shot of the balcony now and again, and no more. I won’t be seeing who passes notes to who else, or who walks out in a huff, or who falls asleep that you might of expected to pay close attention, or who gets together in huddles in the rows. I need you to watch for me, and listen close, and send word if you see anything that appears to you to be out of line.”

  “And what’ll you do if I do see mischief? I’ll see plenty afore this week’s over, you know. What do you plan to do about any of it, missy?”

  “That depends on what it is,” said Responsible patiently. “Might could be there’ll be nothing I can do; might could be I can be useful. But unless I have you to report to me, we’ll never know which.”

  “And what will you be doing in between my reports, besides lolling in your bed and sniffing the posies?”

  Responsible thought of her hateful list of “to do” tasks. “I’ll find a way to pass my time,” she said with assurance.

  “Rolling in his arms, no doubt!”

  “Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible, mock-serious, “you have an evil mind.”

  The Granny clicked her tongue against her teeth till Responsible wondered the tip didn’t bleed.

  “Shiftless and shameless!” she ranted, shaking her finger at the girl smiling up from her pillows. “What would your mother say?”

  “That she couldn’t believe any man would of wanted me,” said Responsible promptly. “You know that. Especially when there’s such competition as Silverweb of McDaniels around, all unspoken for and never been kissed. Now do please go on to the Hall, dear heart? Please? It’ll be time soon for the Travellers to begin their move, and I’d be pleasured to know how they open the game. You can come back tonight and lecture me on my morals till you drop in your tracks if that appeals to you; so far as I know, nobody ever talked a maidenhead back into its place, but I’ll listen respectfully if you fancy trying. But not now, Granny Hazelbide, not now!”

  The Granny went out of the door, proclaiming woe and thunderations all the way down the hall, and Responsible locked her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling until she could hear her nattering no longer. And then she stared a good half hour longer, thinking. She might have put her list away, but she could still see it plain as plain in her mind’s eye.

  “This very day,” she told the ceiling at last, “this very morning -what’s left of it-I’ll see to the Bestowing of Flag of Airy’s two acres.

  And then what? the ceiling gave her back.

  “And then,” she said, carrying it on, “I believe I’m going to need some help. I do believe that I’d better send for my sister.” That silenced the ceiling. What it would bring on in the way of response from other sources, once it was known that Troublesome of Brightwater might be coming down from her mountaintop and into the city, would not be silence. Responsible chuckled, thinking about it.

  And realized that, come to think of it, she missed her sister. Mean as she was, outrageous as she was, impossible as she was sure to be, she missed her. And she’d had no idea.

  Chapter 6

  The Bestowing was drawn up in black ink on snow-white paper, marked with the Brightwater Crest and sealed with the Brightwater Seal, before noon of that day. Responsible had looked over the Kingdom’s maps, displayed for her on the comset screen, with great care; and she had chosen two acres plus a bit of riverbank left over, a nice piece of land only eleven miles out from Capital City, tucked into an arm of the river between two big farms and overlooked this long time because it was so small.

  “Too small to be any use,” said her grandmother Ruth of Motley when Responsible carried it downstairs to the small sittingroom.

  “Too large, to my mind!” her mother had objected. “We’ve almost no land left to give, Responsible; if somebody actually did a deed worthy of gratitude, Castle Brightwater would be hard put to it to find any acres to Bestow. I don’t approve, myself; I don’t approve at all.”

  “Responsible didn’t expect you to,” said Ruth of Motley comfortably. “It’d spoil your image. I approve, and I’ll speak for both my husband and my sons: none of them would grudge the young woman her two piddling little acres.”

  “I don’t see,” said Responsible’s mother stubbornly, “what Flag of Airy has done to merit a Bestowing. The last one we gave-and it’s been eleven years ago, mind, before Responsible ever saw daylight!-was twelve acres to the young man that tried to save the lives of Jewel of Wommack’s family. You remember that, Ruth?”

  “I’m not senile,” answered Ruth of Motley, giving Thorn of Guthrie a look as she bit through a strand of embroidery floss that spoke of a preference for setting her teeth elsewhere.

  “Grandmother, you’ll ruin your teeth,” said Responsible automatically. She’d been saying that ever since she could remember, and she’d learned it from hearing everyone else say it. But Ruth of Motley never paid it any mind, and her teeth gleamed bright as they ever had. Then she realized what Thorn of Guthrie had said, and she looked at her mother and tried for a casual face.

  “I didn’t know that happened here,” she said. “Thought it was on Kintucky.”

  “No-sir,” said Thorn of Guthrie. “The Wommacks were here at Brightwater on a visit, the old man and that young wife of his-she was no more than a child, and he had no business marrying her, if you ask me, not that anybody ever has-and Jacob Donahue Wommack’s wife, and the two children. Praise the Gates, they left the tadlings home . . . But the others went down in the river, there where that root tangle is just past the bend, right out there beyond the Castle grounds. And they all died, trapped in the roots and sunken logs, with the boat turned over on top of them. And,” she wound it up, “it was the young man as near drowned himself trying to save them that had the last Bestowing of land from this Kingdom. They were perfect fools, you know-going out on the river, and it in flood, and not knowing what kind of mess there was trapped in that tangle, but they wouldn’t hear no; nothing would do but they should have a day on the river-and they paid in full.”

  “That was a sorry day,” Ruth of Motley added. “Everybody carrying on about the Wommack Curse, like it wouldn’t of happened if anybody else had been in that fool boat. I remember it well.”

  “And that young man did something worth notice, Responsible. He must of gone down a dozen times trying to free the Wommacks, and at the last they had to hold him back to keep him from having another go at it when he was so exhausted he’d never in the world have come up again himself:”

  “Mother,” said Responsible reasonably, “do think. If, as you put it, somebody did something that really called for a gift from Brightwater, those two little acres wouldn’t serve anyway. But they’ll please Flag of Airy and her husband, both of them fine young people. There’s room eno
ugh for him to raise a house, and her to put in a garden that’ll feed the two of them and a few tadlings as the years go by. Don’t be selfish, Mother-it’s not becoming.”

  “Wait till the men are home,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “and we’ll see what they say. Not to mention Patience of Clark.”

  “I’m not likely to make any Bestowing without the whole Family’s approving,” protested Responsible. “What do you take me for?”

  “Responsible,” said Ruth of Motley mildly, “don’t tempt your mother.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The document’s well drawn, and you were wise to do it and have it out of the way. Put it in the desk over there, and then after supper tonight we’ll call a short Meeting and send the vote around. But there’ll be no trouble.”

  “I still say-” Thorn of Guthrie began, but her mother-in-law cut her off. Enough was enough.

  “Thorn of Guthrie,” she said, “for two long months Flag of Airy saw her own babe suckled at the breasts of Vine of Motley, so her milk would not dry up before we Brightwaters got Vine’s own child back to her arms. And in that two months she bore a heavy load. Responsible is quite right.”

  “Fiddle!” said Thorn of Guthrie. “I’ve suckled two daughters myself, one of them there before you, and I’d have welcomed anyone that cared to take the task from me. I don’t see it.”

  Ruth of Motley rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, and then bent over her embroidery in silence. She was doing a panel of ferns and flowers that required a good deal of attention, and she intended to waste no more effort on her sharp-tongued companion.

  There they sat, the two of them: Ruth of Motley with her needlework, one piece after another till the Castle was smothered in the stuff, and Thorn of Guthrie with yet another of the endless series of diaries she’d been scribbling away at for thirty years. They were almost alone in the Castle. It wasn’t large, as Castles went; but today, with nearly everyone gone to the fair or the Hall or some one of the other entertainments, it seemed a vast echoing cavern.