by James Still
I’ve seen rams butt skulls till it thundered. I’ve witnessed caged wildcats tear hide. Neither was a scrimption to this. My body grew roots. My legs were posts without joints. I went off the hinges, I reckon. I begged Jiddy and Cletis to quit. I pled, I bellowed. I shouted till I couldn’t utter a croak, and then I covered my eyes and fell down bawling. Since my child days I’d shed few tears, and these came rough. They set my eyeballs afire.
After a spell I quieted. I cracked my lids and peeped out. Jiddy and Cletis were laying alongside each other in the road, laying as stiff as logs. At night red is black, and there was black over and around them. They lay in a gore of black. And the next thing I knew I was running up Ballard Creek. I might have run all the way to Enoch Lovern’s if the short-quart hadn’t slipped from under my belt. I grabbed it up and threw it winding. It bounced along the ruts ahead and never busted. When I got up to the bottle I hoisted it and drained it to the bottom.
I didn’t run any more. I walked, and as I walked I calmed. What was done was done. Predestination, church folks call it. I footed along peart, thinking of what Jiddy had said once about wanting to be buried in a chestnut coffin so he would go through hell a-popping, and I thought about something else. I thought about Posey Houndshell. Nobody stood between me and her.
The Quare Day
There had been no rain during the whole of August. At the month’s end the winds came and blew through Little Angus valley, drying the creek to a shallow stream, and now it lay without motion like a long thin pond. Under the banks the waters were stained with shedding willow leaves. The wind had settled before the dew dried on the parched grass. Nothing stirred in the cool air pocketed in the damp hollows.
The sun was high above the hills when the sky beyond the ridge took on a yellow cast. There were no clouds other than a scattering of horsetails. At first the yellowness was only in the west, then it advanced, enveloping hilltop after hilltop until the sun-ball shone dully as through a saffron veil. It spread swiftly east, the hue of sulphur. It came without shape or sound bearing the molten glassiness of a sunset. Flaxbirds settled into the thickets. The dark hollow birds that warbled seldom in late summer sang not at all. Chickens went to an early roost in the sycamore trees, the prickly seed-balls hanging on twig-strings about their heads. They settled without sleeping, pale second lids opening and closing.
Shridy Middleton looked down the valley from the porch of her house. She polished her glasses with a fold of her sleeve and watched the yellow sand in the drying creek bed, the gray-yellow limestone shelved above the bank, the yellow-green of the chestnut oaks on the hills. She brushed her hands nervously over her hair, wondering at the color of the day. The mail hack had passed, and the wheels had rutted their tracks in the creek road. Willa Dowe, their neighbor’s daughter, had brought a letter as she came to help with the apple drying, and now Shridy drew it out of her bosom, glancing curiously at the envelope without opening it. In a moment she thrust it back, brushed the meal dust from her apron, and stepped into the kitchen where Willa was paring apples.
“Hit’s no use trying to dry fruit today,” Shridy said. “The sun-ball has a mote in its eye. The slices would mold before they could cure.” Willa was the same age as her son, Rein. Rein, the youngest of eleven, the most cherished, was the “ ’possum baby,” as the saying went. Willa and Rein had in infancy been cradled together when the families visited. To Shridy and her husband Jabe, Willa was the daughter they had hoped for but never had. Although related, the kinship was distant.
Willa stuck the knife into an apple as a holder and went to the door. She stood there a moment, rolling the plaits of her flaxen hair into a tight ball. She made a biscuit of it on her head. “As quare weather as ever I’ve seen,” she remarked. “Mommy says fruit has to get direct sunlight or it’ll lose sugar.” Then, “I’d better get on down to home, for a bunch of things there need doing up.” She paused in her leave-taking, recalling the letter. “But first I’ll read what I brought from the mailbox. I’ll say it to you and you can tell Uncle Jabe what’s in it.”
“The letter will keep until later,” Shridy said, gathering the peelings into a basket for the chickens. “Hit’ll endure till I set my mind to hear it.”
Shridy watched her hurry along the path. Reaching the willows at the creek’s bend, Willa began to run, her gingham dress flowing about her bare legs. When she had disappeared Shridy went around the house and peered up the hill toward the burned-over patch of new-ground on the second bench of the mountain. Jabe was leaning against a stump he had pulled with the help of his mule. He was staring toward the sun, hat in hand, and with no need to shade his eyes. The mule waited, brushing his nose over the charred earth.
Shridy called to him and the shrillness of her own voice rang in her ears. Jabe did not hear, her words being smothered by the redbud thicket between. She brought the fox horn from its nail by the mantel and blew into it with all her strength. Jabe turned and looked down, cupped his hands and blew an acknowledgement. Although it was not yet noon, he loosened the mule and started out of the field.
On coming from the barn Jabe heaped a turn of stovewood in his arms. Shridy met him on the porch. His face was butter-yellow like the air, his eyes the color of rain water drained from an oaken roof. And he noted her face, the sulphur hue of dry clay. Her hands appeared more leather than flesh.
“Hit’s a plumb quare day,” he said, going into the kitchen. “Must o’ been a storm somewhere afar off to the west. My opinion, the wind has picked up dirt from a mighty spindling country where the ground is worn thin. Hain’t the healthy kind like the wild dirt in my new-ground.” He threw the turn of wood into the box beside the stove and kneeled to thrust splinters to quicken the coals.
“I’m baking an apple stack cake for dinner,” she said, as if that were the reason for calling him in from his work.
Jabe arose slowly from his knees. “You’re not baking a cake on Wednesday, shorely. We don’t follow having Sunday cooking on Wednesday.” He was puzzled. “Sort of uncommon, hain’t it?”
She poured the stewed apples into a pan, and began to prepare batter for the layers. “Fruit won’t dry on such a day,” she explained. “Got to do something with the apples we’ve peeled.” The letter was like a stone in her dress bosom.
Standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, Jabe viewed the ragweeds marching along the fencerow of the meadow. They seemed yellow as bolted mustard. A golden carpet spread across the pasture which had been lately mowed.
Shridy called to Jabe from the stove, “You ought to put on a clean shirt if we’re to have apple stack cake for dinner. Hit’s sort of an occasion.” Jabe went into the front room, closed the door and pulled the latch-string inside. He lifted the great Bible from the maple highboy. It was weighty and he sat down and opened it upon his lap. The pages turned familiarly under his hard thumb. He squinted along the double columns, leafing slowly through the chapters, pausing to scan the revelations and miracles. Every page knew his finger, every sentence his eye. The Book was the herald of the past, the prophecy of the future. After a spell he put the Book away, washed himself and donned a fresh shirt.
The sun was poised overhead when he returned. Dinner was spread upon the table. The pole beans, the salt pork, the beet pickles and sliced onions were in the new dishes Rein had sent from Ohio in the spring. The cornbread on its flowered platter was as golden as the day itself. The tablecloth had come from Rein’s wife whom they had never seen. They stood by the table and studied the dishes, rimmed with laurel buds. The linen tablecloth was stark white, cold and strange; it was as if the plates rested on snow. Unspoken were the words that Willa had read to them from the note pinned to it when it arrived: To my dear Father and Mother.
Jabe and Shridy were uneasy about the note which expressed a warmth they did not feel, sent by one they had yet to know. They had weighed the words, looking startled and speechless into each other’s eyes. This was Rein’s wife, their daughter-in-law, they kept reminding themselves. The spo
use of their son’s choosing. But she was not their choice. They had chosen Willa, had counted on his return to claim her. But they must acknowledge Rein’s woman, accept her, stranger though she be.
Rein’s wife had written a letter after their marriage in June; in July there was another in her small, slanted script. There was none of Rein’s stubby scrawling on the pages. Willa had read the letters aloud, for Shridy could not read and handwriting confused Jabe. They had listened quietly. After the second letter Shridy had spoken her fear. “Be it Rein doesn’t write the next time, hit’s a sure sign his wife is going to do all the talking from now till Kingdom Come. He’ll be lost to us.”
Jabe drew back his chair and sat down. “We oughten to put these dishes away and just use ’em for company,” he said. “They won’t wear out before we’re gone from the world. They’re from him, recollect.” Shridy’s eyes followed the long pattern of the tablecloth as she sank into her chair and folded her hands into a knot in her lap. The letter with the small, slanted script was like a scorpion in her bosom.
In mid-afternoon they sat upon the front porch. The sun had swollen above the hills and now its yellow mask shone dull as hammered metal. The hound’s breathing came up through the puncheon floor in moist gasps. There was no movement along the creekbed road. Nothing except the mail hack had passed during the day. The silence and the yellowness swallowed the valley. A jar-fly fiddled in the maple shading the yard and buttery croaks of a frog sounded from the meadow.
“Hit takes a day like this to bresh up the mind and keep us beholden to the Almighty,” Jabe said. “Not many of them as gilded as His throne He lets us see in our day and time.”
Shridy swung back and forth in her rockingchair, her right hand resting upon her bosom. When it seemed the letter would jump out of itself she drew it forth and held it out to Jabe. “It’s from them,” she said.
Jabe jerked toward her. “Who writ it?” he asked impatiently.
“Hit’s from her,” Shridy said. Jabe sank back into his seat in sudden weariness. His hands clenched the chairposts.
The cows began to gather at the pasture gate. They waited without lowing. Jabe rose slowly from his chair and walked toward the barn. The path curved among the hillocks of earth, running before him into the hills. Little Angus Creek was molten gold. Not a wing stirred in the yellow air.
Job’s Tears
The fall had been dry and the giant milkweed pods broke early in September. Lean Neck Creek dried to a thread, and all the springs under the moss were damp pockets without a sound of water. Father had sent me over from Little Carr in April to help Grandma with the crop while Uncle Jolly laid out a spell in the county jail for dynamiting a mill dam. I was seven and Grandma was eighty-four, and we patched out two acres of corn. Even with the crows, the crab grass, and the dwarfed stalks we made enough bread to feed us until spring, but when the grass was gone there would be nothing for the mare. The hayloft was empty and the corncrib a nest of shucks.
Uncle Luce sent word from Pigeon Roost that he would come to help gather the crop early in September. Grandma’s bones ached with rheumatism and she was not able to go again to the fields. She sat in the cool of the dogtrot, dreading the sun. We waited through the parching days, pricking our ears to every nag’s heel against a stone in the valley, to the creak of harness and dry-wheel groan of wagons in the creek bed. Field mice fattened in the patches. Heavy orange cups of the trumpet vine bloomed on the cornstalks, and field larks blew dustily from row to row, feeding well where the mice had scattered their greedy harvesting. We waited impatiently for Uncle Luce, knowing that when he came we should hear from Uncle Jolly, and that Uncle Luce would take the mare home for the winter.
“It’s Rilla that’s keeping him away,” Grandma said. “Luce’s woman was always sot agin’ him doing for his ol’ Mommy. I reckon Luce fotched her off too young. She wasn’t nigh sixteen when they married.”
We waited for Uncle Luce until the moon was full in October. The leaves ripened, and the air was bloated with the smell of pawpaws where the black fruit lay rotting upon the ground. Possums came to feed there in the night, and two got into a box trap I set above the barn. We ate one, steeped in gravy with sweet potatoes. I shut the other up in a pen, Grandma saying we would eat it when Uncle Jolly got home. She was lonesome for him, and spoke of him through the days. “I reckon he’s a grain wild and hard-headed,” Grandma said, “but he tuk care of his ol’ Mommy.”
One morning Grandma said we could wait no longer for Uncle Luce. She took her grapevine walking stick and we went out into the cornfield. We worked two days pulling corn from the small, hoe-tended stalks. When all the runted ears were gathered she measured them out into pokes, pulling her bonnet down over her face to hide the rheumatic pain twisting her face. There were sixteen bushels. “We won’t be needing the barn this time,” she said. “We’ll just sack up the puny nubbins and put them in the shed-room.”
With the corn in we waited a few days until Grandma’s rheumatism had been doctored with herbs and bitter cherry-bark tea. Then there were the heavy-leaved cabbages, the cushaws and sweet potatoes to be gathered. The potatoes had grown large that year. They were fat and big as squashes. Grandma crawled along the rows on her knees, digging in the baked earth with her hands. It was good to see such fine potatoes. “When Jolly comes home he’ll shore eat a bellyful,” she said.
I ran along the rows with a willow basket, piling it full and spreading the potatoes in the sun to sweeten. Once I ran into a bull nettle, and it was like fire burning my bare legs. I scratched and whimpered. Grandma took a twist of tobacco out of her apron, chewed a piece for a few minutes, and rubbed the juice on the fiery flesh. “You ain’t big as a tick,” she said, “but you’re a right smart help to your ol’ Granny.”
The days shortened. There was a hint of frost in the air. The nights were loud with honking geese, and suddenly the leaves were down before gusts of wind. The days were noisy with blowing, and the house filled with the sound of crickets’ thighs. There were no birds in the bare orchard, not even the small note of a chewink through the days.
Before frost fell we went to Grandma’s flower bed in a corner of the garden and picked the dry seeds before they scattered. We broke off the brown heads of old maids and the smooth buttons of Job’s tears hanging on withered stalks. “There’s enough tears for a pretty string of beads,” Grandma said, “and enough seed left for planting.”
Later we pulled and bundled the fodder in the field, stripping the patches for the mare in her dark stall. “If Luce don’t come, Poppet is going to starve afore the winter goes out,” Grandma said. “It’s Rilla hating me that keeps him from coming. Oh she’ll larn all her children to grow up hating their ol’ Granny.”
Uncle Luce came after the first frost. He came whistling up the path from Dry Neck with the icy stones crackling under his feet. Since the gathering, Grandma had been in bed with rheumatism in her back, getting up only to cook. Uncle Luce was filled with excuses. Rilla was sick, and it was getting near her time. His four daughters had had chicken pox. “I’m hoping and praying the next one will be a boy-child,” Luce said. “A day’s coming when I’ll need help with my crap. Girls ain’t fittin to grub stumps and hold a plough in the ground.”
Grandma noticed Uncle Luce’s hands were blackened with resin, and asked if he’d been logging. “I had to scratch up a little something to buy medicine for Rilla,” he said. “My crap never done nothing this year. It never got the proper seasoning. I reckon I’ll be buying bread afore spring.”
“I was reckoning you’d take the mare home for the winter,” Grandma said. “I was thinking you could ride her back to Pigeon Roost.”
“I hain’t got feed for my own mare,” Luce said. “I’ll be buying corn for my nag afore another month. I reckon Poppet has already eat up more than she’s worth. She must be twelve years old. The day’s coming you’ll need another nag to crap with. It would be right proper to take ol’ Poppet out and end her misery.”
Uncle Luce didn’t say a word about Uncle Jolly until Grandma asked him. She waited a long time, giving him a chance to tell her without asking. “You hain’t said a word yet about your own brother,” Grandma said. “It’s about time you told.” Then we learned that Uncle Jolly’s trial had come up the last of September, and he had been sentenced to the state penitentiary for two years. “I’ll get one of the boys to move in with you next March,” Uncle Luce said. “Toll would be right glad to come. He’s renting land, anyway. And his wife would be a sight o’ company.”
“No,” Grandma said. “We’ll make out. My children I’ve worked and slaved for have thrown their ol’ Mommy away. Now that I can’t fetch and carry for them, they never give me a grain o’ thought. I’ve been patient and long-suffering. The Lord knows that.”
She was crying again now, thinking how Uncle Luce had waited until the crop was gathered to come, thinking how Rilla hadn’t come to see her for three years, and how Uncle Jolly was shut up in jail.
“I figure you’d fare better with Toll than Jolly,” Luce said. “Toll is solid as rock and never give you a minute’s trouble. Jolly is a puore devil. He jumps in and out of trouble like a cricket. I hope the pen will make him pull his horns in a little.”
Grandma’s voice trembled as she spoke. “Jolly is young,” she said. “He just turned grown last year. He ain’t mean to the bone, and he’s the only one of my boys that looks after their ol’ Mommy. I’m afeared I won’t live till he gets back. I pray the Lord to keep me breathing till he comes.”
Grandma was quiet again when Uncle Luce got ready to go. She brought out a string of Job’s tears she had been threading. “It might pleasure Rilla to have them,” she said. “It might help with her time coming.”
