by James Still
The smoke grew until our lamps yellowed through it, and we began to cough. One bat fell, spreading the web of its wings before striking the floor. Suddenly they all came down, weaving drunkenly through the smoke, blowing about our heads. They flew swiftly, escaping at last out of the boxed eaves and through the traphole in the floor. Shouts came from below as the bats rained into the room. The smoke thickened until our eyes smarted, and we hurried down the ladder.
The bats were gone when we got down. We put out the lamps, and wiped watery eyes with our sleeves. The scholars who had stayed behind were knotted around a bench, their backs turned to us, and there was none to see how proudly we came down the ladder. The scholars bent closer to the bench, the joy of the bat-fly gone out of their faces. Jonce threw the hot dishpan into the yard and walked toward them, wondering. They stood aside as he came. Fern sat on the bench, holding a hand to her neck, her face white as beech bark. I was frightened, and the lamp fell from my hand.
“Toll Mauldraugh put a bat on me,” Fern said. “It bit my neck.”
Jonce’s eyes searched the room, lighting on Toll standing against the blackboard, edging toward the door. Jonce sprang toward him, catching his sleeve as he crossed the threshold, and pushed him toward the pulpit. He caught up a willow pointer and struck Toll sharply across the legs, once, twice, and then Toll cried out in pain and anger, jerked loose, and leaped through a window. Jonce stood awkwardly with Toll’s torn sleeve in his hand.
“Jonce ought never done that,” Leth said to me. “He ought never touched Toll.”
“Jonce ain’t scared,” I said. “Nary a grain, now.”
“Uncle Hodge’ll be coming,” Leth said. “He vowed a fellow ain’t going to draw breath who whips Toll.”
Jonce folded a handkerchief and wrapped it around Fern’s neck. “Everybody can go home now,” he said. “Everybody can go.”
I went to the water shelf for my bucket, standing on my toes to reach the handle. As I pulled it down I heard a mousy noise. I stood on a bench and looked, and there was a bat in the shelf corner. I opened my bucket and popped it in, closing the lid down tight. I walked out of the church-house with Fern, Leth coming behind us. “It’s not more than a quarter mile up to Uncle Hodge’s place,” Leth said. “He’ll be coming soon.”
The scholars stood at the graveyard fence, looking up the creek road where Toll had gone. Fern caught hold of my hand, crying a little. “I ought never told,” she said. “It’s ruint our only chance earthy.”
Hodge Mauldraugh came down the cove road, walking slowly, walking with his right hand in his hip pocket, wrist-deep and bulging.
“Uncle Hodge ain’t going again his swear word,” Leth said, and his speech was anxious, justifying his kin.
I looked at Leth and his eyes were cold and strange, and I saw then that he had Mauldraugh eyes, like Toll’s. I stood apart from him, hating him suddenly. I drew out the two marbles he had given me, dropping them at his feet. They lay on the ground, green as millet juice, but he did not pick them up or look where they had fallen.
Hodge came into the church-house yard, bending a little to search the windows. We heard his feet clump on the front steps, the floorboards rub under his weight, and a pistol shot. I turned and ran down the creek road, sick with loss, running until there was no wind in my body. Fern came swiftly behind, soundlessly as a fox runs.
We climbed the hill to our house in early afternoon, standing breathlessly at the door, looking in at Mother playing with the baby. I pulled the lid off my dinner bucket and the bat soared out, swinging like a leaf in a wind.
“B-a-t, bat,” Mother said.
Pigeon Pie
“1868 it was,” Grandma said, and her words were small against the spring winds bellowing in the chimneytop. She spread her hands close to the oakknot fire, blue-veined like a giant spider’s web. “That was the year pigeons came to Flat Creek, might nigh taking the country.”
I squatted on the limerock hearth before an ashhill where the bread baked, holding a broomstraw to know when it was done. We had not eaten since morning, and my hunger seemed larger than the ashhill where the bread was buried.
“Them pigeon-birds were worse than a plague writ in the Book,” Grandma said. “Hit was our first married year, and Brack and me had grubbed out a homeseat on Little Flat, hoe-planting four acres o’ corn. We’d got a garden patch put in, and four bee gums a-working before I turned puny, setting and waiting our firstborn. I’d take a peck measure outside and set me down on it where I could see the garden crap growing, and the bees fotching sweetening. There was a powerful bloom that year, as I remember, and a sight o’ seasoning in the ground.”
Bread smells thickened in the fireplace, and I stuck the straw into the ashhill. It came out with a sticky lump on the end. My hunger could hardly wait the slow cooking. I turned my head so Grandma couldn’t see me eat the raw dough.
“Hit was early of a May morning when the pigeons came,” Grandma said. “A roar sot up across the ridge, and Brack came down out o’ the field, looking north where the sound was. We waited, dreading a wind tying knots in the young corn, shredding the blades with hits fingers, but nary a cloud we saw. The sound got bigger, and nearer. ‘Hi, now, you git inside,’ Brack said, and I did, fearing my child would bear a mark if I tuk a sudden fright. I allus followed my man’s word when I was puny-like. I looked through the wall-crack and saw the first pigeons come down the swag, the light brightening their wings, gray like rock-moss and green underside. Then they came in a passel, and the sun-ball was clapped out, and hit got nigh dusty dark. Brack, he took a kindling wood stick, knocking at them that flew low, drapping four. After a spell they were gone, and we had breasts o’ pigeons for supper, fried in their own grease. Brack allus was a fool for wild meat. ‘Hi, now,’ he said, a-cracking bones betwixt his teeth, ‘I’d give a pretty for a pot-pie cooked out o’ these birds.’
“Harl Thomas come up Flat Creek afore dark, saying he’d heard the pigeons had done a sight o’ damage to the craps over at the Forks. He had a poke o’ sulphur and was going to the doublings three miles yonside the ridge where the roost was. ‘A sulphur smudge will bring ’em down,’ he said. ‘I’m a notion salting a barrelful. My woman feeds nothing but garden stuffs and sallet-greens of a summer. I allus liked a piece o’ meat alongside.’ Brack wanted to go, but knowing it was near my time, he never spoke of it. ‘A pigeon pie would make good eating,’ he said. ‘I figger on eating me one afore them birds traipse clear off to another country.’
“Harl and Brack went outside, and I heard Harl laughing. He went off a-cackling like a guinea-hen. I got sort o’ dizzy and tuk to bed. Pigeon-birds kept a-flying around in my head, thundering their wings. I tuk the big-eye and never slept a wink that night.”
Wind drummed in the chimney and a gust caught up the oakknot smoke, blowing it into our eyes. A sift of ashes stirred on the hearth. I tried the bread again, the straw coming out slowly, though clean. I raked a bed of coals closer to the ashhill with the poker.
Grandma balled her hands on her knees, waiting until the smoke thinned and the ashes settled. “Hit was the next day the birds come a-thrashing through the hills proper,” she said. “I was setting in my garden, guarding hit agin’ the crows, when I heard a mighty noise a-roaring like Troublesome Creek having a tide. Brack was up in the corn patch, so I never went inside, wanting to get a square look at the birds. I never give a thought to me being puny. In a little spell they came over the ridge, flying low down, a-settling and looking for mast. A passel sot down in my garden and begun to eat and scratch. I run up and down hollering, throwing clods and a-crying. Hit was like trying to scare a hailstorm off. The birds worked around me like ants, now. I ran and hollered till I couldn’t, then I set me down on the ground, feeling sick to die.
“The next thing I know I was in the house, and thar was a granny woman setting beside the bed with something wrapped up in a kiver. Now I knowed what was in that thar kiver, but I was scared to look. Brack come in laughin
g and said hit was a boy-child. He brought the little tick over to the bed, and I couldn’t wait to look, asking, ‘Has hit got a mark?’ ‘No mark particular,’ Brack said. ‘His left hand hain’t natural though.’ The kiver was opened and thar the chap was, hits little face red and pinched up. Brack pulled the left hand out, and on the side was a finger-piece no bigger than a pea, having nary a nail nor jint. I cried, now, looking at hit.
“ ‘Hit won’t be thar for long,’ Brack said. He got out his razor and ’gin to strap hit hard, putting a hair edge on the blade. When I figgered what he was going to do, I let in hollering and screaming, worse than I did when the birds tuk my garden patch. The granny woman held me in bed, and Brack tuk the baby into the kitchen. I listened, catching for a sound o’ the baby, but he never made one. I reckon hit never hurt much. Brack brought him back and thar was a drap o’ water in its eyes. The granny woman cooked up a pigeon pie for supper, but I couldn’t touch a bite. I’ve never eat a bird since.”
The bread was done. I raked it out on the hearth, blowing ashes from the brown crust. When it was broken, the goodness of it filled my eyes and throat. “A pair o’ pigeon legs would go good with this bread,” I said.
Grandma looked hard at the hoecake, then broke a piece for me, taking none for herself. She took the poker and shook the oakknot fiercely, raising a blaze of sparks. “I hain’t a grain hungry,” she said.
Twelve Pears Hanging High
“Hit’s me so thin that keeps the baby puny, a-puking up his milk, holding nothing on his stomach,” Mother said. “If I got a scratch, I’d bleed dry. I need a tonic, fleshening me up, ’riching my blood.”
Nezzie Crouch sat on the meatbox watching Mother string tiny beans, too young to be picked. She had come up from Blackjack to learn about our moving, walking three miles to carry the word back to the camp. The question waited in her eyes. She took a fresh dip of snuff, holding the tin snuffbox in her hand and pushing the lid down tight. Three red tobacco leaves grew on the wrapper, sticking up through the print.
“Well, now,” Nezzie said, opening her stained mouth, “there’s cures a-plenty for the picking. Ole herb doc down at Blackjack says there’s a weed for every ill, if you know what to pick and how to brew proper.”
“Picking and brewing, I don’t know which, nor how.”
“I heered tell a little ’sang is right quickening to the blood.”
“Woodsful of ’sang they used to be, but I hain’t seen a prong in ten year.”
“So scarce hit might nigh swaps for gold.”
“Don’t reckon they’s a sprig left on Carr Creek.”
“Well, now, hit ain’t all gone. I seen a three-prong coming up from Blackjack a-blooming yellow. I seed that ’sang standing there so feisty, and I says, ‘Hain’t that a sight, nobody’s grubbed him yet,’ and I broke a bresh to hide it.”
“Standing there belonging to nobody.”
“Agin’ the road it was; nobody’s, so far as I see.”
“If I had that there root, I’d try it.”
“Belonging to nobody but ground and air. Hit growed from a seed nobody dropped. This chap can go piece-way home with me and fotch it back.”
Nezzie brought out a sourwood toothbrush and worked it in her mouth, pushing the snuff back into the pocket of her cheek. “I hear tell you’re moving to Blackjack agin,” she said. She had named it, looking over my head through the door, putting no weight on the words.
Mother finished stringing the beans and hung the bucket on a peg, bringing out new-dug potatoes to scrape with the dull side of a knife. They were knotty and small. “The mines hain’t opened yet,” she said. “They keep putting off.”
“Tipple’s been patched, and they’re ready to start. Better chance o’ work if you’re living in the camp.”
“Brack might walk to and from the mine of a day,” Mother said.
Nezzie took the toothbrush out of her mouth. “They’s a tale going ’round that you folks are about starved out up here. I see you’ve got a fair garden patch coming along. Not a grain o’ faith I put in such talk.”
Mother’s hands worked busily over a potato, the skin coming off paper-thin, wasting none of the flesh. “We’ve got plenty,” she said, “a God’s plenty.” Her voice was as sharp as the bright blade of the knife.
The baby caught hold of the bedfoot and pulled himself up, spreading his legs for balance. Nezzie watched, laughing to see him bend his knees. “Look how he tromps his foot and hops up and down like a bird in a bush,” she said. She bent over him, touching his pale face. “Hit’s little hide is so tender. You ought to make that ’sang tea for shore.”
“When it ’gins to blow ’round the north points of a morning,” explained Father, “sign hit’s going to weather.”
“I hope the rain won’t scare the guinea-hen off that nest I set this morning,” Mother replied. “Twenty-six eggs there was.”
“Now you ought to saved a few out to fry,” Father said.
Rain set in before noon, the waters falling thick upon the hills. The draws filled, emptying downward. The martins hid in their gourds, swinging in the drenched air. Little Carr rose, swelling through the willows, swallowing the green rushes. Damp winds whipped around the house, smelling of earth and water.
Mother set the pans where the roof leaked. We pushed the beds catty-cornered, away from the drips. Father sat on the trunk, the knots of his knees drawn under his chin. Fletch and I crawled on the floor, turning our faces upward, letting drops of water fall into our mouths. Euly came from behind the stove, leaving the corncob poppets to ask a riddle Mother had whispered to her. Her eyes lit up.
Twelve pears hanging high,
Twelve fellers riding by;
Now Each took a pear
And left eleven hanging there.
Father’s face widened for he knew the answer, having told Mother this riddle himself. Fletch looked at me, but I did not know how eleven pears could be left hanging. My head felt hollow.
“Hit was a chap six years old sprung that there riddle on me,” Father said. “Taulbee Lovern’s boy. Sharp as a sprig, that little feller is. Knows his figgers square to a thousand, and says his a-b-abbs, backwards and forwards. Hain’t been school-taught neither. Never darked a schoolhouse door.”
“I wisht I had me a pear,” I said, still trying to figure the riddle.
Father glanced at Mother, his gray eyes burning in the woolly light. “Taulbee Lovern’s boy, it was,” he said. Mother looked at the baby sleeping at the bedfoot, never lifting her face toward Father.
“Who, now, is Taulbee Lovern?” Euly asked.
Euly’s question hung in the room like the great drops of water growing under the shingle roof, stretching before dropping.
“Who is Taulbee Lovern?”
“A child too knowing is liable to die before they’re grown,” Mother said.
“As bonny a chap as ever I saw,” Father said. “Don’t reckon he’s drawed a sick breath. Fed and clothed proper since he was born.” Father’s face got dolesome, and his voice lowered into the sound of rain beating the puncheon walls. He looked into all the corners of the room, at the two beds standing in the middle of the floor, at the empty meatbox, at the ball of clothes piled on the table to keep them dry. He looked at Euly standing by the bedboard. He looked at Fletch and me squatting on the floor listening, our heads cocked to one side. “One chap Taulbee and Doshia had,” he said. “Three hundred acres o’ land they own, and a passel o’ that is bottom flat. Six-room house with two glass windows in every dobbed room. Taulbee’s tuk care of his own. They’ve never gone a-lacking.”
Mother’s face reddened. “I hain’t complaining of the way I’m tuk care of,” she said. “We hain’t starved dead or gone naked yet. I hain’t complaining.”
“Twelve pears hanging high,” Euly began, but we were not listening. “Who is Taulbee Lovern?”
“He was your ma’s first beau,” Father said, “the man she might o’ chose.”
The baby ope
ned its eyes.
“Hush,” Mother said.
Euly went back to her poppets behind the stove, speaking doll-talk to the cobs. I crawled between the meatbox and the wall, going there to wonder about Taulbee Lovern’s boy and how it would be to know square to the end of everything. I found a sassafras root, and I chewed it, spitting red juice through a crack in the floor. And I wished I had a pear, one as mushy ripe as a frosted pawpaw. I felt I could eat the whole dozen hanging on the riddle-tree.
I licked the flakes of salt off the meatbox with my tongue. An ant marched up and down, feeling along the board, and I saw four grand-daddy spiders. Three were tight in a corner, their pill-bodies hung in a web of legs. A fourth walked alone. I took up a shoe and slapped the proud walker, and he went down, flattened upon the floor. He lay quivering in a puzzle of legs and body. As I watched, he rose up, moving into the corner. I crawled away from the meatbox, not wanting to see again the gray spot where he had bled.
Father held the baby in the flat of his two hands. Little Green stared into his face. “Take me,” Father was saying, “I never tuk natural to growing things, a-planting seeds and sticking plows into the ground like Taulbee Lovern. A furrow I run allus did crook like a blacksnake’s track. A sight o’ farming I’ve done, but it allus rubbed the grain. But give me a pick, and I’ll dig as much coal as the next ’un. Now I figger every riddle ought to have an answer. Them mines won’t stay closed forever and aye.”
Euly brought a poppet for the baby to hold. He looked at it gravely for a moment, clutching the cob in a tallow-white hand, and then began to cry softly, a tearless smothered cry.
“So puny he’s been,” Mother sighed. “I’m uneasy.”
In middle afternoon the rain slacked for a spell. We went out upon the washed earth, stepping on grass clumps to keep clear of the mud. The swollen tide of the creek flowed high above the rushes, whipping the willow tops. A wet wind blew down into the clouds banked against the hills. The martins came out of their gourds, soaring in blunt flight, coming back to sit on the pole.
