“The Lord must have hinted to me,” Hank said.
Hank was not only Annie’s daddy, he was a deacon of the Green River Church, and sometimes he held prayer meetings and even led in singing at revivals hisself. He was a carpenter who worked away a lot on jobs, so you didn’t see too much of him. In winter he liked to hunt deer and turkeys. I almost laughed at his notion that something whispered to him. But I was mighty grateful to be riding in the wagon. I remembered I’d prayed without quite intending to, and here a few minutes later Hank Richards come by with his wagon. I was beholden to him.
“Awful glad you come this way,” I said.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Hank said.
The pain in my foot throbbed worse once I was setting down. The wagon jolted on rocks and banged on holes in the trail. Every jolt sent waves of hurt through my foot and leg.
“Are you still planning to preach?” Hank said.
Hank had been there when I tried to preach at the Green River Church last year and people had laughed. He was the first deacon to mention it to me.
“Ain’t preached no more,” I said. The pain give me courage to admit the truth. “I’m afraid I ain’t got the call.”
“The call might still come,” Hank said. “The Lord’s timing may be different from ours.”
“My timing was way off,” I said. My face felt hot in the cold air. I was embarrassed to be talking with Annie’s daddy about my humiliation. Hank was the first person that had mentioned it to me. I couldn’t decide if he was being rude or friendly.
“The Lord will lead you,” Hank said. “The Lord looks after his own.”
It was getting up in the evening. It had took me much of the day to walk myself to the top of the ridge and then back down to the head of the river. My lips felt dry and my throat was dry. In the cold wind my lips felt like they was going to crack. The pain had dried me out and parched me inside.
When we passed the spring below the Evans place Hank stopped the wagon. “Bet you could use a drink,” he said. It was like he could read my thoughts. He jumped off the wagon and scrambled down the bank and come back with a coffee can full of water.
I was so thirsty I held the water in my mouth before swallowing it. And then it hurt as it went down my throat. My belly wanted the water so bad it hurt when the cool trickle went down.
“You have saved my life,” I said to Hank when we started again.
“We don’t get nowhere without we help each other,” Hank said.
I’d heard talk like that all my life, but for the first time it meant something. I’d heard Mama talk that way, but it hadn’t seemed important. But now I seen how true it was. People could only get along by helping each other. There wasn’t no other way. I didn’t even resent that Hank had asked about my preaching, I was so grateful to him. I seen he wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings.
“We don’t have to do nothing fancy to serve the Lord,” Hank said as the wagon rattled over the rough road.
It was already dark when we got to the house. Hank drove the wagon right up to the edge of the yard and Mama come to the door to see who was there. Then she run out into the yard holding her elbows in the cold wind.
Six
Muir
“HONEY, YOU LOOK half dead,” Mama said.
I dropped the crutch on the porch and she helped me into the living room. Fay and Moody come in from the kitchen, where they’d been eating supper. “Did you cut your leg?” Fay said. She wiped her mouth with the end of her apron.
“Bet a muskrat bit his toe,” Moody said.
Mama helped me into a chair by the fireplace.
“Is your leg broke?” Fay said.
“It’s just a sprain,” I said.
I started unlacing my boot and felt the tightness under the leather. It hurt just to touch it, and it hurt when you didn’t touch it.
“That boot’ll have to be cut off,” Moody said.
“No!” I said.
Moody took out his knife, which he always kept whetted like a razor.
“You can’t cut leather with a knife,” Mama said.
“Leave the boot alone,” I said. “I can get it off.”
“Don’t want his fancy boots cut,” Moody said. He lit the stub of a cigar he’d left on the mantel. “How much did them boots cost?” he said. “A winter’s worth of skins?”
Mama took the scissors from Fay. She pulled out the laces of the boot and looked for a place to start cutting. There was no easy place to start. The golden oiled leather was sewed tight.
“Just cut the tongue,” I said. “If you cut the tongue the boot will come off.”
Mama started snipping the leather of the tongue. It hurt whenever the scissors touched my skin.
“Now help me pull,” Mama said to Moody. Moody grabbed my boot and jerked it with a twist. It hurt so bad I thought I was going to black out. We all looked at the boot in Moody’s hands like we expected it to be full of blood or holding a piece of my foot. But there wasn’t any blood on the boot, and there wasn’t any blood on my sock either. The sock was stained by wet leather was all.
Mama started pulling off the sock, and that hurt like she was peeling off the skin. My ankle was swole so bad it looked a little crooked.
“Wiggle your toes,” Mama said. I wiggled my toes through the stiff pain. “Nothing’s broke as far as I can tell,” Mama said.
“Ain’t that a pretty leg,” Moody said.
While Moody stood by the fire and smoked his cigar, Mama washed the foot and ankle. They kept swelling up and you would have thought the washing made them bigger. The boot had kept down the swelling. And the pain was getting worser, the more it swole up. I would not have thought a foot could give you so much pain when there wasn’t any bones broke and the skin wasn’t even cut. Only the warm water seemed to give any comfort, and the heat from the fireplace.
“Get me some aspirins,” Mama said to Fay. Mama kept her aspirins on the shelf in the closet with the herbs and other medicines.
“I don’t think aspirins will do any good,” I said.
“Moody, bring me some of your liquor,” Mama said.
“Who says I got any liquor?” Moody said.
“Bring the jug here,” Mama said.
We all knowed Moody kept some liquor near the house. Sometimes he hid the jug in an old boot, and sometimes under a pile of old quilts. When Moody brought the jug and handed it to Mama he said, “You’re welcome,” and then he turned to me. “Now you’ve got a good excuse to drink my liquor,” he said.
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT the small hours was a deep, tender, and terrible time. Late at night all the fat and sweetness of things are gone, and you feel hard up against the cold bare facts. If you think too much in the wee hours your life don’t seem worth nothing. Late at night you feel stripped down to the bone and facing the emptiness and awfulness of the world.
After everybody went to bed, the aspirin took away some of the pain, but it didn’t take away the scare and trouble in my mind. Everything I thought of was terrible, my traps rusting in the water of Grassy Creek, muskrats and mink rotting in their jaws. I thought of all the things Mama had said to me about wasting my time, and they wasn’t as bad as the things I’d said to myself. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, and I didn’t know what I could be.
Wherever I cast my mind, I couldn’t find any hope. There was nothing on Green River that had any hope in it. Even if I done everything Mama wanted me to do, it would just mean working on the place, hoeing corn and splitting wood, like Daddy did. There was nothing interesting I could foresee. And long as I stayed there I’d be fighting with Moody and angry with Mama.
I was going to have to get away, to the North, to Canada or Alaska, to Minnesota, where I could start over, where the fur was better and more plentiful, where there was all kinds of fur, beaver and lynx, marten and otter, wolverine and bear. I wanted to go as far as I could from Green River. I had to change the way I was doing things, if I was ever going to amount to somet
hing.
To pass the time that night I got two of Grandpa’s books off the mantel. One was an old book by James Gibbs called A Book of Architecture. It had designs for churches with very high steeples, and drawings of other fancy buildings too. Since I was a boy I had liked to look through that book. I especially liked to study the drawings of churches with steeples that went up to the clouds. The other book was one Grandpa had ordered just before he died. It was called Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and was by somebody named Henry Adams. It talked all about the fancy buildings of the Middle Ages, about cathedrals in France and how they was built and why they was built. I liked to browse in the book just to hear all the fine things he had to say, though I had never read the book all the way through.
I opened the Adams book to a page: “… and then, with pain and sorrow, you will have to toil till you see how the architects of 1200 subordinated every other problem to that of lighting their spaces. Without feeling their lights, you can never feel their shadows.” It was the kind of sentence I liked, about feeling shadows, about buildings as living things.
I flipped through the book and come to another passage Grandpa had marked a few pages later: “The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man’s aspirations were highest.” That was my favorite passage.
I turned the pages and seen Adams talking about cathedrals “flinging stones against the sky.” I looked at the drawings of floor plans in the book and listened to the wind troubling the hemlock trees. If only I could build something myself and not just waste my time. Even the pain in my foot would be worth it, if it showed me the right thing to do.
Seven
Ginny
MOODY NEVER WOULD talk about what happened that night down at Peg Early’s. He wasn’t the kind of boy that would tell you how he felt when he was hurt or angry. He would always try to act rough, like nothing had happened. Ever since Tom died it was like he lived his life in secret, hiding even from hisself.
After we brought him home that day from Possum Holler and U. G. and me helped him out of the truck into the house, Moody just stayed in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out. When I went in with a pan of warm water and a rag and towel to clean him up, he rolled over and laid there with his legs together.
“You got to be cleaned up,” I said.
“Leave the pan,” Moody said. “I’ll wash myself.”
“You ought to see a doctor,” I said.
“Won’t see no doctor!”
I told Moody he was too sore to wash hisself, but he didn’t answer. I knowed he’d lost a lot of blood and was too weak to do anything but lay there. I left the pan on the night table and brought him some aspirins. It was the only thing I had for the pain except liquor. I didn’t want to give Moody any liquor.
It grieved me to know he was hurting so bad and there was so little I could do. Muir and Moody slept in the same bed, but I told Muir to sleep on the sofa while Moody was in such awful shape. Moody needed to rest, and he needed to not be bothered.
“How did Moody hurt hisself?” Muir asked.
I didn’t feel like I could tell Muir, who was only thirteen and not liable to understand such things. If Moody didn’t want it knowed and bruited about, I would say as little as I could and still tell the truth.
“Moody got in a fight in Chestnut Springs,” I said.
“Did Moody get cut with a knife?” Fay said.
“Maybe he did,” I said.
I never seen the cut on his groin because Moody wouldn’t let me touch him. He wouldn’t let anybody touch him. He was sixteen years old and tall as a man, and I couldn’t tear his clothes off to see his wounds. He was like a dog that has crawled into a cellar to either die or heal itself. I reckon he might have wanted to die them first days and nights he was home.
I woke in the middle of the night and heard a sound like water running. Had it started raining in the night and the water was spilling off the eaves? I listened and didn’t hear no rain on the roof. There wasn’t no rain pattering on the window. The springhouse was too far away to hear the water spilling from the pipe. And the branch was much too far away to hear the water rippling and bubbling between its banks. You could hear the waterfall over on the creek sometimes at night, but this wasn’t a roar like a waterfall.
The mumbling and murmuring stopped and then started again. I got up and put on my robe and went out to the hall. Muir was asleep on the couch and breathing steady. The sound was coming from the other end of the house, not the kitchen or living room. I tiptoed down the hall to the other bedroom door and listened. The noise was coming from there all right.
Was Moody talking to hisself? Would he be praying on his own in the dark? I put my ear to the door and my heart stopped when I heard a sob. It was a sob muffled by blankets. It was a sob held in as much as it could be held in. I couldn’t go away and just leave Moody crying to hisself in the dark. I opened the door and stepped into the room. The crying stopped.
“Moody,” I said, “is there anything I can do?”
There wasn’t no sound from the bed. I reckon Moody laid as still as he could. I wanted to reach out and touch him in the dark. I wanted to hold him in my arms the way I done when he was a little boy. I felt my way to the edge of the bed and set down on it.
“I feel for your hurt,” I said.
“Don’t matter,” Moody said, his voice hoarse.
“It matters a lot to me,” I said.
“Don’t nothing matter no more,” Moody said, sounding like his nose was snuffed up.
I thought, This is a change in Moody. Now he is going to open up and talk about what happened to him. Now that he is letting out some of the pain, he’ll feel better. I knowed the best way to heal the sorrow was to grieve hard as you could and tell somebody how bad it felt.
“You matter to us that love you,” I said and reached out to Moody in the dark. But soon as he felt my hand on his shoulder he jerked away. He covered hisself up with the blanket and wouldn’t let me touch him.
I thought if I said the right thing to Moody I could pick the lock in his armor. I thought if I could melt just one little clot that was blocking the flow of his feelings, he would pour out his grief to me and begin to heal. But he never said another word. The more I tried to comfort him the more he closed hisself off. He had just spoke twice, then closed hisself up again like a terrapin. I seen there was no use to try to pester him or beg him to talk. He would have to decide to talk hisself. I set on the bed for nigh onto an hour and Moody never moved or spoke again.
AFTER A FEW days, when Moody was feeling a little better, I seen Muir carrying a pencil and piece of paper from a school tablet into the bedroom. When he come out I asked him what the page was for.
“Moody wants to write a letter,” Muir said.
Now Moody never was one to write letters, though he could pen a fine neat hand when he wanted to. In school he had the best handwriting of anybody in the class, and he had the best hand of anybody in the family. I asked Muir who Moody wanted to write to, but Muir said he wouldn’t tell. Muir said Moody had made him promise not to show anybody the letter.
I was curious because I thought Moody might be writing to the sheriff or the revenue or to Peg Early. I didn’t try to ask Moody or Muir about the letter, but I kept my eyes open. Everything Moody did was a mystery, but I needed to find out what was going on. I didn’t hear no more about the letter, and when I went into the bedroom that evening to take Moody his supper I didn’t see the pencil or paper. But the next morning, when I passed Muir’s coat where it hung on a nail beside the kitchen door, I seen an envelope in the pocket. I looked around to see if anybody was watching, and I slipped the envelope out. The address was wrote in pencil in Moody’s neat hand.
To: Josie Revis
At Peg Early’s
Chestnut Springs, South Carolina
I slipped the letter back into the coat pocket, careful to not bend or wrinkle it. My throat got tight, thinking of Moody writing to that girl that got so bad beat up for helping him and loving him. My heart felt like somebody had stomped it with their boots.
The week after Moody wrote the letter and Muir mailed it, I went to the mailbox every day to get the mail. There never was no letter from Josie, or anybody else, not that I seen. It’s possible that Muir got up to the mailbox before I did and took whatever letter come for Moody, but I doubt it. I don’t think Josie ever got his letter, and if she did she never answered it. If there had been a letter I would have seen it in the bedroom or throwed out in the trash. A letter might have cheered Moody up. But Moody just stayed sullen and angry and never did talk about his condition. He had scabs on his face and arms, and the scabs got hard and peeled off.
Now, both Drayton and Wheeler come to see Moody a time or two, and they could have brought Moody a letter without me seeing it. But I don’t think they did. If they had brought a letter Moody would have acted different.
What they did bring Moody was a drink, for when I went into the bedroom after they left I could smell it. It was that musty smell of old plums that has fell into the grass and rotted. And Moody seemed a little happier. He must have had the bottle in the bed, for I couldn’t find it when I come in to sweep the floor and dust the shelf. I opened the curtains to let sunlight fill the sickroom, and I swept the dust balls from under the bed. I reckon he had the bottle under his pillow or between his legs, for I never did see it.
When Drayton come back to see Moody, I pulled him into the kitchen. “Now you ain’t going to give Moody no liquor, are you? He don’t need no liquor.”
“No ma’am,” Drayton said. But the next time I went into the room the smell of liquor was even stronger. I figured the liquor might be helping Moody get well, so I let it go.
After about a week Moody got up and started walking. He walked stiff like his joints was made of cardboard. And it hurt him to set down, I could see that. He winced and grabbed hold of the arms when he set down in the rocker. But he limped out to the porch and back, and then out to the barn and back. He limped as far as the springhouse. He must have had some liquor hid out there, for I could smell it on his breath when he come back in. But there was never no letter come for him.
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