“You talk a lot while you’re working,” Florrie said.
“Just muttering to myself,” I said. But I wondered what else I might have revealed, for I often thought about love things. In spite of myself I thought about men and women together. I thought about good-looking young men and the way they talked and the way they was built. I thought about Hank Richards that had moved from Gap Creek to the little house that my brother Locke had built out beyond the church before he went back in the army. Hank had shoulders as strong as Tom’s was and he was a good-looking man. Already he had been appointed a deacon. He was seven or eight years younger than me, and he had the strongest neck and arms. His black hair was wavy where it fell across his forehead. And his eyes was blue as the October sky.
Shame on you, I said to myself. Hank is another woman’s husband, and he is younger than you. And he wouldn’t give you a second look even if he was single. I had always thought Florrie was the lustful one in our family, and here I was having love thoughts about a married man, only a few months after Tom had died.
What is the cure for wandering thoughts for a middle-aged woman? I guess I learned from Tom that the cure for most things in this world is to work harder. If you are worried or distracted, just bring your mind back to the work at hand. For sweat and the feeling of accomplishment will go a long way toward curing most worries that settle into our minds and don’t want to go away.
But sometimes even the hardest labor won’t clear your mind of daydreams. Sweat only spirits up the blood more. And what makes you tired makes you daydream more. I thought of young men in overalls and no shirts working along beside me. I thought of what they would say as we worked. I thought of how we would walk to the spring for a drink in the hottest part of the day.
And not even praying helped. For when I prayed I thought of a young preacher saying the words of the Bible that had always thrilled me. I seen a young man with long curly hair and a thin blond beard like the pictures of Jesus saying my favorite words from the New Testament: “I am the true vine.” “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.” “Before Abraham was, I am.”
Such praying just made me more excited. I thought of the young song leader at the revival I had attended at Crossroads. When he sung it was like he put every muscle of his body and every ounce of strength into his voice, in the notes and words of his singing.
On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye …
O who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
And when I prayed to the Lord to show me a sign to cure my loneliness and the hopelessness of widowhood, and when I tried to study on the higher things, what come to me was a picture of the millennium, of the New Jerusalem foretold in Revelation. And what I seen in my mind was a world of trees and meadows along creeks where boys and girls in thin gowns walked and danced in the shade of trees and grape arbors. In paradise they walked hand in hand and kissed on top of a hill where they could look out on a crystal sea. It didn’t help my problem to think such thoughts.
BUT THEN I learned to worry about my younguns more than myself. I seen I had been a selfish mama when Tom was alive, and I had cared too much about myself and my own feelings. And I thought more about Pa and how his heart had gone weak and sore on him. I thought about the sick and needy in the community. When the air got too thick and close in my head, I remembered how my younguns would be raised with no daddy, and how I had to love them enough for two parents. I thought how prideful my oldest girl, Jewel, was, and I thought how angry and resentful Moody was, and how mean to Muir, and I wondered what I had done to make him that way. And I thought how confused and excited Muir was in his mind, even at the age of nine or ten. And I thought how young Fay was and how I’d never done anything to make her less ashamed of me. She blamed me for the quarrels with Tom, and for the death of Tom. And I thought how they would have to grow up with no daddy. I didn’t know then that Jewel would die in the 1918 flu. I didn’t know what was coming.
It was when I worried about my children that my own little problems withered down to size. And I thought how I had always sought my own pleasures first. But the truest pleasure was to think of them first. It was simple advice, but it was the only advice that worked.
You have been tried in the fire of desire, I said to myself. You have wandered in the desert and in the flames of your bereavement. And you will turn all your loving and all your work toward those around you, them closest to you. You will rededicate yourself to your family.
But even so, it give me a thrill to watch the strong young men that worked with the rye thrashers in August. They labored in the heat and streamed with sweat. I watched them rub off the chaff that stuck to their shoulders. And I thought of the Cherokees that had camped on the same land by the river. I thought of braves that had played their ball game for hours in the fields until they got so hot and sweaty they had to jump into the deep, whispering pools for a swim.
SECOND READING
1922
Eleven
Muir
I COULD HEAR rain on the roof when I woke early in the fall. It was not a pounding or even a tapping on the shingles. It sounded more like a peck and murmur along the eaves. When steady rain runs off a roof it sounds like the gutters are swallowing. And the house feels isolated, far out in the ocean of rain.
When I come back from milking, my shirt and hat was dripping. My shoes left wet tracks on the kitchen floor. Mama told me not to drip on the dough. She was fixing to make pies and had dough rising on the stove. Soon as I strained the milk I tied a cloth over the pitcher to carry it out to the springhouse.
“You ought to put on some dry clothes,” Mama said.
“Muir don’t want dry clothes,” Moody said. “He likes to live like a fish.”
“At least I don’t drink like a fish,” I said.
“You’re a working fish,” Moody said.
I was glad to get back out in the rain, away from the close air of the kitchen. When it rained in fall weather I preferred to be outdoors. The world of rain is clean and soothing. But I don’t know what it is about rain that draws me into it. Maybe the fresh drip off every weed and leaf and needle of the pines clears and cleans the seconds and minutes. Maybe rain is the purest counting of time. I had hated myself since I went down to Gap Creek with Moody. Maybe the rain would wash me clean.
After leaving the milk in the springhouse I listened to the rain on the cedar shingles there. It was dark and musty in the springhouse. The world outside looked brighter when I stepped back into the rain. The light on a rainy day is so gloomy it reminds me of a church, and the gloam of twilight, and the light in groves and thickets. The light of a rainy day is easy on the eyes and calms me. In the dim light I felt sheltered and private.
At the barn I took a tow sack off the pile and flung it around my shoulders. A tow sack will turn off a lot of rain from your back and keep you warm on a rainy day. With the sack over my neck and upper arms I felt I was wearing a cape or the vestments of some kind of service. The rough cloth, rough as bark or binder’s twine, would get heavy as it soaked up the rain and weigh like armor on my shoulders.
Moody and Mama had always teased me about working in the rain. But I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to help myself. When it was raining I couldn’t just set in the house and listen to the drip on the eaves and watch the fire. I could set and look at magazines or the architecture books or Pilgrim’s Progress for maybe an hour, but then I had to do something else. I had to be outdoors where the rain was. If I stayed inside I’d get a headache and feel I was missing something important. I couldn’t stand myself if I just set there.
With the sack around my shoulders and my hat dripping from the brim, I got a hammer and some nails from the feed room in the barn. It was the perfect day to fix the fence around the pasture. You don’t want to get out in the fields while it’s rainy and pack down the
mud between rows. But it don’t hurt to work in the weeds along a fence, if you don’t mind getting wet. I took the pliers and a coil of wire so I could patch the broke places in the fence.
Some strands of barbed wire had come loose, and I nailed them back to the posts. Other places a strand was broke, so I had to splice it. You stretch fence wire with a pole for a lever, so I cut a hickory sapling to use as a stretcher. It was good to see wire straight and tight on the posts again. Made me feel there was some order and hope in the world.
“Nobody but you would be out here,” a voice said. It was Aunt Florrie. She’d walked across the hill to help Mama and Fay make pies. Florrie was the only person I knowed besides myself that liked to be out in the rain. She had an old coat throwed over her shoulders, but her head was bare. Her hair was soaked and dripping, and it stuck to her temples and forehead. Aunt Florrie had sharp features and black eyes and her skin was dark as a gypsy’s. There was not a wrinkle on her face, and she could work like a man when she wanted to.
“You’re your daddy’s son,” Aunt Florrie said. “Tom ever did like to work out in the rain.”
“Did Mama quarrel at him too?” I said. I could ask Aunt Florrie about Daddy easier than I could ask Mama.
“Ginny couldn’t help herself,” Florrie said. “I don’t reckon she ever did understand Tom.”
There was a post leaning over where the dirt had washed away around it. I pushed it upright and begun to pound it into the wet ground with the axe. “Here, let me hold that,” Aunt Florrie said. She held the dripping post with both hands while I pounded it.
As I drove the post deeper into the ground the wires tightened like guitar strings.
“Tom was a mighty good man,” Aunt Florrie said. “You remind me a lot of him.”
“He worked harder than I do,” I said. Water splashed from the top of the post as I drove it in.
“You’ll work harder when you find what you want to do,” Aunt Florrie said. She held a strand of wire tight against the post while I nailed it in place. Drops of rain run down her cheek.
We walked along the fence to where it run into the pine woods. A post was leaning over and needed bracing. I looked around for a sapling to cut for a pole. “I hate for you to get wet,” I said.
“The rain makes me feel young,” Aunt Florrie said. She sounded like a little girl. I chopped down a yellow pine and trimmed off the limbs. Then I sharpened one end so I could drive it into the ground. The brace was a makeshift repair, but it was the best I could do without putting in a new post.
Aunt Florrie warned me against getting myself tied down to any girl. “You have big plans,” she said. “You go on ahead with your big plans.”
Just then there was a flash, and a click of lightning in the air. The crash of thunder was so close it sounded like the air was turning inside out and doors was slamming above us. The ground was so wet it sucked at our shoes as we walked along the trail, staying back away from the fence. There was another flare of lightning.
“I don’t want to be struck before I can have a drink and warm up by the fire,” Aunt Florrie said.
“I’ve heard working in the rain makes you thirsty,” I said.
“Only crying will make you thirstier,” Aunt Florrie said.
THE NEXT MORNING I got up early and milked the cow for Mama. And I strained the milk into pitchers and carried them out to the springhouse. Mama fried eggs and boiled some grits. But even as I set down to eat I knowed what I was going to do. I’d made up my mind during the night. Moody had not come home all night and he’d left the Model T in the shed.
“I’m going to Canada,” I said. I poured some molasses on my plate and sopped it up with a biscuit.
“How’re you going?” Mama said.
“I’m driving the Model T,” I said, and took a long drink of coffee.
“Moody won’t let you have it,” Mama said.
“Moody can’t stop me,” I said.
“Then I’ll stop you,” Mama said.
“I’ve made up my mind,” I said with all the firmness and calm I could muster.
“Well, you can unmake it,” Mama said.
I finished my coffee and stood up. I’d made my plans during the night and knowed what I had to do. Nothing had been right for me since I’d helped Moody drive the liquor up from Gap Creek. “There ain’t nothing for me here,” I said. “I’m going where the fur is better.”
“You’re going to lose everything,” Mama said. “Your family, your friends. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I could stay here and get myself killed,” I said.
Mama turned away and stood in front of the water bucket on the counter. I could tell she was crying. Mama had always expected me to do something important, like being a preacher, and she depended on me to do the things she wanted around the place. She didn’t depend on Moody for anything. She fussed at me and she argued with me, but she expected me to do what she said. For once in my life I was going to do what I wanted, what I had to do.
FROM SELLING MOLASSES I’d saved seventy-one dollars, which I kept in a can in the shed where Moody couldn’t find it. I knowed just what I had to take if I was going to trap in Canada. I got my mackinaw and my hunting boots from the bedroom. I packed my long underwear and my wool socks and my heavy shirts and pairs of pants. I packed my gloves and my hunting knife and my winter cap.
The gear almost filled the backseat of the Model T. I put my traps on the floor of the car and slid the shotgun under the clothes on the backseat.
“You’ll freeze to death up there,” Mama said. She come out to the gate and watched me load up the car. “And nobody’ll know what happened to you.”
“I’ll write you a letter,” I said.
“Send me a picture postcard of a Mountie,” Fay said. Fay had come out and stood beside Mama.
“Let’s have a prayer before you go,” Mama said.
I bowed my head while Mama prayed. But I didn’t listen to what she said. I didn’t close my eyes and I looked at the red dirt in the yard and at the moss under the closest hemlock. It was early fall and the periwinkles on the bank was blooming again. Cones from the hemlocks sprinkled the yard like little eggs. I wondered if I’d ever see this red dirt again.
When Mama said amen I looked up and seen how worried she looked. “First my husband dies of typhoid, then my pa dies, and my oldest girl dies, and my oldest son goes into the liquor business, and now my youngest son is going off to Canada,” Mama said. She come forward and hugged me, and Fay hugged me too.
“I’ll come back next summer,” I said, and hurried to start the car. I didn’t look Mama in the eye. When I climbed into the driver’s seat I patted my pocket to see if the money was still there. Mama and Fay waved as I drove out of the yard. My heart was jumping under my collarbone, but I set my teeth and said to myself, Calm yourself, you idiot, if you want to make it all the way to Canada.
I stopped at the gate, got out and opened it, drove through, then stopped again and latched it. I drove by the molasses furnace and the pine thicket, by the edge of the orchard on the hill, and around the holler where the spring was. I drove by the old house place where my great-grandpa had built the first house on the property.
At the church I turned right to drive out by the Richards house. I wasn’t sure why exactly. I was still mad at Annie, but maybe I wanted to catch a glimpse of her as I drove past. Maybe I hoped she would see me and know I was leaving Green River and she would feel sorry she’d treated me bad. The sun was just coming up and there was nobody on the porch of the Richards house. I seen a cat crouched in the weeds by the road. And then I seen Mrs. Richards milking in the hallway of the barn. I waved to her, but she was bent to her work and probably never even seen who was going by.
I watched the Richards place lit up in an orange glow by the sunrise in my rearview mirror.
At the highway I turned north and drove past U. G.’s store. It looked closed, but I hit the horn anyway, in case U. G. was there early, unpackin
g and sorting things on the shelves. There was smoke coming from the chimney, so he’d already started a fire in the stove.
I’d studied out the route I was going to take many times. Highway 25 that passed right by U. G.’s store went all the way to Toledo, Ohio. From Toledo I would drive to Detroit and then across into Canada. The same ribbon of pavement would take me all the way, going mostly straight north through Tompkinsville and Asheville, through Marshall along the French Broad River, and across Tennessee to the Cumberland Gap.
From the Cumberland Gap the highway plunged north through Berea, Kentucky, into the Bluegrass country, through Lexington, and on to Cincinnati. It was a cool autumn day, and I drove with joy away from my troubles, away from Green River. The little car tut-tut-tutted up mountainsides and speeded up on the down sides. I passed people cutting cane and people boiling molasses. I passed people gathering corn in wagons and people curing tobacco in long sheds on the sides of the mountains.
You just stay calm, I said to myself, and patted the steering wheel. As I wound up into the Cumberland Gap I remembered that was where one of my great-grandpas had died in the Confederate War. I remembered that when Daniel Boone had crossed into Kentucky a hundred and sixty years ago he’d come the same way. “You’re driving through history to the future,” I said. I liked the sound of that and said it again. “You’re driving through the past into the future.” And I thought of Sergeant York, who lived not too far away in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee.
As it started getting late in the day I wondered where I was going to stay the night. I was driving into the sunset north of Lexington. If there’d been woods I would have stopped and camped in them. But I was in the Bluegrass country and all the land was fancy farms with white fences and painted barns. It was the first place I’d ever seen that looked exactly like it was supposed to. The white fences, the stone gates, the lanes running back to mansions with white columns among oak trees, the painted stables with weather vanes, the tall slender horses, looked just like all the pictures I’d seen in magazines. There was no rough, unpainted barns, no gullies, no rocky cornfields. It was hard for me to imagine the wealth that must support such farms. The Model T kept rolling and rattling along. I was getting tired and my back was stiff and sore from setting all day. I’d not got much sleep the night before.
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