Oh, all those that came here today weren’t sugar and spice and everything that’s nice. There were Buckman Tull and Idy, who wanted to be so much, up in front. And Zephon Brown who had lent eighteen dollars to Billy Harbison on his place and when Billy couldn’t pay had taken his improvement away from him so slick before Portius could stop him. Oh, Zephon had one little bitty eye half shut and one little bitty eye half open, and either one could catch a weasel asleep. Folks said Zephon could fall in the ditch and come up with a shilling in his fist. Nor was Sayward partial to Scovel Harris who got happy one time in the trace, laying on his back and yelling, “Hallelujah!” till Jake Tench dropped a bullet in his mouth and Scovel got blue in the face from choking.
But it had them that were good as gold at the meeting, too. There were Mary Harbison who Sayward never heard pass a mean word against Zephon for turning them out, and Tod Wylder’s woman, and the Covenhovens and the McFalls, and George Roebuck who mightn’t give you any overweight on the post scales, but neither would he give you any under. And up near the preacher as she could get was deaf old Granny MacWhirter who knew churches all her life. She told Sayward that betwixt the hawks and the circuit riders, they hardly ever had a chicken left on their place back in the old states. Around her were Judah and Ellen and their six boys and three girls with more still a coming. The MacWhirters, by hokey day, could get up a meeting house all by their own selves, if they wanted.
Last but not least was her own sister, Genny. Sayward had seen her come out of the woods and over the logs with the Covenhovens just a little while ago. She wanted to come in where Sayward sat but the plank sagged plumb full and she found a place in the back where it hardly had room to lean a rail. That was room enough for Genny.
The sawmill had a roof against the rain, but no sidewalk You could sit in meeting and look right out in the woods, for the mill had hardly scratched them yet. The big butts stood mighty still like this was something they couldn’t make out. They’d never seen white folks sit together so quiet and sober. When the dominie prayed, those heathen green trees hardly moved a leaf. But when it came time for a hymn, first two lines read off by the dominie and then the same sung by the whole passel of people, the echoes came back like the trees tried to drown them out. The worst was when the dominie passed around a pewter plate of bread, saying, “Eat this, it is the Lord’s body, given for you and for me,” and when he gave out a fine pewter cup of wine, saying, “Drink ye all of this, it is the blood of our Lord shed to save you from your sins,” something rang through the woods then. Oh, the woods around here had stood a long time and seen many things, but never had they seen anything like this.
It had been a good while since most of the people had, too. Cruel, twisted lumps came into their faces. They must have recollected some church they went to back in the old states, with a graveyard alongside where a sister or brother, mammy or pappy was left behind, with nobody to cut the weeds over their heads any more for Independence Day. A Welshman not long from the old country heard the hymn singing all the way up on Panther Hill and came running down, making more racket than a gray moose through the brush. He didn’t hardly know a word of English. But he could tell meeting when he heard it even out in the woods. He was plumb out of breath. Sayward reckoned she would carry this picture of him in her mind longer than she would tote her young one in her arms, an old man in brush-whipped clothes with eye-water coursing down his dark Welsh face.
Through most of the meeting, Sayward was quiet as a woodsy should be. All she did was get up when the rest got up, and kneel down on the chips and sawdust when the rest knelt down, and sit and nurse her young one when he wanted it. After the first sermon they had time before the second one to stretch their legs and eat their lunch, if they were lucky to have any, or go to the river and wet their gullets that all the preaching of hell and brimstone had parched.
But once the sprinkling started, she hooked up her dress and toted that soft little red bundle forward after Jude and Ellen MacWhirter taking up their own young ones for the same reason. She had thought this all out by herself, and nary a word to Portius. Baptizing was a woman’s business. She remembered her mother saying that her two oldest had been lawfully sprinkled in the stone church by the Conestoga. The rest, Jary said, she had to just give names to her own self. What else could you do out in the woods where dominies were scarce as gypsy fowl teeth? But Sayward made up her mind that wouldn’t happen to her and Portius’s young one. No, this little body drooling in her arms and too helpless to speak out for its own self wouldn’t be just called a name like they gave one to Worth’s old hounds, Rex and Sarge.
All the pewter basin had in it was water from the race, for Sayward saw Zephon Brown dip it. But when the dominie took it and stood there with the basin in his hand, it seemed like some change must have come over the water. With his long iron-gray hair he was like a man out of Bible times. His tight mouth looked like it would forbid you the kingdom of heaven. One or two women cringed in front of him, but Sayward stood up to him stoutly. He never asked was she a member in good standing, for Judah leaned forward and told him he would stand up for her child and be beholden for it. All the dominie asked her was the name, and she told it. Then she watched mighty still as the circuit rider took her babe in his own crow-black arms and splashed cold water on that tender young head.
“I baptize thee Resolve Wheeler,” he said in a loud voice, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
Oh, those words went through her like a sword, and strange things went through her mind with it. Never had she reckoned a Luckett would get a chance to go through such as this, or to get a taste of the bread they said was the Lord’s body and a sip of wine that they said was His blood. These were things of another world to a woodsy. All she knew was the ever forest where the roads were dim paths coaxing you to come on while the monster brown butts stood around still as death waiting for you to get lost. All her life had she lived in the woods, yet still she wasn’t of the woods and still the woods were against her. Oh, it had evil things in the woods that were older than the oldest man. The woods shut you in and fought you while you lived, and sucked up your flesh and blood with its roots after you died. Even the Indians had places in the woods they shunned, where they were ’feard to go. The woods ran from way back yonder to the Illinois and the English Lakes, dark as a sack and mighty as Miljus. The words she heard from the preacher today were like the first light of an open place ahead breaking through the trees.
She minded now a dream she had had last night. Only this morning, it was, just before she awoke. Where this place was she didn’t know, but it had no woods. All the trees and brush, the big butts standing up and the old butts laying down, the brown stumps and green moss and swampy places were gone. In their place stretched streets with brick walls and lofty brick houses. The sun on these brick walls and house fronts was something to see, red and warm as fall, with some shutters green and some shutters blue and some doorsteps marble. High in blue sky she could see a passel of white church steeples and a great dome like a state house, and on this dome had been written, “What came ye out in the wilderness to see?” It was strange, for that was the text the circuit rider had preached on this morning. It was stranger still that she could spell it out. When she woke, she had studied over that dream a long time. Now what did it mean and what-for place was this she saw? It must be Philadelphy, she reckoned, or Portius’s Boston or mayhap London across the water where some of her people came from, for never could there be such a great town with so many brick houses and white church steeples out here in the woods of Ohio.
She went back to her plank wishing Portius could have come along and seen his young one sprinkled. There was one more she’d like to get here. That was Wyitt, the only brother she had. It wouldn’t hurt him to have his head baptized, for never had it felt water except from the run, the river or the rain. And wherever her sister, Achsa, was at, she hoped somebody would drag her up like a wild sow by the ear and
get some holy water on her. It might wash some of the sin out and some sense in. The only one who could never be sprinkled now was Sulie. If she wasn’t numbered with the dead, the red devils had her, and now she would have to bear a heathen name as long as she lived.
When the last hymn started, Sayward gave a start. Now who could that be a singing behind her? It couldn’t be Genny, for Genny claimed she couldn’t sing a note since her Louie had run off with Achsa the night the painter tried to come down her chimney. And yet Sayward knew well enough. In her mind she called like Worth had the time they found Sulie’s little playhouse out in the deep woods, “Sulie! Sulie! Be you still alive?” Only Sayward in her mind called to Genny instead. Oh, nobody could mistake Genny when she opened her mouth and let herself out. She must have heard this common meter somewhere before. One time would have been enough for Genny to learn it by heart. If the dominie wasn’t here to read out the words, that wouldn’t stop her. She would just sing, la, la, la, or make up words to suit. Her voice came out without half trying, and when high notes had to be reached, she took them like a bird over the tops of the trees.
Before the last verse was finished, alternately prompted and sung in couplets like the others, you just knew that could be nobody but Genny.
My friends I bid you all adieu,
I leave you in God’s care.
And if I never more see you,
Go on, I’ll meet you there.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
Sayward didn’t dare look back for fear she might stop her. But soon as the service was done, Genny came up laughing, pushing her face at little Resolve, saying, “Ahdee! Ahdee!” and shaking her head at the “dee” to make him laugh. Then she toted that baby around, showing him off to folks whether they knew him or not.
“Do you know this little body?” she would say. “This is Sairdy’s first one.”
It beat all, Sayward thought, how good you felt toward everybody after meeting. She could even pass the time to Idy Tull and listen to her brag how her brother could start any hymn he wanted without a fork. Just so he had the words and meter. Not that she listened long. Everybody was talking to some other body. When they got through, they would talk to somebody else. And when they had no more talk, they just stayed and listened to others talk, for it would be a long time till they had meeting again, and all were loath to leave each other for the lonesome woods.
What Portius would say when she got home, Sayward had no notion. Genny and the Covenhovens came with her as far as the door, but they wouldn’t come in. When Sayward entered, Portius sat with one of his books. His eyes raised severe over the top of the leather but she didn’t make as though she saw it. She just stayed “cam” and laid the babe in the cradle the bound boy had made. Then she went about her business.
Oh, Portius knew well enough where she was today. Before she left, he had looked at her stern.
“Are your intentions to join the church?” he had asked her.
“I ain’t give it a thought yet,” she had told him, “but I reckon I kin if I want to.”
Now when Portius saw she wasn’t coming out with anything, he laid down his book and picked up his baby. He set him on his knee and made a great shakes looking him over this way and that as if he never clapped eyes on him before. Sayward watched him out of the corner of her eye. She guessed somebody had stopped in after meeting and told him.
“Now who could this young and illustrious mortal be?” he boomed gravely. “Is it Caesar? Is it Hannibal? Is it Vergilius or our master, Shakespeare?”
“I named him Resolve,” Sayward mentioned.
“Resolve!” Portius repeated.
She had thought he might not think much of such a name, preferring one he had heard back in the Bay State, perhaps his own pappy’s name which Sayward never knew. But no, Portius rolled the name, Resolve, over his tongue. Something rose in Sayward as she heard it. It was like a great name called in a court room to come forward.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TAXIN’
THE MORTAL sweetest feeling humans ever had, Sayward reckoned, were for your own young ones. Only you had to be a mammy before you found it out.
Once on a time she thought she knew just how a mammy felt toward little tykes a hanging to her skirt. Hadn’t she raised Sulie and Wyitt, you might say? Hadn’t they run to her for every piddling thing — and Achsa and Genny too? Maybe they had, but she knew better now than think she was their mam. You could feel mighty close to a sister or brother, but it wasn’t the same as your own. No, you found it was something different when your and your man’s own flesh and blood came along, a new body no bigger than a minute, helpless to do a tap for itself, looking to you for rations and for waiting-on hand-and-foot till it was big enough to fend for itself.
Didn’t she know? Wasn’t this her first girl child sleeping in the cradle and her three boys rolling and fighting on the new puncheon floor? And all different! Resolve, you could tell, would make a speech-maker like his pappy. Since the cradle he had the gift of gab. As a babe he used to talk to himself, chirping and puling, gurgling and crowing to keep himself company. Now Guerdon was close-mouthed as her uncle he was named after back along the Conestoga. Seldom a whimper came from him. But you never could fool him any. Sneak up to his cradle light-footed as you please, those little bent ears heard you coming, and when you got there, those bright black eyes saw you first.
Number three boy, when he came along, had his own tricks. He would kick and throw himself till that red cherry cradle would jerk on its rollers like he was rocking himself. And that wasn’t all that tomthumh could do. When he reckoned she didn’t let the milk down fast enough, he used to butt his head against her tit like a greedy gray moose calf standing spread-legged and with neck outstretched under its mammy. Oh, those three boys of hers were a caution, pinching, gouging, squabbling, one trying to get ahead of the other all the time. But it hadn’t anything they wouldn’t do for their mite of a sister sleeping in the cradle now. Truth to tell, those four young ones had fetched some of the blessings of Up Yonder down to her and Portius’s cabin here in the endless woods of the Ohio.
That’s what Sayward liked, humans around. Her own couldn’t raise too much noise for her, save when she had company. She couldn’t make out how some women whined to hear a babe cry. What did you expect of a small babe? Crying was the one thing it could do. Besides, it was a pleasing, natural sound in a cabin. Yes, she took after her mam. She didn’t know what she’d do if she was barren like Mrs. Covenhoven and Genny, with a house fallow as a field that had no crop a growin’.
Well, tonight the Wheelers would have plenty company, for Portius had asked folks to come see about their taxing, this being Old Christmas. It had some dark days in the year: Black Friday, when the Lord was massacred; the first Monday in April they called Cain’s Birthday; and the last day in December when Judas Iscariot hanged himself. But Old Christmas was bright as a new penny. It waited till the middle of the long winter when paths were snowed in and folks seldom stirred from their cabins, when the sun hardly rose out of the forest and the blood halfways froze so that it went through the heart sluggish as slush. Then Old Christmas came along to thaw out the veins for the Christ babe and to make a promise of shorter nights, for longer days were already a starting.
Jake Tench and Will Beagle were the first to come, except Mathias Cottle who was there since noon. After Jake came Zephon Brown and Squire Chew with Captain Butt, the old Indian fighter. It was good to see the whole grist of MacWhirters coming in, stamping off the white curds and fleeces.
“A puncheon floor, by hokey day,” said Granny MacWhirter whom they fetched on a handsled. “Next thing you’ll be wantin’, Saird, is a bed off the floor.”
“Man alive, it’s cold,” Squire Chew said, his face and ears like a turkey cock.
“Snow drifted so deep
, it dipped in my pockets. I wished it was gunpowder,” Captain Butt said.
“What would you a done, Cap?”
That’s what the old Indian fighter was waiting for. His eyes lighted with the fire men like him had when they laughed.
“I’d a touched it off and jumped down a well.”
“We seed painter tracks, Zephon,” Jude MacWhirter plagued him. “He was snuffin’ your way. Better watch out on the way home.”
“Take off your things, everybody,” Sayward called.
“I’m waitin’ till I thaw out,” Jude said.
“You won’t get nothin’ here to thaw out with,” Jake Tench told him. “Why, these folks spend all they have for something to eat and never have a drop of liquor in the house!”
“I don’t want nothin’,” Ellen MacWhirter said. “I’m just glad to be in the warm.”
She went on to tell Sayward how cold it was out her way. Her milk had ice on it in the pail. Hugh McFall had his tongue froze to his gun hammer for licking the flint. He had to go to Billy Harbison’s cabin to thaw himself loose. Their run was ice clean up to the spring. That was the first year they ever saw spring water freeze over. And the Withers’ twins had nigh bled to death a fighting with icicle swords.
Sayward went around busy, taking their wraps and piling them high on pegs. Oh, it might be a hard winter and an icy wind outside, but it couldn’t get through these stout logs and chinking tonight. Here in the cabin was like summer. She and Portius had made a special fire this afternoon. First they had dragged in a heavy log on a handsled. This they rolled in the fireplace far as it would go for a back log. Then a forestick was laid on the fire dogs, another on top of these two, and the fire built up in front with split wood. It took till this evening for the fire to reach its full strength and seemliness. Now with a little replacing, it would last all night and some days afterwards. When one log burned through the middle, they would just drag the two pieces out to the hearth and split them for top dressing.
The Fields Page 3
