Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  In one of the places there was a box of white rats. They were white as milk, and had cloudy pink eyes and pink feet, and were pink inside the ears. They would climb the wooden bars of their cage to sniff at Jake’s finger, their silky whiskers twitching delicately. They were such pretty things to see, so white and not a-feared of people’s hands at all! A blowsy, black-haired man owned them, and fed them little hunks of cheese. They reared up on their hind legs and ate from his hand like pet squirrels. Jake would have given anything for one; he would take it to Cean and let it run up her arm from her hand to her shoulder; it could sit there and nibble with its little pearl tusks at her ear. He would trade for one for Cean when he was able to have a cotton-patch of his own at Pa’s place.

  The white rats were a sight to see. Men crowded around the box, proffering their rough fingers to the delicate noses sniffing in search of cheese. Jasper found truth in his father’s words that to keep the rats for pets would be a foolish waste of food. But Lias liked the sleek, gentle creatures; once he took one from the owner’s hand and smoothed its fur with his long fingers that were sun-burnt from light to dark. The fur was softer than cotton, softer than a goose’s underwing; it was as soft as Margot’s flesh against his workhardened hand, as white as Margot’s flesh in the dark night. If he had his own stuff, he might trade for one of the little squeaking things.

  Even Lonzo could not take his eyes off the little dumbfool critters.

  Chapter 6

  High and proud, Margot sat in Vince Carver’s cart on the way home. The preacher in the Coast town had said: “I now join you together in holy wedlock, and pronounce you man and wife after God’s ordinance.” So what did Vince Carver’s angry silence matter?—or Jasper’s sheep’s-eye glances? Lonzo Smith and Lias’s little brother Jake came along in the cart behind them. Even the little boy’s face seemed hostile as he watched this strange woman who was going home with them; but Margot’s head reared high above the hard thoughts which she imagined they were thinking of her; she belonged to Lias now, and she would ride in her Pain-law’s cart with Lias when Lias told her she could.

  Lias’s face was set straight toward the northwest where home lay in watery autumn light under long-leaf pines that leaned away from the wind’s chill warnings of winter. There were fields there that he had broken and planted and laid by all by himself. He had some rights there, even if Pa was so mad that he might not give Lias the new ground that was due him, and an ox, and help with a house. Lias would build Margot a house; he would have a log-raisin’, and tell the men and boys from all around to come; he would butcher beeves and hogs, and cook them over white oak-coals in shallow pits in the ground. Margot would cook chicken-and-rice, and spiderfuls of rising-bread, and potato pies. Whose potatoes, pigs, beeves, chickens? Lias tightened his jaw on his uneasiness; you never knew what Pa might do, and he was all-fired mad over Lias’s marrying this woman. He had the wrong notion about Margot, Lias knew. And nobody knew her as well as Lias knew her, so Lias thought. Just as on the night when he had first seen her, so now he could feel her presence within himself, even though she was three foot away from him, there on the seat of the cart. And he weren’t a-feared when he thought of her. “A pillar of a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.” His thoughts swerved suddenly away from sacrilege, for those were words from a sermon that he had heard at the Coast; God led the people through the wilderness with a pillar of a cloud by day to lead them the way, and a pillar of fire by night to give them light. The likeness of those shining things to Margot teased his thoughts, leading them away from sermons back to Margot, where all his thoughts homed like a drove of bees that bear their sweetness ever to the same hive, pushing under the low edge of the gum into the warm murmur and the bitter-sweet climate of honey-making. It seemed a sin to Lias to think of sermons and a woman at the same time; but to him Margot was like a cloud billowing along, going nobody knew where; and to him she was like fire by night, lovely as live blood, and burning with heat that hurts if it come too close. Well he knew that loving a woman overmuch is evil, a thing to guard against, a taint of the flesh to pray away; a man must beget children after him, but he must not worship another body. Lias knew the sin of mixing Margot with higher things; women should be kept in their places, and the rest of a man’s time should be taken up with work and clean pleasures. He must put Margot where she belonged in his mind, and plan how he was to build her a house fitten for her to live in. He couldn’t build her a house yet, not till Pa softened up. They would have to sleep in the loft, with Jasper in the other bed in Cean’s place with Jake. Or maybe Ma would give Margot the spare room.

  Margot’s garments were under the seat of the cart in a small hide trunk bound with tin bands. She sat above her belongings beside Vince, who was driving. Jasper and Lias sat behind on the floor of the cart that was padded with folded quilts. Each man’s thoughts settled about his head in a cloud of abstraction. Lias’s thinking was black and turbid, but nonetheless splendid, like an ominous sky shot through with lightning’s jagged javelins. Jasper was a-feared for Lias, and for the consequences of Pa’s anger over this upstart marriage; and he was a-feared of the proud, white woman, Margot, whose face and body moved in slumberous beauty that disquieted him. Vince Carver could take the hide offen yore soul without raisin’ his voice. But most of all, Jasper was a-feared for his mother, who had no expectation of this daughter-in-law thrust upon her—a fine, stiff-necked daughter-in-law from the Coast, dressed in flounces and a black bonnet with blossoms on it. Would this Margot look down on his mother, who had rough, brown hands and weak, near-sighted eyes? Would this woman, who laughed in her eyes while her lips were puckered closed, lie late abed while his mother cooked and churned and hoed?

  In Lonzo’s cart the thoughts were of other things: one saw a vast green sea with white ships that crossed from Trinidad to the New World, and away again to Singapore, and himself the master of one of those ships, high in its rigging, lashing a shaking sail; he did not know how he would lash it, but he would learn. The other saw a little brown woman with a meek face waiting at the end of his journey, her body bearing his son to meet him a little piece down the road.

  The oxen ambled along; white sand spilled from the backs of the wheels in gritty whispers. The skies were clouded over. The woods breathed quickly now in sharp gusts of wind; winter was upon them and they were afraid. The leaves of the trees were flushed with hectic coloring. Small wild trees trembled, turning their leaves this way, that way, any way, to escape the cold wind that breathed death upon them. The old pines sighed and sighed; winter would not kill their long glossy needles; they would retain their green grandeur, growing new needles as the old ones fell, so that no one could know aught of the season from their habit. But the maples would stand, dry and frayed as brush brooms propped against the sky; the oaks would stagger high like dead giant brier berry bushes; for the leaves of all save the pines, winter brought fluttering death and a wide grave on the earth, soaked with rain and hard sunlight, where they would rot insensibly as any human thing. The other living things would go away with the leaves; they would hide out in logs and caves in the dark cold until another year would cause the rattler’s pied-ed skin to slip upon his back, would cause the rabbits to nuzzle their soft noses together and join in proclaiming a new spring.

  A red maple leaf descended the air, tilted on one point on Vince Carver’s rough hat, brushed his humped shoulder, fell to the rut, where a wooden wheel flattened it into the sand. Vince Carver chucked to the ox and roused his body from its heavy quiet. No need to rip and rear. The thing was done. Best give Lias land and a team of oxen and a cow, and get him off. That woman!…He could not resolve his oppression into thought; this was feeling that added unto itself in the middle of his body, and left his head light and empty; it grew within him, feeding on his in’ards, his shame, his pride, his love for Lias. Lias was smart as a whip, quick to see a thing, and quicker to do it. He was butt-headed, too, wouldn’t listen to nobody. But that woman would learn him; y
es, wouldn’t she learn him! She’d learn ‘em all before she was through. She’d take Lias down to hell, that’s what she’d do. But Lias wasn’t to blame; he, Vince, was to blame. God was punishing him. He had loved Lias the best, and it was Lias she went after. And she got him. Jezebel! Slut! He had told Lias about her, and Lias wouldn’t listen. God had stopped Lias’s ears so that Vince could be punished through this son that he loved best; and Satan had stiffened Vince’s tongue with pride so that he wouldn’t speak out and tell Lias the whole truth. It was Satan against God; and Vince had lined up with Satan and his crowd when first ever he looked at that woman; now he was being punished. Vince dropped his head lower into his shoulders. He must take up his cross; he must shut his mouth and endure. Why had he ever thought that the dark might hide iniquity, that distance might silence evil, that secrecy might pass for virtue? Behold, the God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. Vince bowed his head, acknowledging his fault before a great Judge of infinite wisdom, and an unwinking eye, and astounding cleverness in devising punishments for His sinning children. No need to hate Lias and that woman. She would call him Pa, and he must call her by her first name. No need to hate her. This was his cup, and he must drink it. He comforted his spirit in thinking that she had sinned, too; and God would, without fail, brew her a bitter cup, too.

  Margot held her head serene above the sloping white hill of her shoulders that were hidden under black stuff, as was the smooth, deep pit of her bosom, and her arms, full-rounded and soft in the sleeves. Black goods sewed into a tight-waisted, full-skirted frock covered all of her body, down to the soft, heeled shoes. Only the white face and white hands came out with a put-on shame against the black. Her hands lay in her lap, the wrists softened by little frills of fine white cloth sewed into the sleeves. The set of her head and the prideful look in her face bespoke the beauty of her long slender body poised on long slender feet that were tilted on pretty heels of new English-manufactured shoes. Her body told its pride in her eyes that were clear and blue as water that conceals with clarity its true depth. Her eyes were as soft as the flesh in the inner curve of her elbow; they held the delicate sheen of the skin that was stretched taut over ankle-bones where blue veins beat softly and regularly, frangible blue gongs tolling the beat of her heart. Her glances fell ever and again and hovered before her body as though they said: This is not I that you see; no; you see heavy, black goods, but there are beneath this goods shimmering limbs that give off warmth like comforting white fire; there is skin, as fine-made as the silk of a morning-glory’s mouth, stretched across an ivory lattice-work of ribs, where secret flesh swells into pink breast-buds that are like buds of heavy flowers. Beauty possessed her, dwelling in her eyes, weighting them so that they fell from another’s scrutiny; beauty slowed her feet as she walked, so that the skin and the carefully fitted sockets of her bones, and the flesh that breathed and beat and nurtured itself, throbbed silently and smoothly as a diminutive creation within a vast creation, as a minute world within a mighty world, pursuing faithfully its little orbit of coarse loveliness, rounding methodically through its several seasons.

  She held her head serenely, though fear gnawed at her newfound security. Now she was married to a man whom she could love. All the others were chunky or tall, sweaty or new-washed, but they were all heavy-eyed, heavy-mouthed men. But this Lias, this boy, he was lean and clear-eyed; his mouth was unused to the taste of rum, and smelled clean against her mouth; his young beard was washed clean like the brown silk of corn that is washed in rain and dried in sun and wind; his hands held her firmly—they did not hide and slip and seek furtively about her body, they held her securely and desperately, as one holds a fortune of gold.

  She ignored the old man there on the seat beside her, hunched over the cowhide rein in his hand. His glance lay between the ears of an ox, like an ill-wish on the journey. She dismissed Jasper, her husband’s brother, as being young and foolish; true, he was older than Lias, but he was different. Jasper was young and would never be old, as some women are never old, but keep always in their eyes the uncertainty of a child. Now some women would settle to a marriage with a neighbor’s son, to tending a flock of chickens and a herd of goats and a brood of puny drooling children; some women would take the first man that was proffered them, and be satisfied. But not Margot Kimbrough! She had known what sort of man she wanted, and her heart would not rest with any man but that one man. She had loved Lias’s tall insolence when first ever she saw it—when he had asked for whisky and had drunk it straight, not because he liked it straight, but because he knew no better; he had swallowed the strong drink, and his eyes had made her mouth shut up its laughter at him. Oh; she loved this man! She loved this man with her heart; her arms were weary of another kind of love, her lips had been shut many times against other kisses than his, her feet had found their last dark interview; she loved this man with her heart.

  She lived by her mother’s Irish blood. Mary had danced the lilt on a big table in Kimbrough’s place the night before Margot was born. The men laughed about it till yet. And Margot had come catapulting into the world before her mother was scarce decently abed. Mary had laughed before them all because her child was so forward, but later, when nobody saw her, she turned to the wall and wept. She taught Margot the lilt long before the child could write her name; Mary’s words and ways impressed the child as the sun impresses, unnoticed, quietly, leaving layer upon layer of brown, light as dust, upon tender skin.

  Mary was ever wild and willful and her heart loved no one but herself. Micajah Kimbrough she did not love; he meant bread and meat and drink and carousal, and fine garments, and a place in which to show them, but she did not love him. She flung his food together on the rough table when he was hungry; she poured herself a stiff drink for every one that she poured for him when he had a mind to drink. But when she could do so and not anger him, she kept out of his way. There was a little island that lay in the river’s mouth where the ocean washed into the river. With only light rowing, the tide would take her down to the little island and the tide would bring her back when it was ready to come back. Since the time when she first came to the Coast town Mary had loved that little island. Back from sight of the ocean, underbrush was thick, palmettos grew head-high, bamboo vines scratched bloody streaks through her sleeves and across her cheeks. Live-oaks stood thick, crowning the island and trailing curtains of moss. Into this wilderness Mary would go, tramping carelessly, not caring if a rattler sang out suddenly and struck at her leg, for if one should, what did she care? She would lie down and die there; her blood would thicken and stop her heart with purple clots. In lower places where the salt water came inland, she would dawdle in the marsh grass, unafraid of a coral snake’s flick of a bite, for if a coral snake should bite her, she would lie down, face upward, and watch the sky change from light to dark and know that tomorrow she would not care if it were light or dark; then she would not go back to Cajy’s drunken fondling. No. She would forget him quite. Often as she lay with her body sunken in grass in a solitude of live-oaks stirred with sea wind she would forget Cajy and think of Ireland brooding over her little sea toward the Hebrides; she would think of her mother feeding her pigs, and could imagine her shading her eyes toward the south, toward Dublin and Liverpool. For from Liverpool the little ships sail out; and black, horny-tailed dragons are apt to carry down the ships to their sea-lairs and crunch the bones of little creatures who are foolish enough to be abroad in a domain of dragons. Ah, well she knew, did Mary, that she would never go back to the grunting pigs and the mud cottage with a thatched roof.

  Mary loved the outgoing tide, for it was going home. She could fancy it piling its crests yonder on the far coasts of Ireland.

  She would watch the receding tide as it surrendered the beach to sandpipers and gulls. Reluctant waves furled in along the beach, each shaking out its lacy ruffle of foam. Old, bedraggled foam moved futilely on muddy waves out yonder. Sometimes she would wade, pulling her heavy skirts to her knees, and would stand
in the way of the crusted foam, so that it broke against her legs with feather-sounds that were like minute kisses of innumerable minute mouths. Ever she would go away from the sea comforted by its voices that will linger in the ears as they linger in the ear of a seashell, ever to be heard for the listening, though the shell be far from the sea.

  Mary died of dropsy when Margot was fourteen years old. She died simply and sweetly, as any proper body should, as she had not lived. She died with her eyes fixed on far space beyond the smoke-stained rafters of her room. At the end, she quieted as though in overwhelming astonishment that stopped her breath; her pale mouth dropped open in wonder; her eyes held their wide and vacant stare till they were closed by a sick-nurse’s hand, as though her body had spoken in every dumb cell:This that I see cannot be! But what her eyes had sought, or what they saw, never did she tell.

  As the journey wore on, Margot’s head and shoulders drooped a little, as a stiff flower wilts against its will. The miles were long, heavy space through which the teams would not be hurried, although the men whistled and cracked the whips over their heads in the dismal cold air. Rain would bring winter any day now, and they must reach home before rain came.

  In the broad-bottomed carts the goods which the men had traded for slipped and tinkled and bounced about; gold pieces shuffled together in the leathern pouches in the men’s bosoms. The coarsely-woven woolen garments, bunched about their bodies, were warm and comforting. Margot caught her long cloak of sewn squirrel-skins close about her throat. The pink blossoms on her bonnet seemed out of place among the foliage above and beside the road. The leaves of the trees were blotched fever red and jaundice yellow as they died and loosed fragile holds on limbs that had given them sap through a length of days, and then inexplicably denied it.