“I knew it.…I couldn’t sleep. Something told me to come.… I made Jasper bring me. Lias thought I was the master fool. Jasper’s out there in the cold now.”
She threw her wraps off, and discussed with Dicie a hasty means of bringing this child to its birth before it killed its mother.
After that, Lonzo heaped up the fire and boiled great pots of water; he lifted Cean when she was a dead weight in his arms; he thought that she was already dead, because her eyelids did not even quiver when he called her little un.…for she would have given some sign if she had heard….
There was a baby’s angry, repeated crying; the sound of it eased the agony in Seen’s eyes. Lonzo laid Cean down; still her eyelids didn’t flicker when he called her. He held the cord whence bright life had flowed from this woman’s body into his child, until that flow stopped; then he cut the cord forever since its use was past. He tied the shred of the child’s body back into itself, making it an entity, as one finishes something perfect. Cean had made this thing-a thing harder and prettier to do than weaving cloth or sewing a dress. She was not able to do this little last thing for it, so he did it for her. Then he sat down beside her, waiting for her face to regain its color and its meaning for him.
When she opened her eyes after a while, he could not answer a word to her fearful question. Nor did he know that she was afraid to look on the little thing that she had made so carefully. It was Lias’s Margot who laughed away Cean’s fears, saying:
“Just as fine as a fiddle. They don’t make them any finer….”
Lonzo learned from Margot that Cean’s child was a girl, and all the women laughed at his stupidity—all, except Cean. Truth to tell, he had not known—nor cared.
Dicie brought the little thing to the bed for it to lie beside its mother. Margot asked:
“Now what is her name?”
Cean’s eyes lifted from the baby to Lonzo.
“Whatever Lonzo says….”
Her eyes went back to the little stranger in her arms, whom she had not expected and for whom she had no name. Her mind went all around and about this new thing in her arms as she lay there, while the other women hovered over the fireplace, a long way off, preparing a belated breakfast. Lonzo sat beside her, a part of her awakening from the dream that had encompassed all her life until now.…So it was a Her, like herself, to be a little girl—a big girl—a Woman, at last.…Cean’s senses were drugged with her past pain; she was unable to believe so much wonder; never would she have believed that the boy-child that had filled her heart until now would go so quickly into thin air, and leave her arms feeling no emptiness or disappointment, but filled with this wondrous woman-child.
Lonzo’s voice came from a long way off above her: “You liked them magnolia flowers….”
Cean’s thoughts took up the words—magnolias—high and white—and sweet-smelling—too pretty to be broken and wither in her dark house.…But here was a little bloom of some kind, broken for her, given to her to keep, to wear upon her breast as Coast women wear gold breastpins.
She called to the strange white woman by the fire:
“Her name’s Magnolia….”
Margot turned and came to the bed, smiling; her long white hands smoothed the cover and the pillow and the child and its mother.
Lonzo said:
“Cean, this is Lias’s Margot.”
The two women greeted each other with their eyes. Cean said:
“Her name’s Mary Magnolia….
They had forgotten Jasper out in the cold; now they called him in.
All their thoughts and all their desires were toward the little Mary Magnolia.
When Vince Carver had seen her, he went home and set down her name in the big Bible, with the day of her birth. Remembering the little puckered face of his first grandchild, he thought his first kind thought of Margot; for it was because of that woman’s knowledge of Coast ways that the child now slept in Cean’s arms instead of out there beside Elizabeth.…And Cean, too….
Not till days afterward, when her feet were white and withered under the oft-renewed poultices that Margot made, did Seen remember that it was Christmas morning when the baby was born—a day when back in Carolina they were riding from house to house over the countryside, eating syllabub and eggnog at neighbors’ houses, and shrieking “Christmas gift” to every passer-by. She said to Margot:
“I reckon you don’t like the sticks, where they don’t even know when it’s Christmas.”
Margot drooped over the feet of her husband’s mother, that were soft and white like boiled bacon. She said:
“I never cared for Coast ways. I wish folks would forget that ever I was there.”
Chapter 8
When Cean was going with her second child, Lonzo moved her to her Ma’s because she could hardly stand on her feet, much less wash and scrub and tote slops to the pigs. And the baby, Maggie, was a spoiled little trick, hanging to her mother’s skirts and screaming for dear life every time Cean got out of her sight.
When Lonzo carried Cean back to her mother’s, cracking the whip over the ox as they rounded the bend in the road, Vince felt that Cean was coming back where she belonged, under her father’s roof. He was unaware of his jealousy because Lonzo had Cean off there to himself; she was still a brown, thin-legged child to him, even though a little brown baby dragged at her skirts and another was on the way; he had never been easy in his mind that she was out yonder, six mile off, and had to take anything that Lonzo might put upon her, hard words or a whipping or what not.
Vince wanted to keep his family together. He’d be glad if Lonzo and Cean would move into the house so that they all could live together—he and his sons and his son-in-law plowing and planting together, their womenfolks churning and weaving and raising biddies together. That’s the way they did in the old days—Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
He wished that Lias wasn’t so anxious to get off to himself in a house of his own. Why build three houses when one house will do? He had put Lias off last spring with, “I’ll give ye a third of all I make; ye kaint better that by yeself….” And again this spring Lias was anxious to cut loose and do for himself; Vince put him off again: “Wait another year; they’s plenty of time.…“
But Lias was discontented. He found fault with the cooking; he complained that the beds needed sunning; he stormed at Margot to stop primping and learn to put enough salt in the butter. Last fall he had brought a fine newfangled oven home from the Coast, and it was sitting on its three legs on the hearth in his and Margot’s room now, without even the new burnt offen hit; he sulled when his Ma had offered to bake biscuits in it one time, saying, “Hit’s fer me own house….”
Lias was restless and ugly-tempered as a young bull; his eyes fairly danced in his head when anybody crossed him.
Once Margot crossed him and got her jaws slapped for her trouble. They were all sitting at the eating-table, eating supper. Jake had brought in a fine mess of bream and jack from the creek, and Margot had fried them brown for supper. At supper, she waited on the menfolks’ plates, going behind the chairs, helping each plate from a bakerful of hot fish in her hand. She laid a big jack on Lias’s plate, leaning close over his shoulder as she helped his plate. Her cheek lay for half a moment against his cheek; he smelled the warm, sweetish scent that breathed from her bosom. Cean, just to make talk, said:
“Blest if Margot don’t al’ays save the biggest fish fer Lias!”
They all laughed.
But Lias pushed back his plate and sulled:
“Don’t know as I want any fish!”
Seen spoke up and said:
“Why, Lias, we didn’t fix nothin’ but the fish ‘n’ grits ‘n’ corn-dodgers…!”
He said, “I don’t want nothin’,” and pushed back his chair.
Margot put her free hand on his shoulder.
“Now, Lias, you eat! You’ve worked hard all day. You’ve got to eat….”
She leaned close over him, like a light woman with
a mouth full of light words.
Lias’s face tightened all of a sudden, and he pushed her back from him; he looked hard into her eyes and cast off her hand.
“Didn’t ye hear me say I didn’t want nothin’?”
Margot stood holding the bakerful of hot fish that were cooling because Lias had a whim against fish all of a sudden; they wouldn’t be fit to eat, once they were cold. He could be such a fool when he wanted to be. She had tried herself frying the fish so he’d enjoy them; he liked fresh-caught fish, and everybody knew it; he wanted to shame her, that was all. She had put herself out; her back was fit to break from stooping by the fireplace; she HAD saved back the best fish for Lias, and Cean, like a fool, had to go and make mention of it!
She gave Lias back his hard look, telling him with her eyes:
“I ain’t a-feared of ye. Ye’re only a tall, uppity countryman. I am from the Coast, if ye will but recollect a little.”
With her mouth she told him:
“I reckon ye’re no better than the rest of us to eat fish!”
She was NOT a-feared of him. She laughed and went on talking:
“But maybe ye’d like a pot o’ stewed swan’s tongues for tomorrow night’s supper!” She turned to Seen. “Ma, ask around ...”
And then Lias’s hand slapped her a-windin’, and the fried fish were scattered all over the floor of the cooking-shed. She lifted her arm, afraid that he would strike her again; but with bunched lips and an angry brow he turned and walked out the back door.
Margot stood with her head high and her mouth crimping with shame and anger. She was mad at herself for having fended off another blow with her arm; she had let him see that she WAS a-feared of him. She sent a cry after him:
“You…Lias…!”
They finished the food that was on their plates. Margot stooped about the floor, picking up the scattered fish. Jasper pushed back his chair and picked up the big jack that lay beside his foot, its fins and tail burned brown and dry in hot grease. He laid it on top of the other fish when Margot passed his chair. Pa and Jake went on eating, but Jasper found that he was not a-hungry, and pushed his plate away. Seen dropped her eyes to her plate. Cean went on eating, too, but not because she was a-hungry; Maggie had to be fed on hot grits and butter, and, anyhow, Cean’s mouth kept twitching with unsaid words. Eating was the best way to keep her mouth out of mischief; this was shorely none of her affair!
When the others went on to bed, Margot hung about the fireplace, scrubbing out a black pot with sand and soap; dried peas had burned to the bottom of it while she was cooking dinner this morning. She was waiting for Lias to come in.
Jasper sat by the fire and whittled out a slingshot for no reason at all; he allowed in his mind that he would measure Lias’s length on the floorboards if Lias came in and hit Margot again. His hands were a little trembly with the knife. Whittling, with his mind somewhere else, like a fool he cut his finger, and Margot reached down oint-ment from the mantelpiece and held his hand in her hands and stopped the blood with hen’s oil. Jasper was a fool to say anything; in the way of a fool, he said the worst thing that he could have said, for pity is bad for a sore heart. He said:
“Lias hain’t got no business a-beatin’ ye like you was a dog…”
She pushed the back of her hand against her mouth to make her words come straight:
“He knows I’d get him swans’ tongues to eat if I knowed where there might be any.”
She rose and set back the pipkin of oint-ment.
She went on to bed, afraid to wait up for Lias; it might make him madder than ever.
Later, he came and lay down in the black dark, and he must have known that she was not asleep, for he stroked the long length of her arm that lay beside him, and gave her a short penitent kiss on her temple where her blood beat silently as a muted gong. She wanted to fling her arms about him and talk and talk and tell him many things, but she did not know how to put those things into any speech of common A-B-C’s.
No, it would please him best if she lay still and gave no sign that she understood that he was sorry that he had hit her as though she was his dog to beat on. She made as though she was asleep, but blue gongs thundered in her head.
Vince felt downright sorry for Margot when Lias was so hateful to her; but all in a minute he would know deep in his heart that she was getting what was coming to her. Secretly he was glad to see her go off down to the branch and stay a long time, after Lias had said some hard word to her. Nobody raised his voice to rebuke Lias for talking that way to Margot; she didn’t expect them to; she’d just be all the meeker to Lias and the rest….
Vince understood Lias…. Lias thought that he was dissatisfied because he didn’t have his own diggin’s and because Margot showed no signs of having a child. Here it had been more than a year, and she was still as straight as a peach-tree trunk. She was sinful, that’s what she was. And she was sinful in being vain of her looks. Seen had seen her combing her long black hair, combing and combing it to make it shine as it did, like the bolts of silk that were wrapped in homespun and laid high on the shelves of the Coast store-men; Margot’s hair was as like living silk as silk was like itself, and Vince knew it. And Margot poulticed her face with meal and buttermilk, and patted the stuff into the skin all over her body. Seen had seen her do it, and Margot had laughed and said that she must be pretty for Lias. She had scented herself for a long time after Lias had brought her home with him. Maybe her scent was used up now. Oh, Vince could read that woman like a book. She tempted Lias, that’s what, and Lias hated her for it. Vince knew how Lias felt; never in the world would he have mentioned anything beyond corn or cotton or a brood sow to Lias, but he knew how Lias felt. And he understood that restlessness, that bull-headedness. Hadn’t he felt that way when HE was young? Could he rest at home? No! He had to come off down here and bury hisself in the backwoods on the Indian Bank of the Alatamaha where settle-mints are sca’ce as hens’ teeth; he had put his littlest child underground long ago, and now he must tough out the rest of his life away from his people. Right now he did not even know if his father was alive or dead. His old mother was gone. He had left her up there, dead from the hips down, from a fall out of the doorstep. On one of his trips to the Coast—it was the year when Lias and Jasper had first gone with him when they were yearling-sized boys, the year ’twenty-eight, if Vince didn’t mistake—he had found two letters that had come down from Carolina by post. The letters were soiled and dog-eared. The trader, Villalonga, the Spaniard, had kept them for months, expecting Vince in the fall. One of the letters bore a date in January; the other was penned in June. The first letter was set by his mother’s hand, weak and quavery, unlike the fine samples that she had set long ago for him to copy when she was teaching him to write, “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop; The wages of sin is death.” If he tried, he could nighbout remember that letter now, word for word, without going to reach it out of the chest to see:
Dear Son I take my Pen in hand to let you Know that I am Well Hoping this find you the Same Evaline has a Fine Boy Susanna lost her Oldest in the Fall Hooping Cough Am mighty Poorly hope I will not have many More Months to lie here and complane it would Comfort my Heart if I could See you how is Cean and Elizabeth I never hear a Word no more than you was Dead Why cant you all Come Back to see Us Lovingly Mother.
The second letter was shorter than the first, but was folded like the first and likewise sealed with a wafer:
Vince Carver, Ezquire
——————Ga.
Your mother died Monday Nineteenth Day of June of Paralsys of the Back she asked for you
Yrs rsptfly
His His
x John Carver x
mark mark
Never since then had any word come out of the sunny Carolina country; and ever afterward this land was lonelier for him and Seen, though never did he mention how he felt to Seen; she was dissatisfied enough without that. He had to keep up heart….
But sometime he was going t
o pack up, lock, stock, and barrel, and go back to his people. Word every ten years wasn’t enough. Your folks are your very bone and gristle. Here was Lias wanting to get off to himself. Sometime he’d see why his old Pa had wanted to keep him by him as long as he could. Oh, Vince understood Lias! Wasn’t he just like Lias when he was Lias’s age? That woman, and all. Lias wouldn’t be satisfied if you fed him honey out of a gold dish—not Lias; it wasn’t in him. When he got what he wanted, then he would want something else.
Vince was forever worrying: Cean was here in his house, unable to walk and pining for Lonzo, the cause of all her trouble; Lias was rearin’ to be off; Seen hobbled around on her old feet that were drawn into knots by the carelessness of that fool, Dicie Smith; Vince was getting so ailing that he could not stand the midday heat and Jasper had to bear the brunt of the farmwork. Oh, it did seem like his old years were harder than his young ones, and a man’s old years should be full of peace if his young ones are taken up with strife and worry. Vince wished he could go back to Carolina as Seen wanted to do; he wished he could spend the rest of his days there in peace, and die and be buried in a Christian country with a preacher to lay him away in a buryin’-ground full of folks gone on before. Down here the dead didn’t have a sermon preached over them till some journeyman preacher happened to come through. The screech-owls had kept him awake a many a night as they shivered in the trees close to the house, giving warning that Death was hiding about the house in wait for somebody; Vince would lie, unable to shut his eyes, wondering which one Death was waiting for.…Screech-owls can see Death; humans can’t.…How many times this spring had he picked a little green measuring-worm off his clothes, the sly spy sent on ahead by Death for the measurement of a coffin? A score of times he had found the worm and cast it away when it was halfway up his breeches leg or sleeve or shirt.… He’d hate to be laid away out here where the water stands when it rains a little, as it stands everywhere in this country. You’d rot s’ quick!…Eliza-beth’s grave had fallen in years back, and Vince had filled in the little sunken space that was the length and width of Eliza-beth; he knew that she was rotted flat, box and all. In the nights of fall he could hear pine-cones dropping down upon her with a soft, thumping sound. Seen kept the pine-needles swept off the sandy mound, but always there would be a few more needles the next day, each lying flat with its three glossy dead prongs spreading wide from the little brown cap at the end that had held it secure on a high bough through many winds. Never did he think, when he was young, that the lob-lolly pine would shed on him and his’n; he would but rush down to Georgy and make a fortune in rich land, and rush back home again; he had thought that different leaves would fall on him.…It worried him to see how he thought more about death, and dying, and such like, the older he grew.… His Ma’s eyes watered and her old face crimped up when he left for Georgy; Pa had wrung his hand until Vince had thought that Pa would take it off.…They knew what he was learning, and what Jasper and Lias and Jake would learn when they were old enough; but the bad part of it is that you die about the time you begin to learn a little something. Everybody ought to live as long as Methuselah, then they’d know something. But who would want to? Not Vince Carver. He wanted to go on first before Seen and the chillurn; he didn’t want to bury another’n o’ his’n; giving up Eliza-beth had nighabout killed him.
Lamb in His Bosom Page 9
