Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  Cean listened while the breeze came through the shutter, fanning her face. Her thoughts were on her mother’s words, her eyes were on Maggie’s staggering steps that went in and out among the Cape jessamine bushes away from Margot’s outstretched arms. Margot always took up a lot of time with Maggie. Wasps went in and out of the tall hedge of boxwood that grew close along this side of the yard; they must have a nest there. Thick sunshine fell on the white cleanswept sand of the yard where Maggie’s little brogans made careless tracks. Yonder was Margot, stooping by the steps, her arms entreating Maggie; there was the child, teasing. Every now and then there came the long baying of old Major, Jake’s hound, from back of the house. He had been sickly for a day or two, and Jake was offering him fresh, sweet milk.…

  Suddenly, from around the corner of the house under the open window where Cean was standing, Major came running, with Jake close behind him. The dog loped to the end of the hedge, circled around by the front steps where Margot and Maggie were standing, and ran back past the window. Cean saw lather dripping from the dog’s sagging jaws; she screamed to Jake, “He’s mad…!” She kept repeating the words as she screamed; for fear beset her soul. She ran in a fury to the front door and snatched Maggie up from where Margot had set her inside the house, for she could not bear for those small arms and legs to be outside her frantic arms. Seen was screaming to Jake to come inside the house. Jake watched the old dog loping, loping, loping. He said:

  “Oh, Ma, he ain’t mad. He’s jest a-hurtin’ in his belly…. Hyare, Major!… Hyare, Major!…”

  Cean kept on screaming, not knowing what she did. The men came running from the cow-lot, bearing in their hands blocks of firewood or iron spikes or any other thing that they could lay their hands on. Lias ran through the house and brought out the gun from the mantel.

  Jake knew what Lias would do. Disaster nerved him to bitter resolution; he ran and grabbed up the weight that propped the front door open, ran straight in front of the dog that was hasseling foam like soap lather, and beat the broad head that he had stroked so many times, until he was sure that it was broken in. Major lifted his bleary, bloodshot eyes to Jake’s. Blood ran down his nose, his ears flopped back, his legs sagged under him, and he was dead.

  Jake stepped back and defied the men that bore a chunk of wood or an iron spike or a gun in their hands; his features were hard and thin; his lips could hardly form words for crying:

  “Ye thought ye’d kill ‘m, didn’t ye, ye….” And he cursed them with every nasty curse that he could call to mind.

  Vince laid his hand broadside on Jake’s hard-set jaw. “Shet up that short talk!”

  Jake shut up and went around the side of the house, his sobs breaking in his chest because he would not let them out.

  Cean ran out the back way to say something to him, but he flung off her hand and stormed at her, with his voice a little lowered so that Vince would not hear and slap him again:

  “Leave me alone! You done hit…a-hollerin’ like a loon… ‘mad-dog.’…” His choked grief mocked her screams; he flung off toward the branch, and she knew from the way that he stumbled that his eyes were so full of tears that he could not see the way.

  Vince dragged the dog off to the cornfield. Seen covered the bloody sand before the door with other white sand. Vince and Jasper dug a grave for little Jake’s dog that he had played with since he was knee-high to a duck. Vince had brought the puppy home when Jake was running around with his little behind naked, before ever Seen had put him into breeches.…Vince dug out the sandy loam, a spadeful at the time; Jasper and Vince lifted old Major and threw him in on his side, where his head crumpled down on his spotless breast and an ear flopped down, covering an eye. They piled the hole full of dirt, trampled it level, and went back to the house.

  Vince dreaded to go back and face Jake; he’d give anything if he hadn’t slapped his boy. The little feller hadn’t known what he was sayin’. Vince was heartsick; he had been a boy once; looks like he’d learn how to manage his boys; but on he went, making one blunder after another.

  Cean made Lonzo wait until late, hoping that Jake would come back before they started for home. But Jake didn’t come, and finally Cean went off home with Lonzo.

  He was off down by the river on the sandbar where the bright-green willows drooped in little lifts of wind that came and went on the river. The sand was coarse and clean-smelling under his nose. Down there, two foot away from his feet, river water lapped softly at the bank. Little ripples ran away to join the full deep current that flowed farther out beyond a black greasy-looking log that had been stuck there as far back as he could remember. Wind stirred the coarse brown hair on the back of his head and the fine gold hairs on the backs of his arms stretched above his head. His hard male sobs slackened and ceased. He had cried himself out. Hit weren’t no use to cry.

  Coolness came down through the air, and the little willows shivered. Night was coming on, but Jake lay there, not caring, for nobody loved him now—not Ma, nor Pa, nor Cean, nor even Major. He ground his forehead into the sand that was wet from his crying. His jaw still ached where his Pa had slapped him. And Cean had come a-traipsin’ out the back door to watch him cry, with Maggie a-taggin’ at her heels to gape and stare at him. Now he hated Cean as much as ever he had loved her when they used to sleep together in the loft, and Cean would squeeze her arms around him, and he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. It was a little like the way the wind was stirring now.

  He turned on his side so that he could feel the weight of her arm around him, and her breath on the back of his neck. He lay so for a long time, remembering. But not for too long, for this was cool night wind gathering to blow. And he was not a little boy any more, as he had been when Cean had loved him.

  Tillitha Kissiah, Cean’s second daughter, was born in late October, but never could they persuade Jake to ride over with them and see Cean’s new baby.

  Ma laughed and told about the little cloak that Lonzo had made for the baby from the soft skins of young rabbits that he had caught in their nest-es. He had cured the skins, and softened them, and sewed them together in a little cloak as something to surprise Cean with.

  Jake’s lips sneered as soon as his back was turned.

  Chapter 9

  Kissie gave Cean little trouble, even from the day she was born. She lay in her cradle and, slept while Cean went about her work. Magnolia played about the yard while Cean washed or cooked, never allowed to stray beyond reach of her mother’s voice. Cean always had the child on her inner mind as a loved burden, giving it up never, even when it could be lifted for a time, as when Lonzo would ride to his father’s with one of his cows tied to the back of the cart, or to Vince Carver’s to swap a pig or a load of corn. Cean would wash Maggie and dress her in a clean apron and the starched bonnet that her Granny had made for her; the tail of the bonnet fell about her little shoulders that set like Lonzo’s; her swarthy face, with a knowin’ look like Lonzo’s, would peer out of the ruffled brim of the bonnet like a little coon’s from among bright leaves. Cean would wave good-by to Maggie sitting there so proudly beside Lonzo as the cart disappeared around the slough of the swamp at the bottom of the slope. Her heart would tug after the little body. Would Lonzo take care to keep it from falling under the cart-wheel? Would he remember to keep his eyes on it around strange cow-lots and among other folkses’ hound-dogs that didn’t know not to bark at, and bite, this little body?…Oh, she wouldn’t take a cartload of gold for that little body with its head hidden in a stiff white bonnet that its Granny had made to keep the hot sun offen its head! “God love it,” she would murmur as she turned back to her house, to her work and the other child depending on her. God, love it! when it’s out of my sight and out of my reach!…All day she would be raising her eyes to look for the loved figure, would be opening her mouth to call the little name.

  The child was the nigh like Lonzo!—solemn-mouthed, quiet-like, playing by herself for hours at a stretch, and never caring about another
soul. She had stopped her whining after Cean as soon as she got a little growth on her. It always made Cean feel sad when she remembered that the first child had its mother to itself hardly any time at all before its sister scrouged itself into their mother’s heart, and the older one had to grow on off by itself and get out of the way. Ma said that it was meant to be like that, but Cean felt that she had never rocked Magnolia enough, had never mothered her enough. Even her mother’s milk had been taken out of that first child’s mouth, because the jealous presence of the second child was poison.

  But the little Kissie—hit were too sweet a child fer anybody, even Maggie—to hold anything ag’in’ hit! It had not even cost its mother many hard pains, and it had slept through ‘most every day since its birth, in the deep walnut cradle where Maggie slept at night while the littlest one lay close against its mother.…For even Maggie’s place in bed between her Ma and Pa had been taken by the little new Kissie.

  But both children had room enough in Cean’s heart. There was no crowding there. Ma said that a mother’s heart stretched just as her body did when she was carrying a child.…But the heart never rid itself of its burden; it stretched, and stretched again with each new child, being always swollen and tender and hurting. As the babies grew into tall broad-shouldered men and thick-hipped women, there must be more stretching until the heart was fit to burst sometimes with its load. For never did a mother’s heart lose one jot nor tittle of its load: if a child died, still its Ma carried it about with her always, a dead weight; if a grown man got into trouble, his mother added that to her load, trying to bear it for him as she had borne his weight within her, safe from cold and sun and grief, long ago. Ma said that was why mothers always fought against dying, even when they were old and tuckered out. She had closed a many a pair of old eyes and weighted the unwilling lids with coppers to keep them shut; she had folded a many a pair of old hands onto still chests. And Ma said that nobody fought death so hard as a mother did, who left children behind her to root-pig-or-die-pore in a hard old world.

  There was Old Aint Viney Vickers who died last year, past ninety, with her sons and grandsons doing well on their own hooks here and yonder, and her granddaughters all married off with families of their own. But Old Aint Viney didn’t want to go; she begged them to do something for her; she didn’t want to die and leave her children to scuffle along best way they could without no Pa nor Ma; she could not die in peace for fear that her boys and grandboys would be drug off to war, as her old man and her brothers were in ‘seventy-six, and every other male that was big enough to walk and tote his rations on his back. Old Aint Viney’s children soothed her talk of war; they wouldn’t be no war. But she grew all the more frantic:

  “Ye laugh and go on yore way.… Ye’re young…. Ye’d better listen t’ me.… They’ll be a war wussen ye ever hyeard tell of… Old eyes is keener than young ans.…“

  Truth to tell, her words had scared all who heard her, for she was credited with second sight; she had foretold her old man’s passing to the day and hour. She claimed to see things by faith. Many was the cartload of sparkin’ young couples that drove to her house o’ Sabbath days to ask her their fortune. She would tell it in tea grounds: a long road winding to the east was maybe a Coast journey; a cross meant trouble in love; tiny mounds of soggy leaves on the other side of a heavy clot of leaves was marriage and…The fortune would break into Old Aint Viney’s high-voiced cackling, guffawing and back-slapping of the young bucks, and painful proud blushings of two lovers who wished no finer fortune than marriage with one other and a caravan of babies.

  Cean wished that she and Lonzo had gone to ask Old Aint Viney Vickers what their fortune would be. Now she must live it out to see; it lay there before her, near as the next day, but she could not see her hand before her face into it.…Would there be a war while she lived? Lonzo said it was a fool notion. Who wanted to fight? You couldn’t get up a war if nobody wanted to fight.

  A war would be a bad thing. Men took sides and tried their best to kill one other, and a many a one was killed and left to the buzzards. Pa’s Uncle Jasper was killed in the war with the Redcoats. He had been dead, let’s see—law me! moren half a hundred years. The worst thing about war was that men had to go whether they wanted to or not. You couldn’t hide out; they had your name, and they’d send a detail for you. She hoped she’d never live long enough to see them come and get Lonzo and carry him off to be killed, along with Jake and the others.

  But thoughts of fighting did not often disturb Cean’s mind. Older ones spoke of a war over the niggers, but that was fool talk. There weren’t a nigger nigher than the Coast, where they raised cotton and rice by the hundred acre. Why folks could wish for slave niggers Cean couldn’t guess! She heard tell that some of the niggers that were smuggled in off of the ships couldn’t talk a word, and an overseer had to drive them like so many cattle down the rows of cotton or into the wet bottoms to plant rice where a many a one died of moccasin bite. Fine Coast women had nigger wenches in their houses to cook their rations and wash their children’s faces.… Cean wouldn’t abide that! She couldn’t stand a black E-thopian hand on Maggie’s or Kissie’s mouth, or anywhere here in her house with its clean-scrubbed floor and thick rafters bracing the roof overhead.

  When they needed more room Lonzo would ceil the room and make a loft for another room. Now there was room aplenty; and truth to tell, Cean liked the dim space overhead where the corners were veiled with dusty cobwebs that the little gray spiders had woven, bringing good luck to this house. She loved her house; from the beams of it hung her bronze-red pods of pepper drying for sausage seasoning, her beans strung to dry for winter use, her seeds gathered fresh, season by season, and tied in clean rags, to hang safe from the rats’ greedy teeth. She hated the wild, slick-tailed brown rats that scuttled across the rafters in the night.

  Now the little white rat had been a different matter; he had eaten the choicest bits of everything, waiting behind the slats for Cean to let him out so that he could climb her arm and cling about her throat. Cean had loved that little dumb-fool critter, but it had died—Ma said because God didn’t intend for women to fondle anything but a baby. Cean had wropped up the stiff white thing that had died, leaving its pink eyes open, and had buried it by the root of the pink crepe myrtle that her mother had sent her by Lonzo.

  She buried her dead biddies in the row of boxwood; a shoat of Lonzo’s that had sickened and died was buried under the Cape jessamine bush by the door. Dead things made the best kind of earth for things to grow in.…All these things buried about her house added to it, somehow; the yard was lived in now, like the house; each bush had something added to it, other than enrichment of the soil, for, together with its history of planting and rain and sun and dark, each bush now had, close by its seeking root, flesh that had grunted or peeped or squeaked while it lived. It gave Cean satisfaction to know about it.

  She hardly ever went to her Ma’s now. She was satisfied to stay home—keeping things going, she called it. When she had come back from Ma’s, before Kissie was a baby, she found the clock run down. Lonzo had forgotten to wind it; the house felt as though it was dead, for it seemed to Cean that the ticking of her clock was like quick breathing to her house or the placid beating of a heart. When the clock was going again, she felt that everything was all right.

  She would cast her eyes about the big room of her house, and her face would soften in content. Yonder on the wall hung the little looking-glass that Lonzo had brought from the Coast so she could see to comb her hair; on the narrow shelf below the looking-glass lay the fine bone-backed comb and the bristle hair-brush, and the little pipkin of oint-ment compounded of witch-hazel tea and rose leaves, to soothe her lips and hands from winter chapping. On her floor were yellow shuck rugs of her own plaiting and sewing, and deep bearskin rugs from the backs of the honey-robbing, lamb-stealing beasts that Lias, dare-devil! had killed in the swamp. Far in the corner was her bed, and close beside it was the cradle where her babies would s
leep, each in its time. This was what her marriage had brought her—a room, quiet save for the soft voices of babies and the hurried ticking of a clock. And she was content. Why else did she marry Lonzo than to keep his house and raise his children?

  Sometimes she wondered how she could tell that Lonzo cared about her at all, for he had never told her that he thought a heap of her, in so many words. He had courted her as other men did their courting, sidling across a room to stand beside her at a pinder-b’iling, or a candy-pull, or a nubbin-grabbin’. She had courted him as other girls courted, with lowered eyes hiding their desire for him and the desire for his presence beside her until one of them should die. Never did he speak fine words into her ear, nor make fine promises. She knew how many acres Rowan Smith owned, and could guess what Lonzo’s share would be; he knew what sort of a housekeeper she would be, from the looks of her mother’s house. What was the need of words? And truth to tell, words would have destroyed something that lay soft in his eyes when he looked upon her, choosing her to be his own, as he would judge the merits of a fine heifer, or a stretch of timberland, deciding, “I want that for mine!” She had gone meekly to him, quiescent under his choosing, as a pretty, well-tempered heifer follows the gentle pull of a rope in a stranger’s hand to whom she now belongs, as the woods take upon themselves new ownership that descends like a season upon them that are at any season’s will. Words would have shattered the intimacy into which they entered at any casual gathering of young people when their hands met with exquisite stealth and drew apart again trembling for hunger of that other hand, when their beings ached, one for the other, with a pain they could not understand, a pain which nearness, or any other thing, could never quite appease.

  It was at a cane-grinding at Rowan Smith’s place when Lonzo spoke out and changed Cean’s heart from its fluttering and failing to a steady, happy beat. That was nearly three years ago, before this house and these babies were even thought about. She and Lonzo had been near each other many times, but always there was the hot strangling in her throat when he was near by; and to save her life she could think of no word to say, except, “Hit do look like rain,” or, “Hit air mighty hot fer this time o’ year.” But at the cane-grinding —