Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  When Margot’s child had come safely into the world without any great harm to itself or its mother, their hearts became light as white feathers. The very air had been heavy with fear that Margot might die. It was hard to say who was prouder of this fine child of Lias’s—Lias or Jasper. It was a handsome child, strangely like Lias from the day it was born. Straight across its forehead lay the mark of Lias’s high forehead; its nostrils spread at the side as Lias’s spread, as though he were always looking for trouble; its little finger nails lay clean on the flesh of its fingers, as Lias’s did, not buried in at the corners as most nails are. Oh, well did Margot know each finger nail, each pore of flesh by heart; long before this time she had studied out its features; now she could note each resemblance, strong or faint, which this little Lias bore to her Lias. For her this child would always be named Lias. But Lias reared and pitched and said that they might name the child anything, he did not care what, but his own name.

  So Margot named the child Vincent, but to her he was always but a little Lias. In truth, she loved him more than she had ever loved Lias, and that was a small miracle alongside the greater miracle of his lying, alive and with no little bone amiss, in her arms.

  After dinner, Lias held his son on his knee, sitting near the fire. Margot was asleep; Seen was resting in another room and had Fairby with her. Jasper and Jake were gone to the field. Lonzo was gone off home with word for Cean.

  For no reason, the thought came upon Lias, what will Bliss think of this?…He remembered—and tried to stop his remembering, and failed—how Bliss had cried herself half to death when Lias had told her long ago that this son of his was on its way to him and Margot. Since Bliss would not turn the fence rail to ask him to come and see her, he went boldly to her house with word of Fairby, and passed secret words with her, and she met him later by the river.…She kissed him hungrily, slipping her lips across his eyelids that still would tremble, after all this time that he had known her, at the touch of her. When he told her of Margot—only to make her jealous, only to punish her for being so high and mighty toward him—she stopped her kisses; she slapped his face and scratched his cheeks and bit his wrists for anger. Lias tried in vain to comfort her, but Bliss struck his mouth away from her mouth, and cried into his hair, and scratched red streaks across his face and hands. She cried and quarreled and beat him in the face, but ever his hard hands kept their hold on her waist. She talked many a hard word, but ever, through all her meaningless words, his mouth waited for her to hush her wild talk, waited to meet her mouth and bind her lips shut.

  A squirrel chattered…chattered…chattered. A blue jay sharply questioned his mate; she answered him quietly, as though she said: It is no great matter; they are only little people in whom you and I have no concern….

  Lias knew that he should not be remembering Bliss at such a time as this, with his first honest child in his arms and Margot lying there worn out with pain….

  But, Lord! how could he put Bliss out of his mind? She was forever there in his thoughts, light as a cork that will not stay under water unless you hold it there.

  The baby throve, and why shouldn’t it? Margot had no time for anything but that baby. Lias was put-out because Margot never waited on him any more, never jumped when he spoke, never asked him if there was anything she could do for him. Anyhow, there wasn’t anything she could do for him, because she was always doing for the baby. He could not stir her out of her stillness; he would call it stillness; he knew no better word. She was changed, and he could not change her back to what she had been. She hardly noticed him now that the baby was forever in her arms.

  When little Vince was a month old it was high time to lay him down and let him squall if he would. But, no! Margot lugged him with her everywhere, and could not bear for him to wail once. If he but opened his mouth to cry, she would shut it with a kiss of her mouth or milk of her breast. She did not even notice that Lias was glooming and sulling….

  When little Vince was little more than a month old, Lias thought that he would show Margot a thing or two. He caught her by herself, and made as though he was going somewhere in a hurry, and said:

  “If ye need me, I’ll be at Old Man Corwin’s.….”

  He thought she might cry, maybe, or quarrel at him. But her hands only stilled for a minute, then went on patting the baby’s back as he lay on her shoulder. She said, slowly:

  “You, Lias….”

  She spoke to him as though she were a thousand years old and he were only a child, as though she said:There are many things that I would say to you if you were able to understand them.

  Her hands went on beating gently on the back of the baby, uneasy over a pain in its little gut.

  He had not aimed to see Bliss; he had only aimed to torment Margot. Now he had to go to see Bliss, to make Margot see that he was a man of his word.

  Lias went back to his old sulling way. Margot would not let that child rest in its cradle where it belonged. She had to sleep with it in her arms, betwixt her and Lias.

  So Lias didn’t do a thing but move to the loft, and sleep there with Jasper and Jake. Enough of anything is enough….

  Jasper and Jake worked the crops at Pa’s place. Lias helped them out when he had to, but Jasper mostly let him be.

  Margot’s Vince was nigh onto half a year old when it came about that Jasper nigh murdered Lias.

  It all so disturbed Margot that Vince vomited back her milk and was sick for a week. It all came about because Jasper for once lost his reason, and told his mother, who was foolish in her mind, a thing that lay deep in his mind.

  It happened in the winter-time when cold days come and there is little work to do but the feeding of stock or some such matter. A man’s hands are apt to be empty at such a time, and his mind full of this or that heavy matter—last year’s loss or next year’s gain, or a thing that he has done, or a thing that he desires to do.

  With Jasper it was a thing that he desired to do. He had weighed this matter in his mind, and now it would seem a light and easy matter, and then it would seem a heavy, dangerous thing; now he thought it was his bounden duty, next he knew that it was his liking for Margot that ate like a canker inside him.

  Ma had second sight; she would know what was the wise thing to do. He would propound this matter to Ma.…But he would hide himself, and these others, inside a wild story, and so he would receive Ma’s second wisdom without her knowing that she gave it. He and his Ma were, and had ever been, close to one another; he could tell her nighabout anything.…But he would come up on her blind side with this matter….

  Nowadays she had a way of sitting lonesomely by the fire in her room, knitting their stockings with never a dropped stitch, turning the heels as smoothly as when she had good eyesight. She had knitted little cream-colored half-mittens for all of Cean’s girl-children, and some for Fairby, too. When she pulled the little mittens on Fairby’s hands, Fairby laughed and said:

  “I spec’ ye lef’ the fingers out so’s ye could al’ays tell if my hands be’s washed, didn’t ye, Granny?” Seen thought that was a master-smart thing for Fairby to think up!

  Jasper sat close to Ma’s knees on this side of the closed door. Out yonder Margot was cooking dinner with Vincent in her arms. Lias was sewing boots for himself in the thin sunshine on the back door-step. Jake was gone gallivantin’ off to a neighbor’s. Fairby was at her Aint Cean’s, where she stayed any time she got the chance.

  Jasper rubbed his hands together, then let them swing between his knees. He studied the slow-burning fire; he set his glance yonder within a bright cave of coals; the cave was dusted over with fine white ashes, like frost on rosy persimmons.

  Jasper could put this thing into few words; he had figured it all out in his mind many times:

  “Ma, I hyeard a funny thing the other day….”

  The click of her knitting-needles beat softly between her hands, regular as clock-ticks, busy as breathing. Inside the rosy cave yonder, heat, quivering and flame-colored, stirred
not at all, but Jasper knew that it was strong enough to melt a metal hard and cold as iron.

  “Somebody was a-tellin’ me.… I cain’t reckolict jest who… that they’s a man acrost the river….”

  Jasper went on easily: the man was unfaithful to his wife, and was taken up with another woman, and could not love his wife for that other woman; the man had a brother who would, for the saying of the words, marry his brother’s wife and leave his brother free to marry the neighbor woman.… And a likely arrangement it would be, in Jasper’s opinion, if the man would but put his wife away and marry the woman he was running after….

  Seen’s eyes squinted always; upon her bony brow there was drawn a lasting frown of sorrow. Softly she chucked her tongue between her teeth:

  “Tsck-tsck! Devil’s doin’s….”

  She had not waited for him to ask for her second sight upon this matter; a man does not put his lawful wife away for any cause save one that is justified by Holy Writ.

  Jasper was taken back; he could not for the life of him know whether she understood the thing in his heart, or not. He was sorry he had made mention of it to her.

  All day long the thought oppressed him—I might have kept that matter to myself….

  When Ma blabbed it all out, Jasper was not surprised. It was near supper-time when she called Lias into her room. Jasper was beside the fire in the big room, sharpening the blade of his knife on a little whetstone. His heart quaked when he heard his mother call Lias. He spat again on the little whetrock and rubbed his knife-blade around and around in the spittle. The palms of his hands were suddenly moist. He could hear his mother’s voice past the closed door, but he could not make out her words.

  Then Lias jerked open Ma’s door and called Jasper. Jasper laid down his knife and whetrock and went into Ma’s room. Margot had not noticed, since her ears were filled with the sound of frying spareribs on the hearth. Vince lay on a pallet in reach of her hand; he knocked Fairby’s blue beads on a crock and laughed to hear the noise.

  Jasper went into his mother’s room and closed the door softly. Lias was leaning a little forward on the hearth, with his hands behind him. Between his long, stilted legs, Jasper could see fiery tunnels in the coals, towers of flame, and ashes that were furry-white like frost.

  Jasper went up to the fireplace, not daring to look into Lias’s face that was green with anger. Lias said:

  “So now ye’re totin’ tales t’ Ma!”

  Jasper stumbled a little over his words:

  “No, I don’t know as I am. What are ye a-talkin’ about?”

  “Ma says that ye be willin’ to marry Margot if I will but put her away.”

  Jasper looked at his Ma; she was holding her knitting close against her breast. Her voice trembled:

  “No, Lias. I said that hit mought be a likely thing to do.…If ye cannot give Bliss up, then set things right and marry her.…I said that if ye did put Margot away, she need not lack, since Jasper could make enough for us all to eat….”

  Jasper could think of nothing to say; anything he might say would be the wrong thing. Best keep quiet.

  Lias’s whole body strained toward Jasper through his clenched fists.

  “I reckon hit’s about time I learned ye how to tend t’ ye own business!“

  That angered Jasper; he flared back:

  “I reckon hit’il take somebody else besides you to learn me anything!“

  Lias knocked Jasper down in his tracks, and Seen rose out of her chair, screeching.

  Jasper clambered to his feet; his head was singing. Lias swung before his eyes. He struck Lias and reeled him back against the mantelpiece, and Lias’s head hit the corner of the mantelpiece. Blood wet the back of Lias’s head and matted his hair.

  Lias jumped onto Jasper as a painter lights down on a deer; he clung to him in a passion of murderous desire and wrenched his head around as though he would wring it off. Seen cowered in a corner, crying piteously. Margot came, wild-eyed, to the door and stood there shivering and fearstruck, saying not a word.

  The two men were equals; neither could best the other, for they were nearly of a size, nearly of a weight. They fell to the floor boards, heavy as a shot steer; they rolled about, wresting their weight each from the other, giving their weight one hard upon the other. Their brother-faces, hideous with hate, clung passionately together. Their mouths grimaced in their beards, their eyes showed murder, their hands fumbled upon the straining mass of their bodies. Lias was speaking such words to Jasper as Seen quaked to hear; he was accusing Jasper of deeds for which men kill other men when they know of them. If Jasper could have got his hands to Lias’s throat, he would have choked him to death, but he could not get them there. Lias’s length and weight and striving were in the way. But the words danced in Jasper‘s mind, and in Margot’s, and in Seen’s—filthy, bestial words whose meanings are veiled in shame so that a woman will hardly admit that she ever heard such words before.

  They fought like dogs, each close upon the other’s throat, and snarling like brutes. Blood from Lias’s head smeared over Jasper’s hands, ran in slow streams and was slimy on his face.

  Seen came weakly into the middle of the room and fell in a swound on the floor, first time ever in her life she had swounded.

  Jasper and Lias got up from the floor, feeling ashamed of themselves, fearing that they had killed their old mother.

  Margot went for cold water to bring Seen to, making as though she had not seen the fight.

  Jasper lifted his Ma over to her bed, and Lias felt for her heartbeat through her dress. Jasper saw his Ma’s eyelids shake on her cheek, and knew suddenly that she was ’possuming.…But he said nothing. Brothers can find better work to do than drawing blood, one from the other. He had drawn blood from Lias’s head; mayhap he had cracked his skull. The brain’s a tender thing.…He said:

  “Go let Margot wash off yore head, Lias. They’s blood all over ye. I’ll see t’ Ma….”

  Lias went out the door, slinging his hair back with a thrust of his hand.

  Seen opened her eyes, and her face gave up slow tears of old age.

  “Oh, Jasper,“ she said, “I didn’t mean no harm, son….”

  He rubbed her hand a little, as though it was Fairby’s.

  “Hit’s all right, Ma. No harm done. I was all to blame.”

  No harm was done. You cannot live in the same house with a man and be brother to him and hate him. Jasper did not hate Lias, and he knew that Lias did not hate him.

  Anyhow, when you have done an evil thing, the only thing you can do is bury it and let it rot away like carrion in the earth.

  Chapter 14

  Cean was as good as another man in the field with Lonzo. And it was a good thing, too, for it looked like she would have nothing but gals for him. Her last, born in June, was another little slender-faced gal that they had named Caty Lucretia. Lonzo didn’t have much to say, but Cean reckoned he did wish she would have a boy or two, along and along.

  Caty, born nearly two years after Lovedy, was now three months old. Cean was skinny as a fence rail, but she could keep up with Lonzo in the field, except for a few times when she would give plum out and have to go to the house and lie down.

  Lonzo didn’t make her work in the field, like some men made their womenfolks. She liked it. The house was a noisy place that seemed to close in on her. Out in the field the quiet did her good and stopped her mind from straining after what it couldn’t have—things too plum fool to name, such as fine clothes and niggers to wait on her. Lord! what wouldn’t she give for some niggers now! You could buy them at the Coast, but a strong, young buck would cost more than Lonzo would ever have to trade off, and a wench came nearly as high as a buck. Sometime maybe there’d come an extry good year with the rains right and trading good, and then Lonzo could get a nigger.…No! There’d be a house to build for the black to live in and he’d have to be fed, besides. And one nigger wouldn’t do a dab of good; it would take enough to fill long rows of whitewashed quarters,
like the Coast planters had. They bought wenches and bucks and mated them, and let them breed, and in a few years there were crops of fine, fat blacks to pick cotton and grind cane and shuck corn and plow; or the owners could sell them off around the country for a profit. Oh, Cean knew there was no chance of that for her. She could work her fingers to the bone in the field beside Lonzo and she’d never live like the Coast ladies; they were diked out in silk cloth and breastpins; they could have a black lashed twenty-five times because maybe he didn’t bend low enough when they passed by in shining carioles. Those women toted a big iron ring heavy with keys to open the doors of full smokehouses here and yonder on the plantation; or rooms weighted down with big sea-chests full of pyore silver and stacks of boughten bed sheets made of linen from Ireland, or underground stores of rum and sweet wine from Spanish places, dried nuts or spice from Indy, and strange seasonings that come in frigates from ’way yonder crost the Chiny Sea. The big black cooks stir up cakes of sugar and spice for the little Coast children that are dressed in thin, white frocks and shiny shoes that their pas buy offen a ship instead of making them on an old rusty last from under the back side of the bed, as Lonzo must do.

  August heat bathed Cean’s body as she gathered in the cotton to make warm clothing and thick covering for her children. An old bonnet hung limp on her head, the tail of it drooping about her thin neck. Her lean shoulders were bent, causing her to seem less tall and not nearly so handsome as she had been eight years ago when she married Lonzo Smith. When she was a little thing her mother made her hold her shoulders straight. Now if some one had told her to hold back her shoulders, she might have straightened them for a little moment, but then she would have sighed and straightway her shoulders would have drooped again; for they were so tired; five times they had stooped, long and patiently, to carry a child; and many thousand times they had curved inward to rock one of those children to sleep. A million bolls of cotton her fingers had plucked, and a million rattling blades of corn her hands had sheaved. Great mounds of potatoes she had grabbled out of the earth, a little field of watermelons she had lugged home in her apron to give her children pleasure. No, she was tired, her body was no longer unyielding and valiant, eager for what lay before it. Once she had held her head as high as Lias’s, and her shoulders as straight—but not now.