Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  He finished his trading, jewing with the wool-stapler over the long-staple wool he had brought. Ever Cean sent her best wool to the Coast, parting off the long from the short, the coarse from the fine, in the washing; she would rather sell off her best wool for a high price, and gower along the best way she could with the sorriest grades for stockings and undershirts.

  Lonzo haggled with the bootmaker over the worth of the tanned hides he had brought. And he bought for Cean a pair of fringed doeskin moccasins such as redwomen wear. Cean was at home, suckling her two babies, Lonzo reckoned. She was the master-proud of her twin sons, James and John, born in the last hot summer-time. No danger of the Smith name running out. First thing you knew they’d have a pyore Smith Settlemint hyere, danged if they wouldn’t!

  The carts lumbered along on their way home from the Coast. Jake and Jasper had brought two carts this year, for Jasper was a’master-prosperous farmer; he was even talking of buying mules at the Coast to plow his fields. They were strong as oxen and ten times as fast, but the cheapest of them would cost nigh onto a hundred dollars apiece. Lonzo thought such doings would be a foolish waste of money inasmuch as oxen would serve as well. He would not care to trade all his hoard for an ugly-faced mule. Now a horse would be a different matter. But not to save his right arm from being cut off would Lonzo have told any soul of his fancy to buy a horse; they would think he was fitten for Bedlam!

  They came back across the creeks and sand-ridges, betwixt p’lmeters and scrub oaks; and their hearts were as light as their carts, for a Coast journey is a pleasuring time.

  As they neared the river that ran close to the old Carver place they could hear one of Jake’s hounds giving tongue deep in the river swamp: that would be some fox or wildcat or rabbit. Six mile t’ other side of the Carver place would be Lonzo’s place, with Cean waiting by the fire with a man-child of Lonzo’s on each arm for him; he knew that she would be glad to see him, since he had been gone all these long days at the Coast.

  When they came in sight of the Carver place, when the hounds ran, baying, down the trail to meet the carts, Lonzo and Jasper and Jake saw figures, many of them, standing yonder in front of the house. Lonzo strained his eyes to see, and his heart failed him. For he made out Cean’s figure, and all her children were about her. She was carrying one baby, and Maggie was carrying one….

  There was sickness or death or heavy trouble ahead of him. He gave his long whip a mighty crack in the still air above his tired ox.

  The days seemed dull and lonesome when Lonzo was gone to the Coast.

  Cean did not know why this should be. There was as much work as ever to fill her hands—more, if anything; there was but one mouth less to sit at her table and eat. The days were like all the other days when Lonzo was at home—the sun rose, noon came, dark fell, night lasted till the sun came again; but to Cean there was a strong difference. She was glad that Lonzo went to the Coast only once a year, for the two weeks seemed longer than any month when he was home.

  To pass the long hours, she spun after supper when the little children were in bed, or sewed or quilted with Maggie and Kissie by candle-light. Maggie had three quilt-tops of her own put away, and Kissie was working on her second one. Cean could sigh, if she had a will to, over her daughters’ long legs and swelling breasts and eyes that were learning more than their mother ever wished them to know of this world’s ways. Each of her girls had a homespun sack in the loft, filling it with saved goose feathers. Law! Cean would never have another feather bed of her own; she had too many daughters to save feathers for. Maggie, little as Cean liked the notion of it, was nighabout ready to marry right now, for she would be fifteen in December, the twenty-and-fifth day. And Kissie was but a year behind her. But what young stripling had Cean seen to whom she would be willing to give Maggie or Kissie as a wife? There was no man living good enough for her little girls, wide-eyed and innocent-hearted. But all the time she went on saving goose feathers, one plucking to Maggie, the next to Kissie; all the time she went on piecing quilts o’ winter evenings, and weaving lengths of homespun to bleach for the white sheets of their marriage beds; all the time she went on weaving fancy dress lengths, with short lengths of plain color to frill the neck and wristbands, and to flounce the foot of the full skirt. Lonzo said there was a linnen-mercer at the Coast; Cean coveted a length of linnen cloth to make her girls their wedding shifts when they should marry; and their top clothes should be of fine boughten stuff, if there were time and money for Lonzo to buy it. What made her dread their stepping off with a man, and yet plan ahead for it like she looked forward to it? She did not know. She went on saving the sorriest wool, too short for spinning, and planned bright-colored, tufted, woolen comforts for her daughters; she wove yellow homespun till Maggie and Kissie complained of helping her, asking her what she could ever find to do with so much yaller homespun to lie in the loft and rot. Cean answered such questions sharply:

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell ye no lies!”

  Sometimes she would watch Maggie out of the corner of her eye as the child went to the looking-glass when she thought no one saw her, when she smoothed her hair or fastened her neckband with her eyes set on those admiring eyes in the glass. Maggie was a gentle, brown-eyed thing, meek-hearted and pretty to look at, but when one of the children aggravated her beyond reason, she would slap him a-windin’ before ye could say scat….

  Always before she lay down to sleep, Cean climbed to the loft to see how her children slept; and she would find Maggie sleeping, her full young bosom rising and falling in slow breaths, the buxom length of her body as untroubled as her face. Cean would not go close to look into Maggie’s face, nor would she stand but for a moment watching her as she slept, for she could remember waking in years long gone to see her own mother standing above her bed, looking hard into her face. There had been something frightening in the look of her mother’s face, something that Cean had never understood until now. She would not for the world wake Maggie and let her see her mother staring at her….

  Cean had never loved her mother as she did now when she saw her own girls nighabout old enough to leave their mother’s roof for a strange man’s, now that she knew how her mother had loved her. She was walking the way her mother had walked before her, and never did she recognize that road until her mother was dead and her girls were grown about her. A pity it is that nighonto twenty year must come between a woman and her daughter that is the first fruit of her flesh and the very blood of her heart; a pity that Cean must feel as much a stranger to her own girls as her mother had felt toward her….

  How was she to tell her daughters all the things that she had learned, all the secrets that take root in the heart of a woman and grow into evergreen things and put out new leaves as the boxwood does, slowly and faithfully, year by year? She could not tell such things; she could only lean upon the foot of their bed with a candle in her hand; she could only pull the cover close about their throats where soon a hard hand would stray roughly; she could only rest her eyes a moment on their soft, child’s lips that had suckled at her breasts but a little while since, and soon would have a man’s kiss set hard upon them. No, she could tell them nothing more than her mother had told her—that a girl-child’s bosom grows when she begins to be a woman, that living with a man whom a woman loves will cause her body to swell and bring forth children that favor him. She could tell them little; she could let them see not one fear in her heart, nor one tear at the back of her eyes.

  But she could smooth the cover on their beds, bearing a candle for light in her hand; she could pray that the days and nights might go slowly, slowly…until these children were scattered here and yonder away from her.

  For some unknown reason, Cean was jumpy as a cat the day that Lonzo left for the Coast. She made Maggie sleep with her that night.

  She could not think what might ail her; she jumped at every noise and her heart was heavy as lead. Surely one of her children was sickening unawares, or some accident was lying in wait for
Lonzo, or some sickness was in her own blood, not yet having brought her down. All signs pointed to calamity. Straight out in front of her foot on the first morning that Lonzo was gone she saw one of her pins lying on the floor, and the point was sticking yonder the other way. Further than that, didn’t her right ear hum all day long so that by no shaking or turning of her head could she dislodge the sound? On the next morning, when she went to milk, she was halfway to the cow-pen before she noticed that she did not have the milk-piggin in her hand; never before in all her life had she done such a fool thing as that! She made a cross in the dirt with her left foot, and spat on it, and turned back to the house for the piggin. Now she knew that some ill-luck was close by. But worst of all, as she went to milk a little before dark, she found a snake-track across her path; she stooped on her hands and knees and rubbed it out with her face, to beat the luck, but the track had been there all the same, a warning in the sand!

  Through the next day, she stayed close to the house and took good pains to watch after the children. But when she went to milk that night, didn’t a rabbit run straight across her path in the failing light!

  That night she dreamed that she saw a green flame in the leftmost corner of the ceiling over her head; it stayed the same size, and it was too high for her frantic hands to reach it and put it out. Next morning, mulling over the dream, she could not figure it out. But it was a mortal bad sign.

  Three nights later, she remembered the dream when she waked and saw the leftmost corner of the ceiling over her head strangely lit by flames.

  The loft was afire! And in the loft were all her children, except the little twins in the cradle by the side of the bed!

  Outside in the yard, the hounds set up a baying. Cean climbed the ladder and shouted Maggie and Kissie awake. Smoke muffled everything; it burned her nose as acid poison would, and made her lungs seem hard-pumping bellows. The children were coughing and stirring in their sleep.

  Cean handed down the drowsy, lumpish children to Maggie at the foot of the ladder. Kissie carried them out to the front yard, where they lay on the cold sand of the boxwood walk. Cal stumbled about, half-asleep; his muscles jerked as though he were cold.

  Save for the howling of the hounds in the yard, everything was strangely quiet. Cean could hear the sparks popping in the timbers, and the soft roaring of fire gathering air in a draught to hasten its burning. She screamed to Maggie to get from under the loft hole. When the space below was clear, she dragged the chest across the floor and pushed it over the edge of the loft hole, and it fell, breaking loose its leathern hinges pegged with hickory pins. Cean piled her belongings into the dark hole of the loft opening and trusted to Maggie to throw them free of the house—quilts, bags of feathers, wool, the hair-bound trunk, feather beds, children’s mixed pairs of calfskin shoes. She felt her way through the boiling smoke; her eyes and nose burned as though fire was in them; she breathed bitter draughts of black air; tears flooded her face, though she was not weeping. When she knew that she could stay no longer, she went down the loft ladder and helped Maggie drag the things out the door to safety in the yard.

  The little twins cried where they lay yonder in the cradle in the yard. Lovedy and Wealthy took them up in their arms and hushed them. Little Vincent was wide awake, but he was too frightened to cry. Cean commanded her children as though they were little tugging oxen. When Cal cried, she boxed his ears till his head rang, and told him to tote out the cook-pots before the roof fell in on them all. They worked like ants in an ant-bed.

  When the roof fell in, showering red sparks far into the sky, and the flames rolled up into higher billows, Cean was yonder on the smokehouse pouring water on its roof. Maggie was drawing water, one hand over the other on the wellsweep as fast as they could go, till her hands blistered and the blisters broke. Cal and Kissie toted water to their mother, running so that the cold water from the full piggins sloshed on their legs and feet and made their teeth chatter with cold, though they did not notice it. Chickens cackled and guineas potracked, disturbed by this weird waking in the middle of the night.

  Out in the front yard, Cean’s children huddled among her piled possessions, lit by flames of her burning home. Lovedy held one little squalling twin, and Wealthy, who was only six herself, held the other. They were singing at the tops of their voices, trying to hush the yelling babies who wanted their mammy’s milk to hush their crying.

  But their mammy was yonder top o’ the smokehouse, trying to save Lonzo’s meat. She could not hear the brave, thin singing of the little girls’ voices, trying to hush the babies:

  “Bay-black sheep,

  Where’s yore lamb?

  Way low down in the valley;

  Buzzards and the butterflies a-pickin‘ out hit’s eyes;

  Pore little sheep cries Maa-maaa….”

  Little Vincent, two years old this very morning, if Cean had stopped to think, sat close to his big sister, Lovedy, and watched the house burn; he was afraid to cry, afraid to move; he could not hold himself still; his leaders jerked, his teeth chattered, but he did not once cry out for Mammy. But because he was so afraid, he wet through one of Maggie’s quilts and ruined it, for now it must be washed, and marriage quilts should be laid fresh on the bed so that dreams that are dreamed on that first night under new cover will come true if they are not told before breakfast of the next morning.

  The house was long in burning itself down to ashes, for the logs of it were bigger around than yore waist and the timbers were a hand’s-span thick. But after the first tall flames, there was no great danger to the smokehouse and the corn-crib.

  Cean and Maggie and Kissie and Cal came and huddled with the little children among the piled quilts, case-knives, washed wool, grease, gourds, bedding. The little company sat and watched the house burn down to flaming embers of logs–sills whence their feet had gone in and out, rough-hewn clapboards of the roof that had sheltered them. The heat burned their faces. Far around the house, the fields were lit with lurid light. Cean could see her cows huddled in fright yonder in the far corner of the cow-pen. Out behind her and her children, the hounds sat on their haunches, or loped about, baying; they were distraught with fear, too, but they bayed defiance at that flaming thing that menaced the woman and the little women and Cal, who fed them, and the little things that cried.

  The night spread, wild and black, above, for the light of the fire dimmed the stars. Cean took her twin sons on her lap and suckled them to sleep. Vincent laid his head on her knee, and after a while he went to sleep, too. Sweat dried on her body and made her feel the cold. She made Maggie hand quilts around; so they sat wrapped against the cold of the late night. Cean looked up at the sky, wondering what o’clock it could be; her clock lay face down, its pendulum still, under a pile of babies’ didies; never, after that night of lying out in the cold, would it keep true sun time again.

  The lips of the babies loosened on her breasts; she laid their limp bodies on a feather bed and covered them over, and fastened her bosom against the black night vapors. The children were quiet. Maggie spread out the beds, and Cean made the other children lie down and go to sleep.

  “Shet up and go to sleep,” she said.

  But their lips were tight shut, anyway.

  She walked a little way down the slope between the bare crepe-myrtle trees; she cupped her hands to her mouth; she filled her body with breath fit to burst her lights; she called for help, turning her face yonder toward her Ma’s and Pa’s place. Her cry went flying into the night, the weird distress call of these piny-woods, high and clear and long-drawn, sent on two long, distinct notes like the beginning of a terrible song going through the death-still woods in the night-time:

  She called again and again into the dark. Mayhap some soul had seen the glare in the sky and would know that Lonzo Smith’s place was burning down over yonder; for fear that they had not seen it, she would try and wake them. And they would come if they heard her; they would lash their oxen to a run, for they would know that somebody was in d
ire trouble—fire, or cruel danger of death, with no time for sending word.

  The hideous, piteous distress cry of the pinywoods went ringing out across the swamplands. And the lonesome echo of the cry returned into Cean’s face, breaking in mocking cries softly in her ears, “OO-OO-oo-oo!” lessening like her courage.

  O-oh, Lonzo! her heart shrieked. Oh, Lonzo! Come home to me—for yore house has burned down to the ground and yore little younguns are here in the cold….

  She hushed her calling; her hands fell away from her mouth. It was no use to call; Pa’s place was six mile off, and that was the nearest house. She had called with all the strength of her body, but that was not enough.

  She listened; if the night would hold very still for the space of a clock’s tick, mayhap, oh, mayhap! she would hear a cry coming from Margot’s in answer to her crying, or the sound of three gunshots to tell her that help was on the way. The answering wind might blow strong in her face from home, telling her to keep up heart. Tight-lipped, she faced the dark….

  An arm’s-length before her face, a night bird—an owl, or some such thing—lumbered by with dark wings fanning the cold air. Across Cean’s face, there passed the brief, wild scent of its flesh garbed in unwashed feathers. The sudden bird startled her so that all her body trembled.

  And no answer came, save a lonesome echo that mocked her cry. No sound could she hear but the soft roaring of the fire behind her in the ruined timbers of her home that Lonzo had built for her when she was young and pretty as a pine sapling, and merry-mouthed as a guinea-hen.

  No, there was no help. For the men were all at the Coast, trading and tippling and kissing the mouths of strange women. Lonzo, too! What did he care, and him merry-making yonder, leaving her alone to fight fire or to do any other hard thing that came along to be done? Had not she killed a painter oncet when Lonzo was gone yonder a-traipsing to the Coast, and her with a little youngun not yet cooled off from her body’s heat? And had Lonzo ever parted his lips to say a word about it? No. He went on, cold as a stone, deaf as a cypress log, blind as a bat, dumb as a bump on a log, saying nothing, doing nothing, but plant and crap, plant and crap, leaving her to herself like she was somebody not good enough for him since he was a man!…And now his house was burned down from over her head…and him yonder doing God knows what—smoothing a Coast woman’s legs, maybe. Hadn’t Margot told her how the best of men act up at the Coast, once they are out of sight of their wives and childurn? And God help the wives and childurn left alone with hound dogs and a charged shotgun to protect theirselves with! Cean leaned on the trunk of a crepe myrtle; the tree was cold and soothing on her cheek that was nigh blistered from the fire. Tears rolled down her face in the dark; her breaths came in a tempest of despair.