Dermid tried many a trick to make her laugh and come out of her long fit of sadness. He sang “A froggie went a-courtin’” till all the children smiled; but Cean would only break into weeping, thinking on how her children would be sour-faced as herself when they were as old. Dermid sang “Ever of thee I’m fondly dreaming,” and only made her the sadder because he could not carry such a feeling toward her into a far heaven. He cracked jokes and related many a tale of this or that wild adventure; he told tales of history; but Cean could not bear them once she knew that all the people of that time were long since dead.
Finally he argued at Cean: “Then since the life of a man is but a little time at most, we’d best laugh a little before it be too late….” But that was the simplest of all his foolish arguments, for how can one laugh into a face when one sees it to be a grinning skull beneath the skin? How is one to frolic when he may for the listening hear the beat of time in his ears like a tolling, and no heaven beyond!
Margot laughed at Dermid’s worry over Cean, and told him that a woman was like to be a fool at such a time, that all this would pass in the spring of next year. But Dermid could not believe but that Margot was laughing only to cheer him; he could not forget that Cean prophesied that never would she rise from her next childbed.
Late in an afternoon, Aryadne and Bethany strung long necklaces of four-o’clock flowers and brought them to Cean for her to wear about her neck. Because the necklaces minded her of heaven’s morning-glories that she had seen in her vision, Cean went into a fit of weeping and groaned in her sleep all night, and spoke out of her head like a woman in a trance.
But when war broke with the Yankees, Cean quieted off and came to her senses; for a captain’s detail came from the Confederacy and mustered the men of the settlement.
Cal volunteered and passed muster; Maggie’s Will and Margot’s tall Vincent did likewise, being of the proper age. Being young and unencumbered, they marched away to shoulder arms, and thought it was a fine thing to have a war to go to.
Cean stormed and raged. A fool thing it was for Cal to go yonder and fight a war over a black nigger. If the nigger wanted to be free, let him fight, his own self! Oh, she could not abear the thought! She lost all her religion in her hate of the men that had made this war. She had begged Cal to slip away from the Confederacy and come back and let her hide him in the swamp. She kept thinking that he might desert and come home, but days passed end on end, and Cal did not come. He did not mind the going, she knew; he was too young to have learned any sense; he was but twenty in October.
Cean bore a girl-child in the early summer, and Dermid gave it her name; to make a difference in his wife and child, he called it Ceany.
She walked to the well before the child was a week old, and looked abroad on her land that was unplowed, unseeded, and it was well into summer. Dermid could preach and teach, but he was no good for farming. And she was sick and had not cared whether seeds went into the ground or stayed out of it. Anyhow, she had planned to die this year, and she was grieving for Cal gone yonder to fight a fool war. Them Coast planters was too hot in the sprocket; if they wanted a war, let them fight hit! But she must get a hump on herself, for some sort of a crop had to be made, some way or t’other.
Dermid tried to keep his school open, but with war talk abroad in the land, and wild rumors on every hand, and many men conscripted and gone yonder God-knows-where, women kept their children at home; anyhow, all hands were needed with the crops now that men’s hands were yonder toting muskets with spikes on them to split Yankee bellies.
They made potatoes and meat and a little corn. Dermid did not go to the Coast that fall; there was nothing for him to trade.
Details came oftener as the need for men grew sharper. Bugles sounded in front of the houses, and track-dogs strained on leashes, for the chasing and treeing of deserters. When Jake counted his age and knew that soon he would be called, since he was in the ripe thirties, he brought Kish and her two little boys to Cean’s house, and bore his shotgun and powder-horn and shot-pouch and tinder-box off into the black swamp—and stayed there.
Afterward, sometimes deep in a night, Kish would hear him knocking on the outside of the wall where her bed was set. She would rise and let him in, and gather up meal and powder and shot for him to carry back with him. Once she left her children with Cean, and stayed a week with Jake, deep in the swamp, and they slept on the braced branches of a tree like two wild things. Jake was glad of the war then, for he had Kish with him, and the ’possums ate leatherbread out of his hand.
When it was Jasper’s time to go, Dermid went with him. He had wanted to go the whole enduring time, but would not say so; he went with Jasper because he would not stay safely at home with women and children while a war was going on. Margot, left alone with little Sully, brought her oxen and cows and pigs and fowls to Cean’s house and set up her bed by Cean’s fire. Kissie and her children were already there, for young Seeb was gone to war long ago.
Cean’s flour had given out long ago, so they had only hoecakes for bread. The salt gave out and they boiled the dirt from the smokehouse floor and distilled salt from it. Now what would she do for her winter meat? Do without, that’s what. She learned to do any work that a man can do. She sawed wood and fixed leaks. She killed hogs and calves as good as Lonzo ever did—and smiled sourly when she remembered how she had grieved when Lonzo killed her first calf at this place.
The bees made sweetening for their hoecakes; the cows let down their milk morning and evening; if the cotton made and the sheep found good pasture, the children would keep warm. If only they could have a good salty piece of meat one more time….
One day broke like another over the backwoods, and water must be drawn from the well for every day of cold or heat, war or peace; cloth must be woven and sewed, and ’taters must be raised and fried, though niggers may be free to roam the land and take a white man’s house away from him. If only they could get word now and then, maybe the days would not pass as slowly as a deathwatch. At such a time all a body can do is wait. And it is a good thing to keep the hands and feet busy at such a time, for work keeps a mind from wandering; no good can come of a wandering mind.
To the east, details sallied out, looking for more men; to the north, the war lay, to the south, the Spanish peril had settled; from the west, Indians might come down any dark night, as they used to do in the old times, and scalp even the smallest screaming child and leave its skull bleeding red, with the soft spot throbbing plain on the top of its head.
When Cal marched off with a grin on his proud face, he slung his hand up in farewell to Cean, and she would not wave her hand to answer his fare-you-well, for she thought him a fool to go before he had to. Now the remembrance of how she would not tell him good-by made her thoughts of him a misery. “If only I had waved good-by to him!” She had a feeling that she would never see Cal again. “He is my dependence, now that Lonzo is gone, so he will be the one to go.” For all that he was so good to her, Cean never put much dependence in Dermid. Dermid was a good man, but he could not manage a crop or a woman as Lonzo was able to do.
Cean dreamed a dream of Cal one night, and she knew when she waked that he was dead. The dream, or more a vision, came to her in the night of the thirtieth day of August. Dark closed in on a wide field, and she was seeking across it, calling for Cal. It grew ever darker as she walked, calling his name. On the ground all about her feet lay The Enemy gnashing its teeth; it had no eyes, but ravened wildly over the ground, slobbering red so that the earth was slimy. As long as she kept out of its way, going quietly, it might not harm her, but, oh, what have you done to Cal? O-o-o-o-oh, Cal! Son, hit’s yore ma a-callin’ ye!…She found Cal fallen in a shape that no one but herself would have known, for his face was buried in the hot black earth. But well she knew the way his hair grew on his neck, and the set of his thin shoulders that had holp her plant and crap ever since his pa died—all but these last war crops when he was fighting. She fell on the ground beside Cal. She
had no time to lift his head out of the earth so that she might see his face and tell if there were not some breath yet left in him, for buzzards swarmed out of the hot night and settled on his legs and feet and tried to jerk them off in their beaks. Then she knew that Cal was dead. The buzzards told her. But still she fought over Cal. She clenched her arms around his head and would not let go; the buzzards set their claws in his legs and ankles and gnawed as far up as his knee joints, and would not leave him be for all her fighting. But they could not reach his head nor his scrawny little shoulders, for Cean had these hidden inside her arms on her breast, and the nasty things must eat off her finger bones and pluck away her lips and eyes before they could reach Cal’s head in her arms. She fought with all her might, but before she knew it there was a black beak hacking at the breast bone over her heart….
Near the battle-ground there stood a large brick building that could serve, if put to it, as a hospital; and through a glade of willows there ran a little stream, and water is useful to a surgeon. The night was bright with moonlight, running water was near, and litter-bearers brought in the dying who cried for water; all night long the surgeon probed for Minié balls or reached for a scalpel or a saw….
Here is a boy with his legs shattered; his mouth cries, his wounds weep blood. The surgeon reached for his saw, but even as he reached, the boy flung back his head, turned aside his face as though he hid it, and died.
Cean’s vision was a heavier grief than the word, coming to her long afterward, that Cal fell at Second Manassas—and that was the thirtieth day of August….
—I birthed him by myself while Lonzo was gone to the Coast.…I killed a painter that wanted to eat him.…He was my first man-child.…Seems as how God might have let him die at home and not off there for the buzzards to eat him. But mayhap somebody dug a hole for him to rest in, away from their greedy beaks. —Never did she know, and it was a sorrow to her; death is bad enough at its best, when ye can bury a body and lovingly tend the earth that lies above it….
The war was long over when Margot saw Jasper again.
It was a queer thing to do, but one night she dreamed that Jasper was at Ma’s place. Next morning she said to Cean:
“I’ve got to go home this mornin’….”
Cean argued with her, but Margot would not listen.
“Ye’d be a fool to go traipsin’ away over there. They hain’t a thing ye kin do but stand and look at the house. And hit hain’t hardly burned down without no fire in hit….”
But Margot would go.
And she found Jasper there, jaundiced and out of his head with fever. It was a full week before he knew her or noticed her; he had outdone his strength in trying to get home to Margot before he got down with this sickness.
One night as she held Jasper’s head so that she could get him to drink a fever-brew without spilling it, Margot nigh dropped the cup when she chanced upon a thing that came into her mind without her having thought of it. She turned the thought over and over, and the longer it lay in her mind the more beautiful it grew. This was her thought: I have you back, Jasper; your head lies here on my arm; but if you had never come home again, yet I should never have lost you. It is precious little difference that a little time or a little distance can make, once a woman loves a man through and through, the way I loved you, Jasper; and it is the same with Lias; I loved you and I loved him, and though I never set eyes upon his face again, yet neither is he lost to me. I have the both of you fast in my heart.
In the same week as Jasper’s return, Margot’s Vincent came home, helping along Kissie’s young husband, Seeb, whom he had run across in a haywagon in Carolina. Seeb had lost a leg at Petersburg and was a sight to make the eyes weep.
Cean stayed on the lookout for Dermid, thinking every day to see him. Somehow she did not feel like Dermid was dead; and seems like he could have got home in this time, if he wanted to.… But la me! Dermid was nigh onto sixty; maybe he was down sick some’eres without nobody to look after him….
She could not help with the planting this spring. She could tell Jamie and Johnnie and Lonzo’s Vince how to do it, but she could not help with it herself, for she could not stand the heat. Twice she had swounded away in the furrow and nigh scared them all to death.
She saw to little chores around the house.
On a June day she was grinding the ax on the whetrock at the other side of the crib. She turned the rock slowly, and spat on the edge of the ax every now and then. Hot afternoon sunshine fell on her bent head; the heat of it gave her a smothering feeling in her chest. She lifted her head to blow a little and chanced to glance down the lane of blossoming crepe myrtle.
She saw Dermid walking slowly up the lane toward her. He was footsore—or else a cripple—and he looked like a beggar in gray rags. His cheeks were as thickly-bearded as Lonzo’s. He did not look like himself, but somehow she knew him.
When she caught sight of him, he waved his hand to her and hastened his steps.
He had walked from Virginny, catching cart-rides as he might, sleeping in haystacks or on the open ground or in a friendly bed, as chance allowed. He had begged meal, and a little grease to sop it in, wherever he could find it. He had not had a horse under him when Lee signed out. Those who had horses were lucky, for such a man could sell the horse, or ride it home and make a crop with it. If Dermid had a horse, he could have got home in no time; it is a right smart piece from Virginny to Georgy if a man must foot it.
Dermid came slowly toward Cean and bared his head, taking his old slouch-hat in his hand. She saw that he was an old man, bent and lean; his eyes no longer shot blue fires, for they were clouded over. He held out his hand toward her, saying nothing, for he thought—If I tried I could not tell ye how glad it is I be to see ye; so I’ll not try; yell have to guess at it or leave it be….
His face swam before her face. She was bent and lean, too; her face was furrowed and her hair was thin and white and tightly drawn over her skull.
Neither did she say any word more than he did; she did not even take his hand, for she was thinking—I have hurt so much and so long in my heart that I reckon I don’t feel things much any more, not even yore comin’ home….
Slowly he spoke:
“Don’t ye know me, Cean?”
Her mouth crimped up:
“I reckon hit must be Dermid O’Connor….”
She leaned on the whetrock stand, trying to find words to say to him; he leaned upon the very sight of her face before his eyes.
She called out shrilly:
“You chillurn! Hyere’s Dermid O’Connor!…”
The children came running, but Dermid could but guess at which one was his child. And that child was afraid of him.
They talked far into the night, for there were a thousand questions to be asked and answered; and between the questions there were silences to be honored, when words were helpless as they are helpless in any silence of a lover or a mourner.
Out of a silence Dermid asked after Lias. Cean shook her head slowly:
“Hit would be comfortin’ t’ know, no matter what may have befallen him.…He was but a year older than me.…Aah, la! In this time he is an old man with a white head and a troubled heart.… Somehow I kain’t think of Lias bein’ old and worried out….”
He reached for her hand and held it, turning it in his hand and gloating over it as though it were a new-found treasure he had chanced upon. Presently they lay down in the dark and slept. As the hours wore on, the slow fire in the fireplace died among persimmon-colored coals and warm ashes white as frost.
“So I am bound for Californy,” Lias thought, soberly, as the stage rattled down the post road toward Savanna.
As the stage passed, dust settled behind it all down the road on the leaves of the wild myrtle bushes that were still wet and shiny from night vapors. Morning sun peeped through pines yonder in the east; Lias could see it every now and then betwixt pine boles that grew in a clear space.
The air of the early day was col
d, and mist hovered low over every softly-flowing branch of dark water; but Lias was warm in a new olive-colored great-coat. The coat’s broad lappets were pierced with big worked buttonholes—a meaningless vanity, for then were no buttons to go into those holes; now there were buttons to fasten up his stuck-out chest, but the lappets were but vain show.
Lias settled his head low within the turned-up collar. He might have slept but that his in’ards were yet weak from being corned last night. And then besides his unsettled stomach, there was the rattling of the coach to disturb him, and the thudding of the horses’ hooves, and the lifting before his eyes of an horizon diurnally new.
At the end of this road was Savanna, and straight around The Horn was Californy.
But he could find no ship in Savanna to suit his needs. There was a small Spanish schooner there, swaying on her hull in the tidewater, and a few little catboats. There was a brig in the West Indian trade. And there was a dingy old Canton trader deadened by her cargo of copper basins, reels, duffle, stroud, powder, lead, guns, cassia, and a hundred-weight vermilion. But the old boat would beat up the Coast and back before she saw Californy. As for a straight-out Californy ship, there was none.
In a gropshop, Lias stood a glass all ’round, old sailors first, claiming an ill-humor of his in’ards to excuse himself from drinking.
Soon the sailors were bellowing “Poor Tom Bowline” and “Captain Gone Ashore,” with all heads close over the glasses. Lias, not knowing the words, joined in the bass, trying to pick up the words as he went along. A brawny tar in a red shirt and a Scotch cap leaned into Lias’s face:
Lamb in His Bosom Page 32
