LONG SWEETENIN'.
MARY ANN MARTHA GRIEVER was notorious all over the Big and
Little Turkey Track neighborhoods, as "the worst chap the Lord
A'mighty ever made and the old davil himself wouldn't have." The
mildest dictum pronounced upon her was "Spiled rotten." Her energy,
her unsleeping industry, would have been things to admire and
wonder at, had they not been always applied to the futherance of
iniquitous ends. To-day she pervaded the sorghum-making, not
like a gnat, but like a whole swarm of gnats. Providing herself
with a weak-backed switch, she followed the movements of Fuson,
or Polly, or Sylvane, whichever chanced to be told off to tend
the old horse. She pursued the beast with a falsetto screech of
peculiar malignance, and tickled his heels with her switch whenever
the exigencies of the work forced his stoppage. To the infinite
surprise of everybody, notably his owner, the gaunt sorrel, after
looking around and twitching his ears and hide as though a
particularly troublesome flock of flies were on him, finally
heaved up the whole after portion of his anatomy in one elephantine
kick, which very [169] nearly cost his small tormentor the entire
top of her head.
Chased away from the horse and the crusher, Mary Ann Martha
turned her attention to the furnace, with its more seductive and
saccharine activities. The skimming hole on this occasion was
not the small, ordinary excavation made for the purpose, but a
sizable pit, dug at some previous time for a forgotten use.
Brush had been thrown into it, vines had grown and tangled over
the brush, till it was a miniature jungle or bear-pit. Tin cans
hid among the leafage, and the steady drip-drip of the skimmings
pattered on one of these hollowly. This spot had a peculiar
fascination for the child. Perched on its edge she thrust
forward her face and attempted to lick a branch over which the
skimmings had trickled deliciously. The distance was considerable.
Mary Ann Martha's tongue was limber and amazingly extensible; her
balance excellent; but also she was in unseemly haste for the syrup
that stood in great drops just beyond reach. In her contortions,
she overbalanced herself and fell shrieking in, going promptly to
the bottom, where quite a pool of sticky sour-sweetness had already
collected.
"The good land!" shouted Roxy, passing the ladle of office to
Callista and reaching down to grab for her offspring. "If they's
anything you ort not to be in, of course you're in it. Now look
at you!" she ejaculated, as she hauled the squalling [170] child
out dripping. "You ain't got another frock to yo' name', an' what
am I a-goin' to do with you?"
Mary Ann Martha showed a blissful indifference to what might be
done with her. Her howls ceased abruptly. She found her state
that agreeable one wherein she was able to lick almost any
portion of her anatomy or her costume with satisfaction.
"Don't want no other frock," she announced briefly, as she sat
down in the dust to begin clearing her hands of skimmings, very
like a puppy or a kitten.
"Well, I'm a-goin' to put boy clothes on you," declared the
mother. "You act as bad as a boy." And she hustled the
protesting delinquent away to execute her threat.
Five minutes after, burning with wrongs, Mary Ann Martha came
stormily forth to rejoin her kind, pent in a tight little jeans
suit which had belonged to the babyhood of Sylvane, and from
which her solid limbs and fat, tubby body seemed fairly
exploding. Humiliated, alienated, and with her hand against
every man, she lowered upon them all from under flaxen brows,
with Lance's own hazel eyes, darkened almost to black.
"You Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," admonished Fuson, as the small marauder
raided the cooling pans and licked the spoons and testing sticks
so soon as they were laid down, "you got to walk mighty keerful
[171] around where I'm at, at least in sawgrum-makin' time."
Mary Ann Martha held down her head, and muttered. She was
ashamed of her trousers as only a mountain-born girl child could
be ashamed.
"You let them spoons alone, or I'll fling you plumb into the
bilin'-pan, whar you'll git a-plenty o' sawgrum," Fuson
threatened. "You hear now? The last man I he'ped Hands make
sawgrum for had ten chillen when we begun. They set in to pester
me an' old Baldy jest like yo' adoin', and when we got done thar
was ten kaigs of sawgrum and nary chap on the place. Yes, that's
right. Ef thar wasn't a chap bar'lled up in every kaig we turned
out, I don't know sawgrum from good red liquor."
Inside the house, Ellen Hands and Little Liza were delaying over
an errand. They had brought a piece of turkey red calico as an
offering for the gospel quilt.
"Don't you trouble to git it out," Little Liza said, rather
wistfully. "I know in reason you've got all on yo' hands you
want this mornin'; but when you come to workin' it in, Ellen an'
me we talked considerable consarning of it, and mebbe we could
he'p ye."
"Callisty's a-skimmin'," announced the widow, running for a
hasty glance toward the sorghum-making activities. "Hit won't
take me mo'n a minute to spread the thing here on the bed, and
[172] try this agin it. Land! ain't that pretty? Red--I always did
love red."
The cherished square was lifted from its chest, unrolled, and
spread upon the four-poster bed in the corner of the living
room.
"You been a-workin' on it some sence last I seed it," Ellen Hands
remarked with interest. "This here thing with birds a-roostin'
on it--I ain't never seed this before."
"That thar's Jacob's Ladder, Ellen--don't you see the postes, and
the pieces a-goin' acrost?" Roxy explained rather hastily. "Lord,
the trouble I had with them angels. I don't wonder you took 'em
for birds. Time and again I had a mind to turn 'em into birds. I
done fine with Noey's dove; see, here 'tis; an' a ark--well, hit
ain't no more than a house with a boat un'neath."
She pulled the folds about, to get at the period of the deluge.
"'Course I see now jest what it was intentioned for," Ellen
professed eagerly. "If I'd looked right good I could 'a' made
out the angels goin' up an' down. How"--she hesitated, but the
resolve to retrieve herself overcame all timidity--"how nateral
them loaves an' fishes does look!"
"That thar's the ark," explained the widow, putting her finger
on the supposed loaf. There was a moment of depressed silence;
then Roxy, willing to let bygones be bygones, observed,
"Over here is the whale and Joney." These [173] twin objects were
undoubtedly what Ellen had taken for the fishes.
"Ye see I had to make the whale some littler than life," the
artist deprecated. "I sort o' drawed him in, as a body may say,
'caze 'course I couldn't git him all on my quilt without. I
didn't aim to git Joney quite so big, but that thar sprigged
percale that he's made outen was so pretty, and the piece I had
was just that length, an' I hated to throw away what wouldn't be
good for anything, an' I'd already got my whale, so I sort o'
len'thened the beast's tail with a few stitches. Would you call
a whale a beast or a fish?"
"Well, I should sure call anything that could swaller a man a
beast," opined Little Liza.
"An' yit he's sorter built like a fish," suggested Ellen.
"That's true; an' he lives in the water," admitted her sister.
"Here's a right good big open place," observed Ellen. "Ef you
was a-goin' to make--whatever--out of that turkey red, hit could
come in here."
"It could that," said the widow thoughtfully. "Did you-all have
any idee as to what it would suit best for?"
The two looked at each other in embarrassment. As unmarried
women, the subject that they had discussed was in some degree
questionable. [174]
"Well, hit's in the Bible," Ellen began defensively. "An' yit--Sis'
an' me didn't know whether you'd care to--to give room to sech
as the Scarlet Woman."
It was out. The idea evidently fascinated Roxy.
"That turkey red shore fits the case," she agreed with gusto.
"As you say, hit's in the Bible. An' yit, anything that's what
a body might call ondecent that-a-way--don't ye reckon a
person'd be sort o' 'shamed to--I vow! I'll do it."
"Oh, Miz. Griever!" exclaimed Little Liza of comical dismay at
the prompt acceptance in their idea. "I believe I wouldn't.
There's the crossin' o' the Red Sea; you could use the turkey
red for that jest as easy."
But the widow shook her head.
"Good lands!" she cried, "what you studyin' about, Liza? I say,
the crossin' o' the Red Sea! I ain't a-goin' to do no sech a
thing. Hit'd take me forever to cut out all them Chillen of
Is'rul. And I never in the world would git done makin'
Egyptians! No, that turkey red goes into a scarlet woman--to
reprove sin."
"Laws, Miz. Griever," began Ellen Hands, solemnly, "looks like
yo' family ort to be perfectly happy with that thar quilt in the
house. I'm mighty shore I would be. I tell you, sech a work as
that is worth a woman's while."
"There's them that thinks different," responded [175] Roxy, with a
sort of gloomy yet relishing resentment. "There has been folks
lived in this house from the time I started work on it, an' made
game of my gospel quilt--made game of it!"
"I reckon I know who you mean," nodded Ellen. And Little Liza
added, "_She's_ here to-day, ain't she?--God love her sweet soul!
But yo' pappy wouldn't bid Lance, with Buddy here an' all--we
know that. They'd be shore to fuss. Man persons is that-a-way."
"Well," Ellen Hands summed the case up, "ef anybody made game o'
that quilt to my face, I'd never forgive 'em."
"I never will," agreed Roxy. "Them that would make game of sech
is blasphemious. Mebbe hit ain't adzactly the Bible, but hit's--"
"Hit's mo' so," put in Ellen swiftly. "The Bible is pertected
like, but yo' gospel quilt is standin' up alone, as a body may
say, and you've got to speak for it. No, ef I was you, and
anybody made game of that thar quilt, I never would forgive
'em."
Outside, Callista stood and skimmed and skimmed, from time to
time emptying her pan into the skimming-hole, the bland October
breeze lifting her fair hair. Everything was sour-sweet and
sticky from the juice. Heaps of pomace were already beginning to
pile tall beside the crusher, reeking, odorous, tempting to the
old cow, who went protestingly past, and had the bars put up [176]
after her. Kimbro looked up from his task and spoke to his
daughter-in-law.
"You look sort o' peaked, Callista," he said gently. "Air you
right well?"
"Oh yes, Father Cleaverage," she returned, absently, her eyes on
Mrs. Griever and the Hands girls approaching from the house.
The unsexed and hostile Mary Ann Martha turned upon the world at
large a look of mute defiance, and completed an enterprise which
she had set up of laying fresh sorghum stalks side-by-side,
pavement-wise, over the skimming-hole.
Women and children were settling like flies about the pan and
its attendant bowls, ladles and testing plates, hoping for a
taste of the finished product. The Hands girls greeted Callista
and joined the others. Fuson's poor little seventeen-year-old
sister-in-law was there with her six months baby, and a child of
two. Roxy took the skimmer from Callista and set to work.
Sylvane relieved his father at the firing. Mary Ann Martha
sidled into the house, whence, a moment later, came a shrill cry
in Polly's thin little pipe.
"Aunt Roxy! Mary Ann Marthy's in here puttin' molasses all _over_
yo' gospel quilt!"
"Good land!" snorted Roxy, straightening up from her task of
skimming. "Take the spoon, Sylvane." She cast the ladle toward
him without much care as to whether the handle or the bowl [177]
went first. "Looks like I do have the hardest time o' anybody I
know," she ejaculated.
"You better git here quick, A' Roxy," Polly urged. "She's just a
_wipin_' her spoon on em'."
"Ain't," protested the infant, appearing suddenly in the doorway,
a "trying spoon" in her hand, over which she was running her
tongue with gusto. "I thest give a lick o' long-sweetnin' to
Eads," thus she named the first of womankind. "Po' old Eads
looked so-o-o hongry."
"She's done a heap more'n that," Polly maintained. Mary Ann
Martha's mouth began to work piteously.
"Give Eads some," she pursued in a husky, explanatory voice.
"An'--th'--ol' snake licked out his tongue, and I must put a
teenchy-weenchy bit on it. 'Nen Adams, he's mad 'caze he don't
git none; an'--Mammy," with a burst of tears, "is I thest like
my uncle Lance?"
She had heard this formula of reproof so often; she knew so well
that it befitted the gravest crimes.
"You air that!" said Roxy wrathfully. "You little dickens! I
don't know of anybody in this world that would have done sech a
trick--but you or Lance Cleaverage."
She wheeled from the furnace toward the house, and set a swift foot
in the middle of the sorghum-stalk pavement Mary Ann Martha had
laid over the skimming pit. The stalks gave. [178] She attempted
to recover herself and have back the foot, but her momentum was
too great. On she plunged, pitching and rolling, descending by
degrees and with ejaculatory whoops among the sticky sweetness,
part of which was still uncomfortably warm.
There was a treble chorus of dismay from the women. Sylvane
leaped to his feet, and ran to the pit's edge. Buck Fuson held
his sides and roared with mirth, and Flenton Hands stopped the
crusher by tying up his horse so that he too, might go to their
assistance.
"Oh land!" gasped the widow, coming to the surface, yellow and
gummy of countenance, smudged and smeared, crowned with a tipsy
wreath of greenery, like a sorghumnal bacchante. "I believe in
my soul that little sinner aimed to do this. She's jest adzactly
like her Uncle Lance--that's what she is! I mind--ow!" The
rotten branch under her foot had snapped, letting her down into
a squelching pool of skimmings.
"Take hold of my hand, Sis' Roxy," cried Sylvane. "No, I don't
reckon the baby aimed to make trouble; chaps is always doin'
things like this, an' meanin' no harm. There--now I've got you."
But Roxy was a big woman, and the first pull nearly dragged him in.
"Let me ketch ye round the waist, Sylvane!" roared Little Liza
in her fog-horn bass. "Ellen, [179] you hold to my coats, and let
the others hang on to you, if they have to. Thar, now, pull,
Sylvane; try it agin--now, all of you--pull!" And with a
tremendous scrabbling and scrambling, the Widow Griever "came,"
hurtling up from her sweet retreat and spattering molasses on
her rescuers.
Over went Sylvane and Little Liza; Ellen and slim Lula Fuson
were nearly dragged down by their fall. Roxy Griever landed on
top of the first two, and liberally besmeared them all with
sorghum juice before they could be got to their feet.
"You let me lay hand on that young 'un," she panted, "and I'll
not leave her fitten to do such as this."
"Never mind, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," Little Liza admonished. "You git
in and git yo'se'f washed up. For the good land's sake--ef thar
don't come Miz. Gentry an' her pa down the road! Mak' 'as'e!"
And the sorghum bespattered women hurried toward the house, the
widow still fulminating threats, the Hands girls giggling a bit.
Callista, trying to carry forward their part of the work, saw
that a team stopped out in front. She was aware of her
grandfather on the driver's seat, and her mother climbing down
over the wheel.
"Well, Callista," complained the matron, making straight for the
side yard and her daughter, "I reckon if I want to see my own
child, I can go to [180] the neighbors and see her there. Why ain't
you been home, honey? Pappy axes every morning air you comin',
and every night I have to tell him, 'Well, mebbe to-morrow.'"
Callista looked over her mother's shoulder, and fancied that she
caught a gleam of grim amusement in old Ajax's eye.
"I've been mighty busy," she said evasively. "Looks like I don't
finish one thing before another needs doing. I'm a-comin' one of
these days."
"So's Christmas," jeered her grandfather from the wagon.
Callista remembered the last time her homecoming had been
discussed with him. Her color deepened and her eye brightened.
"Yes, and I'm comin' same as Christmas with both hands full of
gifts," she called out to him gaily. How dared he look like
that--as though he knew all her straits--the shifts to which she
was now reduced?
There had sounded from the house, on Roxy's arrival there, wails
of lamentation in Mary Ann Martha's voice--wails so strident and
so offensively prolonged as to convince the least discriminating
hearer that their author was not being hurt, but was only
incensed. Now, Roxy Griever, hastily washed, made her appearance.
"I'm mighty proud to have you here to-day, Miz. Gentry," she
said hospitably. "Won't you come into the house? Have you-all
fixed for pumpkin [181] cutting? I just as soon as not come over
and he'p you, oncet I git this mis'able sawgrum out of the way."
"Thank you, Miz. Griever, I won't go in for a spell yet,"
Octavia said, seating herself on a bench. "No, we ain't had a
chance to think o' pumpkin cuttin'. I been dryin' fruit. And
Pappy 's had everybody on the place busy pickin' field peas."
Callista harkened restively to this talk of the harvest
activities, the season's plenty--she who had nothing to garner,
nothing to prepare and put away. She heard her mother's voice
running plaintively on.
"Looks like I got to have somebody with me, since Sis is gone.
I've been aimin' to git over to the Far Cove neighborhood where
my cousin Filson Luster lives. I know in reason Fil could spare
one of his gals, an' I'd do well by her."
The words were softly, drawlingly, spoken, yet Callista,
mechanically working still about the furnace, heard in them the
slam of a door. Her girlhood home was closed to her. The
daughter's place there, which she had held so lightly, would be
filled. [182]