HAS GOD FORGOTTEN SHOCKY?
"Pap wants to know ef you would spend to-morry and Sunday at our house?"
said one of Squire Hawkins's girls, on the very next evening, which was
Friday. The old Squire was thoughtful enough to remember that Ralph
would not find it very pleasant "boarding out" all the time he was
entitled to spend at Pete Jones's. For in view of the fact that Mr. Pete
Jones sent seven children to the school, the "master" in Flat Creek
district was bound to spend two weeks in that comfortable place,
sleeping in a preoccupied bed, in the "furdest corner," with
insufficient cover, under an insufficient roof, and eating floating
islands of salt pork fished out of oceans of hot lard. Ralph was not
slow to accept the relief offered by the hospitable justice of the
peace, whose principal business seemed to be the adjustment of the
pieces of which he was composed. And as Shocky traveled the same road,
Ralph took advantage of the opportunity to talk with him. The master
could not dismiss Hannah wholly from his mind. He would at least read
the mystery of her life, if Shocky could be prevailed on to furnish the
clue.
"Poor old tree!" said Shocky, pointing to a crooked and gnarled elm
standing by itself in the middle of a field. For when the elm, naturally
the most graceful of trees, once gets a "bad set," it can grow to be the
most deformed. This solitary tree had not a single straight limb.
"Why do you say 'poor old tree'?" asked Ralph.
"'Cause it's lonesome. All its old friends is dead and chopped down, and
there's their stumps a-standin' jes like grave-stones. It _must_ be
lonesome. Some folks says it don't feel, but I think it does. Everything
seems to think and feel. See it nodding its head to them other trees in
the woods? and a-wantin' to shake hands! But it can't move. I think that
tree must a growed in the night."
"Why, Shocky?"
"'Cause it's so crooked," and Shocky laughed at his own conceit; "must a
growed when they was no light so as it could see how to grow."
And then they walked on in silence a minute. Presently Shocky began
looking up into Ralph's eyes to get a smile. "I guess that tree feels
just like me. Don't you?"
"Why, how do you feel?"
"Kind o' bad and lonesome, and like as if I wanted to die, you know.
Felt that way ever sence they put my father into the graveyard, and sent
my mother to the poor-house and Hanner to ole Miss Means's. What kind of
a place is a poor-house? Is it a poorer place than Means's? I wish I was
dead and one of them clouds was a-carryin' me and Hanner and mother up
to where father's gone, you know! I wonder if God forgets all about poor
folks when their father dies and their mother gits into the poor-house?
Do you think He does? Seems so to me. Maybe God lost track of my father
when he come away from England and crossed over the sea. Don't nobody on
Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don't keer fer Flat Creek. But
I would, though, ef he'd git my mother out of the poor-house and git
Hanner away from Means's, and let me kiss my mother every night, you
know, and sleep on my Hanner's arm, jes like I used to afore father
died, you see."
Ralph wanted to speak, but he couldn't. And so Shocky, with his eyes
looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph's presence, told over
the thoughts that he had often talked over to the fence-rails and the
trees. "It was real good in Mr. Pearson to take me, wasn't it? Else I'd
a been bound out tell I was twenty-one, maybe, to some mean man like
Ole Means. And I a'n't but seven. And it would take me fourteen years to
git twenty-one, and I never could live with my mother again after Hanner
gets done her time. 'Cause, you see, Hanner'll be through in three more
year, and I'll be ten and able to work, and we'll git a little place
about as big as Granny Sanders's, and--"
Ralph did not hear another word of what Shocky said that afternoon. For
there, right before them, was Granny Sanders's log-cabin, with its row
of lofty sunflower stalks, now dead and dry, in front, with its
rain-water barrel by the side of the low door, and its ash-barrel by the
fence. In this cabin lived alone the old and shriveled hag whose
hideousness gave her a reputation for almost supernatural knowledge. She
was at once doctress and newspaper. She collected and disseminated
medicinal herbs and personal gossip. She was in every regard
indispensable to the intellectual life of the neighborhood. In the
matter of her medical skill we cannot express an opinion, for her
"yarbs" are not to be found in the pharmacopoeia of science.
What took Ralph's breath was to find Dr. Small's fine, faultless horse
standing at the door. What did Henry Small want to visit this old quack
for?