I
“But where do they sleep?” my “foreign” friends would ask, with the
impertinence of civilization, whenever they returned from a call at the
shack where Len and Serena, after nightfall, compressed their spreading
family into two rooms and a loft.
With a light answer I would callously shunt investigation. “Oh, Serena
tucks them away!”
Rectitude, founded on bathtubs, with privacy at one’s mere discretion,
had lost its power over me during the years in which I had hoped for a
season sufficiently free from disaster to enable me to add two morally
indispensable rooms to Len’s cabin; nevertheless the desire hung like a
vague compulsion in the back of my mind, unaffected by the indifference
of Serena, who, oblivious to restriction, remained the smiling magnet
of her swarm.
I did go so far as to give Len the lumber from an old house which I had
torn down with the luxurious intent of lining my own cabin from the
material. I found that it contained enough sound chestnut to provide
an ample kitchen for his house, and we spent a happy evening making
the plans. There was to be a big fireplace, built by Uncle Ben Copp,
an authority on chimney structure, and plenty of “shevs,” about which
Len was enthusiastic, though Serena, innocent of industrial vision,
liquidly inquired: “Whatever’ll I put on ’em?”
Len was to build the kitchen. He was untrained, but not inapt, and
rarely finished a job without a proud touch of invention that gave him
as much pleasure as the pay he received. But, as the only member of his
family possessing the slightest energetic fire, “ever’ turn was hisn,”
and he was always two or three years in the rear of his more ambitious
intentions. The lumber made a promising stack in the back yard, and
occasionally during the season that followed, Len would say to me:
“Reckon my work’ll ever let up so’s I can git at that kitchen?”
The pile gradually receded, very noticeably after a few days of
rainy weather, and by the end of the second year it had withdrawn to
invisibility. No one ever spoke of the kitchen again, and I would
have been the last to mention it; but when the winter winds found the
crevices in my cabin and, with the gaiety of discoverers, attacked
my spine, I thought longingly of my lumber that had disappeared in
Serena’s cook-stove; and one day I had the pleasure of hearing Si
Goforth ask, as he passed through Len’s yard, whatever they’d put their
stack o’ chestnut into? Getting no answer from a hurt and silent group,
he added slyly: “A lumber pile nigh the house is as bad as a rail
fence; it sucks itssef.”
I never had the hardihood to probe into the sleeping arrangements of
Serena’s household; but I could see the two beds in the room where
they kept a fire, sat and talked, picked the banjo and received
their company. I knew there were beds in the loft for the boys, and
that granpap placed his own there when he chose to live with Len
and exchange, for a time, Coretta’s fidgety ambition for the cheery
fatalism of Serena. There was no bed in the room where they cooked
and ate, but this was for lack of space only. The necessarily long
table, benches, and chairs devoured any vacancy left by the cook-stove,
cupboard, and water-shelf. From chance remarks I gathered that if
visitors were men-folks they ascended to the loft; if women, Len went
above, leaving the guests below with Serena and the girls. There were
“ticks” which could be placed on the floor when the beds overflowed,
as they did quite frequently. Just where they were put was something
to wonder over, but I kept the whole matter in a sort of kindly murk,
waiting the day when I should be able to act with deference due to an
articulate conscience.
Because of Serena’s apathy toward gardening, canning, drying, and
preserving, and her persistent habit of letting the children “run along
and milk,” the family diet through the greater part of the year was
without surprise or adventure. Corn bread, coffee, fried meat, ’taters,
and ’lasses satisfied hunger, with no concessions to either infancy
or age. Let me not forget pickled beans. That dish was a mainstay for
babe and man. But notwithstanding the depressing fare, there was always
company at Len’s. Constant good humor and unflagging welcome made for
an open house. “Stay with us,” Len would say, and add the mountain
jargon, which in this case was almost literally true: “We can give you
plenty o’ spring water, pickled beans, an’ satisfaction.”
Sometimes I tried a carefully padded remonstrance, such as: “Don’t you
think it is too hard on Serena to have so much company?”
“Reenie don’t bother hersef. They take what comes.”
“With so many children, Len, you’ll kill yourself soon enough without
providing for others.”
“You kain’t call what I give ’em providin’. I tell Reenie to hand ’em
out some salt an’ let ’em pick ’round the yard.” And with his laughter
filling the air, he would rush off to whichever of his many jobs was
driving him the hardest.
My approaches to Serena were alike futile. I have good reason to
remember the last one, which took place on my front porch one Sunday
morning.
“We’re bound to take keer o’ the Madison folks when they come out,” she
said, in response to a tentative protest from me. “The Merlins used to
live back there, an’ so did all o’ my folks.”
“But Len isn’t the only Merlin around here.”
“He’s the one they think the most of anyhow,” she returned proudly.
“They’re not all from Madison. What about the people from over the
ridge?”
“As to them, Mis’ Dolly, you know as well as I do that we’re up
here half-way ’twixt all o’ Nighthawk settlement an’ the stores an’
post-office down at Beebread. When them folks git on top o’ the
mountain, goin’ er comin’, they’ve got to set an’ rest. Ef it’s
dinner-time, of course I lay ’em a plate, an’ ef it’s leanin’ toward
night you wouldn’t want me not to ast ’em to stay. A barn cat would be
civiller than that an’ let ’em sleep in the hay.”
“There are other houses on the ridge, Serena.”
“Yes, here’s yorn right here, but you’re livin’ by yersef an’ company
makes trouble. I’ve got sech a big fam’ly I don’t notice it when a few
more drap in. Lots o’ times,” she continued, in an attempt to save
my feelings and underrate her own popularity, “they say to me let’s
go round to yore house, an’ I know you’re busy, so I tell ’em we’ll
go after we set a bit. Then I wait till it’s too late to come over.
’Tain’t because they don’t like you, an’ don’t you git to thinkin’ it.”
I had understood that Serena always interpreted me favorably to the
community, but I had not realized until that moment how much I owed to
her sense of proprietorship in me and my affairs. More eager than ever
to reciprocate, I pursued the argument.
“You haven’t explained Sunday. Very likely you’ll have to cook dinner
for half a dozen people to-day, besides your own family.”
“I’m sort o’ expectin’ it. Some young folks told Lonie and Ben they’s
comin’ up to-day. You’re always sayin’ let the childern have a good
time, an’ I reckon you wouldn’t want me to shet off Sunday. There
wouldn’t be much left fer ’em.”
She knew I would find this unanswerable, and thus encouraged entered on
doubtful ground.
“Har’et Drake said maybe she’d come too, with her man an’ the
young-uns. She said they’d take dinner with you er me, one er t’other.”
“With me?”
“Har’et thinks a heap o’ you, but maybe she’ll stay at my house. I
knowed her out in Madison.”
My eyes sought their familiar refuge, the horizon, and even as my
glance swept the hill it fell upon Mrs. Drake, her man, and the five
children in undeviating approach. Serena’s eyes followed mine.
“Looks like they’re comin’ here,” she said. “They’ll git a better
dinner anyway. I ain’t got what I ought to hev fer anybody that’ll
climb all the way up here jest a-neighborin’.”
I gave the guests a welcome which I hope did not reveal a daunted
heart. There was still a chance that they would go with Serena, and
my day of sun and solitude be restored to me. The Madison influence
might prevail. Unexpectedly I found myself blessing that contemned
affiliation.
When Serena rose to go she proved to be the preferred hostess. Mr.
Drake had brought a banana muskmelon from home, which he left with me
in gentle propitiation for his desertion; and as the family accompanied
Serena around the curving road I may have had a slight feeling of
humiliation but no sense of injury. I knew that as an entertainer I
could not compete with Len and Serena. They were reservoirs of mountain
song and story, and their lingual flow never permitted a conversational
vacuum. No wonder that I was passed by.
Serena undulated from my sight, but left illumination behind her. In a
whirl of emotion I went to my smoke-house and took down from my store
as much as I could carry in a generous basket, and, taking a back
trail, brought the stuff to Serena’s kitchen door while her guests were
“chowing” with Len on the front porch.
“The gardens haven’t come in yet,” I apologized, when Serena appeared
at the door, “and I was afraid your canned stuff had given out.”
It was always out by Christmas, and this was April.
“Yes,” said Serena, “it’s jest about gone. An’, I declare, I was out o’
sugar an’ lard too! I’ll shore pay you back.”
“Never mind that. The Drakes don’t get up here often. I want you to set
them a good dinner.”
“I told Len,” she said, with a touch of triumph, “that he’d got it all
wrong ’bout you not wantin’ us to have so much company. I told him
you’s as free-hearted as ef you’s born in the mountains.”
With humbled step I turned into the trail home, and never again offered
any admonitions against excessive hospitality.
Through the spring and summer I continued to make apologetic
contributions to Serena’s table, glad in this way to lessen any debt
of festivity that I owed the community. A more trustful spirit seemed
to reign on the mountain, and there was a happy impetus toward no one
cared what. All might have gone well for a much longer period if,
toward the end of the summer, I had not become too deeply concerned
over the emaciated appearance of little Ross, and the fact that Len,
long overburdened, showed signs of failing health, apparently evident
to none but me. An encounter with Serena brought my feelings to the
surface. She came in one day to tell me of an incident that had amused
her “past common.”
But here I should explain that Serena insisted on “raising” ducks every
year. I had striven in vain to induce her to transfer her love from the
unprofitable duck to the remunerative hen. Ducks amused her, and at
first I shared her pleasure when she took me to see a brood that had
just “broke through.” A nestful of chickens is tame in comparison with
ducklings that seduce the eye with their deeper, ineffable downiness
and their constant vibratory motions that seem to annex the air to
their twinkling contour. As they grow older the entertainment deepens.
The rôle of parent, for good reasons, is enacted always by a hen, and
she will soon learn to wander unconcernedly on the bank while her
charges are diving and paddling in the water, but it is another matter
when, a little after sundown, she attempts to hover ducklings that are
determined to straggle about until after dark. The desperate mother
wears herself out clucking, squawking, and spluttering as she tries
to prevail upon the rebels to change their nature and go to sleep.
Sometimes they impishly gather under her and are quiet for a moment,
then as soon as the hen is in a merciful doze, out they come. The
morning also has its drama, for the ducklings are awake and ready to
run about before daylight, while the hen is still longing for sleep.
Throughout the day she will droop from weariness and distractedly
revive to pursue her duty unthanked and derided.
As time passed, Serena’s ducklings remained out later, and finally
would stroll home, drabbled and noisy, around nine o’clock. In the
early morning one might see the hen roaming disconsolately without
an offspring to cheer her, all of her brood being far in the woods
searching the little streams and wet banks for the food ancestrally
beloved. Their number lessened as wild creatures devoured them. Even
dogs considered them rightfully their own, if found far from the
barnyard, and by the end of the summer Serena would be as duckless
as at its beginning, but she had had many a pleasant, shady jaunt in
search of them “outdoin’est things.”
“I’ll try again,” she would say. “Duck-feathers make sech good
pillers.” But she never got a feather.
On the day I have mentioned, she rippled in and said: “You know I set
that gray hen on duck-eggs again.”
“So late in the year? Of course you’ll lose them.”
“I’d lose ’em anyway,” she said, surrendering fundamental ground for
temporary defense. “An’ I want to tell you ’bout that hen. You know
what an awful time that first set give her this summer. They wuz the
head-longest bunch I’ve ever had, an’ they kept her about crazy. I
wouldn’t hev set her again ef there’d been another hen ready. I felt
sorry fer the pore thing. To-day it wuz time fer her to come off an’
I went to the nest to see about her. I didn’t hear no yeepin’ an’ I
stood around fer a good spell. All at onct there come a ‘yeep’ like a
slit--you know how different a duck’s ‘yeep’ is from a chicken’s--an’
when that hen heard it she jumped off the nest an’ flew fer a smart
stretch a-squawkin’ like she wuz skeered crazy, an’ run up the hill out
o’ sight, an’ I ain’t seen her sence she took off. ‘Yeep,’ an’ she’s
gone! She’d been showed, that gray hen had.”
“Serena,” I said, determined upon judgment, and refusing to smile more
than once, “it is time for you to quit fooling with ducks. There are so
many things you could be doing.”
“What things?”
“Your spring needs cleaning out. It is full of rotting leaves.”
“Yes, I’ve been wishin’ Len could git time fer that.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“It ’ud ruin a spring fer a woman to clean it out.”
“It was a very lazy woman who started that superstition, Serena. I
clean my spring all the time.”
“Yes, an’ it ain’t what it used to be. I’ve been noticin’ that. It’s
druggy.”
“Because the fine roots of that big maple have reached it. I’ll have
Len take that tree out as soon as he gets time.”
“Looks like he gets busier ’n busier.”
“Of course, when the children are getting bigger and bigger and are not
doing their share of the work. Len is killing himself trying to bring
in enough for ten.”
“The boys don’t take after their poppie. An’ if they did, it wouldn’t
keep him from workin’ as hard as he could anyhow. I do all I can fer
him.”
“You could give him better food.”
“Ain’t beans good?”
“Didn’t you notice yesterday that Len left the table without eating a
single bean? He was hot and tired--and _pickled_ beans! He drank a lot
of coffee and ate two bites of yellow bread. Then he went to the field
to work until night.”
“I ain’t ever heard him complain.”
“You never will. He’ll die believing you are the only woman on earth.”
“He ain’t goin’ to die.”
“No. You are going to quit living out of a lard can, a coffee bucket,
and a pickle barrel.”
She was crying a little. “I ain’t got cans fer puttin’ up stuff,” she
said.
“I’ll look out for the cans, Serena. You know you can work. I’ve seen
you.”
“But I kain’t keep it up.”
She knew her weakness. Work one day and rest six was her version of the
great example.
“Lonie will help you, and the boys. Len will plough and harrow all the
good land you want for gardens and patches. We’ll put in a fall garden
too, and have all kinds of green things through the winter--spinach,
lettuce, collards, turnip-tops, celery--besides the keepers, parsnips,
carrots, salsify, sweet potatoes put up in sand--_and_ beans!”
I rushed on, with plans undigested but dazzling, and her few tears
dried in shining twinkles. “I’ll try,” she said, “if you’ll keep right
after me.” I smiled too, and she started home.
“I wonder where that gray hen is by now,” she turned to say. “Ef you’d
seen her when that duck-diddly yeeped, you’d be laffin’ yet.”