They had a long, beautiful fall that year. The warm, still sunny days
followed each other week after week without a break, until it seemed as
if there could never be wind again nor rain nor snow. In the mornings
when Judith stepped out into the yard the grass was covered with flimsy
gossamer webs encrusted with dewdrops, each one a rainbow in the sun.
The beds of geraniums and the bank of scarlet sage along the stone wall
seemed to grow each day a richer red. The morning glory vines over the
back porch were full each morning with fresh bloom. In colors from
faint blue to deep purple, from pale pink to rich rose, delicately
veined and gleaming faërily with dew, they lifted up their frail cups
to the sun that in a few hours would bring them death. Judith loved to
look at the morning glories; yet they gave her a feeling of sadness.
They were very silent, these mornings. No birds spilled music into the
sunshine. Only a few crows cawed over distant fields. It had been a
bountiful year and maturity and plenty were on every hand. The geese,
the turkeys, and the chickens were full grown and the proud young males
were fat and ready for the market. The hogs in the pen were getting
all they could eat. Often they were too lazy to stand up to eat and
munched their corn lolling luxuriously on their haunches. Much of their
time they spent in sleeping. When they awoke they stretched, snorted,
and rolled blissfully in the mud and straw, feeling the warmth of the
sun on their bodies and the satisfying comfort of a full belly. By
Thanksgiving they would be ready for the butcher's knife. There was
a great abundance of tomatoes, cabbages, pumpkins, cornfield beans,
everything that flourishes in the good clay soil of Scott County. Corn
had been good and the cribs were full. Tobacco had been extra good and
Uncle Ezra's great barns were packed to the doors and filled the air
about them with exotic fragrance.
There was much pickling, preserving, and canning done in Aunt Eppie's
kitchen, for she hated to see anything go to waste. The savory smell
of catsup and chili sauce in the making and of vinegar cooking with
spices to pickle the pears and peaches streamed out of the door and
whetted the appetite of passers-by. It was impossible for Aunt Eppie's
family to consume all these bottled delicacies during the winter. Hence
her cellar was crowded with the accumulation of many years. Still she
insisted on making more each year. When the plenitude of peaches or
grapes or cucumbers was so great that it was a human impossibility to
can them all, she gave of her surplus to the tenants, grudgingly, yet
with a certain Lady Bountiful pleasure in bestowing favors, and always
with many admonitions as to the sin of improvidence.
"It's a sin for sech things to go to waste," she would say. "I'm sure
I've give away twenty bushel this year if I've give one. An' all the
tenants could have 'em jes as plentiful as us if they'd only plant 'em
an' tend 'em. I do think it's a shame for folks to live like hawgs from
hand to mouth an' never plant a tree ner a bush ner hardly a tater
to put in their mouths. Jes look at all these tenant houses! Not a
fruit tree ner a berry bush ner hardly as much as a row o' beets an'
cabbages! The shiftlessness of some folks is sech that it's a wonder
the Lord A'mighty don't send a plague on 'em."
As the weeks went by Jerry began to follow Judith with his eyes and to
think about her when she was not in sight. She seemed to have become
all at once a much more interesting person than the little black-haired
tomboy that he had played and quarreled with ever since he could
remember. One October evening when he came up from work and Judith was
in the barnyard milking, he lingered about after putting up the horses,
pretending to tinker with the harness. It was past the time to go home
and he was hungry as a bear; but something held him. Judith got up from
the red and white cow and went to the Jersey, the milking stool in one
hand, the bucket in the other. Jerry followed her with his eyes. She
had on an old blue cotton dress with a long tear in one sleeve and her
arms and neck were bare. Her arms and neck looked very beautiful to
Jerry.
When she had finished milking the Jersey she got up, kicked the milking
stool over toward the fence where the cows would not step on it, and
turning to go to the house saw Jerry still pretending to work with the
harness.
"Well, Jerry Blackford, hain't you got started fer home yet! Haow long
d'ye think yer mammy'll keep yer supper hot fer ye?"
"Till I git there," answered Jerry, coming up beside her.
The horses, as soon as the harness fell from them, had gone at once to
the horsepond and taken a long, satisfying drink, then trotted back
to the barn to munch the good alfalfa hay that Jerry had pitched down
for them. It had been a warm, lazy day. The sun had just set and the
evening was still, blue and luminous. Three two-year-old colts that had
been brought up for the night, feeling the stimulation of the cool air,
began to frolic about the barnyard. They began by rolling in the loose
straw and chaff, turning over and over on their backs and waving their
hoofs foolishly in the air. Then one colt scrambled to his feet and
raced to the gate, the others after him. Back they came from the road
gate to the other gate leading into the field, then round and round the
barnyard snorting and neighing, their heads and tails high, their manes
flowing, their hoofs pounding rhythmically, their beautiful, strong,
sleek bodies taut with the joy of the gallop. The work team, having
eaten a good supper, trotted out from the barn and joined in the fun
with as much zest as the colts.
In the middle of the barnyard stood Charlie, Uncle Ezra's old white
mule. He was too old to do much work and was usually left out at
pasture. To-night Uncle Ezra had brought him up because he was going
to use him in the morning to help haul in corn fodder. Being old and
white, he always looked rough and dirty; and he had an ugly bare spot
on one shoulder where the harness had rubbed off the hair. His under
lip had grown loose and flabby and sagged down, giving his face a
sullen look. Isolated by his age and his kind, he stood perfectly
motionless, his knees bent like those of an old man, his head low, his
haunches slack, his whole body sagging, and took not the least notice
of the horses galloping about him. In joyous madcap career they raced
in front of him, behind him, all around him; but he neither stirred nor
raised his head.
"That's haow folks is when they git old," said Jerry, looking
meditatively at the ancient beast.
"Yaas, an' ain't he for all the world like Uncle Ezry? Seems to me them
two has growed to look alike, they bin so long together."
"The colts hates him 'cause he's old and 'cause he's a mule," mused
Jerry, "an' he hates the colts 'cause they won't leave him have no
peace."
Judith had taken from the pocket of her dress a stub of green crayon
and begun to draw on the whitewashed fence post. Jerry watched her and
saw the profile of Uncle Ezra appear in green on the white post, then
beside it the profile of Charlie the mule. She had skilfully modified
the features just enough to best bring out the points of resemblance.
"See, hain't they like as twins? They're both the same dirty gray
color, both got the same hangin' under lip an' hook nose an' the same
big ears."
"An' both is deaf as posts," laughed Jerry.
Judith had her back to him admiring her handiwork. He wanted to lean
forward and kiss the white nape of her neck. Instead, he turned about
and started off for home.
* * * * * * *
A little before Thanksgiving there came a cold, heavy rain, then a
blighting frost that killed the morning glories and the geraniums and
blackened everything in the garden except the beets and cabbages. A
strong, cold wind blew the trees bare in a single night, and the whole
aspect of the world was changed. Two days ago it had been summer. Now
it was winter.
It was not so pleasant for Judith at Aunt Eppie's after the cold
weather came. Driven in for warmth from the deserted and windswept
barnyard, she found little to interest her in the stuffy, overheated
kitchen or the bare, cold bedroom that she shared with Cissy. As the
days grew colder, the sitting room took the place of the porch. Here a
hideous product of modernity known as a "base burner" was pressed into
service. It stood on a square of ornamental zinc placed over the rag
carpet and kept clean and shiny by Cissy's floor rag. It was covered
with knobs and scrolls and glorious with polished nickel. All around
its fat belly it had several rows of little mica windows. When a fire
was lighted in this gorgeous crematory and fed with a bucket of cannel
coal, mined in the neighboring state of West Virginia, it made the room
so hot that Judith had to gasp for breath.
As the days grew colder, Uncle Ezra spent more and more of his time
sitting silently with his feet on the fender of the majestic base
burner.
The afternoons were short now, and it was night long before the chores
were done. The last thing at night Judith had to milk the cows, feed
the pigs and calves and shut up the chickens. When at last she came in
shivering out of the dark and cold, there was no steaming hot coffee
waiting to hearten her, no bacon sizzling in the pan, no biscuits
fluffy and fragrant from the oven. The deserted kitchen was bleak in
its chilly neatness and a leftover meal was coldly set forth on the
table in the sitting room: cold vegetables and bacon left from dinner,
cold biscuits and corn cakes, cold water and cold skim milk to drink,
a cheerless and uninviting spread. This had been Aunt Eppie's custom
from the beginning of time, and there was never any breach in its
observance. As soon as the great base burner of the sitting room was
put into operation, the kitchen fire was allowed to go out immediately
after dinner, and it was not lighted again until next morning. Aunt
Eppie, in explaining this custom, always made a great deal of the fact
that it saved work for Cissy. What of course it did save was fuel. A
tiny lamp set in the middle of this chill-inspiring table irritated the
eyes with its feeble glare and served only to make darkness visible.
Aunt Eppie possessed a large, round-burner lamp with a polished nickel
bowl and a "hand painted" china shade. This lamp was a present from one
of her married children. She prized it greatly but never lighted its
oil-consuming wick except when she had visitors of importance.
When the silent and cheerless supper was over and the dishes gathered
up and washed, everybody went immediately to bed.
"Never be out o' bed at eight ner in at five," was Aunt Eppie's oft
repeated motto; and winter and summer this rule was rigidly observed.
In the bitter winter mornings as well as in the radiant dawns of
summer, the whole family turned out at a quarter to five. They ate
breakfast by lamplight. Then while Cissy and Judith washed the dishes,
Aunt Eppie and Uncle Ezra sat over the base burner waiting for
daylight. With no light in the room but the glow from the mica windows
of the stove, the two old people sat in unbroken silence, slaves to
their lifelong habit of thrift.
The dreary monotony of this manner of life soon palled upon Judith and
she decided to leave Aunt Eppie's service.
"I'm a-goin' back home nex' Satiddy, Aunt Eppie," announced Judith,
when one Saturday evening she received her dollar as usual.
"What, a-goin' home, Judy! There hain't nuthin fer you to do at home,
an' you won't be earnin' a cent of money. What's the idee of a-goin'
back home?"
Judith looked straight at Aunt Eppie with her dark, level eyes.
"I'm a-goin' home 'cause I want to," she said with unashamed simplicity.
"You'd best stay right where you are," advised Aunt Eppie. "Look
at Cissy that's been a-workin' for me so long, haow well fixed she
is. She's got money loaned out an' a-bringin' her in five per cent
interest. You could do jes as well as her if you'd be willin' to stay
here an' tend your work, 'stead o' goin' off an' a-loafin' round yer
dad's place an' finally a-marryin' some good-fer-nuthin tenant farmer.
You'd best stay here, Judy, an' learn to be a good thrifty housekeeper
like Cissy."
Aunt Eppie said this last with a certain clinching finality, as though
it had been quite decided that Judith was to stay. A more timid and
impressionable girl might have been influenced. But Judith, heeding
only her own inner promptings, could be neither tempted nor bullied
by Aunt Eppie. When the following Saturday arrived she collected her
dollar, packed her satchel, climbed onto a wagon that was passing on
the way back from Sadieville and was jolted toward home.
Aunt Eppie looked after her with an aggrieved expression.
"That's jes haow it allus is," she remarked to the faithful Cissy, as
they turned back together into the kitchen. "They hain't got no notion
what's good for 'em. You no sooner get 'em trained into your ways than
they're up an' gone. Thankless an' shiftless--all of 'em."
She went back to her sewing in disgust, meditating bitterly that they
would now have to pay a male hired man four times what they had been
paying to Judith.
Judith was glad to get back to the humbler but warmer atmosphere at
home, and the folks were glad to have her back. She made Bill and the
boys roar again and slap their sides with delight when she imitated
Aunt Eppie's shriek of terror at the fear of the poorhouse. She spread
out on the table her accumulated wealth amounting to sixteen dollars;
and delighted the twins with a present of three dollars each to buy
them stuff for a new dress. To Elmer she gave a dollar to buy him a
popgun and reserved the rest of the money to spend riotously on clothes
for herself.
"An' we'll all have new dresses for the party," exulted Lizzie May.
"Poolers is a-going to have a party Christmas Eve an' we're all bid to
go. But we'll have to hurry to git the dresses done."
Unable to wait a minute longer, the girls drove to Clayton first thing
next morning and selected the material for their dresses. They chose
cotton voile as being the prettiest, most party-like material to be
had for the sum that they were able to spend. Lizzie May selected a
delicate pink. Luella's choice was a medium blue with darker blue
shadow bars running through it. Judith's was a red and white check.
They were delighted and voluble over their purchases. They felt gay and
festive and full of holiday spirit, like boarding school girls on a
visit home. On the way home they all tried to talk at once and laughed
so much that Tom and Bob, disturbed by the unusual hilarity behind
them, kept looking around inquiringly trying to see what was going on.
As they jolted at a fast trot past the Pettit place, Aunt Eppie peered
out of the kitchen window.
"There goes them Pippinger girls, an' I'll bet they've spent most every
cent Judy's earned while she's been here," she said to Cissy, turning
away from the window with her heavy money sigh. "It beats me haow
extravagant an' shiftless folks kin be. They don't seem to ever have a
thought that there's another day a-comin'."
That very afternoon the girls started to make their dresses. They could
hardly wait to eat and wash the dishes.
On Christmas Eve, when they were dressed ready for the party, they
felt somehow like different beings, as though they were not workaday
people at all but ladies who had always worn new, fluffy dresses, white
stockings, and shiny shoes.
It was a drive of three miles to the scene of the party. Then the mules
had to be hitched to a fence post at the top of the ridge and the
remaining quarter of a mile made on foot. The descent into the hollow
where the Pooler house stood was too steep and narrow to attempt with
a wagon at night. Tom Pooler, the father of Lizzie May's sweetheart,
was a tenant of old Hiram Stone and lived in one of Hiram Stone's
tenant houses. Like most of the other tenant houses in Scott County, it
was built close to the acres of tobacco land with which it belonged.
Proximity to the main road was a matter not taken into account.
By the light of two lanterns the Pippingers proceeded on foot down the
steep, scarcely marked wagon track that led to the house, the girls
carefully holding up their skirts and stepping daintily so as to avoid
the mud. The night was mild and bright with stars. As they walked a
light wind blew in their faces and the dead leaves rustled under their
feet. As they approached the house, they saw light shining not only
from the windows but from many little square chinks in the walls. The
reason for these little golden squares of light dated back to the
building of the house several years before. Tom Pooler had made an
arrangement with Old Man Stone's overseer to build the house if Stone
would supply the lumber. The overseer supplied green lumber. Tom set
to work briskly to build the house and soon completed the twelve by
fourteen packing case which in that locality is called a house. All
went well until the green boards began to shrink. Then Tom approached
his landlord's manager in this wise:
"Whatcha gimme green lumber to build that 'ere house fer? The boards is
shrunk naow so's a man might jes as well be a-livin' in a corn crib.
You could throw a dawg through any o' them there cracks atween them
shrunk boards. You'll have to gimme some more lumber to fix it, else I
hain't a-goin' to stay on there nary week."
The overseer grudgingly supplied another load of lumber, with which Tom
set to work to make the house tight and shipshape. This time he nailed
the boards crosswise. They turned out to be as green as the first lot;
and in a few months they had shrunk away from each other, leaving the
house dotted with little square holes. "I'll fix that," said Tom to
himself one Sunday morning, and started toward the corn crib. He soon
came back with a wheelbarrow load of corn cobs and started to drive
them into the holes and break off the ends. For an hour or so he worked
busily driving in cobs and breaking off the ends. When he was called to
dinner he surveyed the results of his work and saw that he had mended
only a small patch of the great chequered expanse still gaping with
holes. In the afternoon he began again, but with diminished energy.
Along toward four o'clock the weariness of well doing suddenly came
upon him. There were too many holes.
"Aw, hell, let 'er go the way she is," he muttered disgustedly, and
felt in his pocket for another chew of tobacco.
It was to this house of many little golden windows that the Pippingers
were now coming in the darkness. Arrived at the door, they turned their
lanterns low and set them beside several other low-burning lanterns
that stood in a little cluster against the house wall. Pushing open
the door and entering without knock or ceremony, they found themselves
in a stifling hot room crowded with people. The dim glare of two small
kerosene lamps seemed a brilliant illumination after the darkness of
outside; and for a moment they were dazzled.
Addie Pooler, the eldest girl, came forward and escorted Judith and
the twins to a shedlike leanto back of the house where the Pooler boys
slept and which was now doing duty as a dressing room. Here the four
youngest Pooler children were already asleep all in one bed, two at
each end, under a quilt roughly constructed of various sized pieces of
dark colored goods cut from the less worn portions of men's old coats
and trousers. Several sleeping babies were disposed here and there
about the room on improvised beds made of overcoats or lap-robes. The
girls put their coats and scarves on another large bed already piled
with outdoor clothing, patted their hair a little in front of the
small, face-distorting mirror over the chest of drawers, and followed
Addie back into the kitchen.
Here the party was not yet under way. The women and girls and small
children of both sexes were sitting or standing self-consciously about
the walls. For the most part they sat bolt upright and stared straight
ahead of them. Now and then they eyed each other covertly. Sometimes
a woman would speak to her neighbor in a hushed voice and thus start
up a small whispered conversation; but of general talk there was none.
Almost all of them, daughters and mothers alike, were painfully thin,
with pinched, angular features and peculiarly dead expressionless eyes.
The faces of the girls wore already an old, patient, settled look,
as though a black dress and a few gray hairs would make them sisters
instead of daughters of the older women.
Tom Pooler, the host, a little man, red-faced and choleric like a
bantam fighting cock, the possessor of a tremendous ego, sat in a
round-backed armchair by the stove and spat tobacco juice into the wood
box. His feet in heavy gray cotton socks were comfortably extended upon
the fender. He was the center of a group of older men who stood and sat
about the stove spitting tobacco juice and discussing the same things
that they always did. The young men were nowhere to be seen. They were
all standing outside with the lanterns.
All at once the door flew open and Jabez Moorhouse came in with his
fiddle.
Jabez was in the best of spirits. He had taken a drop before he
started, had had several pulls from the bottle on the way over to keep
out the cold, and was feeling in holiday spirit. He was much in demand
at gatherings like these on account of his ability to play the fiddle
and call off the dances; and his response was usually a ready one. But
he never went without a flask of good corn whiskey in his pocket to
blur his eyes and his mind and nimble his fingers and his feelings.
"Waal, naow, gals, whatcha doin' here anyway? Settin' all raound
solemn, like you was to a buryin'?"
He opened the door and held it open while he called out into the
darkness:
"Hi there, you backward young fellers! Air you a-goin' to set aout on
the doorstep with the dawgs all night? Come along in here an' pick yer
gals fer the fu'st dance."
They came pouring in, elbowing and shoving each other and uttering
loud guffaws to cover their embarrassment. They were healthier and
less angular than the girls and the look of premature age had not been
stamped upon their features.
"Naow then, you good lookin' gals, git up onto the floor; an' if a
partner don't pick you, you pick a partner. This here is leap year
anyway. Besides it's allus the wimmin that picks the men, though they
try to make out it hain't. I say every gal that wants to git a good man
step out onto the floor. An' every gal that wants to stay a old maid
keep a-settin' by her mammy."
Nobody was offended by the crassness of Jabez' exhortation. It was what
they had all been waiting for. This crude joviality and the smell of
corn whiskey that was beginning to pervade the atmosphere soon cured
the young fellows of their bashfulness, and there was much pulling and
pushing of the girls from their seats, which they pretended to wish to
retain.
Jabez had stationed himself in a corner and was tuning his fiddle.
"Naow then, all aboard! Form a line daown the middle; a lady an' a
gent, a lady an' a gent. Gents to the right, ladies to the lef'. Swing
yer partners."
He broke into the tune of one of the square dances familiar in that
neighborhood, and the feet of the young men and girls followed
him. Awkwardly and haltingly enough they stepped the first figure.
The girls, with their angularities sticking out of their skimpy,
ill-fitting dresses, moved at first as though from the pulling of
wires. The young men slumped and floundered, lost their partners and
got tangled up in the chain of dancers and had to be untangled again.
As they warmed to the music, however, the feet lightened, the arms
limbered, and self-consciousness was forgotten.
The men about the stove kept the fire well stoked and the room grew
hotter and hotter, especially to the dancers. Dance followed upon
dance. Tobacco smoke and the fumes of corn whiskey filled the stale
air. The cheeks of every one were blazing from the heat and closeness.
The children in the chairs were all asleep, leaning against their
mothers. The older men in the corner by the stove watched the dancers
and talked and spat tobacco juice into the wood box. They spat so much
tobacco juice that the wood was covered with it. Fortunately it was the
spitters who had the job of putting the wood into the stove, so it was
their own affair. For the dancing girls in their slippers and light
dresses, their feet and hearts beating time to the music, the spit
encrusted wood box did not exist. With the beautiful ability of youth
to ignore the ugly and sordid, however near at hand, they danced and
laughed and coquetted with their partners, feeling in this their hour
far removed above the humdrum of their lives.
The two prettiest girls in the room were Bill Pippinger's daughters,
Lizzie May and Judith. Lizzie May, with her pale pink dress, cornsilk
hair and small, dainty features, made one think of a wild rose. Dan
Pooler could not take his eyes from her and insisted on being her
partner in every dance, until toward the end of the evening the two
disappeared entirely from the dancing floor. Judith in red and white
shone in her dark loveliness like a poppy among weeds. Something more
than her beauty set her apart from the others: an ease and naturalness
of movement, a freedom from constraint, a completeness of abandon to
the fun and merrymaking, to which these daughters of toil in their most
hectic moments could never attain. Somehow, in spite of her ancestry,
she had escaped the curse of the soil, else she could never have known
how to be so free, so glad, so careless and joyous.
This difference from the other girls singled her out for comment more
than once; and the comment was always adverse, less from maliciousness
than from lack of comprehension; although envy, naturally enough, was
not absent.
"My sakes, Judy Pippinger'd otta think shame to herse'f," whispered
Jenny Whitmarsh to Esther Pooler, "the way she goes on with the
fellers!"
"If Judy's poor mammy was alive, she wouldn't like to see her a-goin'
on in that way," sighed Aunt Mary Blackford to Aunt Maggie Slatten.
"That way o' carryin' on ain't a-goin' to bring her to no good."
The men about the stove had by this time passed the bottle several
times and were filled with good feeling and reminiscences, as they
watched the dancers passing in a far-off blur. The young men too had
occasionally slipped aside to enjoy a swig with a companion, and were
becoming bolder and more demonstrative in the dance. From time to time
the talk of one of them slipped past the bounds of the decent and
caused the cheeks of his partner to flush still redder.
As they danced the old game of "Skip to ma Loo," everybody sang noisily:
Dad's ole hat an' mam's ole shoe,
Dad's ole hat an' mam's ole shoe,
Dad's ole hat an' mam's ole shoe,
Skip to ma Loo, ma da'lin'.
In the pauses of the dance, the voices of the men about the stove could
be heard growing louder and more vociferous, as the bottles became
lighter.
I'll git another one better'n you,
I'll git another one better'n you,
I'll git another one better'n you,
Skip to ma Loo, ma da'lin'.
Aunt Nannie Pooler, a wizened, bent little woman, the mother of eleven,
now began to spread out the refreshments on a table in a corner. Some
of the older women got up and assisted her. The Poolers were noted
for their improvidence and their lavishness in entertaining. Soon the
table was spread with layer cakes, cookies, corn cakes and plates of
cold fried chicken. The smell of bad coffee boiling on the stove had
permeated the room for some time. It was now poured into cups, mugs,
bowls, glasses, anything that would hold liquid, and the guests invited
to step up and partake.
"Yaas, we eat at our haouse," Tom Pooler's voice could be heard saying
loudly. "An' anybody comes in our doors, neighbor or stranger, goes
away with his belly full."
"Whose hencoop d'ye reckon old man Pooler reached this fried chicken
out'n?" asked Edd Whitmarsh of young Bob Crupper, when the two had
retired to the back stoop to enjoy chicken washed down by a swig of
whiskey.
"Whosever it was he had 'em fed fat," answered Bob, devouring a piece
of the breast with great satisfaction. "I sholy do love a fat chicken.
I kinder hope the joke was on Uncle Ezry."
With the leg of a chicken in one hand and a corn cake in the other,
Jabez, now blissfully intoxicated, stood beside the table and rallied
the girls as they came up. Most of them were too excited to care for
food and Jabez knew it.
"Waal naow, Judy, my gal, hain't you a-goin' to do nothin' but nibble
at a half of a wing, like you was a mouse on a pantry shelf? I seen you
a-dancin' that fast an' a-laughin' that hard, a body'd think you'd be
clean wore out an' a-needin' vittles. If you'd worked that hard at the
washtub, I'll bet you'd be a-wantin' to eat a' right."
Judith's cheeks were scarlet and her dark eyes blazing. She looked at
him from under her straight black eyebrows with the peculiar level
gaze of hers. Even in the excitement of the moment there was something
calm and critical, almost cold in that clear, unwavering look. She had
always resented the self-appointed privilege of the old to make sport
of the young.
"When you was seventeen did you eat hearty at parties, Uncle Jabez?"
Jabez did not notice the question. "Land, Judy," he said meditatively,
"it makes a body feel old to see haow quick you young uns grows up. It
seems like only day afore yestiddy you was a little brat a-crawlin'
raound on the kitchen floor. When I'd step into yer dad's to see about
borryin' a tool or gittin' shoes put onto a hoss, I'd have to walk
careful to keep from settin' my foot daown on yuh. An' naow here ye be
a tall, growed young leddy; an' if there's a handsomer gal in Scott
County I'd like to have her showed to me."
Just then Jerry Blackford came up, grabbed Judith on both sides of her
red and white checked waist and whisked her away to another corner of
the room.
The music and dancing began again after Jabez had finished his chicken
leg and ended in a wild, helter-skelter scramble, the young men chasing
the girls around and around the room, catching them and kissing them
with loud, resounding smacks. The girls exchanged slaps for kisses,
and the sound of female fingers ringing on male cheeks peppered the air.
"Young folks to the wall; ole folks to the middle," called out the
voice of Jabez. "This is dad's an' mammy's turn naow. Step out here you
ole timers an' show the young uns haow we used to dance when we was
lads an' gals."
Tom Pooler could be heard pulling his shoes out from under the stove.
"Yaas, by gollies, let's show 'em haow we done a barn dance. We hain't
so stiff with rheumatics but what we kin step a figger yet, hey,
Nannie?"
The other men about the stove shambled after Tom to the middle of the
floor. The older women, exhorted by their daughters and husbands, were
at last persuaded to forsake their chairs and join the circle.
Although nearly all of the "old folks" were under fifty and most of
them in the thirties and forties, it was a scarecrow array of bent
limbs, bowed shoulders, sunken chests, twisted contortions, and
jagged angularities, that formed the circle for the old folks' dance.
Grotesque in their deformities, these men and women, who should have
been in the full flower of their lives, were already classed among
the aged. And old they were in body and spirit. It was only on such
rare occasions as this that the stimulation of social feeling and corn
whiskey incited them to try to imitate with Punch and Judy antics the
natural gaiety of youth.
"Yaas, we'll teach 'em haow to step a dance," cried Andy Blackford,
the father of Jerry, floundering into the wrong place in the chain and
grabbing the wrong partner with his great, seamy, wart-covered hands.
"This is haow we done it in the old days, hain't it, Aunt Susie?"
The skinny, dried-up, little women in their black dresses and white
aprons did not get much enjoyment out of the dance. There was neither
lure nor mystery about the other sex for them any more; and they were
disgusted and nauseated by the foul whiskey breath that spewed out upon
them from their partners' mouths. The thought of the hard-earned money
thrown away upon said whiskey did not tend to make them more cheerful.
They went through the dance as they had gone through everything else
since childhood, as a matter of course, because the circumstances of
their lives demanded it of them.
Toward the close of the dance, Tom Pooler fell sprawling upon the
floor. The drink had gone to his legs as well as to his head. He took
the fall as an unwarranted insult to his dignity and scrambled to his
feet flushed with whiskey, importance and indignation.
"I tell ye, I'm a baar in the woods, I am. Nobody don't dass say nuthin
to Tom Pooler that he don't wanta hear--not Ezry Pettit ner Hiram Stone
ner none of 'em. I don't take no sass from nobody no matter haow much
land they got. I bet I cud lick any man in Scott County. I tell ye I'm
a baar in the woods."
"You shet up yer mouth, ye dern ole fool an' don't git to quarrelin'
in yer own house. Whatcha drink all that whiskey fer?" admonished Aunt
Nannie in a loud whisper close to his ear. He glared at her with small,
fiery, bloodshot eyes, like an angry old boar at bay. She met the glare
firmly and calmly. Under her cold gaze that had restrained him so many
times before he calmed down. But for a long time he kept muttering to
himself: "I'm a baar in the woods, I am. Yaas, sir, I'm a baar in the
woods."
The young people had paid no attention to the dancing of their elders.
They had slipped away into corners and were absorbed in their own
affairs.
The party was over with the old folks' dance. There was much sorting
out of clothing, wrapping up of sleeping babies and shaking of older
children to get them wide enough awake to walk to the wagons. No one
told the host and hostess that they had enjoyed themselves; such things
went without saying. When the Pippingers were all ready to start and
had at last selected their own lanterns out of the bewildering cluster
by the door, Lizzie May was not to be found anywhere. They waited and
called. By and by she appeared around the corner of the house; she had
been saying good-by to Dan. She seemed flustered and excited.
After they had reached the wagon and were driving along the ridge
road, they heard Jabez, who was striding home across fields, singing
ebulliently as he walked:
Possum up the 'simmons tree,
Raccoon on the graoun';
Raccoon says, "You son of a bitch,
Throw them 'simmons daown."
The night was still, mild and bright with stars. There was a clean
smell of earth and dried leaves. The song came across the fields out of
the darkness, rich, clear and mellow. A soft, cool wind blew in their
heated faces; and the stars twinkled down through the tracery of bare
treetops.
"Ain't Uncle Jabez awful!" sighed Luella, snuggling down into the
straw. "He kin play the fiddle good; but land he does use sech
langridge."
"Oh, don't think yerse'f so nice, Elly," snapped Judith, who had loved
the sound of the singing. "His langridge hain't no worse'n other men
folks'. On'y the song hain't true, 'cause a coon kin climb a tree jes
as good as a possum any day."