She ran out of the house at dusk, her fiddle in her hand, fiddle and bow
clutched in her fingers. She went rapidly down the street, thinking that
she would walk toward the pool, toward the fields, toward some point far
beyond the town. She would hurl fiddle-playing into the tops of tall
trees and hurl it again into the darkening sky. The ripples of the water
would be black and the plowed fields would be black where the dusk had
sunk into the autumn furrows.
Before the livery stable she saw Stiggins, who stood listlessly, his
hands in his pockets, swaying unevenly from one foot to the other. The
wind that would have blown the dark water of the pool was shifting the
straws and trash of the stable about before Stig’s feet, making a shallow
drift in the dirt and refuse.
“Come on with me, Stig,” she said. “Come and go with me where I go.”
He shuffled uncertainly, hearing her words slowly. “Come on now,
Stiggins,” she said.
She turned about and went toward Hill Street, Stiggins following after
her a few steps. It was the hour when the street-lights were not yet lit
and the people who passed were gray undistinguished motions drifting
unevenly through the fog of the first-dark. Now and then as she went she
called to Stiggins and was assured that he was following by his shuffling
uneven steps that quickened at each cry. She went to Lethe’s cabin and
knocked at the door, and at Americy’s call she went inside, passing
swiftly over the threshold. Stig remained on the doorstep staring, but
after a moment he crouched in the doorway. Americy brought a chair to
the middle of the floor and offered it without a greeting. Then she went
to sit on the bed, her accustomed place, and Lethe turned slightly about
from the table, where food had been eaten. A few crusts of bread lay on a
plate, but the other dishes were empty. Lethe was sullen, sitting turned
away from the door, and when Theodosia was seated she moved slightly and
spoke with contempt, speaking softly.
“You come here and all the town will be a-talken. You want the town to be
a-talken about you-all? What you want t’start up everybody a-talken about
you for?”
“What’s to talk about now?”
Stig began to mumble half-articulate words, looking at the floor with a
strange smile about his eyes. “A leetle scrop to eat, a leetle leavens.
All I want is a leetle mess to eat. The pickens on a ham bone is good,
the pickens on a ham bone. Have you-all got e’er ham bone around? All I
want....”
Theodosia took her fiddle to her chin and began to play Americy’s tune,
touching the bow lightly to the strings. The eyes in Stig’s face were
bent down slightly at the corners, wearily drooped, but his lips smiled
at the music. Theodosia remembered at that moment that Lethe had once
had a child. “They buried Lethe’s baby today,” some voice was remembered
saying. “Another death on Hill Street.” A child epidemic had been
sweeping over the town. Remembering the infant she looked at Lethe with a
searching gaze, the dead child and Lethe’s grief in her mind, wondering
at the nature of this grief and searching Lethe’s face anew for some
remnant of it.
“Skeeter Shoots, he’s got a thing like that-there to play on,” Stig said,
speaking suddenly in a flare of words, half shouting. “Only he plays
his’n on his mouth, plays it with his spit.” He began to hum aloud and to
sing unmusical sounds, his hands crumpled at his lips. “Plays on it with
his spit in his mouth,” he said. “Goes like this-here.”
“What you bring Stig here for?” Lethe said. “Did I tell you to bring Stig
here?”
He began to tell of some confused happening which was related to the
mouth harp in his mind. A rat had been killed in the corn room, a
half-starved rat that had been shut into a tank for many days. He talked,
catching at his breath, gleeful over the story, waving his hands. “We
kill ol’ rat in corn room,” he said. “We brain ol’ rat one day in corn
room.”
“What’s he want?” Lethe asked.
“He don’ want e’er thing,” Americy said, speaking gently. “Leave him be.”
“There was a rat, ol’ rat,” Stig began afresh. “Got shut in water-tank.
Tin water-tank, not got no water in it. You ought to ’a’ seen ol’ rat!
Skeeter Shoots he says to me, ‘Look at that-there rat, God knows, shut
inside that-there tank. Been shut up three weeks since that-there rat got
shut up since tank was open last. Skeeter Shoots says.”
Lethe turned back to the table, her elbows on the board, her knees
crossed. Her body was bent slightly forward as if she were deeply
fatigued.
“What’d you bring him here for?” she asked. “What’s he here for now?”
“What is it you know about him?” Theodosia asked sharply, turning
suddenly on Lethe, unafraid in her sudden surprise.
“I know enough. I ain’t been borned so long ago for nothing.”
“A ham bone,” Stig began to whimper. “Ham-meat is right good now. Ham.”
“You can take him on away when you’ve done whatever you come for.”
“We all say, ‘Whoopee! come see ol’ rat.’ So weak in his legs he can’t
walk on his feet. Crawl on his belly. Slow, go like a snail-bug. See ol’
rat go up stable. Ol’ rat. ‘Take ker, ol’ rat!’ We all watch ol’ rat go
towarge corn room. Slow, slow, towarge corn room.” He made slow creeping
gestures with his fingers on the floor.
“I know enough. Was I borned last week? For God’s sake!”
“You hate me, Lethe,” Theodosia said after a little, speaking through
Stig’s garbled recitative that continued. “You hate me. What makes you
hate me? What did I ever do to you?”
“Was I borned last week? Don’t you reckon I know your tricks? Is he
anybody to me?”
Americy began to play one of her tunes, laboring with the chords and
humming softly, half whispering, and Theodosia watched the fingers on the
strings or she plucked her own strings to make harmonious chords with the
tune. The music set Stig’s eyes in a dance and renewed his memory of the
scene in the corn room. His voice was lifted to a higher pitch.
“We all says ‘Whoopee! Come see ol’ rat.’ Crawl on his belly. Go a leetle
piece, stop, go a leetle piece. Three weeks in that-there tank and ne’er
a bite inside him.”
“For God’s sake!” Lethe said. She turned wearily toward the table again.
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
“Ol’ rat,” Stig said. “Rat go crawl, crawl down towarge corn room. We
all walk behind ol’ rat and see ol’ rat go crawl down towarge corn room.
Skeeter Shoots says ‘Come see ol’ rat.’ Says, ‘Naw, don’t kill yet. Watch
’im crawl down towarge corn room.’ Take ol’ rat, I reckon, hour. I go
water Rose and hitch up Beckie. Come back. ‘Ain’t ol’ rat got there yet?’”
“To let Minnie Harter take your man away. For God’s sake! You’re easy.
To let Min Harter get ahead on you. The lame slut.” Lethe spoke with
great passion, turning half about and staring at Theodosia, eyeing her
form up and down.
“What you know about that?” Theodosia asked. She turned back to Americy’s
playing again. “What do you know about that?”
“Plays a tune right outen his spit,” Stig said.
“Oh, God’s pity on us all,” Americy said. She was rocking herself forward
and back.
“What’s God got to do about this?” Theodosia asked. She turned on
Americy, her words like an outcry. Americy stopped her rocking and sat
stilled, afraid before the rush of the question.
“What’s God got to do? I do’ know,” Americy said. And then she whispered,
“Oh, God ’a’ pity.”
“Where is any God?”
“A ham bone to gnaw on’s all I want. My spit wants a ham bone to lick,”
Stig said.
“Oh, I d’know,” Americy said, speaking to both of them. “Oh, I got no ham
bone.” Her face was bent low and her voice was low.
“Ol’ rat go crawl, crawl, so weak he can’t go.”
Theodosia looked at the small flame in the lamp behind the dull burnt
chimney, her eyes on the little apple of light that throbbed unevenly
there. She was thinking of the light as a small flower in bloom, and she
traced its essence to Americy’s face and then to Stig’s forehead where
it shone against his brow. The shadows beside Americy’s nostrils made
hollows in the long, blank brown of her face, her two dark eyes bent over
the guitar in a stupid anxiety to accomplish a chord she had known a
few days before. There was a step outside on the roadway, and presently
steps were moving away from the house. Somebody had been looking in at
the window. Theodosia stirred a little in her chair and her own part in
the room troubled her, in the house. “What am I here? What to them?” she
was asking herself. She sat in the stiff chair, in the middle of the
floor, facing Americy, feeling Lethe’s hate. “Her hate pushes me back,
but it does not push me out at the door,” she was thinking. She began to
play some melody on the fiddle, a melody which she broke and distorted,
rubbing the bow softly over the gut, making a thin, distracted music,
unjointed, without logic. Lethe turned away and sat toward the table, and
Stig had begun to tell his story again. Lethe’s hate did not forbid her,
but rather it pricked the air with some fertile pollen and prepared every
moment a newer menace, and to each moment the fiddle responded with soft
demonic music, ill-flavored, crooked, sinister. She brought her playing
to crashing discords, softly played, a disturbance working upward through
half-tones, and Lethe turned about, her head and shoulders facing the
fiddle, and said:
“To let Min Harter take your man. God’s sake. Right afore your own
eyes. Would I stand that-there, me? Min lame and you got two good legs
yourself.”
“You hate me hard, don’t you, Lethe,” Theodosia said, speaking sharply.
She tried to turn back to Americy’s song.
“Or let Flo Agnew. Some said it was Flo Agnew got your goat. God’s sake!
You a tame one.” Lethe’s words were bitter to her own taste now, turned
back upon herself, as if she were defending herself.
“Where’s Ross now?” Americy asked, speaking softly, afraid of Lethe’s
passion. Her tone was slightly knowing, as if she gave a taunt in defense
of Theodosia. Softly spoken, “Where’s Ross by now?”
“He works now of a night at the brick-yard, works all night at the
brick-kiln.”
“It was said Ross was sweet on Lou at the lodge supper a Sat’day, sweet
as pie on Lou, was said.” Americy spoke to herself, in a dream, and she
began to rock to and fro again. “That’s what was said a Sunday at the
church.”
“If he spends one quarter on her,” Lethe said, laying down her hard oath
with slow, careful words, “If he spends one quarter on her or walks in
the dark once beside her, I’ll ... I’ll cut her body open with a hog
knife. One time, and I’ll do it, so help me God.”
Stig was telling his story, making small tracks with his fingers on the
bare floor, his mouth dripping in his eagerness to relate the happenings.
Theodosia looked at Lethe continually now and she saw her hate arise to
an intense power and she knew, seeing her, the force of hate where it
mounted, direct, willing, uncurbed by self-searching. Looking intently
at Lethe she merged for the instant with her and felt the sting of hate
where it spread over her own face and her breast.
“That’s what was said,” Americy whispered, staring at the floor. “Sweet
on Ross, Lou was, and him sweet back on her, was said.”
“One time, and I’ll cut her open with a hog knife. She knows I will. She
better know.” A cry.
“Crawl, crawl, crawl down stable. Climb step. Can’t climb last step. Too
steep. Skeeter Shoots, he says, ‘I help ol’ rat up last step.’ Sets ol’
rat down on top. ‘See?’ Skeet says. ‘Here’s corn room.’ We kill ol’ rat
inside corn room.”
“Americy, have you got a soul, a spirit?” Theodosia asked. “Did you
inherit one? Did you?”
“I saw the glory o’ the Lord one time,” Americy said, half singing. “I
saw the Lamb o’ God. Oh, my Jesus!”
Theodosia arose quickly from her chair and stood by the door, her hand
having flung open the door. “Stig, have you got a soul? Inside you
somewhere? Inside?” She knew that she was persisting cruelly. She leaned
over him where he sat by the frame of the door.
“I got a hungry belly insides me. I got a tape-snake wants a ham bone to
gnaw,” Stig said. “I mean what I say.”
She was leaning over him, looking at him intently, seeing his large
heavy face from above and watching its changing shadows, looking at his
dirty brown coat and his frayed breeches that bulged into the light where
his knees were raised. He seemed to be chewing at something, his lips
working in and out. Her eyes centered to his hands that drifted about
over his thighs and cupped together beyond his knees.
“Hold out your hands, Stig,” she said, “hold out your hand. Your hand.”
His hand, broad in the palm, flexible, sensitive to the boards of the
floor, was stretched, palm downward, beyond his foot, or it crept over
the floor; it turned upward and moved back and forth before her. The long
reach of the thumb and the span of the thumb and the fingers assailed
her, and the hand fiddled a moment on the air. Then it crumpled together,
bones and muscles flexed, and withdrew to the shadow under his knee. “The
fiddle hand,” she said, standing straight beside the door now. “You got
the fiddle hand, Stig,” she whispered. “You got it.”
“I got a hungry belly insides me, that’s what I got. I already told
you-all now. I got a hungry gut.”
She ran out the door, making a clatter on the steps, flinging the gate
back after her. The lights were lit along the streets and lanes now and
people were stirring about. The town seemed of one essence, every detail
flattened to the mass, and she walked as if she walked alone, arrogant,
stepping upon the closely conglomerated matter of voices, stones,
shadows, faces, acquaintance, history. Singularly marked, standing above
the stones on which she stepped, above the earth on which she walked,
she came down the street and entered her gate, detached from her own
entrance, standing above the click of the latch, above the segments of
light that lay as broken rectangles on the gallery floor.
* * * * *
Anthony had passed into a delusion, imagining he was in some other place;
he talked of a sea which he thought could be seen from the window and he
would ask the state of the tide. He called Theodosia by a strange name,
Amelia, one she had never heard in the family before.
Theodosia set herself to gather a class of students for stringed
instruments and presently she had as large a number as her time allowed,
for a passing fancy for this kind of playing was spreading over the
town. The house was desolate and poorly warmed. There was little fuel,
and Aunt Bet sulked of insufficient supplies for the kitchen. Theodosia
brought the children to the parlor and taught them there, wondering at
Anthony’s myth of Amelia and a sea. Or passing away from his room after
he had talked with her in his strange knowledge, she would look with an
unyielding scrutiny at herself, at the myth of Anthony, to try to find
some last sign of an inevitable substance or kind, perpetually existent,
unchanged, beyond delusion. “I join hands with him, and he is gone,” she
said.
“Tell Sylvester to put harness on the gray,” Anthony would say, or again,
“High tide comes the second of the month, Amelia....” If he were from his
bed he would sit very quietly, sinking slowly with the fire until he sat
crumpled in sleep.
He had departed although he continued some manner of life. He never
again called Theodosia by any name but Amelia. She fed him broth from a
spoon and thus nourished his continuation while he had already gone into
some memory, perpetually keeping there now. “He’s gone, he’s gone,” she
said in her thought, “and I join hands with him,” and as she tuned some
child’s instrument or busied herself with the lessons she leaped forward
to try to experience entire dissolution, to consummate it for him, to
foretell the encounter already well begun, stayed from any outcry by the
enveloping confusion and distrust without and within.
His regard for Amelia was constant, tender, dispassionate, and a
curiosity to know who this person could have been troubled her and set
her to search among all the names she had ever heard spoken in the house.
Or she asked her father.
“Who was Amelia in Grandfather’s life? When did Grandfather know Amelia?”
“Amelia? Search me. You can’t never tell about the old war horse. Lived
a long time, he did, and he lived well. What’s one skirt more to the old
war horse? But she was a lady nohow. You can set that much down for
certain. The old war horse, his taste ran to ladies. No white trash in
his loven days. Amelia was a lady.” Horace spoke with tenderness now.
“And who was Sylvester then?”
“No tellen. Some nigger, I reckon. I wouldn’t say.”
* * * * *
“You can’t tell. A man lives a long time. Goes through a heap from first
to last.”
They sat in the dining-room waiting; there were many hours of waiting
now. Horace talked incessantly, as if the summary of a life being enacted
on the bed in the front room loosed his tongue and brought his own
experience to a period, to a momentary full-stop. Or he talked of the
old man and he was touched often with grief. Theodosia sat half-drowsed
now, for she had slept but little of late. The words came as a continued
recitative as Horace talked.
“The old man was a good soldier. Nobody could say any dirt of the old
man. Proud of his lineage and rightly so. He loved the fine things of
the mind, you might say, and pursued classical learnen. Faithful to
his ideal, honest with all men, proud, gentle, tender as a woman. Why,
Father was a traveler far and wide. In his youth he spent several years
in travel—and a right smart of money too, I reckon. Few men of his
generation were more widely read, more richly informed. I know what I
say. In his youth he was an omnivorous reader, optimistic, salubrious,
and among his colleagues there was none better fitted to lead and counsel
the young. Faithful to his highest conceptions, an inspiration to the
youth of his circle, he was intelligent, honest, proud, and as tender as
a woman.”
He would grow tired and slip into his more negligent mood. “Did I ever
tell you about the time the old man put up Leslie Robinson for Governor?
He put out, I reckon, five thousand dollars to nominate Les Robinson.
It’s a pity the old man ever turned his talent to politics, even for so
short a time as it took to roll Les Robinson up into a spit-ball and
throw him up on the roof of the convention hall. It’s all in the count.
But Father believed in Les Robinson’s genius, wanted to see him win, and
he had some notion to get something for himself out of it, I reckon.
It’s no use now to waste breath on old measures. All the west counties
got in line, and then somebody got all the mountains in a handful. It
was a frame-up on Les. The owls of iniquity will howl. No use to go into
it now. Money melts in politics like sugar in hot water. Nobody knows
where’t goes. The most hearty desire to render succor, service, unselfish
devotion to the common cause of myself and my country. I promise, if
elected, to emulate the great heroes of our great commonwealth in word
and act, to uphold the constitutions of the state and of the nation, to
honor the law and the right, and to protect the home as the sanctuary of
mankind.”
He was personally reminiscent now, his feet on a high hassock. “You
remember, don’t you, Theodosia, the time I ran for the state senate?...
It’s queer how it is, but your own brat that you begot yourself grows up
and looks you full in the face and asks you with a sharp shoulder-blade,
‘What made you ever do that durned fool thing for?’ I’ve known you,
Theodosia, ever since you were no bigger than my two hands, and earlier.
Ronnie Robinson says, ‘Le’s make this one a toast,’ and then Mike
O’Connor says, ‘We’ll drink to the health of the unborn.’ The time I
acted Santy Claus in the church. I never told in your hearen about that,
did I, Dosia?
“Folks there in the church thought here’s a good time to get Horace
interested in church work, I reckon. Charlotte played the organ there
part of the time. I recollect they asked me to act Santy Claus. ‘Who
ever saw a Santy Claus six foot and over?’ I says, but they’d got their
heads set to’t. Mike O’Connor says, ‘God’s sake, Horace!’ when he heard
I was to be the Santy Claus. Christmas Eve at night, it was to be. Rosie
Granger made the costume for me to wear, a red coat, boots with fur sewed
on the top. A white beard all over my mouth. ‘I drink to the health of
the unborn,’ Mike O’Connor says.”
She saw that he was repaying her for being a shoulder-blade to his
pride. “I drink to the health of the unborn,” he repeated the saying.
He was repaying her for all her scorn of him. “Tom Molloy says, ‘God’s
sake, he won’t stay sober.’ I recollect after I got on my costume we all
sat down in Tom Molloy’s room to wait till the church was ready, all
the singen down and the tableau over, up the street from the church, in
the old hotel. Miss Esther What’s-her-name down-stairs promised to call
me when it was my time to go on, and we all sat down to a little cards,
Tom Molloy, Mike O’Connor, and Ronnie Robinson, uncle to Ruth, he was.
Sat down to a few hands of poker. Ronnie poured out the spirits and he
poured big measures, and I sat there all dolled up for Santy Claus.
‘Christmas comes but once a year,’ Ronnie said, and then Mike stood up
and, solemnly, he meant every word of it too, says, ‘We’ll drink to the
health of the unborn.’ Charlotte was not goen out then. She was, you
might say, in a delicate condition, and God’s sake! It was you yourself,
Theodosia, that was curled up inside her asleep like a little kitten.
God’s sake! Mike stood up, solemnly, too, meant every word he said, and
out comes, ‘We’ll drink to the health of the unborn.’ Don’t you ever
forget that about Mike. Then Ronnie in his turn, ‘I drink to the health
of the unbegotten.’ I swear to God he did. After we’d drunk to the health
of the unbegotten twice or three times Tom was so drunk he was beside
himself and he says, ‘It’ll never do. It’ll never do on earth. He can’t
stand up on his feet, let alone walk around a Christmas tree and hand
out pretties,’ and we all sat down again to a little cards to steady our
nerves.
“Tinkle, tinkle, merry bells. I remember the night as well, cold outside,
the fire big in the grate, fireworks up the street where the boys were
out, good cheer, good friends, and a world new-born. I recall I held two
queens and was drawen for a third when up calls Miss Esther and says it’s
time to go over, says they’re on the last piece, she can tell by the
singen, and says they’ve already begun to light the candles on the tree.
Then Tom says, ‘He can’t do it. He’s drunk. God’s sake, there’ll be a
holy show if we let him get loose,’ and I called down to tell ’em to wait
till I draw another queen, to keep the song on foot till I draw one time
more. Well, we went over, and Ronnie laughed so hard he said he was in a
paroxysm, and Mike says, ‘A what?’ Mike always was a good friend of mine.
I recollect Tom was all in a tremble and he says, ‘It’ll be a holy show.’
Thought I couldn’t do it.”
A pity for him came into her mind and a hatred, cruel and bitter,
for these men, his friends, some of them dead or gone somewhere. She
remembered them now; they were scattered away from the town, or some of
them were dead. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and sank into
the hollows of the chair, her face turned toward him and away from the
fire. She pitied him for a moment before he spoke again, but when he
spoke her pity was lost, dispelled. “I handed out these little gauze
sacks with candy showen through to fifty chaps. ‘I drink to the health of
the unborn,’ Mike says. Old Mike. I handed out these little gauze sacks
and I handed a good precept along with each one. I made a first-rate
Santy Claus. ‘I drink to the health of the unbegotten,’ Ronnie says, over
at the hotel before we set out for the church.”
She could see him as she sat. He ran his fingers through his hair, full
of the pride of memory. He had forgotten her then. His blond hair stood
over his head, ready always for his fingers when they responded to his
pride, and she pitied again, seeing the bare spots above his temples. His
great body was untouched by fatigue, was full of vitality. He could talk
all night, she thought. He was speaking further, half slyly, making an
end each instant and renewing himself.
“There’s more I could tell if I was of a mind to, but I won’t. After it
was over we decided to take a walk in the cold to sort of clear up our
heads. We took a walk after it was over, a long walk, took a walk....”
His voice seemed delayed, the words slowly pushed apart to let clearer
pictures stand between.
She was waiting on a street that was thronged with people, all of them
hushed to await some event that gathered itself together and approached
far up the street. “The street-parade,” a voice said. There was a wide
promenade left for the procession which was coming far up the way, all
the people standing back and all very still. The procession was near
at hand then, was passing by. It was made up of women, long strange
creatures, not old but haggard, spent, thin, labored. Their long lank
garments hung to their ankles, but their meager thin forms could be
seen through the dejected attire they wore. They walked in an irregular
procession, more than a hundred although they were uncounted. It was a
terror to see them.
They converged toward something, focused toward some following object
or person although their faces were set forward and they marched on.
Their steps plodded on the pavement. They centered back in a fan-shape
of interest toward some other, some focus. Then there was a great blare
of sudden music and, the women being finished, the object was at hand.
It was the figure of a man, made of human flesh. He stood at ease on a
dais or float and moved forward with the blare of music without effort.
The women were gone now, their backs visible as they walked down the way
of the procession, but the man was at hand in the midst of a great burst
of horn music. He was more than life-size, was of heroic proportions,
moving easily along on the float as if he were propelled by some unseen
force engendered by the multitude of women. He was one, one man, heroic
in size, bursting with strength and life, made of flesh like a man. He
stood erect, his limbs apart, in a lewd pose. He was naked. On his body
were marks then; on his chest they began, as small warts sprinkled over
his breast, but lower, on his upper abdomen, they were larger and were
shaped like small teats. They became larger as they descended over his
abdomen and became more alive, each one more living than the last. They
were rigid with life and were pointed forward toward the women.
Her own self stood at her elbow. She turned quickly about, toward her
self, and she knew a deep wish, an ardent prayer that her self had
not seen this last. Her self had not seen, was watching the women as
they were going far down the street. The great fanfare of horns became
suddenly remote and the float had passed by. Her self had not seen it.
She was glad with a great thankful prayer. She found then, suddenly,
that she had waked from sleep, that she was in the room with Horace, who
was still speaking. His voice gathered itself back, closing the wide
opening that had stood between his words. “_Silent Night_ and one thing
and another,” the words said, gathering together into sense. “It was Mike
proposed to take a walk, and we sang a long while out by the Johntown
forks of the road.”
Her dream rolled back before her conscious eyes, vivid in memory now.
The terrible drama of it stood it before her eyes as a passing design.
Her picturing mind went back to it, detail by detail, fascinated and
frightened. She put it together and took it apart, dwelling on each
terrible picture, and saw the dreary women in procession, laboring
forward, and then the man infinitely furnished, and then herself guarding
her self from the sight. She went back to the beginning and stated it
anew, bringing the pageant into play slowly. The women marched in their
long drab garments, walking without music, laboring forward. The man
then, and the blare of horns.
She walked to the opened door and looked at Anthony where he lay
stretched out to die, covered as she had covered him. He was sleeping
profoundly, his breath continuing. The evening was early as yet; later
she would look for others to come, Frank and a friend or two of Horace’s.
She went back to her seat by the fire, and Horace was still speaking.
“Then I recollect we set-to to finish up the job Mike proposed for us,
to walk down every street and alley in town. ‘We’ll slight not one,’
Mike said. ‘No alley or by-way so humble it would be said we wouldn’t
walk on it,’ Mike said. That’s how I ever got in the alley back of the
jail, I reckon. ‘I drink to the health of the unborn,’ Mike said, up in
Tom’s room before we went over to the Christmas tree, and had you in
mind, you understand. Mike was always a good friend of mine. I’ve been
richly endowed with friendship all my life, good friends as any you’ll
ever see any man have.... That my father should ’a’ come you might say
to poverty in his old age, to actual poverty. Those sneaken, low-down,
three-times-damned hounds that got his property. I’ll do something about
it yet. Put up Les Robinson for governor and all the low-down sharks in
the state got the pickens of his purse. They’re not done with me yet, not
by a jugful. That my father, Anthony Bell, should.... The old man adored
you, always from the start. I could see it, you no bigger than two years
old. Believed in you. ‘She’s got a rare musical talent,’ he said. Used
to get warmed up over it, you no bigger than that high. What’ll become
of us now, we two the only ones left? We’ll have to console each other,
get near together. The world, it’ll be a lonesome place for me and you
without the old man.”
Theodosia was distraught when he began to weep. She walked to the inner
door again, but when she returned his head was in his hands, his body
bowed forward. Retelling all that he had said of Anthony he cried aloud,
“A fine old man. I’ll be a bereft man now,” turning his mind toward
self-pity. “Come to your father’s arms, Dosia. My heart, it’s broken.
Come kiss your poor old father.”
She kept in her place. “I’ll stay where I am,” she said.
She had moved to a chair toward the table, toward her grandfather’s door,
and sat erect. The large heavy sideboard reached beyond her, too near,
as if she were crowded into its shadow, as if she were something living
that was being expelled from the dark, dead mass of the furniture, pushed
outward into a quivering point of pain. She stared at the dim pattern in
the carpet, or she moved and stood before the sideboard, her arms folded
together. Her tears were gone now and she gathered herself together in
the act of folding her arms. Expelled from the entire room, from all the
history of the place, she turned about without guidance and stood near
the wall.
“You poor child. Come to my arms,” he said, coming near to her.
“Your hands off me. I’ll stay where I am.” She felt herself to be
diminished to a point of denial, concentrated to negation, and his grief
continued.
“Over your grandfather’s dead body, around his deathbed, you wouldn’t
kiss your own father. She’s hard, a hard girl....”
His tears dwindled to a close, lingering while she, feeling a summons,
walked toward the inner door. She stood beside Anthony’s bed listening to
his long, slow breathing, each breath fixed into a space of quiet. She
opened the window to give him fresh cold air for his labored inhalations.
One or two came, friends of Horace, and later Frank came. Theodosia sat
by the bed alone, but now and then one of the men from the parlor would
come to stay with her for a little. At midnight the night-lamp which
Anthony liked to have near at hand burned out and she called Siver to
carry it away and renew the oil. When he returned with it rubbed clean
and restored, he set it on the table and stood beside the bed, charmed
by the enactment there, and presently it appeared that Anthony would not
breathe again, that one of the slowly breathed sobs that had quietly
shaken his body had been his last breath. They, Theodosia and Siver,
stood beside the bed, she making her farewell of the beloved cadaver.
Siver found two silver pieces from his pocket and held them in his hand,
uncertainly, or he showed them to her, and they seemed for the moment
appropriate, as if they gave some sign or made some charm. Then Siver
made as if he would lay them across Anthony’s eyelids and she consented.
When he had done this she adjusted the coins with her own hands, and thus
they closed his eyes. Then she called the men from the parlor.
* * * * *
After the funeral Horace went to Paducah to attend court. Mr. Reed called
on Theodosia, his blank kindly face looking at her from across the parlor
while she settled to her chair. He seemed weary of his mission before he
had begun, knowing the end from the beginning. Anthony had made a will
seven years earlier making her his sole heir. The formality of unfolding
papers and citing memoranda was scarcely necessary, for there was nothing
left. He might at any moment have forgotten to proceed, to have summed
all with a sigh.
He told her how she might stay certain creditors and hold the house for
a short time. “Until you can look about you a little,” he said. He had
taken his hat from the table and had placed the memoranda on the piano.
She might rent a part of the house, retaining a part of it for herself,
he suggested. “Until you get used to things and can look about you a
little.” She had already floated far from the hour and the interview in
her apathy, in the numbness following the acceptance of the disclosures.
He would give her any advice he could, he said; she might always apply to
him. Apply for what? she wondered, and she closed the house door, looking
intently at the door-frame, at the latch, at the baseboard and the floor,
seeing them for the first time, seeing them as her possessions.
Horace did not return from Paducah. Time passed. He wrote once hurriedly
asking her to send his clothing, or again, much later, he expressed
affection and said that he had entered a law firm. In his final letter he
said, “My practice needs new life and this city offers a splendid field.
I shall start life anew. I shall grow younger every day in this new
field. The broad river spreads out before me as I pen these lines.”
She walked through the house day after day, her house, experiencing
ownership, making certain her knowledge of the place through which she
had moved since first she could remember. She saw the stairway intently
each time she mounted it, and saw the cabinets where the Indian hatchets
and flints lay. She owned the house with a deep passion, possessed it,
brick laid on brick in the chimney, the sagging floor of the upper
gallery, the upper chambers. She had rented a part of it to a small
family, retaining the parlor and the chamber above, and she had her meals
at the renters’ table.
Frank looked at her complacently now across the space of the parlor.
She saw the deeply subordinated admiration in his eyes which had their
advice from his life design. He would sit at ease in his chair beside the
lamp, Albert’s place, and listen to her playing, more at ease now that
Albert and Conway were gone. His large, rugged, unbalanced face induced
a thought of solid strength, of simplicity. “You could work him out by a
formula,” she thought, as she saw him appropriate her music to his hour
of relaxation. He had an office in the court square of the town and his
talk was of wills, deeds, farms, contracts, or foreclosures, unless he
remembered to quote from his favorite poets. He remembered the poets
often. As a formula he sat now, out before the walls of the parlor,
detached from her determination to keep her house, her inheritance.
The house was lost, but she was determined to regain it. It was hers by
the deeply imbedded elements of memory, hers by all the fragrant, richly
toned ideas that had grown with her own growth. She looked now at her
first memory of the earth and saw in it its enhanced qualities as they
had come to her first-seeing. She knew that she had been born at the
farm, Linden Hill, but that she had been brought to the town house a
few months after her birth, when Linden Hill had passed to other hands.
She saw, as if it were a super-drama where time and event are enlarged,
herself at play as a little child at the foot of the large rough stone
chimney in the east wall, and she knew the soil there intimately with
her eyes and with her fingertips, for in the drama she had dug into it
with a small spade and had shaped it with her hands. A few herbs such as
sorrel and dwarf mint grew there, and a little beyond, away from the damp
of the wall, were the first clover blossoms. She saw her hand prodding
into the earth to find out its way, her head bent low to see and to smell
the crumpled soil. Her mind was fixed now to regain the visible sign of
the old play, to keep the trail that led back to her first-knowledge.
She saw how the great trunk of the elm tree came out of the earth,
deeply wrinkled and gray or black, as the light fell. Among the floating
festoons of leaves overhead, a sharp sudden cry, remembered, so real
and vivid as to be cruelly felt, had struck her with a quick and joyous
pleasure which was like a recognition—and she had heard her first
bird-song. “At these points I am attached to the earth,” she thought,
looking at her moving hands, her feet, her memories, at the sorrel and
ivy of memory. Aunt Bet had gone to another place without regret or
outcry, and Siver was gone. She taught her class with fervor. “I perceive
the earth, myself imbedded into it, attached to it at all points,” she
thought, “sinking at each moment into it.”
* * * * *
It was spring then, the beginning, a new beginning, she reflected.
Infinities of springs were crouched back under the earth waiting to come
out in their turns, a spring and then another, flowering momentarily,
annually. “Who am I that I should know?” she asked. She walked out the
Johntown pike in the mildness of sunset, the hills and the pastures
faintly tinged with the first green, a mere wash of delicate light over
the top of the pasture, and the color went with the setting of the sun.
It is the beginning of the beginning, she reflected anew, the first of
the first, the before that stands before itself, the quiver of a closed
eyelid. The roads were drained now of their winter mud and slop. A
stillness was settled over the creek where the frogs would cry later when
the nights were warm. The thing would give birth to itself out of itself,
the color of the picture would grow out of the picture, dawning up from
within the thing itself. The streets of the town, when she had returned
to them, had no sign of that which she had seen on the pastures in the
light of sunset, but they had their own token. It was Sunday night, the
night after the festival at the hall in Hill Street.
She could feel the tension of the street as it was left from the passion
of the night before, as it centered now in the church, in small groups
that gathered in doorways or moved swiftly by. There was little gayety
left. The leavings of the night before were summed up now in unfinished
and unappeased emotions. These were the first mild February nights when
a soft balm sifted in from the south. The dim lights began to appear
behind the stained windows of the church entry. She pushed open Lethe’s
door, without knocking, and went quietly inside. Stig was there with them
in the gloom. He was sitting on the bed beside Americy, and in a moment
Theodosia saw that Americy was quite drunk, that she laughed and wept in
turn, tears on her face.
“Where’s the light?” Theodosia asked. “Why not have the lamp?”
She lit a match and made a light in the small lamp on the shelf. Then
she saw that Lethe was sitting beside the table that stood near the
fireplace. On the table there was a small bit of food, untasted, but this
had been swept back toward the farther edge of the board. Before Lethe’s
hand lay a knife. It was sharpened to a keen edge and the point was well
tapered. It was such a knife as was used to cut leather, to mend harness,
and she knew that Stig had brought it to the cabin.
“What knife is that?” she asked.
“A good knife. A right good blade,” Stig said.
Americy was dressed in her best garments, a silk dress and a scarf
brilliantly dyed. Her stockings were torn, the color faded and spotted
with abuse, and her low shoes were defiled. Her clothing had not been
changed since the day before and her hair had not been set in order since
she had slept last.
“I wanted a drink,” Stig said, “but nobody wouldn’t give me none.
Stingy.”
Stig was less ragged than he had formerly been, and Theodosia thought
that Americy had probably given him the necktie he wore. He munched at
something which he carried in his coat pocket, nuts or hard candy, and
his hand would go to his pocket from time to time.
“You know Lou Trainer? Did you ever see Lou Trainer anywheres?” Lethe
asked, and she turned toward Theodosia slightly, asking her.
“I know Lou. A dark girl. Thin. Walks fast. Yes. I saw her since dark.”
“Where’d you see Lou Trainer since dark?”
“Just now. Out the Johntown pike a little piece.”
A cry like a wail came from Lethe’s mouth and was mingled with her words
which were at first undistinguished. “Out that way. Let me get a hold on
her throat. I’ll strangle her breath outen her body.”
Americy had begun to sing, or to hum unevenly, some song that was used in
the church. As she sang she rocked herself back and forth. Her tune ran
with a long slow measure and she intoned the words as if she thought of
an organ accompaniment. The song,
Comen home, comen home,
Lord, I’m comen home.
Open wide thine arms, Oh, God,
Lord, I’m comen home.
Each word was slowly pronounced and widely slurred, as if Americy heard
a great throng singing. Lethe arose and walked twice up and down the
chamber, but she came back to her seat before the table, and presently
she broke into another outcry which put a swift stop upon Americy’s song.
“I said if he spends one quarter on Lou, or if he walks with her one time
in the dark, I’d cut her clean open with this-here knife. I’ll knife her,
and Ross he knows I will.”
Stig laughed a great burst of ill-balanced laughter and began to cry out,
“She’s done it, she’s done it. Afore now. A whole lot. God’s sake. Lou
Trainer. God knows. I want be there when you-all cuts her guts out. See
old Lou Trainer’s insides drip out.”
Lethe’s words were set widely apart, dispersed by hate. She pushed the
knife back with a careless unseeing gesture, or she rested her hands on
the edge of the table, leaning hard upon her palms. “I said I would and
I will,” she continued to say, or she made her oath. Her words were set
against Stig’s sudden laughter and Americy’s singing or weeping, or from
time to time there would be a space of quiet when no one spoke.
“There’s singen in the church. I got to go. Where’s my hat. I got to go,”
Americy said. She got up from the bed and walked around the room, but she
forgot the hat when it did not come to hand and settled again to the bed,
and presently she sang, as before intoning the words slowly.
I wandered far away from God,
Lord, I’m comen home.
The paths of sin no more I’ll trod,
Lord, I’m comen home....
“Oh, for God’s sake let me get my hands once ahold onto her throat. Let
me get my hand in her face. I’ll stab to kill. I’ll learn her what I
mean.”
“There’s singen in the church. Let all you-all sing now. Let all you
sing. All together. Stand and sing the song of the invitation. I see the
new Jerusalem and the glory of the Lord. Come sinner, Halleluiah!”
“One time, I said, one time. If she goes a night with him once. I’ll get
my hand aholt on her....”
“One time?” Stig said, and he broke into a burst of laughter. “One time.
Oh, God’s sake! Skeeter Shoots says to me, he says, ‘Ross, now,’ he says.
‘Ain’t Ross he Lethe’s man? God’s sake! Thought Ross,’ Skeeter Shoots
says, ‘thought Ross were Lethe’s man. Thought Ross took up along with
Lethe a long while ago,’ Skeet Shoots says.”
Americy looked at Stig amorously and began to kiss his face, her own face
wet with tears. Or she would stop in her caressing and, with hands on his
shoulders, she would sing again, always the same tune. Theodosia had been
sitting near the middle of the floor in the chair she had always used
when she had been there before. It was drawn near to Lethe’s chair now,
and thus she sat, but presently she arose and walked to the door or she
returned to stand a moment over Lethe. In Lethe hate was apotheosized, a
hungry god, ravenous, beside an altar waiting for food. Lethe’s breath
was fluted and broken, timed to the beating of her heart, marked by
regular sobs that were softly voiced now and then. Her eyes were beyond
seeing, turned glassy with their own inner sight. She was unaware of
the presence of Stig and Americy, and after her first questioning of
Theodosia she had seemed shut from any recognition of her. Theodosia
pushed her chair near the table and bent one knee into it, standing
uncertainly, looking about at the dim walls, at Americy’s weeping. She
stood over Lethe, leaning slightly forward, and her breath became hard,
fluted with the beating of her own heart where anger began to arise and
was timed to Lethe’s panting breath.
“I’ll kill. I’ll stab her afore daylight,” Lethe said with her shaking
breath.
“Lou? What for? Lou?” Theodosia asked.
“Oh, I’ll kill. I said kill.”
“Ross,” Theodosia said. “Didn’t he look at Lou? Didn’t he want Lou? What
call have you got to let Ross go? Where’s Ross?”
“Lou. My hand on her heart. I’ll tear her guts outen her side.”
Theodosia walked to the door and looked out into the dark, but she
returned again and stood as she had stood before. Her breast and her
throat were shaking in a sobbing rush of ineffectual hate, her teeth
chattering when she ceased to speak. She could hear Stig’s taunting
laughter that came in strange, high-pitched bursts of feminine tone as he
recounted the surmises of his friends and the opinions of the hands at
the stable.
“Ross,” she said.
“Lou. I’ll stab to the heart of her. I’m not afeared. I’ll stab fitten to
kill.”
“Did Ross bring Lou to see you? Did he ever? You see how it is with me.
Did he?”
“Oh, I’ll kill. Ross he knows I’m no tame woman. He knows.”
“‘I brought her here so’s you’d see for your own self,’ he says. ‘The
easiest way. No fuss.’”
“Oh, I’ll kill. Afore day I will.”
“He said ‘You see how it is with me, Dosia. I brought her here.’ It’s all
the same. He brought her in the door of the hall, before all the people,
came inside the door with her, his hand ahold of her arm, before your
eyes, came inside the hall of the festival.”
“Oh, I can’t bear not to. I’ll kill, kill....”
“‘I brought her here so’s you’d see for your own self.’ ... Then he
bought her a treat at the counter where the things to eat were. His hand
on her arm and on her shoulder. His hand on her back.”
“Kill, I will. I couldn’t bear not to.”
Theodosia felt her body slipping into the chair and leaning nearer.
She wanted justice. She leaned close to Lethe’s body, her hands on the
edge of the table beside Lethe’s hands. She was shut into a complete
stillness and she was mingled with Lethe’s anger and hate.
“Ross,” she said.
“Lou. I’ll rip her open. I’ll stab inside.”
“Did Ross bring Lou to see you? ‘You see how it is with me,’ he said. Did
he ever?”
“Oh, I’ll kill her. She knows. She ought to know.”
“‘I brought her here so’s you’d see for yourself,’ he said.”
“Oh, I’ll kill. Afore day, I will.”
“‘She’s out at the gate to wait for me. I brought her here so’s you’d
see. For yourself.’”
“Oh, God, I aim to kill. He knows I mean what I say.”
“Kill Ross. Who’s he to go free?”
“Lou. She’s already dead now.”
“He said, ‘You see how it is with me....’ He brought her in the hall of
the festival. He came inside the door with her.”
“Oh, I can’t bear not....”
“‘I brought her here so’s you’d see for your own self.’”
Suddenly Lethe turned upon her and threw her arms about her neck, holding
her in a deep and tender embrace for a long instant, a powerful maternal
caress. Theodosia could feel the impact of the stiffened muscles when,
after relaxation, they leaped to renewed force, and she could hear the
deep sob of hate where it arose and shook Lethe’s bosom with a force that
beat with pain upon her own more slender body. When Lethe turned away
toward the table again she sat leaning upon it as before. She seemed to
have sunk into a dream.
People were passing, voices talking softly, steps falling unevenly on the
rough road. Americy had fallen into a state of quiet weeping, her arms
about Stig’s shoulders. Then Lethe lifted her head suddenly as if she
were hearing something from without. Her hand leaped to the knife-handle
with such suddenness and such force that Theodosia’s hand was swept off
the board. Then Lethe had sprung from her place and had rushed out at
the door. Theodosia sat bowed over the table, staring at the place where
Lethe’s hand had been, or her eyes would dart about over the board,
looking for the knife, expecting to see the knife where it had lain. A
remote footstep went by in the street or another paused at the gate, or
drifted on. She accepted these as a part of the night outside.
After a long while she moved in her seat, her body pained with its long,
stiff pose, and after she had stared at her own hands and had stretched
them on the top of the table and turned them about, searching for some
sign or recognition, she arose and stood beside Lethe’s chair where it
had been pushed roughly back and overturned. It was a token of Lethe’s
going. Lethe was gone. The knife was gone. She walked to the door and
looked out, up and down the quiet street, but the church was dark now
and the houses were shut and quiet. Once she called “Lethe!” from the
doorway, but there was no answer and she heard no footfalls anywhere in
the dark.
When she came back to the room again Americy was caressing Stig with
a deeply amorous intent and he had ceased to cry out his taunts after
Lethe’s going. He was laughing in a hideous way, returning Americy’s
caresses. She stopped before them, standing before the bed where they sat.
“Come on now, Stig, and go with me. It’s time to go now,” she said.
“Me, I don’t aim to go,” he said. “I don’t live in stable no more.”
“Come on, Stig. It’s time to go now.”
“I live along with Americy.” He laughed uncertainly, unable to talk
farther.
“Americy,” she said. “Don’t you know what Stig is? Stig’s your brother.
Wake up and know what I say. Your brother.”
“I’m your sister,” Americy mumbled as if she were asleep. “I always
knowed I was your sister.”
“And Stig’s our brother. Our brother.”
Their replies were not articulated. Stig’s response became a low,
monstrous laughter, falling rhythmically, like the bleat of some great
animal, pleading laughter, crying to be appeased. Americy had fallen
into a semi-sleep. Theodosia stood over them, trying to awaken Americy,
calling to her, drawing at her arm. But Americy clung the closer to Stig
and Theodosia came swiftly away.
* * * * *
It was late when she reached her room, near midnight. She sat on the edge
of her bed staring at the wall, looking with horror at what she had left
in Lethe’s cabin. Lethe had gone somewhere in the dark with the knife in
her strong hand, and she would plunge the knife into hated flesh. Her
hand would feel the dull resistance of human bone and it would rain up
and down, stabbing deeper with each blow, letting out the blood, tearing
through flesh until her hate had eased itself. She looked at the two,
Lethe and Americy, and their two ways met and became one horror that
dazed her mind and drowsed her eyes so that, moving back from it, she
sank quickly into a deep sleep. She lay in the heart of evil and slept
all the night, lying as if she had been drugged, uncovered to the cool
air that came in at the open windows. She lay on the outside of the bed,
as she had first fallen, deeply shut into sleep, and the chill damp air
that came with a dense fog at dawn did not appraise her of anything, nor
did the ringing of the morning angelus.
Late in the morning she stirred slightly and was aware of herself as
the residue of disaster, the leavings of tragedy, the nothing of the
evil hereafter. A faint cry for pity hushed itself on her lips. Then
she began to chill in the cold and she slowly aroused herself to sit on
the side of the bed. Her body was shaking in curious rhythms that built
upward toward a climax and subsided only to arise again, a compound
rhythm of quivering flesh. She reached for a warm dressing-gown and
covered herself in the bed, but the chill persisted. Later the woman who
had rented the house came bringing some food.
“I thought you might be sick,” she said. “I do believe you got a chill.”
She set the tray she had brought on the table and began to build a fire
in the grate, talking meanwhile about her morning work, suggesting
remedies for the cold she said Theodosia had caught. There had been
a tragedy in the town during the night, she said. A man had been
killed—Ross. She asked Theodosia if she knew a black man named Ross. He
had been killed the night before. When she had told this news Theodosia
cried out that she had killed him, and the woman was frightened as she
came away from the fireplace and stood over the bed.
“You must be real sick,” she said. “Is your throat sore maybe? What hurts
you?”
“Oh, I killed him,” Theodosia cried out again. She could feel the strange
rhythms tearing her body in orderly stabs of pain. “I stabbed his throat
with a harness knife. I cut his throat.”
“You never did no such thing. You’re clean out of your head. I better
send for Dr. Muir.”
“I stabbed his throat with a harness knife.”
“How do you know it was a harness knife? How comes it you know so much
about it?”
“I did it,” Theodosia said. She sank back to the bed then.
“It’s curious you know how it happened. But it was a black woman, Lethe,
stabbed him. Everybody knows it.”
“Lethe stabbed Lou, but I killed Ross. I cut his throat open.”
“Lethe tells how it happened. She’s in jail now. She’s confessed and
there’s no question about who did it. She did it. She went after Lou,
seems like, but when Ross defended Lou she killed him. Out at the
brick-yard it happened, about midnight they say. Lethe’s in jail now and
she’ll maybe go to prison for ten years or so. Ross was her husband, but
he went off after Lou, and so the court will likely give her a light
sentence, they say. Ten years or fifteen, but that’s not light, goodness
knows. Anyway she won’t hang, or is not likely, they say.”
“I did it,” Theodosia cried out again, sitting up in bed again. “I’ll go
to prison ten years, fifteen maybe. Hang maybe. I don’t want to be hung.
But I did it....”
The strength of the chill multiplied and the rhythms flowed in a strange
complexity, short rhythms fitted into the long flow of the heavier beat.
Later the fever came and she was still again.
* * * * *
A month later Theodosia sat for a little while each day in the sunshine
on the south side of her room. Dr. Muir had come every day to listen to
her breathing through a stethoscope. She had let life bring her back to
life if it would, lending little aid herself to the return. Her fiddle
had been shut securely into its case.
She would have to rest for a long while, Dr. Muir said, and she would
have to live in the country and have much rich food. She was shut into
some remote death although breath came and went in her throat. The
doctor’s suggestions became a law that moved over her, having its way
without protest. Abundant food regularly taken, more than was desired—it
came to her bed. Presently it would be owed for, but now it was merely
there, to be eaten, the last caloric measure. She would not be playing
the fiddle, Dr. Muir said, not for several months anyhow. Playing would
put too much strain on the arms and chest. The town had its spring
season, the birds in the trees. Her windows were always opened wide.
“You had better go to your Aunt Doe’s, in the country,” Dr. Muir said. “A
long rest, fresh air, food. That’s all you need.”
She had better sell the house and let the mortgages be paid, the doctor
said; she had better close her life there in the town. She was unable to
continue her teaching. He went into the facts about her inheritance and
weighed each in her presence, asking questions, making judgments. She
had better sell all, he advised, and turn away the creditors, had better
relieve herself of all worry. She had better go. In the heart of this
remote death into which she had passed she stirred a little, remembering
the great sweep of rolling land as it was to be seen from the upper
windows at the farm.
Some light sorrel horses had stood by a fence, and the
queen-anne’s-lace-handkerchief was spreading white beyond the creek
path. “Oh, it’s a good morning. I someways like a day just like this,”
the words arose and flowed back into the mingled picture—a path along a
cornfield where sweet hot weeds gave out their savors in the sunshine
of noon, the man in the low field plowing all day, the horse and the
plow and the figure of the dark creature that bent over the plow-handles
making an even pattern of dark lines that crept slowly over the earth
and continued all day, pleasant to see and of no effort to herself. The
high cackle and clatter of the feeding times soon after dawn when the
poultry and the geese and the guinea-fowls sang their food cries through
the baaing of the calves and the low grunting of the swine, and she had
turned on her pillow to sleep again, lulled by the sweet blended clatter.
The hill field sometimes plowed but mainly left in pasture grass. Out
the upper window the land had rolled away a hundred miles, two hundred,
never to be measured, beyond hills and fields, insufficient even where
the last frail tree stood on the most removed hilltop, beyond two farms.
She would go. Frank came to sit with her frequently or he brought
passages to read, tribute to her convalescing hours. “Good old Frank,”
her tears surprised her in saying once when his departure clicked the
latch of the gate.
A dealer in old furniture came from Lester and bargained for the pieces.
A crier sold the house from the gallery steps one noisy court day in
May. The archaic hatchets and flints were dispersed, culled over by a
collector from Louisville, some of them rejected and thrown into a large
basket. Theodosia saved for herself Anthony’s books, and she had them
packed into boxes to be hauled to the farm. Dr. Muir had been to call
upon her aunt and to ask hospitality for the invalid. All was arranged.
She would go. The way was sunny and long on the day of the journey, the
road heavy to go, distorted with shadows, the hedges standing back far
and the woods vistas spacious to the point of giving pain. As if bandage
had been removed from a recent hurt or fracture, the confines of the
town taken away, she spread painfully out through the hills and fields,
through the ways to go. She closed her eyes and the car slipped lightly,
too lightly, among the road windings.