Part 12

So Mrs. Haynes’s invitation was accepted. Serena and I were to stay until the next day, but Len and the daughter, Lonie, were to return that evening to look after the children, the cows, and the chickens.

The brethren who had come out from Carson returned to town, with the exception of Lawyer Jenkins, who, probably, was thinking of profitable affiliations with the remote but fertile valley. I observed him reading the headstones around the new-made grave, and it seemed to me that he was afflicted with a growing concern. He turned, with a question, to the man nearest him, who happened to be Len.

“Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?”

“You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time, savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what they wuz.”

“But four? Isn’t it a little unusual?”

“Well, maybe it is, but Uncle Nathe wuzn’t no hand to set at home by hissef.”

At that moment, to Len’s apparent relief, Aunt Lizy came up, and we found that Mr. Jenkins also had accepted her invitation. He walked with her husband, Uncle Dan’l Haynes, and I gathered from drifting fragments of their conversation that Mr. Jenkins was still on the trail of Uncle Nathe’s connubial history.

At the dinner-table he pleased all of the guests by introducing the topic from which they were politely holding back. “I have been learning from our kind host,” he said, eying with favor his selected piece of fried chicken, “what this loss means to the community.”

“Yes,” some one responded, “it knocks all of us, losin’ Nathe does.”

“There is some property too, I believe. I trust there is harmony among the heirs.”

“They’re all behavin’ fine,” said Aunt Lizy, with some heartiness.

“Our brother was married several times, I understand. Did--er--all of his wives leave issue?”

“Young-uns? No, Aunt Lindy never had any, ner Lu Siler, but Callie had a little feller that died--Rufe, they called him. An’ Ponnie, his fust wife, left four, all livin’ yit. They git along together fust-rate.”

“I wonder what Ponnie would ’a’ said,” reflected Uncle Dan’l, “ef somebody had told her Nathe wouldn’t be buried alongside o’ her.”

“Well,” said Uncle Ranz, “I’d ruther not hear what Ponnie would ’a’ said.”

“I say it ought to ’a’ been Lindy he wuz laid by,” asserted Aunt Lizy. “She lived with him the longest an’ worked the hardest.”

“She didn’t think a grain more o’ him than Lu Siler did,” returned Uncle Dan’l.

“Our brother expressed no preference?” inquired Mr. Jenkins.

“You mean which un did he want to lay ’longside of? No, he wuzn’t a man to put one wife ’fore another. He left that to us.”

“Very thoughtful, I take it,” said the lawyer. “A strong character certainly. I am sorry I never knew him.” And he mused a little on the bed-rock qualities of the old mountaineer.

“We meant,” explained Uncle Dan’l, “to lay Nathe by his fust wife, Ponnie, but when we dug down there we struck a rock that would ’a’ had to be blasted out, an’ we’s afeard it would shake up the graves. We couldn’t lay him t’other side o’ her, ’cause her two childern wuz there, an’ then come Lindy, his last wife, so we decided to dig jest beyant Lindy. But about four feet down we come to water that turned ever’thing inter mud--it wuz that spring, I reckon, that sinks inter the ground above the graveyard--an’ we had to go to the upper row where Callie an’ little Rufe an’ Lu wuz layin’. We couldn’t put him by Lu, ’cause she wuz in the aidge o’ the Ponder lot, right next to Randy Hayes in Bill Hayes’s lot, an’ it jest had to be Callie er nothin’.”

Comments followed, various and spirited, with citations of other instances, historic and contemporary, and the dinner was over. Mr. Jenkins regretted that he must leave us. He was urged to stay, in the politest highland manner, but when the door had closed behind the respected “furriner,” the immediate relaxation in the air showed that the hour of restraint had been heroically prolonged.

“Harmony!” exclaimed Aunt Lizy. “An’ there’s Angie Sue claimin’ ever’thing her daddy had. There won’t be a scrap left when they all git through fightin’.”

The general glance slanted toward me, and I began to think that I ought to have disappeared with Mr. Jenkins, though the fact that I was under Serena’s native wing had done much to vouch for me.

“I don’t reckon Bake Lindsay’ll mix up in anything,” said Pole Andrews, with an eye carefully diverted. “I seen he wuz at the buryin’.”

“Wonder what he’s back here fer?” said another, equally disinterested.

“He’s come to git his mother,” Serena easily announced.

“Ann!” came from several voices.

“That’s what he said. You heard him, Mis’ Dolly.”

She turned to me with careless confidence, and I responded with an uncritical smile that embraced the company.

“Oh, yes! He has come in for his mother. She is going to live with him and Jenny.”

I knew everything then! There was a stir of abandon, and an eager voice asked: “You don’t think that Bake can tech any o’ the property, do you?”

“’Course he kain’t,” said Aunt Lizy, before I could recover from the direct appeal. “Anybody knows that.”

“You are right, Mrs. Haynes,” said I, now clothed in authority. “He is not entitled to a single thing. Though, of course, I’ve never heard the whole story. I’ve been wishing some of you would tell me everything just as it happened.”

“Ranz there’ll tell ye,” said Aunt Lizy. “He thinks his tongue’s got a mortgage on ever’thing abody could say about Nathe Ponder.”

“Ef I’ve got sech a mortgage, Lizy, you’re always scrappin’ to git yer name on it.” Then he turned to me. “If I tell it, I’ll have to start at the fust of it. I never could hit the middle an’ go on.”

“All right, Uncle Ranz,” said one of the younger men. “That’s what we want. I reckon this is the last time we’ll all corcus over Uncle Nathe.”

“Y’all keep Lizy from pesterin’ me then, an’ turn that feist out, some o’ ye.”

II

“Nathe took me to live with him an’ Ponnie,” began Uncle Ranz, “when they’s fust married. I wuz about ten years old then, an’ I’ve got to say it fer Nathe, he wuz as good to me as a daddy. He wuz thirty years old when his fust trouble come up, an’ he’d been married turnin’ onto ten years. Him an’ Ponnie had four childern a livin’ an’ two dead.”

“You wuz there, Uncle Ranz,” put in a guest, “the very day o’ the trouble, wuzn’t you?”

“I wuz right there, but ef I’m goin’ to talk it will have to be on my own time an’ not yorn.” There was a chastened silence, then he continued amiably: “Ponnie had been spittin’ fire fer two er three days, an’ the childern wuz dodgin’ her. I wuz grown up by that time, an’ could look out fer myself. Nathe an’ Ponnie had been plum crazy about each other when they got married, but they had black eyes pineblank alike, an’ I’ve noticed that don’t work out as well as when you marry a different color. Nathe’s hair wuz curly, though, an’ Ponnie’s wuz straight an’ long. It wuz powerful thick, too, an’ she could twist it an’ wrap it round her head big as a dish-pan mighty nigh. I’ve _hearn_ she had a drap o’ Cher’kee in her----”

“That wuzn’t so, Ranz,” Aunt Lizy interjected. “Me an’ Ponnie wuz the same age, an’ run together from the time we’s out of our cradles, an’ ef there’d been any Indian in her I’d ’a’ knowed it.”

“You’d ’a’ had to know her gran’mother, I reckon. Anyways I’m jest tellin’ what I hearn. There wuz a woman up on Sawmill Creek that folks said wuzn’t much good. She had hair as yaller as honey, an’ as sprangly as a stump full o’ gran’daddies. It begun to seep around that Nathe wuz slippin’ over there, an’ Ponnie got holt o’ the talk. After that, Nathe dassent stay away from home all night, she’d git so ruffled up. He come to me one day an’ ast me ef I couldn’t ride over inter Tennessee an’ look at some mules he wanted to buy to trade on. I thought he ought to go hissef, ’cause he knowed a mule from the tip o’ his nose to the kick in his heels, so I says: ‘Nathe, you kain’t afford to let Ponnie ruin yer business. Air ye a man, er air ye not?’ That’s what I said, an’ I reckon I ought to ’a’ kept my mouth shut, seein’ how it turned out, an’ gone on inter Tennessee. Nathe walked off an’ saddled up, an’ told Ponnie he’d be gone four er five days. She’d come out to the gate, an’ when he told her that, I saw her kindle up, an’ she turned square around an’ went inter the kitchen. After Nathe rid off I went in too, an’ I saw Ponnie wuz workin’ hard an’ tryin’ to git easy. We talked about what a good man Nathe wuz, an’ what he wuz doin’ fer his fam’ly, an’ how the neighbors thought sech a sight o’ him, an’ what he wuz goin’ to make agittin’ mules out o’ Tennessee an’ tradin’ on ’em, an’ she quieted off an’ seemed all right till Nathe got back from his trip. When he come in she wuz mighty glad to see him. He told her he’d done well, an’ she’d be stringin’ di’monds in that black hair some day, an’ they ’most had a little courtin’ spell. But Julie Mack come in the next day to help Ponnie put up fruit an’ bile off apple butter, an’ Julie’s mother lived up on Sawmill Creek not fur from that woman.”

“Ol’ Sis Mack could split a truth an’ make two lies out of it!” said Aunt Lizy, and Uncle Ranz loftily accepted the interpolation.

“That’s what I told Ponnie when she come out to the orchard where I wuz shakin’ down apples. She said that Julie’s mother had seen Nathe ridin’ down Sawmill Creek road, an’ I told her what I thought of ol’ Sis Mack’s tongue. ‘He may ’a’ jest rid by innercent,’ I says. ‘Innercent!’ says Ponnie. ‘It wuzn’t yisterday she seen him, it wuz the day before.’”

“‘Well, ef it’s so,’ I told her, ‘it ain’t so bad as buryin’ Nathe.’ I reckon that’s another time I spoke wrong, fer she said she didn’t know about that, an’ went off a-studyin’. But she come in an’ got supper, tryin’ to smile peart, an’ Nathe didn’t know nuthin’ wuz wrong. Next mornin’ she got to studyin’ agin, an’ come round to me about ten o’clock. ‘Ranzie,’ she says, ‘I’m goin’ to kill Nathe,’ an’ I says: ‘You need him too bad, Ponnie, to hep raise yer childern.’ ‘I kain’t raise ’em at all,’ she says, ’ef he keeps me bothered this a-way. Nathe’s my man, an’ I ain’t goin’ to have him runnin’ here an’ yander.’ I went to Nathe then, an’ told him that Ponnie knowed about him an’ he’d better get it fixed up with her. He said nobody could lie hard enough to git anything fixed up with Ponnie, an’ I said: ‘What ef she took a notion to kill ye, Nathe?’ He laffed big at that, an’ said: ‘Ranz, you don’t know Ponnie like I do. She’d keep me here jest fer her temper to bite on.’ ‘She ain’t so awful high-tempered,’ I says. ‘She works hard, an’s raisin’ yer four childern. She’d never say a hot word, leastways to you, ef it wuzn’t fer the way folks say you run around. Ef it’s so, I’d try to quit it till she gits to where she don’t think enough o’ you fer it to bother her.’

“‘Lord, they ain’t no hope o’ that,’ he said. ‘But don’t you worry ’bout her killin’ me.’ An’ he went off to hep some men we had workin’ in the fodder. I kep’ busy in the orchard, an’ ’long a little ’fore twelve I wuz goin’ inter the yard with a tow-sack full o’ winesaps on my back when I seen Ponnie comin’ from the smoke-house with the big butcher-knife in her hand, an’ seen Nathe a-crossin’ over to the spring. They come up close together, an’ she put out her hand an’ took holt o’ Nathe’s hair right above his forehead. He had powerful curly hair then, like I told ye, an’ black as sut. She turned his head right back, an’ says: ‘Nathe, I’m goin’ to cut yer throat.’ That sack dropped off my back, but I wuz so cold I couldn’t move. Nathe looked right at her an’ laffed. ‘Go ahead, Ponnie,’ he says. ‘I reckon that’s what you ought to do.’ She let go then an’ made like she wuz playin’ with him, but she says, ‘Some o’ these days I’ll mean it,’ an’ went inter the kitchen. In about haf an hour she come to the door an’ called ever’body to dinner. We’s all in the yard, washed up by that time, an’ we went in. Ponnie had made apple pies that mornin’, an’ had chicken an’ dumplin’s, ’cause that wuz what Nathe liked, an’ she’d set the table out nice, an’ put on a white table-cloth, which we didn’t have only fer company an’ Sundays. She hepped ever’body, an’ picked out the drumstick fer little Rosie, an’ made the boys, Herb an’ Sam, stop scrappin’. Then she says: ‘Hep yersevs, I’m goin’ inter the big room fer a minute.’ We went on eatin’, an’ Nathe called out she’d better hurry up, the dumplin’s wuz goin’ fast, an’ right then we heard a shot. When we got in, there she wuz lyin’ on the floor stone dead, an’ Nathe’s ol’ rifle there to tell it. Nathe fell down on the floor an’ kept sayin’, ‘You don’t mean it, Ponnie, you know you don’t mean it,’ over an’ over till I’s about crazy. He’d rub her black hair like he wuz techin’ a baby, an’ swear that he’d put his eyes out ’fore he’d look at another woman agin. ‘You know you hear me, Ponnie,’ he’d say, ‘you know you do.’”

Uncle Ranz paused feelingly, and when another voice took up the narrative, the help was tolerantly welcomed.

“Yes,” said Uncle Dan’l, “I’ve hearn Ben Goforth tell it. He wuz one o’ the men workin’ there that day, an’ they pulled Nathe away from Ponnie an’ inter the yard, till the women could lay her out. Soon as she wuz dressed fer her coffin he went back an’ laid on the floor till they carried her off.”

“He got over it, though,” said Serena, who could never linger in gloom.

“Purty slow, purty slow, but when he did put it by--well, sir, he _put it by_.”

“Slow it wuz,” said Aunt Lizy. “I remember, as well as Ranz, er anybody here, ’bout that next winter an’ spring. Nathe kept lookin’ like he didn’t keer whether he wuz in this world er the next, an’ he wouldn’t put in no crap. Ranzie here had the whole farm on his hands, an’ I’ll say it fer Ranz that ef it hadn’t been fer him them little young-uns would ’a’ gone hungry that year, er lived off the neighbors. The deacons fin’ly went to Nathe an’ ast him ef he thought he wuz heppin’ Ponnie any by neglectin’ her childern, an’ said he ort to git somebody who would take keer of ’em. They told him to marry some good woman that ’ud look after them like Ponnie wanted. An’ after they’d pestered him a while, he says: ‘All right, I’ll marry, but I don’t want a woman that’s crazy about me, an’ I don’t want to git crazy about _her_.’ He told ’em to find somebody that would be good to the young-uns an’ he’d be satisfied. The deacons went all around then, an’ got their wives to go, an’ they talked to all the single women as fur up as Sawmill Creek an’ as fur down as Nighthawk, but they’s all skeered to marry Nathe, an’ no wonder when he kept stuggin’ round the country lookin’ like the hind wheels o’ destruction. They thought there must be something awful quare about him er Ponnie wouldn’t ashot hersef. There wuz jest one widder----”

“Ay, Mary Kempit,” said a voice, as Aunt Lizy paused, a little short of breath. “She had five young-uns.”

“That’s her,” said Aunt Lizy, coming back with some haste, before Uncle Ranz could weld his broken narrative. “She said she’d try it, fer Nathe had a fine farm, an’ Bune Waller said the same. Bune wuz an old maid with one leg crippled up ’count of a snake-bite when she wuz little. The old folks thought Bune would suit better’n the widder, not havin’ any young-uns to mix up with Nathe’s, so they went to him an’ told him that Bune wuz the best they could do. I’ve always wished I could ’a’ been there when they told him. Uncle Joe Withers, he wuz senior deacon then, he said Nathe cut his galluses an’ went straight up. When he come down an’ got his breath, he says to ’em, ‘Who’s counted the finest-lookin’ single woman in Silver Valley?’ an’ they ’lowed Callie Brown wuz the takin’est one, sence she’d come back from South C’liny, where she’d been workin’. But she wuzn’t keen to marry, not a mountain man anyway, fer she wouldn’t look at Mince Peters, who wuz runnin’ a payin’ sawmill, an’ the best ketch ’twixt Cherokee an’ Hiwassee. Nathe ast ’em would she be good to the childern, an’ they ’lowed she would, she looked like she’d jump out o’ the way of a worm ruther’n step on it, but he couldn’t git her, they said, not ef he’s as rich as cream in a cracklin’ gourd. She didn’t have no call fer holdin’ off though, Uncle Joe told him, fer she hadn’t saved a brownie workin’ in the mills, put it all on her back, he reckoned, an’ she didn’t have no home, her folks all bein’ dead. ‘But ef you go to see her,’ he says, ‘you’ll ride back jest like you come. She’s livin’ at my house, an’ I know Callie.’ Nathe never paid no more ’tention to what they said, an’ fixed hissef up fer courtin’.”

“Fixed hissef up!” Uncle Ranz bore in, returning with vigor to his own. “I reckon! I wuz right there, an’ the way he shaved an’ slicked an’ combed an’ dressed would take me all day to tell ye. We wuz exactly the same size, me an’ Nathe, an’ he walked in on me an’ says: ‘Ranz, you let me have that new suit o’ yorn, an’ I’ll give you that white sow an’ them three shotes you been a-wantin’. I’ve got to have it right now,’ he says. He’d let his clo’s run down till a skeercrow wouldn’t ’a’ swopped with him ’thout a smart chance o’ boot. But when he wuz all growed inter my suit, an’ rid off on a big bay mare he had, thinks I yer my own half-brother, but it ’ud take some travellin’ to find yer mate fer looks. He went over to Joe Withers’, where Callie wuz stayin’, an’ in two weeks they’s married. When he wanted to, Nathe had a way o’ talkin’ that folks said would put heart in a holler log, an’ I reckon Callie wuz all heart, the way it turned out. As fer holdin’ hersef high, I never seen none o’ that after she come to live with Nathe. She made him a good wife, an’ got to likin’ him powerful, but he never seemed to take to Callie. ’Twuzn’t thinkin’ about Ponnie, though, that kept him from likin’ her, fer when he did drap his troubles he drapped ’em hard. It pestered me awful the way he went on fer a while, huntin’ up ever’ woman he could hear of that wuzn’t much good. I said to him onct that Callie seemed to be doin’ _her_ part, an’ he said: ‘Ef you don’t think I’m adoin’ mine, Ranz, jest keep a-thinkin’ it.’ An’ I dassent say any more, fer Nathe in them days wuz wearin’ his temper outside his shirt, an’ you had to tech him keerful er go round. When Callie wuz fust married she didn’t know much about housework an’ takin’ keer o’ farm stuff, but she went at it steady, an’ in less’n a year she wuz runnin’ ever’thing like it ort to be, an’ nobody would ’a’ knowed the childern wuzn’t hern ef she hadn’t been too young to be their mommie.”

“Ay,” said Aunt Lizy, “they went under her skirts like they belonged. Nathe lost a lot of his luck when he buried Callie Brown.”

“How long did she live?” I asked, and Uncle Ranz seemed to approve of the sympathetic query, which perhaps reminded him that he had a new and perfectly safe pair of ears for an old tale.

“She lived four years full, an’ inter five, from the time she married Nathe till we put her in the graveyard in the row above Ponnie an’ her two. We wuz lookin’ fer Callie’s baby, little Rufe, to die, an’ Nathe ’lowed they could lay there together. That soft look Callie had turned out to be weak lungs, an’ the cotton-mills hadn’t hepped ’em any. The hard work at Nathe’s pulled her down to a shadder. I own it, I got to thinkin’ a heap of Callie. Looked like she wuz tryin’ her best an’ never botherin’ Nathe, er lettin’ on she wuz any more to him than a hired woman. When I seen it wuz killin’ her, I wuz druv to say something. I’d tried Nathe, an’ that didn’t hep any, so I went to Callie an’ told her straight out that she could git a divorce from Nathe any day she wanted it, fer the whole country knowed how he wuz runnin’ on, an’ the deacons had been to him about it. I said she wouldn’t have to go fur, nuther, to git somebody to take keer of her right. She wouldn’t have to go blood-naked ner eat acorns, not by a thousan’ mile, while I wuz drawin’ a workin’-man’s breath. When I said that, Callie turned her back on me an’ begun to cry. I waited to see what she wuz goin’ to say, fer a woman’s cryin’ might mean one thing an’ it might mean another. When she turned round she says: ‘Ranzie, I’ll fergive ye ef ye’ll go to church reg’lar.’ An’ I went to meetin’ from then on, till Callie died, though it wuzn’t easy to set still an’ listen to ol’ Silas Mack a-whinin’ from the time he got up to preach till he set down two hours afterwards. Barrin’ that, I ain’t ever been sorry I let Callie know she could git away ef she wanted to. I told Nathe about it after she wuz dead, an’ he said he wouldn’t hold it agin me, seein’ he never hurt hissef makin’ it easy fer Callie, an’ he told me to stay right on with him an’ hep look after the farm. I thought ef he didn’t want to make a fuss, I wouldn’t, an’ I staid right on till he married Lu Siler. He wuzn’t slow about pickin’ up Lu. She hadn’t been a widder more’n three er four months, an’ chainces wuz thick with her, ’cause she had a house an’ lot in Carson, an’ a fine piece o’ land on Little Horse Branch. When Nathe got ready he walked right in an’ took her. She wuz a little older’n him, an’ short on looks, but there never wuz a better woman than Lu, leavin’ out Callie, an’ she wuz awful proud o’ Nathe. She wuz the one who got him inter this Freemason business, bein’ Eastern Star hersef, an’ a lot o’ her folks an’ friends belongin’. Nathe took to it fine, an’ went as high as he could as fast as they’d take him, an’ always held a big hand afterwards in whatever they had goin’ on, till late years when most o’ the old members had drapped out er wuz buried, an’ he seemed to sort o’ fergit about it. He went around with Lu, an’ treated her respectful, like he ort, with her deedin’ him ever’thing she had an’ cuttin’ out her own folks. He sold the house an’ lot in Carson an’ built the big house on the farm the first year he was married to Lu. He said he wanted her to have ever’thing as nice as she had it in Carson when she wuz livin’ with Jim Siler. It wuz in them years that Nathe sort o’ stept up in life.”

Uncle Ranz was forced to take breath, though he knew that Aunt Lizy would be in at the breach.

“Nathe never got bigetty though,” she said. “It wuz about that time that he got to lookin’ round an’ heppin’ folks in hard luck. He wuz always ready with the loan of a cow fer a widder, er a plough-critter fer new-married couples, er a sack o’ meal, an’ sometimes a bit o’ money that he wuzn’t too pertickler about gittin’ back. I’ve said many a time that Silver Valley owed a lot to Lu Siler fer makin’ a changed man out o’ Nathe.”

“You want to start that old argyment, Lizy, an’ you can have it. I say, an’ I’ll always say, it wuz Ann that changed Nathe, an’ not Lu Siler.”

“Ann!” The contempt of the elect was in Aunt Lizy’s voice. She reached into her pocket for her snuff. Only snuff could reconcile her to the existence of Ann. Uncle Ranz turned to his more passive hearers.