Part 13
“There ain’t any man, er woman nuther, in this country,” he said, “who knows more about that than I do. It begun ’long in the last year o’ Callie’s lifetime, an’ I reckon I wuz purty keen on what wuz happenin’ round Callie. Nathe had a little ol’ mill on one end o’ his farm, fer grindin’ corn fer hissef an’ his neighbors. It’s there yit, only it’s been built all over. An’ he had a little ol’ log house settin’ close to the mill, where he kept a fam’ly to ’tend to the grindin’ an’ hep on the farm. He ’lowed the man could work on the farm, an’ his wife could tend to the mill, in a pinch anyways. Well, Curt Lindsay, he come over from round Cowee an’ ast fer the place. He said he wuz married, an’ his wife’s mother wuz livin’ with ’em, an’ she could handy ’tend to the mill. His wife wuzn’t much stout, an’ he didn’t count on gittin’ anything out of her but a little housekeepin’, an’ maybe hoein’ in the patches. An’ Nathe told him to come on. Curt wuz a big feller an’ looked like he’d make a good hand. I told Nathe so mysef, an’ there’s one more time I’d ’a’ done better ef I’d kept my mouth shet. Well, they come on, an’ the mother looked like all she knowed wuz hard work an’ more of it. But Ann, Curt’s wife, she looked like a hummin’-bird round a rosey-bush. The mother, that ’uz Mis’ Baker, told me Ann had never been much strong an’ her daddy, up till he died a little ’fore that, had never let anything be put on her too hard. Ann wuz willin’ enough, but they had to put it on her light, er she’d git down sick. Curt didn’t keer one way er another so the work got done. Ann had married him when she wuz fourteen, an’ she wuzn’t more’n up’rds o’ fifteen when she come to live on Nathe’s place. Nathe wuz a little above thirty-five, an’ had seen his troubles, but they hadn’t put the years on him. When he wuz smoothed up, folks said ef his good looks wuz divided around, they’d make ever’body in the settlement look passable, even countin’ Sary Copp, who had a caved-in nose an’ scrofula o’ the jaw. But Nathe wuz fur from bein’ as good as he wuz good-lookin’. I reckon he wuz the furdest from the Amen row right then that he ever wuz in his life. He’d put a mortgage on his farm to git spendin’ money, an’ he wuz runnin’ round spendin’ it. ‘Ranz,’ he says to me, ‘I don’t keer much about women, but what’s a feller to do with hissef?’
“An’ then Ann moved in. ‘Let’s go over,’ Nathe says to me one day, ‘an’ see ef Curt’s got settled. Maybe he’ll need some hep about something.’ ‘All right,’ says I, an’ we went. Looked like there wuzn’t nobody at home when we come up. Nathe walked up big an’ pounded on the door till I wished there wuzn’t anybody in there to hear him. Then Ann opened the door. Nathe hadn’t ever seen her ’fore that, an’ when she looked up, a bit skeered, an’ her eyes as blue as a prize ribbon at a fair, Nathe fell back inter the yard like she’d pinted a gun at him. I ask her how her folks wuz, seein’ Nathe wuzn’t goin’ to talk, an’ she said they’s well, an’ her mother wuz in the house, wouldn’t we come in, an’ Curt wuz gone to Carson to git some things they needed fer housekeepin’.
“‘What things?’ says Nathe, gittin’ over his lock-jaw, an’ when she told him, he says: ‘Tell yer mother to come over to the house an’ my wife’ll give her anything you’re needin’.’ Then he went off. I follered him, an’ he walked along like a wooden man till we got nigh home, then he says: ‘Ranz, I reckon I’d better look after things round here a little closer’n I been adoin’.’ An’ from that minute Nathe wuz changed, an’ he hadn’t ever set eyes on Lu Siler. Callie wuz still alive, an’ she seemed awfully hepped up about Nathe. She talked to me of how he wuz takin’ holt like he raley owned the place, an’ it wouldn’t be long till he’d lift the mortgage, an’ maybe send Angie Sue to Carson to school. But Callie wuz too worn out by that time fer any change to do her downright good, an’ she died in the spring, like I wuz tellin’ ye. Then Nathe married Lu. I ain’t sayin’ my own half-brother married a woman fer what she had, but I do say that he’d got to be sort o’ cravin’. Where he’d spent a dollar before, free as water, looked like he wuz tryin’ to save three. He wuz runnin’ the farm close, an’ raisin’ ever’thing we et purty nigh, but coffee an’ sugar, an’ wuz watchin’ his tradin’ right sharp, though when Lu got there he built her a nice house, like I said, with her own money, an’ he went around the country with her whenever she wanted him to, an’ didn’t mind spendin’ on his lodge a bit ’er heppin’ folks like Lizy wuz tellin’ ye. I quit livin’ at Nathe’s an’ went over inter Tennessee. Callie wuz on my mind, more’n when she’d been livin’, seemed like, an’ on top o’ that I wuz afeard Nathe an’ Lu were goin’ to have fallin’ weather. I thought ef he wuz in fer a mess I’d seen enough o’ his troubles. But he kept writin’ fer me to come back, an’ when I’d been gone about two year I come home. I found ever’thing runnin’ like sugar-water in sap-time. Nathe never went round the mill, er where Ann wuz, so fur as anybody knowed. When something had to be ’tended to over there, he’d git Lu to go.
“‘Lu,’ he says one night at supper, ‘looks like we ortn’t to live here in this big house with ever’thing comfortable, an’ water piped from the mountain yander, an’ the fam’ly that works fer us puttin’ up with that smoky little hut over at the mill. When yore folks wuz out from Carson the other day I wuz ashamed to tell ’em that shack wuz on our farm. What you think about takin’ what I make tradin’ this year an’ fix ’em up a place they can keep clean an’ make look like something? Mis’ Baker’s always ready to come over here an’ give you a hand at anything, an’ we ort to make it easier at home fer a hard-workin’ woman like she is.’
“‘I’d hate to fix up a place fer that rowdy, Curt Lindsay,’ said Lu. ‘He stays drunk half o’ his time now.’
“‘You fix it, Lu, an’ I’ll drive him off er make him do better. The women-folks there are human, same as us, even ef Curt ain’t.’
“‘Yes,’ says Lu, ‘I git awfully sorry fer that pore little Ann. I don’t know what keeps her spirits up. She’s always singin’ when I go over there, er diggin’ in the yard round her flowers, an’ they say Curt beats her, too.’
“Nathe jumped up then, like he’d swallered a crumb too quick, an’ went out to the water-bucket. When he come back he wuz a little hoarse from chokin’, an’ he says: ‘You do what I told you, Lu. You know more about houses than I do. Fix it up so we won’t be ashamed of it anyway, an’ I can git a better man to live there ef I have to drive Curt off.’
“Lu ast me to hep her, an’ we got Mose Kimpit to boss the job, him that married Angie Sue afterwards, an’ I hired some men, an’ in no time Ann wuz livin’ in a little house that looked like a pickcher, but Curt wuz drinkin’ harder than ever.
“‘You’ll have to get rid o’ him, Nathe,’ said Lu, an’ he said: ‘Well, let’s go over there an’ see about it.’ ‘Come on, Ranz,’ he said; ‘Curt might jump onto me an’ I might want some hep.’ Nathe wuzn’t afeard o’ nuthin’ this side o’ Jordan, an’ I laffed an’ went on with ’em. When we all got in a hunderd yards o’ the house we heard somebody screamin’, an’ Nathe got white as a dead man. ‘It’s Ann,’ says Lu; ‘he’s a-beatin’ her,’ an’ she begun to cry. Nathe says to me: ‘You stay here with Lu. I’ll fix him,’ an’ set off runnin’ like he’d gone mad. He didn’t open the door, jest kicked it in like it wuz glass. There wuzn’t any more screamin’, an’ when he come out he says: ‘Go in there, Ranz, an’ hep patch that feller up. I’ve give him two hours to git up an’ crawl off. He knows what the law does fer a man that lays his hand on a woman in the fix Ann’s in, an’ he’ll go. He don’t want to spend the next ten years in the pen.’
“Well, Curt went off, an’ Mis’ Baker wrote fer a son she had over on Cowee to come an’ take his place on the farm, an’ they all lived there in the little house quiet as could be. The whole country wuz braggin’ on the way Nathe had settled with Curt, though some said he ort to have tuk him up an’ let him go to the pen. Anybody that ’ud beat a little thing like Ann ort to git the worst the law could lay on him.
“In about three months Ann’s baby wuz born, an’ Lu acted like she thought it wuz hern, the way she took keer of it, an’ wuz over there half the time. She begged Nathe to go with her to see it, but he wouldn’t. That wuz woman’s business, he said. Things went on quiet-like fer two or three years, maybe four. Angie Sue got through school an’ married Mose Kempit. She didn’t do much fer hersef, considerin’ the chaince they give her. She had Ponnie’s temper, too, but Ponnie had a big heart along with her temper, an’ Angie Sue never had no more heart than a hornet’s got. Little Rosie wuz a-growin’ up, an’ the boys, Herb an’ Sam, wuz nearly men. They wuz quiet boys, not wuth much one way er t’other. Ann’s brother got married, an’ Nathe fixed him a house not fur from the other one, an’ Ann an’ her mother lived by thersevs. Mis’ Baker, she ’tended to the mill. The boy wuz named Baker, fer Ann’s father, an’ folks called him little Bake Lindsay.
“Well, we’s livin’ along, an’ ever’body comfortable, when one day in the fall when the woods wuz a-turnin’, Lu says to me: ‘Ranz, s’pose we take Rosie an’ the boys an’ go hunt chestnuts to-day? I ain’t been in the woods this year.’ That suited me, an’ we all went over to the big hill about a quarter of a mile to the back of Ann’s house. Nathe wuzn’t along. He’d got a letter the day before tellin’ him to come to Carson about a trade, an’ he’d set off walkin’ that mornin’, not lettin’ the boys drive him to Scatter to hit the train. It wuz too much trouble, he said, an’ he liked to walk. He wuz in fine health then, his skin clear pink, an’ not a gray hair in his head. Lu wuz feelin’ a little lonesome, I reckon, after he set off, an’ that’s what made her hit on goin’ fer chestnuts. We had a good time, an’ picked up a lot, but we didn’t go up the big hill any furder than the oak spring. Me an’ Lu an’ Rosie set down by the spring to rest a bit, an’ the boys said they’d shammuck along home an’ carry the chestnuts. We had about two flour-pokes full. While we’s settin’ there, me an’ Lu an’ Rosie, we heard somebody laffin’ way up at the top o’ the hill. ‘There’s somebody else out to-day,’ said Lu. ‘Let’s wait an’ see who it is.’ We knowed from the way the voices sounded that whoever wuz up there had started down. I sort o’ felt like I knowed the man’s voice, the way he wuz laffin’, an’ I set there with my eye-teeth a-gittin’ loose, till right out o’ the woods about fifty yards above us come Nathe an’ Ann. They come on down, not seein’ us till they wuz right on us, but we saw them all right. An’ I’ll say to ever’body here, an’ Lizy too, that they may have been as mean as the old boy, but they looked like they’d got to Heaven an’ took up. Nathe’s face wuz like halleloo, an’ Ann wuz flutterin’ ’s ef she wuz made out o’ wings. She saw us ’fore Nathe did, ’cause he wuzn’t seein’ nothin’ but Ann, an’ she give a little scream an’ set right down on the ground. Nathe looked around then, right at Lu. They stood there lookin’ at each other, an’ Nathe couldn’t move his eyes fer a minute. Ef there’d been a hole anywheres handy I reckon he’d ’a’ drapped into it, but he didn’t have any hidin’-place, an’ Lu--Lord bless her!--maybe she wuz sorry fer him, she said, ‘Let’s go home, Rosie,’ an’ turned off an’ we come home.”
“Ay,” said Uncle Dan’l, “Lu wuz a good woman. I wuz thinkin’ when that Jenkins wuz here an’ we wuz talkin’ about who ought to lay ’long o’ Nathe, that Lu had paid fer the place, even if she didn’t git it.”
“Maybe so, but I am glad it wuz Callie got it, an’ I hope she knows it,” said Uncle Ranz, a bit snappishly. “I wuz sorry fer Lu, though. Nathe come in about midnight an’ went to bed in the room next to the one where him an’ Lu always stayed. But he didn’t sleep none, an’ about three o’clock he come an’ woke me up an’ ast me what Lu wuz meanin’ to do. I told him she hadn’t said yit, he’d find out to-morr’. But next day she couldn’t speak fer a cold she’d caught settin’ by that spring. She wrote on a piece o’ paper that she’d git a divorce an’ they’d divide the property fair. Nathe got down by the bed an’ begged her not to do that. He said there wuzn’t anybody to blame but him, an’ it ’ud kill Ann to be disgraced, which wuz what he ortn’t ’a’ said to Lu, but Nathe wuz so tore up I reckon he couldn’t think o’ pickin’ his way. An’ Lu wrote, ‘Is Baker yore boy?’ an’ Nathe said he wuz. I s’pose he thought lyin’ wouldn’t hep him any with Lu lookin’ right through him. I could see the big tears rollin’ down Lu’s face, an’ she wrote: ‘I’m goin’ soon as I git up.’ But she didn’t go, an’ there wuzn’t any divorce, fer her cold turned inter double pneumony. In three days she wuz dead, an’ we laid her up there in Callie’s row next to little Rufe.
“It wuzn’t long till talk wuz floatin’ round ’bout Nathe an’ Ann, though I don’t b’lieve he went nigh her, an’ I reckon Rosie started the talk. Nobody but me had heard Nathe say that Bake wuz hisn, but Rosie told Angie Sue what she’d seen that day by the spring. An’ they thought it wuz fine to act smart about it.”
“The gals thought a heap o’ Lu,” said Aunt Lizy, irrepressible as justice. “I don’t blame ’em fer takin’ her part.”
“I ain’t blamin’ ’em,” said Uncle Ranz. “I’m sayin’ they wuz mighty hard on Ann. Angie Sue said she wuz goin’ to tell her father he had to turn Ann off the place. I never heard her tell him, but I seen her go into the room where he wuz. When she come out she looked like she wuz fallin’ to pieces, an’ milk couldn’t be whiter. As fur as I know that wuz the only time she ever named Ann to her daddy. Nathe wuzn’t bothered about Angie Sue, but he walked mighty keerful on Ann’s account. He kept goin’ to church right along, an’ travelled over to Carson faithful to his lodge meetin’s, an’ acted a little more’n fair in his tradin’, an’ kept his name right up. He wuz gittin’ to be wuth something too. I reckon his farm, an’ stock, an’ what he had in the Carson bank, would ’a’ come to more’n anybody else in Silver Valley could ’a’ spelt. So the deacons let him alone, as they ort, with no more proof than what me an’ Rosie saw, an’ him behavin’ right an’ payin’ the preacher reg’lar, besides givin’ him a suit o’ clothes an’ a fine pair o’ shoes at Christmas.
“Folks sort o’ made it easy fer Ann too, fer ever’body thought a sight of her.” Here Aunt Lizy gave the narrator a glance that drove him to an emendation. “Barrin’ a few o’ the women that wuz so good they didn’t have no use fer the New Testament. Most o’ the folks would go to the mill, like they’d been doin’, an’ act frien’ly, an’ make a heap over little Bake. Ever’body knowed that Ann had had an awful time with Curt, an’ Nathe wuz twenty years older’n her an’ could talk water up-hill. Nobody could prove nothin’ anyway, ’cause walkin’ in the woods one time wuzn’t no proof, not what the law could handle anyhow.
“Lu had been dead runnin’ onto a year, an’ the talk had died clean out, when Nathe told me to go to Mis’ Baker an’ tell her to take Ann to Carson an’ git a paper from the judge sayin’ she wuzn’t Curt’s wife. It wuz the law in them days that if a man an’ his wife didn’t live together fer three year they wuz nachally divorced ’thout goin’ inter court. I b’lieve they’ve changed it to five year now, but it wuz three then, an’ Curt had been gone four year an’ up’ards. I found Ann all in a trimmle an’ cryin’ hersef to death. She showed me a letter she’d got from Curt sayin’ he wuz comin’ back to settle with Nathe--that he’d heard whose boy Bake wuz, an’ he reckoned Nathe wouldn’t be so spry about havin’ him arrested ef he come back. She said she wouldn’t marry Nathe, fer Curt would be shore to slip in an’ kill him. That’s what Curt said he would do in the letter, an’ she didn’t have no more sense than to believe it. I went home an’ told Nathe, an’ he swore like no human bein’ ort to, an’ went straight off to Ann’s. When he come back, I knowed from his looks as fur as I could see him that his tongue hadn’t hepped him fer onct.
“‘I told her,’ he said, ‘I’d marry her, an’ take keer o’ her the rest o’ her life, like no woman wuz ever tuk keer of in Silver Valley, an’ ef Angie Sue come home she’d have to begin smilin’ at the gate er she’d never git inter the house, an’ Ann told me to find me a good woman an’ let her alone!’
“‘She’s afeard Curt’ll come back an’ kill ye, Nathe,’ I told him.
“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘Curt’s comin’ to kill me! That’s why he sent in his brag. So’s I could have my trigger ready.’
“‘Shucks,’ I said, ‘he’s a big coward; he’ll never come.’
“‘’Course he won’t,’ says Nathe, ‘but that don’t hep me ef I kain’t make Ann believe it. Git me a good woman, she says, an’ let her alone! It ’ud serve her almighty right ef I did.’
“‘You won’t do that, Nathe,’ I says, an’ he said: ‘No, I’ll hang around Aim fer the rest o’ my life, waitin’ fer a chance to lick her shoes!’
“‘That won’t be much to do,’ I told him. ‘Her shoes ain’t bigger than a thimble.’ ‘No, they ain’t,’ he says, an’ took the all-over trimmles. ‘I’m clean crazy, Ranz,’ he says.
“He mulled around fer maybe a month, kickin’ at his luck, an’ tryin’ to break pore little Ann, an’ the very day Mis’ Baker told me that Ann couldn’t hold out agin him much longer, he tied up with Nan Tittiewad.”
Uncle Ranz paused once more, and Aunt Lizy, always at the gap, and now evidently big with information, darted in.
“Her name wuzn’t Tittiewad. I knowed her folks that year me an’ Dan lived out in Jackson County. Her name wuz Benson, an’ her fam’ly wuz sort o’ bigetty. She married Jim Sluter the fust time. Jim’s father wuz called Taterwad ’cause he stole a wad o’ ’taters onct, not more’n a good mess, an’ wuz carryin’ ’em home when he wuz ketched with ’em. His name wuz Ham Sluter, but folks called him Ham Taterwad after that, an’ from him it went to his whole fam’ly. When Jim married Nan Benson, they called him Jim Taterwad after his father, an’ Nan would git so mad about it they told her they’d change it to Tittiewad ef that ’ud suit her better, an’ the madder she got the tighter that name stuck to her. Jim an’ her didn’t git along. They fit up an’ down the road, till fin’ly Jim left her, an’ nobody ever knowed what become of him. He got clear away from Nan. But they kept callin’ her Nan Tittiewad, the same as ever, ’cause it fitted her, I reckon, an’ it follered her wherever she went. I could ’a’ told Nathe all about her, but he wuzn’t sayin’ much to folks around home right then. He met Nan one day in Carson, an’ went round to the boardin’-house where she put up. They talked all night, an’ the next mornin’ they went to the court-house an’ got married.”
Aunt Lizy was breathless from the hurried discharge of her burden, and Uncle Ranz came in leisurely.
“I never knowed nothin’,” he said, “till I seen ’em drive up an’ Nathe hepped Nan out o’ the buggy. She wuz tall, an’ had a fair sight o’ flesh on her, but you couldn’t call her fat. She had red hair, but nobody wuz ’lowed to say it wuz red. She said it wuz orbun, but that didn’t change its color a bit. Her skin wuz white as a white egg-shell, an’ her eyes sky blue, not dark blue like Ann’s, an’ her lips as red as shumake heads. She wuz the fust woman Nathe had laid his hand on in nigh to a year, an’ I reckon, considerin’ what his nater wuz, it jest made him swim off. Nan sailed inter Lu’s house, an’ in less’n half an hour she’d been in ever’ corner of it. Her lip wuz curlin’ considerable, but when Nathe come in she ’peared to be satisfied. I b’lieve she wuz raley took up with Nathe at first, an’ he went about with his head lookin’ over all of us, heppin’ do ever’thing she wanted, pullin’ the furniture here an’ yander, an’ takin’ the pick o’ the parlor set to the room where they slept, an’ all sech crazy work. But when they’d been married about three weeks, an’ Nathe begun to think o’ settlin’ down to work like he ort, she said at breakfast one mornin’ that seein’ they’d done without a honeymoon, s’pose they tuk a trip to Californy er Flurridy. She’d always wanted to go to them places, she said. Nathe ’lowed he didn’t have enough money in the bank fer the trip, an’ didn’t have time to go ef the cash wuz layin’ handy. She got mad then, an’ said: ‘Well, I ain’t got time to wash yer dishes an’ sweep yer house an’ cook yer meals, nuther.’ Nathe told her he thought Rosie had been doin’ most of the work, but ef it wuz too much fer her, he’d let Angie Sue come home a while. She’d been wantin’ to come, ’cause she’s havin’ trouble with Mose Kempit, the man she married the fust time. An’ Nan said: ‘Oh, Lord, don’t bring any more peek-eyes in here! I’m smotherin’ to death now!’ Then she got up an’ walked down toward the creek, but she come back fer dinner, an’ from that time on it looked like the devil wuz runnin’ the house from top to bottom. Nathe fin’ly said he’d give her the money to go to Californy on ef she’d stay when she got there, but she told him she wuzn’t that easy, he wuz goin’ to do more than that fer her. She said she’d have to be paid good fer comin’ to sech a hole an’ livin’ with an ol’ squeeze-pocket that had killed three wives an’ kept another woman too. I reckon she’d picked something out o’ the neighbors, an’ Rosie had told her about Ann, fer she wuz powerful thick with Nan the fust week she wuz in the house.”
Uncle Dan’l was growing restless. “I say, Ranz,” he put in, “I never b’lieved Nan wuz near as bad as she made hersef out. She wuz tryin’ to git Nathe to drive her off, so she could sue him fer support an’ live where she wanted to.”
“’Course she wuz,” assented Uncle Ranz. “I found that out right away, an’ me an’ Nathe talked it over. ‘You want to be keerful, Nathe,’ I told him, ‘an’ keep yer hands off her an’ not give her any claim agin ye. She’ll wear hersef out ’fore long.’ ‘You reckon she will?’ Nathe ast me, an’ I told him I wuz shore she would ef he kept still no matter what she done. That seemed to hep him, an’ he set his teeth an’ tried to stand it. He didn’t dare go to see Ann, fer that wuz what his wife wuz watchin’ fer. He knowed she’d find him out, day er night, an’ he walked straight as a shingle. The whole neighborhood thought Nathe wuz actin’ fine, an’ anybody would ’a’ been sorry for him the day that Nan called Ann’s name an’ put something else to it as plain as the Bible speaks it. Nathe set still, like he’d never move till jedgment-day, an’ her tongue hurtin’ him worse than rippin’ fire. I b’lieve Nan felt kinder discouraged after that, thinkin’ she’d never git him riled enough to beat her er drive her off.
“It wuz awful the way she made a destroyment of things in the house. One day she wuz settin’ in the big room with Nathe, an’ she tuk a little penknife she had an’ begun to cut the threads out of a cushion that Lu had worked all over with little birds an’ leaves. ‘Don’t do that,’ said Nathe. ‘Lu made that hersef.’ An’ Nan says, ‘It’s mine now!’ an’ throwed it inter the fire. Nathe jumped up to grab it off the blazin’ logs, an’ Nan got right afore him. He’d ’a’ shoved her down, I reckon, if Cricket Sawyer hadn’t been there an’ held him back. Crick knew what Nan wuz after, the same as the rest of us, an’ she got so mad at him she never spoke to him afterwards, though they set at the same table three times a day.