Part 14

She wished for some other contact beside Frank, who came now every week or two. She remembered too vividly his face, his gestures, his presence after his departure. She was lying on the ground under the linden tree, seeing the pods of the linden that hung under each leaf by a slender stem of green. Walter and Abe would be cutting the tobacco in the lower field. The wild horses ran roughly up and down their pasture, their hoof-heavy tread thundering, the young stallion stopping to paw the grass until the dust rose from beneath it. She could scarcely divide this year from last year except by some memory of herself lying in the bed above the stairs, counting days to achieve ten unfevered. Now she lay on the rough grass and herbs under the linden tree not far from the pine, not far from the portico. She remembered Frank from time to time, or he welled upward from within her own being, his hands that seemed strong now as set beside no other hands. She remembered his face, his gray eyes, his still brow, his scrutinizing stare, a picture of his throat, his hand on his thigh.

“I must have some other people,” she said, stirring as she lay to dispel the too-acute picture. “If I could walk to some other house. Go anywhere....”

* * * * *

The cow at the tenant house was dry now and there was no milk. “Now let’s see,” she thought, turning her mind again and again to the problem. Miss Doe had grown weary. She leaned all day over the novels, her eyes in a dim trance when she was called. There was milk on the neighboring farms, Theodosia thought, but she had no money. “You’ve got as much to eat as I’ve got,” Miss Doe said. “You’ve got as much milk and eggs as you see me eat.”

She was in the back room at the hour of food, waiting. The pones for the dogs baked on the hearth.

“Let me help, Aunt Doe,” she said. “Let me help you do something.”

“I’ll mind my own house. Just keep your seat whilst I manage my own.”

The great pones lay over hot coals to bake, the flying ashes dusting over them. The books were piled on the deep window sill. The bed in the back of the room was spread with a dark pieced quilt of some old design. Dust had settled over the quilt and over the pillows that were laid in funeral rigidity at the top of the bed. Walking near the bed to examine the design of the quilt, Theodosia suspected that her aunt did not sleep in the bed.

“Is this the sunshine-and-shade quilt?” she asked. “Did you piece it? You bought it from an old woman. It’s pretty and faded now, the colors blended. They’re pretty, faded together like that....”

The dust on the quilt and on the pillows made her know they were never disturbed. The quilt was clean under the pillows and the bed was always plumped carefully, the quilt on it in the same way. It was never used, she surmised, and she wondered where her aunt lay to sleep. There was a roll of old quilts thrown into the storeroom where the food was kept.

Miss Doe brought out a small leather cake of wheat bread she had cooked by the fire and a bit of conserve that was old and dry. A few brown crackers.

* * * * *

On her way to the wood-lot in the first cold of a November day when the wind was whipping the trees and shrubs and the leaves were falling in mad disaster, “A woman, I am, walking to gather firewood in a wild storm,” she said. In a wind-whipped bush she found a song-sparrow’s nest, revealed now to sight by the upturned branches and the dispersing leaves. She broke the nest from the bush and carried it away. It was made of fine twigs rounded and woven with perfect care, the wooded ends and strands growing more delicate as they approached the center, the pool where the eggs had lain. This cup was lined with human hair, soft and red-brown, laid in an exquisite hollow to make a lining, her own hair. Walking back through the angry air that twisted her garments and beat her steps from the path, a wind that would cry “It is done, make a swift end then,” and would tear life out of the trees and wrench summer off from the sagging vine on the house wall, a fervor of joy welled in her senses and spread backward to some quiet inner part. She had had this ineffable relation with the bird. Unknown to her, the nest had lain on the bough of the old lilac bush all summer, had been built in the spring. The wind slammed the door on the outside violence and she was free of bodily struggle, ribbons of exhaustion and pain unwinding upward into her thighs and back. She placed the nest on her table and looked at it from time to time, picking it delicately apart to try to discover its order.

In the untended pastures the withered white-top and frost-flowers, rejected by the horses, shook stiffly in the cold gusts. The silkweed puffs had blown and their shards were left standing above the dried sweet-fern and the bittersweet. It was now the dark season when night comes on at the earliest hour.

She turned away from her thin face, seen quickly in a mirror, and fear that had crouched in her thought leaped to become a pain in her breast. She was losing what she had gained, the little she had so carefully built together. It was difficult now to walk her small round, through the trees, along the fence to the stile, to the wood-lot, back up the stair. A dragging weariness which she thought would be hunger gnawed at her body. She had talked of it to her aunt, saying, “When I am stronger I will go.” A curious smile had settled to the dim eyes that were glassed over with the fantasies of books.

She was walking out toward the stile in the cold of a December day, the wind blowing her dress and beating through her thin blood, changing her breath to a quivering chill. It came to her as she neared the stile that she would go to the tenant man, Walter Bland, and say, “I must have food, every day; I will sell something. My books are all I have. How will I do it? What shall I do?” She would say, “As a human being and a neighbor, tell me what I’d better do. You know yourself how Aunt Doe lives. We are all here together on the farm. Now what must I do?” He would be rude and rough in his speech, but he would suggest some plan. He would do something.

She climbed over the stile with a new strength and went down the pasture slowly, stopping to regain her panting breath. She was glad that she had decided to do this. A strength greater than she had came to her with the determination and the satisfaction in her plan. She thought that Bland might want some of the books for himself, and she began to name in mind such of the books as might be within his reach. Walter came suddenly out of the brush at the foot of the pasture, just where she entered the field. Her hand was reached to the loop of the wire that held the field gate in place. He came out of the cherry brush suddenly and stood ten feet away. A hard voice accompanied his approach, spreading through the cherry glades and meeting the cold of the wind on the briars.

“You keep on back up the hill. Don’t you be a-comen down here now. You keep on back up where you belong.”

She tried to say what she had come to say, her words entangled until they were meaningless. The voice spoke out steadily over her struggle to speak.

“You keep on back up to the house.” He glanced fearfully toward the field and the way of the cabin. “You got no business here. You go on back.”

Her words rushed out upon her breath and were shaken with the chill of her body. Her plan would not yield to his uncomprehended speech, and she stood against the gray weathered gate. She drew the flying ends of her bright scarf from before her eyes and stated again her errand. He spoke over her words, trampling them out with his rough voice.

“You keep on back up the hill.... Where you stay.... Anything happens, who is’t gets strung up to a limb? Not you. You go on back. Don’t you be a-comen down this-here way. On back.... You go on, I say.”

She was climbing the rise again, walking along the path, facing the wind now, moaning softly as she went. The cold cut her garments apart and entered her flesh, past her chilled blood. She labored with the low hill and came at last to the stile.

She was drowsed by fatigue and dulled by the cold. She went to the evening bit of food, her life stilled, scarcely knowing when she had eaten the last of the leather cake. When this was done she built a fire on the parlor hearth with wood she had brought there some days earlier and made the wood stand high over the blaze. There would be a great glow, a holiday burning of the demon sticks she had carried, two and two, from the wood-lot. A dozen now went on the flame. She put on a soft gray dress she had saved from her former wardrobe and twined a warm rose-and-yellow scarf about her shoulders.

She sat in the parlor before the high fire and felt the color gather richly above her scarfed breast. The sofa on which she sat ran before the fire in a retreating curve of black, and her mind caught in the irony of warmth and the color that wrapped her throat. Frank came, opening the door for himself, knocking softly and entering, rubbing his hands for their cold, eager for the fire, for the color, eager for herself. He sat beside her and presently he began to kiss her face and her throat and to whisper strange words, but she stared into the blaze and turned his caresses aside with her ironic mind where yes and no functioned identically. His hands were on her body beneath the glowing scarf, were feeding her body, and the fire was food again, these foods rich in their insufficiency. Frank was a kindness at her side, at her ear, at her mouth, and it appeared to her that she would ask him for help. She turned toward him crying with her broken breath close to his ear, “Frank, I’m so hungry. I’m hungry. I never have enough. I’m hungry. Aunt Doe ... I never have real food. I’ll starve.” He warmed her with his caresses, murmuring some pleasure in his bestowal, and she floated out of life, warmed, and presently was appeased and comforted.

She had fallen into a deep inner reverie from which nothing could arouse her. She heard as a long way off the monotony of Frank as he talked. He sat apart from her now, or he had gone, had kissed her in the moment of his departure. He would come back, she could be sure of that, some voice had said. The night would be cold, was cold. Daylight came late. It was winter now, snow on the ground, on the wood in the pile at the back of the wood-lot. The noise of the woodpeckers was strange against the snow, was flattened by the snow. A day was but little different from a night, she observed under the fog of her reverie, one being light, the other dark, a mere difference. Sleep, wake, sleep. The journey to the woodpile was the one link that bound her to that strange and foregone experience, the ways people go and the things people do.

* * * * *

At this time she began to hear voices speaking to her. In the dark of the night or in the cold bright days when she lay in her bed, the windows opened wide, she would stare at the faded rose and pearl of the ceiling or the faded gray of the walls, and the winter knocking of the woodpeckers among the trees about the house would fit into her sense of light and become identical with it. She would lie in an apathy, scarcely breathing, divided in mind, uncoördinated by hunger and unintegrated by pain. Lying thus one day, looking at the woodpecker’s cry as it lay along the ceiling and was interlaced with the faded rose and pearl of the vignettes there, a first voice spoke to her, saying, “The categories of the flesh....” The words receded when they had been said, leaving ripples of flat tone behind, flat words that rode on some rhythm. When the words had receded beyond the reach of hearing and her ears were dulled with listening to their spent rhythms, the voice spoke suddenly again.

FIRST VOICE: The categories of the flesh.

“What are they?” she asked, her own voice as real as that which had spoken and as earnest. She began to turn the saying about to see what it would give. Then another voice spoke sharply, swiftly, a hard voice blurting out its rough saying.

SECOND VOICE: The hunger of the mouth.

An inner voice spoke then, a third speaker, more, subtle and persuasive, saying, “And then there’s Frank.”

FIRST VOICE: A category too. He is.

THEODOSIA: Well, then, well? An occurrence—one happening....

She was dull to Frank, to any reminder of him. She stirred wearily in the bed and drew her knees together, crossing her feet.

FIRST VOICE: The intense will to continue is centered in the individual organism, and thus, or for this, the matter of continuation is entrusted to the instance.

THIRD VOICE: Brain turned into a walnut and then got a worm in it....

THEODOSIA: The genteel poor. I’ve always heard it said they were the greatest sufferers on the earth.

FIRST VOICE: And suppose, as Science says, it’s unlikely that there’s anything comparable to human life on any other planets. Human life, then, lonely in the great space of the sky, swinging around through space without greeting, without advice or sympathy, afraid.

SECOND VOICE: Drunk to get more of itself!

THIRD VOICE: What if.... Suppose she got more. She. Theodosia.

SECOND VOICE: Love of God! What would it be?

THEODOSIA: Nothing comparable to life on any other.... Human life, that is. It must look strange from the outside, this one, when you see the whole lot come in a whirl around the sun. Mercury first, then Venus, then the one with life on it. Maybe it makes it look different. Pain, try-to-do, try-again. Stuff that can look up and down on it, stuff that can say, “God, God!”

FIRST VOICE: And God took up a handful of dust from the ground and mixed it with his own spittle and formed man. A God-handful of dust and the spittle out of the mouth of God.

SECOND VOICE: In the beginning was the spittle of God, and the spittle was with God. Must have a different smell, the one with life on it. “Phew!” they’d say, “here comes that stinken one.”

THEODOSIA: I’ll begin back at the first. Take it all over again. Run through the first scale lessons. Bow practice. Where’s the book of duos? As soon as I’m strong enough, the trills.

SECOND VOICE: As soon as you’re strong enough! Love of God! How’ll you get strong on three bites of leather hoecake?

FIRST VOICE: And half the time she throws the queer stuff up.

A melody came beating lightly through the noise of her thought, inconsequential, irresponsible to any remembered design of song, under the melody a thud of irregular rhythms delaying it with intricate patterns of silence. Her fingers twitched toward the shelf where the fiddle lay, pointing without motion, drawn under the covering of the bed, her hands folded into her armpits for warmth. The melody lived as a fragile pattern creeping from key to key, spontaneously erecting itself out of some inward repository of dancing, sinking and rising, repeating itself in its own shadow when it fell away, becoming then the still rhythmic nothing of anti-song. Returning afterward, it tapped even more lightly with whisper music that broke upon a faint up-and-down, a mountain ascending and descending, contrived and defeated in a slow design, regular, living each moment and dying in succession, her own breathing. Her breath pushing in and out upon the air, denting the air.

* * * * *

She was sitting in the parlor before the fire which burned the wood she had carried stick by stick from the wood-lot. Dark had long since come. The wind among the trees made a noise like the rush of water in a river, and the night was very dark outside. Once she looked from the window, leaning against the cold glass and bending her neck to see overhead. Back at the fireside again, the whining of the wind in the chimney and the crack of the dry burning logs was a clicking of summer insects shut into winter, imprisoned in frost.

The old bitch, Old Mam, had littered in a bedroom at the end of the upper hallway, three weak puppies in a writhing heap on a bed of rags. They would die of the cold. It would be cold above-stairs, she reflected, her fire untended, the sour odor of cold cleaving the air, rising from the window ledges and gathering at last to the bed. It would be cold beyond the walls of the house, beyond the reach of her fire; all night the air would grow more and more dense with cold. The pond down by the creek would be frozen, a thick sheet of ice to be broken in the morning by some axe. To lie all night on the ground ten feet from the place where she sat would be death to life, the end of all vigor. She would lie on the frozen grass, willing, she predicted, and the wind would search out her thin dress, her thin blood. Determination would hold her there. Pain would wrap around her, fixed into her limbs and her body and her brain, and finally she would become drowsed. All would recede, the all meaning her memory of life. “Was it for this?” something would ask, saying, “You were saved at birth by care, some care, and were taught, praised, kept—a curious thing—for this.” A black irony. Drowsiness would settle nearer. It was for this. Morning would come and she would lie still, frozen, ten feet from the spot in which she now sat, her hands bent, her body stiff, the waters of her flesh congealed, ice in her mouth.

She moved nearer to the fire with a sharp cry and held her hands to the flame, leaning her body nearer. She looked at her hands as she rubbed them well into the warmth of the fire’s radiance, her thin narrow hands moving with life, blood in their channels, and she loved her hands.

Frank was coming in at the hallway, closing the front door, whistling. In the next instant came a great clutter of leaping feet, confused thought, cries, growls, oaths, blows. A rush of animal feet on the stairway and more outcries. She went to the door of the parlor and opened it wide, and Frank was there trying to defend himself from two dogs, another dog coming down the stair. He was kicking at the beast that was at his feet, but another was at his breast, leaping.

She drove the dog, Old Mam, from his breast, ordered her back with a sharp command. There were four dogs now in the dim hallway, one coming from the region beyond the stair.

“This house, it’s full of devils,” Frank cried out. He was drawing back toward the door. “This whole damn place is a den of demons. For God’s sake keep that dog off me!”

The dogs went away sullenly, Old Mam above to her whelps, Tilly to lie at Miss Doe’s door until it opened for her tapping.

“This house, it’s full of devils.” He was coming striding across the carpet toward the fire, indignation scarcely waning. He opened the door to the dining-room and gazed into the blackness beyond, listening. “Ugh! devils, demons, ghouls!” He slammed the door quickly. “You wouldn’t catch me out there. I wouldn’t go out that door.... You couldn’t bribe me to go.”

* * * * *

Five large pones of coarse bread, unsifted meal stirred with water and set in skillets of hot grease to bake before the fire, this was the food for the old dogs. Miss Doe mixed it with her hands or with a spoon that was never cleaned. It baked on the hearth all morning, not far from the place where Tilly and Old Mam lay. While it cooked Tilly would sometimes sniff at each hot pone, impatient for the heat to do its work. The thick vapors and gases from the dogs spread through the room, and Theodosia ate her small leather wheat cake quickly and went back to her chamber to lie weakly down. The voices began to ply, issuing and receding.

FIRST VOICE: The receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged. Said Anthony hath given, granted, bargained, sold, transferred and released, and by these presents doth give, grant, bargain, sell, transfer and release unto said Goodwin a certain tract of land situated, lying and being in the county aforesaid on the south side of Casey Run....

THEODOSIA: Situated, lying and being. Theodosia, born a Bell, now situated, lying and being. Here. Herself.

FIRST VOICE: Could a woman butcher a hog?

SECOND VOICE: How many hogs has Frank butchered for you? Did Frank ever offer you a hog?

THIRD VOICE: Come, let us butcher a hog together. The celestial hog. A sea hog that swims in the river of forgetfulness. Easy to know and lived in a lonely place.

SECOND VOICE: Took the trouble to look into the matter of the old lady’s will. Peeped around and made old Daniels talk. How about the Singleton farm, old lady Singleton, Miss Doe, they call her? Does anybody know how old Miss Doe is a-leaven her estate? Horace Bell and Theodosia are her natural heirs.... If Theodosia is to get the farm.... Easy to do.

She settled her whole mind upon some event, long past, selected at random from the nothingness of all forgotten events and brought forward to be examined minutely. It was the meeting, some meeting, of the literary society at the Seminary—quotations, addresses, papers, debates. She began to recite carefully, dwelling on each phrase with humorous interest, sucking from each its last degree of pleasure.

And, “Please your honors,” said he, “I’m able By means of secret charms to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep or swim or fly or run, After me as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole, the toad, the newt, the viper; And people call me the Pied Piper.”

SECOND VOICE: The murderer. Murder in her hands. A snake in her belly.

A FOURTH VOICE, _screaming_: She eats murder and snakes.

FIRST VOICE: Frank. She asked him for bread and he gave her a snake.

SECOND VOICE: If you had a hog to kill for food, could you butcher a hog? Would you?

THEODOSIA: I’d have no idea how to go about it.

SECOND VOICE: Knock it in the head with the axe. Then watch it bleed. Stick its throat and catch the blood in a dish. Blood is good to drink. Blood pudding. Cut it open along the bacon. Cut out the melt first. Hog liver fried in fat is good. A little onion. Pepper. Makes your mouth water.

THEODOSIA: But the hog is still alive. Where is the hog now?

FIRST VOICE: You asked him for bread and he gave you a serpent.

SECOND VOICE: What was she out to kill?

FOURTH VOICE: She helped Lethe kill Ross.

SECOND VOICE: She wanted to kill. Kill! kill! Why didn’t she kill a hog?

THEODOSIA: Where was I? Oh, yes.

And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon his pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.

THIRD VOICE: She wanted to kill. There was a night when she had kill inside her. She helped Lethe do her work.

SECOND VOICE: Why isn’t she in prison then? Where’s Lethe?

THEODOSIA:

As if impatient to be playing Upon his pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.

SECOND VOICE: Her hand went with Lethe’s. Into Ross. All night blood ran out.

FOURTH VOICE: Too bad it wasn’t a hog. Melts fried in fat make a right good dish. Onion. A little butter.

THEODOSIA:

Upon his pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.

SECOND VOICE: She likes to forget it. All night Ross bled out his life. A man, he was, what they call life in his body, and then he went out, a slash in his throat.

THEODOSIA:

And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats, Will you give me a thousand gilders?

THIRD VOICE: Took the trouble to find out about the will. Peeped around and quizzed old Daniels. How now, is old Miss Doe a-leaven her farm? Too bad. Told her the second time he’d had her. Too bad. Left it all to some charity, every cent. Some kind of hospitals away off somewhere, a long way off. In trust to some board.