Part 16
At once a vivid appearance entered her mind, so brilliant and powerful that her consciousness was abashed. Larger than the world, more spacious than the universe, the new apparition spread through her members and tightened her hands so that they knotted suddenly together. It tightened her spine until she sat erect. Her recognition settled to a word, groped with words, settled again about a word, some word, catching at words with a net. The word was vivid, was like a new flower in a sunny place, and unable to say it she knew it with a rush of thanksgiving that out-ran all her recognition of it. The word she could not say, could only approach with reaching tentacles of memory and thought, erected a joy throughout her senses. Her body spread widely and expanded to its former reach, and the earth came back, herself acutely aware of it. A pleasure that she still lived to participate in this recognition caught her throat with a deep sob. She had shifted her gaze so that she looked now into the fire. She sat leaned forward, tense with new life, with the new world, and she penetrated the embers with her gaze and saw into the universe of the fire, the firmament of dimly glowing heat that receded, worlds on worlds, back into infinities, atoms, powers, all replete with their own abundance. She laughed in her joy and went with the fire, more living now than the coals in the heart of the red ash. The word let a happy substitute stand for itself, a delegate appearing clearly defined, a word experienced as a glow of pride in life and joy. “Tomorrow” was the utterance, clearly placed then. On the next day the peddler would come along the road. This homely, habitual fact had been the Arise-ye of her resurrection. “I’m still alive,” she sang under her breath, “I’m alive, I’m alive.” She leaned tensely near the hearth and spoke, or she smiled without speaking. Her eyes were dim with the new birth and the bloom of renascence slightly blurred her consciousness as yet. The loaned word grew more vivid, “Tomorrow,” substituted now for the unsaid word that receded, its mission accomplished. She leaned near the hearth.
Then she arose quickly and gathered her wraps and some clothing to a chair. She shut her fiddle into its case and placed the music in a pile beside it. Then she went below and hung a white cloth on the pillar of the portico, for she thought that the peddler might pass early. In her room again she found a piece of the coarse bread under her pillow and of this she ate sitting wrapped in the blanket of the bed, the room being cold now, the fire almost gone. Without undressing she lay in the bed, ready for her departure, a gladness singing through her thin blood where life still beat. Presently she was aware that it was morning and that she had slept happily. She bathed in the cold water, shaking with cold and joy, and she ate the last of the bread. When the peddler brought his car along the driveway she took her things into her arms and went down to the portico.
“I’d be plumb pleased to death,” he said when she asked her favor, although she told him she would have to ask him to wait for his pay. “I wouldn’t charge a young lady e’er a cent to ride along with me. Pay? Don’t say e’er word about pay. Would I charge a young lady to go a-riden with me? Sakes-alive!”
When he asked her where she wanted to go she had no answer ready, but she was joyous in her evasions, making questions and replies that kept the destination delicately poised at the brink of an answer. He would go here and stop there, naming farms, and he could come to Spring Run Valley by noon of the day, he said. Then he stopped at a farm, the house near the roadway, and called his wares to the farmer’s wife, who bought. She peered curiously at the front of the truck but she made no comment.
“Where did you say you aimed to go?” he asked when they were on the road again, and she answered, “Spring Run Valley.” Then he told her of the origin of the name, she having asked. “Spring Run is a creek that rises in a spring off a way to the north there.” He told the news of the countryside, of the dead, the sick, the new-born, the lucky. Along the roadside men were clearing the ditches, shoveling out drains for the roadway, and over the tops of the hills some crows were flying. The winter had blown the last leaf from every bush and every vine and the earth stood ready to be remade, the streams running cold under the little bridges, the water quick and yellow. The truck ran swiftly, and there were few sales made, for the people were busy with other matters, with the plant beds, the hen-houses, the early gardening or fencing. They would wave the liniment-man away with a greeting. “You know somebody in Spring Valley?” he asked. She did not know what she would say to that, and she waited for a reply to find its way to her mouth, her humor that of a bird waiting for its song. She saw her strange happiness going its unknown ways and she looked from afar, quaintly amused, as if place were a humorous adjunct to being, for if one is happy in being alive he has to have a place to be happy in. They could never take that away from happiness in being. That control of places kept in the hands of men, certain men, this seemed exquisitely droll.
“Miss Hettie, she up and married awhile back, took and married and went off right in the middle of the school. They haven’t got a teacher yet to the best of my belief and knowledge. Doc Bradley said to me they would be right put-to to find one so late in the term.” Bradley was the school trustee for the district, and the appointment of the teacher was his duty, he said.
She was weary in body, aching from the long ride, and a vertigo seized her now and then, induced by the unaccustomed motion of the truck and the swift passage, but her pleasure ran still with the slipping countryside as it opened before her and with the flocking of the crows as they made off toward some farther hill. She had waited for her replies as a bird might wait, but finally she made known her mission as it appeared to her. She would ask to be allowed to teach the Spring Run Valley school for the three months remaining. “So that’s were you’re bound for,” he said. “Well I vum! They’ll be right glad to get you, that I know.” He would let her down at Dr. Bradley’s house, he said. “I’m bound straight for that very place.”
Then he took a package from his coat pocket and said that it was a snack of lunch his wife always wrapped up for him, that he never could tell where he would be for his dinner and she always tied him up a little snack to be on the safe side.
“I’m a mind to eat it now, to get shed of it,” he said. “I’ll be in Spring Valley to dinner, that I well see, and I always eat my dinner with Doc Bradley when I pass. I’m a mind to eat the bite I got here now, and maybe you’ll have a bite along with me, just to keep me company.”
He unrolled a paper from about the food and offered her one of the sandwiches in his hands. Then the juices of her vitals leaped like hungry serpents at the sight of the food and her hand reached for it, afraid it might be withdrawn, her hand trembling. She took the food out of his hand, her eyes smiling, her mind joyous, the serpent of her maw beating with anticipation, reaching forward with craving, and she knew that her way was strange as she took the bread into her hand, that even he, unobserving and eager to talk, one of his hands on the steering-wheel of the wagon, knew that her manner was biased, deflected from the ways of women. In her fingers the food was seen to be pieces of well-baked bread buttered richly, between the pieces bits of tender meat delicately salted, the flesh of cattle made ready for food. At the first moment a sickness arose as she swallowed, but she ate slowly, a rich repast, two pieces of buttered bread and the meat. When she had fed she drowsed slightly, and she let the morning spend itself as it would, let it run past her unhindered, noted but unguided.
Some people were standing in an old doorway talking together, and they shook their heads when the peddler called out to them, sufficient in themselves, joyous over some departure, waving hands as two went down a path. At a small gate beside a bridge a woman was driving a great turkey-gobbler, guiding it skilfully into the small entry, and her passing set a bright glow of color against the brown of the earth and the faint yellow that lay over the bushes, her shawl dull blue plaided with gray. Some children loitered at the side of the road making a seesaw of a fallen board and two larger girls came idly down the road under the lacery of stripped boughs, a renewed token that school did not keep. Her joy lasted and the journey came to an end. The truck went slowly down the village road between the small houses, scattering the hens from its path, calling the men to the door of the blacksmith’s shop, curving its path to the curving way.
SIX
From her window she could see that the houses in the hamlet were close together, huddled about the blacksmith’s shop and the store. The noises of the lane were near at hand, the voices intimate. She was in an upper chamber in Bradley’s house to rest, for she had asked for two weeks’ time. She had been sick, she said, but she was now recovering. In two weeks she would begin to teach the children. The doctor said finally:
“I expect your aunt, old Miss Doe, lives right close and stingy now. She’s half starved you maybe.”
“I’ve been sick. But I’ll be well now,” she said.
She would board with the doctor’s family two weeks, resting. After that time she would be given her board, week by week, among the patrons of the school, as the custom was, for the pay was small. Her work at the Seminary had given her the teacher’s credential. “I got no uneasiness but you’ll be able to teach those youngones a right smart,” Dr. Bradley said. “First we must put a little meat on your bones.”
The food was set on the table by the doctor’s wife, a large, breathy woman who sank comfortably into her ampleness and formed a bulwark against which their children leaned. She talked habitually of her work, of the food she prepared. Theodosia saw that she stilled her curiosity about herself, saw that she turned it into delicate sauces and the creamy essence of meats, nourishment for the body. The woman set upon each preparation diligently, carefully choosing an egg, rejecting a cream, tasting, studying, whipping, shredding, kneading, stirring, each dish brought to the board with a gesture of deep concern as she slightly leaned toward it to give it a last scrutiny. These attitudes were her habitual replies to her husband. The table was laid in the kitchen, for the days were cool and here was the most snug warmth. The doctor came from his office, a little room at the end of the yard, and sat at the head of the table. Sometimes he brought a patient with him, or a traveler, for there was always an extra place prepared. The heavy savors would arise and mingle sweetly with their hungers, with the faint odor of smoke from the cooking fire where the wood burned away now that it was no longer wanted. The doctor brought a breath of cold air with him and this lingered about his clothing and spread through the odorous warmth. When he was seated he bowed his head briefly and asked a blessing in a psalm-like sentence, and the little children would suck at their spoons and put their hands into their empty plates, an ear attentive to the blessing, of which they understood nothing but the amen, their hungers like the hungers of some small gentle beasts. The ceremony of carving and of passing plates was swiftly over, subordinated to their cravings. “Begin on your plate while it’s hot,” the doctor would say. “No waiten. No use to make any more fuss. Eat your victuals while they’re warm.”
The men in the village road knew one another intimately, calling “John” or “Bill” or “Thad” back and forth, shouting orders or suggestions. Lee Cummings worked somewhere on a farm, but he came home with his team at nightfall, the empty wagon rattling through the roadway. Or beyond the vapors of her sleep she would hear a night-passer, the wheels of a buggy or a car on the road which lay but a few feet from the house. In the early morning the village cows were driven to common waste pasture which was indifferently owned, along the creek, and the boys who drove them would loiter to swap knives or to boast of some personal excellence. A man’s voice would call out a command or a threat and a boy would move after his cow, simulating hurry. Thad sold goods at the store. He would stand in the sun in the early morning waiting for trade to come to his door, shifting his feet, waiting to see what the weather would offer before he predicted the business of the day. Chickens ran in the road and plucked at the grain that dropped from passing wagons, but when feeding times came they gathered at old Oscar Turner’s door. Thad would call out a jest or a truism to passing friends.
“Yes, the rich they have their ice in summer, but the poor they have their’n in winter, and everything hit’s all evened up all round,” he called after some leaving companion, closing some tale or argument. He took credit to himself as a philosopher. Or again, as a prophet:
“Hit’ll rain all day, you may as well get ready for hit. See them-there hens out eaten grass in the rain? When you see hens out in the morning eaten grass in the rain, that’s a sure sign hit’ll rain all day.”
She walked through the lane toward the creek or returned to sit on Bradley’s doorstep, or she walked along the highroad past the store and the grist-mill, knowing no surprise that she should be there rather than anywhere else, and no surprise at the replies of the people that fell the one against another, as they talked of their tasks, every man knowing the other’s needs or peculiar quality. One of old Oscar Turner’s hens laid her eggs in an overturned barrel beside Thad’s door.
“I looked to see if she was on,” a man said, drawing back from the barrel.
“Is she on?”
“I wonder if old Oscar he’ll set her there.”
“A right public place.”
“That old domernik hen, she don’t mind, she’s got no shame.”
They were new with the beginning of the earth, beyond the reach of truism, fresh and uncertain, the dew of new-birth on every saying. They were of the world and the world was new. They were free of all but the bare statement of themselves as standing out before time, before running duration. Kate Hull driving to the grist-mill with a sack of old corn to have it cracked for her pullets escaped truism as entirely as did Thad’s voice and demeanor as he uttered his philosophies, as she drove awkwardly into the setting and sat dejectedly above the corn sacks. A man, Caleb Burns, rode down from the upper-lying farmland, riding a brown horse that had three white feet. A child named Sallie West, unknown to her as yet, sent her a handful of wild crocuses. A girl, at the door of the store, buying baking soda and lemon extract, invited her to a party. A woman standing by a gate, her hand stayed on the latch, said to her as she passed, “I heard you playen on your violin last night. I heard it when I was on my way to bed. It was a fair sound.”
* * * * *
She met the children at the school on the appointed day. There were twenty-three, boys and girls. The schoolhouse stood near the creek at the end of the village, under a shade of beech and sycamore trees. Some of the children rode down from the upper valley each day in a buckboard cart, or a boy or two came horseback. Susan West, who drove the buckboard cart, would take the old horse from the shaves and hitch it under a great beech tree, and at noon one of the boys would, as his duty, without asking leave, take the eight ears of corn from under the buggy seat and feed the old nag in a wooden box that was nailed to the tree. Old Oscar’s hens would gather about the horse’s feet to catch the wasted grains of corn. She began her progress up the valley, living first at the houses that were nearest to the school and moving week by week farther away, Cummings’s first, and then Fishman’s place, and Baker’s.
The farmers had formed a beef company, a group of six or eight men who killed a beef every ten days or two weeks and shared in the meat by a carefully drawn contract. Each man furnished a yearling steer in turn and each man was given a part in turn. One or two of the men sold their portions, peddling it from house to house in the hamlet, or others used all, having many at hand to feed. The slaughter-house was a dull shed at the back of a small enclosure near the beginning of the village, removed from the schoolhouse by the whole length of the village, but Theodosia saw it as she walked in the late afternoon, and on the killing days she saw the men gathered there. A constant stench floated out from the place, and toward the back of the shed were scattered quantities of bones, the heads and feet of cattle that had been gnawed by the dogs until they were clean, some of them weathered white by the rains. Often the dogs fought there all night, their yelpings heard through her sleep, and the day after the night of the snarling dogs there was fresh meat on every table up and down the lane and the road, and fresh meat to eat with the bread for the school lunches. It was sweet to taste, good to the mouth and satisfying to the want of the inner hunger. With the meat was buttered bread and apples from some cellar or apple house, or there was honey that had been saved from the past year’s garnering, or conserve. Sometimes a sheep was slaughtered on one of the farms, or if these animals were lacking there were fowls to be baked and served in their richly buttered sauces.
At playtime the children played a game, singing,
I went to the door and picked up a pin, And asked if Mistress Jones was in, She neither was in she neither was out, She’s up in the garret a-hoppen about.
Theodosia heard the song without surprise, heard the strange quality of the singing as it rang and hollowed broadly under the great beech trees along the creek. Here the cries of the birds were the more broadly dispersed as tone, richly amplified. The children were, in general, attentive to their lessons and eager to progress, to atone for their long vacation. If they were dull, Theodosia, in her distress at this, played for them on the fiddle. The day little Johnnie Turner could not learn to spell “hitching” she played a _Romance_ and an _Adagio_, a pensive wailing, until all the children were happy and they leaned forward on their desks, a-tiptoe, to hear. She heard their song game while she sat under the beech tree at noon not far from Susan’s nag, not far from old Oscar’s hens, she eating her lunch, the food some village wife had prepared for her. The names the children called as they walked away, beginning conversations, lay out under the great beeches as aliens, as belonging to the farms up the valley, and she accepted the names for tone without questioning the owner as to whether he were man or child or woman—the names, Shirley Bond, Betty Hawthorne, Rose Hines, Lum Brown. The little girls were equal in importance, none seeming to dominate the rest, the child, Sallie West, always giving, supplying the others, making the others safe or comfortable at the game, a talkative child. A voice said one day, receding down to the end of the playground where the little children kept, “Betty Hawthorne has got a blue ribbon,” or another said again, “Mollie has got a silver cup.” There were rainy days when the beech trees dripped their dejected wet. Sometimes she called the children to their books by playing a jig. They had their sayings; they would talk of leaving kisses in the drinking dipper, or they called water left in the dipper after one had drunk “slobbers.” “Let me have your slobbers,” a little boy said to his favorite among the girls. Or another, “I bid for Susan’s slobbers.” Susan and Sallie were the West girls; they came from the top of the valley, Susan a strong, well-rounded girl, misty and vague with her first flowering, neither child nor woman. “She takes after Mammy,” Sallie said. “She’s a liven image of....” she called some strange name. They liked to dwell upon whom they took after, each child designating himself and trying to discover himself. The lessons in the books were remote from them, were unknown gods to be appeased with offerings of study. Their learnings were ceremonials far apart from their richer flow of living. They measured their height at a door-post and compared this year with last, and they watched one another. Their words, coming to her from the end of a game, while they sat to rest:
“What color is Betty Hawthorne’s hair?”
“It’s red.”
“It is not so.”
“It’s brown and red mixed. I looked close at it one time.”
“Roan color is what it is. I heard my pap say one time it was roan color.”
“You think your pap knows everything. Your pap, he don’t own the earth.”
“I touched Betty Hawthorne one time.”
“I laid my eyes on her. That’s as close as ever I got to her.”
“I touched her.”
“Where’d you touch her?”
“I touched her on the leg.”
They were singing the game again, the voices blended to a high thin shouting that spread widely under the great trees and out before the creek.
Down she came as soft as silk, A rose in her bosom as white as milk. She took off her glove and showed me her ring, Tomorrow, tomorrow the wedding begins.
Oh, mercy on me what have I done! I’ve married the father instead of the son. His back’s as crooked as an old tin pan, And they’re all a-laughen at my old man.
Theodosia wrote sums on the board and made history questions and outlines or searched out stories to read and made maps with chalk; and felt a slight and very inward jealousy of Betty Hawthorne as holding the interest and affection of the small girls and boys. Betty Hawthorne might wear her blue ribbons and knot up her roan-colored hair for all she cared, and she played a capricious dance tune at the end of the noon hour to state her jealousy of this creature, a careless air barbed with subtle darts that deflected it from its kept rhythm, that jerked it hither and yon under the implied three-four of the measure, her lips smiling. All about the men were planting the corn. All day, looking across the creek from the windows of the schoolhouse, she could see the drills working up and down making exact rows through the broken soil. Everywhere the gardens were being planted, rows of seeds put into the soil in orderly ways to yield them food.
“My own hair, it might be called roan-colored too,” she said, “but a dark roan. A rose in her bosom as white as milk is no matter. I’m a dark roan myself....”
* * * * *
The men were taking a cow through the road toward the slaughter-pen, a fattened heifer to be killed for beef. She came from Burns’s farm at the head of the creek valley.
“What does he kill a heifer for?” one asked at the door of the store. “What for does he kill a heifer?”
“No good, she is. Wouldn’t calve.”