Fair and Tender Ladies (40 page)

Did you bring a woman here with you?
I asked.

Nope,
he said.
And I am going to kick this one right out on her hiney if she don't quit asking me questions and get to gathering wood.

I started laughing. We went out and got up all the wood we could find around there, and it was full dark when we got back with it. Honey had some dried apples and jerky and journey cakes that we ate for our dinner.

I remember looking across the fire at him that first night.
I know what I'm doing,
I said.

Naw you don't either,
he said flatly, but he grinned at me, and he was right, but it did not signify. Nothing did. For I had to stay with him awhile. It could not be long, I knew that. We would have to go down off the mountain before long, I knew that too. But right then I didn't care. Can you understand this? I didn't care. We drank right out of a spring. We washed ourselves off in a little creek. We ate huckleberries and blue berries and nuts and greens and whatever Honey could catch—a squirrel, a rabbit. It was cold up there at night and a white mist covered the whole world in the morning. One time Honey was gone for a while and came back with some jimson weed and squeezed the juice right into his eyes—me screaming for him to stop, mind you, all the while—and died his eyes
black
for a couple of hours! I couldn't believe it. I had never seen anybody do that before, nor ever heard tell of it. But Honey Breeding was full of tricks, full of stories, full of songs. One that I remember was real funny.
Here's your chitlins, fresh and sweet, who'll jine the union? Young hog chitlins hard to beat, who'll jine the union? Methodist chitlins, just been biled, who'll jine the union?
and such as that, to make me laugh, and Poor Wayfaring Stranger to make me cry. I can't stand that one, it's so sad.
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger, travelling through this world of woe, but there's no sickness, toil nor danger in that bright world to which I go. I'm going there to see my mother, I'm going there no more to roam. I'm just going over Jordan, I'm just going over home.

Honey Breeding sang this song on the third day we were up there, late in the afternoon as we set by the mouth of the cave looking out on the rocky valley. It was misty, drizzling. It had been raining a little bit off and on all day.
Don't sing that one,
I begged him.
It makes me cry.

Well then I won't,
Honey said, and stroked my hair.

We set there together. He didn't sing. By then I knew all about him, he had told me the story of his whole life. How his parents had both died and he had lived for a while with a family where the old woman went sweet on him and he got run off, and then how he joined the Army and went to war and saw terrible things there, and came on home. And how he could not stand a city or a town, how he had to have mountains, and roam. If he got around too many people, he said, he heard them talking in his head. So he had give up one good job after another in order to roam, until he had hit on the bee business which suited him. He said he knew it was no kind of life for a grown man, but he couldn't help it. He said he had tried to live in a house with a woman twice, that is with two different women, and he said that they were real nice women and in fact he had married one of them, but in each case there come a morning when he woke up and looked around and knew it was time to leave there.
That is just the way I am,
said Honey Breeding.

I didn't even have to say,
I know it.

I knew, he knew.

There would come that morning, and it came. It was hot and bright. We had got up early. I didn't have any idea how long we had been up there, I had kind of lost track of the time. The skirt of my dress was ripped and hanging by then, I remember that, and I was skinny as a rail. I could not keep a thing on my stomach. I could feel every one of my ribs and my hipbones were sticking out. I felt hot, dry, like I had a fever. Maybe I did. I kept drinking water but it didn't help.

We stood in the cave looking out at the day.

I reckon we will go on back now,
Honey said.
It is time.

No no,
I said, or I think I said. Then I fainted or fell, down to the floor of the cave. Honey came over and pulled me up and kissed me and took me outside to sit on the rock that we always sat on, but when I felt well enough to look at him good, he was staring off down the rocky valley with his eyes set hard on distance. He had already left me, in his mind. The rest of it wouldn't be nothing but follow through.

And I'll tell you something else, Silvaney.

Something awful.

I would of stayed up there. I would of stayed with him until I starved to death and died, I reckon, living on love. I would have stayed right there with him if he hadn't of made me leave, and that's a fact. It doesn't even make me feel bad to say it. There has got to be one person who is the lover, and this time it was me, and one who is the beloved which was Honey. And I will tell you the truth—may be it's best to be the lover, some ways. Because even if it don't work out, you are glad. You are glad you done it. You are glad you got to be there, anyway, however long it lasted, whatever it cost you—which is always plenty, I reckon. We'll get to that. We'll get there. But right then me and Honey sat on a warm gray rock with little shiny pieces of mica in it, and I was glad I was me. I picked at the rock with my fingers.

Fools gold,
I thought.
Well all right.
I remembered mining in the creek with Molly so long ago. And now it felt natural to me to be here, to have come up this mountain with this man. I guess that the seeds of what we will do are in us all along, only sometimes they don't get no water, they don't grow. Other times, well—you see what can happen. All of a sudden I felt my age. Forty. I thought about the old dry seeds that I found in the gourd up in the attic when me and Oakley moved back up on Sugar Fork, years ago. They were still there, still in the gourd, still in the attic. Who put them up there? Granny Rowe? Momma? It all went a long way back. Honey stood up.
Come on Ivy,
he said. And even though I cried and pitched a fit, I finally went.

I follered him down the mountain that morning, which was harder going than I expected. I was real weak. I was sick, as I said. I had to keep on stopping to get my breath, which caught in my side with each step. Honey walked ahead, light-hearted it looked like, sure-footed, whistling a little song. We went down a different path from the way we had come up there, it put us down off the mountain that afternoon by the hard road that goes from Majestic to Pound, where I didn't know anybody.

I stood by the road clutching at Honey's shirt. It was so hot—bees buzzed in the clover and the Queen Annes lace by the side of the road. A couple of cars went by, faces turned plum around, staring at us. I thought then about what we must look like, what they must think. I thought about Oakley, whose face came clear in my mind for the first time since I had been gone. Somebody blew their car horn at us. Dust hung golden in the air after each car passed. I would of given my life for a cocacola. A green truck passed us, then stopped and backed up. The man got out.
Sir I am so glad you have had the kindness of heart to stop, for we have been in a big accident and
—I heard Honey saying. Bees buzzed in the weeds. My ears were roaring. There was a taste in my mouth, sour and sweet.
White honey comes from white clover,
Honey said in my mind,
amber from tulip poplar. But the best of all is the sourwood honey, pale yellow and sweet and light.
That is all I can really remember. I can't remember the truck ride back to Majestic at all, nor Honey leaving, nor Victor and Ethel driving me back up on Sugar Fork. I don't know if I spent the night with them or not, but it seems to me now that I must have.

Because it seems to me that it is morning again when I come back home. I am surprised at all the cars parked below—Oakley's family is up here, it looks like, and the Rolettes, and another car and a truck that I don't know.
May be it is somebody from Oakley's church,
I said right off the top of my head.

Ethel looked at me. She looked real tired. Why would you say that, she said.

I don't know, I told her. I reckon it just come to me. Oakley goes to church all the time now, I said. You just don't know the half of it.

Victor parked Stoney's car and we got out. Victor was huffing and puffing. He is a big man, and it was hot, and it seemed like he was building up to some kind of explosion.
Sister!
he said finally, pulling hairs out of his big thick beard which is what he does when he gets too wrought up. He always calls me
sister. You hadn't ought to've done it!
he said.
You ought to've stayed at home!

Ethel turned on him in a fury.
You crazy old man!
she said.
Don't you reckon she knows it?
Ethel can be a spitfire sometimes. When Stoney Branham passes, which will not be long, Ethel and Victor will have themselves a time. You can see it coming.

I felt like I was with them but not with them, that morning. I felt like I had been gone for years, and then like I had never been gone at all. The air was clear and sweet up on Sugar Fork.
Come on honey,
Ethel said. She took my arm. I felt awful. I was wearing Ethel's clothes.

We crossed the creek on the steppingstones and started up to the yard. The rosybush was blooming by the steps. The yard had been swept clean. The breezeway and the porch were full of people, we could hear the low buzz of talking as we came. My sweet Bill was the first to see us, as him and Danny Ray came walking around the side of the house.
Mama!
he hollered.
Looky here, it's Mama.
And he came running, all skinny flying flailing arms and legs, a boy like a windmill, he nearabout knocked me down.
Mama, Mama,
he said, hugging me. His strawcolored hair smelled good. Then Danny Ray was there, hugging me too.
Where'd you go, Mama?
they said.
Where've you been?
I hugged them and hugged them and then looked up at the house.

All the talk had quit. Those on the porch and the breezeway stood like statues, looking down. It was Oakley and his mother and daddy, and Dreama, and Martha holding Maudy, and some several people that I didn't know. Oakley looked at me with no expression atall on his face. Then he turned without a word and went back in the house.

Come on, Ethel said grimly, and we walked on up the hill.

Martha smiled at us shyly.

Hidy Ivy, she said. We killed a snake in the house while you were gone.

That's good, I said. I couldn't think what to say.

Maudy started struggling to get down.
Mama, Mama,
Maudy said.

Edith Fox has brought us a stack-cake, Martha said. It's real good too. She put Maudy down and we all watched as Maudy clambered down the steps and ran to me. She was bigger, fatter.

I got a new kitty,
she said.

Martha was smiling, holding onto the rail, but nobody else was. Dreama was staring so hard that she liked to of bored holes in my face, I could feel her eyes.

The kitty's name is Susie.
Maudy can talk so good for her age.

Dreama stood at the top of the steps like she was blocking them.

Wait a minute now! Just a minute now! Victor took off the straw hat he always wears and started fanning his face with it. Hold on! he hollered. Will somebody kindly tell me just what in the hell is going on here? Why are you all up here, anyway? I know damn well this is not a welcoming committee for Ivy.

Without moving her mouth, Dreama said, It is LuIda.

What about LuIda? Victor was huffing and puffing, short of breath.

LuIda is dead,
said Dreama.
We buried her this morning.

Just out in the orchard, Bill said. Me and Danny Ray helped to dig the grave.

Oh God oh God.
I could hear, and yet not hear Ethel. I could not stand up.

What—I think I said. What—

Ray Fox Senior came down the porch steps then two at a time, and lifted me up. Oh Ivy honey, he said. I am glad to see you back.

LuIda was sick to her stomach, Bill said, but not real sick.

And she died? asked Ethel, old practical Ethel.

I reckon it was her appendix, Ray Senior told us. That's what they have all been saying. He led me up the steps and when we got to the top one, Dreama looked at me hard and started screaming and ran back in the house. Edith Fox went after her. Martha came over and hugged me, she had a big shy-looking boy follering at her heels that looked familiar.
This here is Rufus Cook,
Martha said, and then I knew who it was. It was Early Cook's son, who had come to make the coffin.
I'm sorry mam,
Rufus Cook said.

I pushed them all away and rushed through the breezeway to the back of the house but stopped dead when I saw the lilac. Granny's voice sounded strong in my ear.
Never let a lilac bush grow tall enough to shade a grave, or death will come to fill it.

Up at the top of the orchard, right next to the treeline, I saw the pile of red dirt. I could not go up there. I sat down where I was on the back steps, and cried. I cried for a long time. I could hear people coming and going around me, car horns honking, somebody crying, somebody laughing down below, suddenly hushed. But they left me alone. They let me cry. Finally after a long time Oakley came up and stood behind me. I could
feel
him standing there. Then he said,
Get up, Ivy, and take care of your children,
and I did.

I am still doing so. I will continue. I will not be writing any more letters for a while though, as my heart is too heavy, too full. But somehow I had to write this letter to you Silvaney, to set it all down. I am still in pain and sorrow, but I remain,