Gap Creek (6 page)

“Mr. Richards, you should have brought your mother,” Mama said to Hank.

“Ma wouldn’t go anywhere but Painter Mountain to church on a Sunday,” Hank said.

“She would certainly be welcome,” Mama said.

“Have you ever rode the train?” Carolyn said. Carolyn had not been able to take her eyes off of Hank since he got to the house.

“I took the train all the way to Chattanooga one time, looking for a job,” Hank said.

“Did you sleep on the train?” Carolyn said.

“It’s not polite to ask too many questions,” Mama said.

“I didn’t sleep in a berth,” Hank said, “but I took a nap in my seat.” We all laughed.

“Have you ever been to Greenville?” Rosie said.

“I go every year, me and my brothers, to sell hams and molasses,” Hank said.

“I would love to ride the train to Mount Mitchell,” Carolyn said. Carolyn was wearing one of the pink lacy dresses Mama made for her, the one that had smocking on the front.

Finally Mama said for me to go get the coffee off the stove, and she asked Rosie to bring in the coconut cake she had made. Rosie loved to make coconut cakes, even when she was a girl. And nothing goes better with coffee than coconut cake.

There was still a fire in the cookstove, and the coffee was boiling. I took the pot off the stove and carried it to the dining room. But as I got close to the table I wondered if I should pour the first cup for Mama, who was a woman and the oldest person at the table, or for Hank, who was our guest at Sunday dinner. I couldn’t make up my mind, and that flustered me. I took a step toward Mama and then stopped.

“Julie, pour some coffee for Mr. Richards,” Mama said. That settled it, but the damage was already done. My hand was shaking when I held the heavy coffeepot over Hank’s cup. Coffee come out of the spout too fast and splashed out of his cup and on his knee. He jumped when the hot coffee touched him, and I must have screamed as I stepped back. I hit the buffet as I jerked around and the pot fell to the floor, throwing out a scarf of smoking coffee.

“Oh, Julie,” Mama said.

Hank stood up and knocked the drops of coffee off his pants. “It’s nothing,” he said.

“Are you burned?” I said.

“Not a bit,” he said.

Mama run to the kitchen for towels, and I helped her wipe up the spilled coffee.

“I’ll wash your pants,” I said to Hank.

“It’s just a spot,” he said.

I finished mopping up the coffee and carried the pot and wet towels to the back porch. Through my carelessness I had ruined everything. Everything! I figured Hank would just get his hat and go, as soon as it was polite. He would get away from all us girls gawking
at him, and Carolyn flirting, and Mama calling him Mr. Richards. I knowed there was a lot of girls prettier than me closer to Painter Mountain, girls not so clumsy and nervous.

But I was wrong. Hank did get his hat, but he said, “Julie, show me where the spring is. I need a drink of cold water after that fine, hot dinner.”

There was no way I could refuse to show him where the spring was. I wiped my hands on a dry towel and hung it on the nail by the stove.

“Somebody can bring a bucket of fresh water from the spring,” Mama said.

“I want to drink it cold from the ground,” Hank said.

It was the brightest day you ever seen outside, bright as only early fall can be. The grass and leaves on the trees and even the bare dirt appeared to sparkle. I don’t know if it was the light, or the fact that I was falling in love, that made everything shine. The world was lit in a new way, and I was lit up in every finger and toe and part of me.

Our spring was down the hill behind the house, below the big walnut tree. The spring was hid by laurel bushes so it was always in shade. It was the boldest and the coldest spring on the mountain. Water pushed out from the sides of the spring, boiling up the white sand on the bottom and stirring the flecks of mica. There was little lizards around the edges of the pool, showing how pure the water was.

Hank took the coconut shell off the stick by the spring and dipped out a drink. He offered it to me and I shook my head. He drunk the water slow, like he was savoring the flavor and the coldness. “This here water tastes like it comes out of rock,” Hank said, “like it’s been running through rubies and emeralds.”

It was pretty the way he put it.

“I wish I had a ruby; I would give it to you,” Hank said.

“I don’t need no ruby,” I said.

Hank dipped up another drink, and then replaced the coconut shell on the stick. “Now my mouth is sweet,” he said. He looked into my eyes and stepped closer. He took my hands and raised them, first one and then the other, to his lips and kissed them. Nobody had ever kissed my hands before. Then he put his hands on my elbows and pulled me closer to him.

“You are an unusual person,” he said and looked right into my eyes. I couldn’t think of any way I had been unusual except to splash coffee on his britches, but I didn’t say that. He leaned closer and nudged my lips with his lips. It tickled, and made my lips tingle. He rubbed his lips sideways across mine, and I thought how gentle and careful he was, for such a big, strong man. I wondered if Mama or Rosie or one of my other sisters was watching us from the back porch. And then I remembered the laurel bushes was between us and the house. Hank pressed his lips to mine and the feeling was sweet, sweeter than the fresh water from the spring. Then he nibbled at the edge of my lip, at my upper lip and the corners of my mouth. He run the tip of his tongue along my upper lip. It was a feeling I’d never had before.

When Hank put his lips full against mine and placed his arms around my shoulders, I felt I was being gathered up in a spin and cut off from the air and light around me. It was like his arms made a separate world around me. His arms and lips and the feel of him against me made us apart from the woods and spring and bushes. We was our own world just by being together.

The feeling of the kiss went all over me. The kiss went through my arms and legs to the tips of my fingers and toes. That was the strangest part. Hank kissed my lips and run his tongue around my lips, and I felt the sweetness in the back of my head and down my back. So this is what kissing is, I thought. And I thought, This is
not me. This is better than me. This is better than I deserve. And I thought, No, this is what I have been waiting for; this is what the future is going to be like.

Hank kissed me and we turned around like we was dancing real slow. We stepped around, but I wasn’t hardly aware of stepping. I felt the trees and laurel bushes and the spots of sunlight was all circling. Everything was turning as Hank kissed me. My eyes was closed and I floated with the turning.

When Hank took his lips away and breathed, I caught a breath too. I took a breath and opened my eyes. And looking over his shoulder at the woods I seen somebody standing among the bushes above the spring. It was the oddest feeling, to open my eyes after my first kiss, after an otherworldly kiss, and see somebody staring at us from among the oak trees. It was like waking up from a sweet dream and finding somebody studying you.

I knowed it was one of the Willard boys. I think it was Clarence. He must have been watching us all that time. I couldn’t know how long he had been watching. But if he was watching us, the rest of them must be watching us too. There might be half a dozen Willards spying on us.

“I want you to be careful,” I said to Hank. I didn’t mean to spoil everything by telling him we was being watched.

“Careful about what?” he said.

“You just be careful as you go down the mountain,” I said.

And then I heard a squirrel bark. But it wasn’t a regular squirrel. The bark was too steady, and a little too loud. It was one of the Willards making the noise, teasing us. And then I heard a bobwhite call, and though it sounded like a bobwhite, the call was too loud. It was another one of the Willards answering the first.

Hank must have seen the worry on my face, for he started to listen. Just then a turkey gobbled further up the ridge. “There’s a lot of varmints about,” he said and laughed.

“Don’t you leave here by yourself,” I said.

Hank pulled his coat back and showed me a pistol stuck in his belt.

“They may have guns too,” I said. I knowed the Willard boys carried pistols with them, especially Webb. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons they would walk along the road with a .22 and shoot at rocks and cans.

“Don’t you worry,” Hank said. “Worry never made anybody live a second longer.”

We walked around the edge of the yard and Hank held my hand. I think he wanted whoever was watching to see us together. I showed him the garden where the tomatoes was so ripe and many they had broke down the vines. And the summer squash had got so big they looked like yellow geese laying in the weeds. The tater vines was dead and the bean vines had turned yellow.

We walked to the edge of the cornfield where Lou and me had already cut the tops and pulled the fodder. “Who did all that work?” Hank said.

“I did some,” I said. “And Lou helped, and Mama did some.”

Hank looked at me and run his finger along my cheek. “You will make somebody a good wife,” he said. I couldn’t look into his eyes. I couldn’t hardly bear for him to look at me. For I knowed that more than anything in the world I wanted to be married to Hank Richards. I wanted to live in a house with just him and me, and I wanted to help him work in the fields and raise chickens and pick apples to dry in the sun for winter. It seemed too much to hope for that I could be with him day after day, day and night. It was too perfect to think on. Nothing ever worked out that perfect in this world. And if I wanted it too bad it would never happen. The world was made so people never got what they wanted most. Or maybe they wanted most what they couldn’t never get.

“You will make somebody a good husband,” I said. I hoped he
didn’t think I had cut all the tops in the cornfield by myself. I was a little ashamed of all the hard work I had had to do.

“Who is going to help you kill hogs?” Hank said. We had ambled close to the hogpen and the mud of the pen sent its stench over into the sweet smell of the garden.

“I guess Lou and me and Mama will do it,” I said.

“I could come up and give you a hand,” Hank said.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“You’ll need help lifting the hog,” Hank said.

I didn’t protest, because I wanted him to come whenever he would. And I didn’t want him to think I was able to kill a hog and cut it up all by myself. We walked by the grape arbor where the bees was busy on the ripe Concords.

“Did you ever make wine?” Hank said.

“Papa used to make blackberry wine for his rheumatism,” I said. “But nobody else ever did drink any.”

“Pokeberry wine is better for rheumatism,” Hank said. “It warms the joints and soothes them.”

When we got to the front porch Mama come out and said she had made a fresh pot of coffee. She asked Hank did he want any.

“That would be perfect,” he said. “I’ve got to leave soon, but a cup of coffee will set me up for the road.”

Mama brought out two mugs on a tray and we set on the swing on the front porch. I never had coffee except in the morning, but I took the cup just to be sociable. Maybe it was because I was excited and in love, or maybe it was because I wasn’t used to drinking coffee in the afternoon, but after a few sips it felt like lights was going through my veins to the ends of my fingers. And the yard and front porch got even brighter and clearer. Everything was so clear it hurt my eyes to look at it. And Hank was so handsome with his black hair and downy mustache and brown eyes and high forehead, it sent a pain through me just to glance at him.

I thought I heard Carolyn giggle inside. She must have been watching us through the window. She was nearly fourteen, and too big to giggle like that. But she was spoiled and I reckon she was jealous because Hank had come to see me and not her.

“What if I was to ask you—,” Hank said. But just then there was a whippoorwill call on the hill above the road. Since whippoorwills never call till after dark, it didn’t fool us. It was one of the Willard boys all right.

“That bird has got its clock wrong,” Hank said.

“If you was to ask me what?” I said.

There was a dove call, slow and mournful, from the same place the whippoorwill had called from. “Those birds are singing up a regular chorus,” Hank said.

“Those birds ought to be jailbirds,” I said.

Next it was a mockingbird on the hill, sounding like the other birds, and a rain crow and a robin. And then a fox barked up there too. “The woods is full of noise,” Hank said.

“If you was to ask me what?” I said again.

There was another bobwhite call, and a fox bark, and then a wildcat scream. “What if I was to ask you to be my wife?” Hank said. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I had only walked home with Hank the first time that morning. Some girls had to wait months, even years to get engaged. I had first laid eyes on Hank less than a week before, and here he was asking me to get married. It felt like I was dreaming it all.

AFTER WE KISSED and held hands and looked into each other’s eyes for what must have been an hour, ignoring the birdcalls from the hill, and Carolyn’s giggles behind the window, Hank said he had to go, if he was to get off the mountain before dark. He didn’t want to be caught on the mountain after nightfall. “Might step on a snake,” he said.

“I’m afraid for you,” I said.

He kissed me on the forehead. “Just do what I tell you to do,” he said.

“What do you want me to do?” I said.

“I want you to hold my hat,” he said. He took off his widebrimmed black hat, and he went to the front door and thanked Mama for the dinner.

“I hope your pants ain’t ruined,” Mama said.

“A spot of coffee won’t ruin good cloth,” Hank said.

“You come back and see us soon,” Mama said.

“I’ll do that,” Hank said.

Out in the yard Hank handed me his hat and told me to stand by the front gate and hold it for him.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“I’ll be back,” he said and winked. And taking off his coat and tucking it under his arm he headed down the trail to the outhouse. The outhouse was hid behind the arborvitae, and it was right at the edge of the pine woods. I heard the door of the outhouse slam. I smiled, thinking how delicate Hank had been about mentioning where he was going.