Oral History (9781101565612) (11 page)

Almarine wouldn't touch a bite.

Neither would Granny Younger, out in the lean-to laying out Eli. Sometimes the rest of them heard her murmuring voice out there, and looked quickly away from each other's faces. Who knew what Granny was saying, or worse yet, what-all she did?

Nobody went to sleep.

Finally Granny came around from the lean-to like a little old bent-up straw doll in the night. They could barely see her.

“Davenports!” she cried, and the Davenports got up off the porch and went with her and then in a while they brought Eli back around, laid out on his own little bed-tick, hands crossed over his sunken chest. The Davenports carried him to the front porch and put him down.

“Don't he look pretty,” Louella said, but Rose started crying.

“I need me some silver money, Almarine,” Granny called, hobbling after, and Almarine got up from his wife's bed and came to the cabin door and stood there, looking out. The Hibbitts girls and Rhoda sat on the porch rustling their skirts and bending back and forth in the darkness like big dark flowers. They wanted to see it all. Then the Davenports went and stood in the yard, all three, and Granny Younger stood by Eli, laid out on his little bed-tick on the porch.

“Air you got any silver money?” Granny said.

Almarine stood in the door.

“Yessum,” he said, and he reached into his pocket and held out his hand to her, and she put a dime on each of Eli's closed eyes. Eli looked like a big doll laid out on the porch.

Almarine stood in the door thinking about how he had been playing poker at Joe Johnson's store, that was why he had the money and more money besides, how this might not have happened if he had come straight home. He was sure it would not have happened if he'd come on home. He said it to Granny Younger, who snorted.

“Hit ain't got nothing to do with yer poker,” she said. “Hit all has to do with the cow.”

“That cow has eat in the holler before,” Almarine said. “Hit ain't never took sick.”

The yellow light from the fire came out through the open door to light the porch, and Eli's body, and Granny Younger's face.

“Now that's a pure fact.” Almarine stood dark against the door. “Hit ain't never took sick before, and neither has none of yourn, and every one of you-unses knows it.”

They stood like that, all quiet, until a hoot owl started up steady in the pines right behind the cabin and a little sliver of moon skidded out from behind Snowman Mountain and hung there blood-red in the sky.

“Like a killing knife,” said Rose—she was the fanciful one—and Rhoda shook her head at her daughter but it was too late.

Almarine said something low and strangled and took off running down the trace as fast as his legs would carry him. “Lord sweet Jesus,” Rhoda prayed out loud. The Davenports pissed in the yard. Five shots rang out directly, echoing off the mountains, and Granny nodded. She bunched her mouth. She knew he had cut out the cow's heart and fired in the light of the moon.
What he orter do. You have to cut out the heart still beating and shoot it five times.
Granny lit her pipe and they all waited for him to come back, but he never came. That little moon slipped across the sky. They sat up with Eli's body all night long while Pricey Jane moaned in sleep beside the fire and Almarine ran through the night toward Snowman Mountain screaming out like a crazy man, or like a man bewitched.

Lord! It was awful.
He
was awful. I will hate him now to the day I die, and that's a fact, I don't care if it's not Christian. I don't care what Mama says neither. I'm not one to go throwing myself on a man, all I was trying to do was help out. But the whole time I was over there at Almarine's, I felt so funny and weak-like, I just couldn't do a thing. And cry! I never cried so many tears in all my days, and never a reason for it. Of course I have ever been the sensitive one. I have a good heart. And of course I missed Mama and Louella. And it truly was sad and all, that little Eli dying and then Pricey Jane, but it wasn't like Mama had died, nor Louella, and I still don't know why I took on so. I just couldn't do a thing! I could feel it coming on and I'd have to run right out to the springhouse or the cedar trees to cry in peace. And it made me feel so funny in my stomach and around the tops of my legs, like I was coming down with the ague. Lord! I never would of stayed over there if it hadn't been my Christian duty, neither. If Mama hadn't said. I'm not one to throw myself on a man, I'd never of done it for sure. And it was awful. Sometimes I thought I'd die iffen he looked at me, other times I thought I'd die iffen he failed to.

Which made nary bit of difference, that's a fact.

Almarine looked, but he never saw. He never minded nothing, and this went on for the longest kind of time, for days and days. They brung Dory back home from Margie Ramey's by and by, after Margie had got her weaned to a cup, and I took care of her and kept the house as best I could. Lord! That Dory was the sweetest thing. It would just make you cry. But Almarine wouldn't have nothing to do with her neither, oh not for the longest time. All he did was set on the porch like he was sleeping, or he'd set inside by the fire. Everbody came over and cut his corn or he would of let it rot, and I'll swear it. He would of let it rot in the field. He never minded a thing. It was so sad how he set with his face all still, and never a flicker in them blue eyes.

“Almarine?” I'd say, coming up behind him. I'd say, “Almarine?” But he never said a thing, and then that would start me off crying again, and I'd have to run out to the spring.

One time I remember I woke up way in the night and sat smack up in the middle of the bed. I thought I had heard him speak. It was dark as pitch in the cabin, little tiny fire nearabout out. But I thought I had heard him speak. “Almarine?” I said out loud before I could stop myself. I said, “Almarine?” I don't know what I would of said if he had answered, or what I would of done. I swear it to this day I just don't know, and him so hateful. My heart was a-beating, beating to beat the band, while he slept away there so sound. It was like all the blood rushed up to my head then, and made me cry, but still he slept on and on.

The way he slept and the way he done nothing but sit, you couldn't hardly remember how he had carried on at her passing, the way he had ranted and raved. Why Lord, it scared Louella and me to hear him! He come back all tore up covered in blood and said his dog had been kilt in a fight. And the dog never come back neither. But we knowed the truth of course, that he had gone to that witch and kilt her and I'll swear it made goosebumps all over my arms. I'll swear it made goosebumps come. We all knowed what he had done.

By the time he come back it was morning, and Pricey Jane had passed on. Granny had her in the lean-to, laying her out, and when Mama told Almarine the news, he give a big holler and kicked in the lean-to door and told Granny he'd do it hisself. You see how hateful he is.

“Hit ain't fitten,” Granny told him, and Mama too, but he was wild. He wouldn't do a thing they said. He kept his gun by his side, couldn't nobody change his mind.

So Almarine was laying her out hisself and Mama was a-praying and Granny was mad as a wet hen when all the rest of them finally got there, Harve Justice with the pine to make the boxes, and old Joe Johnson, and Luther Wade and Hester Little, and all the Rameys and the Justices, Ratliffs and Horns and Skeens, and one-eyed Jesse Waldron hauled the liquor up there on a sled, the same way they had hauled Granny. They had come across Doc Story at the creek and sent him back.

It took considerable doing to get Pricey Jane in the box that evening when they had finished it, considerable doing. They had to hold Almarine back, I forget how many it took to do it. But after they done it, and after Harve nailed her shut, it was like all the fire went out of Almarine directly. It was like he had done give up. He slept finally, that night, and early in the morning they carried her and Eli up Hoot Owl to the burying ground and put them down.

I didn't go up there myself. Mama made me and Louella stay and clean out the cabin while they was all gone a-burying. We cleaned and swept and beat out the bed-ticks in the yard. I'll tell you, we worked like dogs!

And all for naught, which I'll get to directly.

I recall how Mama pulled me over when we was finished, and set me down out there on the little bench he'd built for her under the cedar trees. “Now listen here, Rose,” Mama said. Mama can lay down the law when she wants to. “After this burying, we are all of us going on home. Excepting me, I mought go on to Granny Younger's. Her time is coming on and I can tell. But we are all fixing to go off from here and leave you to take keer of Almarine.”

“Now Mama,” I said. I never knowed what she had in mind till right then.

“They'll be bringing that baby back up here directly,” Mama said. “Almarine is in no shape to keer for her neither, as ye see, and so I'll be a-leaving ye here to do it fer him. Somebody has got to stay fer a while, and that's a fact. He ain't got no people in the world.”

Well Lord! My heart was just a-thumping in my breast. I knowed what she was up to.

“Mama,” I said.

But Mama looked right hard at me and pushed back my hair and said, “Hush your mouth.” Then she said it was my Christian duty, but I knowed.

My mind went back to a time years and years ago when I was naught but a girl and already I knowed, even then, how I looked and how boys turned away. Even if folks tries to hide it, you allus know. Well, it was early spring right after the thaw and I woke up before light and I heard it raining and I slipped out. If you wet your face in the first spring rain it'll make you beautiful, Granny said. So I was a-standing out there in the yard, in the rain, when it got light at last and Mama opened the cabin door and said, “Oh Rose. Oh Rose, come back inside.” I was soaked clear through to the skin. “Oh Rose,” Mama said and she held me so close and she cried.

This all went through my mind when she said stay.

“Let Louella,” I said, but she took ahold of my shoulders and shook them till my teeth like to left my head.

“You're the eldest,” Mama said. “Don't be a fool,” she said.

But I was a pure-tee fool for Almarine, till I saw how hateful he is.

And he wouldn't never look, nor never speak. Oh I felt so sorry for him, it like to broke my heart when they come back with the tales of the burying and how Almarine had built a little lattice burying-house above her grave to keep out wolves, and how Joe Johnson who had the learning and the skill had carved her name PRICEY JANE CANTRELL on a slab of fine-grained oak he brung from home a-purpose and nailed it over the door. They said it almost kilt old Joe to climb Hoot Owl Mountain. Nobody thought he'd make it, but he did. Nobody preached at the burying, of course, that was still to come. When the circuit rider comes around he does all the funerals and marrying which has built up over time, since last he came. But you've got to go ahead and get them in the ground, all the same. They say Hester Little played the harmonica over her grave. What with all that building and digging and so on, it was full dark when they come back down and went their own ways home. I guess they was glad to leave, the Davenports in particular.

I stayed on.

And he never paid me no mind atall, nor even spoke to Dory when they brung her back, until three weeks or more had gone by and he started coming out of it. All of a sudden I could tell. He picked Dory up, that was the first sign, and then the next day he turned to watch me pass as I come in with water from the spring. I could feel his eyes in my back as I passed.

“I'm Rose,” I said, and Almarine said, “I know who you are.” I cotched up my apron and started to cry, I'll say it—oh Lord! I was such a fool. I won't even say what I thought then, or what I hoped.

Well, it went on this way into October, and one rainy cold morning early when he was out feeding the stock, come a knock at the door.

I opened it.

A woman who looks like she might be part Indian is a-standing there, and a little old girl behind her a-holding her skirts. This is a skinny little girl with great big eyes. Now this gives me a surprise because where that cabin is, don't nobody much get all the way up there without you knowing it, and I never heard a thing. Dory starts to holler then and I turn to get her, and this half-breed woman just walks right in. She sighs and puts her sack down on the floor. That little girl is peeping out behind her skirts, and both of them dripping wet.

“Can you spare me a bite to eat?” the woman says, and I get her a cornpone and she eats it and gives the little girl half. She is a tall woman with thick shiny black hair, dark complected, of course, and a big strong nose and a wide mouth and big dark eyes. She made me feel puny a-standing there. The rain had made beads on her shiny black hair.

“I've come a long way,” she said. Nothing moved in her face when she talked, old Indian poker-face is what I told Mama later. Of course I would not have given her the time of day if I had met her in the road, and there she walked right into Almarine's house.

I never said a thing.

“I'm looking for Almarine Cantrell,” she said. “Air you his wife?”

“No, she ain't,” Almarine said from the door and I started crying and run past him out that door into the rain, he was hateful just like I said.

By the time I come back, she had clean took over. She was the kind of woman to do that—just like I am the kind, I reckon, to have such a tender heart. Oh she was hateful, and he was too. She was making coffee and frying eggs and her little girl was holding Dory on her lap. This was Riley's wife, I found out—that brother who ran away, and now he had died, and she came looking to find his people. Her name was Vashti Cantrell, she said, and her daughter was called Ora Mae. She said it all in a low flat voice, just like an Indian, and her face never moved atall. By then she was sweeping his floor. Almarine was just a-sitting there blowing on his coffee and nodding his head and watching what-all she did.