Raintree County (20 page)

Fullfashioned ladies pranced across the poster on tiny toes.

—Sure you won't have a glass of beer with me, John?

The Saloon was a brown dusk beyond curved halves of the door. Clutching a golden bough, the hero twin lunged over a forbidden threshold, through memories of innocent wickedness, intemperate dreams. Voices gaily accusing pursued him singing, O

were the words on the crude sign hanging from the wagon. Johnny Shawnessy drove onward past the exhibits at the County Fair until he reached a point opposite the Saloon on the south side of the Square. There he stopped and as the crowd walled him in stood up on the wagon seat and said:

—Ladies and Gentlemen, come to the Opera House tonight, and bring your friends. The Play is a good one. I ought to know because I wrote it.

The crowd laughed.

—Give the boy a drink, a hoarse voice yelled.

Someone threw a tomato. Johnny ducked and drove on, one street north of the Square to the Opera House, a frame building made with wooden columns in front to resemble a Greek temple.

In front stood T. D. talking with a smartly dressed young man of middle height, who was leaning against the hitching rail, cigar in mouth, thumbs hooked in vest, thin legs crossed. He had a soft dark beard, thoughtful brown eyes, a small derby hat.

—Hello, Pa. Hello, Cash, Johnny said, pulling up.

—John, the young man said, I just been telling your pa that we ought to charge admission to this here Rally. Look at this crowd. We could clean up maybe fifty dollars.

The young man's eyes were christlike as he spoke. He unlipped his cigar and tipped the ash delicately.

—No, T. D. said. We ain't selling reform. We're offering it. Virtue ought not to be priced.

—Just a nominal sum, the young man said. Ten cents a ticket. People are likely to take it more serious if they have to pay for it. Besides you'd keep the undesirable element away.

—The undesirable element is what we desire, T. D. said.

—You got to have money to run your organization, the young man said.

—Cassius, you got natural money sense, T. D. said amiably. No getting around that. But I don't want the taint of money on this purely humanitarian venture.

In those days, Cassius Carney was already known in Raintree County as a comer. Although he wasn't much more than twenty, he had managed to get a controlling interest in the local feedstore. He had been keeping the books for the outfit when the owner died, leaving a business saddled with debt and an attractive widow, age thirty. Cash and the widow exchanged condolence of sundry kinds, and in a few weeks Cash was in the saddle and driving things with a tight rein. At the end of a year the business was his, lock, stock, and barrel.

—That there's a longheaded boy, men said. He'll go fer.

Johnny had met Cash in connection with the Temperance Drive, to which Cash had volunteered his services. One day Cash had said,

—John, you and I are some cuts above the other hicks. Frankly, I like you, and when I like a person I tell him so. Have a cigar?

—No, thanks, Cash, Johnny had said. I don't smoke. My pa would croak if I took up smoking. He's against it, you know.

—Never start it. Filthy habit, Cash had said, lighting up. I like your pa too. With all his contacts and energy, he ought to be rolling in dough. But frankly, he don't know the first thing about money. He isn't hardboiled enough. He can't make collections. I took a look at his books the other day, and I said to him, T. D., what's the use of all these fine columns of figures? You never collect half. He took a hopeful view of the thing, but he'll never see any of that money. Still, he's a nice old guy, and I like him. That's why I agreed to help him out in this Temperance Drive.

Some people said Cash was really in the Drive because he wanted to see the local saloon closed so that he could start a ginstore of his own. But T. D., who was President of the Raintree County Temperance Crusaders, was convinced that Cash had come into the Drive in response to the most virtuous impulses.

—Now that young feller, Cassius Carney, T. D. said, he's gone and joined up to the Crusaders and offered to keep our books for us
and be a sort of business manager for us. A fine young feller, and I have no hesitation in saying to you that he's got as long a head on his shoulders for business at twenty as I had when I was thirty.

But Cash's real interest was the railroad. In 1855 a singletrack branch was run from the main line at Beardstown to Freehaven and on east. It passed just below the southernmost bend of the Shawmucky, between the river and the Danwebster Graveyard, running behind the Home Place. Cash would point to the railroad and say,

—There lies the future.

Those days, Johnny didn't think the future lay down the railroad at all. The railroad was a lonely, manmade thing piercing bleakly through halfcleared forests. Once a day a chugging woodburner engine and a few cars went by.

—Where you going now, John? T. D. said, when Johnny had left the wagon behind the Opera House.

—Back to the Square, Johnny said. I thought I'd look the Fair over.

—If you see Nell and Garwood, T. D. said, tell 'em to be sure to get over here at seven-thirty tonight. Wouldn't hurt us to have one more quick rehearsal of the Play.

The Square was a tented town within a town. Excepting a cleared space for the political rallies, tents were everywhere on the court house lawn, and venders had set up stands along the curbs and sidewalks. Barkers for sideshows and amusements advertised their wares. One whole side of the Square was roped off for exhibitions of livestock. Bulls bellowed, cows mooed, chickens clucked, pigs snorted from wooden enclosures in the unpaved streets. Crowds flowed by to see the biggest bulls, the gaudiest cocks, the heaviest ears of corn in Raintree County.

—Ladies and gentlemen, spare me a minute of your precious time.

It was a vaguely familiar voice booming across the tented confusion, pouring bright oils of hope on the Square.

—I trust you all perceive the object that I hold in my hand. It is only a plain, unadorned, ordinary . . .

—Fatima, barked a vibrant voice, is the biggest hunk of human flesh on the face of the globe. And yet, friends, she is as bee-ewtiful as she is big. And along with this, friends, I have inside this tent six other impossible, unbelievable freaks. You can't afford to miss . . .

—Hucko the Strong, a man with a megaphone was shouting from the exhibition ground, is the winner of last year's prize competition in the yearling class. Notice his unusual . . .

Pointer raised, a bespectacled man standing beneath a tree indicated areas on the Phrenological Chart.

—To each and all of you, I want to put this question. Are you all that you hoped to be in the bloom of your youth? Do you possess . . .

FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, AND FRÉMONT

were the words printed on a large sign carried by a belligerent man in a stovepipe hat who was leading a snakedance of citizens through the Square. He disappeared among the tents while the trail of his followers dissolved in confusion.

—What's this here line formin' fer? a citizen asked.

—I don't rightly know, a second citizen said. I hear we're gittin' free beer tother end of the Square.

—How's that? said a third citizen. Ain't this a demonstration agin Fremont?

—No, it's
fer
Frémont, the first citizen said.

—Way I heard it, the second citizen persisted, we was goin' to git . . .

A VOTE FOR BUCHANAN IS A VOTE FOR THE UNION

appeared on a placard carried at the head of another line, which mingled with the first.

A man stood on the sidewalk beside a metal chair that dangled from the hook of a weighing apparatus. While a crowd watched, a woman sitting in the chair pulled the pointer up to a hundred and forty-five.

—Sorry, Madame, the man said. No surprise box of Bonafee's Bon Bons for you. Next! Guess your weight! Guess your weight! If I miss by more than three pounds, you get a box of . . .

—Hello, Johnny.

Nell was standing beside him, revealed by a shifting of the crowd. She was wearing the green dress he had seen at the Danwebster Church. Her hair was pulled hard to the shape of her head and was rolled up into a huge bun that rode the back of her neck. It gave her little face a bare look and seemed to magnify the big eyes which,
when he turned, gazed thoughtfully into his. Except for the caressing way in which she had said the word ‘Johnny—a word that seemed to invite vocal caresses—she was studiedly proper, as indeed she had been all through the play rehearsals.

—Hello, Nell, he said. Say, I was looking for you.

Along the Shawmucky, the summer reeds are yellow, leaves are falling in the shallows, the waterbirds are crying. I waited by the deep pool close to the twin mounds. I was behind rushes watching all afternoon. But you didn't come again.

—Smoke, John? Garwood Jones said.

He had been standing on the other side of Nell.

—No, thanks, Johnny said.

Garwood made a fat curl of smoke around his fat lips. His face was smooth and creamy.

—Guess your weight, the weightguessing man said.

—How do you tell? Nell asked.

—We can't tell about the ladies, the man said. God made 'em, but Godey did 'em over. We just guess the ladies and hope we get within a hundred miles.

Nell put out her tonguetip and fluttered it between her teeth while her eyes studied the apparatus.

—Well, I'll try, she said.

—Step right up, young lady.

The man was a brash scoundrel with a fox face. He touched Nell's bare arm and turned her in the street.

—In Kentucky, he said, we feel the ladies. But of course, in Indiana——

The crowd laughed. Nell allowed herself to be turned. Nothing seemed to disturb the green composure of her eyes.

—Brother, said Garwood Jones, if you guess it, I'll take it away.

—You get the better end of that deal, the weightguesser said.

Who will guess the weight of the most beautiful exhibit at the County Fair? In Kentucky, we feel the ladies. But in Indiana, we hide behind rushes and watch them in the river. Who will guess the weight of the river nymph? Add in, too, the beautyspot, on the left cheek of her saucy tail. Without that, you'll be a little short.

—Well now, young lady——the weightguesser said.

He ran eyes of shrewd appraisal all over her body, then back again to her face.

—Chum, I'll bet you a cigar I can guess it closer than you will, Garwood said.

—Taken, chum, the guesser said, unless you have special advantages. Does this young man know this young lady?

—Not that well, Nell said.

—We have to allow a lot for the things we can't see, the weightguesser said. With the women, it's pure magic.

—I say one hundred and thirty pounds, Garwood said.

—I see, my boy, the weightguesser said, that you're a lame hand at this sport.

The crowd laughed.

—All right, the weightguesser said, I guess this young lady's weight to be——

He hesitated.

—Let me guess too, Johnny said impulsively.

—No fair, Nell said.

—One hundred and thirteen pounds, shouted the weightguesser, for the young woman and seven for the accessories. One hundred and twenty pounds. Now, young lady, if you'll just park yourself in this chair and lift your dainty feet off the ground.

Nell sat down, gravely gathering her skirts about her. The pointer squeaked up and stopped at a shade over one hundred and twenty pounds.

—Ha, ha, laughed the weightguesser. Wonder what I left out? Well, do I get to keep her, boy?

The crowd applauded.

—Here's your smoke, chum, Garwood said in his grand manner. Now don't forget to vote for James Buchanan for President.

Nell sat swinging gently a moment under the scales, hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were enigmatic.

Had she at last confessed their naughty secret? But she looked slowly away, patting the bun of hair, and stood up.

Johnny gave the message about the rehearsal and then walked away into the crowd. He had seen the arithmetic of gravity applied to the most beautiful thing in Raintree County. For some reason it made him faint with love.

Weigh me a hundred and thirteen pounds of Raintree County earth. Weigh me the loamy, lively earth from the river valley. Weigh in the river and the color of the river and the lazy curve of the river. Weigh in desire.

Johnny slouched around on the fringes of a crowd listening to a political speaker. The man was a Republican candidate for the State Legislature, but his topic was the State of the Nation. He spoke at some length about the fighting in Kansas between the slavery faction and the free-soilers, who were being led by a man named John Brown. He said that the Republican Party was the defender of the Constitution and didn't seek to kill slavery but only to prevent its spread. He quoted someone he referred to as the Honorable Abraham Lincoln of Illinois as having said,

—Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature—opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

There was a big crowd in the Opera House at eight o'clock that night when the Temperance Rally began. T. D., Cash Carney, and members of the cast peeked out from between the drawn curtains and were appalled by hundreds of faces.