Читать книгу Quilly Hall - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 11

Just prior to Halloween, my grandmother and Pearl rode into town with Uncle Everett. I had just returned from school, when they drove up in his truck. Grandmother preferred to ride in his car, but there the three of them were, crowded into his pickup. Grandmother owned a 1939 Ford Coupe, but she rarely drove it. She housed it in a shed near the old slave quarters. Their unexpected arrival, however, signaled something amiss, if not worse.

As Uncle Everett assisted, first, Pearl and then my grandmother out of the truck, my mother came out into the yard. “Well! What a welcome sight. Come on in! I’ll make some tea.”

“Please, do!” my grandmother urged. “I’m feeling a little peaked and could use the stimulant.”

While the four of us sat in the living room, my mother prepared the tea.

“Shaula! We’re not really here for a social call,” Uncle Everett spoke up.

“That’s right,” sighed my grandmother. “We’re worried about Jim and Viola. I haven’t seen them in over a month. Nor has anyone on the farm.”

“Is that that unusual?” my mother queried.

“It is for this time of year. Jim’s not been well at all, and Viola’s no specimen of health, herself.”

“If I can talk them into it,” Uncle Everett began, “I want to try to move them to Mama’s farm. There’s still a nice tenant house vacant, down the creek, toward town. If Marion’s going to be around next weekend, I could use his help to move them, provided they’ll agree to relocate.”

“Yes. I’m certain he’ll be here,” my mother stated, as she brought in the tray of tea and sat it on an end table near my grandmother.

“Everett’s going over tomorrow to check on them, and we’ll let you know.” My grandmother placed two cubes of sugar into her cup and stirred them slowly until they dissolved. “I miss all of you, you know,” she continued. “The farm’s not the same without you,” she directed her statement toward my mother. “And Tommy, honey! How I miss you!” She sat her cup and saucer down and dabbed her eyes with a white handkerchief, which she had slipped from her purse. “Come here and give Grandmother a hug.”

I scooted out of the chair and put my arms around her neck. She kissed me on my cheek. I could feel a hot tear as it ran down my neck under my shirt.

“Shaula, you’ve got to let this boy stay with me come the holidays. Come Thanksgiving and Christmas.” She dried her eyes. “The house gets so lonely without you. The rooms so empty and cold.”

“I know, Mama. After all, it’s the only home Tommy knew until now, and mine as well.”

“Mama, stop dwelling on the past,” said Uncle Everett. He rose to his feet, clattering his cup and saucer as he set them in the tray. He glanced intently at my mother and kissed her cheek. “We gotta go,” he muttered. “I’ve got work to do at my own place. Come on, Mama. Time to go. Tell Marion I’ll call him as soon as I know anything.”

He held my grandmother’s arm as she struggled to her feet.

“Pearl, you’ve been awfully quiet,” my mother said.

“Yes, ma’am. Just been thinkin’,” she smiled. “Life’s kind of hard for all of us, right now. Ain’t it?”

“A philosopher in our own midst!” Uncle Everett avowed. “Resolute! ‘Resolute’s’ the word,” he announced. “Isn’t that what you always say, Mama? ‘Resolute!’”

She stared at him in silence and stuffed her handkerchief into her purse. They passed through the living room and foyer and walked to the truck.

“Everett, be sweet to Mama,” my mother whispered under her breath.

“I know,” he said, with a lost look in his own face. “OK, everybody!” he raised his voice with a smile. “Back to Quilly Hall! All aboard for the Knobs! Nonstop, all the way!” He opened his door, and then suddenly swooped me up in his arms. He gave me a tight hug, set me down, returned to his truck, and slammed its door. Off they drove.

I think Uncle Everett must have been as shocked as my grandmother upon learning that Uncle Jim and Aunt Viola were ready to move. Earl had ridden with him in the wagon to convince them to relocate. According to Uncle Everett, it was Earl’s presence and humble spirit that won them. “Ain’t no use in fightin’ nature,” he told them. “Look at me! I ain’t able to live remote, and the Lord knows Miz. Edmonds ’a’ been like a sister to me. And you’re even kin.”

“That’s right,” Uncle Jim purportedly said. “How I hate to leave here!” he glanced toward the river and the Knobs. “’Twas the best tobacco patch I ever had.” He looked up toward the cemetery. “Cain’t neglect that!” he moaned. “My whole life was lived right here.”

“Nobody’s going to neglect their graves,” Uncle Everett promised. “We can still come back and raise tobacco, cure it in the barn, and haul it to market. But this house is no place to live anymore, and you’re too old to die here from a stroke or something worse and put that burden on Aunt Viola. I’ll always come back to check on it.”

Earl later told my grandmother how much it hurt him to look back over their farm by the river, as “me and Mr. Everett crossed the ridge. Your brother Jim and Viola had taken to their rockers and was sittin’ there in the cold, holdin’ hands. Miz. Ginny, it reminded me of Pearl’s own mother’s death, and how poor we are, though I ain’t complain’.”

Relocating the couple required everyone’s help. Jessie, Albert, and Earl each brought a wagon up from the farm. Uncle Everett managed to drive one of his own trucks to the site. It had a flatbed and was used for transporting hay, grain, bailing wire, and heavy farm equipment from locations in town to wherever it was needed at his place or Grandmother’s. Many of the women pitched in; my mother and Pearl prepared large baskets of food for everyone. I rode on the truck with Uncle Everett, along with my mother and Marion. Going up, I was able to ride on the flatbed. Coming back, I walked behind Uncle Jim’s cow for a while, before clambering up onto the truck again. That Sunday, Uncle Everett and I rode back to retrieve their pigs and chickens. How they squealed and cackled in their respective pins or coops! Earl drove the family buckboard, pulled by Sally. Pearl rode with him and oversaw the packing of Aunt Viola’s pantry goods and crocks from the springhouse. Hams and moldering slabs of bacon had been brought down the day before. The old couple couldn’t afford to leave anything that necessity would demand of them later. Uncle Jim was too proud to ask for a handout. He remained silent throughout most of the move, as did Aunt Viola.

Grandmother sighed with grateful relief when it was over. Her brother and sister-in-law were now her neighbors, and only a path’s stroll away, at that. My mother felt better, too, along with Uncle Everett and Marion. “At least she’ll have them at her elbow,” my mother observed. “Thank God for that.”

“Now you’ll have to take care of all three of them,” Marion teased Uncle Everett.

“True, but they’re a hell of a lot closer to each other. Maybe we can rest at night now. Plus, they’ll have Pearl to look after them, too. Poor girl! Once the war’s over, maybe she’ll meet somebody decent and that baby of hers will have a father.” Suddenly, he grew quiet and glanced down at me.

I instinctively knew what he was thinking. But it was all right. I strained to conjure up an image of my father, but none materialized, other than the photo on my grandmother’s mantle. One memory did resurface from time to time. A tall man was holding my hand and we were walking in a park, or at a fair. His grip felt strong. My mother flanked us; a breeze buffeted her hair. She was carrying a sticky cone of pink cotton candy.

“Tommy!” My mother placed her arm about my waist. “Tomorrow’s a school day. Time to review your homework before you go to bed.”

“Well, time for me to go,” said Uncle Everett. We had been sitting in the kitchen. He rose slowly and walked toward the front door and out into the night.

“He needs to remarry,” Marion commented. “How long’s it been now?”

“Too long,” my mother replied. There was a wistful hesitance in her voice, a melancholic glint in her eye. “Far too long.”

Just prior to Thanksgiving, Aunt Rachel showed up, uninvited, at the door. Her gay mood and sobriety, however, offset any ill will her unexpected arrival might have caused. Plus, she was my aunt and my mother’s sole sister.

“Lord, come on in,” my mother greeted her. “We’ll all be going to Mama Edmonds’ tomorrow, but you’re welcome to stay and help.”

“What’s up?” she asked, as she removed her broad-brimmed white hat, complete with a brown pheasant feather in its band. Her stylish white silk dress tweaked when she sat on the sofa to rest.

“Hog killing time! Remember?”

“Heavens, yes. I know I should have written.”

“I’ll welcome the help.”

“Oh, gads! Cutting up all that hog fat, grinding it into sausage, and rendering out lard! What a grizzly thought!”

“I’ve got an old dress and scarf you can wear. Or you can stay here in town and flirt with the cab drivers.”

“No, no! You know what will happen if I do. I’ll tag along and sweat it out.”

Hog killing time always coincided with Thanksgiving. By then the weather had turned sufficiently cold enough to kill the hogs and butcher them in the lot beside the slave cabin. Fingers would turn blue and numb, in spite of the long hours and heat from the fires.

Earl kindled one in the cabin’s hearth and swung a large kettle over its flames for rendering the fat into lard. Another fire was built outside under a huge cast iron vat. It was shaped like a bathtub. The hogs were dipped immediately into it after being shot. Uncle Everett and Jessie took turns killing them with a .22 rifle. They’d hold the gun to the hog’s head and shoot it between the eyes. The stunned animal would squeal and collapse on the frozen ground. Jessie and Albert would hoist it on a pulley and lower it into the vat, then swing it out to scrape off the hair. Hog after hog was butchered in this manner. Earl, Pearl, and several women disemboweled each animal and lifted out the heart, kidneys, and liver for puddings and whatever else. Uncle Jim oversaw the cutting up of the limbs into big white and pink segments for hams, picnic shoulders, loins, bacon, and sausage. Uncle Everett had learned from his father how to salt down the meat and pack it into large wooden casts for storage. Later it would be scraped again and hung in the smokehouse. At least, twenty-two animals were slaughtered that day, to my count. Long into the night and all of the next day saw the continuation of this process. Each tenant family was given a share of the meat for preparing it themselves into bacon, side-meat, hams, and sausage. But the rendering out of the fat into lard remained a communal effort, with its division into tins of lard coming several days later.

We did not celebrate Thanksgiving until the “operation” had concluded. That Sunday afternoon, Grandmother served oven-baked pepper-smeared ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, canned corn, pickled watermelon rind, relishes of all sorts, canned tomatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, and biscuits with jelly.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Viola, along with Earl and Pearl, joined us at the table.

“What a blessing to have all of us together!” my grandmother chirped. “The hand of Providence has blessed us once again.”

“Please, Mama! No theology! No dogma. Don’t spoil such a wonderful day,” Uncle Everett interrupted her.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Uncle Jim added, in what was now his squeaky, reed-thin voice. “Who’s to say what’s providential and what’s ain’t. I miss the farm.”

“That’s enough!” Aunt Viola threatened, raising her fork. “Stop sniveling. You sound like an old man. Be grateful and count your blessings.”

“Amen!” Marion concurred. He lifted his water glass and held it in the manner of a toast. “To my new family! Its members and Quilly Hall!”

“Amen!” Uncle Everett repeated, clinking his glass against Marion’s.

I raised mine with both hands to join in.

“Ah, Mister Biggety!” my grandmother chortled. “To our brilliant scholar in school.”

School? That was the last thing on my mind.

Marion smiled and sat forward to touch his glass against mine. A water crystal gleamed on his goatee. He winked, as our eyes met. We had already formed an avuncular bond that transcended words.