Читать книгу Quilly Hall - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 7

Over the next few weeks, we saw very little of Uncle Everett. I missed him greatly, for in every way he was my surrogate father. We did enjoy Mr. Chappels’ visits, especially my mother. He began showing up in the late afternoons. Frequently, he brought her flowers and, occasionally, boxes of candy for my grandmother, Pearl, and me.

My grandmother effused for hours after he left. “Ah! Shaula! I told you there was another man for you. You like him. Don’t deny it. That’s quite all right, dear. Hamilton is dead. Tommy’s daddy is never coming back. I don’t mean to sound maudlin. But we have to face reality. He needs a daddy, and you’re too young to waste away as a widow.” It would grieve her to have to say this. Nonetheless, she would fold her hands in her lap and stare at my mother with that certain look, with that dreadful truth in her eye: that both knew that this was best.

They would rock together. Sometimes my mother would cry. Although, I was quite a large and strong child for age six, my mother would reach for my hand and have me sit in her lap. She would hold my head against her shoulder and neck, and rock and rock and rock.

Sometimes my grandmother would turn with a twinkle in her eye, and, standing with her back to the fireplace, lift the edges of her dress—ever so coquettishly—shuffle her feet in a pretend dance, and sing:

Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, over there.

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,

The drum’s rum-tumming everywhere.

So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware.

The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,

And they won’t be back till its over over there.

If she were in a more melancholic mood, however, she would remain seated and hum: “Oh, Danny Boy.” Sometimes she would substitute my name for “Danny’s.”

After awhile, I would fall asleep in my mother’s lap.

As for my mother, she possessed a spirit of grit that wonderfully compensated for any diminution in size. She could not have been more than five-one in those days. Later, she would shrink even more. Long red curls defined her, if anything. Her coiffeur set her apart from other women. Plus, her eyes: a pale shade of green behind warm eyelashes. There was a softness about her touch and her fair skin. It would freckle at the slightest exposure to sun. For this reason, she never left the house without wearing a hat that protected her face, even in the winter. Farm odors annoyed her. She would sprinkle a dainty pink handkerchief, no larger than a postcard, with her favorite perfume: Enchanté de Paris. How Parisian it was, I never knew, nor still know. That she could buy it in the drugstore in Abingdon during the war, says it all. It came in a tiny square bottle, which she kept on her dresser. A delicate fragrance filled the room, whenever she uncapped it.

At that time, Mr. Chappels lived in town. My mother took me to visit him one warm March afternoon. He met us at the door. “Come in young fellow, Master Edmonds,” he addressed me. “I’ve been expecting you,” he winked toward my mother. I realized something pre-planned, no doubt, was astir, but my curiosity overruled any sense of adult management. He escorted me into a large library, where he had set up an electric train near a fireplace. A circular track, with a black engine, coal car, one brown and two yellow boxcars, and a red caboose immediately caught my eye. “Oh, boy!” I must have shouted, for both he and my mother laughed. “It’s all yours,” he beamed.

“Marion! Please! It’s too much,” my mother protested.

“On the contrary! Here, Tommy, let’s sit down and see if it works.”

I followed his lead and sat on the floor with him, with my feet tucked under my legs. He turned on the transformer, and the train began to crawl. He increased its speed. It whistled, and smoke puffed out of its chimney. He ran it around the track a dozen times.

“There are lots of books you can look at,” he pointed toward the shelves. He turned off the train’s switch and rose to his feet. “Your mother and I need a few moments together,” he said.

I thought nothing of his comment and, stooping forward to examine the boxcars, lifted them off the track, turned them upside down to spin the wheels, before placing them back. I did that with all the cars; then I began to explore his library. My eyes struggled to take in his holdings. They equaled anything we had on the farm. His books seemed more neatly organized than ours, and many of them still had their bright, glossy dust jackets in place. Stacks of Life magazines enjoyed a shelf of their own. Their covers had to do with the war, with wounded soldiers and shot-up military matériel. I stared at the soldiers’ bloody bandages and dirty hands, their hollow eyes, and mess kits and canteens. I wanted to be a soldier. To carry guns and throw grenades! To kill Japs and Nazis.

It had grown very quiet in the house. I placed the magazines back on the shelf and crept across the hallway and peeked into living room. Mr. Chappels was kissing my mother. And she was letting him! My face felt hot, my heart numb. I wanted my grandmother; I wanted to run home. I slipped back into the library, closed its glass doors, and curled up in a corner by the Life magazines. How long we stayed, I have no idea.

More and more, my mother drove into town alone. More and more Mr. Chappels came out to the farm and stayed with us for supper.

My grandmother delighted in these arrangements. “Tommy, your mother and Mr. Chappels are going to get married. Do you know what that means?”

“I think so. It means Mama’s gonna move away.”

“No! It means you’re going to have a new daddy, Mr. Chappels. He’s incredibly fond of you and will love you as much as your father. Your mother will be very happy, and we’ll all have a new life.”

That there was anything wrong with our present one escaped me.

“The wedding will be here on the farm. Won’t that be exciting?”

I didn’t know. But as I thought about Mr. Chappels, I drew comfort from the fact that he had steadied Uncle Everett’s horse that afternoon, when I was perched behind the saddle, and had then pulled out his pistol and shot Mr. Crawford, dead! I liked that. That’s what Uncle Everett would have done, if he could have gotten to his pistol.

About that time my mother’s sister, my Aunt Rachel, came to visit us. She generally came once a year and stayed a month or more. Though unpredictable, she could be entertaining. She paid me dimes to run errands and do special chores for her. Her arrival caused the wedding to be postponed, but that didn’t anger my mother. “I need more time,” I overheard her say to Aunt Rachel. “Marion frequently has to be in Richmond, when the legislature is in session. I’ve asked him to wait till late summer.”

Aunt Rachel lived in Roanoke. She and my mother were originally from Wytheville. The two loved to reminisce about their childhood and first years of marriage. Aunt Rachel had a dark side, but if it had emerged in previous visits, it passed unremembered by me.

One afternoon, after my mother had been tutoring me in reading and simple addition, I happened to pass through the kitchen, on my way to play outside. Aunt Rachel was seated in a swing on the back screened-in porch. She was talking to herself and cussing under her breath. I stopped to listen.

“The son-of-a-bitch. I told him not to see her. By God, I taught him. Bastard!” she chuckled to herself. “Got him right in the arm! Swish! Take that!” She held her left hand up, as if gripping a knife. “Shit!” Her eyebrows arched. An ugly smile marred her thin lips. Her complexion was dark to start with, and her forehead wide and sallow. One could not call her beautiful, though perhaps she had been in her youth. Strands of uncombed brown hair hung limp about her ears. She kept tapping the floor with one foot, to keep the swing in motion. In her right hand, she clasped a pint bottle. Suddenly, she stopped, turned, and glared at me, as if through a dense haze. “Tommy! Is that you? It’s not nice to spy on Aunt Rachel. Come here,” she beckoned with her right hand, causing the alcohol in the bottle to slosh loudly. “I need to kiss you. Come, darling. Aunt Rachel’s not going to hurt you. No sir-ree!”

I approached her with apprehension and stopped by the swing. “Kiss me!” she mumbled, with slurred speech. I leaned forward to hug her. A stagnant odor rose from her breath. I kissed her neck and stared at her bare feet.

“Run along now,” she said, as she pushed off to swing more.

I ran outside, to one of the outbuildings, climbed the wooden steps to its loft, and peered out its front window toward the porch. Aunt Rachel had fallen out of the swing and was struggling to get up. Just then, my mother came to the porch. “Rachel!” she blurted. “Are you hurt?” She must have seen the bottle and surmised Aunt Rachel’s state. “Oh, Rachel,” she moaned. “He wasn’t worth it. You’ve got to get over this.” She bent down and helped her to her feet. Aunt Rachel staggered inside, with my mother’s arm about her waist. I could hear Aunt Rachel laughing, but it was one of those cheerless, inebriated laughs.

That weekend, Uncle Everett came to take me to his place. Aunt Rachel watched him from her bedroom, upstairs, but never came down. I could see her pull back the curtains, before she withdrew from the window.

Uncle Everett drove a rusty-red pickup truck that always had handfuls of hay or straw and farm equipment in its bed. He chuckled as I climbed in beside him and my mother closed the door. She had to swing it hard to make it shut. He motioned for her to come to his window. “How much longer does she plan to stay?” he nodded toward the house.

“She’ll be all right. She’s sobered up now, but you never can tell,” my mother replied.

She put her hand up to his door. He had rolled his window down. He placed his hand over hers. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

“Yes. Marion’s a good man.”

“I wish I could believe you,” he stared at her. “Marriages are supposed to be forever, you know. That’s a long time.” He turned the ignition switch on and continued to study her face.

“Go on, now!” she said, lowering her eyes. “Tommy! Behave,” she uttered as an afterthought.

“We’ll have a great time,” Uncle Everett pressed her hand once more. He turned toward me and smiled. “How ’bout it, boy? What do you say?”

“Yes sir!”

“You do what he says, now,” my mother commanded me. “He’ll bring you home Sunday.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She backed away from the truck, as Uncle Everett turned it about in the dirt drive, and we headed for his farm.

We drove into Abingdon near the Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church; then crossed over Main and turned left on Whites Mill Road.

“Will we get to see the mill?” I asked.

“That’s where we’re heading. Then we’ll come back to the farm.”

It took about twenty minutes to drive to the mill. I had visited it once before. I had been with my mother and grandmother, and they had driven all the way across town and past the Laurel Springs Bottom, just to have a bushel of corn ground to a fine powder. It was white corn, which my grandmother preferred to yellow corn for her spoonbread and cornpone cakes.

Soon after passing the Laurel Springs, the creek began descending swiftly through a deep grassy gorge, bounded by steep hills and thorn bushes. A few cattle grazed in one of the higher meadows. I could see them nudging and tugging at the short grass between the rocky outcroppings. A long wooden trough came into view. It angled gently away from the creek but parallel with it. Streams of water poured through the seams of the wooden canal, as it fed the rushing current toward the mill. A huge paddle wheel turned ever so cumbersomely, as the water spilled from section to section. The mill, itself, rose three-stories tall. Its wooden planks had long ago transmuted into sodden, weathered boards. A copula graced the wood-shingled roof. Pigeons flew away as we stopped the truck and got out.

We entered the dusty building, redolent of milled wheat, ground corn, and stripped cobs. Stacks of powdery, swollen flour bags formed passageways through the mill. Below we could hear the wheel humming and watch particles of swirling dust sift up through the cracks in the wide floorboards. Since no one had met us upstairs, Uncle Everett led the way down a narrow flight of wooden steps to the grindstone below.

Tiny powdery clouds of sparkling chaff churned in the air. An old man with a red bandana about his mouth and nose turned toward us. “Well, well! Everett! Be with you in just a minute. Who’s the boy?” He slipped the bandana off his face and brought the big grindstone to a halt.

“Hamilton’s and Shaula’s. Name’s Tommy. Tommy, say hello to Mr. Archy.”

I held out my hand to shake his. He eyed me thoughtfully, hesitated a moment, and shook my hand, “He’s shore got the Edmonds brow and build. And eyes, too. Handsome boy. Your nephew, huh?” White dust covered his face and hands. Even my right hand turned white with powder.

“That’s right!” Uncle Everett replied. He rubbed his hand across my head. “Got any good cornmeal? Need to fix me and the boy some cornbread tonight. He likes it with strawberry preserves. Isn’t that right?”

I nodded as much.

The miller filled a small cloth bag with cornmeal from a large bin. “Ten cents,” he said. He filled a second one. “This one’s free for the boy.” He turned his head sideways and spat a string of tobacco juice through a crack in the floor. I could hear the rushing creek below. “He shore looks like you,” he glanced back at Uncle Everett.

“It’s the Edmonds genes,” Uncle Everett replied. “He gets them from his great-grandfather, just as I do.” There was a curt edge in his voice. He seemed moody, withdrawn. “Let’s just say his mother’s a beautiful woman, and Hamilton won her in a way I couldn’t.”

“Sorry if I upset you. You Edmonds are a strange lot!”

Uncle Everett paid Mr. Archy, and we left.

The drive to Uncle Everett’s farmhouse required returning toward town, crossing a rocky creek at a shallow ford, and proceeding a half-mile or so on a dirt lane. The latter followed a smaller creek that fed into one at a ford. Pastured hills rose to our left. Across the creek, three-to-four hundred acres of prime bottomland stretched halfway back to the Laurel Springs. The land lay dark, damp and fallow, save for a wheatfield of young green sheathes. Corn shocks and trampled fodder littered a field beside the creek.

“That’ll all be plowed up soon,” said Uncle Everett. “We’re going to fish that creek in the morning,” he pointed. “And tomorrow afternoon, we’re going horseback riding up on the ridge, just to see what’s back there. Think that’ll keep us busy?”

“Yes, sir! Will we see any wolves?”

“Not on this trip. But you never know,” he smiled.

“Will you carry a gun? Can I shoot it?”

“Your mother would kill me if I did.”

“I won’t tell. Not even Pearl.”

“You and Pearl are great buddies, aren’t you?”

“When she’s not busy. Uncle Everett, why won’t Grandmother let me call her ‘Granny?’ I always have to call her ‘Grandmother.’ Why?”

“Tell you what I’ll do. We’ll talk about that tonight. Right now we’re almost home, and you and me, Mr. Bigshot, have chores to do.”

Uncle Everett’s house came into view. It was a two-story red brick structure, with a wooden front porch, its rails painted white and floor gray. Wide brick steps led up to it. Gray shingles hung out over the porch’s deep eaves. All the windows had screens. Two chimneys, one at each end, flanked the house, though a coal furnace provided its principal heat. Uncle Everett had been married but now lived alone.

After supper, Uncle Everett lit a fire in the living room’s fireplace. Spring nights continued to be cold, long into May around Abingdon. Uncle Everett’s house was sparsely furnished with only a few pieces in each room. Many were handmade, crafted by one of his tenant farmer’s father. The old carpenter worked out of one of Uncle Everett’s sheds. He was crippled and wore a large three-inch sole on his right foot. He hobbled from bench to bench but produced elegant furniture. I still have most of it, my favorite piece being a large cherry chest of drawers and a gun cabinet, stocked with Uncle Everett’s shotguns, rifles, and numerous pistols, along with two of Marion’s shotguns and the pistol with which he shot Olan Crawford.

I pulled up a child’s rocker and sat beside Uncle Everett. The orange flames glowed softly against the blackened back wall of the fireplace. Uncle Everett took down a dark green book and turned to a picture of Daniel Boone.

“The man was a pioneer. See his coonskin cap and deerskin clothes? He lived off the land and explored this region, and over into Kentucky. You asked about wolves. When he came through here years ago, he and his party spent several nights in caves, right on the Main Street of town. The caves ran under the whole hill, where the big monument stands today. You know the one? The one of the Confederate soldier. The wolves attacked their horses and dogs. After several nights, they had to travel on.”

“Did the wolves eat anybody?”

“Not that I know of. Boone’s men probably skinned the few they killed. In fact, the wolves lived there a long time and weren’t driven off until years later. That’s why the town was called ‘Wolf Hill.’ But I think they were gone by the time the Colonel settled in town. But that was after he built the house where you and Mama live.”

Uncle Everett closed the book and replaced it in a knotty pine bookshelf near the mantle. “Got another surprise,” he said. He opened a drawer beneath the bookcase and produced a small walnut box that sported silver hinges and a silver latch. He placed it in my lap.

“Be careful. Don’t jiggle it or let it fall off.”

I unlatched the box and raised the lid. A collection of hand-struck flint arrowheads lay stacked neatly in rows on a green pad.

“I found everyone of them, right here on the farm. They’re very old and go back a long time.”

I picked up the largest arrowhead with care. Its sharp tip almost pricked my thumb. Its serrated edges were equally sharp. Many smaller but similar ones lay beneath it.

“One day, this will be yours. The whole kit and caboodle! Let’s put it back now, OK?”

As he reopened the drawer, I saw another box: a shiny, cherry box, shoved in the back. “What’s in that?”

“Secret! Big secret! Don’t ever let me catch you in there, unless I tell you! Maybe one day I will.” He forced a smile and patted me on my shoulder.

Early the next morning, we walked through the wet grass to go fishing. All Uncle Everett carried was a short cane stick. He had tied a filament of line on the narrower end and had attached a small hook to that. Along the way, we picked up a few night crawlers and dropped them in a can. We paused in a marshy meadow several yards from the stream. “Shhh! Walk softly. The fish will feel our vibrations. They spook easily,” Uncle Everett said.

Uncle Everett held up the hook. “You put the worm on it,” he whispered. “It’s time you learned how.”

I reached in the can for one of the worms, flinched as I picked up its slimy body, and struggled to spear it on the hook. Its warm digestive track gushed out all over my fingers. I tried not to frown or show fear. I wanted Uncles Everett to be proud of me.

“Good job!” he whispered. “Now watch!” He swung the line out over a deep, but swift, narrow section of the creek. Within seconds, the cane reed wobbled and bent slightly. In a matter of an hour, he caught ten pan-size rainbow trout. To my great horror, he released each. Seeing the disappointment on my face, he simply stated: “We’ve got ham for lunch and apples. The fish can wait another time.”

My spirit sank with incredulity.

That afternoon, he saddled up one of his horses, and we rode up high into the woods that overlooked his farm. Far off in the distance, I could see the town’s spires. Acres and acres of pastureland, hills, and bottomland stretched westward and to the north. Sheep and cattle grazed on the higher hills; milk cows, pigs, and chickens milled about the barnyards below. Several tenants were beginning to plow the land along the creek. Only three other farms were visible. I could see numerous sheds, Uncle Everett’s tin-roofed barns, his pear and apple orchards, and two tobacco beds, protected under long white sheets of cheesecloth.

We rode around a ridge, entangled with thistles, and stopped near a large swath of granite outcroppings. “See that!” Uncle Everett pointed. “That’s where your mother and Pearl will soon be picking strawberries. There’s a wonderful patch just below there.”

He slid off the horse and helped me down. Near a cedar-protected ledge, we sat on a lichen-covered outcropping and ate our picnic of biscuits and apples. “One day this will all be yours,” he gestured toward the silent hills with a sweep of his hand. An estranged and sad countenance filled his eyes. We sat there awhile longer, then remounted and rode back down to the farm.