Читать книгу Quilly Hall - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 8

That Sunday afternoon, Uncle Everett drove me home. As we approached the house, a yellow taxi pulled out of the drive. I could see my mother and Aunt Rachel in the back seat. Aunt Rachel’s face appeared distorted. My mother was attempting to restrain her. Aunt Rachel clutched a paper bag in both hands; my mother was wiping her face with a blue washcloth. At the same time, Aunt Rachel was fending her off. Her face defied recognition. The cab driver slowed the vehicle and rolled his window down. My mother had a desperate look in her eyes. “Taking her to Marion, to the hospital,” she called from the backseat.

Uncle Everett had rolled his window down. “When will you return?”

“Tonight. Mama will take care of Tommy. Behave, Tommy! Help your grandmother and Pearl. Be a good boy!”

I sat up tall in the seat to get a better look at the cab driver and Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel stared at Uncle Everett. A stream of profanity tumbled out of her mouth.

The cab driver winced from under his cap. “Well, Everett, at least I know the way.”

“Yeah!” Uncle Everett replied.

The cab pulled forward and headed into town. We drove on in toward the back of the house. Uncle Everett turned off the truck’s ignition switch and slumped in silence. “Hate for you to see that, Tommy. Your Aunt Rachel’s sick. Come on. We had our fun, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir. Can we do it again?”

“We’ll see!”

I squirmed out of the truck, but only after Uncle Everett had wrestled open the door.

Both Pearl and my grandmother had come to the screened-in porch. Pearl opened the door as Uncle Everett brought in my valise. It was an old brown-colored cloth piece with leather straps.

“Get in here, boy!” joked Pearl. “You missed all the fun!”

“Hush! What a dreadful thing to say!” my grandmother scolded her. “Oh, Everett, it was horrible! She drank, cursed, and wretched in the commode the entire time. Poor Shaula! I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘She must go!’ I ordered. ‘Sister or not! Family or not. I will not tolerate her here!’ I am so distraught!”

“Now, Mama, I’m not so perfect myself.”

“Yes! But you’ve reformed. Rachel’s incapable of anything but drunkenness and rage. Just an inveterate alcoholic! Disgusting! Unsettling! Look at me. I’m a nervous wreck!”

“Come on, Mama. Pearl, pour me a cup of coffee and fix this boy somethin’ to eat. We can talk later.”

I don’t remember when my mother returned. Pearl put me to bed shortly after Uncle Everett left. Night came quickly to the farm, as darkness crept out of the Knobs, wrapping the night in its black bituminous shroud.

Aunt Rachel did not return from the sanitarium in Marion for several weeks. Her arrival by taxi created considerable commotion. Aunt Viola happened to be visiting. Uncle Jim had gone into town and had left her at the house. They had come by wagon, and Uncle Jim had gone on to purchase the usual staples of salt, spices, sugar, cloth, and kerosene. He had also packed the wagon with burlap bags of corn and wheat to drop off at the mill. In addition to the Whites Mill near Uncle Everett’s, a smaller mill, about a mile from our place, bordered the route into Abingdon. Its big water wheel dripped all the time. We frequently carried bushels of corn, wheat, and oats to it for processing into flour and meal. My grandmother let Pearl have the sacks to make into aprons and dresses. In fact, our own dishtowels were made of flour sacks.

When Aunt Rachel arrived, we were rocking on the front porch. She had ordered Ralph, the taxi driver, to blow the horn. My mother accepted her joviality as a good sign, an omen announcing her cure, but my grandmother’s face betrayed a darker assessment. Her cheeks had turned red and her mouth hung open with disbelief. “Would you ever!” she gasped. “The likes of it!” she placed her hands to her lips.

Aunt Rachel hung partially out of the cab’s right back seat window. Two balloons—one blue, the other yellow—bounced against the vehicle’s doors. When she stepped out of the cab, her purse fell off her lap, and its contents spilled across the drive. Ralph hurried to her rescue, while she reached back inside for her valise and a hatbox. She was wearing a stunning pink dress, cut rather low about the breasts, though she had so little to display. Even as a child of six, I knew a flat-chested woman from one with a fuller bosom. And poor Aunt Rachel had nothing to reveal, or conceal. She and my mother often laughed about it. But, there Aunt Rachel stood, her purse and hatbox in hand, with the balloons’ strings tied about her wrist, her face aglow with renewed self-confidence and the rosy blush of sobriety. I immediately scooted from my rocker and hurried down the steps to hug her. “Tommy, Tommy!” she whispered, as she bent down to kiss my cheek. Tears filled her eyes. My mother quickly followed. Aunt Viola walked stiffly behind her. My grandmother rose from her rocker, swallowed the lump in her throat, no doubt, and made her way with a bruised pride into the circle about Aunt Rachel.

“Rachel! You break my heart, but you’re what you are.” My grandmother placed her arms about Aunt Rachel’s neck and kissed her. “Who am I to condemn you? Forgive me, dear. Holman wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Mama Edmonds, there’s nothing to forgive,” she kissed her in return. “I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you, and always seem to cause. I’ll be going home soon.”

“Now, now! What family doesn’t have its delitescent sorrows? We will survive. That’s the Edmonds motto. Sic jurat transcendere montes. You must dare to cross life’s mountains! Come dear. You must be hungry as well as tired. And you, too, Ralph. Come on in and have a bite with us.”

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’ve got to get on. The bus from Bluefield will be arriving soon. But I’m much obliged.”

Aunt Rachel reached in her purse and handed him a five-dollar bill. “Thank you, Ralph. You’ve been wonderful.”

“It’s always my pleasure, ma’am. Well, I’d best be off!” he tipped his hat and returned to his cab.

It was late afternoon before Uncle Jim’s wagon came trundling into view. Grandmother tried to persuade him and her sister-in-law to spend the night, but Uncle Jim preferred to drive on. “Thanks, Kate,” he called her by her middle name, “but we can be home before dark.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You and Viola need to think about boarding that place up and coming down here. I’ve got two empty tenant houses you can choose between. Anything could happen to you, and you know it.”

“Well, we’ll give it some thought.”

My mother assisted Viola into the wagon, and we waved as the couple rode off.

Aunt Rachel left the following week. Her original intention had been to remain for most of the summer, attend the wedding, and then go home. But after her stay at the sanitarium, she resolved that it was time for her to return to Roanoke.

After she departed, the house seemed empty. Mr. Chappels returned from Richmond and continued to court my mother. In the meanwhile, Uncle Everett came by periodically to check on the farm and us.

With the coming of April, plowing and seedtime resumed, and great activity broke out across the land. Since I was not in school, and wouldn’t be enrolled until the fall, I had a child’s run of the fields and barnyards, allowed to participate in whatever caught my fancy, or my mother and grandmother consented to let me do. I got to ride on the backs of the big draft horses, cling to the drag when it came time to break up the plowed clods, take the horses down to the creek for water, and, once their harnesses were removed, feed them huge ears of hard yellow corn, or a half-pail of oats each. I also enjoyed gathering eggs, feeding the chickens, slopping the hogs, and playing with the tenant farmer’s children, whenever they didn’t have chores of their own.

Two of the children were close to my age, a five-year old boy named Russell, and his four-year old sister, Cruella. They hailed from sturdy mountain stock, to say the least. Russell was a tough little kid and always wanted to fight. We frequently wrestled each other and would hit each other hard on the arms. His sister liked to play with dogs, especially when the dogs were in heat. This was all new to me, and even I came away shocked one afternoon when I stumbled upon Russell and Cruella having sex with a dog. Russell was holding it by its hindquarters, while Cruella had taken off her panties and the dog was humping her back. My curiosity overrode any sense of buggery or morbid wrong. Later, the three of us played “doctor-nurse,” Russell and I practicing on Cruella what the dog had more successfully performed. That continued for most of the summer until Pearl caught us doing it in the apple house and threatened to tell my mother. “You leave those thrash alone!” she reprimanded. “Good Lord, boy! Your mother would skin you alive!” I doubted that, but I had no desire to anger or hurt my mother. I avoided the two children, but occasionally I would play “husband-wife” with Cruella in the barn. She would pull down her panties and I would slip out my “winky,” as my grandmother called it, and press it against Cruella’s tight, little crevice. It was only in my teen years that I realized what we were supposed to have been doing. But by then Cruella and her family had moved on.

Summer ushered in many exciting activities. Earl, Pearl’s father and one of the older farmhands, hitched up the wagon one noon and took me with him into the Knobs to cut a load of firewood for the kitchen’s cookstove. We stopped near the top of the ridge, overlooking Uncle Jim’s farm, before turning off into an old growth of hickories and oaks. Earl carried a long, wobbling steel saw over his shoulder and cut up a number of logs from fallen trees. He watched me carefully, but allowed me to assist with the sawing. Since I was a tall, stout boy, I was able to pull the saw in unison with him, but he had to do the heavier, muscular work and load the logs onto the wagon. Later, he split them into stovewood-size pieces and let me whack away with a hatchet to create kindling. He oversaw everything I did and taught me how to swing the hatchet with clean smooth strokes, creating slender sticks that would ignite quickly. He rarely called me “Tommy.” Instead, he addressed me as “Son.” I thought that strange at the time, but his calling me “Son” made me feel special. He had lost his only son in a mowing accident. Pearl would often retell how “his horse done reared up when he come upon this rattlesnake, and Felston fell right off, face fo-m’st in the blades. It ripped him up like a hog.” It was Earl who let me sit on the drag, ride the horses down to the creek for water, and perform other chores within my range. He never once raised his voice in anger, swore, or grew impatient over anything around me. He sometimes ate with us in the kitchen, since his wife, or Pearl’s mother, was dead, but he always walked back to his cabin at night. Two brothers and their wives and children lived there, as well. It was his brothers who did the larger portion of the plowing, planting, harvesting, suckering of tobacco, hay bailing, thrashing of the wheat, cutting and shocking the corn, and, at Thanksgiving time, slaughtering the hogs. The latter, however, constituted a colossal undertaking, requiring every farmhand’s effort for an entire week. Not even the women were exempt. They worked harder than the men, cutting off the fat for lard and grinding up scraps for sausage, which they peppered and stored in long, greasy, cloth sacks.

During berry picking time, we descended on the hills like locusts. First, came the strawberries and later blackberries, mulberries, and cherries. Like primitive food-gatherers from some wandering ice-age tribe, my mother, Pearl and I joined the women and other children on the farm in these group forays. We scoured the hills and hedgerows, fields and byways, picking and filling our baskets with nature’s delectable bounty. Uncle Everett came for us to pick strawberries on his farm, where we gathered the sweetest berries of all. Later, at home, my grandmother oversaw the converting of our juice-stained pails of berries into pint and quart jars of luscious preserves.

This latter bout with nature led to a discourse on Providence and the goodness of the Creator, in which my grandmother insisted Mr. Chappels participate. His presence, that particular evening, rested solely on the basis of his love for my mother. But seeing he had stayed for dinner, there was no escaping her theological confrontation.

“Now don’t you find that convincing?” she began. “That the grandeur and opulence of nature, the very abundance and extravagance of creation, should reflect something of the grandeur and goodness of its Designer? Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” he moaned, not wishing to contest her.

“What is your own theory? You must have one. Please share it. We’re all family now, or soon will be,” she smiled. Then she folded her hands in that aristocratic style she must have acquired at the Martha Washington Seminary for Girls. She waited patiently for him to commence.

“Mama, the poor man and I have a ton of things to discuss and plan. Can’t we do this later?”

“Oh, Shaula! Later never comes, my dear. Occasions like this are gifts of the season. Tomorrow will sweep them all away and introduce an order of fresh new duties.”

“You do have a point, Miz. Edmonds. But I see it all as nature’s boundless way of hurling thousands of seeds and berries to the winds of chance, knowing that only a few will ever survive the harsh conditions of reality. She’s a profligate spender, if you ask me. Whether God exists or not, or guides the process or not, or foreordained its mechanics, I fear to say. Our beliefs should match the facts, and not the facts our beliefs. That’s what every successful banker knows, and God pity the ones who don’t.”

“Oh, so definitive! Do tell! We mustn’t misguide Tommy. Not a sparrow falls, but that our heavenly Father knows it. I might be old fashioned, and out of my league when it comes to banking, but I can never doubt His guiding hand.”

A silence ensued. Her brow lifted and sagged and her face grew taut. Her wrinkles swelled into grooves. Then she smiled. “We need you, Mr. Chappels. Yes, dear man! And God knows it. Don’t disdain an old woman’s belief in the mercy of Providence. I know it when I see it.”

“And coffee cups, too, Grandmother!” I piped up. “Remember, you saw him first in the coffee cup.”

Pearl and my mother hooted with laughter. Mr. Chappels blushed with mirth. My grandmother’s face turned ashen.

“Oh, goodness!” she feigned. Her cheeks burned red, even under her rouge.

“So much for dissembling, Mama,” my mother said.

“‘Opulence,’ ‘dissembling,’ ‘Providence’!” repeated Mr. Chappels. Does anybody ever explain these words for Tommy?”

“Or for me?” added Pearl.

“He’ll learn them in time,” said my grandmother. “That’s far better than paltering around the boy. Once Holman redeemed me from the Knobs, I vowed I’d never allow my speech to deteriorate again.”

“Nor have you!” confirmed my mother. “Marion, she knits with a dictionary at her elbow.”

“I believe it!” he smiled. “Well, Mama Edmonds, if I may call you that, I look forward to being part of the family. And being your stepfather, Master Thomas,” he grinned as he addressed me across the table. He enfolded my mother’s left hand in his and kissed her fingers. “And to you, Tommy,” he raised his voice. “May your childhood be filled with unending joy.”

I don’t remember if I smiled, or thanked him, or looked away. Numb is not the word. Puzzled would have been more like it. Or nonplused. I could still feel his presence beside the horse, when he slipped his hand about its reins and shot Olan Crawford in the chest. Whatever I thought about this man, or however I felt about him, I liked his quiet mannerisms and manly, genteel qualities.

June did not end happily. Late one misty evening, Earl showed up at the back screened-in door with a lantern. “Little Ouida’s missing. Ain’t nobody seen her a’fore supper. Please pray for her, Miz. Edmonds. Somethin’s happened to her, bad. I just know it.”

Ouida was Earl’s niece, his oldest brother, Jessie’s, baby girl. She couldn’t have been more than three.

“Won’t you come in?” my grandmother offered.

“No’m, thank ye. I was hoping you could spare Pearl. We’re mountin’ a search party for her right now. Leavin’ from the barn and up through the orchard, where her mama last seen her. She didn’t come in for supper.”

“Oh, Earl! Let me call the sheriff. Or Everett. He’s got tracking hounds. He could be here in less than an hour.”

“We done got some of our own, Miz. Ginny. Ask Pearl to bring a lantern and follow us up through the woods.”

By now, Pearl had come down from her room over the kitchen. “Wait, Pa, and I’ll go with you.”

Earl waited on the steps while Pearl tossed a shawl about her shoulders. She laced up her brogans and lit a kerosene lantern, which she had retrieved from a table in the pantry.

“Can I go?” I begged.

“Most definitely not!” my grandmother retorted. “One lost child is enough. Get on up to bed,” she remonstrated. “Earl, I’ll make some coffee and send it up by Shaula to the barn.”

“Thank you, ma’am, we’d be much obliged.”

As he and Pearl disappeared in the night, I ran to the front hall windows and peered out into the dark. The orchard lay just across the road in front of the house, and I could make out a dozen or so glowing lanterns in the mellow night, as searchers wove their way up the hill in the mist. They gathered briefly under some apple limbs, on the edge of the woods; then formed a single file of fading light that grew fainter and fainter until they were swallowed by darkness.

I pretended to mount the stairs, stomping my feet and muttering pouting sounds as I climbed. But instead I was standing by Quelle and staring up at the indomitable Capt. Edmonds, with his balderdash eyes and gigantic sword. With that, I tugged quietly on the front door and slipped out into the night. I all but stumbled off the porch, as my eyes adjusted to the dark. It had been drizzling but had stopped. A white fog enveloped the yard. I ran toward the barn and hid in one of the empty horse stalls. Soon enough, my mother arrived with a large, enameled-covered pot of coffee, a tray of cups, and a pitcher of cream.

I could hear voices on the road. It was more of Earl’s kin people and a moil of dogs. The big, chained hounds were whining and baying and pulling the men behind them. They were coon dogs.

“Miss Shaula, how kind!” The men helped themselves liberally to the coffee and trudged back onto the road.

“I’ll have biscuits for you in awhile, as soon as Mama bakes them,” she called. “You’ll need something nourishing before long.”

They waved to her and slipped out of sight in the mist. I watched as my mother retuned to the house. Once she disappeared around the corncrib, I hurried after the men.

They passed through the orchard, stopped where I had seen the others pause, and stared down at the ground.

“Damn!” one of the men groaned. “That’s blood.”

“That’s a track,” another said. “A cat’s track. Some panther’s done drug her off.”

My grandmother had often told stories of how panthers stalked the Knobs, but when she’d see how much that frightened me, she’d change her story to, “Oh, that was long ago, when I was a little girl, and Holman first came over the Knobs to visit us. They’d scream like wild women in the night. And they would drag off an occasional lamb or ewe.”

This time it was no ewe, but a lamb—a lamb of a child. The dogs pulled the men onward, while I shrank back, uncertain what to do. Soon, caution gave way to fear, and fear, abetted by darkness, to panic; and, racing through the wet grass under the apple trees, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me down to the road. I climbed the rail fence, tore a hole in my overalls, cut my hands on the lone strand of barbwire on the top rail, and hurried toward the house. My grandmother was waiting for me at the door.

“You imp! You little ingrate! How dare you frighten us so! Look at you! And look at those hands! March that little butt of yours up those steps, right now! And don’t stop until you get to the bathroom. Oh, the likes of it! I should flail you with a switch!”

I scampered up the stairs and fled to the bathroom. “Wash yourself!” she commanded from below. “And go straight to bed!”

In the morning, I rushed down the stairs to learn of the night’s search results.

“Gone! The little thing’s gone!” Pearl muttered. “They never found a thing. Just a little shoe. I got it upstairs, in my room.”

“He dragged her up in some tree,” my grandmother hypothesized. “Or some cave. There’s a thousand caves back in there. Old mica mines, iron mines, salt mines. The Lord alone knows where she is.”

“Mama, Earl asked you to pray, not prophesy her funeral,” my mother commented.

“Oh, she’s dead all right, Shaula. You can mark my words on that. Many a night my father would have to sleep out in the cold during the lambing season, for, if weren’t dogs, a panther would kill a ewe, or carry off a lamb. They bite their little throats, cutting off the air to their windpipes; then drag them deep into the woods. And what they don’t eat, they bury under leaves. Those dogs of Earl’s brothers are coon dogs. Not bloodhounds, or real hounds. They probably got distracted and ran off after coons. Earl claimed as much. That’s why they came back.”

The entire morning past, and still no one found the child, or any sign of the child, or the predator that had stalked and killed her, no doubt. I was playing in the front yard, near the purple lilac bushes, when Uncle Everett drove up in his pickup truck. Two portable dog cages wobbled back and forth in its bed. As soon as he stopped, you could hear the hounds clawing to get out. I ran to his truck and climbed up on the bed.

“Careful,” he said. “These rascals are big and hungry and the first thing I want them to smell is something of that little girl’s.”

“Pearl’s got a shoe inside. I saw it yesterday. It’s just a rag, covered with blood.”

“Run get Pearl and tell her to bring the shoe.”

While I scampered toward the back porch, my mother and grandmother came around from the front of the house to greet Uncle Everett. Pearl had already overheard Uncle Everett and was halfway out the screen door. “Where’s the dogs?” she asked. “I heard what he said.”

We hurried together to the truck.

“Don’t let them smell it yet,” warned Uncle Everett. “I want to saddle up Sally, or old Fred, then turn them loose on her trail. Mama, Shaula, what happened?”

“They found the cat’s tracks up in the orchard,” my mother pointed. “The men either lost the trail, or the dogs never got the scent.”

“I couldn’t tell them a thing,” my grandmother protested. “Just hardheaded tenants,” she shook her head with sadness. “The poor little darling! Probably never had a chance.”

I weaseled in as close to Uncle Everett as I could. “Not this time, boy,” he smiled. “But you can hop in and ride up to the barn.”

“Don’t you let him go!” my grandmother pointed her finger at her son. “Don’t you dare let him on your horse.”

“I won’t, Mama! I’ve got more sense than that. But the boy loves adventure, and he needs to be free of your skirts far more than you let him.”

“Well, not this time! One missing child is enough. Anything could happen. Tommy, you hear that, don’t you? You come back as soon as Everett saddles up and releases those dogs. I’ll not permit a second of perfidy!”

“Yes, ma’am! I’ll come right back.”

“Pearl, you go with him and drag him back if you have to, but he’s not, I repeat, ‘not going.’ And that’s final.”

“Mama, nothing’s ever final, except death,” said Uncle Everett. I climbed up in the bed and peered in at his huge hounds. They whined and wanted to lick my fingers, but I knew I couldn’t let them, without spoiling their scent for Ouida.

At the barn, I remained in the truck until Uncle Everett had saddled up Fred—an old but sure-footed horse. Pearl handed him Ouida’s little shoe, as he led the horse by its bridle around the truck. He held the little shoe in front of the caged dogs. They yelped and bayed with excitement. “OK,” he said. “Go find her!” With that, he released their kennel doors and out they burst.

Off they lunged, sniffing the air and weaving in circles. Suddenly, Roy, the larger of the two, stopped, sniffed something ominous in the wind, and, letting out a loud bark, began whining and running toward the orchard. Dixie, his sister, picked up the scent, and off she raced, yelping and whining to keep up.

“Adios, amigos!” Uncle Everett called. He swung into his saddle, and Fred trotted down the road.

“Wait!” I shouted. I ran behind him. “The gate! Let me get the gate!” I ran ahead of the horse, as Uncle Everett slowed its pace. I opened the orchard gate and looked up at him.

He smiled as he passed through. “Now get on back! A promise is a promise. I promised your mother and grandmother. There’ll be other times for us. Now run on. If I find her, I’ll take you there someday and show you myself.”

“Yes, sir!” I groaned, as I stepped up and closed the gate and watched him gallop off, after the dogs.

He did not return until late that evening. Across the saddle, a tiny body lay draped against his waist and legs. He had covered it with a burlap sack. The dogs panted beside him, their tongues long and distended. They all but jumped into the horses’ trough for water. Froth and lather dripped from old Fred. Uncle Everett handed the body to Pearl. A fetid stench accompanied the transfer. She clutched the sack in both hands and wept. Once Earl’s brother and sister-in law came down, they wept, too. Leena, Ouida’s mother, moaned and pulled at her hair. Jessie just stood there, looking down at his feet. His overalls were stained with mud and chaff; his beard was black and grizzly. He took the bundle in his arms. As he cradled the child, he too let out a whimper, like the sound of a sob under a pillow. He and Leena walked off together toward their cabin. I helped Uncle Everett re-kennel his dogs. Without smiling, or saying anything, he climbed in his truck and drove away.

No one ever found the cat, or the panther. “It probably ran off across the Holston,” Uncle Everett surmised. “One day we’ll get it, Tommy. By jingles, next year, I’m taking you with me—promise or no promise—and will get the so and so! Whatta you say?”

“Yes, sir! We’ll get the son-of-a bitch!”

“Whoa, Lord! Watch that tongue, or we’ll both be in trouble!” he feigned a frightful grimace.

I understood what he meant.