Читать книгу The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky - Everett MacDonald - Страница 7

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Beneath Eagle Crown the four-room cabin reposed in a shelter of spruce-pine, hemlock and cedar. Its plot was covered with countless quaint flowers and its rock-hemmed path to the horse-block in front was lined with pink wild roses and forget-me-nots. Here the creeping ivy and honeysuckle ran wild.

Although the mound of Maw Lutts, in the scrub orchard behind the log barn, was green again for the third time, her beloved flowers had come back to earth each year with reassuring, tender messages for Belle-Ann Benson, who had adopted them and had nourished and tended and cherished them with a pathetic devotion.

Belle-Ann knew their language well. And when they died—more than at any other season—the kindly, smiling face of old Maw Lutts followed the girl all through the chilly fall days.

It was Belle-Ann who had folded Maw Lutts's two hands, one upon the other, back on that terrible day. It was Belle-Ann whom the men found after the battle, crouching in despair over the dear, still form lying in the yard, and crying out to God for Him to make the mute lips speak back to her.

Belle-Ann had never known her own mother, but she had found a mother in Maw Lutts. So it was Belle-Ann who fed the martins, and encouraged the wild birds, and the tame squirrels Maw Lutts had loved.

The Lutts family now consisted of the old man, two boys, the adopted girl and an old negro who had fled from Lexington when a boy, in the first days of the Rebellion, and who subsequently had found sanctuary at the Lutts abode. He had been permitted to remain because no form of persuasion could induce him to leave the premises, once fed, and had the distinction of being the only negro on Hellsfork.

Belle-Ann was a daughter by proxy, since her own mother had died in her babyhood and Maw Lutts had opened her heart and home to the child. Belle-Ann was now some months past sixteen and her unusual physical beauty was noted throughout the mountain community and wondered at by the few strangers who chanced to reach the isolated cabin on Moon mountain.

To-night the girl dropped a wooden bucket and gourd after watering the plants, and walked briskly over the carpet of shadows, stepped out under the radiant moon and stood gazing intently up to Eagle Crown, where she saw the magnified outlines of Cap Lutts against the sky.

Near by a huge witch-elm butt, sawed into three steps, shaped a horse-block. Upon the topmost step of the block she seated herself. Her brow puckered slightly and she waited with an expectant air. Even the pale moonlight revealed her marked loveliness.

Her form was tall for sixteen, with that subtle grace wholly undefinable. Clinging about her head and mantling her shoulders, a mass of natural curls clustered in riotous abundance, shimmering like polished ebony in the moon's rays.

Her features were chiseled with a delicate, hellenic touch, and sweetly oval. Her thin nose was straight and short and small; and her red mouth told of unfathomable depths of emotion. Her wide, limpid eyes were like two blue patches of early June sky.

Her sleeves were short of her dimpled elbows, and her skirt reached scarce below her knees. Her graceful legs were bare, but her little feet were incased in neat, cow-hide moccasins with the hair on, laced and thonged about her round ankles.

A great measure of the girl's physical beauty had been transmitted by her mother, who had been a gentle blue-grass woman, of noted beauty and lineage, and who had in a fit of pique, married the picturesque trapper of the Cumberlands and buried herself in her unloved husband's wilderness existence.

Many pathetic tales were told of the great-hearted Tom-John Benson's patient struggle to make his wife happy; but the most beautiful woman the mountain people had ever seen had pined away and had gone to an early end.

Belle-Ann's father now worked for a lumber company, down on the Big Sandy. It was only now that he had saved sufficient money to send Belle-Ann to the mission school at Proctor, and so fulfil his wife's last request.

Belle-Ann had heard the news only three hours ago.

Jutt Orlick, returning from one of his mysterious, periodical visits abroad, had stopped to say that her father had sent word that he would come for her the following week and take her to the school at Proctor. And Orlick, whom the girl distrusted, had not departed without the usual flattery she always half resented.

As Belle-Ann sat on the horse-block her little heart was prey to many emotions, and she was well-nigh reduced to tears.

Impatient to tell the tidings, she was waiting for the boys, who had been away since early morning, and for the old man to come down from his lofty station. From the cabin door a vague, lank shape came toward her through the shadows.

"Yo', Slab!" she called.

"Heah me!" responded an old treble voice from the dappled path.

When Slab reached the horse-block, although he said nothing to the girl, he took a posture that indicated pointedly that he expected something of her; and she slipped from the horse-block and sat down on the big grapevine family bench a few feet distant.

Here a blind hound appeared and, feeling his way slowly and uncertainly, laid his old muzzle in the girl's lap and raised his sightless eyes to where he knew her face must be.

Then Slab took Belle-Ann's place on the witch-elm block and produced his beloved instrument—a cross between guitar and banjo, self-made of gut and a gourd. Just as he had done every fair night for years, he was ready to sing his favorite song.

He maintained vigorously that if he sat elsewhere than on the horse-block the banjo fell bewitched and refused to answer its master's fingers.

Tentatively, he plucked the strings; then launched abruptly into the song he had rendered for years—a sad and stirring melody, telling the early love-story that had been his before the days of emancipation:

"You ask what makes this darky weep,

Why he, like others, is not gay?

What makes the tears roll down his cheek,

From early morn till close of day?

My story, darkies, you shall hear,

For in my memory fresh it dwells,

'Twill cause you then to drop a tear

On the grave of my sweet Kitty Wells."

When the notes had died away Belle-Ann spoke up:

"Slab, ef pap er th' boys don't cum short now, I'll blow th' horn, I reckon."

"No—no, honey; doan yo' blow dat horn. Yo' let dat horn blow itse'f if it's got t' blow; but doan you blow it, honey. Yo' jist let pap be—he'll cum heah soon. 'Sides, ain't Slab heah wif yo', honey—ain't Slab heah?"

The old negro picked the strings with a preface to the second verse of "Kitty Wells," his condolence being entirely lost on Belle-Ann.

As he gathered a solemn breath to begin, the disconsolate girl, sitting on the vine-bench in the moonlight, raised a protesting hand and stopped him.

"Slab, ef I don't blow th' horn I jest got t' cry."

Slab settled the banjo jerkily between his long, thin legs and rolled indulgent eyes upon her.

"Now, looky heah, honey; yo' ain't gwine t' take on so, is you? Yo' oughter be tickled inter a keniption fit, yo' ought, 'stead of actin' up. Why, honey, jist give praise to de good Lord dat yo' at las' got de chanst! Yo'll cum back home powerful smart an' edicated, like my missus wus 'fore de war.

"An' when a li'le gal gits edication, she naturally gits purttier; an' if yo' gits purttier dan yo' is now—why, honey, yo'll shore cum back er angel! Now, doan be pesticatin'. Smile up, smile up! Gwine t' school ain't gwine t' kill nobudy."

As Slab concluded these cheering words, he poised his banjo again and as his lips parted the girl stopped him with a gesture.

"Slab, air thes my heart heah—right heah?" she queried, pressing a hand upon her breast.

"Sho', honey!" Slab assured her testily, striving to disguise his own impatience. "Now, tell me why yo' ax dat—jist tell Slab what fer yo' ax sich er sorry question noways?"

"Slab, I 'low my heart'll burst in two when I got t' go 'way!" she returned unsteadily, her black-fringed lids blinking bravely to keep back the mist that would creep across the violet of her eyes.

Slab gazed at her speechless, and heaved a hopeless sigh.

Tenderly, Belle-Ann lifted the blind hound's reluctant head from her lap, stepped nearer to the old negro, and held a profound, exacting finger close to his face.

"Slab, will yo' promise me somethin'? I kin trust yo'-all, Slab, ef yo' promise ag'inst the witch. Will yo' promise Belle-Ann somethin', Slab?" urged the girl, and her sweet bell-voice fell subdued and imploring.

Slab's mouth opened slowly and he hesitated. He would have died for Belle-Ann; but he was much opposed to dragging in the witch, because he feared to make his sacred witch a party to any contract that carried the slightest chance of rupture, and thereby hold him to eternal reprisal.

"Will yo' promise thes, Slab?" the girl urged solemnly.

"Air yo' sho' I kin do it, honey?" he probed, loose-lipped and with eyes that rolled wider.

"Sho' yo' kin!"

"Ez yo' say I kin do it, me promises," he assented dubiously.

"Cross yo' heart on th' witch-block!" she demanded.

He solemnized the pledge with a gnarled and bony hand, and the girl's eyes welled full and her throat pained.

"Slab, yo' must promise to be good to ol' Ben heah—feed em an' bed em reg'lar, but don't give em no cracklin's. An', Slab, yo' must promise to pick the flowers every Sabbath, jest like I alers do—yo' knows the ones well's I do—pertic'lar th' for-get-me-nots over yon by th' grind-stone. Yo' must pick 'em in th' mornin' early, Slab—every Sabbath—an' put 'em on Maw Lutts's grave. Will yo' fergit?"

A deep breath relieved Slab's tenseness as he agreed effusively.

"Lord, goodness! Yo' jist leave it t' Slab, honey! He do dat ebry single Sabbaf!"

"An', Slab, when hit gits cold an' th' leaves air gone an' th' flowers air all daid, yo' must pick th' geraniums outer th' boxes inside an' put 'em on Maw's grave—an' when hit gits powerful cold an' snows hard an' th' snow gits piled up on Maw's grave—would yo' care—would yo' go, Slab, an'—an'—an'—push hit off—an'——"

Her petitions thickened, tumbled together in her aching throat, and refused to cross her trembling lips.

She turned away quickly. At the log bench she sank slowly down with her black head in her arm. The heavy curls clustered around her face and caressed her neck. She sobbed in soft, whimpering outbursts.

The blind hound thrust his nose questioningly into her lap, licking her free hand, and caught the tears from her young heart warm upon his gray face. He whined aloud and reached for her wet cheek.

The old negro fumbled at random and did not speak.

Turning, he looked upward to where Cap Lutts sat in the flood of moonlight on the palm of rock; as silent and motionless as the inanimate pillar of granite under him. Slab's eyes wandered down to the trail and he spoke hastily to the distressed girl.

"Honey, heah cum de boys!"