Читать книгу South Moon Under - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Страница 3

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Night entered the clearing from the scrub. The low tangled growth of young oak and pine and palmetto fell suddenly black and silent, seeming to move closer in one shadowy spring. The man told himself there was nothing to fear. Yet as he walked towards his cabin, naked and new on the raw sand, darkness in this place seemed to him unfriendly.

He thought, “Time I get me a fence raised tomorrow, maybe ’twon’t seem so wild, like.”

Light still hung raggedly above the hammock west of the cleared acres. Here and there a palm shook its head against the faint orange of the sky, or the varnished small leaves of a live oak were for a moment luminous. There was an instant when the hammock reared back against the west; when the outline of each tree-top was distinct; when the clearing gathered about it the shreds of twilight. Then there was no longer scrub or clearing or hammock. Blackness obliterated them with a great velvet paw and crouched like a panther on the cabin doorstep.

The man tested the security of the split rails that formed a temporary pen about his hogs. The grey mule was hobbled and the scrub milch cow tethered. The chickens clacked and fluttered in the coop that must hold them until a proper roost was built. After the fence was raised, they could all run free. He stood by the coop a moment. His thoughts stirred uneasily in his mind, milling like the fowls. He could not be sure that he had done well to move his family here, across the river. He had not made a good living in the piney-woods. Only the knowledge of his native Florida wife and of his neighbours, her kin, had kept him to the few crops that would yield on that grey shifting land. His family of five was of an age now to help with the crops. He had exchanged pine-land for scrub, with a precarious fringe of hammock.

The Florida scrub was unique. The man Lantry recognised its quality as well as its remoteness. There was perhaps no similar region anywhere. It was a vast dry rectangular plateau, bounded on three sides by two rivers. The Ocklawaha, flowing towards the north, bounded it on the west. At the north-west corner of the rectangle the Ocklawaha turned sharply at right angles and flowed due east, joining, at the north-east corner, the St. John’s River which formed the eastern demarcation.

Within these deep watery lines the scrub stood aloof, uninhabited through its wider reaches. The growth repelled all human living. The soil was a tawny sand, from whose parched infertility there reared, indifferent to water, so dense a growth of scrub pine—the Southern spruce—that the effect of the massed thin trunks was of a limitless, canopied stockade. It seemed impenetrable, for a man-high growth of scrub oak, myrtle, sparkleberry and ti-ti filled the interstices. Wide areas, indeed, admitted of no human passage.

In places the pines grew more openly, the sunlight filtered through and patches of ground showed bald and lichened. The scrub was sparingly dotted with small lakes and springs. Around these grew a damp-loving hammock vegetation. Or a random patch of moisture produced, alien in the dryness, a fine stand of slash pine or long-leaf yellow. These were known as pine islands. To any one standing on a rise, they were visible from a great distance.

The scrub rolled towards its boundaries like a dark sea. It cast itself against the narrow beach of swamp and hammock that fringed the rivers. The two types of growth did not mingle, as though an ascetic race withdrew itself from a tropical one and refused to inter-breed. The moisture along the rivers gave a footing for the lush growth of cypress in the swamp; of live oak, magnolia, hickory, ash, bay, sweet gum and holly that made up the adjoining hammock.

The western edge of the scrub plateau was high. The Ocklawaha ran forty or fifty feet below, so that its scrub-side bank rose from the river swamp in a steep ledge. Here Lantry had come, clearing land in the narrow strip of hammock along the top of the ridge. The scrub adjoining in front of his cabin had been recently burned over by forest fire. The bush was young and low and he could see across it for a mile or two.

He had high hopes of the hammock soil. He had a deeper hope of what should pass for security; a sense of safety achieved through isolation. For ten miles, north or south, there were no other settlers. Behind him the river ran, deep-banked and swift of current. Before him lay the scrub. Miles on miles of scrub rolled impenetrable between his clearing and the rising sun and moon.

He picked up a gourd foaming with the night’s milk and moved to the house. Light from a fat-wood hearth fire flickered through the small-paned windows on three sides of the cabin. He lifted the wooden shoestring latch of the door. The clatter of cooking utensils on the clay hearth, bitten into by the snapping of the fire, was the only sound in the room. The woman, the three boys and two girls seemed frozen, waiting for his return, like a vixen and her litter in a den. They stirred to life as he closed the door and handed the gourd to his daughter Piety.

“Ol’ cow know she’s done been moved,” he commented. “Didn’t give no more’n the half o’ what she belongs to give.”

Relaxing, they looked at him where he stood massive across the door. The man Lantry was tall and bulky. He was red-brown, full-bearded. There was a stiffness about his beard and hair, so that the firelight darting across them gave the effect of sunlight on brown pine needles. His eyes were red-brown, deep-sunk like pools of cypress water. He made on strangers an instant impression of violence, but no one in the country could report him as anything but quiet.

The Lantry woman was small and fox-faced. She sat on her haunches before the fire, her long nose pointed over a black Dutch oven steaming with squirrel stew. Her scant streaked hair was twisted in a tight knob at the nape of her neck. Now and then she lifted a claw-like hand to smooth a wisp back of her ear. She turned her head to Lantry over her shoulder.

“You jest as good to put your ’baccy back in your pocket,” she said, “for supper’s that near done hit’ll be to spit out and waste.”

He continued to pare a shaving from his twist.

He said, “A short chaw’s twicet as good as a long un.”

The boys dragged straight wooden benches and split hickory chairs from against the walls to make seats along a rough deal table. The girls laid the table with a red cloth, white English crockery and heavy knives and spoons. They handed plates to their mother, which she filled with the stew, with soft-cooked grits and white flour biscuits. The yield of corn had been poor the previous summer across the river and they had long since been out of meal. They drank heartily of thick coffee, thrice boiled since morning. The sugar, of their own making, was brown and sticky but of good flavour.

There was little talk while they ate, but the meal was shot through with excitement. There had been cold lunches eaten at the clearing while they worked on the house, but this was the first family supper cooked on the new hearth. This was to be the first night of sleeping in the scrub. They were here at last to stay, yet the place seemed more unfamiliar than before. The accustomed dishes were strange. They had moved in actual distance no more than twenty-five miles. But they had crossed the river into the scrub. The clear dark stream divided one world from another.

Mrs. Lantry was the first to finish. She was insensitive to change, so long as the major matters of food and bed were not interfered with. She sat at the end of the table nearest the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap, until the others should be done with their plates. The boys had bolted their meal. They teetered back in their chairs, seeing who could lean the farthest. Young Thaddeus suddenly spilled backwards, and the older two, Zeke and Abner, were on him like terriers. The woman had no interest in their tumblings. Lantry laughed aloud, wiping the red mouth above his beard with the back of his hand.

The girl Piety said, “Them crazies!”

Her look darted from the wrestling boys to the father; to the mother. She was alert to their thoughts.

She said to her sister Martha, “Wouldn’t we ketch it, iffen we was to toss and mess that-a-way!”

The mother said, “ ’Tain’t mannerly, no-ways.”

“Sho, hit’s good for young uns,” Lantry said.

He rose from the table and moved his chair close to the hearth. He stirred the coals, adding a log of live oak, and spat into the fire. His wife scraped the plates, opening the door a crack to put out the scraps for the hound whimpering outside. The girls laid away the red cloth and washed the few dishes in a pan on the table.

The boys threw themselves on the rough pine floor before the hearth, watching the flames. The girl Piety went to the east window and pressed her forehead against the pane. She stood some time, looking out into the blackness of the late winter night.

Lantry asked, “What you studyin’, Py-tee?”

“Nothin’. Lookin’ to see is there ary thing to study.”

“You look out. You might r’aly see you somethin’.”

Mrs. Lantry said, “She wouldn’t keer no-ways. She’s a perfeckly cur’ous young un.”

Young Thaddeus spoke eagerly.

“Pa, what-all you reckon’s here in the scrub? Varmints and snakeses and sich?”

The man looked long into the fire before he spoke. His red-brown beard shone. Thoughts beyond the immediate question rippled across the deep pools of his eyes. Piety watched him closely, her eyes small and bright. He answered slowly.

“I dunno. I dunno what-all’s here. The same as on ’tother side o’ the river, is what I been tole. B’ar, likely, same as there. Cattymounts and lynxes and wild cats. Ol’ man Wilson, your daddy,” he nodded at his wife, “done tole me there was oncet hundreds o’ wolves, quare-lookin’ and pieded.”

The boys fidgeted in delight.

The woman said with some animation, “I mind me o’ him tellin’ all that. Him and the ol’ timers say there were a day when ’twa’n’t safe to dress a beef in the woods and tote it home alone.”

Abner said belligerently, “They ain’t no wolves now. Leastways they ain’t none in the piney-woods yonder.”

Lantry nodded. “That’s it. Ol’ man Wilson said one day the wolves was here, hundreds. The next day they was gone. Jest plumb gone. No man kin say where they goed. They mought o’ died o’ some sort o’ plague. Folkses mought o’ got too thick for ’em here in Floridy and they mought o’ takened out one night and goed off to Texas.”

He stroked his beard.

“They’s mighty leetle here to harm a man.”

There was a defiance in his voice. There was something underneath what he said, Piety thought, like a trout thrashing around under what seemed still water.

He said, “A panther kin worry a man. I wouldn’t want no panther trailin’ me nor trackin’ me. But they ain’t attackded much more’n young uns, when it comes to humans. I ain’t much afeerd of a b’ar. A wild hog’s bad, now, and rattlesnakes.”

He was talking aloud to himself. He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room, his chin sunk in his beard, his hands behind his back. His voice was heavy in the room, like thunder.

“The worst things I knows of is rattlesnakes and some kinds o’ people. And a rattlesnake minds his own matters if he ain’t bothered. A man’s got a right to kill ary thing, snake or man, comes messin’ up with him.”

Piety thought, “He’s afeerd o’ somethin’. Somebody interferin’.”

It chilled her, that Lantry was afraid.

Mrs. Lantry said, “I’d orter be piecin’. You gals had orter be piecin’.” She said after a moment, “I’m too wore out, movin’ over and all, for piecin’.”

The family was silent. Thought of the change was a common holding. Lantry and the woman and the boys and girls drew close to one thought. It was a smouldering fire among them. Now and then a fresh blaze flamed into speech. Each one fed a few words to the fire.

Zeke said, “I reckon ever’thing’s a mite different.”

Abner said, “Seems to me they’s cat-squirrels this side o’ the river, ’stead o’ fox-squirrels.”

“You kin lay to it, they’s a reason,” Lantry said. “You jest don’t know the reason yit.”

Mrs. Lantry said, “You-all kin set up if you’re a mind to. I’m fixin’ to git into the bed. I be wore out.”

She let down her streaked thin hair and braided it over her sharp shoulders. Her nose was peaked between the braids.

Abner said in a low voice, “Ma looks somethin’ like a varmint with her hair that-a-way.”

Zeke and Thaddeus guffawed. The woman gathered a swift vixenish energy to slap the boy across the face.

“You be mannerly, you!”

Lantry frowned.

“You boys turn your backs now while the girls gits undressed.”

Piety and Martha took off their garments as far as cotton undershifts; slipped on muslin gowns with long sleeves and high necks; plaited their soft young hair like their mother’s. Mrs. Lantry undressed.

“Ary one want to wash their feet?”

The day’s work had been cleanly. Feet were not soiled. Mrs. Lantry padded about on bare soles with a hand basin of warm water from the black iron kettle on the hearth. Each took a turn at washing face and hands with the coarse washrag. Lantry and the boys undressed as far as their undersuits; stretched their toes, cramped from heavy home-made cowhide boots, before the fire. Lantry and his wife went into the adjoining room and between quilts into a large pine bed. The girls followed into the same room, taking a smaller bed at the other end. The boys were left, three to the one bed, in the main room of the cabin. They called luxuriously to their sisters, thrashing their cold feet under the covers.

“Py-tee! Marthy! We got the farr! You-all never figgered on the farr!”

Mrs. Lantry called wearily, “You boys shut your mouths now. The girls is warm as you.”

The fire crackled. The light played jerkily over the high new rafters. The Lantrys were warm under thick hand-pieced quilts. Mrs. Lantry snored thinly, like a cat. There was no other sound but the sputtering fat-wood.

In the night Lantry awakened with a start. The chickens were cackling in alarm. The hound, huddled under the doorstep, was rumbling. The man threw on his jacket, examined his 11-gauge muzzle-loader and went out of the cabin into the yard. The hound crouched close at his heels. The chickens quieted as he came to the coop. The night was chill and black. He could see nothing. He walked around the house, wishing that he had brought a fat-wood splinter torch. The hound reared against him, licking his hand. Whatever the intruder, it was of little consequence. He felt his way to the front stoop. A small figure in a long white gown stood there.

“That you, Py-tee?” He knew in the night that it was she. “The night airs’ll do for you, child.”

“I wanted to see what-all were stirrin’ out here.”

She walked down from the stoop, her bare feet white against the sand. She stood by him, close under his shoulder, her arms crossed over her thin breast, shivering. They listened together.

“You wa’n’t afeerd to foller me, Py-tee?”

“I wa’n’t no-ways afeerd.”

As they stood, the blackness dissolved. The sky was a mass of stars, close and bright. The starlight spread towards the earth, so that as they watched, the chicken coop was visible. The thick line of hammock behind the clearing moved in sight. Stars clustered about the chimney-top like silver bees in swarm.

The girl said, “The longer you studies, the more you kin see in the dark, like.”

He turned her ahead of him into the house.

“ ’Twa’n’t nothin’ out here but a varmint. A ’possum or sich arter the chicks. They needs a roost.”

The man looked at the straight figure, diminutive in the long gown.

He said softly, “Leetle ol’ scrawny cur’ous young un.”

Over his shoulder, closing the door, the cabin stood in the clearing like a house on an island. He thought that he heard the river running below the ledge. The river was a wall for his back. In front of the clearing the scrub rolled in, lapping at the edges of the bare sand like a vast sea.