Читать книгу The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields - Sarah Bell Hackley - Страница 6

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"Awake, awake my lyre, and tell thy silent master's humble tale."

"Dock and me went out this mornin' and scraped up about three tablespoonfuls o' frost offen that plank a layin' right thar by the fence,—yes, sir, three tablespoonfuls, nigh about. Ef we don't watch, some o' our terbaccer's a goin' to git ketched a standin'. Frost a holdin' off ontel the last o' September hain't seasonable. What you thenk about hit, Mr. Brock?"

The pale blue eyes, half-hidden by the bushy red side-burns that floated wildly out on either side of Mr. Doggett's face, like sunburnt bunches of broom sedge blown in a high wind, included all his audience with a comprehensive beam of agreeability. Finally these pleasant eyes rested, in the enforced deference due the most prosperous guest, on the thick-set man with the hog-like neck, and the enormous mole, that stood, sentinel-like beside the left nostril of his rose-colored, aquiline nose.

For reasons domestic and infantile, a portion of the Doggetts' Sunday's company,—Susie Dutton and Hattie Leeds, the two daughters, and Lem and Jim, the two married sons, the four spouses and the eight babes, had taken a reluctant mid-afternoon departure.

The unfettered guests, Mr. Nathan Lindsay, Gran'dad Doggett, who was staying with his daughter, Lindy Gumm, over on the River,—and Mr. Galvin Brock (he of the mole and the nose) who had been young Callie Doggett's second husband, lingered.

Mr. Lindsay, who held himself a step above the Doggetts, but was not averse to a Sunday's visit to that hospitable household, had suggested that it was warmer outdoors than in the house. The three guests, with their host and his youngest son, sat in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon's sunshine, at the woodpile on the west side of the house.

Mr. Brock's usual manner of answering a question was by an assenting or dissenting grunt. This time, however, his mouth left its grim line an instant.

"If it keeps as dry as it is now," he observed, "nobody's tobaccer will see a killin' frost unhoused."

During the Civil War, Gran'dad Doggett, on account of what he called "a leetle shootin' scrape, but nothin' criminal," had brought his young family from Bell County, in the Kentucky Mountains, to the Blue Grass. Before this flitting of necessity, he had been a Justice of the Peace, which fact, ever afterward caused him to affect an air of conscious superiority toward his son.

"More than that, Ephriam," he remarked, corroborating Mr. Brock's observation, "more than that, frost don't never kill in the dark o' the moon. I'd 'a' thought in the thirty year you've been a raisin' terbaccer, you'd 'a' learned that!"

"That's right, old man, yes, sir"—Mr. Doggett's slow drawl was affable in the extreme—"that's jest what I told the boys. A body hain't no use to cross a bridge afore they gits to hit! Jim now, he wuz might' night' wilted down along in July, afeerd the best part o' his crop wuz a Frenchin', but hit growed off all right, and now hit's the best terbaccer he's got! I'm afeerd he'll have too much fer his barn and he'll want to put some in mine.

"I says to Jim and Mr. Castle last week, 'I hain't a aimin' to let you scrouge up and burn up my terbaccer.' Although a heap o' men, when they are a leetle short o' room, they'll push up the sticks together, hit's a poor way! Terbaccer'll rot, ef you crowd hit, ever' time. The rot'll start up whar the stem jines the stalk, and hit'll drap off ef you don't watch.

"Yes, sir, Jim's got a fine crop. Ef he could save ever' leaf, he'd have two thousand pounds to the acre, jest about. Some o' this farm's mighty tired, but I 'low they hain't no sech land as them ten acres in the world fer richness!

"Although when I wuz in town on a Court day last—Monday wuz a week—a Texas feller wuz a tellin' about how rich the ground is thar. He says the crops thar is astoundin', the dirt is so rich; he says he raised one punkin'—jest an ordinary sized one too, fer Texas,—and his old sow, she made a bed in hit fer her peegs! Yes, sir!"

Mrs. Doggett, a large, spare, and comely woman, with high cheek bones and olive skin, lifted the battered zinc buckets she was filling with chips.

"Well, Eph," she vouchsafed, "ef that's the truth, I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas. Ef anybody's any worse needin' a betterin' o' their condition than us, I dunno who ner what hit is! Look at the house we have to live in, will you, front and back! It'd be mighty late when Mr. Castle'd durst offer to put you in sech a house, wouldn't hit, Mr. Brock? He knows better. He couldn't put hit off on none his terbaccer men but Eph!"

The house, had it been a thing of feeling, would have shrunk before the scrutiny of the five pairs of eyes lifted to it, so disreputable was its aspect. Panes were dropping from the time and weather-gnawed sash in the windows of the two rooms below; rags stopped the holes in the one window above that had a sash in it, and the lank old pine leaning over the stone-paved walk that led to the little hingeless gate assisted a wide board to keep the wind out of the other window.

"Seems to me, Ephriam, Castle ort to pervide a better house fer ye, er make out to fix up this un," quavered the old man.

"He ort now, he ort," assented his son, "though he's been a promisin'—"

"Promisin'll be all!" broke in Mrs. Doggett. "He's never kept nary promise yit, about the house, ner nothin' else! But Eph, he'll jest stay here and put in another three years a grubbin' canes and choppin' roots—a clearin' up a thicket, and then git jest half the terbaccer he raises on hit, like ever'body else does on ready-cleared land!"

"The old lady, she's a poppin' hit to me and Mr. Castle, hain't she?" Mr. Doggett smiled indulgently in the direction of Mrs. Doggett as she went across the rotting planks that served for a back porch floor, with her chips. "Although," he went on, "hit's might' night' the truth. Mr. Castle is mighty close.

"'Doggett,' he says, 'don't bring in nothin' but one cow and a horse er two on me to pastur fer you,' and that's the way he talks, and me a lookin' after his mar's and colts, and fixin' up his water-gaps, and all sech like work outside the terbaccer crop, all the time, both afore and sence he tuck to livin' in town.

"I says to him one day—I says, 'Mr. Castle, here you are a gittin' rich offen our work, able to have a conquick mansion, with burssels cyarpetin', and a brick hin-house, and me and the boys is a workin' our finger nails off, and in the house I have to live in I can't hardly find a dry place to hang my hoe!' (And hit's the truth, yes, sir, though Mr. Castle says sence terbaccer is so low, he has to make a livin' on his other investments.) Mr. Castle, he never said nothin', jest tuck up my hoe and went to lookin' at hit,—my old hoe thar I've used in the terbaccer fer twenty-five year."

Mr. Doggett pointed to where against the side of the patched weather-boarding hung a hand-made hoe, shining like polished silver, its hickory handle worn to the hard glossiness of Japanese lacquer.

"I says, 'Mr. Castle, ef that hoe could talk, hit'd tell o' enough sweat to drownd a elephant in, and o' enough warrysome back-aches, and arm j'int aches, and gineral all-over aches to keep one them thar rest cyores Joey wuz a readin' about, a runnin' at full blast fer all time to come. Yes, sir, hit could! And, although a body has a heap to be thankful fer anyhow, hit's mighty little I've got to show fer all that sweat and them aches.'

"Mr. Castle looked at me mighty hard; then he says, 'Doggett, you've had a livin'.' 'Yes, sir,' I says, 'but Mr. Castle, I've had to git out and sometimes work fer other people!'"

"'Pears like to me, Ephriam, takin' your words fer what they're wuth, movin'd be a good thing fer ye," suggested Gran'dad at this moment.

"No, sir, I hain't a needin' none them way-off States," Mr. Doggett shook his head emphatically: "thar's too many quair creeters in 'em fer me. That feller Fletch Keerby I had a workin' fer me last spreng, him and his brother Larkin, they lived out in Texas fer a while, and Fletch he said one day they wuz goin' 'long together sommers, and on the way they ketcht sight o' a beeg snake. Hit wuz fifteen foot long and beeg as a post, and hit wuz layin' plumb acrost the road a sunnin'! Hit wuz one them buoy instructors.

"Keerby, he told me he says, 'Larkin, ef a feller had a kag o' damanite, he'd be all right, but we hain't got hit, so what can we do? Hit won't do to shoot him; I'm afeerd to, because ef we don't git him, he'll git us!' Yes, sir, that's what he said. And Larkin he went and got a club and slipped up on the snake and hit him back o' the head about eight inches. Yes, sir! And that snake jest swapped eends! But he wuz dead, yes, sir, he wuz dead. He wuz a instructor, a buoy instructor!"

"Well, Ephriam," Gran'dad slapped the new gray jeans that covered his thin legs, with a prolonged cackle of derisive mirth, "you wouldn't be no fust rate hand to kerry on a funeral—you'd tickle the ondertaker. They don't have none them buoys in Texas. They don't live nowhars but in Africy!"

Mr. Doggett rubbed his narrow forehead reflectively, ignoring the correction.

"Whar is hit them mare-maids lives, er is hit marry-maids? I fergit the name. Keerby, he said he seed a pair o' 'em onct—in Floridy Gulf hit must 'a' been. He said they had a woman head and a fish body hitched onto hit somehow, and ever' scale on the fish part wuz as beeg as a sasser, and a shinin' like the sun! He said he never looked at 'em perticular clos, considerin' they wuzn't dressed fer company ner cold weather, but they wuz ondoubtedly the purtiest creeters a body ever seed!"

"Did Keerby mention anytheng that wuz dressed fer winter out thar?" asked Gran'dad with a covert wink at Mr. Brock.

"Well, Keerby, he said they wuz b'ars—them kind that'll hug like a courtin' feller, and their meat's as sweet as a courtin' feller's tongue. Keerby says you can p'intedly eat all the b'ar's fat you can git around ef you pepper and salt hit right good, and instid o' sickenin' you, hit'll fatten you."

"Keerby'll never see as much b'ar's fat ner nothin' else as he can git around!" jeered Gran'dad.

"I'm afeerd he won't," agreed Mr. Doggett. "I'd 'a' kept him longer, he had sech a good sleight at turnin' off work,—done more'n three thirds o' the feedin' ginerally, and ever'theng else accordin'—but the old lady 'lowed she wuzn't goin' to be et out o' house and home ef I wuz. Onct he et so long I thought I'd have to hitch up the team and pull him away from the table."

Dock, the twelve-year-old, small and scrawny, but tough as a hickory withe, who had up to this time lain stretched on his front by a hollow log, skilfully executing with his barlow a colony of ants as fast as they crawled from the rotting section of buckeye, gave a wicked glance at the slender and hollow-cheeked man of fifty sitting near him.

"Mr. Lindsay, he ort to have some o' that b'ar's fat Keerby wuz a tellin' about to make him sortie plump up and look purty to Miss Lucy."

A slow red crept into Mr. Lindsay's sensitive face.

"I don't reckon I need any bear's fat yit, Dock," his voice was low and gentle: "My mother always told me whatever I done, never to starve a woman, and I ain't ready to starve one yit, ef I could git one to have me."

Mrs. Doggett who had come out again with her improvised chip baskets, turned toward him, her black eyes sparkling mischievously.

"Now Mr. Lindsay, ef I wuz a single man like you, that'd been to Texas and Missoury, and seed all over the country you might say,—a man that knows how to keep on the good side o' women folks—a not a trackin' in mud no time, ner never spittin' on the hearth, and always washin' his feet at night in plowin'-time—I'd be plumb ashamed to say I couldn't git no woman to have me!

"Been here in this neighborhood might' night' six year, too, and hain't never said nary word yit as anybody's ever heerd tell of, to keep Miss Lucy Jeemes from settin' thar always with her pa and Miss Nancy! I thenk hit's time he wuz doin' a little courtin' in that direction, don't you, Mr. Brock?"

The best beginning of a man's enmity is the suspicion that another man has a better chance of the regard of a woman he has selected for his own, and though Mr. Brock had sat during Mrs. Doggett's speech with stern inscrutable face that conveyed no hint of his feelings, his heart beat with angry tumult, and within its inmost chamber was born a lusty beginning of hatred toward the pale man sitting on the beech log.

Callie had been in her grave only six weeks, but when a man has been twice married, and twice bereft, may he not, after six weeks, begin to consider a third partner with propriety, if the consideration is done in secret? And after the convenient pattern set by other widowers, Mr. Brock had selected a neighbor, the kind-faced woman who had been a ministering angel at the death beds of both his wives, for that third partner. His pale grey eyes gave their sidewise glance at Mr. Lindsay. The warm color on that gentleman's cheek irritated him strangely; he rose precipitately, and with a mumbled word of farewell, took his departure.

"Mr. Brock got in a mighty hurry all to onct," said Mr. Doggett, gazing in some wonderment after the departing figure: "I can't thenk what tuck him off so suddent."

After the departure of Mr. Lindsay and Gran'dad, a few minutes later, Mr. Doggett, with a pleasing idea in his head, strolled out to the barn-yard, where Mrs. Doggett milked the red muley.

"Ann," he remarked, "I been a thenkin' about Mr. Lindsay a not havin' no settled home, ner no nigh kin to take keer o' him, ef he ever wuz to git down sick. Hit would be a sorter nice theng fer him and Miss Lucy Jeemes to marry now, wouldn't hit?"

Mrs. Doggett looked uncertain.

"Maybe Miss Lucy wouldn't marry him, Eph," she advanced. "Sometimes I thenk she's one o' them women that wouldn't marry any man."

Mr. Doggett took a few steps out of range of the milker.

"Don't you fool yourself, Ann," he chuckled, "thar's jest one woman in the world that won't marry!"

"Who is she?" Mrs. Doggett asked curiously.

"She's a dead woman!" responded Mr. Doggett.

"Aw, shet up, Eph!" Mrs. Doggett spoke with some acerbity. "You jest go git me some stovewood, ef you want any supper tonight!"