3stalwarts (155 page)

The high water had not flooded over the berms this year. Even if it came now, it was evident that the Irish would dig through by fall.

Jerry knocked again.

The door opened silently, and Mrs. Peck confronted him. She looked at him closely past the sides of her hooked nose. A girlish dress hung loosely from her old bent shoulders.

“Well!” Her voice was hoarse. “It’s the wandering husband come back to home.”

“Mrs. Peck?”

“You’ve seen me before, ain’t you?” Suddenly she chuckled. “But not to look like this, I guess.” She put an effort at coquetry into her words. “Step inside if you want to see me.”

She drew the door wide open and stood aside for him. He passed through a dim pantry into a kitchen. Behind him her stick scraped across the boards. “There’s a chair, young man. Set down.”

Muttering to herself, she bent slowly backward into a rocker. A sigh escaped her. She pushed back her gorgeous yellow hair to show thin grey bristles underneath, and wiped aside some sweat with a hard-veined hand.

On the corner of the table stood a bottle and a glass.

“Have a little joyful?” she suggested.

“No, thanks.”

“Well, I will then, if you’ll pardon me.”

The bottle neck knocked against the tumbler rim. She smacked her lips, and her old teeth started niddering. As she lifted her chin to drink, Jerry saw her neck in the shawl, thin, weazened, corded like an old hen-turkey’s.

He said, “I just dropped in to tell you I’d like to pay for the cabin for three months’ advance.”

“That’s all right with me.”

She peered at him sharply.

“Going to be away a spell?”

“That long, maybe,” Jerry said stiffly.

“I’m just a curious old woman. People say I’m evilly inclined. I drink too much.” She chuckled. “But I was an honest woman up to now. Tisn’t every woman was honest to a tanner for a husband. What are you up to?”

“There’s work out at Irondequot.”

“Thought of taking her along?”

“I don’t know what it’s like out there.”

“Well, I don’t, either.”

She bent her head to her glass, then lifted her chin again to swallow. The illusion of the drinking old hen-turkey was renewed.

“Told your wife about it?”

Jerry said, “If you’re willing, I might as well pay you now.”

“You don’t like to listen to an old woman. Nobody does that’s young. I’m not so old, my boy. I know a thing or two. I’m not so old. Not by a half so old.” She chuckled. In the midst of the pleasant kitchen, Jerry thought of her there alone, growing gradually insensible— chuckling to herself.

He pulled the money from his pocket.

“I see that you ain’t told her. Well, you’d better. She was ailing all through January. There! Bite on that if you won’t have my whiskey.”

“What do you mean?”

She grinned.

“Well, she’s a healthy girl. And you came home three days in January from your gallivanting. It looks to me it’d happened once already.”

Jerry stared at her.

She winked one thin, lashless eyelid.

“Maybe you want to reconsider now?”

“I can’t take her along.”

“Oh no.”

She watched him slyly.

“I’ll look after her. She’s all right with me, young gallanter. You step off.”

Her skinny hand at last accepted his money. He thought suddenly that she would wait, listen and wait, until she was sure she was alone before she hid it. People said she never banked her money.

He went quickly out.

It had grown darker in the yard. He stopped for a moment. He had not heard a thing. After waiting awhile he heard a wagon coming along the road. His eyes dimly made out a white horse. He thought, “It’s not my business,” and went on to the cabin. Mary had lit a lamp there. He entered. He had business there.

She had put Polly into her cradle and was shoving it back in its dark corner. The child was already sound asleep. Jerry looked down over Mary’s shoulder at the blond, curled knot of hair.

“Mary.”

“Shh! Don’t talk so loud.”

He waited till they were both seated by the hearth.

“Mary, how have you been?”

“Finely, thanks.”

“Mary, don’t talk that way.”

Her eyes met his accusingly.

“Mrs. Peck’s been talking.”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

But his voice was contrite.

“I didn’t know you wished to know.”

“Mary!”

She softened to him.

“Jerry, I’m a bad, cross woman. I guess it just gets me so. You mustn’t mind.”

She said again, “Being without her husband makes a woman strange maybe.”

After another time she said, “I’m grateful to you, Jerry. I love you, for a fact.”

Then she said, almost laughing at them both, “I guess you can tell me now, Jerry. You needn’t look at your boots no longer.”

His face reddened.

“Yes,” said Mary. “You have got to go off again for a long spell. I’ll be good.”

He nodded once more; but he said, “Mary, you seem so strange from what you used to be.”

“I guess we both are.”

“You’ve changed to me.”

Her level forehead puckered slightly. When she looked up her eyes were bright with honesty.

“Jerry, I don’t believe it. But yet, being so much alone hurts a pride in me. I brighten me all up when you’re to come back. But all the time I’ve got it working in me to make you stay outside. As if I was a vengeful person, though I’m not truly so.”

“I don’t see.”

“I guess we’re different that way.”

“I thought this cabin would be like what you wanted. I’d think after two years it would seem like yours. You said you wanted a little place.”

“Yes, I did. But I saw us both in it, Jerry.”

“Here we are.” He laughed a little. “And yet I feel outside of there.” His eyes were on the door.

“Yes. You often seem so to me. Even when you’ve held to me, I see your thoughts outside of there.”

“I don’t plan it so.”

They looked at each other.

Again, with the firelight across her eyes, Jerry caught the ripple of the Hudson River. He heard the dock sounds. He saw her head against the Greenbush bank, all alone among those other redempti oners.

“Mary,” he said.

“Yes, Jerry.”

“Maybe this is the last time I’ve got to go away from you. The very last. Let’s pretend so. Let’s us pretend we are beginning right at the beginning. The way it was in Albany and this time is like the time we went along the road. When Issachar Bennet picked us up. Do you recall him?”

She said, seriously, “Yes. I’ll try. But then we were together. I think it’s being left so much alone this second time.”

As he watched her eyes he felt as if he saw a mantle closing down in them. He felt himself grow thin. He had no strength. There was a time in Uniontown when he put bacon in the smokehouse and the door blew shut behind him, enclosing him in fearful darkness. He beat upon the door with fists. They were so feeble against the heavy boards that no one heard him. It took him a long time to notice the smoke-hole. It made a spot of light upon the floor. When his family finally discovered him, he was sitting in that spot of light.

“I’ve got to leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll make your travel dinner now,” said Mary.

He watched her set about the work; efficient, quick, she made good lunches. In the corner of the cabin he noticed a new coverlet that she was weaving.

“That?” she said in answer. “Oh, I have to have something to do. It’s easing to me, weaving is.”

He drew a kind of comfort from her voice. He did not know how, nor see why. He felt himself like the little boy hammering at the smokehouse door. They spent the night in quiet.

Just at dawn they rose together and Jerry dressed.

It was a fine clear sunrise. Already the Irish were at work across the river; he could see them clearly, armpit deep in the cold, watery muck. The skin on one’s bare buttocks was silver as a fish’s.

“Good-bye.” Her kiss was cool. He could tell by her eyes that she had not slept.

“Good-bye, Jerry.”

“Hye! Hello there, young man.”

Jerry looked up. He was a mile or so out of Lyons Village, and the time was a little before noon.

He saw a bolster wagon, hooded, coming along behind four fine fat mares. They looked fresh and sleek, in spite of the hot sun, and their trace chains made a jingling. The driver who had hailed him was a plain-faced fellow; but he had a ringing voice.

“Morning,” Jerry said.

The man drew up his team.

“You seem to be passing my way, young man. Would you ride?”

“Surely,” Jerry grinned.

“Stand on, then. I’m aiming to get on a good piece before sundown.” As Jerry jumped over the wheel and sat on the broad seat, the driver whistled to his mares. Out in front of Jerry’s feet their backs looked fat as suet puddings. They had fancy harness, with dyed feather tufts and red horsehair tassels. He took another look at the driver.

“Yes, sir,” he turned on Jerry suddenly. “I’m calculated a medium kind of a man— height, heft, and coloring. Meet me, mister— Merwin Gandy.”

When he talked his mouth shaped out each word with extraordinary largeness. Jerry could see his teeth, and his tongue, and if he chose he thought he might have looked all the way down to hardpan.

“Jerry Fowler, eh?” continued Mr. Gandy. “Fowler’s a good name. Shocks up well with Gandy.” He arched a judicious spit between the off mare’s legs. “You don’t meet up with them too often. Where are you heading? Me, I’m out for beyond Palmyra. Got my order four days back. Rounded up four beeves, killed and slaughtered, peeled and loaded them, and dug right out. I come from Oaks Old-Stand, that’s in Vienna township. Greatest beeving meadows in this country. Fat? There ain’t no beeves in these United States a man can sink an arm in farther than our cattle. Gandy beeves. I’m not a boasting man, myself, but look along those mares. There ain’t one single straight line in the four of them. By God, they even bend their traces. That means horseflesh, young man. Same way with my hogs. You ought to see my hogs. That’s why I get prime prices. Folks call me talkative, but that ain’t so. Git, Lizabella. (Named for my first daughter— a pretty mare, but devilish when she smells a stallion.) Yes, we run to stoutness as a family, barring me. I’m kind of medium only. But you’ve got to leave off somewhere. Even the Lord, He had to borrow a rib, by God ! Where did you say that you was headed?”

They were rolling along at a brisk trot, and a bit of lather was rubbed out between the plump thighs of the wheel mares. The sweat smelled fat and strong.

“That’s what I would call coincidental. Me, a medium man with four stout mares, and you a youngish fellow, pretty tall. Now, if that ain’t the strangest thing. Here, us two in this wide world; why should we set out that way and meet up at this very place? Why should I say, neighborly inclined (back in Vienna township they call a Gandy neighborly) , why should I say, ‘Stand on’, to you? Because you was a likely-looking youngster? No, that ain’t what it is. The whole thing’s a coincidence. That’s what the world turns on, seems as how. I told my wife that, when she announced me she was cornered. She said I was a twig. ‘Merwin Gandy, if you ain’t a twig!’ she says. And I told her that was what she said to me the morning after she was brided. Mostly in Vienna township womenfolks will call all Gandys twigs. Not that I hold with nigger-pipple, bundling boys with girls, or topsy-turvy notions. I’m a churchman, deacon, too, and just a pure and simple man.”

Jerry had been brooding all along the road, but now he could not help but smile. He asked, “Have you got quite a family, Mr. Gandy?”

Gandy arched another spit; under his beard his cheeks collapsed like pricked balloons. He wiped his mouth with his medium hand.

“My old girl piles them up on me for fair. Four girls, at this date instant, three boys, and something in the wind.”

Jerry said, “I’m not much of a family man myself. I’ve got one girl; but my wife is expecting something soon.”

“The month?” demanded Merwin Gandy.

“I’d put it down as sometime in October.”

“October!” Gandy bugled. “Didn’t I say coincidence? I ask you. My wife’s planning on her bedding for October! By God, Fowler, let me shake your hand. All along, since you got on this wagon, I’ve been thinking. ‘This here is coincidence.’ Most men would think of it as offering a lad a lift. But not me. No, not Merwin Gandy. Come on here, Anna May! (Named for my aunt of the same name.) Well, sir. There’s the coincidence complete. I wonder what it means for us. You here, me there. At Palmyra, now, I set you down. You here, me there. Maybe we’ll never see again or hear of hide nor hair of one another. That’s part of the coincidence. I get to thinking of these things and wonder what there’s into it. Now what do you think of this canal, hey?”

“It seems all right to me.”

Gandy drew a breath and launched himself. The trace chains jingled through his voice. “It is. But it is changing this whole land. Look at Lyons-springing up like fountain water. We’re heading for Palmyra— she’s growing stout. Time was when these-here lands was pretty well wooded. My Grampa used to carry a shotgun when he herded to Niagara and take along a dozen boys. For why? Because the Doanes and Tomblesons was scouting out the cattle money. Well, they’re gone. Roads did it, and the canal that’s coming is going to do it more. We used to see land-clearer’s smoke all round of us. They’ve moved. The wood lots have a shape now. Why, you’d hardly see a log house round Oaks Old-Stand now. And them along this road are mostly shingled. Trappers they have moved out westward. Most of them have even left the Purchase, as I hear tell. You’d come upon their shanties handy to most every beaverfly. But now they’ve fallen in. I know just one. It sets a way off’n this identical road. A feller, name of Lager, a most curious old coot, he used to trap it then. There wasn’t any road— this-here is new, you see. Lager’s logs, we called it. I wouldn’t house a Chester boar in such a place myself. But he hid out there. It’s got a butternut down in the ditch along the road. Not far from where you’re going, too. He moved out when he seen Geddes coming through the first time. Said the woods had smelled of men too strong for foxes. There’s coincidence again. Just last week I told a man about it. He preached in our meetinghouse. We fixed the price. He told me he made two deliveries. A dollar for a plain good sermon, and fifty cents was extra for a spray of hell-fire. Well, I paid him and he earned it. He had each last one of us sweating there for fair, and when you make a Gandy sweat, you’re getting somewhere. Well, I told him what I have been telling you; and the queer thing was I ended up the same way.”