3stalwarts (157 page)

For an instant he stood facing the warped boards, his ears alert. He could hear no breathing over his own. He went slowly to the hearth and looked down. Her eyes were closed. The arched brows were smooth and the thick, straight lashes brushed the cheeks. Her skin was without red; but it had a velvety texture in the firelight. Seen in sleep her face was almost like a child’s. He glanced at the jar in his hand for a moment, distastefully, then looked back at her.

Her eyes were open.

Her eyes were black, like her hair, with a faint lustre, very large. As she looked at his embarrassed face, a little painful smile touched her mouth with a hint of coquetry. Then as she tried to move her head, her lower lip snapped in against her teeth, and Jerry heard her indrawn breath.

He said, kneeling down beside her, “I’m going to rub your back with salve. It’s going to ease a lot. Do you mind?”

She smiled a little.

He spread the blanket on the hearth in double thickness. Then as carefully as he could he lifted her. His hands could feel the pain in her body. But she was wordless, like some small hurt animal. He put her down upon the blanket on her face, and awkwardly bent over her.

She said, “My dress is laced in front.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper. He helped her onto her side, and her eyes looked up at him. They were looking into his with a total absence of abashment.

“I don’t mind.”

She said it almost bubblingly, as if she found drollery even in pain.

His fingers seemed stiff with large blunt ends, and their very carefulness was clumsy. She lay motionless under his touch, and sick though she was, her body gave him a sense of life. She was young, but she was no child. She was not beautiful by the points that he judged beauty by, but her duskiness was lovely. He kept his eyes resolutely on his hands, but in spite of him his sight would stray.

At last he got the dress unlaced and rolled her forward on her face. She shivered as he drew the dress back from her shoulders, worked her arms out of the sleeves and bared her slim back.

“Who did this to you?”

She did not answer; she had laid her cheek against the blanket. He felt the nerves spring under the skin as he spread on the salve. It reeked strongly in the heat, but it sank in as if the skin were hungry for it, and he thought under his hand he could feel the welts lie down.

She made no sound till he was done; but after a while her lids closed over her eyes, and she sighed.

“It makes me feel so much easier, mister.”

“My name’s Jerry Fowler.”

She was silent for a minute; then she said, “Mine’s Norah Sharon.”

“Who did this?” he asked again.

“I’m very grateful.” Her voice was low, upon the edge of drowsing.

He gave up the question.

She asked after a while, “Who’s the old man that was here and gave me brandy?”

“His name’s Issachar Bennet. He’s gone for milk and things. So you can eat.”

“I’d like to drink a little milk.”

“That’s fine. Feeling any better?”

“Lots better.”

“Do you want me to move you back?”

“No, it’s nice here.”

“Is there anything I could do to make you feel better?”

“If you could find a comb I’d like my hair combed.”

He had a carved bone comb of his own in his pocket and he fished it out. She was like a cat under the touch of it. Her head moved imperceptibly to meet a stroke in some spot that she cherished. It made her drowsy. By the time Jerry had untangled the ends and tied the rope with a thread, she was fast asleep.

He sat still, letting the firelight wash over her against his knees, hearing his own heart beating, watching her quiet sleep. He could not keep his eyes from her; they kept questing for her face. She was not beautiful, he told himself again. She was too small for beauty.

The night became a still, clear time for thinking. But Jerry could not sort his thoughts. Whenever his eye fell on the sleeping figure, his brain became disturbed. He saw the curve of a shoulder into the small ribbed back, and he wondered how she came to be there, what man had brought her to this cabin, what his right over her had been. He felt his own heart thud against his chest. He saw the sweep of the black lashes on her cheek. The warmth of the fire brought her color back; a clear bright red —it almost startled him to see it. He put one hand lightly against her cheek to see if she was fevered, and her left hand stirred in her sleep, creeping up to brush his fingers, and he snatched away his hand. He looked at his hand a while. Long ago his mother said he had the gift of handling things; it was a gift in a man, like preaching or making money in the law. He wondered in his brain how the hand might be that had put those marks upon her back.

So he heard, long afterwards when his firewood was getting low, the thresh of a wagon on the brushy trail. He went outside to meet it. Issachar Bennet’s mare was threading over the clearing.

The Shaker shook himself when he climbed down.

“It is the dreariest-looking place I ever saw, by moonlight. How is she, Jerry?”

“She’s sleeping now.”

Bennet reached into his wagon.

“Here’s milk.” He handed over a cool jar. “If.it ain’t buttered by the jouncing. Here’s a smoked ham, small, the joint end. Here’s corn meal and sugar and tea. It ought to last us out.”

He unhitched the mare.

“I’ll bring her in. She’s used to sleeping with me outside of a barn and will act quiet.”

The mare was dainty with her hoofs. She seemed to know a sleeper should not be disturbed. While Jerry unharnessed her, Bennet went over to the girl.

“She does look better. She ain’t really badly hurt. Just sore. She’ll get righted quickly.”

He came back to feed the mare, and then the two of them sat down on the floor at the girl’s feet. With their knives they whittled off ham to eat while waiting for a tin of tea to brew.

“Did she come round, when I was gone?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t tell you nothing?”

“No. She wouldn’t answer who did it.”

The Shaker examined her sleeping face.

“It’s a peculiar strange thing. Finding her so. Most likely she won’t ever tell.”

Jerry said, “I’ve been wondering how it come that Merwin Gandy should tell us both about this place.”

Issachar Bennet looked up. His eyes twinkled like little bits of glass.

“Do you think he done that? Then you ought to see his wife. That man’s hen-ridden for a rooster, Jerry. No, he told us of this place because it’s one of the few little things he knows about. I stayed with him. Give him half a day and that man just begins repeating. It is a wonder to him to speak out like a man.”

He shook his head.

“Merwin Gandy can graft fat on animals. But he couldn’t do that thing.”

The tin of tea put out a fragrance.

“I’ll lace it with a thread of brandy,” Bennet said, “then we can talk a while.”

Under the brandy the cabin seemed to close in with comfort. Bennet had brought an armful of split oak that burned with quiet evenness. And Jerry told him what he had been doing. The old man had no interest in his work; he wished to know of Mary, and the baby.

“It makes me feel I started things. Adam you and Eve for her. I ought to make a garden.”

Jerry said, “Where did you get that mare?”

“Oh, I got kind of tired of them bays I had. I drove a roan a while. I traded him for her one night down in Ohio. I don’t know whether she’s Ohio bred. I never saw the man to ask him.”

He had been wandering for three years, covering eight states and a territory.

“I haven’t been back in New Lebanon. The more I wander round, the less I consider being of a sect. I never took it serious. It is a pity, for I’ve got the gift for preaching. Sometimes it makes me fearful.” He sighed. “All they want is to be told how sinful this world is. And I know that. I tell them all about me, only the way their minds consider such things.”

He stared a while at the fire.

“It’s a peculiar thing, Jerry. You travel through the west and you see people settling down. At first they’re far apart. They’re neighborly and stand together. The Indian was a great thing for them. Now the Indian’s gone and they have to look for devils. It’s queer.”

He sipped his tea.

“As soon as they get money they set up a school. Later a church. But always the school first. It seems these people want to get to being gentry-fied. Learning is a splendid thing if you can take it just for knowledge. But to them it means money, setting up above your neighbors. One year a man will go to help his neighbor, Joe, nine miles off. Next year that same man’s in a town, incorporated under statute, and he says, ‘That Joe must be a backward man. He’s still living under logs.’ And his wife says, T do feel sorry for Joe’s womenfolks, to have to work in darkness under paper windows. Why, she hasn’t had a petticoat in these three years.’ They feel sorry for them and they leave them be.”

He nodded at the sleeping girl.

“Now 1 don’t feel sorry for that girl, beyond the pain she’s in. Most likely she’s just caught herself in her own spinning.”

Jerry said, “In an incorporated town the way you say, it couldn’t happen to her.”

“No. Maybe not. But she could raise a powerful harm against some other person. This way she just got caught. The man did it, and he’s gone. He won’t be even hanged.”

“He ought to be.”

“No doubt. But suppose he come back and you should rise up and kill him. That would be all right, too, I suppose. At least you wouldn’t have a lot of people all aroused to kill him with you. You’ve never seen a public hanging, Jerry.”

Jerry brooded. He felt the firelight against his hands. He thought it would have been a better thing if he had walked the storm out. Better for him, better for Mary.

“Suppose,” said Bennet, stroking his thin chin, “suppose now you should get caught by her. I wouldn’t blame you. Supposing you to think yourself in love with her. If I was younger I might be myself. She’s got a sense to rouse a man. It is a natural thing. A man is caught by beauty, some man by a peach tree, some man by a horse, and some by women. That’s what the Lord, supposing it is God, put into us. But it takes different ways. The pity is until we are too old for it, we generally don’t know what we’re after— Jerry, if you ever see it, you dig in and grab it.”

His eye fell on the mare again and he laughed softly.

“I wonder if the man that owned that mare saw any beauty in that hammer-headed roan I left him? But he’s a better traveler than she’ll ever be. And anyway the next time I feel called upon to deal, the next man will have her. She’s dainty, isn’t she?”

As he spoke, the girl woke up. She stirred, turned over, and her eyes were swimming with her drowse.

“What did you say, mister?”

Bennet smiled.

“Just a word. How are you feeling, missy?”

“Ever so much more easier.”

“Would you like some milk?”

“Yes.”

He warmed her a cup of it. Jerry watched the girl’s eyes take the old preacher in. A strange man for a preacher. Then her glance came round to him. She gave him a long look. There was slyness in it, estimate, and the same strange sense of invitation.

“Thank you, mister,” she was saying to Bennet.

“What’s your name, missy?”

“Norah Sharon.”

“That’s a pretty name,” he said. “It seems to suit.”

She was drinking her milk. When he spoke, she took her lips from the cup and looked aside at Jerry. Jerry was just aware of her. He saw her tongue come out and lick aside a drop. She lowered her glance to the cup, and as her lips met the rim she smiled a little.

The wrinkles at the corners of the preacher’s eyes were gathered up in nets. He rubbed his hands with a small, dry, whispering sound.

“Have you got any friends out here?”

She shook her head.

“Nowhere to go, no money?”

“No, mister.”

Jerry’s heart began to beat. But he kept his eyes away.

Bennet said, “I’m on a preaching circuit. I wish I could help you. But strange people are close-questioning about their preachers.”

He appeared to think.

“Nowhere you could go back to?”

She said, “I left my home. I couldn’t stand it.”

“What’ll we do with you?”

“Never mind me,” she said to Bennet.

She spoke sturdily, but Jerry felt his pity for her rise.

“What do you say, Jerry? We can’t just turn her loose.”

Jerry spoke thickly. His face was sweating and he was ashamed of his utterance.

“I’ll board her, if she needs it.”

“You can’t stick her in a working camp.”

“Maybe Mann’s Mill. I’ve heard Mr. Bates say it was handy.”

“You can’t have a girl like her so close to workers.” Bennet clasped his knees. “Corbal’s up the creek. He runs a little gristmill. He’s an oldish man. He might board her.

“You’d rather be alone a spell, wouldn’t you?” he asked Norah.

She nodded.

“I’d feel scared of him finding me again.”

“Who is he?” Jerry demanded for the third time.

“I don’t know his name.”

Bennet looked over her head at Jerry and shrugged.

“You’ll never find that out,” he seemed to say.

But she was undisturbed. She seemed content to take whatever came her way. Finishing her milk, she lay back again and closed her eyes.

Bennet said, “We might as well all of us get some sleep.”

He and Jerry took the dusty bed of needles. The girl was already sleeping. Jerry lay still. The firelight kept flowing over the recumbent figure of the girl within reach of his hand. Her head was towards him. In the corner the mare drowsed with hanging nose.

After a while, Bennet began to snore, and Jerry eased himself into a more comfortable position. He watched the girl. She stirred a little, and then her hand stole out and came upon his hand. The touch was warm and very dry; and the blood stiffened in his veins. The mare turned her head, her eyes dull coals against the firelight.

He could not sleep. The mare lay down carefully and quietly. Bennet snored on, and the fire died. Outside the cabin a barred owl hooted mournfully. But he had a feeling that a loneliness that he had lived with many months was lifting, that the hand in his had touched a nerve, and that it was not right he should feel glad… .