3stalwarts (164 page)

But his feet took him doggedly ahead. He must know. They sludged upward to the Victor road. He stood still there, listening. The rain drifted through the leaves. Its drip was hushed between the roots. There was no sound but the dry labor of his heart.

A stick broke behind him. He whirled to meet two outthrust arms.

Jerry smelled the man’s strong scent. The muck odor in his clothes was unmistakable.

“I guessed you’d be coming back.”

The arms drew him in. The hands slipped up upon his shoulders.

“Leave go,” said Jerry.

The man swore.

He dropped his hands and stepped back.

“Who are you?”

The man spoke up surly.

“What difference?”

“Andrews, aren’t you?”

“What if I be?”

“What are you doing here?”

“What difference?”

“Tell me, blast you.”

The man stepped forward. Jerry could see him looming in the rain.

“Listen, cocky. I don’t take no more orders from you. I came here to meet a girl, see? I’ve had my eyes on her some time.”

The rain stuck Jerry’s shirt against his shoulders.

“Did you see her?” he asked quietly.

Andrews laughed shortly.

“Not exactly to see her. She skun out of my hands. I don’t exactly know. I caught my toe on a God-damned root. I took out after her, but I couldn’t make up. My ankle smarted me. So I come back. I thought she’d come back sometime.”

“Which way did she go?”

“One way or another— how’d I know?”

“Which way?” Jerry’s voice rose.

“How could I tell. My nose was in the dirt.”

“Which way?”

Andrews laughed.

“You go back home, cocky. She’ll come back. I’ll fetch her to you.”

“Which way?”

“Go wipe yourself.”

The white blur of his face reached over Jerry. Jerry knew that the face was grinning. As he stared up at it, his eyes drew in the features, the bright, small eyes and widening nostrils, the short brown beard. His fist closed in the darkness at his side. He struck at the face in the dark rain.

The tingling in his knuckles was real. He felt the jaw snap back from them and the squelch of the man’s boot heels.

“Which way?”

He heard Andrews stroke his jaw and his breathing go deep.

“I’ve always wanted to trim you, cocky. I’ve always aimed to give it to you sometime.”

“Which way?”

“This way.”

He saw the face come over him again and felt the hands reach out. Stepping back, he struck again, his right against the jaw, his left low down as he stepped in. He felt the man wince, and his elbow was struck up by a rising knee. He glanced aside; his shoes slewed in the muddy road, skidding him round.

Andrews laughed.

“A spiteful little cocky, ain’t you?”

The sludge of boots came at him, slowly, carefully. The man limped a trifle from the twist he had had. But Jerry watched for the white blur of the face. He glanced upward under his brows to show his own as little as might be. His head was very clear.

He missed the jaw, but found the throat, and Andrews fell back gasping. Jerry stepped in. He sank two blows as low as he could guess, and as Andrews lunged he threw himself down and stretched his foot out. Andrews fell, and Jerry sprang up and kicked with all his might. His boot found solid flesh. Andrews made no sound. He got up slowly in the dark, but his breath rasped through his beard. He launched himself low down, his head catching Jerry’s thigh and spinning him off. The pain came dully, stiffening his leg. But Andrews was hampered by his weight in the slippery mud. Jerry did not jump on him as he kneeled. He slipped behind him, and as the man rose on his feet he said, “Which way?”

Andrews turned oxlike in his slow surprise to meet the blow with his mouth. Jerry could feel the hair over the lips, the lips themselves, and the teeth under them. He stepped back as Andrews spat.

The woods were still. The rain came through the leaves as still as ghosts. It wetted their faces. It stuck their shirts against their steaming skin.

“Which way?”

It gave him pleasure to cut in at the blurred face. He could not see what he was doing; he could only launch his fists. His head sang from the hammering inside his ribs; his head felt light above his feet, and the cold of the rain upon his skin was remote. The only sounds were their breathing and the slip and squelch of their shoes in the muddy road.

“Which way?”

The only words he knew. His voice was cold, like another person’s voice. It kept asking questions over his head. It asked where he had stood a moment since and Andrews charged it like a thundering bull. The redemptioner had lost all sense of cunning. His fury carried him in. He did not try to strike. But he began to whisper over and over, as if he prayed, “Just let me get my hands on him.”

He was too slow to cope with Jerry. In daylight, if he could have seen, it might have been a different matter. Now he was like a beef to carve.

Jerry felt the flesh of the blurred face grow loose under his knuckles. A sticky warmth sprang out upon his hand and crawled into the notches his clenched fingers made. He felt so light. He felt his head as clear as water in a wineglass. His body took on joy.

“Which way?”

Andrews drew back and took a shuddering breath in through his lips.

“Mann’s Mill.”

Without a word, Jerry turned on his heel along the road. And then, with the ugly swiftness of a bear, the redemptioner was on his back. From chin to toes his body struck the road. The great hands on his shoulders twisted the fingers in. The knees climbed up upon his back and the man lifted himself on his hands and hurled himself down on Jerry’s back.

He forced Jerry’s face into the mud.

“I got my hands on him.” There was wonderment in his voice. He stretched himself flat on Jerry, suffocating him with his rank odor, and whispered in his ear, “Eat it, cocky. Eat some mud. Eat it. Eat it.”

The lightness had gone from Jerry. His head was stonelike in the man’s hands. He could not move with the weight pressing him down. A little fountain made of fire seemed to play in the back of his head and the spray from it came out before his eyes in specks of all the colors in the world.

Suddenly Andrews got up.

He stood over him a moment.

“Get up. I won’t hurt you any more. It’s just a taste of a man’s fighting.”

He laughed harshly to himself, caressing his jaw.

“Go after your girl if you like… . She’ll consider you a pretty little cocky to make love to. Get along. I’m done with both of you.”

Lying in the road, Jerry listened to his broad feet treading back. He seemed to feel the blows they made in the mud against his cheek. His back was aching in slow waves of pain that began at his heels and rose and rose until they lapped his neck, and then went down. And the going down hurt more than the rising.

His head was like a stone. He tried to lift it; but his neck had lost strength to bear the load. He let it fall again to draw his breath. He tried again. This time he got his hands beneath him, thrust his knees forward. He swayed on hands and knees trying to lift his head. At last he got up.

He began to walk. At first it was hard for him to keep the road. But as he went on, his feet walked for him. His head kept saying, “Mann’s Mill.” And something further back said, “Two miles… .”

A light had been left burning in the miller’s house. He opened the door and leaned against the post.

“Good God in Heaven!”

Mr. Bates and the man who had ridden. in with Borden sat at the kitchen table with a pile of papers between them. A lamp burned on the table, and a moth with rosy splotches on his wings was fluttering round and round the pricked brass shade. The pricks made spattered patterns on their staring faces.

“Where’s Dancer Borden?”

“Dancer!” Mr. Bates looked blank.

“Where’s Dancer Borden?”

“What happened to you, boy?”

“Where’s Dancer Borden?”

The second man looked annoyed.

“He lit out. He said he wanted to get back to Victor. He lit out at ten o’clock.”

“Wait a minute!”

Mr. Bates came to the door. He blinked his eyes against the falling rain.

He said: “What happened to him?”

“He’s had a fight,” said the dry voice. “I’d say he got licked.”

“I’ve got to get him back.”

“Come inside. We’ve got to settle up the yards of earth.”

“To hell with your embankment!”

But Jerry had vanished in the rain.

He struck into a path to keep away from Bates. He heard him pass along the road. His voice came thickly through the rain. He waited until he had gone back. Then he himself went on.

He took the backward road. The rain kept falling. It came now more heavily and drops were things to feel. He lost the road awhile and moved along through underbrush. His face was whipped by twigs. Sickness be-gan to grow in his stomach. It crept up in him.

The dawn was pallid in the rain. Along the road he began to meet wagons. The men were driving with set faces. They had their women on the seat at their sides and their children back of them in the boxes.

“Which way?” he asked.

“You’re heading wrong, young man,” the man said. “Henslow’s woods lie west.”

“Dan, look at his face.”

The man swore under his breath.

“Hey, wait a minute.”

A man came riding on a leggy bay with slatted ribs. The rain ran off the brim of his tall hat and spattered on the white hands folded on the horse’s withers.

“Which way?”

The exhorter lifted wet grey eyes that showed red half-moons for the underlids.

“At Henslow’s. West of Pittsford.”

“Which way?”

“Set your face to the path of the sun. The sun sets in the lap of God.”

His eyes did not observe, but he made a blessing in the air.

A tinker drove by clattering his pots. His woman was clad in rags and snatches of bright colors.

Jerry struggled to think.

“Which way?”

The woman looked at him.

“Stop a minute, Rafe. The boy’s been hurted.”

The man yanked at his pony.

“What are you looking for, boy?”

“A girl.” He said it stiffly. “A man on a black horse.”

The woman looked at the tinker. The tinker laughed.

“The both of them on one black horse? We’ve seen them, boy. We seen them afore sunrise riding out of Victor. She rode behind him on a blanket pillion with her arms around his middle. She looked at us— and laughed because his horse shied at our rattling load.”

He seemed to take pleasure in the telling. Then he spoke to his pony. But the woman grabbed the reins.

“Where do you live, pet?”

Jerry stared stupidly at her. His tongue was thick between his teeth. It filled his jaws when he tried to answer.

The woman said, “We’d better take him with us.”

The tinker cursed.

“You’ve gotten me eight miles off my route to tend camp-meeting. What do you want now?”

“He needs tending, Rafe.”

She jumped over the wheel. Her legs flashed bare. They were round and hard. She came back to Jerry and took his swaying shoulders in hard hands.

“You’re sick, pet. Come get into Rafe’s wagon.”

Rafe grumbled.

“The pony’s overloaded as it is.”

“I’ll walk, then.”

Rafe cursed.

“Where’U we take him to? We can’t turn up at camp-meeting fetching anything like him.”

“We’re not going to camp-meeting. The boy’s got fever. We’ll stop him at the first house along the road.”

“There ain’t no houses on this road.”

“We’ve got to get him shelter from the rain.”

Rafe grumbled.

He got down slowly.

“You are the damnedest bitch at altering things.”

He helped her shove Jerry into the box. She spread a blanket over him. Rafe climbed aboard and cut the pony viciously.

“You needn’t change your mind. Get on.”

He hunched himself against the rain. The woman bent over Jerry. The rain was running in her hair, down her brown cheeks. She had brown, slanting eyes and a long nose with curving nostrils. Her clothes smelled of leaves and stables, and her skin gave out a musky, overpowering, sweet scent.

She said to the tinker, “If you’re sick of me, you can go on to meeting. I’ve got no trouble finding me a man.”

The man croaked raucously.

“There, pet,” she said to Jerry. Her voice was high-pitched when it grew gentle.

The little pony trotted doggedly. The rain slanted down on Jerry’s face like grey, blunt-headed arrows. Trie boles of the trees showed black sides to the rain. Their branches drooped with the weight of rain. But the woods were alive with traveling people.

Wagons came up behind the tinker’s rattling cart and passed with a whisper of wheels along the muddy road. The people in their bright best huddled under the rain, but their faces looked straight ahead to where the sun would set in the lap of God. Some were excited; and their words tossed over Jerry like bright-colored birds.

“Preacher Eddy’s coming up from Cincinnatus to exhort.”

“He is a powerful exhorter.”

“He uses his hands powerful in exhorting. Seems like he puts his hands upon the Devil’s tail to twist him out of my breast. He lays right hold of the Devil in everyone that hears him, causing the Devil to howl, Preacher Eddy does. …”

“I listened to a minister in Oaks Old-Stand. Deacon Gandy hired him. A notable breather this man is. He breathes into a person’s eyes to clear them for the sight of God.”

“He breathed into my sister’s eyes. She said she saw the Jesus crucified, and angels on a ladder, climbing up to God like painters, only for buckets each one carried a Commandment set in gold.”

“That’s right, I guess. She said she heard the Israelitish trumpets clear as Pennsylvany Bells.”

“It’s going to be a powerful endeavoring against old Satan. Fifteen ex-torters will be there.”

“Captaining against the Devil.”

“I feel my soul get heavy with the Devil now.”

“Exhorter Marcy will deliver you, sister. I put store in Marcy. He’s got acquaintance with the saints.”

They passed on and the pony trotted his jingling load in silence. The rain gained force. The tinker swore.