Belle Cora: A Novel (19 page)

The next day, Matthew told Agnes: “You see your sweetheart, tell him his sneaky trick has come to light, and he’s going to have to take his licks. I’ll attend to it when he comes over for hog killing.”

Agnes, blushing, said, “He’s not my sweetheart,” and I thought:
It’s true
.

“Oh, I know that,” said Matthew, who knew many ways to be cruel.

XII

THEY SAY THAT ANIMALS DO NOT COMPREHEND
the inevitability of death. One felt that keenly around the creatures who fed in happy ignorance of their fate, as the season of their killing and butchering approached. There were to be several slaughters, accompanied by feasting and drinking, on one farm and then another in our part of the country, and there was a holiday atmosphere, there was something pagan in the air, as the first of these occasions approached, and blades were sharpened, ropes mended, barrels and buckets scrubbed, and trips made into
town for salt and whiskey. On the day appointed for the slaughter on my uncle’s farm, two families arrived soon after dawn. Jeptha’s family came after we had already started. I knew I would be mocked for turning away, so I stood where I could see everything, as the first struggling victim was manhandled to a spot beneath the old maple, and as the pig was struck between the ears with the blunt end of an ax, and struck again when the first blow proved ineffectual, and provoked into a last sad kick as a long knife penetrated its heart, at which point I sighed, sorry for the pig. Hearing a derisive snort, I glanced quickly around; Jeptha’s mother was regarding me coldly. When I looked back, a stick was being thrust through the hind legs. A rope was thrown over a stout limb, men pulled the rope, the carcass ascended, its brethren squealed with human horror, Agatha moved a bucket to catch the blood, Elihu slit the throat. After a posthumous shave in the iron kettle, the hog rose again, and everyone crowded in for the disembowelment. Lewis asked me if the steam that issued from the carcass then was the soul, and I said yes; it seemed obvious.

My aunt handed Lewis a stick and told him to chase the dogs away until they could be distracted with the lungs, which were their portion. Later, when the feast began, she said that he had done well, and as a reward gave him his choice of certain fatty tidbits children crave. I coaxed him to try these delicacies, and he did, but as usual he barely ate. I told him that this was a rare occasion and he should take advantage of it. I said that at night, when I hugged him, I could feel his ribs. I said that if he did not start eating more he would stop growing and the other boys would beat him up; that he would get consumption and die. I told him things like that all the time.

He had not regained his appetite since the moment he heard of our father’s suicide. The news had no other observable effect on him. He did not sulk or brood; he seemed to like the farm; he made pets of wild creatures; he tagged along behind Matthew and Titus whenever they’d let him. He was usually cheerful a half-hour after a punishment. He did not talk about New York or Mama or Papa. He ate barely enough to keep himself alive.

I watched Jeptha as we all brought our plates to the makeshift tables, which had been created by laying planks of wood over barrels. The
strangeness of this place had put me into a stupor; all my emotions were dulled, every feeling muted and muffled, but something about this boy broke through and seized my attention. At school I had noticed that he was very quick, and in my only private conversation with him so far I had learned that, like me, he had read an essay about the discoveries of Galileo and an essay about the Battle of Waterloo in an older student’s copy of the fourth-year reader, though in the school he was only up to the third-year reader. I was sure that he had read the whole series, but he kept that to himself: he was shrewd enough to realize that having a reputation as a scholar did a boy more harm than good around here. He was friendly and agreeable to everyone, yet I had the feeling that he was searching, in every spare moment, for another example of his kind.

One day he had come into school with a brooding look and sat at his desk making fists, and at recess his sister Becky said that Jeptha and Papa had had an awful fight the night before.

Now, though everyone knew he was going to fight Matthew today, and everyone expected him to be beaten, he stuffed himself with pork and Indian pudding, apparently cheerful and fearless. I hoped that he would not spoil the effect by puking, as I had once seen a boy do under the exact same circumstances back in the Union Presbyterian School in New York City. Occasionally, I saw him give his father a cool glance. The father had had more than his share of my uncle’s whiskey, and I remembered that everyone said he was quarrelsome when he was drunk.

The older boys drank, too, under the protection of the fathers, who observed sagely that the men who had never been brought up to whiskey were the very ones who became drunkards when they grew up. It was a constant cause of friction between Elihu and Agatha. My aunt usually had the stronger will. He had given in to her on such large matters as joining the Free Will Baptist church, and (I came to realize) taking in her dead sister’s children. But he held out on some things, to show he wasn’t completely tame, and this included the matter of letting Titus and Matthew drink.

Jeptha confined himself to water, saying, “I got religion,” which I took for a joke: I knew from our one conversation at school that Jeptha was an infidel, like his father. “But don’t let me stop you, Matt. Agnes, give Matt some more of the creature.”

“You want me to, Matt?” asked Agnes.

Matthew ignored her, asking Jeptha: “You think if I’m corned and you ain’t it’ll help you out later on?”

Jeptha said firmly, “I’m counting on it.”

Matthew looked at him with pity. “I could whip you with ten drinks in me.”

“Why don’t you show me?”

Before Matthew could reply, Agnes filled his cup; Matthew stared down at it and looked up at his sister.

Jeptha said, “You could lick me corned? No fooling? Is that true? Show me.”

“Getting me corned will make it worse for you,” Matthew explained in a patient tone. “If I was corned and I tried to bloody your nose, I would hit you too hard and break it. If I was corned, I might bust you up so bad nobody could fix you.”

“You’re scared to hurt me? That doesn’t sound like you, Matthew. I don’t believe it. Does anybody believe it?” Jeptha asked the other children at the table; and they all said no, and the hands, Pat and Sam, shook their heads, too. “Look around you, Matt. They know you, too,” said Jeptha. “They know what you’re like. They’re begging you. Drink up. Unless you’re scared that if you drink you won’t be able to beat me.”

Matthew did look around. Everyone was nodding and saying, “Go on,” and “Have another, Matt.”

My aunt was staring at us from the next table. Children and men fell into guilty silence, expecting her to scold them for urging her son to drink. But she said, “Maybe they’re right, Matthew. Have some more. Show them you’re not scared.” She announced generally, “Let nobody call my son a sissy.”

Matthew certainly must have realized that his mother was hoping that whiskey
would
make him lose, thereby turning him against whiskey. Nevertheless, he raised the cup, absorbed its contents, and slapped it down to the table defiantly.

Whereupon Agnes did something that made me admire her despite myself. Locking eyes with Jeptha, she refilled Matthew’s cup. We all stared at him, and he drank.

His footsteps were extremely deliberate as he and Jeptha made their way to a grassy patch between the back porch and the garden and took
off their jackets, while the fathers and mothers and children gathered, including Mrs. Talbot, Becky, assorted other members of the large Talbot brood, my uncle Elihu’s brother, Melanchthon, whose farm lay half a mile from ours, and his wife, Anne, and Agnes, her lips compressed, her hands alternately making fists and claws.

Matthew and Jeptha used to be great friends, according to Titus. They had hunted together, played Indian and mumblety-peg, dug for gold, and competed with each other in feats of skill, endurance, and daring. This had ended abruptly a year and a half ago, with Matthew giving as the reason that Jeptha had too weak a character to face up to his, Matthew’s, superiority, and Jeptha giving as the reason that he had gotten tired of hearing Matthew talk about himself.

Jake was shouting at Jeptha, “What’s the matter with you? He’s whupped you twice already, you little girl, ain’t you learned your lesson?” As the fight progressed, and Matthew kept swinging and missing, Jake’s cry changed to “Sock him, you goddamned dancer!” And when Jeptha had Matthew’s head in his arm and Matthew’s face was as red as a tomato, it was “Rip him up, damn you! He whups you now, I’ll whup you worse!”

Jeptha, straining and grimacing, asked, “Are you licked? Say you’re licked.”

Matthew sagged within Jeptha’s clutches. He seemed almost to fall asleep. Suddenly he struggled again—a ruse—it didn’t work.

“Are you licked?” Jeptha repeated.

“No, he ain’t licked!” screamed Jake. “Do him so he knows it, you fine lady in white gloves and petticoats. You got him. Put him to some use!”

My uncle looked at Jake without speaking. My uncle’s brother, Melanchthon, said, “It’s all in fun, Jake.”

At last, Matthew admitted defeat. Jeptha let him up. They shook hands. Matthew, in speech that was not slurred but showed effort, every word an accomplishment, said, “Well, you’re … you’re … famous. Famous now. Licked … Matt Moody. When he was so corned he couldn’t … stand, hardly, but … it’s a … Not nobody can never take that away from you. But next time we scrap …” He seemed to lose his train of thought.

“What?” said Jeptha impatiently, as if he could not bear to waste another minute of his life on Matthew. “You were saying. Next time we scrap. What?”

He was angry, I realized.

“I won’t drink,” said Matthew, and he looked around, doggedly explaining, “He got the bulge on me ’cause Agnes—she was in it with him, got me corned.”

“Temperance,” said Melanchthon genially. “Lesson to us all.”

Jeptha had his back to Jake, who stepped forward to put an arm on his son’s shoulder, possibly in congratulation. As though a spring had been released, Jeptha turned and knocked his father’s hand away. Jake laughed. “Ooh, ooh, the taste of blood.” Jake stood in a boxer’s pose. “Go to it, killer.”

“One day,” said Jeptha.

“Jeptha,” said his mother. “You won. Don’t spoil it.”

“Oh, let him be a man, Marm. Come on, boy. I’m corned, ain’t I? That helps you, don’t it?”

Jeptha shook his head. “Not one day when I’m old enough to beat you.”

“Jeptha, you stop,” said his mother sharply.

Jeptha shook his head. “One day when I’m old enough to run the farm.” He slapped his palms back and forth as if he were getting rid of some dirt. “You can go live in town and drink away your days; I’ll pay for the drinks.” His father looked astounded. “I can hardly wait,” Jeptha said, and walked off. Becky followed him with her irregular step through the frosty weeds. “Jeptha!” she called after him. “Jeptha, don’t be mad. Jeptha, be happy you won.” Agnes followed Becky and caught up with her, and they walked together.

“Come back, you ungrateful pup,” Jake gasped, looking as if the wind had been knocked out of him. The disrespect of Jeptha’s outburst, directed at a grown man, a father, who was known to have a violent temper, shocked everyone who had heard it, including me. It was a much bigger thing than the fight which had preceded it. Jake started off after his son, but his wretched wife grabbed him around the waist, virtually leaping upon him, saying “Please, Jake.” He shook free of her. He pulled his arm back as if to strike her, and stopped, and we all knew it was our presence that stopped him. “I
kill
myself,” he growled, “break my back, work my hands raw, die every day for all of you. And who is
he
, goddamnit? What’s he ever done?”

Before this, sometimes when I was in my straw bed but not yet asleep, and the memories of my day offered nothing else to comfort me, I thought of a friendly glance this boy had tossed in my direction. Now I was glad he had not been hurt or shamed. I hoped his father would not hurt him later. But most of all I wished that, like Agnes, I had thought of a way to help. I had seen nothing to do but fret, and a girl who despised me had shown me wrong. I felt as insignificant as they all kept insisting I was.