Gap Creek (21 page)

“I ain’t got but five dollars to my name,” Hank said. He reached into his pocket and took out five silver dollars. I reckon that’s all he had left from working at the mill in Eaton. The coins sparkled in the firelight as he held them in his outstretched palm.

“Ain’t you got something you could pawn?” Caroline said.

“All I’ve got is my tools,” Hank said. “And I have to keep them if I go back to work this winter.”

“I’ve got a necklace and a brooch Mama give me,” I said.

“I couldn’t take your brooch,” Caroline said.

“It’s got gold around the edges,” I said, “like a little picture frame.”

I got the brooch and necklace from the bedroom and showed them to her. “They’re worth about five dollars,” she said. She held on to the jewelry. I tried to think of something else that could be sold. Mama had give me an alarm clock, but it was only worth a dollar or two, even when it was new.

“Tell you what we’ll do,” Caroline said. “Give us the five dollars and the necklace and brooch as a kind of down payment, and we’ll give you a receipt. Then the rest you can work out by fixing up this house. That should be good enough, don’t you think, Baylus?”

“That is mighty understanding of you,” Hank said.

“It’s hard to sell a house in the wintertime anyway,” Caroline said.

“We’re obliged to you,” I said.

“You all helped take care of Pappy,” Caroline said. “I’d like to know a young couple was getting some good out of this place. Besides, it needs some fixing up.”

“We’ll take good care of it,” Hank said.

“We’ll come back in March to talk about the repairs,” Caroline said, “and to buy what materials you need.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening, that we was renting the place and would have somewhere to live until after the baby was born.

“Don’t you all want to stay the night?” I said. “It’s getting late and there’s plenty of room.”

“Honey, we’ve got to get back on the road,” Caroline said. “We’ve got to go back to Greenville to catch the train to Columbia. Baylus has to work tomorrow.”

“You can at least stay for supper,” I said. “We have plenty of turkey left.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Caroline said. “But we really do have to be on our way. And this place makes me sad. I have too many memories here.” She opened her bag and looked inside, and then closed it. “I will mail you a receipt for the five dollars and the jewelry,” she said.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“Business is business,” Caroline said. “I believe in doing things right and proper.”

I was so thrilled my head was buzzing.

“You all should stay the night,” Hank said.

“We’re much obliged for your invitation,” Caroline said. “But there are a few things in the house we should take. They belonged to Mama and they have sentimental value.”

“You take whatever you want,” Hank said. It had been a while since I had seen him so cheerful.

“I’ll just get a few of Mama’s things,” Caroline said. She took the clock off the mantel and handed it to her husband. Then she went into the kitchen and gathered a lot of silver from the drawer into her big handbag. There was a little silver cream pitcher on the table and she took that too.

“Is there anything you can’t find?” I said. I could understand why she would want her Mama’s things.

Caroline took a lamp into the front bedroom and looked through all the drawers of the bureau. She got some jewelry and a comb and brush set. Baylus come back in and carried another load out to the carriage. There was a mirror on the bedroom wall and Caroline took it down. She got Mr. Pendergast’s rifle out of the closet, and a revolver she found in a drawer. She looked in the attic but didn’t find anything she wanted to take.

“You all come back and see us,” Hank said as they climbed into the carriage.

“We’d love to come back to the mountains in the summertime,” Caroline said. “We’ll come back and have a picnic by the creek.”

“You all come back any time,” I said.

“We’ll see you along about March,” she said as Baylus drove them away. “And I’ll send you a receipt for the rent.”

Eight

But there wasn’t ever any receipt come from Columbia for the rent on the house. We waited every day and Hank walked to the little post office down at the crossroads. I got a letter from Mama, and Hank got a letter from Ma Richards. But nothing ever come from Caroline Glascock or her husband Baylus. As the days passed and Christmas got closer, I wondered if they had been who they said they was. After two weeks I figured they wasn’t.

It was hard enough to lose the five dollars and my brooch and necklace, and all the things they had took from Mr. Pendergast’s house. Christmas was coming and we didn’t have no money at all, and no way of getting any. But that wasn’t as bad as what it done to Hank. He could blame me for giving away the jar of Mr. Pendergast’s money, and I had to take the blame. It made Hank feel better that he could blame me and call me a stupid heifer. But now it was him that had been outfoxed. There was no way he could deny that he had give the money and the jewelry and all the things from the house away. And he had been just as pleased as I was at the thought of renting the place with such a little payment, and fixing up the
house in the spring. His feelings was hurt because he took such pride in his judgment of people. Hank never liked to admit he had made a mistake. Men are like that. They care more about their pride than anything else. It made him mad that I knowed he had been suckered just as bad as me. It made him angry at me more than at the Glascocks or whoever they was.

I seen how he felt and tried to soothe him. “It was me that was fooled by them first,” I said. I wanted to make it sound like I was taking part of the blame.

“You should have seen them for what they was,” Hank said.

“I know I should have,” I said.

“Any fool could have seen through them,” Hank said.

“I should have knowed better when Caroline didn’t remember what Mr. Pendergast kept his money in,” I said. If I let Hank criticize me it would make him feel better and then he wouldn’t be so mad at hisself. Nobody likes to be criticized, and I hated to be criticized, but I seen it was easier to let him blame me than to live with a man who was enraged at hisself. And once he got over his anger I hoped he would be fair to me again. When Hank pouted like a little boy the best thing was to treat him like a little boy.

“You should have threatened to call the law,” Hank said.

“Except I didn’t know any law to call,” I said.

“They’ll never be caught,” Hank said. He was feeling so bad he talked in a low voice, almost a mutter.

“If we tell the sheriff what they took, they might be caught selling the clock or silverware, the cream pitcher. That would prove we didn’t take them.”

“I ain’t going to the sheriff,” Hank said.

“What if we get accused of selling off Mr. Pendergast’s things?” I said.

“Nobody knows what was in this house,” Hank said.

“It would be better if we made a list of what they took,” I said.

“That way if the real heirs turn up, we’ll have something to show them.”

“Are you telling me what to do?” Hank shouted. He looked at me hard, like I had insulted him.

“I’m just saying it might pay us to make a record of what happened, and let the sheriff know,” I said.

“I’ll decide when it’s time to tell the sheriff,” Hank said.

“I know you will,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Hank said.

“That you will tell the sheriff when you want to,” I said.

Hank was ready to answer like I was arguing with him. But there was nothing to argue with in what I had said. He opened his mouth and then turned away. He picked up the sugar bowl and throwed it at the stove, and sugar scattered all over the stove and floor like snow.

“It don’t matter,” I said. But he didn’t answer. He was already out the back door, and I didn’t see him again till after dark.

MOST TIMES WE stayed away from the store, because we didn’t have any money to trade there. A store is a sociable place in a valley like Gap Creek. But after losing our money to Caroline Glascock we didn’t feel like seeing anybody. And women don’t hang around a store that much anyway, not the way men do. Some men seem to slouch around the store every day, setting by the stove in winter spitting tobacco juice in a bucket and playing checkers, or setting on the bench out front in the summer. They keep up on the gossip, I reckon, though most of the time you don’t hear them say much. It’s one thing for a woman to go to the store when she has money to spend. But I didn’t have money, and I stayed away from the store at the crossroads.

But along in December we run completely out of coffee, and
then we got so low on sugar I done without it in everything but the rare cake for Sunday dinner. Now you can live without coffee, though it don’t hardly feel like living when you get up in the morning and have nothing to go with your grits but water. And you can use honey or molasses if you have them, instead of sugar. But nobody would do without either if they had any choice.

I tried to think of something to trade at the store for coffee and sugar. We didn’t gather enough eggs to have one a day for ourselves, so it would take weeks to save up two or three dozen, even if we didn’t use none. I didn’t have enough butter to sell.

But sometimes the Lord puts a thought in your mind at the right time. I recalled that people had said Mr. Pendergast had been a digger of ginseng roots. Several had mentioned that to me, and I had seen a little sang hoe on the back porch. But I hadn’t seen any roots around the place. He must have been too feeble lately to climb up on the ridge looking for ginseng, which was usually found far back on the ridges. Then it occurred to me I had seen some roots hanging from a rafter in the attic when I climbed up to the loft to get the single bed for Ma Richards. I had noticed the roots up there and then forgot all about them.

I dropped what I was doing and run right up the stairs and climbed the ladder to the attic. I’d not been up there since we first come to Gap Creek. There was light from the two windows in the loft, and I was struck by the powerful smell of smoke and old wood. I hadn’t stopped to bring a lamp, so I had to let my eyes get used to the dim light. There was chairs and old trunks, dirty fruit jars, coils of rope and rusty steel traps. Some leaves of bleached-out tobacco hung from nails in a rafter, with hammocks of spiderwebs between them. It was warm by the chimney.

And then I seen the roots, hanging on a piece of twine not far from the chimney. Mr. Pendergast must have hung them there and then forgot them. There must have been thirty roots, all covered
with cobwebs. Some looked like dried sweet taters and some like shriveled figures of people, and some like the private parts of a man. I felt one and found it dry and scaly. Was it too dried up to sell? I untied the roots from the string and gathered them in my apron. If there was a pound of them they could be worth two or three dollars, maybe more. But I didn’t think they amounted to a pound, they was so dry and brittle. Holding the closed apron in my left hand I climbed back down the ladder.

Hank had gone out in the woods looking for another turkey, I reckon. He had been feeling so bad lately I didn’t want to ask him too many questions. And I didn’t want to wait for him to come back to take the ginseng to Poole’s store. I got a paper bag to carry the roots in and put on my coat. It was a sunny day, and the road was a little muddy from thaw.

The crossroads was only a mile and a half away. When I reached the store I seen George Poole setting by the stove playing checkers with a man named Slim Rankin. And Pug Little was watching them play. I had met them before at Mr. Pendergast’s funeral. George looked surprised to see me, because I almost never come to the store. “Hey, Miss Julie,” he said. He always called me Miss Julie, never just Julie.

“Howdy,” I said and nodded to him and Slim and Pug.

“To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” George said. He turned his eyes back to the checkerboard.

“I have brought some roots,” I said, and placed the bag on the counter.

“What kind of roots?” George said.

“Sang roots,” I said.

George made a move on the checkerboard. “It’s mighty late in the season to be digging sang roots,” he said.

“These was dug last year,” I said, “and have been drying ever since.”

All the men looked at me, for they must have guessed the roots was Mr. Pendergast’s. George stood up and walked around to the other side of the counter. He emptied the poke I had brought on the counter. The roots looked littler than they had in the attic.

“You ain’t been digging sang roots, have you?” Slim Rankin said.

“I didn’t know Hank was a sang digger,” Pug Little said and grinned at Slim.

“Mr. Pendergast left them in the attic,” I said.

“Pendergast wasn’t able to go digging for the past year,” Slim said.

“I don’t know when they was dug,” I said. All the cans on the shelves behind George looked like roosting birds staring at me. The store smelled of harness leather and coffee and wood smoke.

“These is awful dry,” George said. He took a pan off his balance scale and heaped the roots in the pan. Then he placed the pan on one side of the scale and added little weights to the other side.

“Preacher Gibbs used to dig ginseng,” Slim said.

“Everybody used to dig sang,” Pug said, “back when there was still some to dig.”

“There ain’t but three quarters of a pound here,” George said.

“Is that all?” I said.

“And these is so dry and old I don’t know if the man in Greenville will take them,” George said.

“He just sells it to the Chinese, and the Chinese will buy any kind of ginseng,” Slim said.

“Being dry don’t hurt sang,” Pug said.

“The price is down for roots anyway,” George said. I figured George was going to tell me he couldn’t buy the roots, that I had wasted my time taking them down there. I wondered if he thought the roots wasn’t mine to sell.

“Whatever you give me I’ll later give to Mr. Pendergast’s heirs,” I
said. “When they can be found.” I was glad nobody knowed about us giving the things to Caroline Glascock.