Gap Creek (33 page)

“A shell costs so much it’s not worth wasting on a squirrel,” Hank said.

“Couldn’t you borrow more shells?” I said.

“I’d be ashamed to ask to borrow shotgun shells,” Hank said, “unless there was something bigger to kill than squirrels.”

“It’ll be spring soon,” I said.

“Not soon enough,” Hank said.

I knowed that if I asked Elizabeth or Joanne or Preacher Gibbs or half a dozen other people they would help us out. But they had
already helped us out, and besides, everybody had had a hard time that winter. It was up to us to look after ourselves. If we was going to be grown up married folks who was about to raise a family, we would have to learn to take care of ourselves. It would be a disgrace to depend on other people to bring us things to eat.

When all the dried beans and dried apples was gone, we had nothing but cornmeal and the eggs the chickens laid. There was half a dozen hens left after the flood, and they almost quit laying in late winter. But I was still getting ten eggs a week, and you can live a long time on grits and eggs if you have to. But there wasn’t enough eggs for both Hank and me to have one every day. When there was only one egg I would scramble it and give Hank half.

“No, you have the egg,” Hank would say.

“I don’t want the whole egg,” I’d say.

“You’re eating for the baby,” Hank would say.

“The baby don’t want the egg,” I said.

“It would turn my stomach to eat that egg,” Hank would say. “It would taste like sand.”

I discovered hunger don’t make you resentful. Hunger makes you slow and brooding, like you are just waiting and waiting. You don’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything. Hunger makes you set around, makes you want to go to bed early and sleep late. You don’t want to think about nothing, for if you think you will think about good things to eat. When you’re hungry you don’t want to think at all. You want time to pass. You are waiting for something to happen. You don’t want to waste effort. You are saving the fat on your bones and the strength in your blood. You are saving your breath. When you’re hungry you don’t even daydream a lot. You just drift through the hours and the first thing you know another day is over, another night has gone by. Mostly you want to forget.

• • •

ONE NIGHT I was waked up by wind shivering the bedroom window. Hank was waked up too. We laid there in the dark several minutes. I kept thinking about what we was going to do.

“Couldn’t you find work as a carpenter, now that it’s spring?” I said.

“I’ve tried,” he said.

“And ain’t you worked as a mason too?” I said.

“As a mason’s helper,” Hank said.

We just laid there in the dark. I reckon you don’t go back to sleep so fast when you’re still a little hungry.

“Why don’t you go over to where they’re building the store in Tigerville and get a job?” I said.

“Too long a walk,” Hank said.

“No further than Eaton was,” I said. But quick, I was sorry I’d said it. It was the wrong thing to say.

“That’s my business,” Hank said.

“I know it is,” I said.

“Don’t tell me where to look for a job,” Hank said.

“I wasn’t telling you,” I said. We laid in the dark and listened to the wind roar on the ridge like a hundred freight trains. A gust hit the house again and made it shudder. It’s hard to lay close to somebody in the dark when they’re mad. I knowed it was better not to say nothing else. There was things about Hank I didn’t understand, and it didn’t do no good to try to make him talk.

I didn’t know whether to put my hand on his chest and slide closer to show how much I loved him, or roll away and let him get over his anger on his own. I didn’t feel like going back to sleep. The wind had woke me up, and Hank’s resentment had took away all my sleepiness.

“I know you’ll find another job,” I said, and pushed up close so my cheek was on his shoulder. I tried to say it so it sounded like I
was not just trying to cheer him up. I waited to see how his mood was going to go.

“I won’t get another job,” Hank said.

“Of course you will,” I said.

“Word has got out,” he said.

“Word of what?” A cold silver wire went down the middle of my back.

“Word that nobody wants to hire me,” he said with a sigh.

“That don’t make sense,” I said. “You are such a good worker.”

“They didn’t fire me at Eaton just because all the bricks was made,” Hank said.

I didn’t say nothing. I had to wait for him to go on. It was better for me not to say a thing.

“I got in a fight is why,” Hank said.

“With who?” I said.

“I hit the foreman upside of the head,” Hank said.

The wind sounded like an ocean of doom coming down the valley.

“He cussed me and I hit him upside of the head,” Hank said.

“He must have needed it,” I said.

“He was a rawhider,” Hank said. “I knowed if he kept mouthing off I was going to hit him. That’s why nobody’s going to hire me.”

“Not everybody will blame you,” I said.

“Word has got round,” Hank said. I pushed up closer to him.

“I hit him before I even thought,” Hank said. “He just kept cussing at me, and I knocked him on the head. It was not the Christian thing to do.”

“You will find another job,” I said.

“Nobody will ever hire me again,” Hank said.

• • •

SINCE THERE WAS no cow to milk, Hank went out every morning to feed the horse and chickens and gather what eggs had been laid in the nests in the henhouse. Some mornings he would come back to the house with no eggs. Sometimes he would come back with an egg in each hand like he was a magician and had plucked them from the air. One morning while I was boiling water for grits he come back into the house but he didn’t have any eggs. He looked like he had seen the devil hisself.

“You won’t believe this,” Hank said.

“Believe what?” I said.

“Come out and look at it,” he said.

I left the pot boiling on the stove and followed him out the back door. He marched across the yard and I followed, wondering if the horse had died or he’d caught a thief in the feed room or seen a spook in the barn loft. But he strode right to the chicken house and flung the door open on its leather hinges. “Look at that,” he said and stood aside so I could see into the henhouse.

At first I didn’t see a thing in the dark except the roost poles and the boxes nailed to the walls with pine needles in them for nests. The chicken house smelled sweet and bitter as it always did. But I could smell blood too. And the place was quiet. There was not a cackle and there wasn’t a cluck, as you would expect in the early morning. The chicken house was still as the smokehouse. “What is it?” I said.

“Look,” Hank said.

And then I seen a hen laying on the ground in front of me. It was laying flat with its neck stretched out and there was a little blood on the neck. And then I seen another hen laying in the dust beyond that one. I strained my eyes in the shadows and seen all six hens laying on the ground. “What done it?” I said, and felt my face go pale.

“I’d say a mink,” Hank said. “Only a mink’d kill them all for a sip of blood from each neck just for the fun of it.” I thought of the mink I’d seen in the springhouse in the fall.

“Bad luck goes in a streak,” I said. As I looked at the dead hens I thought that if we had plenty to eat and Hank had a job, and there wasn’t a baby coming, that mink wouldn’t have slipped into the henhouse to kill the chickens. It would have slipped into somebody else’s henhouse. It would have found somebody else down on their luck and out of money to rob.

“The Lord taketh away,” Hank said.

“And lately he ain’t giveth too much,” I said. But quick I was sorry I’d said it.

WHAT WE DID that morning was boil water in the washpot and scald all the dead hens. We plucked them and dressed them. There wasn’t any way to keep them, so I fried two of them. And then I boiled the other four and made stew and chicken soup, which I put in jars. One of the fried chickens I had Hank carry down the road to Preacher and Mrs. Gibbs. We hadn’t give anything to the preacher, and we didn’t have no money to tithe into the church. And there was no way we could eat both chickens at once. The stew would keep a week maybe, and the soup even longer. But the fried chicken had to be eat in a day or two.

Just when we needed the eggs most, and just when there was grass for the hens to eat, as well as bugs and beetles, the fowl had been took. It was the kind of thing that made you just want to set down and cry. It made me want to give up.

We had fried chicken for dinner, and I made some cornbread and grits to go with the chicken, and I still had just a little bit of molasses to go with the cornbread.

Hank and me set down at the table with that hot chicken and cornbread and steaming grits, and Hank said the blessing. He returned thanks for the chicken we had to eat. We set at the table and eat real slow. We didn’t have any butter for the cornbread and grits.

“This chicken’s mighty good,” I said.

“It is,” Hank said. I knowed he was feeling low, and I didn’t want him to get in one of his moods. His jaw was set in a hard line.

“Maybe the Lord seen fit to give us some meat when we need it most,” I said.

“Maybe the Lord wants to feed us now so he can starve us later,” Hank said.

“It’s near about spring,” I said.

“It better be,” Hank said.

AS SOON AS he finished eating Hank pushed back his chair. “I’m going out,” he said, wiping his chin.

“Where you going?” I said.

“I’ve got to get out of this house,” he said. And before I could say anything else he was gone.

Twelve

By living on stew and cornbread and then the chicken soup and cornbread, we got pretty far into spring without starving. I still craved jam, but after I eat what Elizabeth and Joanne had brought I didn’t have no more. I craved something fresh, something green, too, but it was a late spring. Sarvis was blooming and buds on the maples was getting red as little match heads.

“Do you think the creesie greens is out?” I said to Hank.

“They’re up, but too little to pick,” he said. “It’d be easier to pick a mess of four-leaf clover.”

But I thought there must be sheltered places along the creek or one of the branches running into the creek where the creesies was big enough to gather. One evening I took a bucket and walked down the valley to where the little branch called Briar Fork come into the creek. There was green grass along the creek bank, but the fields that had been plowed in the fall was still muddy. I walked along the edge of the plowed ground looking for new shoots and sprouts.

Briar Fork led back into a narrow cove. It was almost a toy valley, with corn patches along the branch no wider than a front yard. There was just enough room between the mountains on one side
and the mountains on the other for the stream to cut through with a little bit of cleared ground on the sides. They was the kind of patches you could make with a hoe. A crow called somewhere on the ridge, and I could hear a waterfall further up the holler. Pines stood out black on the ridge almost straight above me, against a blue sky with a few white clouds. I was hid from the world, deep in the cove.

As I was looking up at the rim of the mountains my feet touched something soft. It was lush weeds at the edge of the plowed ground. I looked down and seen I had been stepping on creesie greens, growed up several inches, big enough to gather. I knelt down and took a handful of the leaves. They was so tender and soft some of the leaves crushed between my fingers, leaving a green stain. I picked them more gently. The leaves was so fresh they almost melted if you pressed them. Rain had splashed grit on some of the leaves and I tried to gather the cleanest ones.

As I squatted on the ground I seen the mud had caked on my shoes. It was like extra soles had thickened there. Layers of different colors of mud had built up. It was hard to stoop over with my feet raised so high on the mud. There was a pain in my belly from bending over. I stood up and stepped over to the grass to kick the mud off my shoes, swinging my feet hard across the grass to wipe off the thick layers, driving one foot and then another into the grass, knocking off tongues and wedges of mud. I kicked harder, trying to clean the soles. A pain shot through me from deep in my belly. It was like I had colic, a bad gas pain. I stood still to let my insides settle.

The roar of the waterfall upstream sounded closer, like the air had got damp and was passing the sound on. A crow called from almost straight above me. As I stood still, the hurt went away, but there was a hotness in my belly, like something had been stretched or strained. It was probably nothing. It was some kind of cramp from bending over. I wanted to pluck more creesie greens for a good
mess. Because they boil down to almost nothing, you have to gather a lot just to cook up a good bowl. Nothing goes better with hot cornbread in the spring than creesie greens. I needed the bucket full just to have a decent meal. I wouldn’t have any boiled eggs to put on them, but I still had some vinegar to tame the wild, bitter taste and make it perfect.

I stooped over slow and started picking more greens. They are really just wild mustard, somebody said. But we always called them creesie greens. A pain stung through me like you had plucked a tight wire. This time the pain went right down into my groin. I stood up, and the hurt went away a little. I stood and waited, looking at the clouds easing over the rim of the mountains. What was I to do? I wanted to get a bucket of creesies after coming all that way and finding the patch. Hank and me needed them for a spring tonic. We needed something to thin our blood and get us ready for hot weather. And I needed the minerals in the greens for the baby, to help it grow strong bones and strong nerves. I hadn’t had any milk since New Year’s. I had to get a good mess of greens to go with our cornbread.

But the pain in my belly didn’t go away. The throb worked its way around to my side. It was not so much a tearing pain as a hot burning inside me. I tried to recall anything I had eat that would give me such a pain. Would bending over tear something loose inside me? I patted my belly with green-stained hands and waited for the pain to dim again. Surely my insides would cool off if I stood still long enough. I needed to outwait the pain and get my creesie greens.