Marrying Stone (34 page)

Purposely, Roe turned away from the sight of her and walked over to Onery's side.

With a good deal of moaning and complaint, the old man had managed to sit up on his bed. He dangled his feet off the edge.

"You about ready to wear a path in the floor?" he asked.

"There isn't much else I could do on a night like this," Roe answered.

He helped the old man to his feet, wrapping Onery's arm around his shoulder. Onery's face was ashen with pain, but he only grunted stubbornly. Roe grasped him around the waist and encouraged him to lean his weight into his arms.

The first steps were hard won and small.

"Is it your hip or your leg?" Roe asked.

The old man gave a vivid curse under his breath. "It's both," he answered. "My dang hip is creaking and aching like a wagon wheel plumb out of grease and my old lame leg is throbbin' like a thumb blackened with a hammer."

"Would it help if we got your boots on?"

"In the house? Lord Almighty!" Onery exclaimed. "It'd just be a pure waste of shoe leather."

Onery moaned aloud in pain as he tried out his weight on his bad leg. After only a second, he leaned heavily against Roe.

Slowly, they made their way across the room. The old man's leg was stiff and painful to him and dragging it about cost him dearly of his strength.

"Lord, it is a sight getting old," Onery said. "I used these legs to walk as far east as the New River country and as far west as the Nations." He whistled loudly, in lieu of a curse. "Now it near kills me to walk acrost my own cabin."

"It's just the weather," Roe assured him.

He nodded. "Yep, just the weather. It sure is a shame that the dang weather spends so much time being wet or cold."

Roe couldn't argue with that logic.

"Well, at least the rain today is past. In a couple of days things will dry up completely and you'll be back to yourself."

The old man laughed derisively. "That I will. I'll be back to being a crippled old man," he said.

When Roe made no comment, he continued, "I ain't complaining, mind ye. I'm glad to be alive and I'm happy not to be no more worst off than this. I'm no young man these days."

"Age happens to all of us," Roe agreed.

"That it does, son, indeed it does, and to tell the truth I wouldn't never go back. Not to my own youth no how."

"You weren't happy as a young man?"

Onery chuckled. "I was too happy. That was my problem. I wouldn't go back to being that itinerant fiddle player who just came and went as he pleased."

Roe was surprised. He knew how much the old man loved music and also how much he hated farming.

"You don't miss it at all?" he asked.

He shrugged. "I miss being that young and strong and healthy," he answered honestly. "But I don't miss the life even though I could tell you some stories that would scare the ghost outta good people."

"A sinful life was it?"

Onery hooted with laughter. "More than I'm willing to tell. Truth to say, son," he said in a quiet whisper and with a wary eye toward Meggie's pallet. "They's a pretty gal in near ever' town from here to Georgia that knows my name. And more than one youngun that's got my face."

"You must have been quite a swain with the ladies," Roe smiled, grateful that the talk was diverting his attention from his pain.

Onery snorted. "I weren't nothing a'tal. I was fair enough to look at, I suppose, but I didn't have a mil in my pocket or a serious thought in my head."

"But the women liked you anyway."

"Ain't nothing gals is more interested in than some stranger that they mamas are busy warnin' them against."

Roe's brow furrowed. "Yes, I suppose that's true," he answered, casting his own glance toward the pallet across the room.

"It is for some, even for my Posie, Lord rest her soul, she was as stuck on me as a tick on a hound. But there was a difference, of course."

"Of course."

Onery stopped in the middle of the room and looked Roe straight in the eye. "The difference was that I was stuck on her, too."

The old man's eyes glazed slightly as he spoke of his long-dead wife.

"It were the strangest thing," he said. "When I was with her, I felt like I just belonged there. Right queer, ain't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"She were a pretty thing, my Posie," he continued. "She had that cornsilk hair like Jesse's and those big blue eyes." He sighed. "Mind you, I'd seen better. But there was something about her. I never did truly understand it. It was almost as if we was meant for each other from the day that we met."

"Perhaps you were."

"Not according to her," Onery said. "She weren't gonna have me. Do you know that story?"

"Jesse has told me some of it."

"She thought I wouldn't make her a good husband," he said. "And I suspect she was right. At least she was then."

"But you changed," Roe said.

"Yep, I sure did. But I wouldn't have, not if I hadn't had to."

They stopped to turn once more. Onery took a deep breath as if he were readying himself for a dive in deep water and then he began to walk again.

"The truth is, if she'd married up with me easy, I probably wouldn't have changed at all," he said. "Oh, I would have still loved her, that's for certain. But I would have grown tired of all this hard work and before long I would have begun wishing I was back on the road."

Roe listened thoughtfully.

"But she didn't marry me easy. She didn't marry me a'tal. I come back here and she's got that little baby that don't seem quite right and all the folks treating her like she was the whore of the county. I offered to marry her like I was doing her a good deed." The old man chuckled at the memory. "That Posie, she looked at me like I was lower than the dirt."

Onery turned slightly to look at Roe as he spoke. "She made me work to get her. It wasn't enough that we was spooning silly for each other and had a baby besides, I had to prove that I could be her man."

Roe nodded thoughtfully.

"It just made sense, I guess," Onery said. "Anything that's worth having is worth working for."

Once more Roe glanced over toward Meggie. He wanted to ask Onery if maybe she was doing the same thing as her mother. But he wasn't ready to talk about Meggie yet. And certainly not to Meggie's father.

Deliberately, he changed the subject.

"I bet you learned a lot of songs while you were traveling."

"Oh, that I did. I did indeed. I ain't sung you near nothing that I know."

Roe smiled. "I'm going to have to get you to give me your English ballads for my collection."

"I suspect I got a few ye ain't heard," Onery told him. "Course I have to bring 'em to memory. That ain't always easy. It takes a bit of time."

Onery stopped near the end of the bed. "I think that's about enough, son. If I was to walk any farther, I'd be too tired to get into the bed."

Roe helped him, gently easing his bad leg onto the feather tick without bending the knee. The old man's face was as white as a sheet by the time he got situated, but his words were still lighthearted.

"I thank you, Roe Farley," Onery said. "You ain't a half bad feller for a Yankee son of a lawyer."

Roe laughed at the old man's joke. It was easy to understand how Jesse was mostly such a happy, easygoing fellow. Roe thought he might have been less serious himself it he'd had a father like Onery Best.

"Wish you was staying the winter here," Onery said. "Cabin gets close in the winter and we do a lot of singing and playing."

"I bet you do."

"It's mighty pretty up here in the wintertime. Snow covering the trees like sugar candy and tracking meat is easy as falling off a log," he said. "On the real cold days when we got no call to go outside, that Jesse he plays that fiddle from sunup to evening and Meggie and I bellow out tunes 'til our throats is sore."

In his mind Roe could almost see the cold winter day that Onery described. The feeling it evoked in him was near envy. "I'm sure it must be nice."

"Nice? It's downright terrible," the old man laughed. "Ain't nothing so bad as being holed up in a cabin with two younguns who's as ticklish about confined places as I am. And that gal of mine cooking up something she's like to burn and smellin' up the place something awful with scorched beans or taters."

Laughing along with him, Roe shook his head. "You don't paint a very pretty picture of it."

"Oh, it ain't much of a picture, for sure," Onery agreed.

"But it does sound awfully good," Roe admitted.

"You stay this winter, son, and you'd get yer ears and yer Listening Box full for sure."

Roe was thoughtful for a long moment. It was amazing how tempting the invitation was. "Perhaps I could stay," he said.

Onery nodded. "It's an idea. You could collect yourself a slew of songs and it'd give you a bit more time."

"More time for what?"

The old man grinned wisely. "Oh, I guess it'd give ye more time to see my Meggie."

FROM THE JOURNAL OF J. MONROE FARLEY

July 14,

Marrying Stone, Arkansas

The weather has become quite warm and somewhat uncomfortable. Completed the work on the new privy and I must admit it has turned out to be a better idea than even I had first thought. Mr. Best's leg continues to pain him considerably and on some days he just sits in his chair and stares out across the distant hills. This has left the entire work of the farm to Jesse and myself. Meggie helps when she can, although her work at the house and taking care of her father keeps her busy. Her garden has suffered some from bugs, but we continue to enjoy fresh vegetables now in addition to the usual pork, chicken, and occasional wild game.

My collection of old English ballads and communal re-creations continues to grow and I have been forced to shave the wax on several less valuable cylinders in order to make room for the new songs that turn up on this doorstep nearly every day. Just last week Mr. Piggott Broody, an older and rather eccentric member of the community, sat in the yard and sang "The Lass of Roch Royal." The original story was in many senses changed, but still maintains Georgie Jeems, the Fair Annie, and the false lady.

I am considering staying on here through the winter. It is possible that I might send for more wax cylinders through the drummers that serve Mr. Phillips's store. Winter seems an especially good time for singing and playing. And I am loath to leave with Mr. Best ailing.

THE BRIGHT DAWN and cloudless sky suggested that it would be a perfect day for a wedding. Dressed in Sunday best and carrying a new willow basket with the freshest and most perfect of the garden produce, the Best family, with Roe Farley along, headed for the Marrying Stone wedding of Paisley Winsloe and Althea McNees.

Roe and Meggie were both concerned about Onery's health as his leg continued to bother him, and the trip was a long one and not wholly necessary to make. A drawn-out argument ensued over whether any or all of them should go. However, the old man declared that he was fine and neither of them had the audacity to dispute his word. Donning a fancy long-tailed frock coat, somewhat worse for wear and very much out-of-date, Onery insisted that he would go.