Olivia, Mourning (17 page)

He shrugged. “I always been thinkin’ so – but maybe that just like I been thinkin’ you gotta know.”

“How could my father keep something like that a secret?”

“I be the only one what seen her up there, ’sides your daddy. After a while he ’member I there, put his hands on my shoulders and say, ‘Boy, you already forgot what you seen here. My wife been a sickly woman, died in her bed.’ I promised him I ain’t gonna tell no one, ’cept for the Doc and it been your father what sent me to get him. He needed someone to help him carry her up to bed. I warn’t strong enough. But Doc Gaylin ain’t gonna tell no one, if your father say not to. Course people, they always whisperin’. The church ladies come, want to get the body ready, but your father say he ain’t believin’ in that, he havin’ a closed casket. But they whisperin’, always aksin’ me, but I ain’t never told no one nothin’.”

Olivia felt too exhausted to go on thinking about it and stood up. “I think I’ll turn in. Thank you for telling me, Mourning. And for not trying to, you know, make it sound not as bad as it was. I appreciate you telling me the truth.”

He nodded. “I remember the way I always been aksin’ folks ’bout my mamma and daddy. Wanna know the truth, even if it be hard.”

She spread a sheet and comforter over her mattress, let down the canvas flap Mourning had nailed to the door, undressed, and pulled a clean white nightdress over her head for the first time since leaving home. She frowned, trying to think of something to use for a pillow, but was too tired to worry about that. Before lying down she sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing her feet together to brush the dirt off and thinking what a great bed it was. Solid wood clear to the floor – no old man to reach out and grab her ankle.
Of all things
, she scolded herself.
Mourning tells you your mother hung herself and all you can think about is Avis’s old man under the bed?

But her mind refused to focus on this new image of her mother. She sank back onto the bed. The mattress felt wonderful, as if she were floating on a cloud, and she put her arms over her head and stretched. She could hear Mourning outside and guessed he must have swept out the wagon and made his bed in it. For a moment she was conscious of the two of them, alone in the woods, in the dark, nothing but that canvas flap between them. But she was too exhausted to give much thought to Mourning’s sinewy muscles.

An enormous white moon hung low in the sky, three bright stars at its side, all in the haze of a pale halo.
Wordsworth should be here to write a poem about this sky
, she thought. The night air grew chilly and damp and she huddled under her quilted blue comforter as sleep crept over her, heavy, dark, and silent.

“Ain’t you never gonna wake up?” Mourning called through the canvas flap the next morning, stomping his feet and clapping his hands. “I got work to do.”

Olivia sat up and put her feet over the side of the bed. Beads of dew glistened on the comforter and cold clung to the air.

“I thought I gonna give you a wood splittin’ lesson first thing.”

“Hold your horses and stop hollering.” She slipped into her dress and shoes and went outside, running her fingers through her hair and yawning. “It’s early.” She looked up at the gray sky. “And cold.” She went back in for her woolen shawl.

“Good reason to get movin’ ’round,” he called after her.

Her cuts and blisters looked and felt worse and when she came back out she showed him her hands.

“They bad all right. ’Fore you light the fire, get some a that soot from the chimney ’n rub it in the ones what bleedin’. Ain’t nothing else for ’em.” He held his own hands out for inspection. “See mine? Like leather. But you gonna suffer for a few days. Best get some rags to wrap ’round ’em.”

That was apparently all the sympathy she was going to get and she went in to prepare herself for the day. When she returned, Mourning showed her a large harp-shaped tool with a jagged blade.

“This here be your buck saw.” He walked away, motioning with his head for her to follow him to a dead tree lying at the edge of the woods. He braced one foot on it and held the saw, blade down. “You get over there and latch on to the other handle. We gonna take off a nice log. That get the chill off you.”

She took hold of her end of the saw and tried her best to help him, wincing in pain.

“No, not like that. You ain’t spose to
push
it,” he said. “All you can do to a buck saw is
pull
. First
I
pull, then
you
pull. That why it got two handles. While I be pullin’, you don’t do nothing but hold it steady.”

After a few more false starts they got a rhythm going. Despite her pain, which the wet rags she had wrapped around her hands only seemed to exacerbate, she helped him saw off three logs.

“That’s enough for now,” she said and stood up straight. “My skin isn’t leather yet.”

“Okay.” He picked up one of the logs and carried it to her chopping block. “Now we go on to splittin’. You can use one of these, if it suit you.” He picked up a sharp-edged triangular wedge of iron and held it out for her inspection. “You gotta find the right place in the grain.” He pressed the sharp edge into the wood and used the butt end of his axe to pound it in. “And then …” he picked up a five-pound hammer, “you give it a good old bang.”

Olivia admired his grace as he raised the hammer over his shoulder and brought it down with a loud ring of metal on metal. The two halves of the log fell to the ground. He put one of the halves on the block and offered the wedge and axe to Olivia. “Now you.”

She managed to pound the wedge into the log and then raised the sledge hammer over her head and brought it down with all her might. She grazed the wedge and sent the log flying.

“You tryin’ to break my foot or cut it off?” Mourning yelped.

On her sixth try the wood split into two uneven pieces.

“Okay, that one way. Now have a go with a splitting maul.” He offered her a tool that looked like a wedge-shaped hammer.

“No, thanks. We’ll leave that for the next lesson.” She shook her hands and winced.

“Well, okay. You done good for a first try,” Mourning said. “Real good.”

“I’m going to mix up griddle cakes and make coffee.”

“You know, ’fore too long one of us gonna have to shoot something or catch something out a that river. Or we gotta go into town and buy some eggs. We gotta eat something what gonna stick to our inners. Your uncle ever take you fishing?”

“No.”

“Don’t neither of us got time to sit holding a pole, but I show you how to run a trotline. All you gotta do is pull it in every day, see what you find on them hooks.”

“All right. And I’m not a bad shot. Maybe later this afternoon I’ll go find a good blind and sit for a while,” she said over her shoulder as she headed back to the cabin.

Nothing appealed to her more than the idea of resting quietly – and guilt-free – in the woods, while she waited for a deer to wander by. Of course, if she got one, she could guess who was going to be expected to process and preserve the meat. And she had no idea how to do either.

She unwound the rags, shook her head at the bloody mess, and rubbed her hands with chimney soot before wrapping them back up and lighting the fire. All she felt like doing was soaking in a hot tub, but Mourning had been right about one thing. She wasn’t cold any more.

“Come inside, eat at the table,” she called through the doorway and then looked up at the sky. Some “inside” their roofless little cabin offered.

Mourning came in and sat on one of the stump chairs. Ignoring his knife and fork, he spread a griddlecake with jam, rolled it up, and picked it up to eat with his fingers. Then he did the same with another.

“You ready for me to show you how to stitch that bark together for the roof?”

She looked at her breakfast, most of which was still on her plate. “Yes, Massa.”

“You want a roof over your head?” He shrugged and rose. “This weather ain’t gonna hold forever. Miracle we ain’t been soaked yet. It gonna rain sometime soon. I figure we can get most of the cabin roof on ’fore it does. We do the front first. That where the wind be comin’ from. If we both sleep with our backs against the front wall, we shouldn’t be getting’ no rain on us.”

“You’re fooling me,” she said.

He raised his chin. “You ’spect me to sleep out in the rain?”

“Mourning, I can’t sleep inside the same cabin with you.”

“Why not? Your head gonna start where my feet end. We be farther apart in here than we been on that boat.”

“That was different. There were all those people around. And no one knew us. But this is our home. What would people say?”

“What would people say?” he mimicked her, pitching his voice high. “What the hell people?” He stood up and spun around, hands out to both sides, palms up. “Who gonna tell anyone, the raccoons?”

“I’m sure you can figure out some place to sleep besides the cabin.”

“Sure, I can go crawl inside one a them hollow trees.”

“You could sleep under the wagon. Stand it in the corner of the barn closest to where the wind’s coming from. Then hang some canvas over the sides, like a tent, to keep the wet out. That would be drier than the cabin with only half a roof on it.”

His stared at her, his face stone.

“Don’t you be looking at me like that, Mourning Free. You know you’ve slept in worse places.”

His face remained blank.

“Anyway,” she continued, “you’re the one ought to be worried about what folks might do if they found a colored man sleeping in a cabin together with a white girl.” She thought she saw the line of his jaw relent before he turned toward the door.

“Wait, don’t go,” she said, gulping down a hasty bite. “I do want you to show me how to do the bark. Just let me finish eating. You haven’t even had any coffee.”

“Best make it fast. Lot to do today.” His voice sounded normal as he wrapped a rag around the handle of the tin coffee pot and poured himself a cup.

When they went outside, Mourning walked to where the pieces of bark were spread on the buffalo grass.

“This bark gonna be laid ’cross the roof in rows,” he said. “So first you gotta find all the pieces what be the same length. Don’t matter how wide they be, just how long. If they a real funny shape, you can fix ’em like this.” He took out his pocketknife and picked up an uneven piece of bark to demonstrate. He turned it over, scored a straight line along the top edge, and carefully bent it to break off the jagged edge. “Just don’t be thinkin’ like a girl, that they all got to be perfect. They all gonna lap over the other, so don’t matter none if they ain’t nice and straight.”

She nodded and he reached into his pocket for a roll of cloth. Inside it was a thick needle with a wide eye. He handed it to her.

“They’s a roll of string over there on the stump. You cut off a bunch a pieces, ’bout eight inches long, thread one of them through that needle. Then you put two pieces a bark together, with the long edges overlappin’ by ’bout two inches. Nuff so you got where to use that needle to poke holes through both pieces.” He demonstrated, holding two pieces of bark together. “You gonna make two holes near the top corner and tie off the string, then two more near the bottom corner. When you got a row wide as the cabin, I be layin’ it over the roof poles, nail it in place. Then the next one on top of it.”

“That’s the whole roof? That will keep the rain out?”

“You ever see a tree carryin’ an umbrella? May be some water gonna drip in, but it keep us mostly dry.”

Olivia sat down and began working. Her fingertips were soon covered with painful red dots and she rose to rummage through her wicker baskets in search of a thimble.

When she came back out Mourning was harnessing Dougan and Dixby. “You doin’ fine. I’m a go for more trees,” he said.

After he disappeared she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on one of the stumps. She allowed her thoughts to wander to her mother, but they didn’t remain there long. She found herself more interested in water – how much she had used washing up and how many times she would have to go up and down the hill, today, tomorrow, and every day after that. Anyway, what was there to think about her mother? Nola June had been determined to die and dead she was. She hadn’t given a whit about the people she was leaving behind, so why should Olivia waste energy fretting about her?

She worked on the bark, hauled water, gathered wood, and made a few feeble attempts at splitting logs. Then she put both the beans and a pot of potatoes on to boil. Suddenly aware of how deep her hunger was, she decided that she did indeed need to go hunting today. The woods between the river and stream must be home to a lot of animals. It was too early in the day for many deer to be moving, but she would go pick a good spot and return later. She slung the Hawken and possibles bag over her shoulder, waded across the stream, left the trail, and carefully picked her way through the brush. She lifted her skirt, but it was already covered with brambles. Thorns scratched at her ankles and sharp twigs threatened to poke her eye out. She sighed, wishing she’d taken the high-top work boots she’d seen at Killion’s General. She left broken branches dangling to mark her trail, remembering that she hadn’t even told Mourning where she was going. How stupid of her.

Finally she came upon a small grassy clearing. She licked and raised a finger to check the wind and scrutinized the woods around the edge. There it was – the perfect tree – with an enormous trunk and low-hanging branches, a ready-made blind. She walked over and squatted behind it. Yes, it was a good place. She walked to the opposite edge of the clearing and pulled at the leafy branches of a young tree, breaking a few off and tossing them in a heap. Surely any self-respecting deer would venture two steps out of the woods to browse on those nice tops. Already tasting roast venison, she hurried back home. By the time she got there, Mourning had returned with another load of roof poles.

“Where you been at?” he asked.

“Finding a blind to hunt from. I’m starving. But if I get anything, you’re going to have to gut and skin it. I’ve never done that.”

He nodded, and she watched him wield a curved, double-handled draw knife as he stripped the bark from a thin trunk.

He makes everything look so easy
, she thought.
And he never whines. Not like me
.

“So why ain’t you watchin’ out for a deer ’stead a standin’ here watchin’ me?” he asked.

“It’s too early. They’ll still be bedded down,” she said.

She dished up two plates of potatoes and beans and they sat outside, wolfing the food down. Then she hauled water to replenish the barrel. On every trip down to the river she passed the clothes she had hung on the line yesterday, but was in no hurry to take them down. There was something comforting – homey – about the sound of them flapping in the breeze. Then she sewed together two more strings of bark, while Mourning built a ladder that he stood against the wall of the cabin.

“Maybe I will go settle down, before the deer get up for their dinner,” she said. “And maybe I’ll start looking for a bee tree. I brought some old honey comb.”

“You know how to find one?”

“It’s easy. My Mammo Killion taught me. She had to have her honey wine. You burn a piece of honey comb and pretty soon a bee comes buzzing around. Before you know it, there’s a whole swarm of them. Then you wait for them to leave and watch which direction they go. They circle round and round till they’re high enough and then make a straight line back to their tree. You follow that line as well as you can and then burn some more comb. You keep doing that until eventually the bees start leaving in the opposite direction. Then you just walk back real slow and you’ll find the tree.”

Mourning’s bottom lip covered the top one as he nodded his head in approval. “Then how you gonna get the honey out a that tree, with all them bees buzzing around?”