Pamela Morsi (18 page)

“I don’t know why the boy has to be there,” Jeptha had complained to Moss. “He’s awful young to see the kind of sight he’s likely to see.”

“Eulie thinks that he needs to know how to help you,” Moss answered. “After I’m … in case I’m not here, he needs to learn what to do.”

Jeptha supposed that was right. Although he didn’t see it as very important. If Moss was not there, Jeptha could just wait until he got back. Surely the woman didn’t think that he’d need to bathe that often.

He didn’t know what she thought or what she expected or what she wanted. All he knew was that two women whose opinions mattered to him had told him that he had a vile stench. Obviously that necessitated some course of action.

Moss poured a near cup full of powders in the
water and sloshed it around to make it dissolve.

“What’s that?” Jeptha asked him.

“Poke root,” he answered. “Eulie says that it’s good for itch and will get rid of anything that pesters you—chiggers, mites.”

“I ain’t got no lice,” he assured his nephew. “Except maybe for a few nits in my hair and beard.”

“She sent sassafras oil for that,” Moss told him. “And a fine-tooth comb.”

Jeptha nodded. Reluctantly, self-consciously he began to remove his clothes. Carefully he folded his shirt.

“Just leave your clothes in a pile,” Moss said. “Eulie’s got the laundry fire going and she’s going to boil them good and give them a wash as well.”

“Then what am I going to put on when I get out?”

“She’s got one of my work shirts here for you,” Moss answered. “And my old trousers that were so much patched at the knees, she’s just cut them off and seamed them together at the end. She’s made you some underwear, too. Cotton flannels, they’re real soft.”

Jeptha glanced over at his new wardrobe, feeling a little threatened. Getting clean and dressing in fresh clothes seemed almost too big a step for one day. He’d rather face gunfire. But he’d promised to do it.

Shirtless, he fidgeted with the buttons on the front of his trousers. Rocking left to right, he eased them down over his hips and beyond the stumps of his legs. He was naked.

“All right,” he said.

“Rans, squat down and let him put his arm around you,” Moss said.

The boy did as he was told. Moss offered his own shoulder on the right. They lifted him up and lowered him slowly into the bath.

Jeptha gasped as his flesh came into contact with the hot water. It was startling at first, but it felt good. It felt very, very good.

The washtub was just deep enough for him to sit with the water shoulder-high. As a young man, his legs would have hung uncomfortably over the side. That was no longer a problem.

“You want one over the top?” Moss asked, holding a full bucket in his hand.

Jeptha nodded. A half minute later a gallon of water splashed down upon his head, drenching his hair, face, and beard. He wiped the excess out of his eyes.

Moss moved a chair up next to the tub.

“Here’s your soap and brush and the sassafras oil,” he told him. “Eulie said that once your hair is clean rub it in real thorough and then drag the comb through it until every nit and tangle is out. Let it set for a while before you rinse it.”

“I can do that,” Jeptha agreed.

“Do you want my razor?” Moss asked.

Jeptha fingered his beard. It was thick and coarse, and wet it hung down near his belly button.

“I don’t want to have to start shaving again,” he answered. “Why don’t you just bring me some shears and I’ll trim it short.”

Moss nodded and reached down to pick up the dirty clothes.

“We’ll leave you to your solitude, then,” he said.

He walked toward the door. The boy hesitated.

“You think we should leave him alone like that?” Rans whispered. “What if he tips over and cain’t get back up?”

“He’s sitting down,” Moss answered, his tone impatient and superior. “He’s no more likely to tip over in the tub than he is in his cart.”

Jeptha glanced over at young Rans. His cheeks were bright red with the humiliation of the setdown.

“I’m pretty steady here,” Jeptha told him, more kindly. “If I get into trouble, I’ll holler so loud they’ll be able to hear me down at the meetinghouse.”

Rans acknowledged his words and left with Moss.

Jeptha picked up the dark yellow soap and started rubbing his head. The cake must have had a good measure of rosin, because it lathered up better than he expected. He dug his fingers into his thinning hair, scrubbing his scalp with rough, determined motions. He slid down in the tub to rinse the soap out. He was surprised at how whole he felt. The buoyancy of the water gave him more stability, not less. It felt almost as if he had legs once more.

The sassafras oil smelled slightly sweet as he furrowed it through his hair. It was pleasant and almost comforting. The fine-tooth comb, however, was not. Jeptha pulled and worked at the mats and tangles, wishing he had the shears already. He’d just cut himself bald-headed.

Finally, when the comb would pass unhindered through every lock of hair on his head, he eased back with his neck against the edge of the washtub and relaxed. Eulie said the oil needed to soak in. He was willing to allow it to do so. And rest up a minute before he washed.

He’d missed this, he realized. He’d missed this very innocent pleasure of being clean and alive. He remembered a different sense of it from the war. The field hospital may have known nothing about saving gangrenous limbs, but they sure had a bent toward cleanliness. Soap and water was their main cure for everything. Perhaps that was why he had given it up without a fuss. It was tied to too many bad memories.

But there were good memories as well. He closed his eyes lazily and, contented, he allowed his thoughts to wander. Saturday nights when he was a boy, he and all his brothers washed in the river. Truly it was more swimming than washing, and more horseplay than anything else. He and Nils frequently ganged up on Zack with the intent of drowning the pesky baby brother. They never had, but they had sure had him come up sputtering a time or two, mad enough to chew splinters.

A slight chuckle escaped Jeptha’s throat. The sound of it was so rare and unexpected. He tried never to conjure up the past in waking hours. It was horrible enough to live it in sleep. But by avoiding the bad memories, he had let go of the good ones as well. And he missed them. He missed the recollections almost as much as he missed his family.

One single tear escaped from his eye and coursed its way down his cheek.

“Sary,” he whispered aloud. And saw her in his mind as she was then, fresh-faced and bright-eyed.

He’d said good-bye to her a dozen times, each one more impassioned than the last. But in the wee hours of that morning he’d meant to leave he’d sneaked over to her father’s farm to see her again one more time.
He’d tossed a handful of gravel against the back wall, and five minutes later she was in his arms.

The night had a slight chill, but Sary had come to him in her josey. Her legs and arms bare, he was forced to embrace her to keep her warm.

“Where is your wrapper?” he’d asked her. “The air is cold.”

“The world is cold,” she answered. “And it will be every night and every day that you are gone from my arms.”

He hadn’t meant to make love to her. He had thought to wait until he returned, until he could offer her marriage. If he didn’t come back—and that thought had occurred to him—he didn’t want her to be ruined. He didn’t want her to be forced to explain on her wedding night why she came to her husband no virgin. He wanted her to live happy, to be happy, even if it could never be with him.

He supposed that she had been. Sary had found happiness with another man. She had married elsewhere and undoubtedly she had managed to explain to her husband on her wedding night why she had not been chaste, why he was not her first.

Jeptha had never had to explain himself to anyone, ever. That one woman, that one night, was all he had ever known of life’s sexual pleasures. It was the only carnal knowledge he possessed. But it had been enough to sustain his love for her for more than twenty years.

He sighed and sank lower in the washtub as he recalled the glow of her fair skin in the moonlight, her hair tousled and spread out upon the ground around her like a halo of passion. She sighed and whimpered
and pleaded for his touch as she declared her love for him. He answered her in word and in deed.

Her breasts were small, barely a handful, but they were high, well-formed and topped with hard pink nipples. He toyed with them and tasted them and relished their texture against his tongue. Her young, firm body was beautifully exposed to him as he tucked the thin longcloth josey around her collar.

Just lying atop her, feeling her flesh against his flesh, that alone was enough almost. Almost.

He parted her thighs with near-reverence, marveling at the softness of her skin and the enticing redolence of her desire.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Sary,” he told her, as he hesitated upon her threshold.

She was beyond caring.

“Love me, Jeptha,” she whispered. “Love me now, tonight, for all time.”

She grasped his buttocks, her gentle hands urging him forward, her fingernails digging greedily into his flesh. The sensation nearly unmanned him as he pressed himself inside the hot, narrow opening of her body.

It was like nothing that he had imagined on sleepless summer nights. Then he had thought lovemaking to be only physical, sensual. He discovered it was spiritual as well. The joining of man and woman, two as one, just as heaven intended it to be. He had to bite his own lip to keep from crying out in the intensity of it, emotion, sensation.

He confronted the last impediment of her body to his own. He struggled against his need, his imperative to press on. Rigid with self-control, he tried to ease through slowly, gently, to minimize the pain.

Sary would have none of it. She wrapped her legs around his waist, impelling him forward. She gasped when he tore through the barrier, but she did not flinch from him or draw back. She urged him on until he was buried full measure inside her.

“I love you, Sary,” he had whispered to her then. “I love you this minute and I will love you until the day I die.”

He began to move then. At first just barely rocking, trying to be careful, considerate. Then he moved in long, slow strokes in and out, in and out, gathering speed and response as their passion spiraled. Her movements beneath him were driven by need, unschooled, and shadowed by the lingering discomfort of her newly opened body. Together they were awkward at first, impatient, two bodies craving separately and unsatisfied. Then, as they found their commensurate rhythm, they moved together in a harmony that edged them further and further toward all that was human and earthly. Two people, they became one. Striving, struggling, moving, they spoke words of love, of desire, of ageless, timeless, indestructible yearning. And they spoke not at all.

As they approached the summit, the heat between them sparked a blaze that became an inferno, a pyre upon which all former understanding of what it meant to be man, woman, and human was incinerated to ash.

As Jeptha felt the essence of him, his line, his name, his future, gush from him in a hot flood of total fulfillment, absolute completion, he cried out her name.

“Sary!”

The door to the kitchen opened and the boy, Rans,
came charging in carrying shears and a shaving mirror.

Jeptha jerked upright in the washtub, but could do nothing to hide the huge, throbbing erection that had risen with the enticement of ardent memory and now hung, thick and aching, between the stubs of his legs. He could not allow the boy to see such a thing, but the murky bathwater was not sufficient to hide the spectacle.

Unable to come up with any other quick course of action, Jeptha lashed out.

“Dangnation!” he hollered. “Cain’t a man even bathe in private in this household anymore?”

Rans froze in place, cut short by the angry venom in Jeptha’s voice.

“I just brought you the things that you asked for,” the boy answered defensively.

“Well, leave them on the chair and get out,” Jeptha said a little less harshly as he used one arm in an attempt to cover himself.

“Fine,” Rans said as he slammed the articles upon the chair with enough force to crack the glass in the nickel-framed shaving mirror. “If you need anything else, get it yourself.”

The boy stormed out and Jeptha glanced after him, inwardly cursing. He was a selfish, bitter, legless cripple. Young Rans was, in his way, as wounded as Jeptha himself. He saw slights where none existed and took too seriously the ones that did. The boy had his own pain; he didn’t need Jeptha’s. Nobody needed Jeptha’s. Not even Jeptha himself.

“I’ve been such a fool,” he said aloud, the admission hard-won.

P
REACHER
Thompson’s four-week circuit kept him away from the Sweetwood for three Sundays a month. Services were conducted without him, of course, led by his wife or one of the deacons. But the fact was, most people didn’t show up except when the preacher did. And that made the monthly Preaching Sunday a very special occasion.

The morning was cool and fragrant and heavy with dew. Eulie was unflappably cheerful and very excited. She was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everyone ready to go.

“It’s our first time to attend church as a family,” she said. Then, momentarily puzzled at her own statement, she changed her wording. “Well, our first time as a new family,” she tried. But that didn’t suit her either. “Well, it is the first time we’ve gone with you, Moss Collier,” she declared finally.

Moss grinned at her tolerantly. He didn’t really want to go. He had never been much of a churchgoer, and although the pounding had taken most of the sting out of the shotgun wedding, he was still a little embarrassed. Especially since he knew that soon he’d be leaving.

But it appeared to be so important to her that he washed and shaved and put on his good shirt, which now sported a big scorch mark on the back, and his dress coat.

The youngers stood in a line in front of the cabin awaiting inspection. Dressed in their go-to-meeting clothes, Clara and Rans carried their shoes and stockings, unwilling to waste the precious leather on the hard-packed trail between the ridge and the meetinghouse. The twins had none, but were content to be barefoot. Little Minnie wore her fancy kid boots as if the world held an infinite supply of footwear for her.

Eulie did the traditional motherly check of hands and necks and ears. But she also gave reminders about smiles and noise and the use of
yes, ma’ams
and
no, sirs.

Clara was as eager to attend the meeting as her sister. Undoubtedly she was expecting Bug to request permission to walk her home. Moss couldn’t see how he would deny such a request, especially since the man had made his honorable intentions perfectly clear. But just the same, Eulie wouldn’t like it.

The twins were clean and shined and identical, as usual.

Rans was typically surly.

Little Minnie was gussied up fancier than plain potatoes at a box supper. Eulie had taken a good deal of time with the girl. She had twisted the little girl’s hair into a dozen big sausage curls and tied ribbons upon her at nearly every location. Still, Minnie was pouting, and there seemed no help for it.

“I want everyone on their best behavior,” Eulie said to them. “And try not to get dirty.”

The prospect was doubtful. It was to be a very long
day. And there were far too many potential disasters.

Red Tex was groomed and saddled and ready to ride, but he was also a little skittish of the big burlap sack tied to him that contained the clattering dinner plates and eating utensils of seven people. Nor did he like the three-quart stove pot that was suspended by a rope from his saddle horn. It contained the food, field peas with fatback, that they were taking as their part of the noon meal. It was obvious that Eulie did not like getting close to the big horse; still, she checked the lid on the pot a half dozen times to make certain it was secure. Preaching Sunday always included dinner-on-the-ground, a sort of picnic after the service. It gave opportunity to relax, to visit with neighbors, and to eat cooking that was not one’s own.

“I wish I was bringing something from the garden,” Eulie said to Moss. “Field peas seems like such a poor offering.”

In truth, the easily grown legume was produced in great abundance and often shocked as animal feed. But they were perfectly good for human eating. Moss actually preferred them over tired old brown beans.

He waved away her concern. “If some people think themselves too high in the pecking order to eat plain,” he said, “then it leaves more for the rest of us.”

She laughed at his little joke.

“Everyone is about in the same shape,” he continued. “The gardens are all up and going but not producing enough yet to make a difference on the table.”

“But you know that someone will have gotten a real early start and will be coming with something grown fresh,” she said.

Moss nodded. “Of course, there are always those
folks. They must plant their seedling by the fireplace in midwinter. They’ll be serving summer squash before the rest of the Sweetwood gardens have spinach.”

Eulie smiled at him and nodded in agreement. “And they always act like they are so surprised that no one else has anything coming up yet. As if they’re producing early simply because they are living right.”

Moss grinned at her. “Next month everything will be coming up and we’ll eat fresh vegetables until our bellies ache.”

It crossed his mind that he might not be here next month. He could be gone to Texas already. He could leave tomorrow if he set his mind to it.

No, he decided, he’d get the crop in and maybe wait until apple picking. There was really no hurry. He didn’t want to leave Eulie in a lurch.

“All right,” she asked in general. “Is everybody ready?”

There were nods all around.

“Then we’ll—” Her words were cut off in midsentence.

“I’m ready.”

They all turned to see Uncle Jeptha rolling his cart out of the cabin and across the porch. He was clean and dressed in his new clothes. His hair was cut and his beard trimmed. He looked to be almost a different person. Since Eulie had insisted upon his bathing, he’d kept himself neat and tidy. It was very curious, but Moss knew better than to say anything. The man was very touchy about it.

That first evening when he’d come to the supper table, the whole family was stunned into silence.

“Uncle Jeptha, you look wonderful,” Eulie blurted
out finally. “You look so … so healthy and so … so much younger.”

He prickled as if he’d been insulted.

“I’m forty-two years of age,” he said snarling. “Just exactly how old did you think that I was?”

He’d continued to keep clean and be well-kept, but his disposition hadn’t improved.

“You’re going with us to the preaching?” Moss asked him. He tried to keep the stunned disbelief out of his question. In all his life, Uncle Jeptha had kept strictly to the homeplace. The furthermost he’d venture was the summit ridge or the fishing hole. And he avoided people almost entirely. To show up at Preaching Sunday was to put himself in the way of nearly every soul in the Sweetwood. And his opinion of God, religion, and churching in general, was not high.

“If I’m cleaned up and dressed up, I might as well go,” Uncle Jeptha answered. “Besides, I want to see if that fool hound could really pull this cart down the mountain without killing me.”

There was no reason to argue. Rans went for the harness, and the twins whistled for the dog. Within a few moments he was all hooked up and ready to go.

Moss mounted his horse. He loved the sense of height and power the animal gave him. There was also that exhilarating sensation of freedom. On Red Tex a man could travel to the ends of the earth.

The twins led the way on either side of the harnessed hound. Clara and Rans followed after them, Clara with her head in the clouds. Rans was unable to stick to the path, wandering into the weeds along the edges.

Moss slipped his heel out of the stirrup and offered his hand to Eulie.

“You can ride with me,” he said.

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and dumbfounded.

“I didn’t think Red Tex rode double,” she said.

He felt sheepish and shrugged. “He’s a big horse and you’re a small woman. I don’t think you’ll break his back.”

Eulie continued to look uncertain. She turned to her sister.

“Little Minnie,” she said, “would you like to ride on the horse?”

The difficult child didn’t even so much as lower her stubborn chin, but she marched right over to Red Tex, confident in her natural right to be the one to ride.

Eulie had to lift her up so that she could get her foot in the stirrup. Easily Moss put the child up behind him. Red Tex stirred, not liking it one bit. Moss wasn’t fond of the arrangement either. It wasn’t as if he required company, and he had never allowed anyone else to sit upon the valuable horse. But he’d wanted Eulie up beside him. In the month since their marriage, he had grown more than accustomed to her, he’d grown fond. He liked talking to her and laughing with her. The cheerfulness that he had found so disagreeable at first was now a welcome addition to a hardworking day.

He was also honest enough to admit to himself that he missed her nearness. Little Minnie’s thin, girlish arms around him held no allure. But when he imagined Eulie up behind him, embracing him, her body close to his own, his heart beat a good deal faster.

For the good of their separate futures and Moss’s own peace of mind, Eulie now shared the new bed he’d built with Minnie. Moss took his lonely nightly repose
upon a floor pallet. But he remembered all too vividly the feel of his bride in his arms.

It wasn’t that he wished to change their arrangement. He was leaving. It would not be right to put a child inside her. But he still longed for her nearness and the warmth of her touch.

Like most men who lived alone, he was plagued frequently with carnal desires. He had always managed to keep himself in control He felt less in control in the last few weeks than he had in his entire life. Eulie had invaded his thoughts by day and his dreams by night. His body responded to that like a stallion penned up with a mare at breeding time.

He couldn’t, shouldn’t, do anything about it. But it was awfully nice just to be close to her.

He motioned her over. She approached carefully, clearly not pleased at the prospect of walking next to the big horse.

“I’m thinking to build you a root cellar,” Moss said.

“A root cellar?” She seemed astounded at the suggestion. “We’ve always just buried our vegetables in a ditch. If you get them just under the ground, they don’t usually freeze and they keep real well.”

He nodded. Ditching the excess garden crop was as common a practice for putting by winter stores as canning, salting or smoking.

“But a root cellar would be better,” he contended.

She couldn’t deny it.

“The Knoxes have one,” she told him. “Why they’ve got potatoes and yams in there that look as good as the day they were pulled from the ground.”

“Then it’s settled,” Moss said. “I’ll dig you a root cellar to keep your plenishments.”

Eulie appeared both delighted and nonplussed.

“But that’s so much work,” she told him. Casting a surreptitious glance toward Minnie, she apparently deduced that the young girl wasn’t paying any attention. “You’ve done so much already. I know that you must be anxious to … be doing what you’ve dreamed about.”

He dismissed her objection.

“I’ve already got some timbers cut,” he told her. “I can get Jeptha and your brother to help me with the boards. We can carve it out of the side of the ridge. It will mean a lot less digging and you’ll be able to walk straight into it with no stairs to lug things up and down.”

Her expression was filled with such open adoration that it almost made Moss uncomfortable. He didn’t need to please her and needn’t court her favorable opinion. He shouldn’t be making her like him and depend upon him. But somehow he couldn’t seem to help himself.

Her opinion was important to him. She was important to him.

Suddenly, Moss’s eyes were drawn to the trail up ahead of them. A speckled fawn scrambled out of the brush. It was hard to say who was more startled, the young deer or the group of humans. The lanky little animal stared at them for one frightened moment before scampering away. She did not fail, however, to capture the attention of Old Hound, who, with a howl of thrilled announcement, took off after her.

Uncle Jeptha jerked valiantly upon the reins and managed to get the dog halted, but not before he tipped the cart, throwing Jeptha to the ground.

Moss dismounted off Red Tex in a rush and handed the horse’s reins to Eulie as he hurried forward.

Jeptha lay on his back, looking up at the sky. He was still grasping the harness lines.

The children were gathered all around him. Moss knelt by his side with concern.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Wearily, Jeptha pushed himself up into a sitting position.

“I wondered if that old hound would try to kill me,” he said. “I guess it’s a lot to expect of a hunting dog not to hunt.”

“Maybe I should buy another goat,” Moss said. “They are a lot easier to bridle.”

Jeptha tutted and shook his head. “I don’t want no dang goat around the place, eating the clothes off the line and climbing up on the roof. I’ll teach the dog to take me, or I’ll stay at home like I always have.”

Moss righted the cart and Jeptha, unassisted, put his palms on the ground and raised himself up, hand-walking back to the trail. He struggled a little getting inside, but he managed all right.

It was a hard thing to watch, so Moss didn’t. Uncle Jeptha’s pride was monumental and his appetite for sympathy nonexistent. They never talked about what had happened. They had never discussed his missing legs, not even when Moss was a boy. He’d always known somehow that it was best just not to mention it.

The children seemed to understand the same thing. They neither gawked at him or tried to help. It was as if in the short time they had lived on Barnes Ridge they had come to understand the bitter, wounded man as well as Moss did himself.

Except for the boy, of course, who thought he was grown-up and knew everything there was to know and just blurted out whatever came to his mind.

“You know,” Rans said to Jeptha as he gave him the lines. “We could make some straps for this cart, so if the dog took to running, at least you wouldn’t fall out.”

Moss rolled his eyes impatiently. He didn’t bother to give time for Jeptha to answer.

“That’s the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard,” he told the boy too harshly. “If Uncle Jeptha were strapped into the cart he couldn’t get out and the dog could drag him, might even kill him.”