The Fields Page 14

  “It’s a black-spotted one,” Guerdon said. “Them kind never rattle.”

  Savagely he finished off the curled-up beast with the corn chopper. Then he backed out to a clearer space where it had more light to look at his hand. He could see the ugly twin marks. Hell’s needles, they were, the devil’s thumb print. Already he reckoned the finger looked a little different, a mite fuller and more “yaller.” It was starting to swell and the “yaller” was turning black already. After the finger, it would go to his hand. And after that, his arm. He wished he was home. His mam would know what to do, but he was a good ways from home. He couldn’t wait till he got back now.

  He walked around with Kinzie following till he came to an old log half as high as he was. It was stitched in moss, and green like it had been dipped in paint.

  “Take this corn cutter, Kin,” he said. Kinzie took it wondering. Guerdon laid the suffering finger on the top of the log like the neck of a gypsy fowl on the chopping block. “Now you kin cut it off.”

  Kinzie gravely studied the finger.

  “Clear off?” he wanted to know.

  “Just at the top knuckle. Not the hull finger.”

  “It’ll bleed.”

  “I want it to. That’s what’ll git the pizen out.”

  “What if I miss it?”

  “Go ahead. You kin whack at it agin.”

  “I mought chop your hand off.”

  “No, you won’t. You kin see better’n that.”

  Kinzie stood stock still. He squinted this way and that, lifted the corn cutter several times. But he didn’t bring it down.

  “I ain’t good at this. I never done it before.”

  “Give it here!” Guerdon cried, exasperated. “If you kain’t, I kin.”

  He shut one eye and measured with the corn cutter. Then he drew it back and struck.

  “Now give me a piece from my shirt,” he told him shortly. “You ought to be able to cut that off.”

  Whatever tarnal thing it had in the swamp before, its spell must have been broken when Guerdon killed the snake, for the cows started to come in by themselves just then. They walked high with their bells a ringing, but Guerdon just about made home. He came to the cabin with the skin tight as a drum over his arm, a fire in his eyes and the world spinning around. His pappy asked stern what he had been doing.

  “Nothin’. I just got stung out in the nettle patch,” he said.

  His mam took one look at him and put him to bed downstairs where she could tend him. First she unwound that rag from his aching finger and washed it with warm water from the kettle. She washed his face and hands and the rest of the arm, too. Never did he expect his mam’s strong hand could be so easy. Not a word of scold for his finger or his shirt, and his pappy never quibbled over the whiskey she poured from his jug over the wound. She gave the boy to drink of it, too, and he didn’t know which burned the harder, his throat or the stump of his finger. He felt he could sleep a little now, but do you reckon she would let him? No, she raised up his head every few minutes and made him drink water from the gourd. He drank so much she had to hold him up on his unsteady knees while he made his water hot and scalding in the old cedar bucket.

  “It’s good it wa’n’t my first finger, Mam, or I couldn’t fire off a rifle,” he told her, and she nodded grave like she’d let him take out the rifle every day, if ever he overed this.

  It was a sealed book, he reckoned, whether you overed a snake bite or not. Only God Almighty knew. Soon as folks heard about it, they came by to see how he was making out. He could tell he was pretty sick the way they looked down on him. They all had some cure they wanted Sayward to try, and his mam listened quiet to each how it was done.

  Mollie Weaver said the best was to take him out and dig a hole in the ground and then bury his hand and arm in it up to the shoulder. Mrs. Covenhoven said she would kill a skunk, and failing in that, a cat, and put its hide warm on the wound, the bloody side under. A black cat was best. Will Beagle said it had a stone some places, and if you put that stone on where a snake or wolf bit you, the stone would draw the poison out. All you had to do when it stopped drawing, was turn the stone around to some fresh place. He believed he could find such a stone in the woods around here if it was daylight. But Sayward said she would stick to her own receipt.

  Nobody that dropped in that evening left right off. They all hung around, you could tell, waiting to see what happened. They wanted to carry the news home he was either better or a gone Josie. Even Colonel Suydam stayed. When he first stopped in with his cane he said he wanted to see this boy who had the cheek to chop off his own finger. Guerdon could hear their talk coming to him. Sometimes what came through his head made sense, and sometimes it didn’t. Mary Harbison said when they first went up to the place they had now, many a day she looked out the door and saw a rattlesnake setting on their doorlog looking in. She said one time she gave little Salomy a bowl of milk and went out to work in the corn patch. Something made her go back and look in the cabin. There was her baby still a setting on the floor drinking at the milk and a spotted rattlesnake lapping up what she spilled. She stood there not a knowing what to do, for if she ran in, the snake might strike her baby. She waited till Salomy reached her spoon at the snake. Then she screeched before she thought, and the snake slid out through a hole in the chinking. She said she hated real bad to kill that snake. She felt sure it knew Salomy was just a babe and harmless, and she felt grateful to it for not hurting her.

  Afterwards Mollie Weaver told about the woman she knew back in the old state. That woman’s baby always cried in the morning because she had no milk for it. One night her man got awake and found a snake in bed a sucking at her breasts, and that’s why she never had any milk for her babe, because after her man killed the snake, the babe had plenty.

  Now why did Colonel Suydam have to go and spoil that story! He said he didn’t believe it. But he could relate one he couldn’t explain. Back home somebody from the country fetched in a live rattlesnake with twelve buttons and the store keeper put it in a hogshead where the boys had fun with it. First time the colonel looked down at it, he didn’t know what came over him. He saw those snake eyes a blazing up at him from the dark hogshead and it made him feel faint all over. For the first time in his life he thought he was going to swoon. He believed he would have fallen in the hogshead if somebody hadn’t helped him off. He judged that’s how rattlesnakes put a spell on birds and small beasts — with their eyes. No, Jake contradicted him, they did it with their smell. He once smelled rattlesnakes after a rain, and that was the orneriest smell he ever did smell. A woman would have passed out.

  Guerdon believed he felt a mite better. It had worse things in this world than to lay here with nothing to do but have folks talk and worry over you. He couldn’t get over how good his mam had been to him. She was so “cam” most times you thought she took you for granted and didn’t give a whoop for you any more. But let something real like this or stone blindness or black plague come along and you found out how much she liked you. Why, she’d chop off her own finger if it would help him any, he could tell. It gave him a feeling for her like old times. Every once in a while her face hung over him, seeing how he was. The rest of the time he was satisfied to lay there with the sociable feel of folks sitting around the cabin and the sound of their talk flowing over him soft and easy like the soapy water his mam had washed him with.

  It was Jake Tench who kept saying that rattlesnake bite was worse for a young one than a “growed” person. When Guerdon’s mam and pap went to the door with Colonel Suydam, Jake came over and held Portius’s whiskey jug to the boy’s mouth. He told him he better drink if he wanted to live. More, he said while Guerdon choked and sputtered. More, he kept saying, till Sayward came in and took the jug away from him.

  When Guerdon lay back, the room purred like a cat with the whiskey. After while the ends of the cabin started to go up and down like they were loose, and the loft like a cradle rocking. That whiskey was fighting the poison no
w, he could tell, for he felt a heap better.

  “My lights and livers!” he yelled before he knew it, sitting bolt upright in his bed.

  The company talk stopped short.

  “Yi-i-i-i-i-i!” he shrieked like he was in pain.

  “What’s wrong, Guerdie?” his “A’nt Ginny” wanted to know.

  “Hallelujah and salvation!” he howled at the top of his voice like he heard the circuit rider do. “Hallelujah and amen!”

  The folks were staring.

  “He’s gittin’ religion,” Mary Harbison said.

  “I’m runnin’ out the devil!” he hollered. “Vamoose! as the Lord said to the white-whiskered man. Git out, you dod-rotted, long-haired, long-eared, long-horned devil!”

  “Guerdon!” his mam said sharply.

  He felt too good to stop now. He yipped and hooted. When he saw Huldah, Libby and Kinzie looking down at him from the loft hole, it only set him on.

  “I’m a peddler!” he shouted. “I’m come from Maytown. I’m a tradin’ razors and breastpins. See this here fine whisker cutter! It’ll cut your meat and slice toenails! All you got to do is buy it and put it in your pocket! You’ll wake up with a clean shave and a clean shirt in the mornin’. And five shillin’ in your pocket!”

  “The pizen’s put him out of his mind,” Mrs. Covenhoven said.

  His mam made him lay back. All were staring at him save Jake Tench who was laughing fit to kill.

  “He’s drunk, that’s what he is!” Aunt Genny said finally.

  Soon as his mam let him loose, Guerdon heaved up again. What his Aunt Genny said put him in mind of a catch she sang when company came to the Covenhovens. It had plenty verses, and he only knew a few. Now he yelled those verses at the top of his voice, keeping time with his head and hand at the same time.

  That night I come a ridin’ home

  As drunk as drunk could be.

  I seen a head on the bolster

  Whar my head oughter be.

  Come here, my dear sweet Ellin,

  I married lawfullee,

  How come a head on the bolster

  Whar my head oughter be?

  You blind fool, you drunken fool,

  Kain’t you never see!

  It’s nothin’ but a cabbage head

  Your granny sent to me.

  I’ve traveled this wide world over

  A thousand miles or more.

  But a mustache on a cabbage head

  I never did see before.

  A slew of laughing followed that.

  “He knows it nigh as good as you, Ginny,” Mollie Weaver spoke.

  “He ought to. He’s heard it oft enough,” Aunt Genny said.

  “You kin tell singin’ runs in the Lucketts,” Will Beagle said with a look at Genny for, though she was married, never had he given her up.

  Sayward pushed Guerdon flat in bed again.

  “Now lay down and hush up,” she told him, but he thought by her eyes that his tomfoolery made her laugh like the rest.

  Jake Tench came across and looked down.

  “Looks like he’s overed it,” he said like he was disappointed. “He ain’t a goin’ to die after all. I reckon me and Will kin go home now. We won’t have to take measurements for his grave box. Of course, you never kin tell. Sometimes they take a turn for the worse. I knowed a boy once —”

  “Now let him alone, Jake,” Sayward said sharply. “You done enough to him.”

  “All that saved his skin was the whiskey,” Jake declared. “How much would you a took for him two hours back?”

  “Not the whole country and you thrown in,” Sayward told him.

  Guerdon looked up at her, closed his eyes and looked at her again. It wasn’t so bad to get bit by a “spotted sarpent,” he reckoned. He was short a finger above the knuckle, but he had his mammy back. A mam like he had didn’t grow on every bush. He’d chop a whole finger off for her any time she wanted it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FREELY BE HIS WIFE

  SAYWARD had her mind made up. This was something she had studied out for a good while. She had all the young ones she aimed to.

  She felt thankful she had no more while she was poorly. If she had, she couldn’t have kept her head above water. Now that she felt stouter again, she still had her hands full. Never did she lack for something to do. It took a pile of spinstuff and stitches to make all her young ones’ clothes and keep them mended. That was a crowding when the whole grist of Wheelers sat down to the table, Resolve, Guerdon, and Sooth on one side and Kinzie, Huldah, Libby and Dezia on the other. Being the youngest, Sooth and Dezia sat on their mam’s either hand, so she could tend their mush bowls. Portius sat stern with his back to the door, and Sayward with her back to the hearth, handy to pots and johnnycake board.

  Sayward could hardly believe sometimes she had all these, and that she was their mam. Most of them had looks and ways she never saw in the Lucketts or Powellys either. How they all came from her and every one different was something to make a body wonder at. There was Resolve, the book reader, steady and sober-minded. You could see it in his walnut-brown eyes and hair. Now Guerdon had coaly black Indian hair, was supple as a kitten and wouldn’t read a book if it was printed on flowery Chiny silk. “A’nt Ginny” said he was a Luckett with a Yankee gimber jaw. But Kinzie had sorrel hair, light blue eyes and a body plastered with hickory-nut freckles. He was a sight to see when he washed all over in front of the fire or took off his clothes to go in the river. Of the oldest two girls, Huldah was the smarter. You would have to watch her. She could be pretty as a picture with her long black hair and eye winkers, but the devil was in her like in Achsa. Now Libby had “yaller” hair and a fat little breadbasket like Sayward had when she was a girl, and she never took anything serious save plaguing her brothers and sisters.

  She used to devil Sooth. Sooth better be good. She better watch out or the Shawanees would lift her red scalp to make them a light through the woods on a dark night. Little Sooth believed her. Before she went out, she would tie a rag over her small head against any Shawanee spying from the woods, for her hair was like fire. Now Dezia would never get taken in like that. She sat like a grown body at the table. She was the oldest-faced young one you ever did see. Old in her ways, too. Some ran and hid when strangers came, or sat tongue-tied in the chimney corner. When Dezia was littler, she crawled to her mam, pulled herself up at her skirt and stood there looking the person over with knowing gray eyes. Even on her hands and knees on the floor she had been like little old grand folks telling common folks what to do. Oh, Sayward knew this was no Luckett or Powelly she had borne. She put Sayward in mind of a person she’d never seen or even heard tell how she looked. That person was Portius’s mother sitting starched and polite in her fine Bay State home.

  Let’s see now, Sayward used to tell herself when she was poorly. Resolve was one and Guerdon two. Kinzie and Huldah made four, Libby and Sooth six, and Dezia seven. That didn’t count poor little Sulie lying yonder in the bury hole. Eight was more than her own mam had borne. Of those eight, none hadn’t been wanted. None would she give up without hard fighting. And none was her favorite over another. She loved this one as good as that. But it had a time to start and a time to quit. She knew when she had enough. When she looked back, she found she hadn’t felt good since Dezia came. The other babies had been nothing to carry and bring forth, but this strong young one with the old face and master ways had taken something from her. She was a Yankee through and through, and you could always trust a Yankee to get the best of a deal.

  She felt stronger again now, and she was bound she’d keep that way. Oh, she couldn’t expect Portius to fall in line with her. Not that he hankered after a big family especially. It was just hard on a man, Sayward reckoned, when his woman stopped being a wife to him. He didn’t stop to figure out he’d had a mighty easy time of it, making trouble whenever he wanted and then going about his business. The woman was the one that had to pay the fiddler. She had to give her flesh and
blood before her babe was born, and her milk and tending afterward. You might as well say she was mammy and pappy both. The man was just the one who didn’t know what he was doing when he dropped the seed, like a squirrel hiding a nut or acorn in the ground. That squirrel had no notion of raising a stand of oaks or a chestnut orchard. Truth to tell, you could almost do without the man, but you hadn’t dare tell him so, or he’d be miffed. The way Portius acted, he must have reckoned it a terrible thing, this going against her vow to freely be his wife. But he’d get used to it in time.

  She was glad he had Tateville to take his mind off of it, for the major’s town was going great shakes. Portius had to tramp up there every Saturday morning to take care of his law business in town. She looked for him to rub it in what a mistake she made not trading the farm for a fine brick house in town when she had the chance, but hardly ever did he talk his own self about Tateville. He would come back tired and close-mouthed. It was his children who egged it out of him. No matter how late at night, they would stay up a waiting for him. They would stand around a little afraid of him at first as he sat in his hickory chair in front of the fire. Usually Huldah was the first to get up grit to ask him something. Soon all were putting in their oar, a begging what he did and saw that day in town.

  Oh, it wasn’t just Tateville but town, Sayward told herself. Her young ones hadn’t given up the notion of being town bodies some time. Now and then the tale of some grand Tateville doing would make them raise their eyes at their mother like she had done them wrong. They never forgave her for not going to the auction Independence Monday and taking them along. Their pappy said folks had come to that auction for twenty mile. Whiskey had run like water, and any hand, young or old, had lief to hold its cup to the barrel. Peddlers had their booths loaded down with lace and trinkets, calicos and domestics, gingerbread and sweetmeats. A vendue man with the gift of gab had raffled off the lots, and two men had fought over a piece of ground hardly big enough to stake a cow on.

  By winter it had so much business around Tateville, Portius had to close his school Fridays to go up there. Saturdays weren’t enough. Sayward just felt glad to see his learning get him some place, and for all the fee-stuff coming in. But Genny acted different.