Mountain Part 31

Her knees trembled; she waited to regain strength.

Then she moved heavily toward the house, entering by the rickety kitchen steps in the rear.

With a child's helpless seeking, she walked down the hall. She must tell her mother at once. She heard Stella's rocker moving monotonously on the sagging front porch. A loose board squeaked in soothing rhythm.

Sharply she visualized the simple, wrinkled face.... It could never understand....

She turned wearily into her own room, and threw herself face downward on the bed. The loud pounding of her heart frightened her; she turned upon her back, staring at the constricted darkness of the blank ceiling.

XVII

An old negro, his sleep-wrinkled, s.h.i.+ny coat and paint-stained overalls itchy from stubble acquired in a deserted barn, idled down the switching track that ran behind the Judson lands. His scrubby gray beard was stained with blackberries; his knees were gritty and dank from kneeling beside the brook that slipped over the quartz ledges beside Billygoat Hill. In doubtful cogitation he knocked cinder and chert cl.u.s.ters down the steep fills, swinging his hickory stick with an air of ancient mastery.

"Lawd bless me, look at dem long houses!" as he pa.s.sed the lower end of Hewintown.

A white man eyed him closely, a short man with a tarnished metal badge on his ore-stained coat.

"Got any wu'k?"

The guard relit his pipe. "Too old, n.i.g.g.e.r."

"I kin tote a powerful lot."

The guard continued to stare off at Shadow Mountain. Whistling good-naturedly, the old man continued down the track. "New houses! New fences! Things mus' be lookin' up!"

He observed the path that led to the crest just east of Hillcrest Cottage, and took instead the steep descent to the spring lot. He sniffed at the well-placed garden truck, noticed the ducks and the s.h.i.+ny duck house, skirted the widened concrete swimming pool, and came at last past the game house to the spring. From the tin dipper swinging on the twenty-penny nail he took a drink, first clearing out his mouth several times and spitting the warmed water into the spillway.

He looked furtively around, up toward the big estate, then along the path to the eastern crest. He took up the two buckets empty on a concrete pump base, filled them three-quarters, balanced them, and made his careful way up the latter path.

When he reached the top, he skirted the ramshackle house. At the back he paused at the two half-barrel tubs redolent with laundry soap. He stooped over it, pouring in the first big bucket.

A heavy voice rang from the kitchen above him. "Hey, n.i.g.g.e.r, what you doin'?"

He turned a puzzled face toward the window. "Ah'm--ah'm----"

A big roundish woman stepped out on the rickety porch. "Fuh Gawd's sake!

Is you Tom?"

"Sho' Ah is." There was an aggrieved whine in his voice.

"You come back? Whar you been?"

He emptied the bucket, and brought the other to the bench under the back steps. "Ah been wu'kin'. Ah come back."

"We done got a letter sayin' you wuz dead."

He laughed broadly. "Ah ain't."

Tramping up the steps, he flung his wrinkled coat on its old nail above the lanterns, and sat down in a splint-bottomed chair, testing it carefully before he leaned back in it. "Got any breakfas', ole 'ooman?

Ah's plumb starvin'."

She set out cold bacon, cold pone, a gla.s.s mola.s.ses pitcher with its top broken. "He'p yo'se'f, Tom. Ah's powerful glad you's home."

He spoke through a mouthful of bread and "long sweetening." "Ain't married agin, or nuthin'?"

"Ah ain't huntin' no mo' trouble."

She slid his emptied dishes into the loaded sink, and took up the two empty clothes baskets. "Come he'p me tote de clo'es back. Miss' Mary mebbe got somethin' for you to do."

At supper, the biggest kerosene lamp was lit on the middle of the table, and spread its smelly radiance over the reunited family. Ed and Jim had come in last, their cap-lamps still lit, their s.h.i.+rts clayey from the underground work. "Here's yo' pappy, boys, come back agin," announced Stella proudly.

Diana, her nerves on edge from another meeting with Jim Hewin, got in a side blow. "I suppose you've been with that 'Banjo' Strickland again, and couldn't get home in time for supper?"

"Aw, close yer trap," growled Ed. "Think you own the place!"

"Yer maw says you boys is wu'kin' hard."

Will, who possessed a good-natured sense of humor, chuckled appreciatively. "We sho' is! You know dat chicken-farm by de dam on Shadow Mountain, paw? We been wu'kin' powerful hard, an' dat's de Lawd's trufe!"

"We got fried chicken fo' supper, Tom," as Stella lifted the simmering pan with feigned indifference.

"An' dey ain't grow on no egg-plants, an' dat's a fack," continued Will.

"You'd a come in handy, paw, las' Sad'dy night," said Ed, who had recovered from his temporary ill-humor at Diana. "Ev'rybody's lef de place 'cep' club-foot Jake Simmons; dey lef him to watch. Me 'n' Banjo he'p'd him watch; we played poker, while de three boys poked off thuhteen hens an' a c.o.c.kerel."

"And that isn't all that you all and 'Banjo' 'poke off,' either,"

interrupted Diana, her light brown face glowing a shade darker. "What would yo' paw say if I told him all I know?"

"What's dis? What's dis?" His explosive tones regained something of the former authority.

Stella laughed comfortably. "Nuthin' at all, Tom. Diana got a fool notion dat de boys been meddlin' wid cars at de Union Depot; dat's all."

Tom scratched his head in profound silence; the rest of the family watched him with differing emotions. At length he spoke unctuously. "De Lawd he put chicken-roos'eses an' melon-patches whar dey is easy to get at; it ain't nacheral for a n.i.g.g.e.r to let a hen suffer dis vale of tribulation, or let a melon grow ole an' useless on de vine. Cars is different. Cars is different. You boys ain't got kotched at nothin'?"

"You bet we ain't!"

"Den Ah don't know nothin', an' Diana don't know nothin'. You'd better watch out, dat's all Ah say. Calaboose never wuz no black man's frien'."

"We's careful, paw. We got regular jobs."

"Dat's all Ah say. Bring out mah Bible, Babe; Ah ain't read de Scripchers for two years."

"We done jined de union, paw," said Babe, laying the s.h.a.ggy-eared family Bible in the yellow circle of lamp light. "De miners' union."

"A lot you all know about unions!" sniffed Diana.