Between the Flowers: A Novel

  Marsh listened, and wished the same could be true of corn. He was glad his visitors did not offer to look over his fields. During the last two or three days he had looked at the corn no more than necessary. It hurt to walk down the rows of high stalks, no longer alive and rustling, but with soft limp blades that sighed thinly in a breeze, or stood pale and silent with yellow pollen sifting down into dead

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  hot air that would in a few days longer dry the silks at the end of each coming ear. When that happened his corn would be finished the way Perce's and most other crops, planted earlier, were finished.

  He drove Maude into the hot dusty twilight of the long barn hall, and promising his callers a feast of cold melon, he started to the spring house. Outside again, he noticed first his shadow, pale and thin, and looked to find that a creeping blackness touched the sun. For the first time in weeks his wish for a good steady rain was touched with hope. He walked to the spring house with his eyes on the sky, hurried in for the melons, came out with one under each arm, and when he walked against the pig sty instead of into the barn, he stopped rather than take his eyes from the sky.

  Long bands and streamers of black cloud torn from some great mass he could not see came leaping over the southwest rim of the horizon, flew up to the zenith and wreathed the sun until it darkened and the shadows of all things merged slowly into the pale yellow twilight enveloping the land. A strong breeze came singing up the river, bringing dust and a smell of rain that made Marsh think of spring and a harvest of corn, of water dripping from a roof, cattle knee-deep in rich dark clover, and Delph's eyes brightening over the rain. He pushed his hat back and it fell to the ground, but he did not bother to pick it up. He never knew how long he watched the sky. He heard men's voices, and remembered his neighbors. It was always twilight in the barn hall, and they, deep in talk, would maybe not have noticed the good sign of rain.

  He stepped to the door and heard the words they said, and stopped and listened and forgot the rain. Their backs were to him and they did not know he was near. Their talk held him and he hardly knew he listened. They were talking of Delph. They had taken no care to lower their voices; the things they said were true, and mostly praise. Both men liked Delph, respected her skillful hands and her way of never complaining. Perce had praised her many times, teased her, and said that she with her garden and cows and peddling was making more money than Marsh.

  He talked of her peddling now, was describing her, the skittish mules, the drunken crowd at Patty George's blind pig where she had gone to peddle on the first Saturday in Augustprimary election day. It was no place for a woman, so he, Perce, had told her, but she

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  had laughed and said she thought she'd sell her melons. Perce paused for laughter and laughed so hard that the chunk of muskmelon to which he had helped himself, trembled in his hand. "'Uncle John,' she says, 'was always an' election officer, an' ever' election day he kissed us all good-bye. Why, we've killed more men in Fincastle over politics than you all up here have sent to jail.'"

  Perce took a bite of melon and shook his head. "I didn't argue. What she said was th' truth. Her paw was a good man, but ever' time he killed a man there wasn't a sheriff in three counties would try to arrest him. They'd send him a postcard tellin' him he was under arrest, an' pretty soon he'd drop into th' court house civil as you please with fifteen or twenty of his cousins all armed to th' eyebrows, bent on seein' that justice was done."

  Marsh watched Perce, and wondered that he did not go on, say it all, and be done with it; say that Delph was one of a wild, headstrong race, that she was like her father, that a man might keep her by him for a little time, but he could never have her to know that she was his. But Perce made no observations. He only ate melon and finished the story. One of Quarrelsome Sexton's boys had fired at Rufus Nunn in the store, something over a card game he thought. Sexton had missed. Rufus had run out of the building and around Delph's wagon with Sexton after him.

  Perce laughed again, and selected another piece of melon. "There was Andy Sexton, his gun out, aimin' anti-godlin at Delph's head, tryin' to get a bead on Rufus Nunn runnin' off through th' trees on th' other side a th' wagon. I'll never forget how that girl looked. Her bonnet was danglin' on her shoulders, an' her head was throwed back, an' her eyes throwin' off sparks while she was curlin' back with a long black snake whip. Then ever'thing happened at once. Delph's whip sizzled an' cracked, an' Andy swore an' a bullet whined, right through my hair seemed like, then Delph's mules were tryin' to run away, an' all th' men half sober, a swingin' on to them. An' that Sexton stood quiet a slingin' blood from his hand an' a lookin' at his pistol on th' ground."

  Marsh didn't want to learn any more. He had in a way forced Delph to go into such a crowd, though he had supposed she peddled only in Burdine and by the Hawthorne road. It came to him that maybe all he knew of Delph was supposing, that maybe she belonged in the oil fields instead of a farmer's world.

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  Roan said something about Marsh's mules, and he remembered he was listening when men didn't know he was near. He kicked a swinging stable door, for he didn't seem able to find his tongue. They heard, and Perce called, "Marsh, we've been talkin' about your wife. You ought to let her run for high sheriff. She'd clean up th' county in no time."

  Marsh said nothing. He remembered that a while back something had pleased him. He had wanted to tell the men. Now, his thoughts shaped themselves no better than his words. He thought of Delph and wished she were home. He found himself sitting in the crib door, eating a watermelon he did not taste while he listened to some talk he did not hear. He roused himself when Perce said for the third time, "Speak up, Marsh. It's th' only way I see. I'm sick a th' job anyhow, an' th' school's by your land where you can keep an' eye on it."

  "Anything for peace," he said, and listened until he learned that he had promised to run in the school trustee's election in the fall. Perce said that more than one had suggested it. Lately there had been much hard feeling about the trustee business. Every man had some relative asking for a teaching job, or children hard to manage. Now, they wanted a sober, sensible man who would get a strange teacher for next year, good to all and partial to none. Hence, Marsh was just the man. He had no children and no teaching kin of whom anyone had heard.

  The thing was settled. Marsh, with the backing of Perce and the good will of Roan, a little electioneering from Dorie, and some good talk from Brother Elineither of whom lived in the districtwould be elected. Marsh tried to feel the pleasure he knew he should feel. Last winter he had been no more to these men than a roving oil mannow he belonged in their community, was one they trusted. For an instant he savored the triumph of one victory toward his dreamsand then he thought of Delph.

  Perce was telling some tale to illustrate the hard, thankless life of a school trustee when the blue fire of lightning trembled and danced through the barn hall. Each man sprang to his feet as if the fire had singed his hair. The tongues of flame had hardly died when the air seemed changed to sound, thunder crashed in one wave of noise and motion that clanked the trace chains on the wall and rolled and tumbled over the roof like wagon loads of rock dumped there, then

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  growled and muttered in the high secret places of the sky. Then there came another sound that made the thunder and the wind seem as nothing, a great roar that hummed in the ears and caused the men to look at each other with unbelieving eyes. Perce thumped Marsh on the shoulder and yelled, "It's rainin'," and Marsh staggered under the blow and knew that he would maybe have a crop of corn.

  They stood in the barn door and watched the walls of water ride over the fields silent, lost in the wonder of the rain. The young pigs in the barn yard stood with heads lifted enquiringly toward the sky, blinking their long-lashed eyes in puzzlement, and seemed to know that the rain was good, though it was mostly strange to them. Young chickens who had not followed their mothers in days went hunting them now, alarmed by the strange new noise of
thunder. Caesar was little better. Marsh laughed at the way he cocked one ear and growled when the thunder growled, but when lightning spun and thunder boomed and roared Caesar grew still and wrinkled the brown spots above his eyes and looked first overhead and then at the rain as if he would decide the beast that made the noise. He looked at Marsh to see what he thought of the strange business, and after one glance at him, Caesar grew happy and bold and went trotting out into the wet after Prissy's calf, too full of scrub to come in out of the rain.

  Marsh breathed deep and heavily, filling his nose with the hot earthy smell of the rain. Perce and Roan were talking, but the noise on the roof drowned the most of what they said. They talked of the rain and what it meant. Marsh knew that so many things; pasture, a fair-sized yield of corn, a payment on the mortgage, and. Caesar barked and ran down the lane, and Roan said, "I'll bet Delph has been caught in this rain."

  "She wouldn't ha had time to be on her way home," Marsh answered, but a moment later a pair of mules and then a wagon cleared the high spot in the river road, and Perce bellowed, "Good God, it's your team a runnin' away."

  Marsh started to run, looked, stopped, and continued to look while Roan swore behind him, and Perce groaned, "God, she'll never make it over th' hill."

  But Delph continued to stand in the swaying wagon and watch the sky. Her bonnet dangled from her shoulders and the wind and

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  rain blew through her hair. One long braid and then the other uncoiled and streamed behind her, but she didn't care. She liked storms and wind and thunder. She liked the coolness of the rain and the lightning flashing blue over the rocks and the waves of rain dancing over the bottom fields like women whirling in silver. It was fun to be behind the mules; they knew it was raining and they were going home, else they would not have run so. She laughed for no reason at all, and felt young and free and like Delph again. She hardly knew she held the reins, but let the mules go at their will.

  Marsh stood in the barn lane and held his breath as he saw the rear off wheel spin for a second on nothing when the wagon lurched too near the edge of the road. He silently cursed the mules when, as they rounded the sharp down hill curve, they gave every sign of galloping over the embankment and plunging into a ditch. He heard Perce's great sigh of relief when the wagon was safely turned into the lane, and then his admonishing advice, "You oughtn't to let her out with them mules. Lizzie was sayin' th' other day that bad harm might come to heryoung an' newly marriedwith no more thought for some things than a chicken."

  Marsh flushed and said nothing, only watched her as she stood in the wagon and laughed and wrinkled her nose at the rain. She never noticed him or the others as the wagon came rattling down the lane, careened around a corner of the barn and plunged into the hall, and stopped with the mules standing quiet, and sedately flipping their ears as if they had known all the time they would not run away.

  Delph was smiling as she sprang to the ground, and Marsh, remembering Perce's words, frowned in thinking of the child and her safety. Delph saw first his frown, and the laughter left her face as she said, "I didn't hurt that new harness comin' on so fast, an' th' wagon's good an' strong."

  "I wasn't thinkin' a that," he answered shortly, and might have tried to explain, but could not with Perce and Roan about and both talking to Delph.

  Perce told her she was liable to break her neck, and Roan advised that when she drove mules to remember always that she drove mules, while Delph laughed and called them her Aunt Fronies. The rain seemed to have given the men and Delph the same unthinking gaiety it gave the farm animals and Caesar. Marsh listened, and

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  though he said nothing, gradually something of their light heartedness entered into him.

  He invited them all to stay to dinner, promised fried chicken and hot biscuit, and the half of a custard pie for Roan. Perce rubbed his beard and considered, decided to stay, though maybe it was not the thing to do. Lizzie had been promising him and the boys a mountain of fried chicken if it rained in time to save any of the late garden and corn, and she could be certain she could spare a chicken from market to fry. "We'll all have chicken now. At least once," Marsh said, and glanced at Delph.

  She was not looking at him but outside at the rain, studying it as if slowly realizing for the first time all that it meant. She turned when Perce called her Mrs. Trustee, and told her that Marsh was to start hiring the teachers soon, and would most likely fall in love with a pretty one and run away with her and Maude and Caesar. She looked at Marsh in a questioning way, and he answered, careful to betray nothing of what he knew was petty childish pride, "Yes, they're goin' to have me run for school trustee."

  "He'll be elected, too," Roan said.

  "An' I hope he picks a teacher that won't always be tellin' my boys to be smart an' go away from home like that Samuel Dodson Fairchild," Perce said.

  "Well, he was smart," Delph answered, and turned away and watched the rain.

  Marsh looked at her shoulders. They were straight and still, but once he thought they shivered slightly. He took a jumper from a nail on the wall, and walked up to her and said, "Here, Delph, hadn't you better put this on? Th' air's gettin' chilly."

  She shook her head. "I'm not cold," she said, and continued to look at the rain.

  He stood a moment with the jumper in his outstretched hands, looked past her to the fields of reviving corn. He wondered with a weariness like an ache which was the worseto be pitied in the face of defeat or scorned in the promise of victory; and always alone.

  He was glad of his visitors. All during the good dinner and into the rainy afternoon their laughter and talk stood like a wall between him and Delph's somber eyes. Roan talked again of hunting in the Big Rockcastle Country, and continued to beg Marsh to go with him

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  there in the winter. "You'd like it fine," he said. "An' you'd maybe pick up a good bit of extra moneymore than pay you to go."

  Marsh sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the rain. "I couldn't leave my stock an' such," he said, and glanced up to find Delph's head lifted from the overalls she mended.

  "Sober Creekmore would be more than glad to take care of your stock," Roan insisted, "an' Delph there, she wouldn't mind to live two weeks without you. Would you, Delph?"

  "Law, no, I wouldn't mind. I won't have th' neighbors sayin' I keep my man tied to my apron strings," she answered with a quick toss of her head.

  "But I'd mebbe be gone mor'n two weeks," Marsh reminded her, nettled that she seemed to have such a little need of him.

  "That's no life timeif you want to go. Mrs. Elliot, she'll most likely be gone to Florida then, she'll let Vinie come an' stay with me nights, or pshaw, I wouldn't be afraid to stay by myself."

  Perce laughed. "Why, she's sickened a you already, Marsh. Same as sayin' she'd like to see you gone for a spell."

  "It looks like it," Marsh answered, and hoped his tongue hinted at nothing of what he felt.

  "We'll go in a cold snowy timeno need to try to hunt when it's open an' rainywhen you'd have nothin' much to do at home but feed an' stick by your fire. An' if you did have, a little rest wouldn't kill you anyhow," Roan went on, all eagerness to show someone his land.

  Marsh waited, glancing hopefully at Delph's bent head. He knew he couldn't go. He couldn't leave her in winterwhen the baby was to come in February. Still, she was the one to say he couldn't go. Lizzie wouldn't let Perce stay away that long, even with all her children for company. "Delph," he haltingly began when she had shown no sign of speaking, "might get lonesome an'."

  Delph flung up her head, and impatiently pushed raincurls from her forehead with the back of one hand. "Lord, don't use me for an excuse likelike I was Maude to tend or somethin'. Go on. I'll be all right. Th' money you'd make would maybe come in handy."

  Marsh got up and strode to the door. He wished he could read Delph's mind. She couldn't have changed soin spite of the quarrel. Last winter when he was gone three days with Dorie's tobac
co she

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  had come rushing to meet him as if he had been gone a month. Now, she practically sent him away for two weekswhen she ought to want him most. He glanced cautiously in her direction, but she sat as if she had eyes and thoughts for nothing but the overalls she mended.