Between the Flowers: A Novel

  Marsh listened a time to others talk of bumper crops and falling prices. He ordered another drink and felt a deepening sadness that nobody wanted his corn or his tobacco, such pretty stuff that he had

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  raised. He thought of Roan and went hunting him, leaving Poke Easy to weep over the price of corn. He found Roan in his office, but Roan had little time for him. Harlan Shadoan, County Superintendent of schools was there, and with him the new head of the County Board of Health, a thin young man in a white linen suit, perspiring heavily, but not entirely from the heat.

  An outraged hill man in the eastern section had threatened him with death because he had, when going over a school, vaccinated three of the man's children for typhoid. The hill man was opposed to such because it went against nature and God. The young doctor had made the mistake of carrying a gun when he returned to give the second shots; and now it was extremely doubtful if he could even get into the neighborhood for third shots. The sight of the poorly concealed weapon had aroused the anger and suspicion of all the parents.

  Superintendent Shadoan had brought him to Roan with the hope that the county agent might be able to talk some sense into his head. Few men in the county had the respect and the confidence of the hill men that Roan had. He was talking now in an attempt to make the stranger see the foolishness of carrying a weapon. If it came to a show down he could not outshoot a hill man; and he would be better without a gun. But the young doctor, his head filled with tales of the doings in Harlan, a short distance east, insisted that he be permitted to go armed.

  Roan begged him to go on about his duties with no attention to what anybody did or said. With typhoid raging in three communities in the Rockcastle country, seven dead within the month, four cases of infantile paralysis reported south of the Cumberland, rabies, tularemia, and young children's diseases rising to their usual late summer highs, it was important that the head of the county board of health be a man of some backbone.

  When he had gone his perspiring way, Roan fell into one of his bitter pessimistic moods, and wished that one, just one, of the many men out of Westover County now practicing medicine in various parts of the world, including two foreign missionaries, would make his home county his life's work. They would at least understand the people.

  Marsh could suggest no comfort except a drink. They returned to the saloon and found both Perce and Poke Easy

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  drinking buttermilk and exchanging grievances. Roan's presence added little sprightliness to the conversation. Marsh listened to their talk, and wondered how two weeks ago he had dared be proud of his own little community. The county doctor and his nurse had come to Cedar Stump School. Marsh had been too busy in his tobacco to go, but he had deputized Delph to go and set a good example by getting herself vaccinated for typhoid. He had the day before told Ezrie in the presence of the school that if any of the bigger boys ran away or acted up to send for him, and he would round them up while Ezrie managed the others. Nothing had happened; all the children needing shots were given them, including Sober's four bigger ones whom he had sent with Delph.

  He had, following directions in a government bulletin, treated the cistern water, and it on being tested was found to be clean and pure as was the water of his spring. But now the water of one school seemed nothing when Roan pointed out that so far less than half in the county had been tested within the year, and less than half of those tested were fit for drinking.

  Marsh listened and drank again, and felt the drink, and the bitterness in Roan's eyes, the disgust and sorrow in Poke Easy's, the sticky heat, the troubled talk of farmers about him, his memories of the drought, the flood, Delph's unfathomable ways, the long years of saving, the longer years ahead of paying. He felt it all and didn't want to feel it, and drank and sank deeper and deeper into the wild not-caring that had used to seize him at times in the oil fields when he would drink and spend and gamble and fight, usually just before he went into new territory where he would drill wells given to gushing or haul nitroglycerin.

  This anger seemed blacker, more bitter, and more bottomless than any he had ever had. He tried to walk away and leave it there in the hot saloon. Then he was drinking again and the anger dissolved like snow in a south wind.

  Instead there were visions through the drunken clouds that wrapped his brain. He saw his dream of paying for a bit of land, his dream of a day when for him there would be no wonder and no doubt nor fear nor change, only peace and security and Delph's love, grow feeble and pale like the flame of a candle at sunrise. In its place there was a greater something; he had seen it sometimes, the memories of

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  it in Dorie's eyes when she talked of what she had hoped her children would do. Last winter when he tramped over Roan's lands in the Rockcastle country, he had glimpsed it dimly through Roan's talk, had heard it again today when Poke Easy made his drunken speech on the marker of the Polish soldier; never a dream of land alone but of the people who would some day live on it, and be weak or strong as it was weak or strong.

  He saw the mountains and the rolling hilly lands like some great garden out of paradise. The time would come when men like Roan and Poke Easyand Burr-Headwould shape this land into what it was meant to be, a place for people to live. Hill men would some day plant trees as they planted corn, and raise fruits and cattle and sheep and quit trying to live only from cane and tobacco and corn. Their children would quit having rickets; the land wouldn't wash away, and all the cows in the country would be fine as his own. It took no more to feed a good cow than a scrub; the whole world ought to know that. He ought to go up and down the streets telling all the farmers that it took no more to feed a good cow than a scrub.

  Then somehow, it might have been minutes or it might have been hours, he was only a drunken farmer, remembering his wife and his child and ashamed to go home or even face his mules. He was fighting somebody, and somebody else was holding him, and someone else was laughing, and somebody else was driving away with his mules. He saw things now and then, but they made little sense. He was on his back, staring through green leaves at the sky, but he wasn't in the woods, but in a wagon, with a red trim like his own. Only he guessed the wagon belonged to Roan and Poke Easy. They sat in front and drove. He questioned them once, and Roan explained that they had swapped Dorie's truck and his car for it and the team.

  But mostly there was little in his head but trouble. He thought of Delph. She would look at him and her eyes would turn stony cold like her Uncle John's or else they would be like fires covering him with angry sparks. He grew easier in his mind when Roan told him not to worry. They were taking him to Lexington to see the fine horses and buy a registered Jersey cow.

  He roused again when he heard Poke Easy calling loudly, ''Sure, Mrs. Huffacre, this is Marsh's wagon an' team. Business is keepin'

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  him late in Town, but he'll hail a ride on a truck or come home on th' bus. These green tree branches in th' wagon? Oh, that's just stuff Marsh had us put on to keep his groceries cool; he bought a big mess of fresh killed beef."

  The wagon went at a faster pace, and he heard their laughter, and then he heard nothing. He awakened slowly to the sound of heavy grunts and groans, and after a moment's listening he knew they were his own. His head felt as if someone had used it for breaking rock, and his mouth and his throat and his stomach seemed lined with fire. Then he forgot his body in the fear and trouble that racked his soul. Poke Easy and Roan had lied to him. They had brought him home. He knew Caesar's whine by the window, and he could see the outline of the morning-glory leaves.

  He raised on one elbow and a damp cloth smelling of camphor slid down his nose. He listened, but could hear nothing more than heavy snores from Delph's room above his own. The other bedroom was filled with tobacco. Delph never snored like that. She was not in the house. She had when he came back taken Burr-Head and run away, maybe to the South Fork country, or maybe to Cincinnati. All summer long he'd made her save the milk
and butter money for clothes for herself and Burr-Head. That would have more than bought a ticket.

  He sprang up and dashed across the room in the direction of the kitchen, banging his shin against a chair as he did so. He jerked open the door, and heard Delph's startled scream from the back porch. He saw her then as she stood in one of her fall-skirted, white cotton night gowns, with one long braid of hair over her shoulder, the other half braided in her hand.

  "Youyou all right, Marsh?" she asked. and picked up the lamp and came to him as he stood, floundering in a sea of misery, by the kitchen table.

  He nodded, but could think of nothing to say. She came on with the lamp, and before putting it on the table held it a moment and studied his face. "You do look better," she said, "but kind a peaked still.Couldcould you drink some coffee or some buttermilk? I saved some back from th' spring house."

  "Buttermilk would taste mighty good," he said, and watched her as she went rushing about, to the cupboard for a glass, out to the

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  porch for the buttermilk, spilling a bit in her haste, then dashing for a dish towel to wipe the glass clean before she gave it to him. He continued to look at her as he took the milk, and drank it in a few long swallows, his eyes studying her above the rim of the glass. ''You've been cryin', Delph," he said, and set the glass on the table. "II'm sorry I made you cry," he went on when she gave him no answer, only stood flushing and staring at the floor, looking all ready to cry again.

  "You'd ha cried, too," she burst out in a quavering voice. "Here, them two come bringin' you in. WhyI thoughtjust for a minutethat you might be bad hurt, orworse."

  "Would that make you cry, Delphthinkin' all that?" he asked, and took the half finished braid of hair and started to braid it, the way he had sometimes used to do, and when she did not answer him he said, teasingly as he had used to say, "Now, Delph, don't think I can't braid your hair smooth as can be. I learned from braidin' horse's tails."

  And she smiled as she had used to smile, gently somehow when he touched her, with the Delph in her eyes and the Delph on her mouth the same and mostly just for him. "Pshaw," she suddenly said with a little breathless laugh, "don't think I wasted any time cryin' when I learned what ailed you. I knew in a second from th' way Roan was laughin'takin' you out an' havin' you drink a lot a poisoned moonshine, an' Poke Easy had been in a fight. He's got a black eye big as my fist."

  "Diddid he say who hit him?" he asked with careful unconcern.

  "Some fool farmer that was drunk an' wanted him to go to Lexington for a Jersey cow, but law, maybe it was a mule kicked him. He wouldn't know.Whatever he got he deserved it. I certainly gave him a piece a my mind, gettin' you out like thatan' you so troubled an' all."

  "Troubled?"

  "Yesabout th' low pricesan' th' money you've spent this summer," she said, and he was certain she was going to cry.

  "Lord, Delph don't ever pay attention to a man's talk when he's drunk. I reckin you heard me, just talkin'. We'll pull through."

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  She dropped suddenly into a chair by the table, buried her face on her folded arms and fell into a fit of easy weeping. He dropped down beside her, put his arm around her shoulder, and begged her to hush; he was not dead, they were not going to starve, and he would never get drunkwell, at least dead drunk again, but Delph persisted in crying. While he sat feeling helpless and ashamed, his eye happened upon a worn bank book and some paper that looked to be a deed laying on the table. "What are these things, Delph?" he asked, less from curiosity than from the hope that she would maybe talk a bit and leave off her crying. "Just read 'em an' see," she sobbed, and cried the harder.

  His head was not exactly clear, and what with the surprise of all that timber land and some money belonging to Delph and her crying over it like a crazy woman, it took him some little while to get everything straight in his head. Delph's explanations, though they were sweet to have, were not exactly helpful. She was crying because she had got all that some time back but hadn't told him of it sooner. John had wanted her to keep it for her own, she said, but now when he was not going to make any money this fall, she felt he ought to take at least some of the money from the sale of the timber. That sounded fairly sensible, but when she changed her mind and said she was crying because he loved Burr-Head so, he gave up and just sat patting her shoulder and staring at the back of her head.

  He wished she would laugh instead of cry. In spite of his splitting head and Poke Easy's black eye, he felt like laughing, more like good long laughter than he had ever felt in his life. The money was a nice thing to havebut money could never make any man feel as he felt now, but he did wish she would hush crying. "Pshaw, Delph, don't take it to heart so. Mebbe I don't love Burr-Head. Why, th' little devil pulled my nose th' other day. That's no way for a son to act, pullin' his father's nose."

  Delph giggled unexpectedly and lifted her head and studied him, with the tears on her lashes shining like rain in the lamplight. "Marsh, you must love him an awful lot, not even to forget him when you were so drunk an' allor me either. Th' first money I ever knew you to spend foolish."

  Marsh sat uneasily forward in his chair and made a desperate effort to think what he might have bought, maybe gone in debt and

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  bought a car, or a pony for Burr-Head. He dropped back in his chair and smiled when Delph said, "They are so cute. If I wasn't afraid Sober would shoot us for chicken thieves, I'd go get him now. I can just see him blubberin' an' carryin' on over that toy horse an' cow, but, Marsh, honey, you ought to ha known he's lots too little for overallsbut he'll like th' red aprons you bought for me. He takes awful after bright colors."

  "Aye, he'll grow into overalls before anytime at all." Marsh smiled and didn't feel like laughing anymore. He did wish that so long as he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing, he had bought her something better than an apron.

  Delph never noticed his tender, remorseful eyes, but leaned her chin on her hands and was lost for a moment in thought and plan. "Don't you think, Marsh, that next fall we ought to take him to th' fair to th' baby show? I'll put him in a little blue suitor greenhe'd look mighty pretty in greenbut I don't guess that would be so well for a baby, especially a boy. I'll make it with buttons here an' here, an' a little pocket on this side." And she was Delph again, talking with her mouth and her eyes and her hands.

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  21

  The winter that year was cold and snowy with a skim of ice on the river and frost on the window panes, a time of long gray twilights and slow dawns. Marsh was busy as always, cutting firewood, mending fence, getting out stone and building an enormous cellar for Delph, and tending his mules and hogs and cattle. Prices had continued low; it was cheaper to keep a hog and feed it corn than try to sell either the hog or the corn. When men asked him how he was making out, his answer was apt to be the same as that of other farmers about, "Well, I reckin I'm hangin' on." But there was no complaint in his answer, or fear, nor even the grimness that had colored his speech when during his first hard summer men asked him how he fared.

  Then, he had never known the taste of walking into his house, tired and cold from a good day's work in the winter air, have Burr-Head, first crawling and then staggering tipsily toward him in short exciting sallies from chair to chair, have Delph come running up to him to kiss him on the chin or pull his nose or tweak an ear the way she always didnow. He always went first to the kitchen, but from there he would go into the living room, stand a moment with Burr-Head in his arms and warm his back to the fire, maybe say nothing at all, for there seemed little need of saying anything. He would take the milk buckets then and go to do the barn work and the milking, maybe snatching up the half of a fried dried apple pie or a sliver of souse meat or ham on the way. Before meal time he was always hungry just as at night time he was always pleasantly sleepy.

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  It was good to finish the barn work and return to find the lamp lighted in the kitchen and the firelight in
the next room flickering and flaming over the wall. Supper was always good, a bountiful meal like breakfast and dinner. He and Delph, since they could sell little, were sometimes hard put to take care of their food. Marsh complained at times that both he and Caesar were getting fat, Burr-Head was like a butter ball, and even Delph had curves to her elbows.

  That winter, partly because she must always have some plan or scheme or dream, to which to put her busy mind, Delph gave much time and thought to her cookery, and Marsh learned what it was to be well fed. The days when Lizzie Higginbottom or Dorie could sit and brag of well-fed families and low grocery bills were gone. Some said that Marsh and Delph either ordered their groceries from Sears Roebuck or else just didn't buy any, for all they ever seemed to buy at Lewis's store was a bit of salt and coffee with maybe a few pounds of sugar now and then. Delph made her own soap, and they didn't even buy dried beans. Last summer Marsh had sowed cow peas in his corn. Delph had picked and hulled better than ten bushel, and Marsh had taken nine of them to a produce house in Hawthorne and swapped them for three bushels of good pinto beans. He never bought meal or even flour; he'd swapped some corn for wheat and had that ground in the Burdine mill as he had his corn ground.