Between the Flowers: A Novel

  "They're no worse than your big-footed Tilly you're ashamed to ride down th' main road to church," he answered teasingly, for thatwith Fronie's disgust for young women who galloped their horses on public roads where all could seewas Delph's excuse for following the old ridge road.

  No matter what they said in their stolen meetings; words of the weather, or Marsh's brief answers to the many questions she put to him about the places he had been, Delph was most often shy and ill at ease with a guilty look in her eyes that made him hate her family. It was a pretty pass when a girl couldn't speak to a man without breaking some law laid down by her people.

  But today she sat and smiled at him, less mindful of the rules she broke than yesterday. Some gay eager excitement quivered in her face and made her eyes bright blue and warm with her lips redder and brighter than the dahlias. "How's th' revival?" he asked, and came nearer and smoothed Tilly's mane.

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  She tossed her head and something like defiance shadowed her eyes, and then they were gay again, taken up with other things, "I think there's about a dozen mournin' on th' bench, but so far nobody's got saved that I know of," she answered, and smiled at him, impishly, her thoughts a thousand miles from the mourners. Somethin' good's happened to me," she burst out suddenly.

  "You an' Logan aimin' to get married?"

  She flushed, then smiled over Logan as she had smiled at the mourners. "Pshaw, no. I'll not be married for a long whilenow." She leaned forward with her hands dropping on Tilly's mane near his own, and her eyes laughing down upon him. "Uncle John's goin' to let me go to Town an' finish high school. I never thought he wouldan' when he told me last night I felt like flyin'."

  She sat back and waited, smiling, for his congratulations. "That's fine," he said at last. "It'll mebbe take a whilebut one a these days you can blossom out with a career an' allmebbe be like th' women you read about in your magazines."

  Her smile faded, and she sat remote and drawn unto herself, staring at the black velvet ribbon on her white straw hat. "But I thought you'd be glad to know," she said at last in a tight hurt voice, "thatthat somehow from th' way you looked, you'd understand better than th' people here, better than Logan even, what this little beginnin' means to me."

  His tongue seemed suddenly to have a will of its own, not sensible like the rest of him, remembering always that he'd most likely never see the girl again come fall. "You're mighty nice th' way you are," he said, and stood looking at her hands.

  She tapped his bent head playfully with the dahlias, and he felt their yellow pollen on his nose. "It's such a little beginnin'. You needn't be worried. I'll stay with Cousin Emma Chrismann on Fronie's side, an' I won't be exactly seein' th' world, but at least I can get a little more of it in my head. Get ready to go to collegemaybe. I can't begin to think how that would seem."

  He looked up at her, but she was staring past him through the trees. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were free of hunger, feasting on dreams and visions instead of trees. He felt a hot unreasoning thrust of jealousy; the world she saw was finer than any manor worldcould ever be.

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  Tilly, impatient from standing still so long, rattled her bridle and Delph came back to realize that she was riding to church. She looked at Marsh's gloomy face and sighed. "You're kin of Aunt Fronie's, always so sober like," she said, then laughed again and bent and whispered quickly by his ear, "Tonight I'm celebratin' all th' same. I've fin'ly persuaded Logan an' th' Hedrick girls for us all after church to run away to that dance they're havin' at Joe D. Martin's."

  Marsh frowned more darkly still. "Now I wouldn't do that. If your Uncle John found it out he'd never let you go to school."

  "Pshaw, who'd be mean enough to tell him? I'm stayin' th' night with th' Redrick girls, an' Mr. Hedrick he's stayin' at our place with th' preachers, an' Mrs. Hedrick she'll most likely pray all night with Lucas Crabtree."

  "Somethin's bound to slip," he insisted. "There'll be a wild crowd up at Martin's. An' if you must go you'd better have somebody else around. I've seen your Logan Ragan drunk as a Lord in Hawthorne Town."

  She wrinkled her nose and prodded Tilly into motion with her heel. "Juber, he'll be there, an' anyhow Logan would never start drinkin' when he's out with me," she said, and added in mock scorn, "He's not a wild drinkin' oil man."

  "There'll be one a them at that dance tonight, so save a few dances for him," Marsh answered.

  "Recollect Logan he'll be there, an' I know now about that fight you almost had with him," she called as she rode away.

  "An' you're not mad about it?" he wanted to know.

  She answered nothing to that, but he smiled to see her neck and her ears red. It had taken some little time, but she had done what she set out to do, invite him to the dance. He watched until she was swallowed in the trees, then walked restlessly over the ridge side. The bulletin on clover stayed in his pocket, forgotten, while he looked sometimes at his horses, sometimes at the sky, and smiled with his eyes. And as he rode Jude home, Jude took advantage of his master's dreaming ways that left the bridle loosened on his neck and wandered two miles off their course before Marsh noticed where they were, and then he only gave one short easy oath.

  Once home, Marsh cleaned his shack, carried all his clothing and bed clothing and spread them on the pine bushes for an airing. He

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  often did that with the hope of taking the oil smell away, but it always seemed to him that he never quite succeeded. Later in the day when both he and his place were clean and straight, he went down to Copenhavers, his nearest neighbors, on what he feared was a useless errand. Still, it would do no harm to ask.

  On the front porch Old Willie greeted him, and Maude nickered from the yard; a pretty thing she was with a white starred forehead, a shining mane and gentle eyes. "Aye, she's mindful as a woman with th' flowers," Old Willie said when Marsh praised the mare. The old man smiled and fondled her with his dim eyes as she grazed in the wide sweep of hill yard, filled with flowers and apple trees where the scent of overripe apples left to rot, and the marigolds by the log porch steps, blended in a sharp winey sweetness that drew the bees from their hives in the orchard.

  Marsh lingered a time on the vine covered porch and stroked a hound dog lazily, and listened to Old Willie talk. He talked of horses and hunting and fiddles and hound dog tunes; and sighed for the old days when guns were guns and men were men, and the timber was fine and tall and filled with game. The guns were better then, truly rifled and truly put together, heavy, and of a length to suit a right sized man. "When th' old Costello breed a men died out or left th' country, we lost th' ones that knowed good guns an' loved a good horse an' could set all night on th' Pilot Rock an' listen to hound dawg music," the old man said, and spat contemptuously into the yard. "That John takes after his maw's peoplesober like in his ways, but, Lord, his brother, Delph's pawwomen or God couldn't keep him under. Too bad Delph's a girl."

  "I wouldn't call her exactly a failure," Marsh said.

  Old Willie sighed. "Blood's blood an' it'll tell. I look at her in church sometimesa singin' away an' a cryin' in her eyes. They've held her in too close, brought her up so pious like an' still. An' she's th' old Costellos through an' through." He spat again with angry vehemence. "But she's a girl. When she marries into them smooth mouthed Ragans she'll go by their ways."

  Marsh got up with sharp abruptness. "I've got to be goin' on," he said, but paused and looked down through the yard; the lower half of it in hill shadow now. The bee hives were filled with a soft sleepy droning, surrounded by clouds of homecoming bees sinking out of

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  the sunlight into the shadow, and as each bee dropped near the hive it seemed to lose a burden of golden light and be but a small dark dot going home. Below the yard were the acres of bottom land corn, its lower blades in fodder now. Soon there would be corn cutting time, and time to sow the rye, and dig the sweet potatoes and put the apples away, then corn gathering time and wood getting; the
n winter when the bees were still and Old Willie sat by his hearth and whittled the endless balls in chains and chains through balls with which old hill men whiled away their winter hours. And through it all there would be no fear of death nor change nor wonder of how the next year would be.

  He thought of all that, and he thought of Delph's eyes when they looked past him and saw visions he could not see. Somebody ought to have something. He wished he had shown some gladness when she told him of getting a thing she wanted. He would tell her tonight, say he was very glad. He remembered his errand, and stopped on the top porch step and looked at the corn as he said, "It'll soon be corn cuttin' time. My work's slack now.How about me comin' down an' helpin' some?"

  Old Willie smiled. "No oil man would want th' little wages we could pay."

  "Th' pay wouldn't matter so much."

  "Why, you'd mebbe cut your leg on a corn knife, an' it 'ud be hard fer you.Easy work but all in knowin' how," the old man said.

  "I know somethin' a farmin'a little," Marsh explained hesitantly. "I was raised on onewell, more than one. In Missouri we raised corn. I know how to cut in case your son needs a hand."

  Old Willie spat over the porch steps, then boomed, "Aye, there'll never be need for a money makin' man like you to fiddle with a corn knife, but if I was you," he went on after a long survey of Marsh's clothing, "I don't know but I'd take a knife or a pair a knucks if you're goin' where I think you're goin'."

  Marsh smiled. "An'where would I be goin'?"

  "I'm wonderin' myself. What I'm thinkin' is that there's talk that Delph Costello's been sort a castin' her eyes after yousickened a Logan so I've hearedbut recollect he's still her beau," Old Willie said, then dropped his head against the back of his chair and seemed to fall asleep.

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  ''You oughtn't to tell such tales, Old Willie," Marsh scolded. "Why Delph's Aunt Fronie wouldn't let her look at a wild oil man."

  Old Willie smiled in his beard without opening his eyes, while Marsh hurried down to the waiting Jude. Twilight lay blue on the valley road, though the taller pines and poplar on the hills were tipped here and there with a bit of red gold sunset fire. He galloped down the clay and limestone road; sometimes he glanced at a field of ripening corn, or snatched at a cluster of hazel nuts, but most often he looked straight ahead, and when Moses Sexton who lived where the toll gate used to be called to him, "I never saw you ride so careless like an' easy," he answered, "I feel careless," and rode on with never a glance back at the Sexton cows walking up to the barn for milking.

  He stopped at the post office and ordered pork and beans and crackers and cheese from Mrs. Crouch for his supper. She glanced suspiciously at his fresh shave and good clothes, but said nothing. A batch of short-core jelly she was then making was just at that moment smoking its pipes, and she in fear that it would overcook took no time out for conversation.

  He went to sit by the creek, where he ate, hardly knowing what he ate. He watched the darkness deepen and heard the first faint croakings of frogs and saw the fireflies go in and out among the beech boughs. He listened then to the conversation of two whip-poor-wills farther up the creek above the bridge. One seemed to be trying to comfort the other, but always failed, for each time the other would answer just as sadly as before, "Whip-poor-will," with such sadness on the will, that gradually the more cheerful of the two agreed that for some things there was no comfort, and cried his knowledge long and sadly through the darkness.

  A rising night breeze rustled in the beech trees and whispered through the corn in Mrs. Crouch's garden. The wind carried a faint smell of earth damp by the creek, that hinted of some fainter, farther smell Marsh could not name, maybe leaves or trees or decaying wood, more like the memory of warm spring rain on fresh plowed ground. The smell was familiar as a suit of threadbare clothes. Yet always one quick first breath of it could cause a sharp thrust of what in another might have been homesickness, but since he had never had one certain spot for home he knew the earth smell could not bring that. Times like tonight it stirred a hatred of his wandering

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  way of life, and pricked him, too, with something like regret or shame. He sat a time and figured in his head the money he had spent foolishly within the last year, but it was a hateful business, and he was glad when Mrs. Crouch called for her bowl and spoon.

  He went to her dwelling quarters behind the store, knowing full well it wasn't the bowl and spoon she wanted, but mostly information as to where he might be headed. Since the day he had driven her to Big Cane Brake Church the postmistress had stood to him as something like a guardian angel, not only that but now and then she let out helpful hints such as, "Juber was tellin' me Delph was aimin' to ride down here to see what I had in th' way a gingham, tomorrow afternoon," or, "Boy, you mustn't ever dress up to go courtin' in these hills. Some a these men with young girls'ull mebbe be thinkin' you're out tryin' to spark 'em."

  Though he disliked the lie, Marsh felt that the postmistress would be easier in her mind if she thought he was headed for Holly Bush eight miles away instead of Martin's dance, and so he gave that as his destination when she asked him where he might be going. She, in accordance with her usual custom of late, complained of having too much food and never being able to cook for one, and so begged him to eat of the hot fried ham and other dishes on the table. He was not hungry, but ate a bit, while she as always watched him and smiled, and talked of her own boys scattered in northern cities, and wondered if they had had good suppers that night. Sometimes she showed him their pictures, bringing the cheap shiny photographs from the massive folding bed in the side room, holding them carefully in one corner of her apron so as not to spot them with her dish-watery hands. They were all wide-shouldered, stalwart hill men, with something roving in their eyes that made him think of Delph.

  But tonight Mrs. Crouch said nothing of her children, and never invited him to sit a time on the front porch as she usually did. She seemed in a hurry to finish the dishes, and Marsh noticing that under her wide apron she wore a dress different from her everyday ginghams and that her hair showed signs of curling irons, suspected that she as well as Delph might have a beau. He rode away in the direction of Holly Bush, but when he had topped the first hill, dismounted and sat on a fallen log until he heard Logan's car go up the road on the other side of the bridge that led to Martin's.

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  He rode again then, following a narrow, little used road that kept to the twisting ways of the ridge. He was in no hurry. He on a horse could get there quicker than Logan chugging over limestone ledges and creek bottoms. Now and then he stopped to watch clouds play hide and seek with a rising moon, or listen to the southwest wind in the pine trees.

  Joe D. Martin's log house lay in a lonesome spot, a cove at the head of a narrow creek, well away from a main road or other houses. Though tonight the place held no air of lonesomeness, but was bright with lanterns and carbide lights hung on pegs on the log porch and on the gate posts. He lingered a time in the shadowy yard and listened to the low talk and lower, almost soundless, laughter of the hill men. The dancing had not yet begun, but from the big house room there came short wails and cries from fiddles being tuned, with now and then a lively twang from a guitar or banjo.

  Soon after he heard the shuffling, stamping feet of the dancers, and felt a curious lonesomeness, unusual with him. Delph would be dancing now with Logan's arms about her waist, her mind on a million things other than a roving oil man. He worked his way through the crowd on the porch, and stood with other men in the low wide door and looked into the room. The musicians, including Juber, sat on the hearth in front of the empty fireplace, while the dancers, many girls in gingham dresses and men in overalls, held the center of the room. Big Foot Armstrong stood on the top step of the three steps leading to the loft room door and called the sets in his booming voice. Men lounged by the walls and in the windows. Women with babies in their arms and young children leaning by their knees sat in hickory bark bottomed chairs or
makeshift benches by the wall, and listened to the fiddle tunes and watched the dancers with their deep quiet eyes which seemed shadowed by some memory of sorrow or foreboding of trouble and pain. The hands that waved the palm leaf fans seemed tired and slow, and the thin, stooped shoulders looked old for women giving suck to young. Marsh looked at them and was glad that Delph was going away to finish high school. Still, the women came from people different from her own, wives of poor back hill farmers and moonshiners, not of men with money in the bank and acres of timber and farm land.