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He looked for her among the dancers, but found her instead sitting quiet and still between Logan and Mrs. Crouch in a shadowy corner of the room. He caught the postmistress's eye, but she looked at him in such fierce surprise that he stayed where he was, and hoped that Delph would look at him. She, however, listened to some talk of Logan's with her dark brows lifted a bit and her shoulders too stiff and still. Soon she turned abruptly away and watched the dancers, and though Marsh looked fixedly at her she saw nothing but the bowing swaying figures.
He watched her fingers tap the time on her knees, and then her feet, slyly without her knowing, beat the tune on the floor. Logan glanced at her moving feet, and then at her. She flushed and held her feet and her hands carefully still. Marsh looked at her quiet feet and her quiet hands a moment longer, and then went up to her. Mrs. Crouch saw him first, and the wavings of her fan from being long and leisurely with pauses between each wave, grew suddenly short and agitated, though her voice was calm enough as she said, ''Good evenin', Mr. Gregory. I thought you'd be goin' out to Holly Bush to th' shootin' match."
"Not when there's a square dance on hand," he said.
Logan turned and looked at him, and smiled his frosty hill man's smile. "How come you're not dancin' then?"
"I've not found a partner to my likin'," he said, and watched Delph's ears redden and wished she would look at him.
"I see no sign a one in this corner," Logan answered, while Mrs. Crouch got up with a nimbleness surprising in a woman of her age and size, seized his elbow, and said all in a breath, "I've been noticin' one a th' Branchcomb girls lookin' after you all evenin' She's over there by th' beda pretty girl with red hairI'll take you over an' make you acquainted. She's a might good dancer an'."
Marsh disregarded her not so gentle pull on his arm. "What about DeMiss Costello? Doesn't she dance?"
"Yes. I mean no, she," Mrs. Crouch began in a feeble voice, but Logan cut her short with an icy, "No, not in this rough crowd," while Delph said nothing as she got up, dropped her cardboard fan across Logan's knees, and took Marsh's free arm. "Yes Delph dances," she said to no one in particular. ''She didn't come to sit around like a deacon's wifean' Logan."
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Logan sprang up and stood staring at her with open mouth, and surprise and anger struggling in his eyes. "Delph, you can't go runnin' around with a stranger in this rough crowda man you never hardly saw in your life."
"She'll not be runnin' around. She'll be dancin'," Marsh answered, and led her away with no looking back. He was conscious of the eyes in the room, searching his face and his back like fingers feeling cloth to learn its worth.
"I guess I've made a fool a myself," Delph whispered as they joined the lines of dancers.
"You're awful pretty when you're bein' a fool," he whispered back, and laughed down into her eyes where all the frolicsome fiddle tunes seemed gathered in a flickering, dancing, laughing world of light and shadow.
Delph danced and never thought of Logan, only noticed in an absent minded sort of way that he made frequent trips to the back porch where she guessed young John D. Martin was doing a thriving business in white corn liquor. If he wanted to make a fool of himself because she danced, she didn't mind. She didn't mind anything. She saw Juber with his fiddle under his chin and eyes and heart for nothing but the leaping bow in his hand and the strings quivering under his fingers. Juber loved the music somaybe it was the only way he knew of going away. The fiddle and the bow, she knew, were finer to him than they really were. Sometimes while he helped her in the flowers or at night when he milked in the barn, he would talk in low broken whispers of the fiddle and bow he would like to have, a bow tipped with silver and a fiddle trimmed in gold, and of some wondrous sweet singing wood that was mellow and old with no harshness and no twanging.
She would never be like that, dreaming and dreaming her life away, never having, never knowing, never feeling the world. She would never be like Mrs. Crouch living away in a low lost holler and wondering after and sighing over her man dead and her children gone away. She wouldn't be like that thin stoop-shouldered wife of a poor hill farmer with a fat baby tugging at one blue veined breast and another sleeping by her knees. Marsh's hands clasped her waist, and swung her high and free. She looked up and smiled into his eyes, and her thoughts of the life she would live dissolved. Life for the
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moment was enough. The line advanced, she bowed, then straightened, and saw Logan by the mantle. His nose was white and his cheeks were red. He'd started drinking, she guessed. That meant that Marsh would have to see her home, but she didn't mind.
Becky Daughtery, the hill farmer's wife, shifted her baby to the other breast, and whispered to Mrs. Crouch without taking her eyes from Delph, "Lord, don't she make a body feel young agin. I'm glad she took th' bit in her teeth an' danced."
Mrs. Crouch nodded, and waved her fan in pleased acquiescence to the situation. "I hope that fool of a Logan Ragan gets so drunk he can't start trouble. I never had a girl a my own, but I always thought that if I had I'd a let her have a little funharmless like this with older folks lookin' on. A woman's dancin' days are short an' mostly things for her to recollect anyhow."
The hill farmer's wife sighed, and shook her head slowly as she smiled on Delph. "Aye, an' if she never dances th' youngens an' th' work an' th' fetchin' an' tendin' fer a man they'll come no easier anyhow."
And Juber, lost as he was in his fiddling, glanced at Delph and whispered to his fiddle, "She's havin' th' time of her life."
Big Foot Armstrong, caller of the sets, complained that his throat was dry, and one of the Martin boys brought in a jug of raw corn liquor, from which Big Foot helped himself. Then each of the musicians took one long drink, even Juber who shivered and batted his eyes as the drink went down. After that the music quickened and the feet and bodies of the dancers matched it with whirls and leaps and lively steps. The wide heavy planks of the big house floor bounced and swayed and creaked, while puffs of dust undisturbed for fifty years danced into spurts of sudden life between the cracks. Hound dogs visiting from miles around pressed between the legs of the watching men, and looked and listened to the goings on with glistening wondering eyes.
The more sober minded of the women began to grow restive and whisper to each other that it was getting late and time to start home. Each agreed that she had come only to hear a bit of music and not see all this sinful dancing with maybe Big Foot Armstrong and the musicians drinking on the sly. Of course it was only water in the jug, the men would never dare to drink so openly.
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The older women were not the only ones worried by the gay turn the party had taken. Now and then one of the Hedrick girls tried to whisper to Delph that it was time to go home, but Delph never listened, and danced as if there were no world before and no world after, only the dance. Her cheeks were pinker than when she came, and her eyes were brighter, bluer, with all the smiles that touched her mouth living in them too.
At first she only smiled like a woman in her sleep when Logan took advantage of a pause in the music to come to her and say in a loose sleepy voice, "Delph, we'd better go home."
She studied him with angry narrowing eyes, then moved a step or so away. "You're drunk," she said.
He made an exaggerated motion of straightening his shoulders. "Not so much but I can drive you homenow."
Dolly Hedrick nudged his elbow and whispered, "He's drinkin' an' we'd better all go. He might start trouble."
But Delph only studied Logan and gave no sign she heard. "Come on, let's go," he insisted, and she understood that he was less drunk than angry.
She was still a moment, bewildered by a curious feeling, less of anger at his domineering ways than of surprise at herself. Yesterday or even while they sat in the corner and quarreled, Logan had mattered more to her than anyone. The prospect of school in Town had been sweetened by thought of seeing him. Now, suddenly, his anger or his pleasure didn't matter. He wa
s only a bit of the Little South Fork Countrysomeone like Fronie to shape her in a pattern she had never chosen.
She glanced at Marsh and saw his eyes, gray slits in his face, and his mouth a straight colorless line. All at once it mattered very much that nothing should happen to him. He stood there, ready to use his fists, and most likely never knew that Logan had a gun.
"Delph, don't stand there wool gatherin' all night. Let's go," Logan said, and took her arm.
She felt his hot big hand through the sheer stuff of her dress; the touch sickened her, and she jerked herself free. She heard the ripping sound of her dress sleeve in the too quiet room, and was conscious of the faces watching her, worried and disapproving faces that held her up to shame. She saw Logan and the bewildered look in his
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eyes. He didn't understand. He thought she was teasing him with the oil man. He looked foolish with his jaws working twice before the words came out, "Youyou needn't jump so. I'm not poison.You've let plenty others hug you tight all evenin'."
She flushed and said in a choked dry voice, "I danced like th' others. I've done no wrong."
"Well, soon's I get you safe back to Hedricks I'll not be botherin' you. I brought you here. I'll have to see you home," he said, and stood waiting for her to come with him.
She stood with clenched hands and tried to look at no one. Her throat ached, not so much from anger as from a sense of loss; all the fun of the evening broken like a bit of bright glass. She had a sudden fear that she might be going to cry with all the people looking on. She had committed no sin, only danced; and now they looked at her as if she, and not Logan, were the guilty one. "I'll go home," she said without looking at Logan. "But not with you. Not with anybody." She started toward the door, trying to walk slowly and never show how anxious she was to be rid of the watching eyes.
Logan followed her a step or so, then whirled about when Marsh said, "Leave her be."
"Listen youyou good for nothin' roustaboutyou've caused enough trouble for one evenin' You've no right to come nosin' where you're not wanted," Logan called over his shoulder.
"Nobody gave me cause to think I wasn't wanted," Marsh answered in a flat low voice, and stood with hands loose and easy by his sides and his feet spread a little like things rooted in the ground.
Logan looked at him in silence and so did all the others in the room. Only Juber stood on tiptoe and craned his head to see and muttered, "Easy now, men, easy. John'ull get wind a this an' it'll be good-bye to Delph's goin' to school," but no one noticed Juber.
"Th'bit a notice Delph gave you has gone to your head," Logan muttered, and backed slowly toward the door with his eyes on Marsh.
"You could be civil," Marsh said, and followed him.
"You've no need to come after us," Logan commanded, and went through the door.
"I go where I please," Marsh said, and walked on, careful to keep his eyes on Logan's hands.
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There were others who watched Logan's hands, for the Ragan men were noted for their quick light hands as well as their soft-spoken, smiling ways.
He disappeared on the porch. Marsh followed him and stood for an instant sharply silhouetted in the lamplight falling through the door. He couldn't see Logan on the porch for his body was hidden in shadow, but he heard Delph's wild cry. He saw Logan's face then, a white blur by a tangle of vines on the porch edge. He saw Delph's dress, the white spinning cloud of it when Logan gave her a violent shove.
He jumped sideways and cat like as he had learned to do in his drilling days when the bull wheels burst or a cable broke. A bullet whined and splinters flew from the door jamb while a gun popped, softly, he thought. The way Logan talked. He heard Delph's scream of "Oh, you fool," and saw the whiteness of her dress again between him and Logan; saw it whirl and sway like a wild thing as she struggled for the gun.
He leaped and jerked her away, and caught Logan's hands. A hot something like splashing grease touched his arm as he heard another shot right by his chest it seemed. The gun clattered to the floor, and something inside him laughed at the helplessness of men like Logan without their guns. He stepped back, and while Logan stood bewildered, stooping a bit to see the gun, Marsh straightened him, lifted him with a blow under his chin. When Logan wavered, perfectly straight, immensely tall, he knocked him through the screen of vines, so that he fell with his head on the ground and his heels trailing in the vines.
He was suddenly conscious of the pain in his arm, and the worse pain in the knuckles of his right hand; of women screaming behind him and men crowding around. But they were dim and of no account when there was Delph's hand on his arm, shaking him while she begged, "You're not hurt, Marsh? Please, you're not hurt?"
He flipped hair from his forehead and smiled. Then he was ashamed and sorry. This fracas would most likely cost Delph her chance to go to school. Still, it was sweet to know that she stood there, not thinking of school, but saying over and over, "Please, Marsh, are you all right?"
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4
That year more than one in the Little South Fork Country marveled at the beauty of the fall. The early frosts were light and the days clear and still, roofed by high bottomless skies, cloudless and intensely blue. Sometimes with only Tilly for company Delph went on long hunts down the pine ridges after wild grapes and chestnuts. Mostly she would come home empty handed, a few chestnuts in her sweater pockets or grape stain on her fingers. She would stand silent under Fronie's tearful lamentations, and never answer her aunt's eternal, "What ails you anyhow, Delph?" and never defend herself when she said, "You know no woman's reputation can stand runnin' around in th' woods by herself.An' th' Lord knows yours is bad enough as it is, after runnin' away to that dance, an' causin' a fight by dancin' with a strange oil man."
Delph never told her aunt or even Juber what it was she hunted in the woods. She didn't know. Sometimes she would sit motionless on Tilly for minutes together and watch a single yellow poplar leaf rise and rise and linger for one moment high and bright and gold against a great blue sweep of sky, then turn and fall in long cascading spirals, its brightness lost in shadow, and settle at last only another leaf to rot and die. Something would ache in her throat and smart in her eyes, but she never cried. The sky and the leaves and the earth cried of change, and the honking call of the wild geese flying in a high vee was a challenge to go away.
And more than these were Marsh's eyes when he looked at her, and smiled, with little joy in his smile. Each day of fall brought the winter nearer, a time when he would be like the leaf and the wild
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goose call, a memory of something that went away, They met often in the woods, sometimes in Mrs. Crouch's kitchen, but Delph seldom chattered gaily or teasingly as she had used to do with Logan. Marsh thought there were many who said he would be safer out of the country, tried not to think of the winter and of going away. The thought hurt when he walked through Old Willie's fields and smelled the ripened corn, but it was something worse than simple hurt when he looked at Delph. Sometimes he tried to tell her how sorry he was he had gone to the dance and had a fight with Logan of which the whole country, including her Uncle John, heard. But Delph would only interrupt to say, "Pshaw, if it hadn't a been that it would ha been somethin' else.I guess I was never meant to go away," and she would look at him and smile with sorrow, but no blame in her eyes.
Many, especially Mrs. Crouch and Juber, marveled that Delph took John's refusal to let her go to school with such seeming unconcern. Delph herself wondered sometimes why it was that school and the mysterious world that books could open for her no longer seemed importantor even interesting. Marsh alone kept life from being empty and flat and dull. New magazines with their tantalizing smell of ink and fresh shining paper were irksome, and the endings of the continued stories no longer mattered. The letters that Logan sent filled with apologies and asking her forgiveness were bits of paper and nothing more. Fronie talked of dresses for the winter, and John, kind as always in
spite of his sternness, bought her a blue tweed coat with a red fox collarthe nicest coat she had ever had and fine as any in Townbut she didn't want the coat. She didn't know what she wanted.