Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You

  “Finally she said, ‘And was it only just this morning that Vonda disappeared? How much time has passed since you-all went off to church?’

  “Daniel tugged his pocket watch out and flipped it open. ‘It’s one-thirty now and I’d say we left home about nine-thirty. So that’s four hours.’

  “She nodded and turned her attention to Perce. He squirmed and reddened under her gaze when she said, ‘You was the one to see the tracks. Is that right, Perce?’ When he admitted to it, she asked, ‘Were all the tracks sharp-edged or were some of them streaky—like whoever made them was sliding about in the slick mud?’

  “‘Sharp-edged,’ he said.

  “‘Sharp-edged. Both coming to the porch and going away?’

  “‘Yessum.’

  “‘Is the mud soft all the way down or is the ground froze underneath?’

  “‘We’ve had some frosty nights,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a covering of mud over frozen ground in most places.’

  “Aunt Sherlie didn’t even glance at him, but kept looking steady at Perce. ‘How about the back of the house?’ she asked. ‘Did you think to look around back?’

  “He colored up again and said, ‘Yes, ma’am. I did look. But there weren’t no sign. Hadn’t been nobody back there.’

  “She smiled at him in friendly fashion and spoke softly. ‘No sign and nobody ain’t the same thing.’ Then she inquired of the four of them if any had seen Paul O’Dell after his fight with Jimmy, and Harry said he had seen him the day after the fight down at Plemmons’s store.

  “‘How did he look?’

  “‘Poorly.’

  “‘Took a sound beating, you’d say?’

  “‘Worst I ever seen,’ Harry said, adding proudly, ‘and I’ve seen many a one.’

  “‘What kind of fighter would you take Paul O’Dell to be?’

  “‘He’s quiet,’ Harry said. ‘He don’t much scrap.’

  “‘Never?’

  “‘Well, sometimes. Sure.’

  “‘How does he make out?’

  “‘He don’t like to fight and he don’t never win, but…’ Harry paused, waiting for words to come to roost.

  “‘But he don’t never say Calf Rope?’ Aunt Sherlie suggested.

  “He nodded, relieved. ‘Yessum. Once his mind is set, he don’t never say Calf Rope.’

  “‘How about Jimmy Keiller? If he was to fight a feller and whup him, would he just keep on thrashing him?’

  “‘Not if the other’n would give up,’ Harry said.

  “‘If the other boy said Calf Rope, Jimmy wouldn’t keep on a-pummeling?’

  “Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t believe he would.’ He grinned, clearly pleased with himself for being able to talk sense to Aunt Sherlie.

  “She then began to question Martha, asking her if she was satisfied that Jimmy was the one Vonda was sweet on. Martha said that all the signs pointed to Jimmy, though Vonda had never declared outright.

  “‘Would she have reason to deceive you? I know, Martha, that Vonda would never lie to her mother, but mightn’t she mislead you without saying anything?’

  “‘The only reason she would deceive me would be to deceive Daniel through me. Because I don’t mind which one she wants, but we knew that whichever she favored, Daniel would be against that one. So we tried to throw him off the track.’

  “‘So if Daniel seemed to cotton to Paul O’Dell, she’d let on she liked Jimmy Keiller,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘And that would throw Daniel off the track. But if she wanted to throw you off, she must’ve been favoring Paul. Do you think she could like Paul better than Jimmy?’

  “‘I don’t know,’ Martha admitted. ‘You never can tell what’s in a young girl’s heart. But she did say to me one time that Jimmy had advantages as plain as the nose on your face.’

  “‘That’s not the same as saying she liked him better.’

  “‘No,’ Martha said, ‘it ain’t.’

  “‘I’ll ask you this,’ Aunt Sherlie said, ‘because you’re around the house all the time and would know. Has anything been taken? Is there anything missing out of the house?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘Nothing at all? I don’t mean a teacup or a ball of twine. I mean something heavylike and maybe pretty big.’

  “‘No.… Well, I finally got that old busted corn sheller off of the front porch. Harry or Perce must have carried it down to the barn like I’ve been asking them to do day after day for months on end.’

  “‘Is that right, Perce?’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘You moved the corn sheller?’

  “‘No,’ he said, ‘but I saw it in the barn when I went for the team. Harry moved it, I reckon.’

  “‘Harry?’

  “He shook his head.

  “‘Daniel?’

  “‘Me neither,’ said Daniel.

  “‘Well now,’ said Aunt Sherlie, ‘I believe we know all we need to know, don’t we?’

  “Then the four Rathbones looked at one another and the puzzlement was mighty thick amongst them. Finally Martha spoke. ‘Well, I don’t know nothing more than I did already. What are you talking about?’

  “Aunt Sherlie turned to Daniel and looked him straight in the face with those sharp blue eyes that would see to thread the eye of the littlest fine needle. ‘I want to get a promise from you, Daniel, if I can,’ she said.

  “‘What kind of promise?’

  “‘If I tell you how to get Vonda back all safe and sound, I want you to promise me that you’ll be satisfied with her choice of man and be reconciled to her and treat all concerned with generous kindliness.’

  “‘Do you know who the man is? Who is he?’

  “‘That don’t matter just now.’ Aunt Sherlie spoke soft and patient. ‘You’d have to settle to her choice sooner or later, anyhow. If you do what I tell you to do, everything will work out for the best. For that reason, I want your promise. What do you say to me?’

  “‘He’ll promise,’ Martha said. ‘He’ll promise and he’ll stick by his word.’

  “‘I don’t know what I’m promising,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a pig in a poke.’

  “‘I’m going to tell you exactly what will happen,’ Aunt Sherlie declared. ‘And then I want your promise to do what I say. In about a week or ten days, Vonda and her new husband will come riding on their horses up the settlement road and probably from the south. There will be a third person with them, mounted on a big roan horse. Without a doubt, somebody will come running to tell you about it because people around here will be expecting you to start up some mischief. But you and Martha and Perce and Harry are going to meet this party of three and invite them in to dinner and feed them good and a few days after that you will have a social in your house and your kinfolks and friends and neighbors will come and greet them and make them feel settled and at home in the region here. And there won’t be no bad blood on any side. And everything will just hum along like a top.’

  “‘Daniel,’ Martha said, ‘listen what a pretty picture Aunt Sherlie has painted for us. If you don’t give your promise right now, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I do know you won’t like it and won’t be liking it for a long time to come.’

  “‘Well, then,’ Daniel said, and squeezed out a tight little smile, ‘I guess I’ll give my promise. I want to see my Vonda again. I will do what you say to do.’

  “And that’s what he did, and he was not a man to go back on his word, and, as the old story says, they all lived happily ever after.”

  My grandmother smiled her sly smile and then rubbed it away with the back of her hand.

  * * *

  “But what happened?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Which one did she marry?”

  “You’re the male person in this room. You can figure it out with the orderly thoughts a man has in his head. Which one do you think she married?”

  “Jimmy Keiller.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because he was big and stout and won the fight.”

  ?
??No. She married little Paul O’Dell. Because he loved her the most.”

  “How did she know he loved her the most?”

  “He took the bloodiest drubbing he could stand, that just about anybody could stand, and it didn’t daunt him. Nothing would stop him but killing. Not the marriage vows, not threat nor refusal. And maybe even after his life was over he might come back for her. A lot of hants are dissatisfied lovers, you know.”

  “Who was the third person that came back with them?”

  “That was Jimmy Keiller on his fine roan horse sixteen hands tall that everybody admired. That Sunday morning after he got his little ruses completed at the Rathbone place, he rode like lightning six miles down to Bitter Springs Baptist Church, where he stood best man, muddy boots and all, for his friend Paul O’Dell. He had pummeled the little feller till he thought one more blow would end his earthly existence and he saw there in that falling-down barn up in Ivy Cove that no matter if he won the fight, he was never going to win the girl. So the boys rested and blubbered together a while and then made the best of it they could. They planned for Paul to carry off pretty Vonda and for Jimmy to lay a false track.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “Now I know a smart boy like you figured that part out the very first thing. Jimmy just walked up to the porch, lifted up the corn sheller, and toted it to the barn so that his tracks going back would be deeper than coming. The footing was slick as grease, what with the mud on top of frozen ground, so he had to step mighty careful for people to read his tracks with no mistake. The other tracks around were smeared and messy as folks slid and slipped and nearly fell. His were the only tracks sharp and clear.”

  “What about Paul O’Dell? How did he get Vonda out?”

  “They just went out the back door and up the hill a ways, then down through the woods to the road, where he had two horses tied.”

  “I thought Perce looked behind and didn’t find any tracks.”

  “Back in that icy holler, Daniel Rathbone had built his house to catch the southern sun. On the front side it did, but the ground back of the house was froze solid. Wouldn’t take a track till almost May. That was where his warm southern exposure tripped up Daniel Rathbone. But it all ended well and it wasn’t long before a grandbaby made him happy as a king.… Now don’t you think Aunt Sherlie Howes was a smart person, woman or not?”

  “I reckon so. Did she tell you how she figured it all out?”

  “As far as I know, she never told a soul. She wasn’t the bragging sort.”

  “Then how do you know what she thought?”

  “I figured it out for myself, following in her tracks, so to speak. Trying to think in an orderly fashion, the way she did.”

  “Then you are as smart,” I told my grandmother, “as Aunt Sherlie Howes was.”

  “Not quite,” she said. “Aunt Sherlie unpuzzled it all while the Rathbones were telling the tale. I pondered on it off and on for four years. Not every hour of every day, mind you.”

  “Still, you got to be smart to figure it out at all.”

  “Well, I guess maybe I’ve learned a thing or two in my time,” she said, and smiled once more and wiped it away again.

  THE SILENT WOMAN

  My grandmother and I sat at the table in the cozy alcove off the kitchen, peeling and coring and slicing Romes into quarters. These moon shapes we dropped into a big kettle of water she had brightened with a few drops of vinegar—“to keep the fruit from browning up,” she told me. She was making what she called a “run” of applesauce, enough to last a week or longer.

  We looked out the windows upon a cold February day with clouds dark and low and voluminous. The grove below the road had unleaved and we could look into the bottom fields with their patches of sheet ice and the tall, shriveled goldenrod where sparrows found uncertain perches. What we had been talking about I don’t recall, but we fell silent for a long space and there was only the sweetly teasing sound of blade and fruit flesh. The smell of the apples rose about us like a strain of ancient music.

  It was the silence that caused my grandmother to fall to reminiscence and the story she told took silence as its theme. It has remained in my memory for some thirty-odd years now, but the nature of it sometimes makes me think she never told it at all, that she communicated the whole of it without speaking a word. Such detailed recounting is not possible without vocalization, I’m sure, and yet so many messages passed silently among the members of our family that I can almost believe I learned this story without hearing it.

  It concerned a woman named Selena Mellon, whom my grandmother had known when she was twelve-going-on-thirteen. Some of her elders dismayed her with their incomprehensible ways, but she stood in perfect awe of those she admired.

  “I had not come to the age of good judgment,” she said, “but I had no trouble making up my mind what I thought about Selena Mellon. She was wonderful. She was like a personage you might hear of in a fairy tale and I never met anyone else like her the least little bit.

  “Women have got a blame name for talking, but I don’t know that it’s a right and just one. If we’re bad to gossip and tattle and trot our tongues unendingly, why, I can say the same about plenty of menfolks and I can number some that have embraced the vice more warmly than any female of my acquaintance.

  “The worst I know of was Cam Mclnery. That man was so bad to tell tales that he even spread rumors about himself. Some people said he even started a few of them, as black as he’d put off on another. He must have known his wife would get wind of these whisperings.…

  “When I hear menfolk accuse women of loose tongues, Cam McInery comes to mind as a worse example than any woman. Selena Mellon comes to mind, too—but for a reason exactly opposite.”

  * * *

  “In a gathering of people, you might not notice her at first. She was not tall or bold or striking … Well, yes, I suppose she was striking, but not loud striking. If you didn’t see her immediately, after a while she’d be the one person you did see. She’d just naturally draw your gaze the way that candlelight does or a cat dozing in an empty room. But when she looked at you, you wouldn’t meet her eyes and would turn your face away.

  “That’s the way it was with me, anyhow, and not only because I was young and shy and skittish. I saw the same thing happen with gray-headed, sharp-tongued women and big, red-faced, loud-talking men. Even a horse dealer one time. What you saw in her face and eyes was so different from what you saw in anybody else that it overcame you. Took a while to adjust your mind and ready yourself. Then it was all right to trade glances, because there was no harm in her, no ill will; she could never harbor malice. Only the kind of person she was made her so unexpectable that you had to prepare.

  “Maybe I’m not being clear.

  “She was middling tall, with coffee black hair that came down in a widow’s peak over her left eyebrow. She was pale-complected, but it was a warm paleness; some said like ivory, but I always thought of scrubbed pinewood. She would wear pale gray dresses or light blue and there was always a touch of snowy white about them, embroidered collars or broad cuffs or sometimes just piping. Her hands were smallish and white and soft as a cotton handkerchief.

  “Her eyes I was going to say were gray, but that’s not right. They were actually silvery; there was a cool light in them as calm as a saucer of water and you could feel it when her gaze came to rest on you. She took you all in, not in a warm fashion but not unfriendly, either. I don’t know how to express what I want to say, Jess.… When she took notice of you, you felt that you had changed and were not the same person as you were before. Not worse, not better; not more comfortable or uncomfortable. You just felt known—and by someone who had no way to know you and no particular reason to do so.

  “Her face was roundlike, but not a moon face, and her lips, too, were pale. Her expression was never lively; her mouth would only hint at a smile or her forehead suggest a frown and that would be enough. Just those little traces of expression spoke volumes. An o
rator shouting and waving his arms on a flag-bedecked platform would appear as lacking in expression beside Selena.

  “But those traces were necessary because she never spoke.…

  “No, I’m serious. No one had ever heard her utter so much as a lonesome syllable. You hear it as an expression—‘That Miller Simms never says a mumbling word’—but it’s not true. The most closemouthed people turn out to be mile-a-minute talkers if you bother to keep accurate count of each sentence. We’re so used to chatter that we don’t notice. But Selena never spoke. No one could recall that she had ever spoken. Sometimes it was thought she might be crippled of speech, like Dummy Pendleton. But somehow you knew she wasn’t. She could hear very well indeed; you caught her listening to sounds most of us would never pay any mind to. She wasn’t deaf and dumb. And besides, there was something about her demeanor, about the way she held herself in company, that let you know she could speak if she so desired, that she was aware of the conversations in all their twists and meanderings.

  “The reason she was silent was a topic of grave and complicated speculation. Some conjectured that she had a deep dread secret like the one that caused Aunt Chancy Gudger to lose her mind—whatever that secret was. They thought that it was a secret so full of itself that if Selena ever spoke one word, all the rest would come tumbling out in a terrible confession that would shame her forever. Others fancied that she had taken a vow of silence, maybe for Bible reasons. I’ve heard of a hermit who vowed never to speak until Jesus returned; he didn’t want to take any part in this sinful world. Or maybe she’d devoted to a vow of silence for reasons of the heart; maybe it was a deep-sworn lovers’ vow. You hear of lovers taking vows of silence sometimes, but it usually doesn’t take long for those to wear off. That’s because they begin to imagine slights and then these turn into hurts, and when people hurt enough, they must talk.