Old Crow Part 64

She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was, bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the gra.s.s in front of the house.

"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning, the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin, who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming toward her across the gra.s.s. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with every pulse.

"Hooray!" he yelled. "That's the talk."

He made a stride and Tira darted back. But it was not she he ran toward.

It was the child. He bent to the baby, caught him up and tossed him knowingly and the baby, again incredibly, laughed. Tira, taken aback at the sight of Martin, like a sudden cloud on her day, was arrested, in her first rush toward him, by the pretty laugh. Her baby in Martin's hands: that was calamity unspeakable. But the child had laughed. She would hardly have known what price she would refuse even to the most desperate of evil spirits that could conjure up that laugh. She stood there breathless waiting on the moment, afraid of the event yet not daring to interrupt it, and Martin tossed the baby and the baby laughed again, as if it were "right." For Martin himself, except as the instrument of the miracle, she had hardly a thought. It might have been a hand out of heaven that had caught up the child, a hand from h.e.l.l. But the child laughed. Martin, for the interval, was neither malevolent nor calculating. This was not one of his impish pleasantries. It might have been in the beginning, but he was enormously flattered at having touched the spring of that gurgling delight. For this was, he knew, a solemn baby. He had glanced at it, when he came Tira's way, but only carelessly and with no idea it was not like all babies. He supposed they began to take notice sometime, when they got good and ready. Queer little devils!

But he was as vain and eager in his enjoyment of the response to his own charm as he was prodigal in using it. The spring day had got into his blood, too, and when he saw Tira dancing, the baby a part of the bright picture, he had taken the little devil up, with no purpose but somehow because it seemed natural, and when the child laughed he knew he had made a hit and kept on, singing now, not a cradle song but a man's song, something he had not himself thought of since he heard his old grandmother drone it between smokes, while she sat by the fire and dreamed of times past. It was something about Malbrook--"gone to the army"--"hope he never'll come back." And there was Tira now, within the circle of his fascination, bending a little toward him, her eyes darker than he had seen them for many a day, her white arms wide, as if she invited him. He wondered how a woman with her black hair could have a skin so white; but he never guessed the lovely arms were stretched toward the child and not to him, and that they would have s.n.a.t.c.hed the baby but for that amazing laugh. He stopped, breathless more from his thoughts than his gay exertion, and gave a shout.

"Here!" he cried, to Tira, in a joviality of finding her at one with him and the day (this first prime day of spring, a day that ought to make a person shake a leg), "you take him. Fine little chap! Set him on the ground ag'in an' you an' me'll have a tell."

Tira took the step toward him and lifted her arms for the child. She was glad the wild game had ended. Martin put the baby into her arms, but instantly she felt his hands on her elbows, holding her.

"Guess that's the way to git you, ain't it?" he inquired, in jovial good humor. "You can't scratch with the youngster between us. You can't cut an' run. By thunder, Tira! you're as handsome as you were that day I see you first an' followed you home? Remember? You're like"--his quick mind saw it at a leap--"you're like this cherry tree, all a-bloom."

He bent his head to her arm, almost as white as the cherry bloom and kissed it. A shadow dropped upon them. It was only a little sailing cloud but it startled Tira more than the kiss; the look of the day had changed so suddenly and as if it were changing for them alone. For there outside was the bright affluence of spring just as it had been but over them the warning cloud. She glanced about, in the one instant of darkening, and on the knoll across the road saw what the kind little cloud might have been sent to tell her. Tenney stood there, a stark figure, watching them. Her numbness to the presence of Martin who stood holding her broke in a throb of fear. The instant before, his lips on her arm had been no more than the touch of a leaf that might have blown there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and, seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped away from him.

"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My G.o.d!

don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got his axe."

But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned away.

"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by----"

She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer proposition, a woman was, anyways.

Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window, still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for him on earth: his mother's arms.

All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she to get dinner? Or was she to a.s.sume that this day marked the settlement of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder, told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper, could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was there--she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and s.n.a.t.c.hing him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her.

Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him.

The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it seemed to her she might not be able to go on.

"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late."

Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just--quiet.

"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?"

"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all."

"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else."

She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different.

"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I knew no more'n the dead."

"Was that him?" asked Tenney indifferently. "I see somebody stopped. I thought mebbe 'twas the butcher. Then I remembered he comes of a Wednesday."

That settled it in her mind. The weekly call of the butcher was as fixed as church on Sunday. Tenney was playing for something, and she understood. The moment had come. The house and she both knew it. She was not sorry, and perhaps, though she had been good to it and kept it in faithful order, the house was not sorry either. Perhaps it would rather rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law.

He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind.

Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning--three together in May suns.h.i.+ne--had confirmed his ugly doubts, he was relieved to wash his hands of them both. The phrase came into her mind, and that in itself startled her more than any fear of him. Wash his hands! How pitiful he had been that night he washed his hands!

They sat down to dinner together, and though Tira could not eat, she made pretense of being too busy, getting up from the table for this and that, and brewing herself a cup of tea. Tenney had coffee left over from breakfast, and when her tea was done she drank it hastily, standing at the sink where she could spill a part of it unnoticed. And when dinner was over he went peaceably away to the knoll again, and she hastily set the house in order while the baby slept.

When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze, while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could not get work.

Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and got up. Was he going to tell her now?

"I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early."

"Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured.

"Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round home."

He went up the stairs without a light, carrying his shoes in his hand, and Tira s.h.i.+vered once, thinking how horrible it was to go so softly in stockinged feet. She was not afraid of him. Only she did wish his feet would sound. She did not sleep that night. She brought in the cradle, put the baby in it, and drew it to the window and there she sat beside it, the night through, her hand on the broken hood. She had chosen a high, straight chair, so that she might be too uncomfortable to sleep, but she had no temptation to drop off. All her nerves were taut, her senses broad awake. She was ready, she knew, for anything. The night was peaceful, thrilled by little sounds of stirring life, and the house, whatever it guessed, had forgotten all about her. Toward three o'clock she suddenly lost her sense of vitality. She was cold, and so sleepy now that the thought of bed was an ache of longing. She got up, found herself stiff and heavy-footed, lifted the child from his cradle and went into the bedroom with him. There she put him inside the sheets, and lay down beside him on the outside of the bed. She slept at once, but almost at once she was recalled. Tenney was standing in the bedroom door, looking at her.

"Wake up," he was saying, not unkindly. "Wake up."

She came drowsily awake, but before she was fully herself her feet were on the floor and she was rubbing her heavy eyes. The sun was streaming in.

"I've blazed the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way.

"I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for even dozens."

"Up in the high mow," said Tira. "Right under the beam."

She heard him go out through the shed, and she followed, to the kitchen, slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse, hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of eggs on the ground waiting for its even dozens.

"D'you find any?" she called.

He did not answer, and she ran out to the barn and called up to the mow:

"You there? You find any?"

But the barn, in its soft darkness, with a beam of dusty light here and there, knew nothing about him. He had not climbed to the mow, for the ladder was on the other side of the barn floor. She lifted it, brought it over, set it against the hay and climbed. She was broad awake now, and her taut muscles obeyed and liked it. She stepped on the hay, found the dark hole old Brahma chose for her secret h.o.a.rding place, and put in her hand, once, twice. Three eggs! Brahma must have thought she was pretty smart to lay three without having them stolen away from her. Tira put the eggs carefully in her ap.r.o.n pocket and hurried down the ladder, and out to the basket waiting on the ground. How many eggs did he want to make even dozens? Did he tell her? She could not remember. Probably he had forgotten himself, by now. She sat down on the step and took the eggs out in her lap, and then began to count and put them back again.

The sun lay on them and they looked pretty to her in their brown fairness. She liked them, she thought, as she counted, liked all the farm things, the touch of them, the smell. Even old Charlie, standing there, smelled of the barn, and that was good, too. Five dozen, that was it, and one over. She put the extra egg in her pocket, got up and carried the basket to the wagon, placing it in front where it could sit safely between Tenney's feet. And at that minute Tenney himself came round the corner from the front of the house, and the day was so kind and the sun so warm on her face that it seemed a long time ago she had thought he meant to send her away, and she called to him:

"You might git a quarter o' tea, the kind they call English breakfast.

An' a half a dozen lemons. It's terrible hard to think up any kind of a pie these days, 'twixt hay an' gra.s.s."

"Tea," said Tenney, as if he were putting it down in his mind. "An'

lemons. You might go out, in a half an hour or so, an' look at that calf."

He stepped into the wagon, took up the reins and drove away. Tira watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was somehow--different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast and ate it, this with more appet.i.te than she had had for many weeks, and smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying crookedly near the top. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pillow. There was the little coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face, carefully folded into a square, was her ap.r.o.n, the one Eugene Martin had torn away from her. The baby was dead.

XLIII