Burn forever, p.5
Burn Forever, page 5
CHAPTER 7
A few straggling groups of khaki-clad boys were wandering aimlessly along the road in the cool dusk, killing time until midnight when they had to be back in barracks at the CCC camp on the hill. Ben nodded to them and strolled along almost as aimlessly. There was nothing to do unless he went up to the camp for bridge at the officers’ quarters. He didn’t particularly feel like it. He did want to get away from Miss Elly Loftus’s ceaseless ribald chatter. It was shrewd and racy, but it got tiresome. Tonight she was rattling on about the Curriers, and Ben had heard enough about the Curriers to last him the year. What interest was it of his whether Julie Currier married Doss or whether she didn’t? Or whether she was “carryin’ on,” as Miss Elly put it, with another fellow.
He wondered idly about it. It was hard to think of Sisky as a successful rival of Doss Currier, but obviously there was somebody else about, or he would have had to put on an exhibition match with the dog, with Queensberry rules off, that morning in the yard. She evidently thought he was the other fellow, hadn’t seemed surprised that the old men put the dog on him.
However, it was none of his business, and he would probably not have thought of it again if it hadn’t been for the Loftus’s conversation during supper. He picked up a handful of gravel from the pile at the edge of the road and stood leaning against the white culvert, dropping the pebbles one by one into the clear shallow stream below. He was thinking of Miss Elly’s malicious and slightly obscene grin when she said, “If hit warn’t fer her ol’ fool granpappy, Old Doss’d take Julie Currier down off’n her high horse mighty quick. He’d whip th’ stockin’s off’n her. They ain’t many’d put up with a scrawny no-account piece like her. Doss’d beat the life out a’ her.”
“I reckon he’d do worse’n that if anythin’ was t’ happen t’ Nate.” Ed Loftus stopped rocking long enough to lean forward and spit under the porch rail. He shook his head a little.
Ben shook his head, thinking of it. It was probably just a manner of speaking and they meant nothing by it. Nevertheless it stuck in his mind. If it hadn’t been for the business of the dog and the three Curriers standing calmly on the porch, perhaps he wouldn’t have thought that Old Doss Currier’s dead hooded eyes were so malignantly hostile. Perhaps it was like the pictures of men wanted by the F.B.I. that he had looked at, tacked up in the Bradleyville Post Office the morning before. They looked so definitely and obviously criminal. Then he thought of his own passport pictures, which certainly made him look like a mobster of the worst sort. Perhaps it was like that with Old Doss. Perhaps setting the dog on him was just a bit of quiet mountain humor. Ben grinned sardonically.
He strolled on up the road. On the whole he felt sorry for Julie Currier, or anybody else who had to live with those two savage old scarecrows. On the subject of Doss Currier he reserved judgment. A savage too, with something cool, ominous and deadly about him, but still more human, some way, than Old Doss. A queer feeling came suddenly to him that in spite of the fact that one of his first duties to the government was to avoid friction with the mountaineers, he and Doss had not seen the last of each other.
He wondered where Julie Currier had learned to speak. That was probably why Miss Elly thought she was on her high horse. And what did Speer have on his mind when he had told him, this morning by the big tree, to look out for her if he got the chance? He grinned, shrugged his shoulders and lighted his cold pipe, a little annoyed at the irritating sense of foreboding that had begun to nag at one corner of his brain.
A shrill voice from the side of the road interrupted him.
“Howdy, mister!”
He looked up, surprised to find himself in front of Mis’ Mincey’s whitewashed vine-covered shack.
Mis’ Mincey was rocking back and forth, her bony claws folded in her lap, peering at him out of watery blue eyes, like Edrew’s except that a crafty low-grade mind looked out from behind them, cunningly shrewd and watchful.
“How’re you, Mis’ Mincey?”
“Tol’able. Hunt yerself a seat.”
Mis’ Mincey’s thin beaked nose and her chin were like ice tongs trying to meet and not quite making it. Two trickles of brown juice ran down the corners of her toothless mouth and dried in little deltas on her chin. A few wisps of dyed hair, mossy brown, hung down her hollow cheeks and escaped from under her black head kerchief like fetlocks around the back of her neck.
Mis’ Mincey spat with great precision at the base of the gas pump, set like a lighthouse on an island of flat whitewashed rocks from the branch, and wiped her mouth with the back of a scrawny freckled hand.
“Some several of th’ ladies from Norris come down yestiddy fer me t’ read th’ tea leaves fer ’em.”
“I guess you gave them all rich husbands. Throw in a dark woman to devil ’em?”
Mis’ Mincey caught her face in her hands and collapsed, rocking back and forth, in a grotesque spasm of giggles. She peered out at him through her fingers.
“Be hit a dark ’oman devilin’ ye, Mister Davidge? Be she this yere color?”
With incredible dexterity the gnarled old hands dived into her voluminous rusty black serge skirt and whisked out a pack of unbelievably filthy cards. Her pale eyes fastened avidly on Ben’s, she flicked off the queen of hearts and placed it face up on the three-legged stool in front of her. She grinned up at him. Her hands moved again. The jack of hearts turned up beside it.
“That there’s her,” Mis’ Mincey announced shrilly.
The jack of spades turned up.
“There’s the dark feller that’s devilin’ ye, mister. An’ he’s devilin’ her too.”
The hands moved again like lightning. Four successive black cards appeared: the king of spades, the jack of clubs.
“There’s another of ’em that’s devilin’ her too.”
She turned over the king of diamonds. “An’ he’s devilin’ her. They be all devilin’ her, poor mite.”
Mis’ Mincey’s face clouded, she huddled down over her stool and shook her head, mumbling, wiping her mouth with her grimy hand. Her game seemed to end suddenly.
She stared down at the ground.
“Trouble. Trouble,” she muttered. “Fer ye, but more fer her, mister. There ain’t nothin’ but trouble fer her, mister.”
There was a curious convincing tone in Mis’ Mincey’s voice. Ben gripped his cold pipe between his teeth, interested in spite of himself. The old eyes shot him a crafty glance. She hesitated a moment and threw off the top card. It was a red jack. Mis’ Mincey gave a quick jerky nod of satisfaction, mumbled to herself and spat at the pump without looking up. She dealt the rest of the cards and squatted forward in her chair, fingering them lovingly. Then she squinted up at Ben.
“Money,” she said. It was almost a whisper. “Hit’s all round a light ’oman. Hit’s a right good-sized pile a’ money. But they’s a heap a’ trouble round her too, a whole heap of hit. Money ain’t no use if they’s nothin’ but trouble an’ heartbreak. Is hit, mister?”
She pointed to the red king, and shook her head slowly, a long time.
Ben sat down on Edrew’s bench and filled his pipe. Mis’ Mincey watched him silently. He pointed to the red queen entirely surrounded by black face cards.
“The Currier girl?” he asked quietly.
Mis’ Mincey spat at the pump and creaked back and forth in her rocking chair in the fading mountain light.
“I ain’t got no way a’ namin’ names,” she said after a while. “Hit’s jes’ in th’ cards. Julie Currier’s got purty yaller hair.”
They sat there silently. When it was too dark to see the cards any longer Mis’ Mincey gathered them together slowly and put them back in the mousy folds of her black skirt. Ben got up and stood for a moment leaning against a whitewashed upright, his head bent forward to keep from scraping against the roof. Was this again some of the almost childish deviousness of the mountain folk? Was Mis’ Mincey trying to tell him something, as Loftus apparently had done? It was the first time she had ever acted this way, and he had known her for six months. One thing was sure. She meant something, and she meant it in earnest. But there was no use asking her to explain it. She would not tell him any more.
Ben nodded and walked back towards the Loftus place. Mis’ Mincey sat there creaking back and forth in the dusk . . . biting her grimy finger nails in a sudden fit of terror at what she had tried to do.
CHAPTER 8
Ben did not hear the people talking on the back porch until it was too late to go back. He groaned inwardly. The Curriers seemed to be pursuing him relentlessly in one way or another. This was Jess Kilgore, their greatest enemy. He was talking with Loftus and his sister on the porch.
“Howdy, Mr. Davidge.”
“Hunt yerself a seat,” Miss Elly said. “Law me, hit’s gettin’ so’s we don’t see hair ner hide a’ Mister Davidge, the way he’s taken t’ runnin’ off. Ye’d think he was a-courtin’ Mis’ Mincey.”
Miss Elly laughed until she choked on her pellet of snuff and finally had to go inside.
Neither of the men smiled. Neither did they seem concerned about Miss Elly.
“They tell me yer aimin’ t’ clear my place over th’ ridge next week, Mr. Davidge,” Jess Kilgore drawled out. His round pleasant face, open and heavily-lined, and his thick white hair shone in the path of the moon coming up down the valley.
“I think we’ll get up there Tuesday,” Ben said.
There was a silence.
“Hear’d anythin’ ’bout movin’ th’ cemetery?” Kilgore asked.
Ben shook his head.
“They tell me they’s some talk ’bout lettin’ you move jes’ the ones that belong to you,” Kilgore said slowly. “I reckon we wouldn’t like t’ leave any a’ the folks there. Don’t look as hit would be right. We’d hate t’ leave Aggy Currier there. Not after she come to us to die like she did.”
Loftus nodded.
“I reckon Nate Currier’s never goin’ t’ forgive you fer takin’ her in a second time,” he said.
“Nate Currier’s a—— —— ——,” Jess Kilgore said peaceably. “So’s Old Doss, an’ so’s Young Doss. Where they aimin’ t’ go?”
Loftus shook his head. “They was some talk a’ gettin’ Julie married off, so’s they wouldn’t have t’ worry ’bout anythin’ happenin’ to them.”
Kilgore nodded. “They’re purty well along.”
“Nate was born in 18 and 58. Doss ain’t so old. They’s some years difference.”
“I reckon if anythin’ happened to ’em, Julie and Doss’d be alone.”
Loftus nodded soberly. “I reckon nothin’ ain’t aimin’ t’ happen to ’em.”
He spat out into the yard. “I reckon you see right many a’ th’ boys from th’ camp down your way?”
Kilgore’s face showed no surprise at the sudden change of subject.
“Th’ old woman don’t do nothin’ but make cake an’ pies fer ’em. Most of ’em don’t act like they’d ever had a bite t’ eat.”
He chuckled quietly.
“Th’ old woman was hoppin’ round like a chicken on a hot griddle t’other day. Found out one feller, that feller name of Sisky, was buyin’ her pies fer a dime an’ sellin’ ’em up to th’ camp fer half a dollar.”
Both men laughed.
“Saw him headed over there this evenin’,” Loftus said. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if th’ old woman snatched him baldheaded.”
The two settled into a judicial and deliberate discussion of state politics. Ben looked at his watch.
“I think I’ll run up to the camp for a while,” he said. “Good-by, Mr. Kilgore.”
Kilgore nodded. “Ain’t seen much a’ you lately. Th’ old woman was sayin’ somethin’ ’bout hit yestiddy.”
“We’ll be over your way next week. Good night.”
Neither of them spoke until Ben had backed his car into the road and was gone.
“You ain’t hear’d if Julie’s made up her mind t’ marry Doss, I don’t reckon?” Jess Kilgore inquired indifferently.
Loftus spat over the rail and shook his head.
“I’d mighty hate t’ see Aggy’s granddaughter to marry Doss’s boy,” Kilgore said slowly. “Seems like Julie allus favored Aggy, an’ her own ma—like she didn’t have no rotten Currier blood in her. I’d mighty hate t’ see her marry Doss. Doss’s the spit of his pappy.”
CHAPTER 9
Just why Ben thought he had to go to Currier Hollow that night he could not have told. It would be dark before he got there. The chances were ten to one that if the Curriers saw him they would shoot, and apparently a hundred to one that if they shot they would hit. But the vague uneasiness that he had felt while dropping the pebbles over the culvert had become sharper and sharper, until he had to do something . . . anything, just to prove it didn’t make sense, if nothing else.
The Curriers lived five miles from the Kilgores, along the so-called river road. It was a bad road in the summer, with dozens of little bridges over tiny streams that overflowed with the heavy falls of rain in the hills. From the Loftuses to the Kilgores it was ten miles, because the old bridge across the river had never been repaired since the spring floods of 1931. Ben thought suddenly of Sisky, whom Loftus had seen headed towards the Kilgores’. He was nearer to the Curriers, because the camp was across the river. Ben suddenly wondered if it was because of Sisky that he was now setting out. He didn’t like the man. On the other hand it wouldn’t do to have him hanging around Currier Hollow and getting shot. It wasn’t the sort of publicity the CCC wanted.
At the three-storied flour mill at Jones Crossroads he turned to the left off the paved highway and slowed down, his tires plowing through the loose gravel. It was a lonely road through the valley. The family on the farm above the school house had already left. The cabin door creaked mournfully back and forth on one rusty hinge, the porch had fallen in at one end. A gourd vine sprawled desolately over the broken-down steps.
Beyond the cabin stretched barren fields, dry and deeply grooved, like sheets of corrugated iron, or like the relief maps in old-fashioned geographies. These were the fields that the TVA talked about, that had been planted in tobacco and corn so long that they were worn out, where farmers did not make fifty bushels of corn a year or a hundred pounds of tobacco.
He turned at the Methodist meeting house at Swallows Bend and crossed the branch to the narrow road through Murray’s Hollow to the spring under the big white oak. From there the road was rough, with ruts so deep that once the car slipped off the hard ridges it would have stayed there, resting on the axles. It was narrow too. Ben hugged the bank to keep from sliding off the edge. He could see the bottom of Murray’s Hollow, and he still had the hairpin bend where the road turned on itself to climb the rest of the way to the top of the ridge. How Mike could get the truck up there had always been a wonder to him; it was hardly short of miraculous driving. He slipped into low and cautiously made the almost impossible bend, with a sheer drop of six hundred feet below and nothing but a single redbud tree between him and whatever there is when it’s all over.
No one lived on the top of the ridge. The twin beams of his headlights made it darker and lonelier. On this side the ruts were deeper still. He stayed in low, closed in to the up side, made another sharp bend. Below him was Currier Hollow, stretching down from the ridge top beyond the cornfield and Old Doss’s workshop to the Powell River.
The car fumbled along on top of the dry hard mounds, like raised tracks in the road. Ben brought it slowly to a stop, looking down in the dark closing in on the Hollow, wondering what he was going to do now he was here. He slipped the car into neutral, slid it over against the bank at the bottom of the road where it widened at the foot of the hill, switched off the lights and sat there a moment, wondering whether it wouldn’t be wiser to go straight ahead and leave the lights on. Nobody with a grain of sense, he thought sardonically, would be fool enough to wander about Currier Hollow at night. He looked at his watch. The moon ought to be up; in fact it was coming up, its bright rim rolling over the far ridge like a moving target in a shooting gallery.
He got out of the car, stepped out of the tunnel of trees overhanging the road and stood there a minute looking around. The cabin was dark, of course. He could have known it would be. People in the hills went to bed with the sun and rose with it in the morning. He stopped abruptly. Further down the Hollow a faint light shone out across the cornfield. It looked as if a lantern was hanging in the door of Old Doss’s workshop. Ben hesitated. For the first time he had a sharp sense of something definitely queer about Currier Hollow. It was odd for the mountain folk to be at work late at night.
He fumbled in his pocket for his oilskin pouch, filled his pipe and looked back at the cabin. Surely they didn’t leave the girl there alone. Then he remembered the dog.
The sound of quick steps in the road around the curve made him move back into the shadow of the trees. They were furtive illicit steps, and they were coming towards him, towards the Curriers’ gate. He put the pouch back in his pocket and waited, intent and alert. Suddenly an unexpected thing happened. A little clump of straggling cornstalks growing up against the rail fence beyond the gate moved almost noiselessly. A voice, plaintively quavering above the low thrumming of a guitar, rose up like mist above the river, and a narrow twisted little form came out from the leaves and hopped along the fence to the gate. Edrew Mincey stood there, picking dolorously at the guitar. The steps in the road stopped abruptly a moment, came slowly along towards the gate. Ben waited. The monotonous melody sounded quaveringly on.
