All True Not a Lie in It (2 page)

BOOK: All True Not a Lie in It
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Once inside the big house I bang the door and I stamp my feet on the flagstones. I have never been here without Ma or Daddy. I hear my heart in my ears. The indoor air is quiet and queer and has a mossy smell. I say:

—Hello.

No one answers. Aunt Sarah, that is to say one of the whores, must be in back of the house spreading out the washing. She goes nowhere else, she is cast out of Meeting and the Friends only suffer her to live with Granddaddy because he needs looking after. Perhaps she is sat down in the grass sniffing up the grave smell of the garden and sniffling over her husband the outsider. He left her and took up with another woman, but then came back when he got sick. This husband is now dead, and sad at being stuck in the earth alone, as I imagine. Daddy could not allow an outsider into the Friends’ burying ground. The Meeting leaders have put him in charge of it, which is a satisfaction to him. He is not satisfied with much else. He makes sure the ground is flat after buryings. He walks about on it with his bandy legs.

I go along the hall singing “I Care for Nobody,” my oldest brother Israel’s favourite song. I toss my club as he does, and I think
of the Delaware king walking on this floor with all his wives. I was here then and I did see, though all I recall is a red blanket on someone and a lot of moccasins. I am struck by a wish for moccasins. I go quietly as an Indian now over the floor. No sound in the house. Perhaps Granddaddy has died.

I stop in the doorway to the right. The room beyond is dim and stinking with the curtains drawn. They have put Granddaddy’s bed there. He is in it, twisted and bony. I look hard. He is breathing. When again I say hello, he starts and tugs up his face, as though I might be a Meeting leader, or perhaps the spirit of King Sassanoon popped out of the wall with a scarlet blanket on and feathers in my hair.

Do you see me, Granddaddy? I do wonder. He squints under his brows, snarled and white as roots. His wet mouth hangs low on the left side. I keep where I am. Up and down goes his chest. Daddy told me all proud that Granddaddy was born in 1666 when the city of London burned down, and now he is so old, and still breathing. Think of him whoring and all unclean before he came on a ship here to Pennsylvania and had to tell Meeting everything he had done before they would allow him in. He had the new Meeting House built as penance, straight at the centre of the township, with all the roads running off from it. And he named the town Exeter after his old home in England. But perhaps this was wrong, it was there he did his whoring. It is not a lucky town, I think.

People smile when Granddaddy is mentioned, and they nod kindly as they do about wise old men, but it is false. He was all right until Aunt Sarah married out and people began to talk of our bad blood. His crooked old right thumb slips about upon his quilt as if he is running the weaving shuttle back and forth, as if he still keeps up his old trade, as if he were still quite a young man inside. As if he still had all his money and had not spent it on the whores of his youth and on this new place, as if he could fornicate any time he chose. As if he were in paradise. He dreamed of it when he turned
up in this new world. This gives a queer feeling in my guts and so I call goodbye, but Granddaddy coughs and waves his arm towards the pot beside the bed.

—Fetchit.

I fetch it from under the great carved black cabinet. I am glad the pot is clean. While he sits up and scrabbles at his nightshirt I say quiet:

—You had a whore.

—Eh?

He has a baby smell, milk and piss, but more sour. His arm trembles. I breathe in and I say:

—But—you had fights. You saved two Indian girls when a gang stole them.

My Daddy has told us this story, it was before the new Meeting House was built, and the Delawares and Catawbas came along their old trail and stopped all the time to trade here. Some bad white men snatched the girls, but Granddaddy spoke hard to the men and gave some money and got them back. I think of a young Granddaddy winning all the fights. I say:

—I fought a gang. I did it just now. Look.

I hold up my bloodied elbow. Granddaddy is filling the pot loudly. His face is half dead and he stares at me as if I am full of lies. I steal a glance at his parts, they have a sad lifeless look. Piss drips from him onto the sheet. He holds out the pot with his shaking arm. It will tip, it will all tip out. He says in a rough voice:

—What do you want here? Eh? Who are you?

My stomach leaps into my throat and I near shout: I will not be old, I will not be like you. I will win all the fights, I will never tell my secrets. I will not go rotten like you in this place. I will find a real paradise. You never did.

Aunt Sarah is clicking along the passage on her wooden heels. Granddaddy rocks his head in the direction of her noise and frowns.
He had to beg forgiveness in Meeting for her marriage to the outsider. I think of that man buried in some unfriendly ground, all bones now. Again I say goodbye. And now I run out the back door of the house and over the grass and the sheets going white in the sun.

I run up into the hills and into the woods. With my club I get a squirrel down from a secret elm I know. The squirrel is a red one with a fair-sized tail. I sit in the tree for some time in hope of getting a wild pig for my Ma, but I have never got one yet, and there is nothing more about worth having. I want to go farther but the night is coming now. I wait until the shadows are stretched, and I make my way down the side of the valley and back along the creek bottom, through my two uncles’ farms and across to the back of ours. My body is all aches and scuffs and bruises from fighting and hunting.

As I come round to the front of the house, Ma steps out holding up the lantern, which makes her look ghastly. She touches my sore cheek but she does not ask what has happened. I show her the squirrel tail and she smiles as she turns her face to the dark. As I put the tail down the front of my breeches I think again of Granddaddy and his parts, and of how his life has gone, and how my Daddy’s has gone too, slowly rotten all through like an old egg.

Oh Ma and you others all gone now, all of my dead, you know that I begin well.

M
Y SISTER
the whore is shown before all the Friends at Exeter Meeting like a grub spaded up. She stands at the centre of the room, and we all sit up on the benches round her to see. Sallie has got her confession prepared. She holds the paper before her face and talks as if she has got a mouthful of chewed potato. Unusual for her to talk so flat, she could run a blab-school if she liked. Heels-up Sallie, the boys say. Give her a tap and over she goes. Always the last to leave a bonfire or someone’s new barn in the dark.

I watch her tip back and forth on her famous heels. Her cap is slipping to one side, she tugs a curl out over her ear and lifts her eyes to see who is watching. Her fellow stands a few feet away looking out the window. I listen for words of interest but the only ones I catch are
I was too conversant
and
fornication
. She admits to all of it though it is evident enough to anyone who takes one look at her belly from the side. And everyone does look.

This is not usual Meeting. The air has a stunned feel as if a shot has just gone through it. The leaders have summoned all of the Friends. The benches are full. Even the Friends from the country farms have driven to town for it.

Daddy bursts into sad perspiring, his smell rises up like bread. He is set to get up and walk off. But Ma’s fingers tap upon little
Neddy’s head, and so Daddy sets his jaw and keeps himself on the bench beside her. I slide my feet in circles. I want to laugh. My sister Bets creases her nose like a fox, and my oldest brother Israel does laugh under his breath.

—This is my confession.

So Sal finishes, but one of the widows near the door begins to swat her haunch and complain of ill winds. Bets chokes a giggle and whispers in Ma’s voice:

—Do you suffer from wind, my dear Danny?

I give her a poke. Hill’s father carries on with Sallie and her fellow:

—In truth you were too conversant with one another before this day.

His voice is a wealthy man’s voice, every word rings like a coin falling. His face has its usual rosy look, but it becomes imaginative for a spell. I become imaginative also. I have not at this time witnessed any conversant doings at our house beyond those of the cows and bull, which are not entirely interesting, being so brief. At this time I am an innocent boy, but I am interested in many things in my mind.

Hill’s father asks Sallie will she now be married before all these Friends.

She says she will. Her fellow takes a sip of air through his teeth and says he will take her to wife.

Well it is done. Easy. Sal sneaks a look at us, she is thinking, That is that. Her eyes are bright. I hear her give her finger joint a pop, as is her way. Not a whore any longer. A wife. Safe, like magic. Well. God is not immune to performing tricks, perhaps He pops his finger joints also.

—And your confession? Plenty of time.

Hill’s father has turned to the fellow, his voice is kindly enough in asking. In his mind, we might sit here all day, but Sallie’s new husband says a brisk no thank you! He is not a Friend, he is an outsider.
Perhaps he is not so certain he wishes to be inside the Boone family after all. But too late. He twists his feeble beard like a wick and squints, though I know he is not squint-eyed. He is keeping his eyes from his new wife’s lower half. Everyone else is still looking.

Hill’s father walks a few paces across the centre of the room and then turns in quick hope to Daddy:

—The truth is all that we seek in this life. Confession makes us new. You will confess now, Friend Boone?

Daddy rises, just as Granddaddy had to when his own daughter did the same:

—My daughter was too conversant. This is true, yes. I am very sorry for allowing it.

For a moment Daddy stretches his neck like one prepared to say more. He looks at Hill’s father’s legs. His fingers twitch as if they might test the weight of that good heavy cloth suit. Daddy is a poor enough weaver himself, though he cannot understand why. He can see this cloth is good. He would like it not to be. The leader’s life has gone right, his suit says so. The deep grey of it defeats Daddy and he says:

—In the future we will be more c-careful.

His stammer noses out of its dark rabbit-hutch as it does at such times. His face goes hard, he touches the top of his head where his hair is gone. He has a love of escape and a love of being angry. See the ship thundering off from the grey English shore, young Daddy’s chin thrust over the bowsprit, away from other people and their ideas and money and churches to find a home for Granddaddy and himself and his brothers and sisters. It was meant to be better here.

Israel snorts. But Ma’s eyes are like glass, all breakable. She squeezes young Squire, who frowns, and Daddy thumps down onto the bench again and breathes against his fist. Ma is a true lover of God. She turns back to Sallie, who is trying to keep up her meek countenance as though she has been brained like a cow by Him.
Bets laughs into the crook of her arm and makes out as though it is coughing, but I know.

I squint like the new husband, I turn my face upward to make everyone vanish. I have no liking for Meeting, the people in rows, the gap at the centre where Sallie and her fellow stand to be gawped at, and the long spells of quiet when everyone contemplates each other’s sniffling. Bets is singing under her breath: Wind in my bow-ow-owels. She pokes me again but I pay her no heed. I am the first to see it. A bird at the highest window, a martin with a dark head and body. It flies straight in and sits for a moment on the sill until it flaps up to the rafters. I see every turn it makes, every shift of its wings. I see every feather of its body, and I see its small black eye.

A few hands rise and point. The martin rushes and flutters in the silence. It beats like a heart against the ceiling. Israel says:

—It will shit on Sal.

I believe Israel, I always do. He is sixteen years of age and has whiskery cheeks. I cannot help a look at them. I suppose I will have whiskers at some time. He crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow and gives a smirk. It is the first interest he has shown today. I look up with my mouth shut. Bets laughs loud this time:

—It will! Or piddle.

Daddy casts her a look from his loose eye and so she saws her cap strings back and forth between her teeth. I keep my eye on the bird. I feel Israel’s idle interest, he is following it too, he could have it down before it twitched.

The martin crosses the rafters back and forth, as if it is stitching them up with a thread. It lands on a window ledge and pants, it opens its beak but it says nothing. I know I could get that bird if I had my club. Or an arrow. Or a stick. I could make a path straight to its head from where I sit. Israel would see me do it.

At a cough from below, the martin dives straight down as if it has fallen but now swings up again to the ceiling. Its head and breast
strike the roof again and again, all dull thuds. I want it to look at me. I am sorry for it. If Daddy would let me have a proper gun, I would shoot a little hole through the martin’s head and its suffering would be ended. I have clubbed plenty of birds dead. I know already that their eyes stay open but lose their wet shine, though their feathers do not for some time. I have held them until their bodies go all cold. It takes longer than you might imagine.

BOOK: All True Not a Lie in It
4.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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