Andersonville (45 page)

He was so beaten by his loss that he could perform little work that day. He was very nearly gentle with the people who worked in his office. He gave his errand boy part of his lunch brought from home. Wirz muttered that he had no appetite. He rode home early and in a near stupor. He went to bed at dusk and lay staring up at the low ceiling, and said
Nein, nein
when Elizabeth offered chicken broth. Two hundred and twenty thousand fingers pulling his logs apart.

Papa, said little Coralie when she came barefoot and in her nightdress, Please, Papa, can I get in bed with you?

Ja, Liebchen,
he said after a moment or two, when the knowledge of her request reached through befuddlement. He held up the covering with his left hand, and the child giggled and hunched with pleasure, snuggling close to his side.

Shall you sing me the song,
Mein Vater
?

He liked to have her call him Father in German, he had taught her to do so. In his cracked nasal voice, but softly, softly, he began to sing a little song which a kind old lady had sung to him first in 1826 when he was but four. He wished that it were 1826 now, he wished that he were but four. Cora lay still as a mouse, her gentle appreciative breathing reached his ears.

 XXVII 

L
aurel Tebbs came in shyness to the Claffey plantation, seeking the loan of a thimble. I did have one, she said in her high-pitched voice. Her voice was a whine suggesting some kind of animal inheritance, an inheritance from an animal whipped too frequently for its own good, and fearing more blows. Did have one, silver one what belonged to Granny or so twas said; but Zoral he kept a-playing with it, dropping it down a crack; and then I’d have to give him a lick and make him crawl under the house after it; and one day he couldn’t find it no way, nor could I, though I went under the house my own self; and I surely hated to do that, count of the dead chickens and rats he’s always a-dragging under there. Reckon maybe he dropped it down— She lowered her tone, faced with the delicacy of Lucy’s presence. Down the privy.

Lucy said, I’m sorry it was lost.

Coral he was kind enough to make me a thimble out’n a big acorn; but that split in two today; and I was part way through sewing myself a gown, and I hain’t got no other gown fit to put on, cepting this one, and the purple one used to belong to Ma. That’s for dress-up.

Lucy said, Come into the house, child, and let me look about. She addressed Laurel thus naturally, not realizing that the girl was fifteen, thinking of her still as the shrunken bag-of-bones she’d always been, peering from behind fences and weed-brakes at the doings of the Claffeys and their people.

Laurel’s father was a frightened Americus widower who had the devil’s own time trying to support his five children on meager returns from his occupation as cooper. Mr. Marion Padgett was hopelessly pale, his kinky hair was orange, his sad small face was spattered with orange freckles and so were his hands and wiry arms. When he made a statement of a fact it sounded like a question, for every sentence ended with a rising inflection which said, Excuse me, was it all right for me to say this, to say anything at all? His children sounded the same way, even when speaking to one another. Marion Padgett hovered over them ceaselessly, putting clothes to soak at ungodly hours of the morning, running from his workbench to take a boiler from the fire, putting down his hammer to take up a soup ladle. He was fortunate in that the children never needed discipline or punishment, they were all too wan and apologetic to fight even among themselves. The Padgetts trotted to the Methodist church each Sunday like a covey of starved red-headed warblers, but mainly silent warblers who did not know how to warble. One day in 1848 a bearded stranger with a tall beaver hat marched into the cooperage which stood in the same yard as the Padgett cottage. It appeared that Marion’s sister had died in Charleston, and her husband had preceded her to the grave by only five days. There were no children, no other relatives, no heirs but Francis Marion Padgett. The property consisted of a house and furniture and some jewelry of value, together with a large lot on Meeting Street and five well-trained Negroes, and forty-two hundred dollars in cash. Marion Padgett spat the nails out of his mouth and wandered in a daze. His children wept to see him go, and he was deaf to the stranger who hastened for a time at his side saying, But, sir, where are you going—? Damn it, sir! Mr. Padgett, I request that you pay some heed to what I am saying— Come back to your house, sir! Your children are in tears! Eventually the lawyer had to return to the cooperage alone, and he parceled the children out to neighbors, and sat in a nearby inn awaiting Marion’s return, in dudgeon. He had to wait three days.

Reports drifted back of a Marion Padgett who wandered from one seller of brandy to another seller of brandy. Mistrusting any orthodox depository, he carried always what few funds he had about him in a chamois-skin bag tied to the belt which held up his pantaloons. Through rigorous saving and self-denial and child-denial he had accumulated thirty-seven dollars against a mortgage payment of forty dollars, plus the quarter’s interest which must be paid soon. Reports drifted of a Marion Padgett who hired a horse and chaise and was seen driving madly over rough roads in the adjacent wilderness. In time he arrived at the Tebbs place. Thus he fathered Laurel. (There was always some doubt about this in the Widow Tebbs’ mind, since it chanced that she had entertained two other red-headed gentlemen in that same week. Well, she said, my little girl does look a sight like that Marion, and I knowed him when I was scarce more’n a infant myself; but I reckon she looks a sight like one of the others, too. And I weren’t yet a widow then, and— But it’s been quite a time since; and all them doses of gunpowder never did do no good at all. She had a vague thought of puppies and kittens. The child cried, and Mag picked her up and cuddled her. She thought briefly of Marion Padgett, now said to be living in distant luxury. She thought once more of Marion, then he strayed from her simple mind, he returned seldom.)

This was an especially hot day, and Lucy was conscious of the strong odor of Laurel Tebbs as the round-shouldered little creature moved beside her. She said sharply, Miss, have you bathed yourself of late? as she might have said it to one of her own servants, and then felt that she had been heedless and cruel, and was ashamed.

Nome, spoke the languid voice. It’s so hard to bring up water from our well, and Coral he’s always off to the forest, and Flory’s gone to the army, and Zoral’s but a babe. Ma she’s always a-entertaining or a-sleeping. I just can’t scarcely pull that big sweep, hain’t got the power.

Then you shall go over to Little Sweetwater, said Lucy brightly. For I have some rose oil which I pressed, and I shall give you a bit of that, and it’s no earthly good, of course, if you’re not freshly scrubbed. And I shall give you a square of Windsor for your own.

Miss Lucy, whined Laurel, I’d be plumb scairt to go naked in the creek. Too many sojers about.

Then go far up the creek, the big creek, where there’s no one.

That I’ll do, if’n you say I got to. Please, what’s Windsor?

Tis a toilet soap I’ve made myself, and scented with caraway, and it’s just the best! Except for variegated toilet soap, and I used to make that too, with Extra shaving the bar-soap fine; but we’ve no longer any Chinese blue and only a teentsie bit of Chinese vermilion.

This conversation occurred in the hall and on the stairs, and Laurel now stood with her hostess in Lucy’s chamber. Oh, just lots of pretties, she said without envy. She was accustomed to seeing silver and portraits, certain elements of grandeur although decayed grandeur, when she helped at the Biles’. But she had never entered a dainty young lady’s room before.

Lucy searched through work-basket, work-table, drawers, appraising her stock of thimbles. She thought that she owned four but could find only three. One of these had belonged to Great-aunt Mary Flo; Lucy remembered this woman as a waspish invalid in a scarlet silk dressing gown; she cherished no particularly pleasant memories of Great-aunt Mary Flo. And the thimble was too narrow for her own finger now that she was grown.

This you may have.

For to keep?

Certainly, for your own. Mind and don’t let Baby Brother get his paws on it.

Reckon I can hide it from him. The girl smiled in wan delight. Didn’t figure to come a-begging. Twas just for the lend; but I do thank you, Miss Lucy.

Now for rose oil and the Windsor! Lucy found the oil on her wash-stand shelf and poured a trifle into an empty pill-flask which had been saved with care. Here’s the toilet soap in my cupboard. And—

Critically she inspected the stringy hair of the child beside her; actually she expected to see vermin, but did not find any; she spread the hair with her fingers with disgust but also in explorative curiosity. She was very curious about fellow human beings—wondering privately how they ate, cared for their bodies, washed or did not wash, felt, thought, lived, died. Certain influences in her rearing cried that this was unwomanly, and Lucy had pride as a woman, she did not wish to be unwomanly although often she knew that she was unladylike in the generally accepted sense, and felt impish about it.

Such a lovely color to your hair, Laurel. It’s like a wild orange, and I remember how Uncle Felton fetched a sack of them.

Hain’t never ate no orange. Ma says they’re good to suck but mighty puckerish.

But pretty hair should be tended—I suppose it’s like the oranges themselves—they must need sun and rain, and your hair needs soap and water.

Well, I did wash it with soap but it like to burnt the hide off my head. And it got all stiff as weeds.

You had no fit shampoo, I fancy. Lucy scribbled a note at her desk and rang for one of the blacks; after some time there was a response. Ninny looked injured at finding Laurel Tebbs in the young mistress’s bed chamber; she stood in a silently sneering attitude, firm in conviction that the young mistress was demeaning herself.

Do you go, Ninny, to my father. He is in the seed house or store shed, and do you give him this note.

In this way Laurel was endowed further with a vial of Lucy’s own shampoo contrived of aqua ammonia, salts of tartar, and alcohol flavored with bergamot. Lucy instructed the girl how to mix the potion with rainwater, and how to rub it through her hair into her scalp until the lather had gone down, then how to lave it out in the clearness of the creek or in more rainwater. Laurel promised faithfully. By this time she was enamored to the point of idolatry. Lucy whirled before her eyes in a froth of the room’s pretties.

Is them your brothers what got kilt, Miss Lucy?

Not this one, child. Tis a miniature of my father when once he was a soldier too. But this daguerreotype, here, and the two ambrotypes yonder. Those were my brothers.

Surely is a pity. . . . My brother Coral, surgeons cut the foot off’n him.

I have seen him since, poor lad, with his crutch.

You got—? Laurel whispered it, and could not look at the young woman as she whispered. Got yourself a fellow?

Lucy did not speak for a moment. . . . I fear not. There is a friend, a gentleman who writes letters sometimes. But— She busied herself in emptying a basket of woven bull-grass, and this too would be a gift for Laurel; the girl could carry home her bottles, soap and thimble. Child, have you a—fellow?

Kind of. He sure did pull me round when we danced, when them Alabama sojers was a-leaving. And he held me tight against himself, she managed to breathe in confidence. A few minutes later she was running down the lane with the speed of a field-mouse, her scarred legs flashing under tags of calico. The spring of extreme youth was in her frame, appreciation for the gifts was foaming, the certainty that she must follow Lucy Claffey’s injunctions (and the sooner the better) was a delight intense enough to be named as a pain. Laurel bubbled to herself shrill bits of worship which she felt might be profanity, yet not the obscenity which she heard spoken often by Coral and Floral. Mercy God, she cried with pulpy pale lips, Mercy God, damn, hell, Jesus, damn hell, Mercy God. She stopped once shortly near the railroad, for a train approached, and she scarcely saw or heard the engine until she was beside the track. Boys rode on some of the platform cars or sat in box car doorways. They shouted, whistled, pretended to shoot Laurel with their guns, but she gave no heed. She had taken the tiny phial containing rose oil from the basket, and had withdrawn the glass stopper and was drinking in the odor with long rewarding sniffs. When the train had gone Laurel fled homeward, her sunbonnet spreading wide soiled wings above her shoulders where it had fallen.

Old Mrs. Bile taught Laurel to sew when the girl was eleven, and thus her thin fingers could fly about the business of it. Coral had caught a string of catfish that morning, and the widow fried balls of cornmeal to go with them. There were turnip greens and pork as well, but Laurel declined all invitations to join her family at table. The rest ate eagerly, greasily, washing down their feast with quantities of okra coffee. Zoral gagged on a fish-bone and choked himself into purple regurgitation before his mother could extract the bone. Through this excitement Laurel did not lift her head from her work, she did not leave her bench and basket. Her gown was finished before two o’clock, fashioned from pieces of calico sent by Effie Dillard. Waist and skirt did not match—the one was of a green pattern, the other of gray—but to Laurel they were measureless beauty and pride. What you a-doing there, Sissy? inquired Captain Ox Puckett when he came stamping in. By Ned, ain’t you a regular little Betsy Ross, like they claim stitched a flag for General Jackson or somebody! Soon Ox and the Widow Tebbs had retired to The Crib, Coral was asleep on his bed, and Zoral was a train growling back and forth in front of a chicken-coop depot. Laurel crammed her new gown into the bull-grass basket and carried off soap, shampoo and rose oil which Lucy had given her. She took also two torn towels, reasonably clean, and some scraps of underclothing. Not even to Lucy could she have expressed her desire to be fresh and scented and neatly put together, in body and hair and dress alike. Passion was in her, her eyes snapped with it as she darted across the field behind the old Rambo homestead next door and sought upper reaches of Little Sweetwater.