Fair and Tender Ladies (39 page)

And that aint all,
Honey said, sounding very serious.

What?
I asked him.

Ever time I see a sycamore tree, I have to run the other way as fast as my legs will go,
Honey said.

Why?
A thrill shot through me.

I get a big urge to hang, is why,
he said.
I reckon I take after Daddy.

Wait a minute!
I sat up.
You said it was a OAK tree, first! And now you are saying sycamore tree.
I got to laughing.
This is awful. I don't believe a word you are saying.

Well you said you wanted to hear a story.
He was taking off my shirtwaist then and he got up and laid it real careful to the side.

Not that story,
I said.

What story, then?
He was playing with my titties.

I knew he was teasing me.
I will know,
I said.

You will not,
he said.
And anyway, it don't matter. For you are a married woman, out here for the afternoon.

Married,
I said after him.

Sugar Fork seemed far away, far off down the mountain. I leaned back and watched while he took off his pants. The sun was blinding me. I laid back while he did everything to me, everything. I watched the hawk gliding huge smooth circles out in the air.
Now do this,
he said, and I did. I had never even thought of doing such a thing before in all my life. I believe it's against the law. Then he stretched out on his back too, and closed his eyes and slept. I sat up on my elbow and watched him sleep. He had gold hair all over him.

I traced his thick blond eyebrows across his face. I loved him so much right then.
I love you,
I said.

He opened his bright pale eyes.

No you don't,
he said.
You just think you do. But this aint real,
he said.

It is real, I said.
I am here, aint I?

That's not what I mean,
he said.

I love you,
I told him again.

Don't love me,
said Honey Breeding.
Don't you dare.

I will if I want,
I told him, which was true.
So there!
I got up and walked to the edge of the cliff and looked over. The wind lifted up my hair.

Honey sat up and shielded his eyes and looked at me.
You are so beautiful,
he said.
You look like a Princess.

I'm too old to be a Princess,
I said.

Then you look like a Queen.
All of a sudden he got up and made a run at me.
Gotcha,
he called, and I leaped back at him.
Gotcha back!
I said. I believe it was the first time I had ever been naked in the sunshine in my life. I don't expect I will ever do it again, either. The sun seemed to burn into my whole body. But it felt wonderful. We played tag for a little while there on the bald on the top of Blue Star Mountain.

Fire on the mountain, fire in the sea
—Honey ran back toward the bald—
can't catch me!

But I am as big and as strong as he is, and I toppled him into the starry flowers where we laid face to face and leg to leg and toe to toe. He is just the same size as me. In fact I think he
is
me, and I am him, and it will be so forever and ever. What I did, I did it out of awful longing pure and simple. I did it out of love. Say what you will, and I don't care what anybody said then or might say now, it could not have happened otherwise. I had to do it, I had to have him. And even now I can close my eyes and see us laying naked in the flowers on the grassy bald, all tangled up together till you couldn't tell who was who. He reached down and grabbed my foot. Then he said,
This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had root beer, this little piggy had none. This little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home.
Then Honey rolled me over in the grass.

Speaking of home,
he said,
don't you forget about it.

Oh, I aint a-going home,
I said. Then, that first time, he thought I was kidding.

He spread my hair out around me on the grass.
You are the sweetest thing I ever saw,
he said.

He was ticklish.
Sweeter than honey,
he said.

The sun had moved down lower in the sky over Bethel Mountain.

He was doing things to me with his tongue.

I said,
I hear tell you're a ladies man.

Honey sat up then and I was sorry.
I guess if the truth be told, I am more of a back door man,
he said.

It is why you don't want to love me, Ivy,
Honey said.
A back door man is always going out the back door while the husband comes in the front.

What if she aint got no back door?
I asked.

Ah,
Honey said, grinning.
Ah then, you are caught up Shit Creek! I'll tell you another story.

Is this story about you?
I asked.

No honey, this story is not about me,
Honey said.
It is about a back door man, though. You will see what I mean.
He got comfortable and started.

There was a man named Josh Raines that fell in with a married woman named Evangeline Matney, and he went home with her, and he was loving her up pretty good when they heard somebody pass the gate. Lord! this Josh Raines said, What'd I orter do? And she said, Hide in the scalding barrel. So he done it. Pretty soon in come the other feller, but it weren't her husband! It weren't no Mister Matney. It was a man named Long John Cates, is who it was, and he commenced to hugging and kissing and lollygagging all over Evangeline Matney. Then all of a sudden the gate slammed again, and this time it was her old man, Herman Matney. And so Long John Cates jumped back in his clothes real quick-like and did some fast thinking, and when Herman Matney walks in the door, he says, Well, hello there Mr. Matney! I just come over to borry your scalding barrel, we are aiming to butcher tomorry.

And Herman Matney didn't like the looks of things much, but he said, Well, there it is then, take it along.

When Long John picked it up, it was so dad blame heavy that he liked to couldn't handle it, but he managed to roll it off down the road a ways, and then he stopped to rest.

He was congratulating himself some too, saying, Well, Long John, you sure did get out of that mess mighty slick, when all of a sudden Josh Raines pushed the top off the barrel and crope out! You sure did, Long John, he said, And I didn't do so terrible bad myself!

I got to laughing too hard to quit. It seemed like I had heard that story, or one like it, from Daddy—years and years ago. Honey Breeding was as good as Daddy or the lady sisters for telling tales. I rolled over laughing on the ground.

Then I thought of something and sat up.
I just want you to tell me one thing,
I said to Honey Breeding.

He said,
What is that?
His hair glowed gold in the sun.

Did you know me when first you saw me?
I asked him.
For I'll swear it on a Bible, I knew you.

What do you mean,
he asked.

I don't know,
I said.

He stared at me.
Yes,
he said. I watched him awhile longer.
You put me in mind of something,
I told him, for it was true.

What?
He was picking the little starflowers and laying them out one by one in a row on the mossy ground.

I can't remember,
I said.
It is a poem.

A poem?
He looked up.
Sure enough?

I used to know a lot of poems,
I said.
I told you I took up with a schoolteacher that they had here one time, when I was young.

Shoot,
Honey said. He was making a flower chain.

It was coming back to me then, or part of it. I said,
Let us be—something—of soul, as earth lies bare to heaven above, how is it under our control, to love or not to love? I think that's it.

I said for you to quit that talking about love,
Honey said.
It aint nothing in it.

I won't quit,
I said, and laid down in the grass while all the poems I ever knew came rushing back over my body like the wind. It was like they were all still there someplace, they had just been waiting. I felt I had got a part of myself back that I had lost without even knowing it was gone. Honey had given me back my very soul. But I knew better than to say it. I laid there with my eyes closed and acted like I was asleep. But I was not asleep. Sometimes I opened one eye a little, to see him. The way he was turned, I could see the line of his cheek and his jaw, how brown the skin on his arms was, his square strong back. He had golden elf-hair curling in his ears. His legs and his ass were real white, like I was real white all over. He set there whistling a tune through his teeth and fooling with the flowers he had gathered up. I couldn't believe it. I had never seen a grown man before that would fool around with little flowers. And here I was, on top of Blue Star Mountain, finally!

All of a sudden I thought,
I could of climbed up here by myself, anytime!
But I had not. I remembered as girls how you and me would beg to go hunting on the mountain, Silvaney, but they said,
That is for boys.
Or how we wanted to go up there after berries and they'd say,
Wait till Victor can take you,
or
Wait till Daddy gets home.
Well, I'll bet you made it up there yourself sometime or other, Silvaney, in all your wanderings, I feel sure you have been there too. And I had got up there myself at long last with a man it is true, but not a man like any I had ever seen before in all my life. Even his back was almost covered with little bitty golden hairs.
He is like one of his own bees,
I thought.
I reckon he goes from woman to woman like a bee goes from flower to flower.
I knew even then that I was only one of a lot of women that Honey Breeding had had or would have. But he was the last thing left to happen to me. So it didn't bother me a bit. I laid there and laughed to myself.

What's so funny?
Honey said.
I thought you was asleep.

I am sort of asleep,
I said.

Well, wake up now.
He leaned down and kissed me.
It's time to go.

No,
I said.

Get up now, I've got you a present,
he said.

So I sat up.
What is it?

He stood up and came over and put it on my head, a double starflower crown.
You look real pretty,
he said.
Now stand up and walk, you will be a Queen.
I stood up and did as he said, and the wind blew all over my body but my crown stayed put, caught up in my hair which is real heavy.

Here now,
Honey said. He handed me my clothes.
We've got to get a move on, if we want to get back before full dark. You can say you got lost, I reckon.

Why, what time is it?
I asked.

For the sun still shone up there.

It is going on seven,
he said,
and it will take us two hours walking back. The sun has set already down below.
I looked out over the cliff. The hawk had disappeared. I felt the cold wind coming up my body to my face.
I'm not going back yet,
I said.

Now Ivy.
Honey grabbed my elbows from behind, hard.
Put on your clothes.

I will put on my clothes,
I said,
but I am not going to go back down there yet. I am not ready to go. I have not had my fill of you yet.

He laughed shortly.
There is plenty that has had a bellyful of me already.

I expect so,
I said.

Oh Ivy,
Honey said.
I am bad news. Anybody will tell you that. We can't stay up here.

We can stay awhile longer,
I said, and I turned around and kissed him, and so we did. This is exactly how it happened that I ran off from home with a bee man and lived up on the mountain with him for a while, and would of stayed longer if I could have, if he hadn't gotten tired of me finally, and I hadn't of gotten sick. It was not his fault so much as mine. I was the strong one then. There is an old song Revel used to sing,
He is just a heartbreak in pants.
Well, this is true of Honey Breeding, and I reckon I knew it all along, but I didn't care. When I stood on the cliff with him that day in the last of the sunshine, I couldn't see nothing but him, nothing. I couldn't see the valley below, nor any part of the world. I was blinded and dazzled by his shape.

Come on then,
he said, and we got dressed. We got dressed, but I knew we weren't going back. Something had passed between us. He walked me back across the grassy bald to the path which we followed still further then, along the ridge till we came to a cropping out place of big huge rocks, like a giant's toys.
In here,
Honey said, and I follered him in between two of the rocks to a cave that was big as a room. I couldn't see. Honey grabbled around in the dark and then I heard a flinty scratch and a match flared up red, and then he lit a candle. There was several candles laying on a rock ledge at the back of the cave, and an old blanket in the corner, and you could see where there had been some several cook fires in the floor.

You have come here before,
I said.

Yesm.
Honey's eyes were winking in the candle light.