Gap Creek (3 page)

“Put something between his teeth,” Papa said. “So he won’t swallow his tongue.”

All I had to put between Masenier’s teeth was a corner of the blanket we had wrapped him in. I folded it twice and stuck it in his mouth, which was foaming with spit. His head jerked as I pushed the fabric between his teeth.

And then he coughed and coughed again. I seen he was choking. I wondered if he had swallowed his tongue, or was he choking on his own spit? I stuck my finger in his throat to pull out the block and felt something rush up into his mouth.

“He’s strangling!” I screamed.

Papa held the lantern closer and we seen that Masenier was throwing up. White stuff come out of his mouth and lines of white stuff. “My god,” I said. For I thought he was throwing up milk or some white gravy. But what come out of his mouth was gobs of squirming things. They was worms, wads and wads of white worms. He kept coughing and throwing up, and more come out.

“He’s choking,” Papa said and reached his hand into Masenier’s
mouth and pulled out more gobs of the things. I shuddered, looking at what he was doing. Papa dug out more worms to clear Masenier’s mouth and throat. And when he stopped, Masenier’s mouth was open and his eyes was open, but he was still.

“Make him breathe,” I cried and shook Masenier’s chest.

Papa pushed on Masenier’s heart and listened to his chest. “He’s not breathing,” he said. Masenier’s mouth was open and his eyes was open in the lantern light.

“What can we do?” I said.

We just looked at his little body, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Something twitched in a nostril. It was another worm that had found its way out through his nose.

I SET THERE on the cold ground feeling that human life didn’t mean a thing in this world. People could be born and they could suffer, and they could die, and it didn’t mean a thing. The moon was shining above the trees and the woods was peaceful. I could hear the creek down the ridge gentle as a dove, and the mountains was still as ever. The ground under me was solid, but little Masenier was dead. There was nothing we could do about it, and nothing cared except Papa and me. The world was exactly like it had been and would always be, going on about its business.

We must have set on the ground several minutes before we got the strength to pick up Masenier and carry him up the trail. Papa and me took turns toting the body, and we got to the house in the first light of day. Mama and Rosie was waiting up, with the lamp still burning on the mantel.

Two

After Masenier died there was just us four girls in the family, Lou and me and Rosie, and Carolyn the youngest. Rosie was the oldest, and Lou was next. After we lost Masenier Carolyn got spoiled almost as bad as he had and never did a bit of work around the place. It was like we had to spoil somebody, and with no brother it was just natural that Carolyn would be the one. Mama made Carolyn pretty pink dresses with lace and ribbons on them. And she fixed Carolyn’s hair in ringlet curls and a pink bow. Carolyn looked more like a doll than a regular child.

Papa’s lungs had started to get a little weaker. When he got overworked or soaked in a storm, or chilled by a draft in church, it would take him in the chest. He’d get his feet wet mowing along the branch and before midnight he’d be coughing and spitting into the fireplace. He had been a strong man, but the chest consumption weakened him all over. When his lungs hurt he couldn’t sleep, and when he coughed none of us could sleep much either.

The rest of us, except Carolyn, sure worked plenty. As Mama got older she sometimes had back trouble and couldn’t stand up straight and had to walk bent over. It might have been rheumatism, or something
inside her way down. But it throwed more work on us girls when she was poorly.

Rosie didn’t mind doing her share of the housework. She never did like to work outside in the yard and fields, but she would cook things. She liked to sew and to knit. She could do embroidery and knit socks and sweaters and shawls. And she liked crocheting counterpanes and fancy pieces. Rosie would help to dust and clean up, but she preferred to be in the kitchen, or setting by the fire with her yarn and hook with a cat in her lap. That needle pulled and pulled and pulled, looping the soft knots of the vest or throw she was crocheting. Her bag of thread and needles, scissors and extra hooks, set on the floor beside her chair.

But what Rosie liked most of all was cooking. She always kept a fire in the cookstove and a pot of coffee warm on top of the stove. Rosie would sip coffee while she was rolling out dough for a piecrust or cooking down strawberries for preserves. She had her own box of spices and seasonings on the shelf and she didn’t want anybody else to touch them. She dried herbs from the little garden on the bank and put the leaves in bottles and jars like a druggist might. “I don’t want anybody to touch my herbs,” she said. “They might mix them up.”

“How do you know they’re not already mixed up?” Lou said once.

“I know by the look and the smell,” Rosie said. She took the cap off a bottle and sniffed it.

LOU WAS THE only one of my sisters that was willing to work outside. I don’t think she liked it, but she was willing to help out. Like I said, when Papa got sick it fell on me to take care of the stock and field crops. But Lou would pitch in and help. Biggest job the year round was to bring in wood, for we had to have fuel for the cookstove and
the fireplace. We had to keep the house warm when Papa was coughing, and that meant load after load of wood.

Ever since I was a girl I had worked with Papa to cut firewood. I could pull a crosscut saw and chop with an axe. Since I was a barefoot girl I had been splitting kindling for Mama. But I was never good at splitting bigger chunks and logs. I had trouble lifting the sledgehammer, and I always did hate the harsh sound of steel on steel driving a wedge.

But helping is one thing, and having to do it all yourself is another. Once Papa started taking to bed for long spells, with his breath too short to get any air, Mama said somebody had to bring in the wagon loads and sled loads of wood, had to cut and saw and split and tote it to the porch where Mama or Rosie or even little Carolyn could reach it. Though Carolyn rarely touched anything as rough and heavy as wood. The job just fell to me, without anybody explaining why. And since it had to be done, I done it, and kept on doing it.

FOR FIVE WEDNESDAYS in a row that winter it snowed. And between the snows it would sleet. And after every sleet come a thaw where everything started melting. Then when it turned cold again the water froze, so there was layers of ice and snow like a fancy cake stacked in the woods.

The snow got so hard and slick the horse couldn’t hardly walk on it. That was the month our cow slid off the pasture hill into the branch and lost her calf. The ground was slicker than a pane of glass.

“I don’t think the horse can stand up, much less pull the sled,” Lou said.

“Then we’ll have to pull it ourselves,” I said.

“I’ve heard of working like a dog, but never like a horse,” Lou said.

There wasn’t no other way to bring in the load of wood that I
could see, except to pull the sled ourselves. We toted the axe and saw into the woods across the pasture where a bunch of trees had been knocked down by the ice. I broke a sheath of ice off a log before we begun sawing. It was like everything had been painted an inch thick with ice, and then coated again.

The first thing you have to learn about a crosscut saw is to just pull it. You don’t ever push it. The other person pulls it toward them, and then you pull it back. If you try to push the saw it will buckle and wear you out before you get started. Pa had taught me that. But Lou had never done much sawing before. Every time she pulled the handle to her, she tried to push it back. The saw pinched and stuck in the log and made it twice as hard for me to pull.

“No, no, just let it go,” I said.

“I’m trying to help you,” Lou said.

The log was froze and hard to saw anyway. Fresh wood has a lot of water in it, and froze wood saws like a rock. And when Lou pushed on the saw it was almost impossible to pull it to me.

“Don’t try to help me, just help yourself,” I said.

For a few strokes everything went smooth. And then Lou started pushing the saw back without thinking. “Don’t push,” I hollered.

After you have held a crosscut saw for half an hour your hands get so stiff you can’t open the fingers. Your fingers are curled around the handle and it hurts to let go. Your fingers ache when you straighten them.

We cut through the log three times in twenty-inch pieces. My back got stiff and my fingers hurt. “Let’s rest a little,” I said.

“We’ll get cold if we stop,” Lou said.

“I’m burning up,” I said. Sweat was running down my back and around my temples, though it was below freezing in the woods. “I hope no man ever sees us working like this,” I said.

Lou pulled the saw back to her and gasped, “Why not?”

“Because he would never think of us as ladies,” I said.

“We’re not ladies,” Lou said.

“I don’t want to be looked on like a field hand,” I said.

“Maybe that’s what some man would want,” Lou said.

“Not any man I would want,” I said.

“Now look who’s being choosy,” Lou said.

We stopped to rest when the log was sawed through. I stood up and put my hands on my hips. “Any man that just wanted a woman who could cook and bring in firewood would either be a cripple or too old to be any count,” I said.

“When is a man too old to be any count?” Lou said.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “But when a man gets beyond a certain age he’s no account for a woman.”

“And how would you know before you married him?” Lou said.

“You’d just have to be smart,” I said. As I rested I could feel the cold sinking in.

“Or you could try him out,” Lou said.

“Lou!” I said. Lou always did like to say the worst things she could think of.

“That would be better than marrying somebody who was no account,” Lou said.

When I let go of the saw handle my hands was numb at first. But as I straightened the fingers and stretched them they hurt like the bones had been bruised.

I knowed marrying was on Lou’s mind. She was two years older than me and she had been thinking of getting married since she started walking home from church with Garland Hughes the year before. She was sweeter than a pound cake on Garland, and they went riding in his daddy’s buggy several times, until she heard he had a girlfriend over at Pleasant Hill that he sometimes went to see, and who was going to have a baby. After that she wouldn’t walk home with him no more. But the way she grumbled and took on,
you could tell she was still studying about him. She was mad at Garland, but she hadn’t got over him, not by a long rifle shot.

I might have been as crazy to think about boys and marriage as Lou was if I hadn’t had to work so hard. There didn’t seem to be any end to what I had to do to help Papa. Papa said he didn’t know what he would do without me.

“Whatever man marries you will be the lucky one,” Papa said to me. “For you’re the best of my girls, the best one.”

That give me a little chill of satisfaction, that Papa would say that to me. For he wasn’t a flattering man, especially with his daughters. But I thought, he wouldn’t talk so agreeable if a man actually asked for my hand. For what would he do without me to help him on the place? What would he do with nobody to bring in wood or hoe the corn? I could hitch up the horse as good as Papa and I could pull fodder and cut tops off corn. I even helped him butcher hogs, though he usually got another man to help him hoist the hog once it was scraped and slide the gambrel stick up a pole so it hung high enough to be gutted and dressed.

And because I was so busy, boys hadn’t paid much attention to me. A girl knows how to invite attention. But I’d never had the time to prettify myself and primp, and to study how to be at the right place to get a man’s notice. Oh, I had thought about it, as any healthy girl would, and I was pleased just to see a good-looking boy at church or in town. And sometimes it give me a thrill just to think of a good-looking boy.

When I thought of a boy I always thought of somebody I could give in to. Not one of these nervous boys that couldn’t hardly look at you without blinking. I thought of a strong man that knowed what he wanted and could teach you. I wanted a body that meant to go somewhere. I guess I wanted a man instead of a boy.

But what was the good of thinking about boys when Papa needed me to help him, and my hands was so rough from holding
an axe or shovel or hoe handle I didn’t want any boy to see them, much less hold them and feel the calluses and swelled knuckles. Hard work will make the joints in your hands swell up so your fingers lose their pretty shape. I didn’t know if my hands would ever get soft again. They hadn’t been delicate since I was a little girl, since before I started working with Papa, sawing and digging ditches with a pick and shovel.

WHEN LOU AND me had sawed ten lengths of wood we loaded them on the sled. It was hard to roll the heavy pieces without slipping, but at least they rolled easier on the ice than they would have in leaves. You always load wood on a sled lengthwise, for the stakes on the sides keep it from rolling off. The ten sticks was heavy, and I had my doubts whether Lou and me could pull the sled.

But it was good to take a break from sawing. We picked up the ropes tied to the rings of the runners.

“I never thought I would have to be an ox,” Lou said, “at least not this way.”

I snickered, but I was already pulling too hard to laugh. The runners had stuck in the ice, and first we had to break them loose. The sourwood runners appeared to sink down in the ice a little. I pulled on one rope and Lou pulled on the other, but we couldn’t budge the sled. Twice I slipped on the ice and hit my knees.

“It’s too heavy,” Lou said.

I saw that if we had to take off some wood and pull half a load it was hardly worth the trip. “Let’s pull sideways,” I said. We jerked the ropes to the left, but still the sled wouldn’t loosen. I was confounded to know what to do. And then I seen a pole leaning on a downed oak tree. I took the pole and pried it under a runner of the sled. “Now pull,” I hollered to Lou. She give a yank, and the sled runners broke free. I dropped the pole and grabbed one of the ropes,
and we started dragging the load through the woods. We had to lean ahead almost until our knees touched the snow. But the sled moved forward and we kept going toward the house.