The Keepers of the House (15 page)

She stood up, put her washing under her arm, and went home. As she walked, she looked carefully, every which way, in every patch of shadow and light, up slopes into the dark shelter of trees, but there were no sounds, there were no movements. Nothing followed her. The signs had been telling her and now they didn’t have to any more. There was nothing more to say.

She nodded to herself. As she went, she began to whistle. She no longer had to watch and listen.

That same day she packed her things. She took the fancy apron her mother had left her, and she put all her possessions in it: her combs—the red one and the black one with the fine teeth—the snakeskin bag of Indian charms that she had never dared open, a couple of arrowheads that were lucky, a stone with a hole bored in the middle that was lucky too. She put in her pair of shoes and her good dress, the green silk one.

Then she went looking for her grandfather, to tell him. It took her a couple of hours to find him. He was resting his team of mules in the shade of a tupelo tree. He was a very old man and the heat of the late-fall day bothered him. He was squatting under the light, spattered shade with his chin resting on his knees, and he was breathing heavily.

How much longer has he got, Margaret found herself thinking, before he gets to see that long lonesome home of his? Before there won’t be nobody sitting under that tree? Before all there will be of him is a heap of mud in the graveyard, and not even too much of that?

We’ll remember him, she thought. For a time, a little time, before it starts slipping away from us, and we won’t remember hardly at all. Then we’ll be dead too, and that’ll be the end of him, for good.

And isn’t it funny, she thought, that it takes two generations to kill off a man? … First him, and then his memory. …

And what would it be like to be dead? To be in the ground, with the Death Cups rising higher and higher over your head. To be a ghost, haunting with the ghosts of your people, drifting through the dark pine woods, drifting between the cypresses of the swamps. … And what did you do, and what did you think when you were dead?

She looked down at Abner Carmichael. He was staring with his eyes open but he did not seem to see her. As if he were halfway there already. …

She touched his shoulder. He turned his head slowly.

“I come to tell you I was leaving.” He did not move; she wondered if he understood. “I got to go.”

He nodded. His dark skin was beaded and reamed with sweat.

“If somebody, they ask for me—” And who would that be? Nobody. Nobody, but maybe one. “If somebody comes asking, like my mama, maybe …”

The old eyes, hooded like a bird’s, slipped open and looked at her.

She held her own face steady. “You got to say that Margaret has gone away from New Church. She gone to work on the Howland place and she don’t expect to be coming back.”

He didn’t look surprised. “Nothing for you to do here,” he said slowly. “You got to be moving on.” His voice wavered off absently.

When she was littler, Margaret might have hugged and kissed him. But that time was past; that time was gone. She wasn’t a child any more and there was nothing for her to do. So she only turned and began to walk away, steadily, unhurriedly, knowing she had a long stretch ahead.

Behind her, her grandfather said abruptly: “It’s hot and I’m miseried.”

She wasn’t little any more. She was a woman grown, and making her own way. So she kept walking, leaving him to his old man’s ache, and his old man’s dullness.

For a while the landmarks were familiar. Then she passed into country she’d never seen before. She walked steadily, shifting her bundle from hand to hand as she went. Not hurrying, not stopping either. She had brought nothing; at first she did not miss food. She felt light and strong and drifting. When dark came, she slept in the woods along the road, curled up on the leaves and the pine needles, shivering a bit in the night cold. In the morning she felt her hunger, sharp and demanding, so she chewed a few pine needles and a couple of pieces of bitter grass. Once she stopped to ask directions of a woman feeding a flock in her dooryard. Margaret smiled at the funny bobbing walk of the chickens. They’d had their toes smashed to keep them from running away.

The woman, heavy-bellied with child, answered her politely, while she stared at the unfamiliar face. “From New Church,” Margaret said, and watched the expression harden. Indian blood wasn’t a good thing, and the New Church people had always kept pretty much to themselves. Margaret moved off, not minding. After all she had only asked directions because she wanted to talk to somebody. She wasn’t lost. She only needed to follow the road until she came to the white-painted house on the fourth slope up from the river.

She recognized it at once. She turned off the road and climbed the rutted, gravel-crusted footpath that cut across the weedy fields. She found herself in a dusty silent yard. Slowly she looked about her—at the higher ridges to the north, at the Providence River almost hidden behind its thick trees, at the sagging barns and the cluster of sheds off by the pasture lots. She walked around the house, searching. She found a family of cats, yellow and white spotted. And she found the kitchen door under the sheltering frame of the back porch. Without hesitating, she pushed through the sagging torn screen. The kitchen was empty. She walked through the dark rooms of the lower part of the house, as far as she dared, as far as she could without opening any closed doors, afraid to open them, but curious just the same. Then she went back to the kitchen. She waited a little while there, sitting at the big center table. Then she waited outside on the back steps, sitting in the sun, body curled over her legs to stop the aching of her stomach, her black skin sweating gently into the heat of the afternoon.

William Howland came home just before dusk. He left his wagon by the barn, unhitched his mules, turned them into the lot. He closed and fastened the gate—moving slowly, weighted down by a day’s dust—and climbed the hill to his house. He’d come half the distance before he even lifted his head. As soon as he caught sight of her, he began to hurry. She sat perfectly still and waited.

“My God,” he said. “I plain wasn’t looking for you so soon.”

She did not answer. She followed him inside.

“You walk here?”

“Not far.”

“From New Church?”

She nodded.

“Ramona!” he called. The sound echoed around the house; no one answered.

“You have anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not today.”

“My God,” he said. “Ramona!” And to Margaret: “You got no cause to do that, child.”

“I didn’t have nothing to take,” she said simply. It was true.

“Ramona!” he shouted, out the back door.

“I didn’t see nobody,” she said, “and I been here a while.”

He ruffled his lips in a half whistle. “She be coming by for supper … but you can’t wait none that long.”

He walked over to the great wood range, black and sticky with grease. He opened a couple of pots and looked in. “She cooked it anyhow. …”

Margaret sat down in a straight wood chair, her stomach cramps making her weak-kneed all of a sudden. She had thought he wouldn’t notice, but in a moment he was standing beside her, and there was a hand on her shoulder.

She laughed, ashamed. “Bitter grass make you lightheaded somehow.”

The hand was pulling her to her feet. “Go get a plate—I’ll get it—and eat something, whatever that is there.”

Outside a man’s voice shouted: “Will Howland!”

“You feed yourself, and when the old woman comes in, tell her to come see me.”

“Hey, Will,” the man outside roared, “where you want your hog molasses?”

“Take you time,” William said, “don’t fret.”

So she sat in the kitchen alone, eating quietly. She listened to the voices of the men outside, and then she heard the trace chains clank as the wagon moved. Her hunger eased, she looked around the kitchen. It was a large room, at one end the greasy black range, with the greasy black skillets on it. At the other was a brick fireplace, tall enough for a half-grown man to stand in, black with years of use. Over it was a heavy scrolled and carved mantel. Over that, a long musket and a powder horn, slung crosswise.

Margaret let her eyes run around the room a few times. Gently, inquiring. She finished her plate and shoved it away. Slowly she got up and poured herself a cup of coffee from the blue enameled pot on the back of the range. Holding the cup in her hand, she looked down the room again, into the black open hole of the fireplace. It was as familiar to her then as if she had always lived here.

When the old woman Ramona came back, Margaret stood up politely, waiting. The old woman looked at her, shifting the wad of snuff from her lower lip to her cheek. “I seen Mr. William already,” she said. “And I got to open a bed for you.”

Margaret followed her through the house, through doors she hadn’t dared open earlier. They climbed a wide bare stair, its dark rail chipped with years of use; they went along a dark hall that smelled strongly of new paint. At the back of the hall, next to a small low door, was a tall mahogany armoire with mirrored doors and a heavy flaring crest on top. The key was missing and there was no handle; Ramona simply pried it open with her fingernail, yellow and hard as horn. Inside the wardrobe was lined with smooth swirled bird’s-eye maple, but someone had put shelves across it, in the space where clothes might once have hung. They were not new shelves, because the unfinished wood was already darkening, but they had been put in crudely. They rested unevenly on strips of wood.

Ramona hunted through the piles of cloth, pulling out one sheet after the other, shaking her head and putting them back. She found one finally. She took it out, and held it up. There was a rip down the middle. She nodded to herself.

It took half an hour to find a pillow and a blanket that were raggedly enough. Then Ramona tucked the lot under her arm and opened the low small door.

It led to the ell at the back of the house, directly over the kitchen. It must have been the oldest part, for the rooms were smaller and the ceilings lower. There were two rooms here, one leading into the other. They were musty and stuffy, and the mattresses on the beds had been rolled up and covered with newspapers.

Ramona put down the sheets and started for another door on the far wall. “Goes to the kitchen,” she said. “You come up and down this way. Lights there.” She yanked a cord and the single naked bulb hanging from the rafters overhead snapped on. “You get enough supper?”

“Yes’m,” Margaret said.

The old woman started down the steps, groaning and wheezing. “Mr. William, he say I got to ask if you have everything.”

“Yes’m,” she said again.

Margaret did not feel tired, though her legs ached slightly from the long walk. She ran down the stairs, avoiding the eyes of the old woman, who was now warming supper at the stove, and got the broom she had seen in the corner there. She ran back up and opened her windows, all of them, so that the cool evening air came pouring inside. She brushed down the walls and chased out the spiders, and swept the floors. She unrolled the mattress and put the sheet on it.

I got to fix that rip tomorrow, she thought. It was the first sheet she had ever had. At home they always slept on the bare ticking.

She stood in the center of the room, studying it. And it also looked familiar to her, though these two rooms were as large as her grandfather’s house. She wondered why she did not miss that more. After all she would be alone up here, and she had never before been alone in a house. But then, she told herself, it wasn’t any different from being alone outside, and she had done that lots of times.

All at once she was tired. Very tired. She began having trouble standing up, and she weaved from foot to foot, as she slipped out of her clothes. Downstairs she could hear the old woman rattling pans and dishes in the kitchen, and singing under her breath.

She had forgot the light. She got up slowly and pulled the cord. In the dark she stumbled back to bed, slipped under the unfamiliar blanket. And naked in a strange room, she fell asleep.

William Howland had been busy. First there was the hog molasses, and then he decided to have a look at the new smokehouse that they were just finishing for him. Then, because he was thinking about it, he walked down to where the wallow was, and looked at the hogs, fat and lumbering and filthy. He was satisfied. When it got cold, which couldn’t be very long now, they would have the hog sticking. With the great boiling tubs of water set in the yard, and four extra men brought up from town. … He liked the smell of a smokehouse.

He liked to take care of the fires himself, just to be sure that they were banked correctly. A slip could ruin a whole season’s meat, and he was a particular man.

He turned and began his trip back to the main house, noticing the new light in the window of the ell over the kitchen. That would be the room Ramona had given Margaret.

He wanted to stop, but he didn’t let himself. Damn-fool thing for a grown man to stand staring at a light. … He kept putting one foot in front of the other, steadily, until he got to the porch. And then it was easy to open the door, call to Ramona, and go to supper.

“Let her help you,” William Howland said when the old woman asked about Margaret. “Got to be something the child can do.”

He saw the wad of snuff flutter at the word “child” and he chuckled. “She’s kind of big, for sure, but she’s not old. … Anyway seems my sister was telling me just a little while ago that the house needed some extra hands.”

“She come out New Church,” Ramona said.

William shrugged. Those people had a bad name among Wade County Negroes. As a matter of fact, they didn’t usually come down this way—and that made it all the stranger, this girl’s coming to work for him.

William remembered again how he had first seen her washing clothes, and how the Alberta story had come popping into his mind. She seemed more like that, somehow, than like somebody who’d come out of the flooded bottoms and the piney uplands of New Church.

She was around the house for a week before he even saw her again. Ramona must have been giving her things outside to do. He was aware that the sprawling Cherokee rose by the dining-room window had been pruned, and that somebody had been working in the herb garden his mother had put in years ago. It hadn’t been tended since then. The mint ran out of its bed and spread its roots across the adjacent yard. The thyme, once planted along the walk, had crawled over the stones and eaten them up. The rosemary formed large stiff bushes bristly with spiky shoots. A single enormous clump of chives lifted its seed globes through the crushing weight of the creepers. Margaret’s fingers pulled out the weeds inch by inch, the red earth lay torn and startled under the sun.