The Trees (11 page)

“Almost warm enough for a body to wash their hair,” she said.

She used that kettle a second time to bake sour dough biscuits in, after she had poured the shortening in a gourd.

“You and your man have a mess of poke yit?” she made talk again. “It has plenty around.”

When the biscuits were done, she used the kettle a third time to fry the shortcake in, first working the fresh shortening in the dough until it was ready.

“Pap got such a nice silver fox last winter,” she said. “I wish you could a seed it.”

Now she took the kettle a fourth time and used it as a bucket to draw and fetch water from the spring.

“I heerd your man’s a puttin’ up a double cabin?”

“Not that one room isn’t big enough for us,” Mrs. Covenhoven explained modestly.

“No, one room’s got plenty room for the six of us,” Sayward agreed.

When the kettle started to simmer, she used it a
fifth time, as a teapot, putting in a lick of dittany and sassafras root shavings. Then she poured out a pair of steaming wooden cups and set them with her two breadstuffs on the trencher. Oh, if this woman could give Worth two kinds of breadstuffs at one time, Sayward would give her no less. In truth she would go her one better, for her sour dough biscuits were not fine and scanty but of a hearty size with a square of smoked bear’s bacon set in the top of each to run down over the sides and bake with a tasty crust.

“Tea’s done,” she said gravely. “You kin draw up your stool.”

This tea thing, Sayward told herself, wasn’t as bad as she had looked for. The biscuits and shortcake were real good. The spicy dittany steam rose. Through it passed their women’s talk with quiet spots between, for two neighbors living so close shouldn’t tell all they knew or what would they have to talk about next time?

Dusk was running through the woods when she tramped part way home with her company. Her father, she told herself, would have to wait for his supper tonight. Oh, she knew he was back this long time. He could keep himself hid like the young ones but he couldn’t keep the stink of his old clay pipe under some bush.

“Don’t your sisters and brother stay out pretty late in the woods?” Mrs. Covenhoven wondered.

“Oh, they ain’t that far off they kain’t find their way home,” Sayward said. In her mind she could see them in the cabin this minute fighting over the leavings of the tea.

Big John Covenhoven came through the woods to meet his woman.

“I need somebody to fetch home my cows,” he said. “By the month. Maybe your brother’d want to talk to me about it.”

“I had such a nice visit,” Mrs. Covenhoven told Sayward. “Now don’t wait till our cabin’s up till you come over.”

Sayward thought on the path home it was strange about new places and people. At first they had their strange look. Then gradually they changed. Later on when you thought about that first way they looked, it didn’t seem like the same place or person any more. This neighbor woman she had known only one afternoon and already she had an old time look in Sayward’s mind.

It was dark till she got to the cabin. She reckoned it must be true she took after her mother’s side of the house, for a woman’s comfort in another woman still lingered in her bones. Now after a fitting time she would take herself over some afternoon to return the visit. Likely she would see for herself those fine breadstuffs Worth talked about and the China tea that he said tasted no more than water in the fall when leaves fell into the spring.

CHAPTER TEN
MORTAL SWEET

G
ENNY
was getting pretty as a picture.

You could see she wasn’t a young one any more like the others. Oh, sometimes she’d rip and tear around with them, play fox and hounds, blow bubbles through Joe Pye weed in the run, or march up and down with sharp blades of wood grass held tight between cupped hands.

And other times she spurned those young ones’ company like they had just crawled out of their log cradles.

Today Achsa wanted her to race terrapins. But do you think Genny would? No, she had nothing for such doings today. She sat by herself on the cabin bench, her bare white legs twined around each other, singing to herself, the sadder the sweeter. Wyitt and Sulie hung around, for they could listen to their sister Genny’s singing all day. Now Achsa didn’t think so much of it.

“She’s got one of her spells on again,” she jeered in her man’s voice to Sayward.

Genny paid her no notice. Achsa didn’t care how hot were the coals she fetched to lay on her pet terrapin’s back to make it run faster. Genny would sooner make music. A song or hymn stuck to her mind like rows of beggar lice to her skirt. Let her hear it once and she knew it by heart. When she didn’t recollect a line, she made one up and nobody knew the difference. She didn’t know herself any more which were the real words and which the made up.

“She’s lonesome as a mournin’ dove. I kain’t even look at her,” Achsa complained and went out.

Today Genny sang most everything she knew: “True Thomas” and “Greenland’s Icy Mountings,” “Sinclair’s Defeat” and “Purty Polly,” “Who’s Afeard” and some others. “Fly Up” she sang over twice. That was a mighty short song but she liked it best.

Genny was thinking she would like to taste possum again. It had none here in these deep woods like it had close to the settlements. Then Achsa’s face, dark as an Indian’s, was stuck in at the door.

“You got your wish,” she jeered. “The bound boy’s here again.”

Genny slowly unwound her legs. You couldn’t believe Achsa half the time, but when she peeked out of the door, Jake Tench and the bound boy were coming along the path. Jake had dressed up in a roram hat, and the bound boy’s reddish hair was tied behind with a ribbon snipped off a bolt of blue strouding.

“Don’t you dare tell where I’m at or I’ll maul you!” Genny warned Achsa, and her white legs flew up the ladder to the loft. She threw herself out of sight on Sulie’s bed, for that was the fartherest back from the hole so the littlest body of them all might not tumble down in the cabin should she
roll in her sleep. The roof slanted down close above. You had to be careful how you raised up or you got a good smack on your head.

She could hear Jake Tench’s moccasins scraping over the dirt floor. He came in their cabin of late like he owned it. Genny couldn’t go him. He put her in mind of the black he-bear she and Sayward had once watched out in the woods trying to please a she-bear. He moved about playful and frolicsome on his legs. But his paws were powerful as all get out, and his little black eyes danced with the devilment he’d do once he got you in them.

She lay there hating to be penned up with him down there. Once she dragged herself to the loft hole to see if her oldest sister was all right. Sayward bent by the fire scraping back ashes to bake cornbread on the hearth. Jake was bragging how he fixed a copper snake. It had caught him on the shank so he held it down with a forked stick and spat tobacco spittle in its mouth. By night, Jake said, he had overed the spittle of the snake, but the copper snake was stiff as a poker. Yes, he could stand the poison of a copper snake, but the copper snake couldn’t stand his.

Oh, he was feeling high today. When Sayward put the hot ashes back over her bread, he squirted tobacco juice half way across the cabin to that fire! Genny saw Sayward’s face flush up, but she didn’t say anything. If it had been Worth now,
Genny thought, Sayward would have stopped him short enough.

She heard the bound boy coming to the door.

“Where’s Ginny at, Saird?”

“Ain’t she outside a matchin’ terrypins?”

“I kain’t see her.”

“Well, you look on around a piece and see if you kain’t find her.”

Genny felt a glow of affection for Sayward. She stood by you. Wyitt would get streaks like his father. Achsa would turn on you like an Indian. Sulie was too little to be of much account. And Jary was half rotted away in her bury hole. But you could count on Sayward. She never went back on you.

She was far too good for Jake Tench. Oh, Genny knew well enough what he was coming around here for. First thing Sayward knew she’d have to live with him, whether she wanted to or no. Worth said already it had half-blood young ones in Shawaneetown they were blaming on Jake Tench. Genny wouldn’t want to be around if Sayward ever had a young one by that old rip. To rock or tote such would go against her grain. Like as not it would have some deilish birthmark of its pappy, as the wolf Jake skinned alive or the wagoner’s nose he claimed he bit off once in a fisticuff.

After while the bound boy came back to the door.

“I kain’t find her nowheres, Saird,” he complained.

Genny didn’t like the sound of Jake Tench’s laugh.

“Maybe she’s up in the loft a waitin’ for you,” he said.

Oh, she knew now she should have lain still as a log in Sulie’s bed and never dragged herself over to the loft hole. She heard the bound boy crossing the cabin. She raised up, and down that ladder she went, holding her dress low and tight between her white knees as she was able. Jake Tench and Will Beagle would get no look at her if she could help it. She had a glimpse of the bound boy stopping short and staring at her with brown, astonished eyes. Then out the door she went.

“Gin! Will Beagle’s here!” Wyitt yelled from the chopping log.

“Ginny!” the bound boy called.

But Genny did not stop. She could hear someone running after. She looked back over her shoulder. The bound boy was coming fast as his feet could take him. She let her slim legs go.

Sometimes when she was out alone in the woods, she ran for pleasure. But never could she go like when a body chased her, if it was only the young ones. Something came in her thin white legs then and she didn’t know any more she had any. She didn’t need to try to run. An easy power
buoyed her up like the wind and she felt she could sail off like a red bird if she wanted to.

Once when they were back in Pennsylvania, she dreamed she could fly. She hadn’t any wings. She just held out her arms and floated from one mountain to another. The valley between had a square log house, a round log barn and redtop meadows. She flew over those meadows so close, the redtop waved in a breeze. The folks came out of that house to watch her. She could still feel how light her body was. Her bones felt hollow as a turkey’s wing.

Today she ran till it felt good to walk, but she wasn’t tired. The forest mould gave soft and springy under foot. Around her stood the thousand pillars of the woods, bidding her come on. The butts of the red oaks were coated with green but the moss would have nothing to do with the black oaks. Down by a run a young doe lifted its head and stared at her with eyes it was a shame to think a corbie would pick out some day. It had been drinking and the drops of water rained from its mouth. Back somewhere behind Genny the young ones yelled and the doe was off. It went through the trees in great effortless jumps, cut a half circle and when it came back to the ravine the run was in, it sailed over like a pheasant.

Genny could hear the bound boy calling to her now. It came over her she was a deer, too. The
bound boy was hunting her like men always hunted women and wild things. Never would they let them be to live their own lives. No, men always came after, smelling and tracking them down. But the bound boy would never find her. She was a young doe. A delicious wildness came up in her. The woods looked different now. The trees and bushes, even the poison sumach, were friendly. They stood over and bent down at her and tried to hide her. You had to be a deer to know how the wild things felt when a man was after you.

A stick cracked close under the bound boy’s foot and she was off like the doe. Her hair floated brown and soft behind her. Every deer she knew had its secret places where it slept out by day. She would go to her place now. Even Sayward didn’t know where she hid herself when things around the cabin got too much to stand. She made a wide circle to throw the bound boy off the track. Then she headed for the river and something pure came into her face. This was a holy place. She had found it herself and never would she show it to any but her true love when he came.

First she tramped through a forest meadow of low fern that brushed soft as lace against her feet and legs. Then she came to a dark clump of pines. It hadn’t many pines in this Northwest Territory and mostly they stood alone. But here in this spot they crowded everything else out like the hemlocks
along a Pennsylvania stream. Always when she got this far, Genny kept her eyes religiously down. Would it mean as much to her as last time, she asked herself. Then when she raised her eyes she’d know this place would never fail her. It was dim with a kind of pine woods night and yet out there beyond the dark, scaly butts and branches the blinding sunlight came down, turning a ferny bank to golden, tender green and sparkling on the river with silver. Out there lay a new world. It was like something to come in her own life some day, something bright and shining on ahead.