Zeke and Ned (45 page)

Mainly, she wanted her mother to understand that she was a good wife, and had done the correct things to make her husband's life healthier and happy. She wanted her mother to know that, despite her fears, she was doing things in the proper manner. How would her mother know that, if she did not stay long enough to see her new home in the daylight? Jewel wanted to show her mother the smokehouse, and where she did the laundry, and the barn, and the garden, and the milk-pen calf. Her mother owned a good, solid cradle, the one the triplets had slept in—Jewel was wondering if she could borrow it for her baby.

But those questions did not get asked, nor would Becca consider waiting for daylight to start home.

“I ain't sleepy. I'd just as soon make a start,” Becca said. “We've got a world of work to do when we get home,” Becca said, several times. She meant it, too. She had put things right with her man, and now she wanted to get him home.

Zeke let Becca do most of the talking. Ned was arguing, and Jewel was pleading, but he knew they ought just as well save their breath. He had a line of stubbornness in him, but it was nothing compared to Becca's line. Nobody was likely to out-stubborn Becca.

The one problem they faced was clothes. Zeke's were so filthy that Becca would not consider letting him put them back on.

“You'll be needing a good delousing when I get you home, Zeke,” she said, throwing his old clothes in the fireplace. All he was left with was his coat, his gunbelt, and his boots. Ned finally gave in and loaned him a pair of pants. They were too long in the leg and too tight in the waist, but Zeke solved the waist problem by only buttoning the bottom two buttons.

The mule was named Pelican, because he had a long, droopy jaw. He was not happy to find himself loaded up in the middle of the night, with two heavy people and a black dog. He bit Ned's finger twice during the saddling; Ned had to cuff him to get him to stand. It was, on the whole, a vexing business. Jewel and Liza stood there holding a
lantern, crying because their mother was leaving without even spending a whole night with them. Zeke was trying to pretend he had never felt better in his life, when in fact he was still coughing and spitting on a regular basis. Becca gave her girls a hug and Ned a handshake, before climbing up behind Zeke. She was all business. It reminded Ned a little of how Jewel became when she threw all her passion into some kind of work—scouring the pans, or cleaning out the fireplace. Jewel's jaw even jutted forward as Becca's did—the sign of stubbornness, Ned thought. He wondered a little uneasily if Jewel would get more and more like her mother as she got older. Would his own wife get so out of sorts with him someday that she would walk out the door and go home to her folks?

Soon, Becca and Zeke were out of sight. Ned heard Pelican, the mule, snort a few times from somewhere in the darkness; then, after a moment or two, he heard nothing.

“Now that's what I call a short visit,” Ned commented.

Jewel and Liza were too weepy to reply. As they were walking to the house, Ned put his arm around Jewel to comfort her. Jewel immediately clung to him, squeezing him tight, so tight that it suddenly occurred to him that there might be a bright side to the fact that Zeke and Becca had taken themselves away so abruptly. If they had stayed, there would have been little chance for him to slip in with his own wife. He would have had to bunk on a pallet, or even outside. But now there was only Liza left with them, and Liza would soon cry herself out and be asleep.

“I wish Ma had stayed,” Jewel whispered. “Just till mornin', at least. I miss Ma.”

“Now, Jewel, they had the livestock to think of,” Ned pointed out gently. All of a sudden, the Proctors' departure seemed a lot more sensible than it did when he had had to rouse himself and go catch the mule.

“It's still two hours to cockcrow,” he whispered back to Jewel. “Let's slip into the covers.”

Jewel was thinking that she was not going to have her mother very much anymore, the mother who for so long had watched her every day and helped her with the problems of life. Her mother lived thirty-five miles away, and she had the triplets to finish raising, a husband to care for, a farm to tend. Jewel knew she would have to learn for herself the things she needed to know to be a mother, or a gardener, or whatever
she might need to be, now that she was gone from home. Her mother had her own duties; she would not be coming to visit much. It gave Jewel a lonely feeling, even more lonely than when she had first gone away with Ned. She wished now that she had paid better attention, or talked to her mother more in the years when she had still been at home.

When they were nearly to the house, Ned suddenly cursed and jumped aside. He had stepped right on a snake. Jewel saw a flash of coil in the lantern light.

“It's a dern snake! Shine your light on it, I might be bit,” Ned said. Jewel managed to locate the snake, just before it slithered under the house. It was just a harmless old black-snake, one that was usually to be found by the woodpile.

Ned was still shaky from the scare, when they went up the stairs. He was fumbling at his own buttons, as if his fingers would not work properly. It amused Jewel that her husband could take such a scare from an old blacksnake. She undid his buttons for him, to keep him from getting impatient and popping them off, which would mean a passel of sewing if he did.

“I do despise stepping on reptiles in the dark,” Ned said. “That dern snake should stay by the woodpile, where he belongs.”

His legs were wobbly, those strong legs that took such a long stride. Besides his eyes, one of the first things Jewel had noticed about Ned was his long stride. She liked to watch him walk. He walked much more gracefully than other men.

It touched her that he was shaky. For a moment, it was Ned who was weak, too unsettled to get his clothes off. Jewel's confidence rose, for now she was the strong one. Ned stood patiently and let her undo his buttons, as trusting as a child.

“There could have been a rattler there, too. Rattlers and black-snakes have been known to coil up together,” he told her. “Shine the lantern on my legs—I want to make sure I ain't bit.”

“You ain't bit, Ned, though I might bite you myself if you don't hush up about that snake,” Jewel said, with mock annoyance.

“Shine the light,” Ned insisted.

Instead, Jewel blew out the lamp.

Then she did bite him, and kept biting him until she got him safely in bed.

A
S
Z
EKE AND
B
ECCA WERE MAKING THEIR SLOW WAY IN THE DARK
across a grassy meadow on the mule Pelican, Zeke thought he saw a spot of light in the forest above Tuxie Miller's farm. He saw it just for a moment—it was as if a lantern flickered, high on the wooded ridge.

“What's that? Did you see it, Bec?” he asked, stopping the mule.

Becca, more tired than she had wanted to admit at Ned's house, had been nodding against her husband's shoulder. Before they had ridden a mile on the slow mule, Becca realized that she had been a little foolish for insisting that they leave, when she could have taken a short rest with her girls. Seventy miles on horseback and muleback was hard on the bones, though she felt a driving urge to get home and did not much regret her haste. It was hard to keep her eyes open, though, with the mule plodding along at a walk. Now Zeke was talking to her about lights on a hill, even stopping the mule to watch.

“I had my eyes shut, Zeke,” she confessed. “I didn't see nothing.”

“I swear I saw a lantern flash, near the top of that ridge over toward Tuxie's,” Zeke said.

“Who'd be out with a lantern this time of night?” he asked, as much to himself as to Becca.

Just then, a shooting star arched down through the dark sky.

“Maybe that's what you saw,” Becca said. “Maybe it was just a shooting star.”

Zeke was not convinced.

“A shooting star is white,” he replied. “What I saw was yellow. It looked like a lantern light, to me.”

Becca expressed no further opinion. She put her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes, thinking a little sadly of what a fine grown woman Jewel had come to be. That was the purpose of being a mother—to turn daughters into fine young women. Becca knew that, but still felt a little sad. She would not be seeing very much of her Jewel, now that her daughter was grown and soon to be a mother herself.

Zeke was troubled by the light on the ridge. He had only glimpsed it once, out of the corner of his eye, but the light had been made by a lantern, of that he was sure. Who would be up in the hills with a lantern, in the hour before dawn? Coon hunters usually gave up and went home well before this time—and if it was coon hunters, they would have hounds. He heard no hounds.

“It might be possemen,” he said, but Becca did not respond. From the way her head lolled against his shoulder, he knew she must be asleep. Like Becca, he began to regret leaving Ned's so abruptly. At the time, it had seemed vitally important to get started for home; but now, it seemed only a silliness. Why had they not just rested for a night on a pallet? Then if it was a posse on the hill and the posse showed up at Ned's house, he and Ned, with their combined firepower, could put it to rout.

That opportunity was lost, for he was two miles gone from Ned's, on a slow mule. A well-mounted posse could beat him here and have Ned shot or captured or hanged long before he could be there to help.

It was still a good mile to Tuxie Miller's place, and he could not get there in time to send a warning to Ned, even if the argumentative Dale Miller would allow Tuxie to take a warning. Besides, Tuxie's tired horse was still over at Ned's, a point Zeke just now came to realize.

If there was somebody up there with a lantern, it would more than likely flash again. Zeke sat where he was, watching the hills for ten more minutes, stroking Pete so he would not bark.

But no lantern flashed. Zeke began to wonder if he had really seen a flash; perhaps Becca was right. Perhaps he had only seen a shooting star. Mounted as he was, with a sleeping wife on a slow mule, he could not easily go investigating.

Then Zeke remembered Old Turtle Man. The old healer was known to travel at all hours. He might be up on the ridge, on some errand of healing.

The thought did not quite still his worries, for he could not get the notion of a posse out of his mind. He tried to persuade himself that he had been seeing things, but the flash nagged at him. He just was not sure.

No second flash came, and his eyes became tired from scanning the hills. Finally, he kicked the mule with his heels, and he and Becca headed on toward home.

I
N THE DAYS AFTER THE DEPUTIZING OF
T
AILCOAT
J
ONES
, J
UDGE
Isaac Parker began to exhibit signs of an uneasy conscience. Martha Parker, who had often been the person who made the Judge's conscience uneasy, was quick to note the indicators. The Judge, a solid
sleeper who would normally be unlikely to wake up if the house was burning down around him, ceased to sleep well. He began to toss and turn, muttering curses in his restlessness. Once Mart heard him say “owl,” though no owls had been around to bother them. Another time, she distinctly heard him say “Mr. President,” though he appeared to be asleep.

Besides being a solid sleeper, the Judge was also an accomplished eater. He could readily dispose of several eggs at breakfast, as well as a sizeable intake of steak, bacon, pork chops, or whatever meats might be available. He preferred his coffee scalding—instead of sipping it as most folks would, he blew on it a time or two, and then drank it down like water.

The morning after Mart heard him say “Mr. President” in his sleep, he came plodding downstairs and requested a single egg for breakfast.

“Fry it hard, I might want to bounce it,” the Judge said. He was usually neat at breakfast, but this morning, his suspenders were unsnapped, and his shirttail out.

“Are you sick? Tuck your shirt in,” Mart said, crisply.

“I'll answer the question—no, I ain't sick—but I won't obey the command,” the Judge said, sitting down at the table, his shirttail not tucked in.

“Ike, are you ornery today, and if so, why?” Mart inquired. “Are you sure you only want one egg?”

“You'd never make a lawyer, Mart—you can't keep to the subject at hand,” the Judge informed her.

“I ain't trying to make a lawyer, Ike, I'm bein' a wife,” she told him. “I'm trying to find out what's the matter with you.”

“I guess I'm like a preacher who's decided to sin with a deacon's wife,” the Judge said. “I've reached the point where I'd rather break the law than enforce it.”

Mart cracked his egg, and dropped it in the skillet, a frown on her face. She did not like to hear mention of the sin of adultery, at her breakfast table or anywhere else. Her husband knew that, plain and clear.

“I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll thank you to clean up your mouth,” Mart admonished.

The Judge was so taken aback by the sudden reprimand that he sat in silence and listened to the egg sizzle in the skillet. When Mart served it, it certainly looked hard enough to bounce.

“Many thanks,” the Judge said. “And for your information, it is a fact that preachers have been known to be taken in sin with wives of deacons.”

“You can eat your dern facts for a while, and see how you like it,” Mart said.

Conversation choked off for several minutes. Then husband and wife commenced apologies at the same time. Neither heard the other's apology, and both left the table with a sense of grievance. It was not until the Judge was correctly dressed and about to go out the door, that Mart tried again to find out what was bothering him.

“It ain't like you to toss in your sleep and call out names,” Mart said. “What's wrong?”