Raintree County (146 page)

Now he knew what grief was. It was a memory of time past, of time in its poignant and irrevocable pastness. It was man's memory of being a child after it was impossible any longer to be a child.

It was late afternoon when John Shawnessy left the Danwebster Graveyard and going back to the road walked toward the Old Home Place, looking for its lonely form on the sky.

T. D. met him at the door. He looked pathetically old and broken, blinking back tears, wandering around disconsolately while others talked. Now and then the old man would stop and put his chin up and clasping his hands behind his back, would begin to rock on his heels with a faint revival of the old look of buoyant optimism. But a vague bewilderment erased the smile, and he would turn and go away by himself. During the next few days, he spent hours sitting in his Office fumbling with the Botanical Medicines. T. D. was obviously not long for this world himself.

Ellen Shawnessy's death had been unexpected. A call had come from a neighbor's house two miles away, near Moreland. A woman was about to have a baby. T. D. was away at the time, but Ellen had put down her work, bridled a horse, and ridden away bareback. Arriving, she had got off the horse and started toward the house. She had come up the walk, smiling, flushed with the ride, had raised her hand to greet one of the members of the household. Just then, she had stopped, turned pale, and fallen senseless on the path. A few hours later, without regaining consciousness and shortly after telegrams had been dispatched to John Shawnessy and other members of the family not at home, she had been pronounced dead.

In the days following, while John Shawnessy remained at the Home Place, wondering if he could find his way back to a satisfactory Raintree County, Carl Foster, a good friend and fellow teacher, told him of a teaching position vacant at the school in Moreland. He suggested that John Shawnessy apply for the place and also attend the County Teachers' Institute, which was being held at Paradise Lake in the latter part of August.

With almost cynical resignation (as cynically resigned as he was ever likely to be), John Shawnessy accepted the suggestion.

In the strength of his young manhood, he had gone to Lake Paradise with a girl named Susanna Drake, after a victorious run through the Court House Square. That was nearly twenty years ago. He had plunged for an afternoon into the very quick of life and had done what it pleased him to do, like a young god. That was before he had erected on the horizons of his soul the shape of a mansion doomed to fall in fire. That was before the War and its wreck of human souls. That was before Atlanta fell and Columbia burned and Lincoln's body had crossed the Nation on a flag-draped train. That was before his lonely post-War years and his messianic dreams. That was before he had gone in Centennial Summer to the City, where he dreamed an enchanting dream of love and fame, and hunted through the world Behind the Scenes, trying to find a lovely woman in a costume closet, but found instead the multiple image of a sphinx recumbent. That was before his recall to Raintree County:

JOHN WICKLIFF SHAWNESSY:

COME HOME. MAMMA IS DYING.

Come home. Come home. That was the thing he hadn't been able to do and perhaps would never be able to do again. For where was the home of life's eternal wanderer, the young American?

Now, he was thirty-eight years old, had lived more than half his allotted years. What trophies did he have of his days to carry before him like victorious banners? He had a huge, half-written, rejected manuscript, some letters addressed to a young soldier named Corporal Johnny Shawnessy (dead in battle), some notes scrawled by a pathetic child whose soul had been scarred by fire, a guide-book to the Centennial Exposition, an album of class day posies, some photographs of children's faces in front of country schools, and a crumpled telegram.

Come home. Come home. He had come home and had completed the necessary legend. But now he saw that he hadn't built new ramparts against the day when the old ones came crumbling down. He had his memories of Raintree County and his mother, and these he incessantly turned in his mind in the days following her death, as if now, when it was too late, he would try to recapture and understand fully the person who had gone away.

Come home. Come home. Well, he would go back to Lake Paradise in the center of Raintree County and see it as it was now, with its new hotel. its revival tabernacle, and its cottages for summer tourists. He would remind himself that nothing remains the same, not even the most ancient scar on the earth of Raintree County. He might even wander some day over to the wild side of the lake, where the Shawmucky emptied into it and see if he could find a boy with sun-illumined hair running among the trees (the fastest runner in Raintree County!).

He would, however, not disturb himself to hunt for that old tree, that mothy personal legend with which he had quaintly amused himself from childhood. He wouldn't hunt for it, precisely because he was afraid that he would find it.

After all, it was there somewhere, with two rocks under it. He knew. He alone knew that it was there in the almost impenetrable swamp where the great reeds thrust to sunlight and the bugs went buzzing by like bullets. It was there, where an itinerant preacher had thrust a little seedling into the earth. It was there all right—and exactly what of it?

Or had he been drunker on applewine than he thought and dreamed the tree and the two rocks?

He knew then that he would never go back to the City. He knew then that he had ceased to be the child of his mother and had become at last, reluctantly, a man, who would have to make new alliances with Time and Fate and find, if possible, new loves to replace the old.

So, in the latter days of August, 1877, John Shawnessy climbed into T. D.'s old buggy and drove off toward the lake with a pile of books behind the seat, among them a pamphlet that Carl Foster had given him. It was really an advertisement for the new Biltmore Hotel, containing a gem of commercial poetry. He had read it with sardonic amusement. C
OME TO
P
ARADISE
L
AKE,
it said:

O, come ye now, and bring your children,

B
RING YOUR WIFE AND SWEETHEART TRUE,
T
O THE EARTH'S
MOST

—L
OVELY GARDEN
you have here, Evelina, Professor Stiles remarked to Mrs. Brown.

Esther liked Professor Stiles, but she didn't really understand him. He and Mr. Shawnessy had just left the porchswing, where they had been talking ever since the picnic supper, and were standing with the ladies near the fountain in the front part of the lawn, watching a game of drop-the-handkerchief. The children gave such a wild shout of laughter that Esther didn't catch Mrs. Brown's reply, but it was probably something genteel and witty.

Esther hadn't forgot Pa's warning, given after the Revival Service. Now that the day was so nearly finished and it seemed unlikely that anything could happen, she was more frightened than at any time before. What was waiting there in the hushed night to surprise these revelers in the garden? Was it something that had been waiting in secret for its hour during fourteen years?

Every Fourth of July was an occasion for mixed recollections of joy and sorrow; she always felt pulled apart emotionally before the anniversary day was over. It was both a birthday and a deathday in her life. Always there was a victory to be won over herself. People who had known her joy would have to suffer for it—this she had always known. For greatest bliss, one had to suffer greatest chastisement.

She had known, too, what this chastisement would be, had often found herself thinking about it when darkness would fall on the little towns where the summer evenings died slow, gorgeous deaths.

—I wonder what's happened to the revivalists, Professor Stiles said. What in the world do they do over there? Burn a house down every time they hold a meeting?

Mrs. Brown and Mr. Shawnessy laughed. Esther was surprised, not realizing that the remark was intended to be humorous. Perhaps they
had
been burning something down. She had had for some time a feeling that there was an unusual disturbance in the town. People were perhaps gathering in the darkness, just beyond the palely colored light from the Japanese lanterns.

—Maybe they're coming to run me out of the County again, Professor Stiles said, sniffing. That's a familiar odor. You don't see anyone out there carrying a long, knotty piece of somebody's fence, do you—and a bagful of feathers?

Mr. Shawnessy laughed, but his eyes were puzzled.

About three hundreds yards away in the Main Street of Waycross, bunches of flame began to move, flicker, flare, approach, recede. They were torches. They drew together into a thick cluster. They began to move forward, held aloft in a shapeless mass, yet riding in a fixed relation to each other. They came forward voicelessly, glaring through the spears of the fence. The children stopped playing and listened. There was a noise now of heavy feet trampling on the road coming out of town.

Professor Stiles sniffed.

—Do they do this sort of thing often? Now if they only had a jungle tom-tom or an Indian war-drum and shrieked at the tops of their——

At that moment, the darkness erupted with a shout of voices singing:

—Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. . . .

Involuntarily, the four older people and the many children in the yard drew closer together.

—Well, Mr. Shawnessy said, I must say——

—Glory, Glory, Halleluiah!

Esther's heart beat hard. A feeling of helplessness came over her, as she waited for this impersonal force to unmask itself and reveal its purpose.

Whatever the purpose was, she felt certain now that it was sinister. Feeling lonely and helpless, she walked over to her husband and placed her hand on his arm. Worst of all was the suspense of waiting. If there were only something that she could do to break the spell, some heroic decision that she could repeat, then all might be well. But as it was, she had to stand here, frightened to the foundations of her being by these trampling feet, shouting voices, swung beams of light. She had to go on waiting here in this garden like someone discovered in the commission of a crime, a guilty woman, shrinking from a sword of flame. She had to go on waiting, waiting,

she went hypnotically through the last details of packing her things. She had a trunk to pack and a small suitcase that she intended to carry. Fernie helped her with the packing, sniffling and blowing her nose from time to time. Esther didn't cry at all.

It was a hot day. When she went over to the window to look out, she saw the yard, the spattered barnlot, fields of corn with limp arms. The taut feeling in her stomach went up into her throat.

Pa had gone into Freehaven at nine o'clock in the morning. He had said that he would be back around four in the afternoon with the tickets for their trip. They were going to drive by a roundabout way to Three Mile Junction, where they could take the train without notice and escape detection. Most of the people would be in Freehaven for the Fourth of July Celebration. Once on the train, the whole thing would be out of Esther's hands. She and Pa would go on out West, and she would try to forget Mr. Shawnessy.

Several female relatives were vigilantly supervising the last arrangements. They came around and talked with Esther, telling her how sensible she was to do this thing for her old pa. They hardly let her out of their sight, except when she went upstairs.

As the hours dragged on, she stood for minutes at a time before the window looking at the road and the fields. But nothing happened. The earth gave no sign, except to grow hotter and brighter. She looked out so long that the fields began to have a kind of white radiance. The earth swam in heat, faintly in motion.

She couldn't imagine what was the matter with her. She felt no sorrow, no joy, no languor, no excitement. She had only this taut feeling of waiting.

Nevertheless, she knew that when Pa's buggy appeared on the road from the direction of Freehaven, rolling swiftly up as she had seen it do hundreds of times, the black horse crisply trotting, the wheels blurred with speed, the polished frame bouncing under
Pa's weight, she knew that then she would have a dark moment of farewell, and she didn't really know what she would do at that moment.

But she had made her decision. She had said that she would go. It was Pa's will that she go, and in this crucial hour of her life Pa's will must be her own will. Only thus could she save from death those whom she loved.

She had voluntarily made a solemn promise. Esther couldn't remember ever breaking that kind of promise.

She kept looking at the familiar rooms, and from time to time she went to the window again. This was the house in which she had spent her life. This was the earth where she was born. The things about her now were the oldest things in the world. In the stillness of these ancient things, she moved restlessly. This world, Pa's world, closed in on her, taking added weight from the heat and stillness of the day. She felt that if she stopped moving for a moment, the walls of her self would be crushed, and she would stop breathing.

At three o'clock in the afternoon she went upstairs to dress. The white dress she took down from a closet was one that she had worn nearly a year ago, twice in one memorable week—and not at all since. She had rowed through the hot brilliance of a summer afternoon and had plunged through a swamp to find someone whom now she would perhaps never see again. There were faint green stains in the cloth that no amount of water would wash out.

It was her most beautiful dress, and this was her most significant day.

Slowly she put on the dress at the mirror of what had been her mother's room. Slowly she bound up her dark hair, winding it and pinning it back to show her ears, one of which bore a disfiguring scar in the lobe. She had no ornament on and didn't powder her face, which looked back at her from the mirror familiar-strange—brilliant dark eyes, lips red and smooth, finely formed straight nose, high cheekbones.