Raintree County (31 page)

At the Academy, Nell had turned up in Garwood's buggy, wearing her green dress, her gold hair pulled back to show her ears under a wide white sunbonnet. Stepping down from the buggy, she had fluttered her hand at Johnny, and a smile touched the corners of her mouth, this mouth with the pointed red tongue, so fullflown and sensual and, alas! so often kissed—but never by Johnny Shawnessy.

—Hello, Johnny, it said, lingering on the word. It's hot, isn't it?

This remark seemed to Johnny somehow the most exciting and subtly meaningful thing he had ever heard.

But Nell's eyes gave no special sign. Johnny felt a cold and not wholly irrational fear. Girls were mawkish sentimentalists and would write almost anything in a keepsake book.

On the way over to Danwebster, where picnic tables had been set out beside the mill, everyone laughed and sang. The Perfessor was full of quips and quotations. Johnny Shawnessy kept leaning out of the Reverend's buggy and yelling things ar the Garwood Jones buggy. Each time he did so, Garwood solemnly thumbed his nose, and Nell stuck out her tongue in a very ladylike manner. Johnny deliberately fell out of the Reverend's buggy once and raced the horse for a hundred yards to loud applause.

When they reached the bank of the river, they put their picnic baskets on the tables and engaged in a new sport that the Perfessor had introduced into Raintree County.

THE BASE BALL GAME
(Epic Fragment from the
Free Enquirer
)

Arriving on the banks of the legendary Shawmucky, the young men promptly divested themselves of their coats and laying out a ‘base ball diamond' proceeded to urge the sportive ball hither and thither in the somewhat complicated evolutions of this new game only recently imported by Professor Stiles from the East into Raintree County. Cassius
Carney demonstrated a baffling speed and precision in the exacting art of wafting the ethereal sphere across the spot denominated ‘home plate.' Professor Stiles showed extraordinary agility in snatching the bounding pellet off the ground or stopping it in mid-air, whenas with one graceful sweep of his arm he would propel it to the appropriate spot on the ‘diamond.' John Shawnessy, he of the limber legspring, shot around the ‘bases' like a comet whenever he got a chance, which, be it remarked in passing, was not often, as he showed a marked inability to engender that contact between bat and ball which is necessary for a ‘hit.' The game was marred by a few altercations, at the bottom of which one could invariably expect to find that rising young politician, Garwood Jones, whose ignorance of the rules and regulations of ‘base ball' did not in the least diminish his readiness to argue about every moot point.

The final score could not be exactly ascertained for a variety of reasons, especially as the rules were scandalously relaxed from time to time in favor of several young ladies who were invited to play in order to make up two ‘teams.' It is believed that about thirty or forty legal ‘runs' were scored by each side.

One amusing mishap involved the person of the aforesaid Mr. Jones, who mistook for ‘second base' a certain circular adornment that is oftentimes found in places where members of the bovine species ruminate.

After the game of ‘base ball' had terminated, several of the young gentlemen were pitted against each other in a test of fleetness of foot. In all these encounters, John Wickliff Shawnessy, that poetic young denizen of the Upper Shawmucky, dismounted from Pegasus long enough to demonstrate to the assembled company a velocity of pedal locomotion not seen in these parts for many a moon. This young man is being groomed by his supporters as a challenger to the honors now so long held by Orville Perkins of Freehaven, better known as ‘Flash,' who has been undisputed champion of the County for five years. When asked by your correspondent whether or not he thought he could obtain the victory over the redoubtable Mr. Perkins in the Annual Fourth of July Race in Freehaven, our modest young hero said without a moment's hesitation, ‘Shucks, it won't hurt to try. Someone ought to beat that old guy before he trips on his beard.'

Personally, we should like to see the veteran velocipede from Freehaven match his stuff against this brash beanpole from the banks of the Shawmucky. Five dollars will get you one of ours that youth will not be denied and that Mr. Perkins' venerable years (he is now, we
understand, a senile twenty-two), if not the fleetness of his challengers, will at last get the better of him.

But now we approach that part of our recital from which the Muse shrinks in trembling anticipation. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon that . . .

It had been Johnny Shawnessy's idea that the picnic include a boating excursion down the Shawmucky River. A half dozen rowboats had been procured and rowed laboriously up the river from Danwebster the day before by Johnny and others to a spot where the river looped behind the Gaither Farm. Here the picnickers could break up into twosomes and row the loops of the river back to the picnic ground at Danwebster, arriving in time for supper and a bonfire before breaking up and going home.

On the mile walk over to the river, the girls collected around Professor Stiles, who led the way, while the young men brought up the rear, falling farther and farther back. Near the river Garwood Jones pulled out a bottle of corn whiskey and passed it around. Everyone took a drink but Johnny. Garwood stopped, passed out cigars, and told a hearty joke, while Johnny lingered uneasily, watching the Perfessor and the girls climbing into boats at the water's edge. Nell hadn't yet entered a boat but stood as if waiting for someone. She shaded her eyes and, as it seemed to Johnny, looked directly at him. She slowly raised her hand and gently beckoned.

While Garwood roared loudly at his own good joke, Johnny began to run. When he reached Nell, he took her hand, which he hadn't held since they were children, and together they stepped into a boat.

—Hey! Garwood yelled. What's the big idea?

He was standing on the bank now, feet wide apart, hands on hips, staring at Nell. Nell bit her lip in confusion and turned her head away. As for Johnny, he stood up, planted the oarblade in the bank squarely between Garwood's legs and with one shove sent the boat skimming to the middle of the river.

ROWING DOWN THE RIVER
(Epic Fragment from the
Free Enquirer
)

Their boats dispread upon the river were like swans on classic waters. With a languorous lifting and falling of oarblades, the gala procession floated on the widening stream. In romantic twosomes,
they lingered on between green walls. Did they stop to think, in the midst of their gaiety and laughter, that they were passing burial places and battlegrounds of vanished peoples? Did they think that the winding river was the highway of extinct races, whose skimming light canoes did cleave the same waters in centuries long ago? Did these maidens in wide bonnets, these lads in straw skimmers and bowties, dream of aught but innocent love and beauty and desire as they drifted on languid oars down waters of youth and summertime! Ah! let us behold them this brief while, floating on the classic river of Raintree County, with all their gushing joys in their bloom. . . .

Johnny dug the water with slow oars. On the breast of the slow-flooding river, he was floating with Nell Gaither, who sat in the stern of the boat, her feet together, her hands on the sides of the boat, her wide bonnet buckling with the breeze that freshened fitfully along the river. Languor and desire flowed from the fullbodied river. Looking past Nell, Johnny could see the broad road of water curving distantly in the haze of afternoon. The air was moist with the odor of the river and its flowers. Nell Gaither's body in the green dress was curved like the river; her face in the bonnet was an incredible, lush flower swaying on a supple stem. Her eyes glowed with a curious light in the brightness of the river air. Turning now and then, Johnny saw the other boats spread out upon the water. In the farthest boat Professor Stiles, paired with Lydia Gray, rowed fiercely toward the bend.

Garwood Jones and Cash Carney, forced by the shortage of women to row down the river together, hung around Johnny's boat. Just opposite the place where Johnny had seen Nell in the river, his boat grounded on a mudbar. Everyone else had missed it by yards, but Johnny, who knew that part of the river by heart, drove straight onto it. Garwood, slightly ahead, laughed grimly and stood up in his boat.

—You'll have to push off, John. Need any help?

—I can manage, Garwood. Thanks.

—Be glad to help, Garwood said grimly.

—No, thanks. I can manage.

Johnny, looking over his shoulder, watched the last boat coasting toward the bend. He and Nell were alone on a mudbar in the middle of the Shawmucky.

Eyes thoughtful, Nell sat with her feet primly together. She reached up often to push a wisp of hair off her forehead, and sometimes she trailed her hand in the river.

—This boat is here to stay, Johnny said, until we push it off. I drove it on hard.

Nell laughed.

—You sure did, Johnny, she said. I thought you knew the river.

—I do.

—O.

—You in any hurry to get to Danwebster? Johnny said.

—Not a bit. This is nicer right here.

Johnny raised the oars and laid them up along the sides of the boat. Nell put her hand on the left oar, still dripping from the river.

—I feel so funny, she said, and the sun's so bright.

She ran her fingers along the thin blade of the oar.

—Remember the line from the Final Examination? she said. I don't know why I thought of it.

She took off her wide bonnet and shook her hair. Her eyes were nearly shut in the brilliant sunlight. Johnny watched her mouth as she recited in a low voice, rhythmical and pensive:

—Oft was I weary when I toiled with thee.
I wonder where the Perfessor got it?

—Probably he made it up, Johnny said.

—Oft was I weary when I toiled with thee,
Nell said. I wonder what it means. It sounds so—so pagan.

She kept running her hand along the smooth oarblade and trailing her other hand in the river.

—Is it wrong to be pagan, Johnny?

—I hope not, Johnny said.

—Oft was I weary when I toiled with thee,
Nell said.

Her large, lovely mouth moulding and murmuring these words was itself a legend, a series of plastic attitudes. What she said no longer seemed important. But this flowerlike mouth, against which he wished to press his own mouth with undissuadable hunger, seemed important.

—I feel so strange. Johnny, did you ever see the river so beautiful?

The air seemed filled with a mist, through which nevertheless all things were seen with peculiar distinctness. Johnny Shawnessy felt islanded in languor, as the river flooded past on its journey to the lake. Somewhere far down on the greenwalled waters, boats were floating in a gay procession. He could hardly open his eyes against the greening brightness. He was tired with rowing on the river. He had dipped white oars a long time in the pale stream of the river.

—My hair keeps falling down, Nell said, pushing it back. Did you mean to sit here a long time?

—We might go ashore, Johnny said.

—We'll have to wade, Nell said. But I don't mind. I feel so funny, Johnny.

They took off their shoes and stockings and left them, along with Nell's bonnet, in the boat. They stepped out into shallow water close to the right bank of the river and made for shore, where they sat for a while on the bank under Johnny's oak, their feet trailing in the water. They talked in half sentences about the picnic and graduation. The afternoon ebbed and flooded around them in waves of warmth and stridulous sound. The murmur of the river was constant on its shoals and among its rushes.

It was Nell who suggested that they walk over and see the Indian mounds.

—I've never really gone up on them, she said. I guess they're so close to our own land that they never interested me.

—The two on the river here, I've seen often, Johnny said. And there's another, isn't there, across the field there?

SCENIC VIEWS ALONG THE SHAWMUCKY
(Epic Fragment from the
Free Enquirer
)

The banks of our own not unclassic river vie with any in the world for scenes of historic and poetic charm. To those who celebrate the Tiber, the Euphrates, and the Nile, we say: When Rome first rose in templed splendor on her many hills, this river ran as now upon her centuried pathway to the lake, part of a mighty system of waters going to the gulf. Before the Parthenon was, this river was. When Babylon rose and fell, this river was. Its shores were dense in summer with crowding vegetation. Green frogs and greatwinged birds, more ancient structures than Egyptian columns, peopled its water and the circumambient air. What is older than the antiquity of life itself? We
know not what ancient empires rose and flourished on these banks, or how often the syllables of lovers mingled with the vocal passion of the river running in the shallows. This river, too, has its human shards, and we dare to suggest that the true archaeologist of beauty will feel a deep, peculiar charm when he beholds the twin mounds upon the river's banks, lonely undulations, mysterious hummocks, sole relics of races that flowered and faded on the Shawmucky without a Bible or an epic poet to keep their names alive. . . .

Barefoot, they walked downstream to the twin mounds. The mounds were fifty feet apart and almost perfectly round—smooth humps fifty feet in diameter and ten feet high.

—Think how long these have been here! Nell said. Hundreds of years maybe.

A curious light hid living in her narrowed eyes. Pinpoint pupils burned in green pools, fringed by her lashes, each lash shiny and distinct. Scrambling up the slope of the mound, Johnny took her hand. It was warm and responsive. The odor of her hair and skin was in his nostrils.

Thick grass covered the mounds. The dirt on top was brown and looked somehow old and pulverized. As they stood on top of the left mound, Johnny had a feeling that it was slightly resilient, as if roofed. The ticklegrassed earth was warm to the palms of his feet. He watched the river, a shining sheet of greenness.