Raintree County (51 page)

So they all sat and waited with Johnny for the entrance of the bride-to-be, albeit in this instance the County didn't look with entire favor on the proceedings because the bride was an out-of-county girl. The nuptial embrace, in which the whole congregation was assisting in fancy, was not quite so intimately communal as if it had been Nell Gaither or someone like that. Besides there was a rumor that the ceremony wasn't the only part of the marital adventure which the lovers had rehearsed in advance.

The organ went on wailing and squeeching, and Garwood and Johnny began to shift from foot to foot.

—Goddammit, Garwood said under his breath, what's keeping her?

Just then there was a disturbance in the crowded entryway. The organist took a quick look and plowed through a series of painful discords into the opening strains of the wedding march. The congregation unashamedly craned heads around and stretched necks to see.

A gasp went through the crowded little church of Danwebster.

Susanna was coming through the back door and down the aisle. Her glistening coarse black hair fell in waves down her back. But the real sensation was her dress. The skirt was enormously emphasized, a circular bell of cloth and froth, whitely wound on bone and wire. Out of this shot cleanly the supple stalk of Susanna's waist, sheathed in white satin that flowed plastically on the lithe contours of her flesh, just catching the soft points of her shoulders and barely containing the abundance of her nodding breasts. Exposed for all to see was a faint scar extending from her throat in a curious curve to the left breast.

—Dearly beloved,
T. D. said in a far, foggy voice, smiling sweetly and rocking so far back on his heels that Johnny was afraid he would fall down,
we are gathered together . . .

ON THE SCAFFOLD

(Epic Fragment from the
Free Enquirer
)

The condemned man mounted the scaffold with little assistance from his attendants. He did not make any speech. He did not delay his executioners. But the swinging off was unaccountably delayed for many minutes while troops of the Virginia militia paraded ostentatiously
in the open space before the scaffold. During this time Brown maintained a stoical calm. Then the deathcap was fitted over his head, and the rope was placed around his neck. He stood on the greased trap. His time had come. The State of Virginia was about to close its case against John Brown. A man stood with hatchet raised ready to cut . . .

—That cord ought to hold good, Grampa Peters said. Your patied it good.

Standing inside the churchdoor with Susanna, Johnny stuck his finger into his high collar, which was much too tight. While he shook hands with Grampa Peters, Garwood Jones, heading a line of grinning young men, kissed the bride with prolonged zest. As the other young men came off the kissing line, Garwood gave each one a snort from his bottle, meanwhile shouting exhortation and encouragement.

—Get a good long one, Bob. John won't mind.

—Don't let go yet, Ezry. There's plenty more where that came from.

—O.K., Slim, that's enough. After all, you're not her uncle.

Garwood went around and got another kiss on the strength of his avuncular relationship.

—After all, I am the best man, he said, and everyone applauded and laughed because everyone in Raintree County considered Garwood Jones a wonderful guy.

There was a big dinner afterwards at the Shawnessy home for relatives and friends. The bride and groom were given seats of honor where they sat blushing in bridal costume and hardly eating. Around them, a great many hungry people gobbled the fat of the County—huge plates of fried chicken, platters full of steaming mashed potatoes, gobs of butter, pots of greasy vegetables, slabs of pie. Johnny had never seen so much eating before except at funerals. Dozens of people he had never met or only vaguely remembered came up, wrung his hand, hit him on the back, claimed relationship with him, and introduced squads of frecklefaced, mat-haired children, as if to impress him with the implications of the thing that he had done. In this wreak and wrangle of faces, voices, laughter, food, handshaking, backslapping, kissing, crying, and singing, Johnny felt that he and
his bride were in danger of being swamped. It seemed he had not simply married an alien girl with black hair and a scar on her breast, but the whole of Raintree County.

Confusion, noise, and excitement increased as the time neared for the goingaway.

Susanna ran up a stair and turning threw her bridal bouquet to a crowd of girls, who fell upon it shrieking and clawing. The bouquet burst and flowers scattered everywhere. Girls ran screaming after the fragments, like hens pecking at corn.

Johnny waited downstairs with Zeke, who was in charge of getting the married couple safely onto the train.

—Now don't worry, John, Zeke said. I got an extra buggy hid out in the barn and all ready to drive off. They think we're goin' in the family buggy, but we're goin' to fool 'em.

Zeke looked worried when he said it. Garwood Jones, Cash Carney, and some of the other boys were reported to be drinking heavily and hadn't been seen for an hour. After a while, Zeke said he would slip out to the barn and guard the buggy himself. He left and didn't come back.

Johnny couldn't imagine how he and Susanna were going to get away from the house. Rooms and doors were packed with people. Dozens of buggies stood in the lane and along the road. The yard was jammed.

After a while, he was called upstairs, where he found Susanna and his mother and sisters. Susanna was in a dark goingaway dress, trimmed with red velvet. She gave Johnny's hand a quick squeeze, but otherwise they had been like strangers to each other ever since the ceremony had begun.

When the time came to run downstairs and out of the house together, Zeke was nowhere to be found. Johnny and Susanna ran down the stair anyway. People flung rice at them as they went through the door. Faces rushed at them shouting. Someone tripped Johnny so that he fell headlong, scuffing his knee. A lot of half-grown boys stung him with handfuls of rice and wheat while he was down. He got up laughing, and he and Susanna ran back toward the barn pursued by a screaming pack. In the barn they found the buggy, but no sign of Zeke. Garwood Jones and some of the boys stood there grinning.

—We've been guarding it for you, John, Garwood said.

The buggy was covered with signs, most of which betrayed Garwood's pungent muse. Cleverest was one that read:

O, my banjo! do not cry for me.

I'se gwine to Louisiana with Susanna on my knee.

Johnny and Susanna started to climb into the buggy, but there was a great dungy pig sitting in it. Johnny gave the pig a kick, and half a dozen chickens flew out of a box on the buggyfloor, squawking and flinging feathers. A big frenzied hen flew into Johnny's face. Waves of bellylaughter came from Garwood and the others, who stood around the buggy in a cordon preventing anyone from helping the groom.

—Where's Zeke? Johnny said.

—He went fer a walk, someone said.

There were stifled sounds from a back stall, where three young toughs were sitting on Zeke and trying to hold him down.

—Let him up, Johnny pleaded. He's got to drive us to the station.

Someone shoved Johnny from behind and threw him to the floor.

—Come on, boys, pile on sacks! yelled a big lout whom Johnny had never seen before.

Johnny struggled to his feet and knocked his assailant down. Another strange person jumped off a stall onto his shoulders and rode him down again. Two others jumped on, and the boy he knocked down got up rubbing his jaw and snarling,

—Let's throw him in the horse trough, boys.

—Who are these guys? Johnny yelled to Garwood, who was leaning on the stall looking in, cigar in mouth, grinning broadly.

—Just some boys—puff, puff—from the Clay Crick neighborhood, Garwood said, shaking out the match.

Johnny struggled wildly on the ground while drunken bodies wallowed on him, kicking, squeezing, gouging, butting. He felt as if his very life was in danger. Everyone, even his friends, wanted to inflict injury on him. Apparently the marriage ceremony wasn't over until the blood sacrifice and the dionysiac frenzy.

Into this wallowing sty of male bodies flew a wildcat fury, snarling and clawing. It was Susanna. She tore one boy's cheek open and bit another in the thumb till he screamed. Ellen Shawnessy
appeared and shamed the roisterers. Johnny's other brothers pitched in, and Zeke got loose and knocked out one of the boys who had been holding him. The boys from the Clay Crick neighborhood were routed.

Johnny stood on the side of the buggy and kicked the pig out. He was almost crying with anger and indignation. Susanna was sobbing as he pulled her up beside him.

—Gangway, he yelled, whipping the horse.

The buggy lunged forward, and a wheel rolled off. The horse began to buck and plunge, and for a moment it looked as though he might run away with the crippled buggy. While Johnny was fighting with the reins and the rearing beast in the middle of a big crowd, Garwood and others who had assisted in unbolting the wheel stood around hitting their knees and holding their bellies. After quieting the horse, Johnny got into the Shawnessy buggy, but wasn't permitted to start until strings of old shoes and assorted junk had been tied on behind. Zeke took the reins for the drive into Freehaven to catch the train. Johnny had a last glimpse of his mother waving with one hand and holding a handkerchief to her face with the other, and then the buggy rolled out and down the road.

A dozen other buggies full of shrieking young people set out in hot pursuit. Garwood Jones overtook the bridal buggy and driving alongside tried to force it off the road. Everyone shrieked and laughed as if unaware that lives were in danger. Johnny could see Garwood's flushed, healthy face, eyes gleaming savagely, as his buggy kept drawing abreast, its wheels locking and catching on the bridal buggy's. Finally Zeke reached out and lashed Garwood's horses, and Garwood's buggy nearly upset. Someone fell out of the buggy and lay in a ditch screaming, but Garwood didn't bother to stop. The whole procession roared into Freehaven and went once around the Court House Square, while a crowd of glum citizens looked on in disgust.

Reaching the station, Johnny began to feel as though he and his bride were not meant to go away together. There seemed no limit to the cruelty of this frenzied mob. But the train was waiting, and he and Susanna grabbed their suitcases and ran toward a coach, with the crowd following. As Johnny handed his wife up, something hit him a blow on the side of the head and nearly knocked him down,
bringing tears to his eyes. It was a big old dirty boot. He smiled, pretending not to be hurt, threw a kiss in the general direction of the crowd, and was knocked through the coach door by a shower of shoes. A glass shattered, and an angry conductor had him by the collar, saying,

—Someone will have to pay for this.

—It's all right, Johnny said, I'll pay.

He gave someone a dollar, and someone told him that it was too much.

—Have fun with those hundred and fifteen dolls, John! Garwood yelled as the train got up steam.

—Hundred and sixteen now, Uncle, Johnny said, grimly.

—Counting you, sprout? Garwood yelled.

The train began to pull out, and even now as it ran slowly parallel to the road trying to get up steam, the buggies followed, while two rough characters amused themselves by aiming rifles at the train windows and raising the guns slightly just as they fired. Several of the passengers lay on the floor of the cars, and the conductor pulled out a pistol and threatened to fire back.

After a while, the train veered away from the road, and the buggies all stopped, and the occupants sat waving and laughing in wonderful spirits, while the two roughs fired several parting salutes.

Even when the buggies were lost to view, Johnny couldn't recover from the feeling that he and Susanna hadn't yet got off safe. He kept expecting some last, most fiendish trick of all to catch them, perhaps just at the border of the County. But they made the change at Beardstown without molestation. A few minutes later they were crossing the western border of the County, and turning then to Susanna, he said,

—Well, honey, I guess we're safe.

As he put his arm around her, he felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life before.

It was a significant moment for Johnny Shawnessy when late that night he and his bride crossed the Ohio River at Louisville. The broad water shimmered from lights on either bank as the wallowing ferryboat brought them slowly to the southern shore, which was lined dense with shacks in which the black people lived. He turned to the girl beside him. She was looking out of the window at a steamboat
swimming on a wash of yellow light. He studied the proud silhouette of her face and shoulders against the window. She was like these rivers and this earth—proud and scarred and beautiful and strange.

—You're South, she said, turning toward him, impulsively. You'll
love
it, honey.

They were very tired when they reached the hotel in downtown Louisville where they had reservations. Johnny felt pensive and uprooted. Alone in a room on the second floor, they opened their hand luggage and were surprised to find a variety of things that they hadn't packed themselves. There were two dolls, a boy doll and a girl doll, with their arms tied around each other and a paper pinned on inscribed with a poem in Garwood's hand. Johnny started to read it aloud:

—Then, where is Seth, ye rocks and streamlets, say,

For whose sweet note Aurora erst did long?

He doth disport him with a lovelier lay,

And ringeth in the day with merry—

—Aren't they cute! Susanna said, holding up the dolls. Isn't that just like Uncle Garwood!

A bottle of applejack brandy had a note appended,

Remember the hard cider. Ha, Ha.
      C
ASH
C
ARNEY

—Ha, Ha, Johnny said.