Raintree County (55 page)

—Just you fail to do one little thing I ask you, Sarah said.

Then one day at supper table, Pa had called Sarah down for something, and Sarah had talked nasty and said that their father favored Esther and everyone knew it.

—Sarah, don't let me hear you say that again, Pa said, standing up, so that they all shrank in their chairs.

His face was red and his little moist red mouth worked inside his beard. He reached a hand across the table toward Sarah.

—I don't care, Sarah said. I never been whipped in school, and Esther has. She called a girl a nigger, and the teacher whipped her. She made me promise not to tell, but she done it, and he whipped her.

Esther became very still, and her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst.

—Is that true? Pa said.

—Yes, Pa.

—Why did you call the girl a nigger?

—She said we had Injun blood in us, and I called her a nigger.

—Did the teacher whip you for that?

—Yes, Pa. And I promised Sarah I'd do her work for her if she didn't tell. But she told anyhow.

She was crying now, and she thought she had never seen Pa that angry before. He grabbed Sarah and dragged her out of the house and took her to the barn. Esther ran off to the stormgrove and hid, and she could hear Sarah screaming and Pa whipping her. She thought it would surely be her turn next.

Later on, Pa came out and found her there. The sweat stood out on his head, but he didn't seem angry with her.

—You done right to call that girl whatever you wanted, he said.

There ain't any Injun blood in our family. That's a lie. That teacher ain't in the County any more. If he was, I'd tear him limb from limb. Did he hurt you when he whipped you?

—No, it didn't hurt a bit.

—If he had hurt you, I'd of gone to find him no matter where, and I'd of taken the hide off of him with a rawhide whip. Anybody ever goes to whip you or hurt you, you let me know.

—Yes, Pa.

The next day was the Fourth, and Pa took her to Freehaven with him, just the two. It was the first time she ever remembered being at the County Seat. She was dressed in her Sunday best, and Pa had on his black suit and looked very fine and terrible and strong. He only cursed a little bit driving the horse into town and seemed to be in a good mood.

In town, it was a big day. Everybody talked about there being a battle in a place called Pennsylvania. Esther walked all around the town with Pa. It was fun to see their faces in the windows of the big stores on the south side of the Square. There were orations and fireworks, and Pa took her around to see everything.

In the evening, Pa put her in the buggy and told her to wait for him. She must have gone to sleep, and when she woke up, there were a lot of people running past the buggy and yelling fire. She got out to see, and there was a big house close to the Square—it was on fire, burning like a tall torch in the night. Pa came and found her and took her hand and led her down to where they could watch the fire. People said that a woman and a little boy had got burnt in the fire.

On the way home, Pa told her never to play with fire, or she might get burnt like the little boy in the house at the County Seat. She felt awfully sorry about the fire, but it had been a wonderful, exciting day, the town was so full of new strange faces and beautiful women in long dresses and handsome men, some of them almost as big and strong as Pa. She went to sleep wondering how they would ever bury the little boy if he was burnt completely up, and

HOW HE COULD GO TO HEAVEN AND GOD HAVE HIM,
IF HE HADN'T
ANY

—B
ODY
and soul, the Woman was made out of Man. Body and soul the Woman belongs to Man. God made her to be Man's partner and helpmeet, and o, sisters of the congregation, how woefully she betrayed His trust!

Preacher Jarvey shook his shaggy head and bent his brows sternly against the good ladies of Raintree County, who made up the major part of his audience.

—Now, let us consider this Woman. In makin' her, God put a new thing into creation. He made a frail defect. He did it with a purpose because the Lord God Jehovah does everything with a purpose. He made it to try the Man, to test him. And o, brothers of the congregation, how woefully Man betrayed his Maker's trust!

But I am gettin' ahead of my story. Now then, after the Lord made Woman, she wanders alone in the garden. The shinin' of the sun of that eternal summer, which is the only season of Paradise, shows her body to be without all habiliment or shameful adornment. Sisters of the congregation, she had no other garment than her innocence. God gave it to her, and she needed no other.

The good ladies of Raintree County shifted uneasily in their bustles and great skirts. They patted their flouncy hats and poked at their twisted hair. Preacher Jarvey's savage eyes glared displeasure on their finery. Then his eyes became remote. He departed upon a point of pedantry.

—Some depict the Mother of the Race as wearin' a figleaf before the Fall. Fellow Christians, this belief is in error. Hit is against Holy Writ. The Book tells us that she was nekkid, and nekkid she was.

Behold her then, the first Woman, cowerin' in the dust before her Father and her God. In that first blindin' moment of existence, she recognizes on bended knee the majesty and godhead of her Maker.

Esther followed a buggy with her eyes as it approached from the direction of Moreland. It was not Pa's buggy.

—Yes, the Woman knew her Father before she knew her Husband. Then the old story tells us that havin' made the Woman, the
Lord brought her unto the Man. O, sweet encounter! Brothers and sisters of the congregation, hit is the dawn of love before Man knew Woman in carnal pastime. They reach out their arms to each other, not knowin' that they are the parents of mankind but only knowin' that the loneliness of the garden has been overcome. Behold them standin' in

in warmth as she waited in the yard of the Stony Creek School on the last day of the school year. Esther had a gone feeling inside, and her heart went at times like a bird jumping in a cage. Perhaps she could be the first to reach Mr. Shawnessy when he appeared on the path through the woods. Many of the girls were inside the schoolhouse arranging their books and things because it was the last day of school.

She hated the older girls who could run faster than she. The one who reached Mr. Shawnessy first got a kiss and could walk along and hold his hand all the way to the schoolhouse. Usually it was one of the bigger girls, though it was understood that the very biggest girls didn't play the game. Not that they didn't want to.

She was afraid that some of the girls would notice her hanging on the bars and see how limp and funny she looked. It seemed to her, though, that if she didn't get to Mr. Shawnessy first today she would never get over the gone feeling she had inside. It was the last day of school, and she wouldn't see him again all summer.

Then when no one was watching, she did something that she had thought about before but had never dared to do. She slipped through the bars and started down the path, intending to lie out along the way and watch for him. That way she would get a head start. Once away, she didn't look back, but her breast was crazy with excitement, and she felt as though she would die if one of the girls yelled out,

—Look at Esther! She's gittin' a head start!

Then she was out of sight past some bushes, and no one had seen her.

She walked down the path in the woods. Just beyond the woods on her right she could see a field set in early wheat. The earth was soft from the recent rains, and the air was full of earth odor, the
smell of flowers and damp wood. Violets and spring beauties were thick beside the path. She walked very slowly, hidden from all sign of human habitation, from all looking of human eyes.

She walked for about two minutes until she could see the stile across a railfence. Then she sat down in a bank of grass, half hidden behind a fallen log. Sunlight filtering through leaves made warm splotches on her body.

It was warm in the sunlight. The green grass of Raintree County was rushing up around her, a dense hair growing. The precise faces of flowers were close to her face. Shiny insect forms, looking impossibly clean and perfect, were in the thick growing of the green world around her.

The sunlight drenched her naked legs with warmth. She was all alone in the woods beside the little path. She was all alone and waiting in the green murmurous garden of Raintree County, a small girl, nine years old, weak with love and waiting.

Even now she could not banish a fear from her breast—the fear that some of the other girls would notice her absence and come down the path looking for her.

Here when she was lying with the soft hair of the earth brushing against her legs and face, the world was an easy thing to understand. God had made the earth, and he had made Raintree County as a place apart. And he had placed in it the wisest and tenderest of his creatures, Mr. Shawnessy. He had put Esther Root here too, and surely he meant that she should be happy in this beautiful place.

There had been a while months ago when she didn't know whether she ought to like Mr. Shawnessy. That was early in the year when she had first heard people say he was an atheist. An atheist was a person who did not believe in God. It was the greatest of all crimes not to Believe. She, Esther Root, had never for one single moment doubted or disbelieved in God. She was afraid to think what God would do to her if even for one little moment she were able to Disbelieve.

But it was plain to her very soon that Mr. Shawnessy wasn't an atheist or anything else bad. In fact, he seemed to her the kindest and best man she had ever seen in her life. She had known only a few men, and none of them were like Mr. Shawnessy. Her other teachers had been stiff, ugly men whom she feared and secretly
hated. Mr. Shawnessy, who knew many times more than they did, was never loud or stern or overbearing.

She could remember a thousand things from those few months, which seemed as much as all the years of her life before. Always before, she had been happy when summer came. Now it hurt even to think that there would be no more school for months.

School was Mr. Shawnessy coming along the path in the morning. It was the fierce rush of the small girls to reach him and hold his hands. It was all of them laughing and leaping around him as they went into the schoolhouse door.

School was Mr. Shawnessy telling a story during the Opening Exercises. He told the most thrilling stories, some of them being continued from day to day for weeks. One story that he told during the year was about the War and how a young soldier fought through the Southland and helped emancipate the black people and saw Lincoln's assassination. It taught them more about the War than any history book, and Mr. Shawnessy said it was a true story, too, about a person he had known.

Mr. Shawnessy had also been in the Civil War. He had come back from the War in 1865, just the summer before the school year opened. People said he had been sick and wounded and had fought in Sherman's Army, but he never said anything about his own part in the War. Yet he must have been in some of the great battles and seen men killed, and maybe that was why he so often had the sad look that was in his eyes when he wasn't smiling.

Or maybe he was sad because of that other thing that people said about him. He had been married, and there had been a terrible tragedy, and now he lived alone.

It was very sad and sweet to think of Mr. Shawnessy living alone. Esther would have been only too happy to live with him and help look after him. She could have done the cooking and the housework and everything that would make him comfortable. She could be as good as a wife to him any day. Always she thought of Mr. Shawnessy alone in Raintree County, walking about on lonely roads and streets, remembering the War and his tragic married life, and no one to love him and care for him.

School was also Mr. Shawnessy telling a funny story. At such times, his long blue eyes would light up and flash, his face would become
really handsome with his longmouthed, shy grin, he would make people come alive with the way he talked, and the children would just split with laughter. There wasn't a boy or girl in the school who wouldn't have gone to the stake for Mr. Shawnessy. Anyway, she, Esther, would have gone to the stake and gladly, and they could have tortured her with whips and put burning splinters in her skin. She would have saved him as Pocahontas did John Smith, putting her own neck in the way of the axe.

Those days, her life had got divided into two worlds. There was her family and Pa, and there was the school and Mr. Shawnessy. She was going to have to give one world up for a summer.

None of the other girls were coming along the path after all. She was lying here limpsy and weak in the mild air, and all of Raintree County was a blurred, beautiful garden in the spring with good things growing, and in this place there were only two people who mattered, Mr. Shawnessy and Esther Root.

Then a new fear came. Suppose that for the first time all year Mr. Shawnessy didn't come down his accustomed path. After all it was a special day, the last day, and it must be getting a little late now. Suppose he were to come another way.

She sprang to her feet and looked wildly up and down the path. Perhaps school had begun, and she had failed to hear the bell. Sarah would tell on her at home, they would ask her why she was late, and because she wouldn't dare tell the real reason, Pa would whip her.

Just then, she saw Mr. Shawnessy. He was still a long way off coming along the railfence on the far side, approaching the stile. He had his coat over his arm and was chewing a grass stem. Crossing the stile, he stopped and looked back at the field that he was about to leave.

Esther began to run down the path, afraid now that some of the other girls would come at the last moment and, racing past her, would get to Mr. Shawnessy first. She ran wildly through the woods, teeth clenched, eyes shining, pigtails flying around her shoulders.