The Devil's Dream (9 page)

I can't say that I was surprised when I come riding around the bend there where that little old falling-down cabin is, that used to belong to the widder woman, and seed the gray horse and the little white pony hitched up in front of it. I got off my horse and tethered her back there in the woods and then walked kindly tippytoe over to the cabin, but I need not have gone to the trouble. For they were making the shamefullest, awfullest racket you ever heerd in there, laughing and giggling and moaning and crying out, and then he'd be breathing and groaning at the same time, and then he hollered out, and then she did.

School, my foot!

You had better believe I told our daddy what was going on in that cabin!

So he was waiting on the front porch that afternoon when Nonnie came riding home on her little pony. He did not let on, though.

“Evening, honey,” Daddy says.

“Evening, Daddy,” says Nonnie, as sweet as ever you please.

“How was school?” Daddy axed, and Nonnie said, “Fine, sir,” and when he axed her what did they do today, why she commenced upon some big lie about geography, but before she got halfway done with it Daddy had struck her on the shoulder with his riding crop and knocked her on the ground, and then he beat her acrost the back with it until she cried for mercy with her hands before her face. I did not lift a finger to help her neither, for she deserved it. Nor did I comfort Nonnie when she lay crying in the bed, not until way up in the night when finely I brung her some tea and some biscuit. Which she did not touch, hateful as ever.

And in the morning she was gone.

She had lit out in the dead of night on her pony, gone down to find her Melungeon at Missus Rice's boardinghouse, where he stayed, and I couldn't tell you what passed betwixt the two of them when she got there, but the next day he was up and gone before daybreak, alone. And then what did that silly Nonnie do? Why, she locked herself up in Jake Toney's room all broken-hearted, wouldn't come out for nothing. Missus Rice had to send up to the house for me to come and get her.

Jake Toney left owing money all over town, as it turned out, one jump ahead of the law. He owed a lot of people due to the poker game he had been running regular in the back of the livery stable. Missus Rice was fit to be tied, as he left owing her considerable, also old Baldy McClain that ran the livery stable and was supposed to have gotten a cut on the game.

They
all
liked to have died when they found out that Jake Toney was a Melungeon to boot, which I told Missus Rice first thing when I went down there to get Nonnie. Missus Rice's jaw dropped down about a foot. The news was all over town inside of a hour.

As for our Nonnie, she was mighty pale and mighty quiet, riding home. For once she had nothing to say. She was not a bit like herself after that, and would not go back to school for love nor money, but stayed at home not doing a thing but crying and looking out at the mountains from time to time. This liked to have killed Daddy, for deep down in secret, he is real softhearted. He brung Nonnie everything he could think of to cheer her up, including a silver hairbrush and a silk scarf.

“Iffen I was to go off in the bushes with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that come along,” I axed Daddy, “do ye reckon I could get me one of them scarves?”

Whereupon Nonnie turned right around and gave it to me, of all things. I was not too proud to take it neither. In fact I felt gratified to take it, after all the trouble she had put me to. For Nonnie owed me, and that's a fact.

Well, we never seed hide nor hair of the Melungeon again, but Nonnie continued grieving him for weeks on end, and laying up in the bed all day long doing it. Then one day I looked at her good, and all of a sudden it come to me that she was going to have a baby.

“No I ain't,” she lied to Daddy, flashing her eyes, but we sent for Granny Horn, who found out the truth of it soon enough.

And then here comes Preacher Cisco Estep, hat in hand, a-knocking on the door.

“I'll tell you what's the truth,” he said to Daddy, when the two of them had set down. “I would send her off someplace if hit was me.”

“But whar'd she go? She belongs here,” Daddy said real pitiful. His eyes was all red from crying and staying up late.

“Well now, Claude, think about it,” Preacher Estep said. “If she tried to come to meeting in her condition and unwed, I'd be forced to church her, as ye know. And around here, everybody knows who she is and what she done, and won't nobody take a Melungeon's leavings around here neither, not to mention the child. This is the long and short of it,” Preacher Estep said. “But if she was to go somewheres else, say, she might have a chance for a new life. In fact,” Preacher Estep said real forceful, “in fact, Claude, I have got a proposition for you.” Preacher Estep took out a handkerchief and wiped at his big red fleshy nose, that looks like a sweet tater.

“Well, what is it?” Daddy said without no hope.

“Well, they is a man I heerd about at the past Association meeting that needs a wife the worst in the world,” Preacher Estep said. “He is in a fair way to come into quite a parcel of land over at Grassy Branch, what is now Preacher Stump's place, but he don't have no wife, nor no children to work it. He is a elder in the Chicken Rise church too. So Preacher Stump has let it out to all and evry that he hisself ain't long fer this world, and he would like to see this feller settled down regular on his land. Hit's a nice piece of land,” Preacher Estep said, “and I don't believe this feller is too particular neither.”

Daddy looked at him. You could tell he was considering it.

“I wouldn't see no reason to mention the Melungeon,” Preacher Estep said.

“Done,” Daddy said.

And so this is how Nonnie come out smelling like a rose one more time, and got a great prize for being bad. For that land over at Grassy Branch turned out to be among the prettiest I have ever seed, and hit turned out to be a fine big double cabin over there—finer and biggern our own, I might add—and I was further surprised to find that Ezekiel Bailey hisself was not so bad to look at neither. He come out to the wagon grinning when we drove up, and he was just as nice to me as ever he was to that silly Nonnie who done nothing but cry and cry, and he did not even appear to notice my face none. I remarked upon how tight he helt my arm when he helped me down off the wagon, and how much he appeared to like the fried apple pies we had brung them—which
I
had made!—and I knowed in my heart of hearts that Ezekiel Bailey preferred me over Nonnie. Yet I resolved not to act on this, nor to tell no one, for I would not disappoint Daddy by leaving him, he needs me so.

Daddy said as much too when me and him was driving back through Flat Gap late that night after leaving Nonnie over on Grassy Branch with old bent-over Preacher Stump and Ezekiel Bailey her husband-to-be.

It was too dark for me to see good even though the stars was out, because of how the mountains rise up there directly in the gap. It was black as tar in the gap, but I could tell that Daddy was crying, and when he spoke, his voice was irregular. “If I ever lay eyes on him again, I'll kill him,” Daddy said after a while, meaning the Melungeon. Then after another while, he said, “Well, hit's just you and me now, ain't it, Zinnia girl?” and so I took his old work-hard hand and helt it in mine, and so it has been ever since, just me and him, the way it ought to be, ever since that very night when we was riding home through Flat Gap in the pitch-black night, the night so dark I didn't have no birthmark, and I was just as pretty as Nonnie.

When Nonnie Hulett climbed down off her daddy's wagon to stand before him at Grassy Branch, Ezekiel Bailey thought she was just about the prettiest thing he had ever seen in his whole life. It made him happy to look at her, and he stood there looking at her for the longest time. Nonnie had tied her dark hair back as severely as possible, but the jolting wagon had loosened it, so that black curls framed her face, red and swollen from crying. When she finally looked up at Ezekiel, her brown eyes had yellow sun-bursts in them, like cat eyes. Nonnie's eyes reassured Ezekiel somehow. He liked cats, such as Garnet Stump's old tomcat Henry Boy, laying over there in the sunshine right now. And Zeke knew how to take good care of things—the animals, the house, the church, the land and what grew there. He took good care of everything. Nonnie would be his wife. He would take good care of her too. Slowly, he smiled at her. Nonnie did not smile back. She balled up her handkerchief in her little fist and ground it into her face, crying even harder.

Zeke did not know what to do then. He turned around to look at old Preacher Stump, up on the porch, for guidance, but Preacher Stump just shrugged and puffed on one of his asthma cigarettes, peering down at them all through the smoke. It looked like trouble to him. Meantime Nonnie's grim-faced daddy was unloading her things from the wagon without a word, box after box, leaving them piled in the yard. She sure had a lot of things. Her ugly sister had presented Ezekiel with a little bag of fried pies which he ate automatically, one after the other, watching Nonnie. Ezekiel did not look at the sister, who was poking around the yard and exclaiming over this and that and acting the fool in general. Nonnie sobbed louder and stamped her little foot.

Preacher Stump sighed.
This will be a hard row to hoe
, he thought. May be he had made a mistake. May be he should of knowed enough not to meddle with nature, should of knowed to leave well enough alone. If God had wanted Ezekiel to have a wife, may be He would of got him one His Ownself.

Nonnie's daddy took off his hat and kissed her and then put his hat on again and got back in the wagon. The ugly sister got back in the wagon too. Nonnie's daddy slapped the reins and said, “Giddap,” and before you knew it, they were gone around the bend of Grassy Branch and out of sight, stirring up dust which hung for a long long time in the still hot air.

Nonnie and Ezekiel just stood there. Joe-pye weed and black-eyed Susans bloomed all along the road, bleeding hearts by the gate. Little yellow butterflies flew everywhere.

Preacher Stump felt old and foolish, surveying this scene from his porch. It was not a thing like the time when Garnet had come to him, a young girl not yet sixteen, full-figured and trembling, with a look on her face that he knew. Bent double, barely breathing, Preacher Stump could see her still, his bride of sixty years before, could feel a stirring of the heavy passion he felt then. He had to go lay down. Without a word he turned and disappeared through the open door, leaving Ezekiel Bailey and Nonnie Hulett standing out in the sun in the heat of the day like their feet had growed roots and planted them there at Grassy Branch. It was August 10, 1880.

For about a week, Nonnie Hulett continued to cry. She tried to cook, and do the chores, for she was a good girl and knew she had done wrong and knew that this was to be her lot; but to her surprise, Ezekiel would not let her do much, coming up behind her to take the skillet out of her hand, to carry the pail of water, to feed the chickens that fluttered around the yard. Nonnie couldn't get over it. She had never seen a man do such things. Once when Zeke grabbed the broom and was sweeping the porch off himself, Nonnie raised her eyebrows and looked questioningly at old Preacher Stump, who sat wreathed in smoke in his rocking chair, and for the first time, Preacher Stump smiled back at her, his mouth full of black teeth, but then he fell to coughing, and failed to answer the question which she hadn't really asked.

Preacher Stump was smoking as many of his asthma cigarettes as he could manage, trying hard to stay alive. Several times lately in a dream he had seen a great golden angel flying down from Heaven like a chicken hawk, swooping down low to get him, but so far Preacher Stump had managed to hold off this angel, for he intended to stay alive long enough to see how things would turn out.

One time when Zeke had taken the bucket from her and set off for the springhouse, Nonnie faced the old man and said, “He don't talk much, I reckon,” and Preacher Stump said, “No, he don't.” This was the only question Nonnie ever asked about him, as blue cloudless day after day came and went, and she got used to life on Grassy Branch. Truth to tell, it was a relief to be shut of that bossy Zinnia! Gradually it dawned on Nonnie that she would be the mistress here, and since Ezekiel seemed disposed to spoil her just as much as her father had ever done, she could have her way without working her fingers to the bone like all the other women she'd ever known. Nonnie had time to wash her long hair and sit out in the sun to let it dry, she had time to dream in the slow afternoons while Ezekiel hoed corn and the old man dozed on the porch. Nonnie had time for herself, golden and slow and sweet as the thick honey that came from Ezekiel's hives up on the mountain behind the house. She kept crying, dedicated to grief, but it grew harder and harder to remember exactly what she was crying about.