The Heart Remembers (11 page)

“Now she
knows
,” Shelley told herself, and could have bitten out her own tongue for the little careless slip. “Before she has been merely suspicious, alarmed; but now she knows.”

There was an instant of tension of which only Shelley and Selena were conscious, for the others were still chattering gaily, and the white-coated Negro man was deftly serving them, unobtrusive, yet watchful of their needs.

Jim said quietly, “Patsy-Jane, eh? Funny how he could get such a nickname out of Shelley. Or did you grow up and select a name for yourself that you liked better?”

Through the whirling of her senses, Shelley realized that Jim, sitting beside her, had gone a little still, and she wondered desperately if he, too, had noticed that momentary rigidity of his aunt, or the malevolence in her eyes.

“No,” said Shelley quietly. “It was given me by the woman who adopted me after my mother died.”

She was still looking straight at Selena, though sharply aware of Jim beside her. But after a moment Selena turned to the young man, Don Benton, who sat on her left and made some remark to which he responded over-eagerly. And eventually dinner was over.

Later, in the living room, Marian found a moment to say anxiously to Shelley, “Look, Shelley, I don't want to be a nuisance, and I know Jim was speaking way out of turn. But if you do decide you'd ever like somebody to share your house and help you fight the ‘ghoses,' put my name at the head of the list, will you?”

“I think it would be fun to have you there, Marian. Come over one afternoon and we'll look the situation over, and if you think you'd be comfortable—”

“You won't think I'm being impetuous or thrusting myself on you if I bring my baggage when I come, will you?” pleaded Marian.

“I won't, I promise,” laughed Shelley.

And when she had gone home from the party, she told herself, as she went into the dark, chilly little house, that it was going to be nice to have someone there with her; someone like Marian, young and gay and cheerfully matter of fact.

She lay awake a long time, unable to sleep; seeing again the scene at the dining table when she had thoughtlessly tossed her father's nickname into the table conversation and had looked into Selena's eyes and seen there fear and suspicion become dreaded reality. In that moment, Selena must have known the truth: that “Shelley Kimbrough” was really “Patricia Newton,” Callie's and Hastings' beloved “Patsy.” And Selena must know, too, that only one thing could have brought Hastings Newton's child back to Harbour Pines to resurrect the old newspaper; the desire to ferret out secrets Selena must have thought dead long ago.

Selena must be wondering how much Hastings Newton's child knew of that old, ugly story of fifteen years ago. Only they three, Selena, Hastings and Callie, had known the truth; Selena may have thought that only she and Hastings knew. What an
ordeal it must have been for her—the trial, waiting minute by minute for Hastings or his lawyer to bring
her
name into the ugly story, giving it the final sordid touch.

How she must have comforted herself that she had been clever, adroit; that she had concealed her part well; that no matter what Hastings might be driven to reveal, it would be only his word against hers. The word of a man on trial for theft, faced with an almost unbreakable web of evidence, against the woman who was stainlessly pure, arrogantly untouchable.

But, Shelley told herself with grim satisfaction, she felt quite sure Selena Durand was sleeping badly tonight!

She was busy in the office a day or two later, reading and clipping small items to be used in that week's edition of the
Journal
, when the station wagon stopped outside and Jim came in, clad in worn khaki, battered boots and a thin cotton shirt open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled above his elbows.

“Hi, lady—busy?” he demanded.

“Just snitchin' some news from the big city papers for this week's
Journal
. Nothing that can't wait. Why?”

“How'd you like to go out and grab a ‘look-see' at what makes a naval stores tick? We're beginning operations on a new stand this morning, and I thought it might interest you.”

“I'd love it!”

She was on her feet instantly, eager-eyed.

As he helped her into the station wagon, she demanded eagerly, “Tell me all about it. I've nothing
but an appalling ignorance about what causes a place like this. How old does a tree have to be before you start doing things to it that eventually turn into turpentine?”

Jim grinned down at her. “Well, the U.S. Forest Service recommends that the tree be ten inches in diameter from a point four and a half feet from the ground, though it's really better, they point out, to wait until it's eleven. That takes about twenty years.”

“My goodness!”

Jim chuckled, and returned greetings and waved at people who called to him from the sidewalk as the station wagon rattled through town.

“We used to do our own processing here,” he said, and indicated an old-fashioned fire-still, with dilapidated sheds and platforms, that huddled forlornly beyond the highway. “But in recent years central plants have been built all over the area, and they get a much better grade of gum, because of course they have proper equipment for filtering and washing, so as to remove all trash and foreign matter that used to bother us. Most of the operators use the central plants now, as we do.”

They drove on past the outmoded still with its falling buildings, and then the friendly, murmurous forest welcomed and enclosed them. Shelley caught her breath in delight as she looked about her, sniffing the warm, tangy fragrance with deep pleasure.

On each side of the road, stretching away into infinity, were the tall, stately brown-trunked trees, lifting their great green tops until it seemed they must brush the very skies themselves. Down the wide aisles, between the straight, symmetrical rows, the resinous dry needles made an aromatic carpet. And here and there along the aisles, there were mule-drawn carts, with two or three men on each cart; the carts laden with stout barrels on the outside of which
sticky-looking, whitish gum had the shimmer of cellophane in the warm golden sunlight.

“Dip-squads,” said Jim carelessly. “They make the rounds of all the trees that are being ‘handled' and empty the gum from the paper drip-cups. See?”

He had parked the station wagon now and they got out, to walk along one of the aisles between the giant trees. He paused to show her the big V-shaped slash, the bottom of which emptied the running sap into the brown cup. The white, gummy substance seeped so slowly, Shelley couldn't see how it could ever fill the deep brown paper cup. And yet she noticed as she walked along that every cup was filling slowly, steadily.

“We begin operations early in March, when the sap begins to flow,” Jim explained as they walked along. “The gum circulates, of course, more freely in warm weather, so we begin in March and continue until November. I suppose you know that the ‘naval stores' industry got its start in this country back in 1665, in North Carolina, when some of the colonists discovered the ‘inexhaustible' forests of long-leaf pine there?”

Shelley admitted frankly, “I don't know
anything
—not even why they call this a ‘naval stores.' ”

“Oh, that,” Jim answered carelessly, his eyes on a group of men who were grouped about a giant tree, laughing, gossiping a little in the warm golden air. “That's a hold-over from the days when commerce was carried on in wooden ships that required tar and pitch. And it's been retained, for convenience, I suppose, or tradition.”

They had reached the group now clustered about the big tree and the men greeted Jim, their dark faces split with wide, white-toothed grins, their liking for him making Shelley feel warm and pleased.

Jim exchanged a few words with the men, who nodded and moved on, leaving one behind them. He
carried a queer-looking axe about three or four inches wide with a handle not quite a foot in length. And while Shelley watched, fascinated, the Negro's sure, deft hands struck a light blow on one side of the pine and a V-shaped gash appeared, done with only a few adroit strokes the grace and skill of which made her eyes widen in honest appreciation.

“He's ‘chipping a face' or ‘box,' ” Jim explained, pleased with Shelley's eager curiosity. “Each week, for the next thirty-two weeks or until late November, he or some of the other ‘turpentine hands' will cut a new ‘streak' above that. He'll use that hack in his hand every year for the next three years; then he will have to have one with a longer handle. It's called a ‘puller,' and every year until the ‘face' is ninety inches in height, he will add a ‘streak.' But when the ‘face' reaches ninety inches, the tree's usefulness as a producer of turpentine is gone.”

Shelley looked up at the magnificent tree, her eyes following its green feathery tops, and winced.

“And then what happens to the poor thing?” she asked softly.

Jim looked down at her as though startled at the phrase and at her tone.

“Oh, then it will be removed for use as a telephone pole, pulp-wood, railroad cross-ties, posts lumber, and a seedling will be planted in its place and left to grow for twenty years, and then it all starts again.”

Shelley nodded soberly.

They walked on after a moment down the aisle of dry, resinous needles, watching groups of men at various tasks. Jim smiled down at her suddenly.

“I wish you could have seen all this sort of thing years ago, when it was called ‘chipping' instead of ‘cupping.' Nowadays the men work on straight salary, not only during the season but twelve months a year; in those days they worked ‘piecework,' each man being paid for the number of trees he ‘handled.'
Some of them were so skillful they could ‘handle' from five to ten thousand trees a week. There was a ‘woodsman' who kept the records so that at the end of the day each man would be sure of receiving full payment for all his work.”

Shelley's eager interest was very flattering.

“The ‘woodsman' must have been a very busy man. How in the world could he keep track of all the men and all their jobs?”

“That's where ingenuity helped,” Jim told her. “Each ‘chipper' was given a short, easy name like Susie, Mary, Ella, Lilly; usually the men chose their sweethearts' names. And as each man finished his ‘box' he called out the name given him, and the ‘woodsman' checked the name on his list. It was quite a thing; I wish you could have seen it—the men laughing, calling out ‘Mary' or ‘Ella' sharp and clear above all the other noises. I used to get a terrific kick out of it. Since I've grown up, and have seen
Porgy and Bess
and heard Ferde Grofé's stuff, I've wished someone could have put it into music, or a play. The sunlight glancing through the pines; the calls floating back, the laughter, the voices—it was something to remember.”

“You love all this, don't you?”

Jim looked startled, as though the thought had never occurred to him before.

“Why, yes, I suppose I do,” he confessed.

She nodded quietly. “I can understand. It's beautiful.”

They stood now at the end of the long aisle of grown pines. Ahead of them a tractor was ploughing a wide swath, and beyond the swath, young, vigorous trees were growing lustily, each tree with ample space for its full development.

“Fire-break.” Jim indicated the tractor and the wide, rich dark earth it was cutting. “Beyond this ten-year-old stand, there is another even younger, too
young even to be thinned, though we are careful to thin them as soon as possible, and plough our firebreaks good and wide. Fire is our chief enemy; if a fellow who carelessly throws a lighted cigarette from a speeding car, or who leaves a tiny ember of a picnic fire burning could only know what we'd do to him if we could catch him, he'd stay out of the ‘piny-woods' the rest of his life! We have to worry, too, about the lazy, shiftless, or just plain ignorant farmer who still believes in, and practices ‘burning off' his woods and fields in the spring and fall. It's a terribly destructive and dangerous practice, I need scarcely add.”

Shelley lifted her head suddenly, her eyes closed, and whispered eagerly,
“Listen!”

The soft, steady murmur of the wind that crept through the pines was intensified here by the smaller growth, and to Shelley it made music so exquisite as to bring tears to her eyes. The warm sun beating down on her shoulders, the fragrance of the pines, the soft murmur of the wind all gave her a feeling she had never experienced before. It was an unforgettable moment in which she forgot everything else.

Jim looked down at her as she stood there, her rapt face lifted, her eyes closed, and suddenly, as though moved by some compulsion he could not evade, he bent his head and set his mouth on her soft, parted lips.

For a startled moment Shelley was quite still, accepting his kiss, savoring it; not quite sure whether she returned it or not; knowing only that it was the final exquisite touch to a perfect moment.

It was Jim who broke the moment. Jim who raised his head and stared down at her, his face taut and pale behind his sun-bronze, and took a backward step, as though startled. His voice came faintly to Shelley, his words scarcely audible, despite the tension with which she listened.

“Now, why the dickens do you suppose I did that?” His tone was one of amazement and honest bewilderment.

For an instant Shelley was shaken to her very toes by that kiss; and then she made a flying clutch at her common sense. Absurdly enough, she had to fight tears before she could manage a gay, flippant answer in a slightly unsteady voice.

“Why, I
asked
for it!” she told him then.

Jim was more startled than ever. “Asked for it?”

“Of course! Don't you know that old trick of counting the stars? When a girl says, ‘Look at the stars. Aren't they beautiful?' and tilts her head and closes her eyes—well, only a cad and a bounder would refuse to accept what she offers!”