The Hinterlands (12 page)

For what seemed like hours, I walked back and forth real slow trying to shush the baby that already had the colic. I guess Wallace was born with the colic, though he growed into a mighty healthy feller. Maybe it was the scare before he was borned that caused it. But he hollered and took on, and I didn't know what to do except hold him and sway to quiet him, which helped a little.

And I kept pushing that plank further in, a little at a time, as it burned. One big piece of wood will never burn as well as little pieces, because the big piece can't get air except on the outside. But I kept the hot coals around the board and it burned enough to give some light and keep smoke going up the chimney. I walked back and forth until my feet was numb. I couldn't hardly feel my toes, or my steps, but my legs just seemed to keep walking on their own.

I might even have gone to sleep while walking. I've heard tell of such a thing. I kept swaying the baby and talking to him and pushing the board further into the fire every twenty or thirty times around the cabin. “Little un,” I kept saying to Wallace, “Little un, you better go to sleep.”

At some point I come to myself and realized they wasn't no sounds from the roof or chimney anymore. Between times when the baby was squalling, I couldn't hear a thing up there. I leaned over and listened, and they was nothing but a puff and whisper of the fire, like when it's raining and the chimney starts dripping inside. It's too cold to rain, I thought. It was cold and clear when I went to the spring at dark.

With the baby crying, I listened as best I could at the door.
They wasn't no sound far as I could tell. I wondered if that painter was standing on the roof still as he could to fool me. Or was he standing before the door waiting for me to open it?

Only place in the cabin where you could see out was the crack at the eave on the west end. I was too sore to climb on the logs, and they wasn't nothing to stand on. But I had to see out. I had to look in the yard. I put the baby on the bed, and wrapped him up in the quilt Mama had give me. Then I walked over to the corner and reached up high as I could to the top log. My arms trembled as I pulled myself up, but on the third try I made it.

Soon as I put my face to the crack it was like somebody spit at me. Something cold and wet hit my cheek. And then I thought, has Realus plugged the crack with cloth or cotton wool? For it was white outside, and what hit me on the cheek was a snowflake. It was already light and snow covered everything I could see through the crack.

I dropped back and felt my insides sore as a rising. But I had to look outside. I run to the door and lifted the other plank from its bracing. The board fell on my foot but I didn't hardly pay it no mind. I opened the door a crack and looked out, and didn't see no painter. Everything was white and snow was falling steady. They was just the swishing sound of flakes touching and piling up. I stepped out the door to look at the clearing. They was big tracks in the snow getting covered up. You could see where the painter had jumped off the roof and headed out past the shed to the woods, though the tracks was already filling and blurred by new snow.

Your Grandpa didn't get back that day till after dinner time. By then I had slept some, and cleaned up the cabin a little. When the baby got to sleep, I run out to the woodpile and raked the snow off some sticks to carry in. It was a fine,
dry snow, like flour or baking soda. I hauled in enough wood to last through the day and night if it had to. I piled wood in the corner where it dripped and run, but I knowed it would be dry enough to burn in a few hours. I was almost too sore to move, and every time I did something I rested a spell. For dinner I reheated my pot of beans and baked a corn pone on the hearth.

When Realus finally come, I couldn't wait for him to see what I had done. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was proud of myself. Any woman is proud of her baby, and I'd done it all by myself. He come in covered with snow looking white as a ghost. He stuck his head in the door, white as one of them polar bears. He had a sack covered with snow too. Snow fell off him in scraps and drops.

“Don't shake that stuff off in here,” I said, sounding firm and concerned. “You'll put the fire out.” He turned around and brushed snow off his shoulders and off the sack in the doorway.

“And don't let a draft in here,” I said. “Some of us could get cold.” I wanted to see how long it took him to notice things was different. Your Grandpa was always a quick man, but he had come a long way and was probably stiff from riding, and hungry.

He put the sack down in front of the fire. Then he stomped his boots in the doorway and closed the door. He still hadn't said nothing, though he must have seen the bench was gone except for the one plank. He leaned his gun beside the fireplace.

“Did you find a midwife?” I said.

He turned and looked directly at me. “Don't need a midwife,” he said. And his face, though it was stiff and burned by cold, begun to break out all over in a grin. Your Grandpa had that kind of face that when he was happy seemed to grin from the tip of his beard to the ears.

“Don't need no midwife,” he said, and pulled me up and kissed me. That was the kind of man he was. You couldn't help but love
him. All my anger and resentment trickled away like the snow on the sack. You couldn't stay mad at Realus. When he was away I could work up a rage. But I never could keep it in his presence.

He looked at the baby sleeping on the bed, and then he rubbed his hands before the fire. After his hands was warm he picked up the baby like he'd never seen anything so curious. Men don't take to newborn babies like women does. But he was still proud. And you could see how struck he was. He didn't know how you hold a baby. His big hands could reach all the way around the bundle and the baby looked smaller when your Grandpa was holding him.

“Let's call him Wallace,” he said. “After my grandsire on my Mama's side.”

That was the first I ever heard of his Grandpa Wallace on his Mama's side. But I didn't say nothing. It was fine with me if we called the baby Wallace. It was a good strong name.

Your Grandpa went out and got two more stumps at the woodpile and put the plank on them for a bench. And we must have set there for two hours, holding the baby and talking. We eat the beans and corn pone, and Realus went out and sliced a piece of deer meat in the shed. I fried that meat over the fire for supper.

“I must have rid fifty miles,” he said, “before I come to another settlement. And they wasn't no doctor or midwife there. But they sent me on to a place called Peasticks where they was a store and tavern.”

When the baby cried I carried him, and then Realus would carry him. I was waiting for him to ask what happened to the bench, and to the ladder pegs in the wall. I was busting to tell him about the painter, but I wanted him to ask. I think he was teasing me by not asking. Or maybe he was too distracted and happy to notice anything but the baby. Finally, I couldn't wait no longer.

“They was a painter here,” I said. He walked in front of the fire with the baby trying to quiet him like I had done all night.

“They was a painter here that tried to get down the chimney.”

“I knowed it,” he said.

“How could you know it?” I said. “If you was fifty miles away?” He didn't take his eyes off the baby.

“'Cause I seen the top of the chimney was tore up,” he said. “Nothing but a painter would do that. I seen it soon as I rode into the clearing.”

I didn't know whether to be mad at him, or pleased that he figured it all out from the tore-up chimney.

“Next time he comes around, I'll shoot him,” Realus said. And he did.

But that evening he got back, we set by the fire and talked. And he brought out all the things he'd carried in the sack from the store. They was a piece of red cloth for me to make a dress.

“Ain't got nowhere to wear a fancy dress,” I said.

“You can wear it here, for me,” he said.

Then he brought out a poke of powder, and some shot. And he had a sack of sugar, and some tea. That was the best thing he had brought, really. I hadn't had no tea since our supply run out in the summer, though we sometimes parched bran and made a kind of brew. I boiled some water right then and made a pot. Nothing I ever drunk tasted better. The smell of that tea filled the cabin. It even seemed to make the baby quiet down. And when I drunk a cup, it made the cabin seem bright and realer.

I don't need to tell you how busy I was in the months following, looking after the baby and keeping things clean. I kept the washpot going almost every day that winter. Your Grandpa split wood and got the fire started in the morning, before he went out
to clear new ground. He was clearing up a whole section further down the creek and burning up the logs.

Every morning I put my diaper rags and dirty things in the washpot and let them boil. And I strung another line to the shed to dry things on. We put a string up over the fireplace for drying when it rained or snowed. My hands got cracked from all the washing, and I put deer grease on them.

I'd try to find out more about the settlements from your Grandpa, but he wouldn't hardly say nothing. We'd be talking about getting us a hog for next fall, and I'd say, “Why don't you ride into the settlement and buy us a couple of pigs?”

“It's too far to drive pigs,” he'd say.

“Couldn't you get little uns and carry them in sacks on the horse?”

“And what would little pigs eat?” he'd say. “They wouldn't be no milk for them.”

Another time we'd be talking about getting flower seeds to plant around the cabin come spring. I wanted some big flowers. “Couldn't we go to the settlement and buy some seeds and bulbs and get some more tea?” I said.

“Can't leave you alone,” he'd say.

“Then we could go with you.”

“It's too far to take the baby.”

“The baby can stand anything we can stand,” I said.

Along in March your Grandpa did go back to the settlement and buy a new grubbing hoe and some more tea, and some pea seed and cabbage seed. He didn't bring back no flower seeds, but he did carry some chickens in a sack on the horse. That seemed really the beginning of our farming. You can't make a farm without animals. It was a different place with hens clucking and a rooster crowing in the morning.

That spring we kept the chickens in a coop so hawks and foxes couldn't get at them. Even so, a weasel got in and killed one of the hens and sucked her blood. When the other hens started laying eggs, it was the wonderfullest thing. I hadn't had no eggs in a year. A fresh egg for breakfast on occasion made a day seem like a holiday. I'd save up three or four eggs and make a pudding or even a cake. We got used to having eggs again and found it a hardship when the hens started setting. For a few weeks we didn't have nothing but mush in the mornings.

That spring we had trout a lot. I fried trout in corn meal, and baked trout, till we got sick of picking out the bones. Realus could take a few worms and catch an armload of the things.

“Why don't we save up some eggs and some honey and take them into the settlements to trade?” I said.

“We don't have enough of either to make it worthwhile,” your Grandpa said. “You just want to go gallivanting. Women always like to socialize.”

“Sure, I'm a real society lady,” I said, and went back to sewing.

I wasn't lonesome on the creek, especially after Wallace come, and then the rest of the children. Mostly I wanted to buy things in the settlement to fix up our place. I wanted a bigger garden, and flowers, and a guinea hen in the yard. And I wanted a cow so we could have butter. And I wanted hogs for making lard and sausage. And I needed cloth to make new clothes, and sheep so I could spin our own wool.

In time your Grandpa bought all them things. He'd go off to the settlement every four or five months and come back with a calf or a couple of pigs. And one time he brought some young apple trees to set out on the side of the hill. Another time be brought plum and pear trees. He even got a grape vine we set out over there alongside the barn. He got so many things I've lost track of the
order in which he brung them. But we gradually begun to push back the woods and make this into a place for people. It's the animals that do it. When you have cattle grazing they keep back the wild things and make room for humans. People on their own can't do it.

Realus even brought back a dog one day, a big cur named Trail, that kept the wolves and painters back on the ridge and let us know if a snake was around. One time we seen Indians at the end of the clearing, but Trail barked at them and they was gone.

“What kind of Indians we got here?” I said.

“Same as in Calinny I reckon,” your Grandpa said. “Maybe some Tuscarora too, besides the Cherokee.”

The second fall, when Realus took some yellowroot and honey into the settlements to trade, he brought back a Bible. “Every family's got to have a book,” he said. “Without a Bible they's no account of folks.”

We made ink out of pokeberry juice and he sharpened a goose quill. One night after frost had come he set by the fire and wrote with great pains and thought in the front of the Bible.

“Realus Richards and Petal Jarvis was married in March. …”

“What day was we married?” your Grandpa said.

“The night we left the settlement,” I said. “You know that.”

“But what day of the month was it?”

“It was March 17th,” I said. I hadn't thought of that date in a long time. But it come back to me. It was an important day.

So your Grandpa wrote in the new Bible:

“Realus Richards and Petal Jarvis was married March 17, 1772.”

You can still see it in the Bible over there. Next he turned a page and wrote:

“Wallace Realus Richards was borned December. …”

“When was Wallace borned?” he said.

There he had me stumped, though I knowed Wallace was borned on about the longest night of the year, just before Christmas.