Between the Flowers: A Novel Read online

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  "Could you manage a six hundred acre hill an' river bottom farm, a drunkard for a husband, raise seven good children by a God-awful lumber town an' still be tender?" Mrs. Crouch wanted to know in a hissing whisper.

  But Marsh was taken up with Delph. He thought it was maybe because her brows were so dark and her eyelashes heavy and black that her eyes seemed so blue. He studied her eyes, but they never noticed him. Now that the hymn was finished Delph sat and watched Brother Eli as he prepared to read the letters of the ones away. He was an elderly man with a whiter fuller beard than Old Willie's, but he was sprightly for his years, and with a habit of looking first at the ceiling then at the floor, dwelling briefly on his audience in between times so that his beard was in constant motion. He was native to the Little South Fork Country, but like Dorie now lived by Burdine on the Cumberland where he farmed six days each week and preached on the seventh.

  There were many letters. Minnie Copenhaver, a farmer's wife in Kansas, wanted to give greetings to all her distant kin and former neighbors, and asked them to pray for rain in Kansas. Roy Belle, a bartender in Seattle, asked that someone please put marigolds on his grandmother's grave. Emma Fairchild, daughter of Dorie, sent greetings from Chicago and money for the upkeep of the church. Eulie Saunders, a missionary in China, asked for money and prayers for the heathen.

  Marsh heard the drone of Brother Eli's reading, but had thoughts only for Delph. She was still with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on Brother Eli and the bits of paper in his hands, and when he had finished a letter she bent forward with eagerness until she learned from whom and where the next one came. After the reading of the letters she showed little interest in Brother Gholston's sermon that followed, but saw with her black lashes low and meek above her eyes and seemed to dream of some pleasant thing. She did not smile, but her face seemed more gentle with less of the impatient hunger that touched it when she had listened to the letters.

  Gradually, however, as Brother Gholston's shrieks for the unsaved grew louder, and more thickly interspersed with gasping "ah"s for breath, Delph looked more steadfastly at the preacher, and her eyes from being warm and bright grew stony cold. When Brother

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  Gholston stopped for lack of breath and commanded that an invitation hymn be sung, though her face showed nothing but its coldness, it seemed to Marsh that when she arose to sing her shoulders had stiffened and her head was higher and prouder than it had been.

  The choir broke into the wailing strains of "Ye who are weary come home," and Mrs. Crouch fidgeted and looked out the window, then whispered, "I was hopin' I could come to this church once without bein' cried overbut I reckin if Delph can stand it I can."

  "WhatWhat's Delph done?" he asked in a troubled whisper.

  "We're both unsavedth' only wonen in th' whole country," Mrs. Crouch whispered through set teeth, then bowed her head and looked at the floor as a tall, red-haired, deep-bosomed woman with a fat baby on one arm forced her way between the benches. "Oh, Permelie, won't you ever give in an' offer your stubborn soul to God?" she began in a sobbing voice with tears streaming heavily down her round red cheeks. ''Tomorrow it may be too late, ever lastin'ly too late," she shrieked, and collapsed with her head on the post mistress's shoulder, and held it there while she sobbed long and violently. The blue-eyed bald-headed baby seemed in no wise distressed by the situation, but smiled pleasantly at Marsh and seemed of half a mind to finger his hair.

  But Marsh was too troubled for Delph to notice the baby. A short fat woman stood on one side and patted her on the shoulder and begged in a low voice, while a tall elderly woman in a black sunbonnet stood in front of her and cried. Delph lifted her head and looked at the ceiling and sang. She continued to sing when the red-haired woman left Mrs. Crouch and went to her and cried and begged more violently than over the post mistress. "That's her Aunt Fronieth' woman th' pore girl has to live with," Mrs. Crouch whispered, then bowed her head again.

  Delph continued to sing, standing still with her aunt's head on her shoulder while she glanced with something like defiance out over the heads of the congregation. Her ears and cheeks and neck were red with embarrassment, and her eyes blazed a hot bright blue that could have been shame or might have been anger. Marsh knew he ought to look away. She would find him gaping at her, and her eyes would crackle with defiance for him as for the others. But he could not look away, and in a moment her glance swept over him.

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  Their eyes met, and it seemed a long moment that just she and he were in the church with their eyes meeting, and then her glance had gone on to the quivering leaves of the black locust tree by the window.

  When not long after there was a stir in the house and murmur of voices, he roused to learn with disappointment that the morning service was over. Mrs. Crouch caught his elbow, and though she whispered, she spared no pains to show her opinion of him. "I know Delph's a pretty girl, but Lord you've been all over th' world, an' will be again most like. You'll see just as pretty in your time, an' can stare 'em out a countenance without runnin' th' risk a bein' bushwhacked."

  "I mean to give her this mail an' speak to her," Marsh answered.

  Mrs. Crouch turned away in disgust. "Ask Dorie an' see what she says. If I can't talk sense into you, mebbe she can.But recollect, don't go off 'fore I give you somethin' to eat."

  He waited by the bench and watched the people come down the aisle. They came slowly in little groups, never alone, and always there was much talk and shaking of hands. A child in a candy-striped dress came with her finger in her mouth and stared at him a moment in wondering silence before she ran away. Colonel Lee, the hound dog came, and sniffed at his trousers and his hands, and when he learned there was no food, walked on. Marsh didn't blame the dog. His clothing always carried a smell of crude oil, and sometimes he was grateful that the dog even deigned to visit him for food.

  A young man, hardly more than a boy, and plainly a stranger to the hills with his careful white flannels and buckskin shoes, stood ill at ease by a bench across the aisle. Old Willie Copenhaver came down the aisle leaning heavily on his iron shod staff, and deep in conversation with Brother Eli. The old men stopped and stared at the young one, studied his nose and mouth and eyes, the way his hair fell back from his forehead, glanced at his feet and seemed to ponder on the shape of his hands. Finished with the examination, Old Willie and then Brother Eli each extended a hand. "You've some of Peter Chrismann's blood else I've gone blind," Old Willie said.

  "He was my great grandfather," the young one answered, and went on to explain while the old men nodded and smiled, "I never saw himmy mother left this country when she was small, but she used to tell me stories." They walked on with Old Willie stopping

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  first one and then another to say, ''Here's some a Peter Chrismann's kin come home."

  Others passed Marsh. A few glanced in his direction, but after one appraising glance they knew him as a stranger to their blood and walked on. It was Juber who came hunting him, thanked him for bringing Delph's mail, and suggested, though somewhat hesitantly, that he come share in the dinner. "I'm not hungry," Marsh answered, and added defiantly, "All I want to do is speak a word with Dorie, an' give Delph her mail."

  Juber studied him uneasily, "Mebbe it's better anyhow that you don't come to th' Costello's end a th' table. Logan, he'd be there.I heared about th' scrap you had."

  "I've done him no harm," Marsh answered stonily. "He stood in my way, an' if he hadn't a got out I'd a knocked him down."

  Juber smiled his gentle smile. "An' do you allus go around knockin' ever'thing down that comes in your way?"

  Marsh nodded. "I've worked in th' oil fields since I was sixteenbefore that I lived with my people. After I could recollect they were rentersalways on th' go. I've learned a few things from them an' th' oil fields."

  "I wondered how a oil man could handle a team so well."

  "It was born in me to handle horses," he
answered with a hardening of his jaw. "But what I learned was that there's bound to be a lot a knockin' in th' world; it's better to knock a man first so he can't knock you."

  "But allus recollect, Boy, they use guns in these hillsfer strangers that come meddlin'.Ever hear a bushwhackin'?"

  "Mrs. Crouch was speakin' a somethin' like that."

  "Wellbushwhackin' is somethin' a mana stranger like youhas to take on faith, like th' thief on th' cross. He's never been back to tell us he went to heaven, no more'n there's ever been a bushwhacked man come back to tell who got him.An' if he did most likely he wouldn't know." Juber lingered a moment to see the effect of his words, and when he could find no effect, walked on.

  When he had gone Marsh went down the uncarpeted aisle of the now almost empty church. He saw Delph, and so much were his thoughts and his eyes for her, that he scarcely noticed she stood near Dorie Dodson Fairchild, the woman he said he had come to see. He

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  saw Logan standing by a window, and though his body looked long and lax and lazy there was a taut look in his eyes. Marsh met his glance, and nodded, and wished again he had struck the man. There was contempt rather than hatred in his cool unflickering eyes.

  Delph stood on the outer edge of a little group of people gathered about Brother Gholston, and the tall, blue-eyed, wide-shouldered hill man whom he knew was her Uncle John. He saw Fronie patting her baby on the back and raptly attending to some talk of the preacher's. And because they were Delph's people they seemed important to him, and he wished he had shaved and worn his new suit.

  Fronie saw him first, and stared at him a moment in a wondering puzzled way, until she saw the catalogue and brown roll of the magazine. "Oh, you've brought our mail," she said, and reached for it. He was conscious of the silence of the others while they looked at him. All but John and Fronie knew most likely that he had made a fool of himself over Delph, but the thought didn't trouble him. He wondered instead if she remembered the day he had seen her in Town, and he wished she would look at him. He forgot it was Dorie he had come to see until she was seizing his arm and exclaiming, "Why, Marsh Gregory, just this mornin' when I was gettin' ready to come, Katy an' Poke Easy were talkin' of you, a thinkin' you'd like to see th' tobacco now, an' wonderin' if you'd be down soon."

  Then Fronie, less frigid after Dorie's greeting, was taking the mail and thanking him, and Dorie was explaining to the company, telling of how that yearand here she must reckon on her fingersthe year before she got her bull Solomon and while Poke Easy was still in the gradesand the summer before Rachel ran away to be marriedseven years agothe year they had had that oil boom about Burdine, this Marsh Gregory he was a driller then and

  A cry of "Law, law if it's not Dorie," followed by Dorie's cry of, "Why, Permelie Crouch, I was wonderin' if you were here," switched the conversation from Marsh to girlhood reminiscences, while Fronie, mindful of all the Costello dinner baskets to be unpacked, excused herself and left with her family. Though Marsh wriggled masterfully, Dorie, deep in conversation with Mrs. Crouch, did not loosen her grip on his arm, and he stood disappointed and angry, but powerless to do more then watch Delph as she walked away with Logan.

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  The two women talked on this and that, mostly of the old days and their children away, until both realized with a start that the church was empty and the preachers would be saying grace and their food not on the table. However, Mrs. Crouch must take time to relate Marsh's misdeeds, smiling as she talked and declaring he was just like her boy Les. The women turned upon him then as if he had been some small boy, stubbornly risking his neck in a hazardous game. Dorie wanted to have a talk with him and tell him about her farming, and Mrs. Crouch wanted to see that he was fed and treated properly.

  After much talk it was finally agreed that since it might make trouble and since he had no wish to eat with the others anyhow, it would maybe be better for him to take a bundle of food to the graveyardthe old Costello burying ground was the nicest spotand wait there for Dorie. After dinner she would like to sneak away to a nice quiet spot and have a Bull Durham cigarette. She'd have to do it on the sly, for in the Little South Fork Country the only thing that a decent woman ever smoked was a pipe.

  Marsh, when he had been loaded with food and directed where to go, crossed the road and climbed the graveyard fence under cover of a clump of holly trees. He found Costello's graveyard as they had said; an older quieter world of the dead, surrounded by a high iron fence and hidden by great, close-growing cedar trees. The graves were covered with short brown cedar needles, and submerged in a deep blue green twilight with no pattern of sunlight and shadow filtering through. Neither grass nor flowers grew in the heavy shade, though today the graves were bright with flowers, great red and yellow dahlias, the fiery flames of zinnias and bright gold of coreopsis. Strange flowers for the dead, and he wondered if Delph had not put them there.

  He walked about and read the names, and always the last name was Costello, when it could be read at all. One, a great mound of flat gray limestone, bore nothing, and it seemed to be the oldest of all. Leaves and cedar needles had drifted into the crevices between the top stones, and a saw briar and a wild grape vine grew there with their long runners, pale for lack of sun, trailing down across the stones. The finest flowers of all, great twisted petal dahlias large as a plate, lay on the heap of stones. Others of the graves were curious things, like boxes of stone laid on the ground, and two were foot

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  thick slabs of stone flat above their graves long as a tall man, and cut with square heads and wide shoulders tapering down to feet.

  He sat on one and ate some of the fried chicken and other good food with which Mrs. Crouch had showered him, but he ate slowly with little thought for the food. Dorie came before he was scarcely finished. "Lord, it's a lonesome place to have a smoke," she said, and sat with him on the man shaped stone, and rolled a cigarette.

  Marsh glanced about at the old protected graves. "It's a nice way to be buried, though. Whole families together like this," he said, and after a pause added slowly, "An' when th' ones livin'die, I don't guess they mind it so; knowin' how it'll be."

  Dorie pulled the string of the tobacco sack tight with her teeth and studied him. "Marshyou don't look so young like as you did in th' spring.You'd better quit this work you're doin'. Somethin's unnatural when a man talks so a dyin' when he's not out a his twenties like you."

  He locked his hands between his knees and looked at them. "It's naturalthat is when a man hauls nitroglycerinfor goin' on four years."

  Dorie blew a smoke ring and squinted at it. "You'd better quit it thenquit th' oil fields an' marry an' settle down."

  "It takes money to settle down."

  She looked at him in some surprise. "You've got money saved. Least ways you ought to have."

  He continued to study his hands, and his face wore a guilty look. "Some I've gotbut not so much as I ought," he said, and went on in his low level voice. "Used to be when I was a driller I'd wonder why th' big money-makin' nitroglycerin mixers an' shooters went on so many sprees an' spent so much, gamblin' an' drinkin'. WellI know now."

  Dorie nodded slowly, and her face showed understanding and pity not untouched by impatience. "I know. One a these days you'll be old, if you don't get blowed to pieces before then, an' you'll be like Dave only worse. Lord, how well I know. Ever' spendin' spree will be a little more drinkin', an' you'll have less an' less. Then one day you'll be wore out. They won't need you any more. You'll be like these factory workers that go out from these hills. When th' factories have had their fill of them, they come back, used up, to squat in th' hills till they die. You'll."

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  He turned on her and his eyes were narrow black instead of wide and gray. "You don't have to say that.I know it all an' a damned sight more. I."

  "Well, for God's sake, Marsh, do what you want to do. I've preached it to you ever' time I saw you for seven years, wrote you letters even."

 
He got up and walked restlessly away, talking as he walked. "I'll never risk goin' in debt. Another couple a years an'well, I've been sayin' that since I was born. But I'll never bite off more'n I can chew an' risk losin' ever'thing like my old man did. He'd be alive an' ownin' a farm most like today if he hadn't a gone crazy through th' war an' gone in too deep."