“Why didn’t you wait on the road until a wagon came along?” Old Bayard shouted. “Always some damn feller with a fieldful of weeds coming to town.”
“I reckon I mought,” the other agreed. “But gittin’ here so quick would sp’ile my holiday. I ain’t like you town folks. I ain’t got so much time I kin hurry it.” He stowed the handkerchief away and rose and laid his parcel carefully on the mantel, and from his shirt pocket he produced a small object wrapped in a clean, frayed rag. Beneath his tedious and unhurried fingers there emerged a tin snuffbox polished long since to the dull, soft sheen of silver by handling and age. Old Bayard sat and watched, watched quietly as the other removed the cap of the box and put this, too, carefully aside.
“Now, turn yo’ face up to the light,” old man Falls directed.
“Loosh Peabody says that stuff will give me blood-poisoning, Will.”
The other continued his slow preparations, his blue innocent eyes raptly preoccupied. “Loosh Peabody never said that,” he corrected quietly. “One of them young doctors told you that, Bayard. Lean yo’ face to the light.” Old Bayard sat tautly back in his chair, his hands on the arms of it, watching the other with his piercing old eyes soberly, a little wistfully; eyes filled with unnamable things, like the eyes of old lions, and intent.
Old man Falls poised a dark gob of his ointment on one finger and set the box carefully on his vacated chair, and put his hand on old Bayard’s face. But old Bayard still resisted, though passively, watching him with unutterable things in his eyes. Old man Falls drew his face firmly and gently into the light from the window.
“Come on here. I ain’t young enough to waste time hurtin’ folks. Hold still, now, so I won’t spot yo’ face up. My hand ain’t steady enough to lift a rifle ball offen a hot stove led no mo’.”
Bayard submitted then, and old man Falls patted the salve on to the spot with small deft touches. Then he took the bit of cloth and removed the surplus from Bayard’s face and wiped his fingers and dropped the rag onto “We allus do that,” he explained. “My granny got that ’ere from a Choctow woman nigh a hundred and thutty year ago. Ain’t none of us never told what hit air, nor left no after-trace.” He rose stiffly and dusted his knees. He recapped the box with the same unhurried care and put it away, and picked up his parcel from the mantel and resumed his chair.
“Hit’ll turn black tomorrer, and long’s hit’s black, hit’s workin’. Don’t put no water on yo’ face befo’ mawnin’, and I’ll come in again in ten days and dose hit again, and on the”—he mused a moment, counting slowly on his gnarled fingers; his lips moved, but with no sound—“the ninth day of July, hit’ll drap off. And don’t you let Miss Jenny nor none of them doctors worry you about hit.”
He sat with his knees together. The parcel lay on his knees and he now opened it after the ancient laborious ritual, picking patiently at the pink knot until a younger person would have screamed at him. Old Bayard merely lit a cigar and propped his feet against the fireplace, and in good time old man Falls solved the knot and removed the string and laid it across his chair arm.
It fell to the floor and he bent and fumbled it into his blunt fingers and laid it again across the chair arm and watched it a moment lest it fall again; then he opened the parcel. First was his carton of tobacco, and he removed a plug and sniffed it, turned it in his hand and sniffed it again. But without biting into it he laid it and its fellows aside and delved yet further. He spread open the throat of the resulting paper bag, and his innocent boy’s eyes gloated soberly into it.
“I’ll declare,” he said, “sometimes I’m right ashamed for havin’ sech a consarned sweet tooth. Hit don’t give me no rest a-tal.” Still carefully guarding the other objects on his knees, he tilted the sack and shook two or three of the striped, shrimp-like things into his palm, and returned all but one, which he put in his mouth: “I’m a-feard now I’ll be losin’ my teeth someday and I’ll have to start gummin’ ’em or eatin’ soft ones, I never did relish soft candy.” His leathery cheek bulged slightly with slow regularity like a respiration. He peered into the sack again, and he sat weighing it in his hand.
“They was times back in sixty-three and -fo’ when a feller could ’a’ bought a section of land and a couple of niggers with this here bag of candy. Lots of times I mind, with ever’thing goin’ agin us like, and sugar and cawfee gone and food sca’ce, eatin’ stole cawn when they was any to steal, and ditch weeds ef they wa’n’t: bivouackin’ at night in the rain, more’n like . . .” His voice trailed away among ancient phantoms of the soul’s and body’s fortitudes, in those regions of glamorous and useless striving where such ghosts abide. He chuckled and mouthed his peppermint again.
“I mind that day we was a-dodgin’ around Grant’s army, headin’ nawth. Grant was at Grenada then, and Cunnel had rousted us boys out and we taken hoss and jined Van Dorn down that-a-way. That was when Cunnel had that ’ere silver stallion. Grant was still at Grenada, but Van Dorn lit out one day, headin’ nawth. Why, us boys didn’t know. Cunnel mought have knowed, but he never told us. Not that we keered much, long’s we was headin’ to’a’ds home.
“So our boys was ridin’ along to ourselves, goin’ to jine up with the balance of ’em later. Leastways the rest of ’em thought we was goin’ to jine ’em. But Cunnel never had no idea of doin’ that; his cawn hadn’t been laid by yit, and he was goin’ home fer a spell. We wa’n’t runnin’ away,” he explained. “We knowed Van Dorn could handle ’em all right fer a week or two. He usually done it. He was a putty good man,” old man Falls said, “a putty good man.”
“They were all pretty good men in those days,” old Bayard agreed. “But you damn fellers quit fighting and went home too often.”
“Well,” old man Falls rejoined defensively, “even ef the hull country’s overrun with bears, a feller can’t hunt bears all the time. He’s got to quit once in a while, ef hit’s only to rest up the dawgs and hosses.
But I reckon them dawgs and hosses could stay on the trail long as any,” he added with sober pride. “‘Course ever’body couldn’t keep up with that ’ere mist-colored stallion. They wasn’t but one animal in the Confedrit army could tech him—that last hoss Zeb Fothergill fotch back outen one of Sherman’s cavalry pickets on his last trip into Tennessee.
“Nobody never did know what Zeb done on them trips of his’n. Cunnel claimed hit was jest to steal hosses. But he never got back with lessen one.
One time he come back with seven of the orneriest critters that ever walked, I reckon. He tried to swap ’em fer meat and cawn-meal, but wouldn’t nobody have ’em. Then he tried to give ’em to the army, but even the army wouldn’t have ’em.
So he finally turned ’em loose and requisitioned to Joe ‘Johnston’s haidquarters fer ten hosses sold to Forrest’s cavalry. I don’t know ef he ever got air answer. Nate Forrest wouldn’t ’a’ had them hosses. I doubt ef they’d even ’a’ et ’em in Vicksburg. . . . I never did put no big reliability in Zeb Fothergill, him comin’ and goin’ by hisself like he done. But he knowed hosses, and he usually fotch a good ‘un home ever’ time he went away to’a’ds the war. But he never got another’n like this befo’.”
The bulge was gone from his cheek, and he produced his pocket knife and cut a neat segment from his plug of tobacco and lipped it from the knife-blade. Then he rewrapped his parcel and tied the string about it. The ash of old Bayard’s cigar trembled delicately about its glowing heart, but did not yet fall.
Old man Falls spat neatly and brownly into the cold fireplace. “That day we was in Calhoun county,” he continued. “Hit was as putty a summer mawnin’ as you ever see; men and hosses rested and fed and feelin’ peart, trottin’ along the road through the woods and fields whar birds was a-singin’ and young rabbits lopin’ acrost the road. Cunnel and Zeb was ridin’ along side by side on them two hosses, Cunnel on Jupiter and Zeb on that sorrel two-year-old, and they was a-braggin’ as usual.
We all knowed Cunnel’s Jupiter, but Zeb kep’ a-contendin’ that he wouldn’t take no man’s dust. The road was putty straight across the bottom to’a’ds the river and Zeb kep’ a-aggin’ the Cunnel fer a race, until Cunnel says ‘All right.’ He told the boys to come on and him and Zeb would wait fer us at the river bridge ’bout fo’ mile ahead, and him and Zeb
