And I don’t believe she was hunting for the husband that had deserted her — likely he cut and run soon as she told him about the baby — and I don’t believe she was scared or ashamed to go back home just because her brothers and father had tried to keep her from marrying the husband, in the first place. I believe it was just some more of that same kind of black-complected and not extra-intelligent and pretty durn ruthless blood pride that them brothers themselves was waving around here for about a hour that day.
‘Anyway, there she was, and I reckon she knowed her time was going to be short, and him saying to her, “Let’s get married,” and her saying, “I can’t marry you. I’ve already got a husband.”
And her time come and she was down then, on that shuck mattress, and him feeding her with a spoon, likely, and I reckon she knowed she wouldn’t get up from it, and he got the midwife, and the baby was horn, and likely her and the midwife both knowed by then she would never get up from that mattress and maybe they even convinced him at last, or maybe she knowed it wouldn’t make no difference nohow and said yes, and he taken the mule pap let him keep at the mill and rid seven miles to Preacher Whitfield’s and brung Whitfield back about daylight, and Whitfield married them and she died, and him and Whitfield buried her.
And that night he come to the house and told pap he was quitting, and left the mule, and I went out to the mill a few days later and he was gone — just the shuck mattress and the stove, and the dishes and skillet mammy let him have, all washed and clean and set on the shelf. And in the third summer from then, them two brothers, them Thorpes—’
‘Thorpes,’ Uncle Gavin said. It wasn’t loud. It was getting dark fast now, as it does in our country, and I couldn’t see his face at all any more. ‘Tell,’ he said.
‘Black-complected like she was — the youngest one looked a heap like her — coming up in the surrey, with the deputy or bailiff or whatever he was, and the paper all wrote out and stamped and sealed all regular, and I says, “You can’t do this. She come here of her own accord, sick and with nothing, and he taken her in and fed her and nursed her and got help to born that child and a preacher to bury her; they was even married before she died. The preacher and the midwife both will prove it.”
And the oldest brother says, “He couldn’t marry her. She already had a husband. We done already attended to him.” And I says, “All right. He taken that boy when nobody come to claim him. He has raised that boy and clothed and fed him for two years and better.”
And the oldest one drawed a money purse half outen his pocket and let it drop back again. ‘We aim to do right about that, too — when we have seen the boy,” he says. “He is our kin. We want him and we aim to have him.” And that wasn’t the first time it ever occurred to me that this world ain’t run like it ought to be run a heap of more times than what it is, and I says, “It’s thirty miles up there. I reckon you all will want to lay over here tonight and rest your horses.” And the oldest one looked at me and says, “The team ain’t tired. We won’t stop.”
“Then I’m going with you,” I says. “You are welcome to come,” he says.
‘We drove until midnight. So I thought I would have a chance then, even if I never had nothing to ride. But when we unhitched and laid down on the ground, the oldest brother never laid down. “I ain’t sleepy,” he says. “I’ll set up a while.”
So it wasn’t no use, and I went to sleep and then the sun was up and it was too late then, and about middle morning we come to that mailbox with the name on it you couldn’t miss, and the empty house with nobody in sight or hearing neither, until we heard the ax and went around to the back, and he looked up from the woodpile and seen what I reckon he had been expecting to see every time the sun rose for going on three years now.
Because he never even stopped. He said to the little boy, “Run. Run to the field to grandpap. Run,” and come straight at the oldest brother with the ax already raised and the down-stroke already started, until I managed to catch it by the haft just as the oldest brother grabbed him and we lifted him clean off the ground, holding him, or trying to. “Stop it, Jackson!” I says. “Stop it! They got the law!”
‘Then a puny something was kicking and clawing me about the legs; it was the little boy, not making a sound, just swarming around me and the brother both, hitting at us as high as he could reach with a piece of wood Fentry had been chopping.
“Catch him and take him on to the surrey,” the oldest one says. So the youngest one caught him; he was almost as hard to hold as Fentry, kicking and plunging even after the youngest one had picked him up, and still not making a sound, and Fentry jerking and lunging like two men until the youngest one and the boy was out of sight. Then he collapsed.
It was like all his bones had turned to water, so that me and the oldest brother lowered him down to the chopping block like he never had no bones a-tall, laying back against the wood he had cut, panting, with a little froth of spit at each corner of his mouth. “It’s the law, Jackson,” I says. “Her husband is still alive.”
‘“I know it,” he says. It wasn’t much more than whispering. “I been expecting it. I reckon that’s why it taken me so by surprise. I’m all right now.”
‘“I’m sorry for it,” the brother says. “We never found out about none of it until last week. But he is our kin. We want him home. You done well by him. We thank you. His mother thanks you. Here,” he says. He taken the money purse outen his pocket and puts it into Fentry’s hand. Then he turned and went away. After a while I heard the carriage turn and go back down the hill. Then I couldn’t hear it any more. I don’t know whether Fentry ever heard it or not.
‘“It’s the law, Jackson,” I says. “But there’s two sides to the law. We’ll go to town and talk to Captain Stevens. I’ll go with you.”
‘Then he set up on the chopping block, setting up slow and stiff. He wasn’t panting so hard now and he looked better now, except for his eyes, and they was mostly just dazed looking. Then he raised the hand that had the money purse in it and started to mop his face with the money purse, like it was a handkerchief; I don’t believe he even knowed there was anything in his hand until then, because he taken his hand down and looked at the money purse for maybe five seconds, and then he tossed it — he didn’t fling it; he just tossed it like you would a handful of dirt you had been examining to see what it would make — over behind the chopping block and got up and walked across the yard toward the woods, walking straight and not fast, and not looking much bigger than that little boy, and into the woods. “Jackson,” I says. But he never looked back.
‘And I stayed that night at Rufus Pruitt’s and borrowed a mule from him; I said I was just looking around, because I didn’t feel much like talking to nobody, and the next morning I hitched the mule at that gate and started up the path, and I didn’t see old man Fentry on the gallery a-tall at first.
‘When I did see him he was moving so fast I didn’t even know what he had in his hands until it went “boom!” and I heard the shot rattling in the leaves overhead and Rufus Pruitt’s mule trying his durn best either to break the hitch rein or hang hisself from the gatepost.
‘And one day about six months after he had located here to do the balance of his drinking and fighting and sleight-of-hand with other folks’ cattle, Bucksnort was on the gallery here, drunk still and running his mouth, and about a half dozen of the ones he had beat unconscious from time to time by foul means and even by fair on occasion, as such emergencies arose, laughing every time he stopped to draw a fresh breath. And I happened to look up, and Fentry was setting on his mule out there in the road.
‘He was just setting there, with the dust of them thirty miles caking into the mule’s sweat, looking at Thorpe. I don’t know how long he had been there, not saying nothing, just setting there and looking at Thorpe; then he turned the mule and rid back up the road
