Ah scrambled forward, climbed through the wire fence and peered through the wall of rotten cane trash a few feet in front of him. In a ditch filled with water by the side of the track, one thin white arm floated like a blaked eel upon a silvery blanket full of holes. Ah watched him fish the blanket out, lift her livid body from its watery grave and lay it down – stiffed already, ah think, from the ungainly attitude of her limbs. Taking a box of matches from Mule’s saddle bag, he set about burning off the leeches that fed upon her body. He wiped her hair from her eyes and looked down at her ravaged face. Even from mah coign of vantage ah recognized the fine-boned nose – broken, her top teeth gone, her eyes puffy and dark and her skin broken in parts by a raging pemphigus. Her once luxurious body was wasted to death and the water had left her skin blanched and wrinkled.
With the help of Mule, Pa carted the body of Cosey Mo over to the cottonwoods. He did not look up and ah was undiscovered – nor did ah care, so thoroughly numbed did ah feel. Ah looked on as Pa dug a hole and lifted her in, first making sure that she was covered by the blanket. The hole was off the track, a little closer to the swamplands but still on firm ground. He dug it deep, covered her over, and then patted the mud down with the back of the shovel. Then he took his whittling knife and a little chunk of wood about the size of a deck of cards, and, sitting on a rock which he had rolled over the grave, he set about carving something into the chunk, then wedged it unner the rock. After he had gone I rolled off the stone.
C. MO
R.I.P.
1943
Ah had never seen Pa do anything with such tenderness and feeling as when he buried the harlot of Hooper’s Hill.
Ah got the urge to return to town. All mah bones were knocking up a notion that something was brewing.
XX
In the year of 1940, Ukulore Valley had been, in anybody’s language, a model town. It had prospered, and each citizen shared in the communal wealth – provided that he or she was a Ukulite, and hence an equal partner in the basic but sound co-operative system upon which the town and its surrounds had been founded.
Joseph Ukulore, brother of the prophet Jonas, had laid the foundations which would provide, many years after his death, sufficient lucre to support an entire township for three years; but even these sound securities could not prevent Philo Holfe’s initial duty as leader of the Ukulite community through the rain years being, under the supervision of Doc Morrow and Pal Weaverly (owner of the liquor store by Wiggam’s General, one of the last remaining private enterprises in town), a reduction by fifteen per cent in the monthly general allowance paid out to each adherent – a necessary course of action if the Ukulite sect wished to remain together as a family of the Lord. Three months later, Philo was forced to reduce the payments by yet another five per cent.
With each reduction in the family allowance, the amount of traffic in and out of the stores dwindled, the Ukculites becoming less and less inclined to venture forth from the grim surrounds of their homes.
Nevertheless, by the early afternoon of 19 May 1943, just about every soul in Ukulore Valley knew of Doc Morrow’s discovery. Most of the denizens were uninterested; others, namely a number of the womenfolk, changed that day from the nightdresses which had become their habitual garb into habiliments of coarse black flax and smocks of white, each one plaiting and coiling her long, loose locks and covering them with a strip of white lace.
By three o’clock around fifteen or so women huddled under the shelter of Doc Morrow’s porch, their heavy shoes clopping upon the bare boards. This huddle of women included, among others, the invalid Wilma Eldridge, with her truckling companion Hilda Baxter rubbing constantly the handles of the wheelchair; Hulga Vanders – a xylocephalic ogress, deep disgruntled furrows carved upon her face, great arms folded across her vast bosom; Nena Holfe and Olga Holfe, precious wives of the brothers; and, clinging to the arm of Nena, Edith Lamb, a shivering miniature porcelain antique of eighty-three, bent and blind and bloodless.
Three years had come and gone and not a day had passed that was not infused with God’s drumming displeasure. The soot-and-ash sky, the rain, its incessant racket, the absence of sun and light and warmth, the damage to property and land, the ruined crops, the dwindling numbers, the flagging assets – all the calamities resultant from His wrath had ceased to be questioned by the band of believers who remained in the valley. The rain simply endured, stolidly suffered by the long-suffering Ukulites; but hot without its toll.
One could see, in the group of womenfolk serried together on the porch, that something had indeed changed, or rather had gone missing. In the prolonged hibernal existence of the rain years, something had been worn from their once hard-lined faces – washed away with the waiting. Something that had been rooted deep in the hearts of these pious souls, that had shone through their eyes, had now vanished. Certainly, the redolence of calm was gone, as was the look of inner confidence, of exclusiveness; and no longer now did the quiet belief in their own supernal destiny colour their expression.
Gone was the God in them.
Instead there was a look of resignation, of defeat, of shame – a flabbiness about their faces that reflected a flabbiness of the soul.
As they awaited the doctor, they spoke amongst themselves and their voices, flat and world-weary, were swallowed up by the drumming downpour and by their own muzzy dumfusion.
‘… swathed in a swaddle and blue as a plum!’ said one.
‘It vill be a miracle zat it should live…’ intoned Olga Holfe, and Nena Holfe, cupping her monstrous man’s hands to her great brawling black-clad breasts, added, ‘And such a tiny zing.’
‘And wearing our Prophet’s very robe! Unthinkable!’ fumed Wilma Eldridge.
‘And wearing the Prophet’s sacred crown upon its little head,’ elaborated Hilda Baxter, a chronic fabulist by nature.
‘Rubbish!’ spat the crippled Eldridge. ‘Utter rubbish! Sacred crown indeed…’
Then, as if struck dumb, the women hushed, each drawing breath as the door to Doc Morrow’s surgery swung open.
Across the road, perched on a public bench, sat Euchrid. He removed one water-filled boot and emptied it. He removed his other boot and did likewise. Bare-footed, his boots beside him on the bench, he peered through the inky precipitation at the black-clad sorority that milled about the doctor’s office.
Euchrid watched as the surgery door swung open and the women, unanimous in their sudden breathless silence, formed a neat half-circle about the doctor. In his arms he cradled a bundle swathed in a clean white blanket, and smiling broadly he appeared to address his audience, though his words never reached Euchrid, drowned as they were in the fremitus of the rain.
Euchrid slid back into his boots and, unable to contain his curiosity, began to walk cautiously across the road. He heard a cheer rise from the onlookers, and as he reached the porch, he caught the last of the doctor’s speech rising from the huddle.
‘… it’s a God-given miracle that she is even alive…’ And then the doctor’s words were lost in the coos and clucks of admiration, the squeals of delight that issued from the gathering.
Hesitantly, Euchrid climbed the steps, craning to glimpse that which inspired so much attention. He heard the doctor’s voice booming again ‘… gently with her… try not to wake her…’, then, her eyes fixed on the little pink face that peeked from the swaddle, Nena Holfe took the bundle from the woman next to her, rocked it gently, hummed a little, turned, cooed, and without looking up, pressed the babe into the arms of Euchrid the mute.
Euchrid looked at the babe and the babe looked at Euchrid.
A second or two passed in deathly silence.
Then a consentaneous cry of alarm leapt from the lips of the women as they comprehended the situation. Euchrid stood, overcome with panic, juggling the tot in his arms, unable to run.