It’s worth remembering that Mam Zena and her whelp could easily have burned if this sort of thing was proved on them — the Church doesn’t put up with that kind of competition. But I dare say there’s no undertaking so dangerous, ridiculous, cruel or nasty but what plenty of goons are ready to have a go at it for a few dollars.
I got annoyed, and I suppose a little overcharged with teen-age hell; besides, I had to get away with my load of wash. Lurette was obviously going to perform as the spirit of Main Byers’ mother; being the opposition candidate was the only thing I could see that might have a future. I freed my knife from under that yellow smock, and put on the big white one over it. It must have cleared Mam Zena’s ankles; on me it swept the floor with considerable dignity, even after I cinched it up with one of the white loin-rags. This left me a pair of bosom-sacks out front which were line for a lot more laundry. Of course I was a little over-balanced — more a 20th Century style as I look back on it now — and my red hair poking up through and around the towel I’d tied over it probably struck a false note, and there could have been a couple-three other things inconsistent with feminine charm at its best. In spite of being dressed for the part, I didn’t feel matronly. So almost right away I gave up any idea of being the quiet type, and finding some tomato sauce on the shelves I splashed a gob of it over the front of the white smock, and more on my knife. I wouldn’t be Mam Byers’ mother after all, but just some well-nourished lady who’d died sudden and still resented it.
Back at my keyhole I saw Lurette about to float in with filmy stuff hung all around her. You could make out a mouth painted large, a pair of eyes, not much more. Hypnotized in the smoky darkness, wanting to believe, Mam Byers would see anything those frauds wanted her to see. That was proved right away, for Lurette entered before I had my nerve screwed up to act. Mam Byers — poor soul, she couldn’t stay at the table as Mam Zena told her to, but jumped up and held out her arms. It somehow gave me the push I needed. I cut loose with “Murder! Murder!” and sailed in waving my gory blade.
Mam Zena rose like a bull out of a mud wallow, knocking over the table and candles, but it was Lurette who screamed in panic, and I went for her first, snatching hold of the drifting white stuff and tripping her so she hit the floor with a fine solid thud. Then I yanked back the window curtains, and when Mam Zena came for me-she had guts — I nipped behind her and started jabbing her in the rump, just enough to keep her active. “Run!” I said, and quoted something nice I recalled from Father Clance’s teaching: “Flee from the wrath to come!”
She fled. I don’t suppose anyone could stick around for that kind of goosing. She couldn’t run for the village, not in a purple turban and black gown. She plunged away into the next room, and I had to let her go — also get out before she returned with some better weapon than mine. But meanwhile Lurette had scrambled up, and she did dart outside for the village, bare-ass, with no more sense than a spooked pullet. She was screeching “Murder! Rape! Fire!” I never did find out which one she thought it was.
I shoved the purse into Mam Byers’ wobbling hands. At least she had seen Lurette unveiled; more than that I couldn’t wait to do. I think she was cursing me as I ran out. Anyone is likely to be cursed for smashing a makebelieve.
I went down those corn rows to the woods about as fast as I’ve ever covered the ground, still brandishing my tomato-killer without knowing it. Sam said later that if he hadn’t known me real well he’d’ve been worried about my condition, but as it was he just wondered why so much feminine influence didn’t do more to bring out the softer side of my nature. Vilet said she loved me too.
On the way back to the cave, after I’d told them the whole amazing story of my girlhood, I stopped in my tracks. “Balls of the prophet!” I said — “I still got that dollar.”
“Oh snummy!” says Vilet, and Sam looked grave. We sat down on a log to reason it out. “It’d be a sin if you’d meant to keep it, but you just forgot, didn’t you, Spice?”
“Ayah. Stracted like.”
“Sure,” she said. “Still I suppose we got to ask Jed what’s the mor’l thing to do.”
Sam said: “Jackson, I’m half-way wishful we wouldn’t do that. I think it’d be mor’lly good for us to solve this ’ere by our lone. Frinstance, could young Jackson, or you, so’t of go on keeping it without meaning to? — naw, naw, sorry, I can see that wouldn’t be just right. More the kind of thing I’d do myself, being a loner by trade.”
“Of course,” Vilet said, “them people was frauds and cheats — oh ffiy gah!” She jumped up, spilling part of the loot she’d been carrying and brushing her worn old green smock as if she’d sat down on fire-ants. “What if that old bag put a witchment onto the clo’es?”
“Nay, Jackson, I b’lieve she couldn’t at this distance. Besides, them spirit-maker frauds a’n’t real witches. Know what? — they be more so’t of quackpot religioners, and you know how Jed feels about such-like. He wouldn’t want no dollar going to support heresy, now would he?”
“That’s a fact,” said Vilet. She was brushing the dirt off the clothes she’d flung away and folding them back into a nice bundle, her hands knowing and sensitive with the cloth. She had a good deal of faith in Sam’s judgment when Jed and God weren’t around.
“And look at it thisaway too,” Sam said; “young Jackson heah has been under a bad strain — nay, I don’t mean about was he a boy or a girl, I think we got that clear enough, he’s as much a boy as any other jackass with balls, but what I mean, he done good work back theah, savin’ a poor lady from sin and folly whiles we was just resting our ass in the brush. I won’t say his hair has turned white from the exper’ence, because it ha’n’t, but my reasoning is, he’s earned that ’ere lucky dollar — a’n’t that so, Jackson?”
“Ayah,” said Vilet. “Ayah, that’s so.”
“Kay. But now, old Jed, he lives on what we got to call a higher mor’l plane — right, Jackson?”
“That’s right,” said Vilet.
“So if we was to tell a bang-up white lie about our boy leavin’ the dollar theah, it’d spare Jed sorrow, right?”
“It would do that,” Vilet said. “Still—”
“It’d keep the wheels of progress greased, I think.”
“Ayah,” said Vilet. “Ayah, that’s so.”
“Account of when you live on a higher mor’l plane, Jackson, you got no time to figger where ever’ God-damn dollar went — if the Lord don’t keep you hopping the unrighteous will.”
“Well,” said Vilet — “well, I guess you’re right…”
We stayed at our cave hideaway a few weeks more, while Vilet fixed up clothes for us. She carried a little sewing-kit, and I never tired of watching her skill with it. Scissors, thimble, a few needles and a spool or two of wool thread; that was it, but Vilet could clutter up the landscape with marvels in a way I’ve seldom seen surpassed. The huge white smock provided three good freeman’s white loin-rags for us and part of a shirt for Jed; then Vilet was able to cobble up the rest of that shirt and two more for Sam and me out of the remainder of poor Miss Davy’s wash. That done, she cussed and sweated some, remodeling the yellow smock for herself, asking the woods and sky why in hell Lurette couldn’t at least have grown a pair of hips. She dissected it, however, and added whatsits here and there; when she was done, it fit her cute as buttons.