Israbestis rose with effort. To climb a tree so high you could see Columbus from it — what a wonder. It was Omensetter's luck. Not a story, an illness. He'd never live its telling. Henry Pimber died of Omensetter's luck, too, one way or other, everybody said. The boy had died at that — the infant. How lucky was he? anybody?
If you ask me that minister is mad. Will you shush? In that garden, bless me, back and forth, back and forth, all he does is walk.
Well, I told old Harris if you use your heart like that, you'll stop, Doc Orcutt said, but if you don't it'll just plug up — you're just as dead and there's no effort in it. The doctor slapped his thigh.
Tott — you've shut your house. In effect, you've shut your house. You can't forget, and you don't dare remember.
I remember who said bless me. In that garden, bless me… Yes. The darkie. Funny… Omensetter was dark, he was brown, a deep brown like pot roast gravy. Israbestis chuckled. Then Furber was dark in his cloth, small and dark, though very pale of skin… oh, very… very pale… a moon out, somebody said, where the stars had been.
The tap when he reached it was warm. He searched the bricks, aware of his sweat. His eyes went over every pit and crater. He saw his spit crusted flat in the dust and spat again on top of it a cottony spit. He pushed aside the stems of marigolds and inspected all their rusty petals. The pungent scent cleared his nose. He hunted patiently through their leaves. There, beside his foot on the walk, stilting on its thread-thin legs, the pebble stood. Israbestis bent down and it suddenly fled. He pursued it down the walk with his thumb, jabbing. It nearly escaped his reach, which would have been too bad, for they were alone in the world, but he put his thumb down and the longlegs went out like rays around it. Then slowly they curled up. Bango, you go bango, Israbestis said, feeling the cement warm his thumb.
What are you doing mister, killing spiders, a little girl said. Yes. Killing spiders, Israbestis whispered, getting up.
Good. I hate spiders. They crawl you up.
Yes.
They're nasty.
Yes. Nasty, said Israbestis Tott.
The Love and Sorrow
of Henry Pimber
1
Brackett Omensetter was a wide and happy man. He could whistle like the cardinal whistles in the deep snow, or whirr like the shy 'white rising from its cover, or be the lark a-chuckle at the sky. He knew the earth. He put his hands in water. He smelled the clean fir smell. He listened to the bees. And he laughed his deep, loud, wide and happy laugh whenever he could-which was often, long, and joyfully.
He said to his wife when it is spring we'll go to Gilean on the Ohio. That is a fine place for the boy you're making. The air is clear.
Therefore, when the snow sank quietly away into the creeks; therefore, when the rivers had their bellies brown and urgent; when the wind went hungry about the bare-limbed trees and clouds were streamers; then Omensetter said the time is coming and we must be ready.
They washed their wagon. They ironed their Sunday things. They braided the hair of their daughters. They did everything that didn't matter. It made them feel good.
They brushed the dog. They piled the firewood left from winter neatly. They pinched each other a good deal on the behind. Everything that didn't matter and made them feel good, they did.
It rained a week. Then Omensetter said it seems that we are ready, shall we go?
They piled their belongings on the back of the wagon. They heaped them up, one on top of the other: flaming tufted comforts and tattercrossed quilts, plump bags of clothing and sacks of shoes and sewing and a linen tablecloth with stains that were always hidden by the plates; two ladderbacks, a stool and a Boston rocker, a bench of quite hard and eloquent oak, and a drop-leaf table whose top was carved into faces and initials by no one they ever knew; jars, a framed view of the Connecticut River, rubber boots; and in boxes: wooden spoons and pans and stove lids and pothandle holders and pots, tin silverware and nickel-plated medallions and a toothpick, somewhere, thinly tinted gold with a delicate chain, a mezzotint of St. Francis feeding squirrels, some tools for shaping leather, two pewter goblets and thirteen jelly glasses, seven books (three of which were about birds by the Reverend Stanley Cody); a collection in tobacco tins of toy rings and rice-bead necklaces, amber-colored stones and tiny china figurines and stamped-out metal dogs and cats and horses and two lead hussars in tall hats and bent guns whose red paint had all but worn away; ten and twenty penny nails, dolls made from sewn chains of stuffed cloth, small dishes and large crocks, a paper cockade, four flat spiders dead a long time and saved under a stone in the hearth; a saw, a hammer, square, a sledge, other things that were called dolls but were more like pressed grass or pine cones or strangely shaped sticks or queer rocks; any kind of shell whatever-turtle's, robin's, snail's; and not in boxes: a tight bucket and an unassembled plow, a spade, a shovel and an ax, a churn, a wooden tub and washboard, and a great white ironstone basin and a great white ironstone pitcher and a great white enamel pot with a chipped lid that was terribly cold in the morning; a shotgun and some harness and a spinning wheel, a compass in a leather case that always pointed to the west of south, and arrows for the unborn boy to shoot at falling leaves and sparrows in the fall. They piled them up, one on top of the other, until there was a tower in the wagon. On the top they lashed the cradle. The tower teetered when the wagon rolled. They said maybe everything will fall into the road but they really didn't think so, and they didn't trouble to cover anything. Of course the rain would stop, they said, and it did. Omensetter hitched the horse to the wagon. He hopped up with a great flourish and addressed the world with his arms. Everyone enjoyed that. Omensetter's wife swung up too. She rested her arm on his leg and she squeezed his knee. Omensetter's daughters whooped up the back. They snuggled under quilts. They made a house in the tower. Everyone said a prayer for the snowman dead a week. Then Omensetter chucked, the dog barked, and they set out for Gilean on the Ohio where the air was clear and good for boys. They left behind them, where they'd kissed and talked, water dripping lightly from the eaves of their last and happy home.
There were still a few people in Gilean when Brackett Omensetter came. It had been dry, for a change, all day. George Hatstat's rig was mired down on the South Road even though the South Road drained into the river, and Curtis Chamlay had turned his wagon back from the western hill that afternoon, being a stubborn man, three hours after he started slipping on its yellow sides. That meant the hill should be impassable since the other slope was generally worse. Consequently everyone was thoroughly amazed to see Omensetter's wagon come sliding down and draw its tilting peak of furniture and tools and clothing into town behind a single wretched horse. They looked at the unprotected quilts, the boxes and the stilting poles, the muddy dog, the high-lashed swaying cradle with bewildered wonder, for all day, in the distance, choked gray clouds had dropped their water in the forests, and even as they watched the wagon coming, away above the western hill, sunshine shining from it, there was a clearly defined acre of rain.
Pausing only to ask directions, Omensetter drove rapidly to the blacksmith's shop, bawling out his name before the wagon had fully stopped and announcing his occupation in an enormous raw voice as he vaulted down, his heels sinking so deeply in the soft ground it held him a moment, lurching, while he rubbed his nose on his upper arm and Matthew Watson emerged from the doorway blinking and shaking his apron. Omensetter rushed to the forge and bent over it eagerly, praising the beauty and the warmth of the fire. He teetered as he pummeled a leg that he said was tingling, his face flushed by the coals and his shadow fluttering. Mat inquired his business. Omensetter groaned and yawned, stretching with an effort that made him tremble. Then with a quiet exclamation he moved by Mat and took a piece of leather from the bench; wound it around his fingers like a coil of hair; let it straighten slowly. He held it gently in his huge brown hands, rubbing it with his thumb as he talked. He spoke in a dreamy monotonous voice whose flow he broke from time to time by peering closely at the edges of the strip he held or by bringing it sharply down against his thigh, smiling at the sound of the crack. He was very good, he said. He would start tomorrow. There was no one in the town brought up on leather, and Mat had far too much to do. That was certainly right, he thought. Mat would see how he was needed. His thumb moved rhythmically. His words were happy and assured, and if Mat's doubts were any obstacle, they calmly flowed around them. I shall work out very well and you can easily afford me. Before Omensetter left, Mat gave him the name and address of his friend, Henry Pimber, who had a house which might be rented since it was empty and dissolving and sat like a frog on the edge of the river.