“He gets water from a neighbor.”
“I thought he might, and right away he came out with a pail and started across the clearing. I went in and grabbed Danny and ran down the path, and when I got to the road I made a man with a wagon give me a ride, because he said he was going as far as the bus line. But then, as we passed this cabin, who should I see but Kady out back, hanging out clothes! Jess, I jumped down, and ran over to her, and I wasn’t crazy any more, I was the happiest person on earth, because I had my two darlings back, my little baby, and my sister that I’d loved ever since I could remember.”
“How does Kady feel about it?”
“She loves it.”
I didn’t love it, and if Kady did, that wasn’t how she told it to me, the last time she had mentioned Danny. But when she came in with the stuff she’d bought, her eyes were like stars, and she went in the back room with Jane without even a hello to me. I sat there trying to tell myself it was all right, it was just what I’d been praying for. If she could love her child, and stop all this drinking and dancing and carrying on, it was the best thing all around, and I could get some peace from her, and not be teased into having thoughts about her that made me so ashamed I hated to own up to myself they were there. It didn’t do me any good. If she’d had a child, and she hated it, that squared it up, and I didn’t have to remember it. But if she didn’t hate him, it was between me and her, and would be, always. I sat there, while out back Jane explained how to mix this and how to cook that, and pretty soon they began feeding the baby, and his crying stopped and Jane began talking to him and telling him how pretty he was, and all of a sudden Kady was sitting beside me and picking up my hand.
“Want to see my baby, Jess?”
“I guess not.”
“He’s a pretty baby.”
“So I hear.”
“And he’s your grandson.”
“I know.”
“It would make me happy, Jess.”
“It wouldn’t me.”
“Then if that’s how you feel about it, I won’t try to change you. I’ll take him away. There’s a reason I can’t go back to Blount just yet, but he and Jane and I can stay in a hotel at Carbon and you won’t be bothered.”
“I didn’t ask you to leave.”
“If my baby’s not welcome, I’m not.”
“You’ve changed a lot, that’s all I can say.”
“Didn’t Jane tell you why?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Didn’t she tell you why Moke took him?”
“She said he was lonesome.”
“He loved Danny, and specially after the way Belle began fighting with him, just before I left. He was crazy about him, and then when he found out he was to be taken away, he went off with him.”
“Who was going to take him away?”
“Jane ran into Wash.”
“The father?”
“Yes.”
“Or it might be shorter just to say rat.”
“He’s no rat.”
“He skipped like a rat.”
“His father made him. And then, a week ago, Jane ran into him on the street, in Blount. And he asked about me, and Danny, and was friendly, and pretty soon Jane came right out with it and asked why he didn’t marry me, and give his little boy a name, and stop being—”
“A rat.”
“Anyway, Jess, what he said was wonderful.”
“What was it he said?”
“He said he was always going to, soon as he was twenty-one, whether his family liked it or not. He’s only twenty, Jess, one year older than I am. But now, he said they would give their consent too, before he was twenty-one. Because an awful thing happened to them. His sister, the one that married into the coal family in Philadelphia, had to have an operation, and now she can’t have any children any more. And now they know if they’re to have grandchildren, it’s got to be through Wash. And now they feel different about Danny. And — so do I. I’m so ashamed how I treated him before.”
“Well, it’s all fine.”
“Are you glad at all, Jess?”
“To me, a rat’s a rat.”
“Not even for my sake you don’t feel glad?”
“I rather not say.”
Tears came in her eyes and she sat there making little creases in her dress. It wasn’t one of those she’d been buying, but a quiet little blue one, that made her look smaller and younger and sweeter. I said she should stay on till it suited her to go and I’d go to Carbon, but she said she’d go, and I hated it, the way I was acting, and yet I couldn’t help how I felt. And then Jane was there, putting something in my lap, and looking up at me was the cutest little child I ever saw, all pink and soft and warm, with nothing on him but a clean white diaper. Kady reached over to take him, but I grabbed him and went over to one of the settles by the fire and sat there and held him close. And for a long time something kept stabbing into my heart, and I’d look at him and feel so glad he was partly mine that I wanted to sing. His diaper slipped down a little and I almost died when I saw a brown bug on his stomach, or what I thought was a brown bug, just below the navel. I reached for it with my fingers, but Jane laughed.
“That’s his birthmark.”
“I thought it was some kind of a moth.”
“It’s his butterfly.”
“It almost scared me to death.”
They went in the back room with him again, but I called Ka out. “I take it back, everything I said. He’s so sweet I could eat him.”
“But if you’d rather I went—”
“I couldn’t stand it if you did.”
“I can understand how you feel.”
“But I don’t! Not any more. It’s all gone, the devilment that’s been in me, and the onriness, and all what I’ve been thinking about. I want you to be happy. And if the boy wants to marry you, he’s not any rat, and I want you to have him.”
“I’m so glad, Jess.”
“Me too.”
“I want to be your little girl.”
“And I want to be your pappy.”
“Kiss me.”
I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and it wasn’t like those hot kisses we’d been having, but cool and sweet like the kiss Danny gave me just before they took him away.
Chapter 6
Why she couldn’t go to Blount right away she didn’t tell me till one day when all four of us were sitting out under the trees and I spotted a big car coming up the creek from the state road. Then she owned up she had wired the boy, and yet she wasn’t going back till he came and got her. So she and Jane ran in the house with Danny to get slicked up and in another minute there he was, kind of a tall, dark boy in slacks and blue shirt. He didn’t put on any airs with me at all, but shook hands quick, and went around the cabin looking at it, and said it was just like the one his uncle had on Paint Creek, where he used to spend part of every summer. So then it turned out his father had got himself a mine, but his family were mountain people, like us. So that went with his bony look, and made me feel still better about him. Then when Kady came out and he took her in his arms, I had to begin fooling around with my shoe for fear they’d see the tears in my eyes. Then when he saw Danny for the first time in his life, in Jane’s arms laughing and trying to talk as she brought him out, he went over and bent over and looked and bent down and called him old-timer and shook hands just like it was somebody he was being introduced to and could say something. Then he tried to brush off the butterfly, just like I had, and we all laughed and had some Coca-Cola and were friendly. But when they went in to get supper he said he’d have to leave for a little while. “If you’re going back to town, I’ll ride along with you. There’s some things I ought to get.”