“If you don’t shut up, I might.”
“Can’t I even laugh?”
“He was right.”
Then we began to talk, and I tried to tell her how it scared me, that I had almost killed a man. “And you, don’t it shame you, you were making up to two men tonight, within ten minutes of each other?”
“What’s to be ashamed of?”
“It’s blood.”
“Listen, if I hear any more of this Morgan stuff—”
“I tell you, it’s in-breeding. It’s what we both got to be afraid of. It’s in us, and we ought to be fighting it. And stead of that—”
“Yeah, tell me.”
“We’re not.”
“Well say, that’s terrible.”
“ ‘Shining, shooting, and shivareeing their kin, that’s what they say of people that live too long on one creek. I thought I was too good for that. But today, right up in that mine, I ran off five gallons of liquor that’s against the law. This evening I almost killed a man.”
“And tonight you’d like to have me.”
“Stop talking like that!”
“What were you shooting him for?”
“You ought to know.”
“You must be loving me plenty.”
“I told you, quit that!”
“Have a drink with me?”
“No!”
“How about you going to reform school?”
Chapter 5
One night when I got through the run I took a walk up the creek, and when I came to the church I kept on up the hollow, and pretty soon sat down by a tree and tried to think. We had had some trouble that day. Now the money was coming in she kept buying clothes, blue and yellow and green dresses, and red coats, and hats with ribbons hanging down the side, and every night we’d drive in town to the White Horse, and they wouldn’t serve her liquor any more but we’d have some Cokes, and then she’d dance and carry on with whoever was there, and then I’d take her home. But in the daytime she got sloppier and sloppier, and one day when it got hot she took off her shoes. And this day she said it was so hot by the still she couldn’t stand it, and slipped off her dress so she was in nothing but underwear and hardly any of that, and began dancing to the radio, swaying with the music with one hand on her hip and looking me in the eye. Well, in the first place, in a coal mine it’s the same temperature all the year round, and that little bit of fire I had in there, what with the ventilation we had, didn’t make any difference at all. So we had an argument about it, and I made her put her clothes on and cut off the music. Then she said: “Jess, did it ever strike you funny, one thing about this place?”
“What’s that?”
“If a woman was attacked in here, there’s nothing at all she could do about it.”
“Couldn’t she bite? Or kick? Or scratch?”
“What good would it do her?”
“Might help quite a lot.”
“Not if the man was at all strong. She could scream her head off, and not one person on earth would hear her. I’ve often thought about it.”
I made her get out of there and go down to the cabin and catch up on some of the work. But I was hanging on by my teeth by that time, and I was a lot nearer giving up the fight, and going along with her on whatever she felt like doing, even getting drunk, than I wanted her to know. That was when I took this walk up the creek, and past the church, and through Tulip, trying to get control of myself, and maybe pray a little, for some more strength.
And then, from up among the trees, I heard something that sounded like a wail. Then here it came again, closer. Then I could make out it was a man, calling somebody named Danny. And then all of a sudden a prickle went up my back, because I knew that voice, from the million times I had heard it at the company store and around the camp and in my own home. It was Moke, but he wasn’t singing comical stuff to a banjo now. He was scared to death, and slobbering at the mouth as he called, and in between moaning and whispering to himself. He went stumbling along to his cabin, and I followed along after him, and watched while he stood in the door, a candle in his hand, and called some more. Then when he went inside I crept up and peeped through a chink in the logs. He was a little man, but I never saw him look so little as he looked now. He was sitting on the clay floor, in one corner, the banjo leaning against the wall beside him, his head on his arms, and shaking with sobs so bad you thought they were going to tear him apart.
I was shook up plenty myself, because if there was one person in this world I hated it was him, and after all Kady had said, and all I knew from before, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing here, and I knew it had to be something that meant me. So I could feel some connection when I came to my cabin, and from the back room I could hear a baby crying. I went inside, and at the sound of the door, a woman called to know if it was Kady. I said it was Kady’s father. She came out then, and from the tall, thin shape she had, and the look of her face and color of her eyes, I knew she was a Tyler. “I think you’re my girl Jane.”
“And you’re my father.”
We shook hands, and I patted her hand, and then we sat down, and both of us wanted to give each other a kiss but were too bashful. “Can I call you Father?”
“I don’t mind.”
“I used to call you Pappy.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember a lot, and how sweet you was to me, and how much I loved you, and how tall you was.”
“Why not call me Jess?”
“Isn’t that fresh?”
“Kady does, but of course she is fresh.”
“It’s so wonderful about her.”
“... What about her?”
“Everything.”
She looked down at the floor, and you could see she was awful happy about something, and then she said: “You know about Danny?”
“Who’s Danny?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“Is that Danny in there crying?”
“He won’t cry after he’s fed. Kady took the truck and ran into town for a lot of things he’s got to have, because all you’ve got here, that he can have, is milk. But she’ll be back soon. And as soon as he gets a little something in his stomach he’ll be sweeter than sugar.”
“What’s Moke got to do with him?”
“Have you see Moke?”
I told her what had gone on in the hollow, and she doubled up her fists and said: “I hope I don’t see him. I might kill him.”
“Hey, hey, none of that kind of talk.”
“Moke took Danny.”
“First my wife, then my grandson.”
“Say that again, Jess.”
“He is, isn’t he?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember it.”
“I don’t forget much.”
“What Moke did, and how today I caught up with him, that’s part of what’s so wonderful. Last week, on account of Kady being gone and my mother not much caring one way or the other, little Danny was mine, and it was heavenly, because maybe I’ll never get married, but still I had one of my own. Then when I came home from the store one day he was gone, and Moke was gone, and I went almost crazy, but I knew it had to be Moke that took him, because he was so crazy about him.”
“Moke loves somebody?”
“Oh, he gets lonely too. And there I was, fit to be tied. Because Kady, that was my whole life before, was gone I had no idea where, and now with Danny stolen it was more than I could stand. But my mother said if Moke took him, he had to have some place to bring him to, and he still had his shack up in the hollow, and maybe it was there. So she drew it out for me how to get there, and I took the bus over from Blount, and even before I got to it I could hear Danny laughing and Moke playing to him on the banjo. So I wasn’t going to take any chance on a fight with Moke. Maybe he wouldn’t let me have Danny, but then he’d know I was around, and might run off again, somewhere else. So he said something to Danny about a drink, but I noticed there was no well out back.”