CHAPTER I

A CRY FOR HELP

"Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."--Matt. x, 31

"On, lookit--lookit!"

"'Sh! Not so loud. Fat'll hear yo'."

"Lor' a mercy! Ain't hit slick."

"Take keer, Mollie. Hit's goin' ter ketch in thet thar tree."

"How y' s'pose God's goin' ter git holt of hit?"

"I, golly, He kin read thet printin' a mile away."

"Huh! He won't hev to. Hit's a goin' all the way. Mollie said so. Hit's more'n two thousand miles from hyer to thar."

"To whar?"

"G'wan, Mollie, let 'er loose. Doan yo' callate hit's riz enough now?"

Mollie's face, upturned to the blue sky, was pale and tense. From wide, anxious eyes she watched the kite mount higher and higher over the heads of the excited children. Head and shoulders above the tallest she stood, arms outstretched, small, capable hands extended, palms touching, after the manner of suppliants of all ages, and slowly released from between work-worn fingers yard after yard of the long, knotted string which, for the moment, anchored the heaven-bound messenger to its petitioners on earth.

"'Sh!" she warned again, without changing her position nor shifting her gaze from the fluttering kite soaring upward on the wings of the soft breeze that was stirring. "Be quiet, now, all of yo'. I'm goin' ter let go. I reckon hit's high enough. Yo' all mind the pra'rs I learnt yo'. This kite's jest nachully flyin' straight up ter God. When He gits hit, He'll shore do somethin'. Yo' all jest hol' your mouths now an' watch hit go."

Away from the restraining hold of the small hands fluttered the slender cord. With a swiftness and directness that made the watchers gasp, the air-borne message sped on its way. Ten little faces peered expectantly heavenward. Ten childish mouths stood agape as hungrily as those of young birds. Ten pairs of eager, luminous eyes stared after the kite as it receded into the great, unknown spaces of the air. With bated breath Mollie herself watched until the kite became a tiny speck in the distance and finally disappeared from even her keen range of vision.

"Kneel down," she commanded, softly, kneeling herself as she spoke.

With one accord the children knelt.

Somewhere the sun was shining. Its rays did not penetrate the gloom which surrounded that pitiful band of innocents with age-old faces and tattered clothes. Behind them spread a miserable little vegetable patch. Beyond, to the right, were the outlines of a ramshackle barn, decrepit out-buildings and a wretched apology for a house. Above loomed tall, gnarled trees, moody and sullen in appearance, their lowering branches frowning down upon the tousled heads now reverently bowed. Directly in front of the little group yawned a morass as sinister and menacing as hell itself, its quaking mud ready to suck into bottomless depths any dead or living creature within reach of its loathsome touch.

The children clustered on its bank knew only too well the awful secrets consigned to those quaking depths. Even little Tommy, the youngest except Baby Amy asleep under a tree, clutched the hand of the child beside him and shivered as he stared, fascinated, upon the ugly black bog while Mollie voiced their prayer:

"Oh, dear God, our first kite was lost. We've sent yo' another. I printed the words on hit big. Yo'll see hit a-comin'. We want help. We want to git away from hyar before Old Grimes puts any more of us in the bog. Oh, God, we're awful hungry. We're hungrier than the sparrows yo' dote on. But they'll git along fer a spell, God. Hit's our turn now. Let us be sparrows. These hyar children need help. That's why we're sendin' yo' the kite. Yo'll find us in the barn or in the veg'table patch. Ef yo' doan find us yo'll know we're daid. We caint git away. So please help us quick. Amen."

A low, plaintive wail sounded as Mollie ceased speaking. She sprang to her feet and ran to the tree under which she had placed the least one of her brood. Little Amy was awake and moaning as only a very sick child can moan. Mollie gathered the tiny sufferer in her arms and did what she could to ease the little one's misery. She realized the uselessness of her efforts. For weeks she had watched Amy slowly wasting away for lack of nourishment. She had listened night and day to her piteous moans. Sometimes it seemed that her own heart would break under the strain of witnessing the grim tragedy about her.

Amy was a year old. She had been a plump, rosy infant when Peter Grimes brought her to the farm. She had two or three pretty frocks and a rattle with an ivory ring. Now her little body was puny and wasted. Her mother would not have recognized the emaciated frame and drawn, pinched features as that of her own offspring. An unnatural intelligence gleamed from the baby's large, pathetic eyes, so mutely eloquent of the tortured, imprisoned soul.

All Mollie's maternal instincts were roused by the suffering of this helpless child. She would not trust the little creature out of her sight.

"There's no telling what Old Grimes mought do," she confided to one of the older children. "He's gone ter town to-day fer ter git the mail. Ef any money comes from Amy's Maw, mebbe he'll let Amy live. Ef he doan git none he'll say she's a-goin' ter die anyhow an' the sooner she's outten the way the more work he'll git outten me. So I'm goin' ter keep her by me. When God starts cycoring I want Amy cycored 'fore any of the rest of us, 'cause she's the miserablest."

So little Amy was carried tenderly to and from the vegetable patch where the children worked daily while she alternately slept and moaned in her grassy bed under the lowering trees. Now, however, there was little time for Mollie's tender ministrations. The vegetable patch demanded her supervision. If Peter Grimes found any fault with the work done by the children they would all be made to suffer.

It had been a terrible task to get the kite made and released without discovery by either Grimes, his shiftless wife or their cruel, sneaking, pig-faced son. Of the three merciless monsters Mollie dreaded the latter the most. One never knew at what moment Ambrose, otherwise "Fat", might come sneaking upon them or what form of cruelty his abnormal mind might devise for their further torment.

Maria Grimes possessed neither the energy nor the intelligence for independent action. She never took the initiative. She merely carried out the commands of her husband and the demands of her ugly, over-grown son. Of those two she stood in as great awe and fear as did the children. Left undisturbed in her slatternly kitchen with her snuff dip and a bottle of corn liquor she became a negligible figure, slow to think and loath to act.

Peter Grimes, himself, sole owner and proprietor as well as instigator of the shameless institution known as Grimes' Hog Farm but which really trafficked in human flesh, was as twisted physically as he was mentally into a repellant, reptilian monster, totally devoid of all human qualities of decency and compassion.

He walked with a sidewise, writhing motion suggestive of the malevolent approach of a giant cobra. This was not due to partial paralysis resultant from an accident as many persons believed, but from a congenital deformity extending to the brain structure and transforming that which might have been human into a diabolical monstrosity. In a more populous section of the country Peter Grimes would have been removed in his youth from contact with normal persons and cared for in an institution. But in the isolated hill country of the south he grew to maturity unsuspected of being a menace to society, though shunned and feared for his cruel acts and taciturn disposition.

His hog farm was not inaugurated until after his common law marriage with Maria Honeycut, whose father owned the land and for years operated a still in the fastnesses of its quagmire protected borders. Old Honeycut had been shot by a revenue officer that he tried to throw into the bog, and the illicit distillery had been destroyed. Maria, the daughter, remained on the premises, working spasmodically in the truck patch and sometimes trudging to town to dispose of vegetables in exchange for sugar, corn-meal and other commodities. Peter Grimes, with the craft of a serpent saw his opportunity. He visited Maria in her lonely abode and told her she needed a man. Maria, dull-witted and fearful, accepted the statement without question and Peter remained. A son was born and they named him Ambrose, the name of the old moonshiner who had sought to throw the revenue officer into the bog.

From the time he could toddle young Ambrose had amused himself by throwing everything he disliked into the bog, as his grandfather had done before him. The child laughed and clapped his hands to see the frantic struggles of bird and animal to escape the suction of that black mire which slowly, steadily pulled them down, down, down into its foul depths until nothing remained on the surface but sluggish ripples of mud, lapping over the spot where the hapless victim passed from sight. It was hellish but young Ambrose laughed. It was hellish but his strange father approved. It was hellish but his mother accepted it as a matter of course. She had seen such things all her life. She supposed it was what bogs were for.

With the advent of young Ambrose the forlorn truck patch became more and more neglected. Peter Grimes was not given to manual labor. Maria was naturally shiftless. They had to live, so Peter sold a hog. The sale gave him an idea. When an expected litter arrived he did not dispose immediately of the young pigs but fed them until they were of a size to bring a better price. Then he affixed a sign to the high gate which effectually shut off all view of the farm from the one precarious roadway leading to its portals. The sign was a piece of shingle with crude lettering in black paint:

"Hogs for Sale."

"Thet law agin lettin' hawgs run loose in the woods was plumb hard on some folks," Peter remarked to Maria when the sign was finally in place, "but I reckon hit'll do us some good."

"Peaches are powerful good for hawgs," Maria replied with unexpected brilliancy. "Pappy uster tote in great loads of 'em an' our hawgs got plumb fat 'fore killin' time."

"I ain't goin' ter tote no peaches," returned Peter.

"Ef Ambrose was bigger," Maria commenced, then paused at seeing a new expression come over Peter's grim face. It was the dawning of his great idea.

"I'll git yo' a bigger young-un," he exclaimed with more vigor than was his wont. "Hit won't cost nothing ter keep, fer I'll git board money fer keepin' hit an' hit'll work ter pay fer hit's keep."

"Whar'll yo' git hit?"

"Never yo' mind whar. Jes' hol' yore tongue an' do what I tells yo'."

Very soon after that conversation Peter Grimes took his writhing, ominous way to a near-by city. When he returned, two children accompanied him, one a boy of nine years, the other a tiny girl. That was the beginning of the industry which for years permitted the Grimes household to flourish amid the luxury of idleness and to lay by a snug sum of money for some undefined purpose which even Peter could not explain.