Part 13

We had left home early because of Len’s prediction that we should have to walk after reaching Red Hog Gap, the entrance to Silver Valley. “But we’ll be in two miles o’ the graveyard then,” he said, “an’ can pick it up in no time.” Uncle Nathe’s farm lay in Silver Valley township only four miles, by crow’s wing, northwest of mine, but the descent over cliffs and crags was hazardous, and we had set off in exactly the opposite direction, walking the two miles down to Beebread, where Arnold Weaver was waiting on the new highway with his car--the first automobile to become a local pride in our part of the mountains. We soon sailed over the few miles of highway and reached Scatter, the next railroad-station below Beebread, where we turned into the narrow mountain road leading to Uncle Nathe’s country. Here we began to come upon people who were walking to the funeral, and it was here that our car, through Len’s cordiality, became so firmly packed. He extended invitations until the seats, the floor, and the running-boards would hold no more. “You’re payin’ fer the whole car,” he said, “an’ might as well git yer money’s worth.”

We were bouncing heavily along over the rutty road when ahead of us we saw a young man whose brisk step was certainly not of the highlands. There were various unsuccessful conjectures as to his identity, and suddenly Len called out: “Hey, Arn, stop yer shooter! It’s Ann Lindsay’s boy!”

“He’d have to set ’tween yer big toe an’ the long un,” said Arn. “I ain’t goin’ to stop no more.”

“But he’s come all the way from C’lumby to be at Uncle Nathe’s buryin’.”

“He didn’t walk only from Scatter.”

“I’ll jump out an’ let him set in my place.”

“You ain’t got any place. You’re settin’ on the tip aidge o’ nothin’.”

But Arn stopped the car. “Here, Bake,” said Len, “I’m gittin’ out, an’ you hop in. Reckon you know me?”

“Len Merlin!” cried the stranger. “You caught that fox yet?”

“No, he’s waitin’ fer ye.”

“Can’t get him this trip. Got to hurry back. Go on, Arn, with your baggage. I’m walking to rest myself. Been on the train since last night. I’ll see you all over the hill.”

His refusal of the “seat” was positive, and we moved on, but not far. We were climbing the hill leading to Red Hog Gap, and Lea’s prediction came true. The car refused to take the last lap over the hill, though we gave it an opportunity to do its best, by dropping out and scattering as readily as overripe plums from a suddenly shaken bough. With good cheer we began our walk to the graveyard. When nearly there we were overtaken by Bake Lindsay, and Len picked up their broken conversation.

“What yer hurryin’ to git back fer? You ain’t been in sence when?”

“Not since I was married,” said Lindsay, “and that’s five years. I started soon as I heard about Uncle Nathe.”

“Is he really a nephew of Mr. Ponder?” I asked of the woman walking nearest to me, for with the whole country calling him “uncle,” the blood-kin were left without distinction.

“No, he ain’t no nephew,” she said, in a tone that I had learned to recognize as a shut trail in Unakasia. The story was not for me, an outsider. Even Len and Serena had turned a gently impassive front to my very reasonable interest in Uncle Nathe’s family history. But Serena now stepped up and said intimately: “Jest wait, Mis’ Dolly. We’ll go to dinner with Aunt Lizy Haynes. Uncle Nathe’s half-brother, Ranz, is stayin’ there, an’ he’s shore to let loose after the buryin’. When Uncle Ranz lets loose it’s something else, I’m tryin’ to tell ye. They won’t be any more questions to ast when he gits through.” Then she moved over to Bake. “It’s fine, yore comin’ in, Bake,” she said.

“Of course I wanted to be at the funeral, but,” he explained honestly, “I’ve come mainly to get mother.”

“She goin’ back with you?” cried half a dozen voices.

“She’s promised to. I’ve been trying to get her to come out to me and Jenny ever since we’ve been married.” Then his voice seemed to struggle a little. “Before we tied up, Jenny gave me her word that she’d be good to mother, and I know she’ll keep it.”

“You got any young-uns?” asked Len, and Bake said he had a little boy. They had named him Nathan.

“That tickled Uncle Nathe, I reckon,” said the woman who had answered me the moment before. Then she hastened to cover her indiscretion. “’Course y’all have been on his place a long time, an’ he’s been mighty good to ye.”

“He’s been good to ever’body,” said another.

“I reckon he has,” said Bake, and we entered the graveyard.

It was to be a Masonic funeral. Uncle Nathe’s popularity would have drawn a large attendance, but the presence of the Fraternity made the occasion an event in Silver Valley’s history. Nathan Ponder had been the only Freemason in his township, a member of the distant lodge in Carson, and for years he had not been in active attendance there, but he had left a request to be buried by the brethren, and they had gallantly responded.

“That’s Elmer Jenkins,” whispered Serena of a man who was prominent in the ceremony. “He’s a lawyer, come up from South C’liny ’bout a year ago, ’count of his wife’s health, an’ settled in Carson.”

“Looks like,” said another voice, “that they could ’a’ got along ’thout a furriner to tell ’em what to do.”

“He’s high up in the lodge,” said Uncle Ranz Ponder, the half-brother of Uncle Nathe, “an’ he seems mighty frien’ly.”

The old and impressive service was solemnly conducted to the end, and there was a general breaking-up, amid a conflict of invitations for everybody to go home with everybody else for dinner.

“We’ll go with Aunt Lizy,” said Serena. “They’s a lot been astin’ me, but they ain’t none of ’em pulled the buttons off my clo’s tryin’ to take me with ’em, an’ I know we’ll be full welcome at Aunt Lizy’s. Uncle Ranz, he’s her cousin, he’ll be there, like I said.”

So Mrs. Haynes’s invitation was accepted. Serena and I were to stay until the next day, but Len and the daughter, Lonie, were to return that evening to look after the children, the cows, and the chickens.

The brethren who had come out from Carson returned to town, with the exception of Lawyer Jenkins, who, probably, was thinking of profitable affiliations with the remote but fertile valley. I observed him reading the headstones around the new-made grave, and it seemed to me that he was afflicted with a growing concern. He turned, with a question, to the man nearest him, who happened to be Len.

“Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?”

“You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time, savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what they wuz.”

“But four? Isn’t it a little unusual?”

“Well, maybe it is, but Uncle Nathe wuzn’t no hand to set at home by hissef.”

At that moment, to Len’s apparent relief, Aunt Lizy came up, and we found that Mr. Jenkins also had accepted her invitation. He walked with her husband, Uncle Dan’l Haynes, and I gathered from drifting fragments of their conversation that Mr. Jenkins was still on the trail of Uncle Nathe’s connubial history.

At the dinner-table he pleased all of the guests by introducing the topic from which they were politely holding back. “I have been learning from our kind host,” he said, eying with favor his selected piece of fried chicken, “what this loss means to the community.”

“Yes,” some one responded, “it knocks all of us, losin’ Nathe does.”

“There is some property too, I believe. I trust there is harmony among the heirs.”

“They’re all behavin’ fine,” said Aunt Lizy, with some heartiness.

“Our brother was married several times, I understand. Did--er--all of his wives leave issue?”

“Young-uns? No, Aunt Lindy never had any, ner Lu Siler, but Callie had a little feller that died--Rufe, they called him. An’ Ponnie, his fust wife, left four, all livin’ yit. They git along together fust-rate.”

“I wonder what Ponnie would ’a’ said,” reflected Uncle Dan’l, “ef somebody had told her Nathe wouldn’t be buried alongside o’ her.”

“Well,” said Uncle Ranz, “I’d ruther not hear what Ponnie would ’a’ said.”

“I say it ought to ’a’ been Lindy he wuz laid by,” asserted Aunt Lizy. “She lived with him the longest an’ worked the hardest.”

“She didn’t think a grain more o’ him than Lu Siler did,” returned Uncle Dan’l.

“Our brother expressed no preference?” inquired Mr. Jenkins.

“You mean which un did he want to lay ’longside of? No, he wuzn’t a man to put one wife ’fore another. He left that to us.”

“Very thoughtful, I take it,” said the lawyer. “A strong character certainly. I am sorry I never knew him.” And he mused a little on the bed-rock qualities of the old mountaineer.

“We meant,” explained Uncle Dan’l, “to lay Nathe by his fust wife, Ponnie, but when we dug down there we struck a rock that would ’a’ had to be blasted out, an’ we’s afeard it would shake up the graves. We couldn’t lay him t’other side o’ her, ’cause her two childern wuz there, an’ then come Lindy, his last wife, so we decided to dig jest beyant Lindy. But about four feet down we come to water that turned ever’thing inter mud--it wuz that spring, I reckon, that sinks inter the ground above the graveyard--an’ we had to go to the upper row where Callie an’ little Rufe an’ Lu wuz layin’. We couldn’t put him by Lu, ’cause she wuz in the aidge o’ the Ponder lot, right next to Randy Hayes in Bill Hayes’s lot, an’ it jest had to be Callie er nothin’.”

Comments followed, various and spirited, with citations of other instances, historic and contemporary, and the dinner was over. Mr. Jenkins regretted that he must leave us. He was urged to stay, in the politest highland manner, but when the door had closed behind the respected “furriner,” the immediate relaxation in the air showed that the hour of restraint had been heroically prolonged.

“Harmony!” exclaimed Aunt Lizy. “An’ there’s Angie Sue claimin’ ever’thing her daddy had. There won’t be a scrap left when they all git through fightin’.”

The general glance slanted toward me, and I began to think that I ought to have disappeared with Mr. Jenkins, though the fact that I was under Serena’s native wing had done much to vouch for me.

“I don’t reckon Bake Lindsay’ll mix up in anything,” said Pole Andrews, with an eye carefully diverted. “I seen he wuz at the buryin’.”

“Wonder what he’s back here fer?” said another, equally disinterested.

“He’s come to git his mother,” Serena easily announced.

“Ann!” came from several voices.

“That’s what he said. You heard him, Mis’ Dolly.”

She turned to me with careless confidence, and I responded with an uncritical smile that embraced the company.

“Oh, yes! He has come in for his mother. She is going to live with him and Jenny.”

I knew everything then! There was a stir of abandon, and an eager voice asked: “You don’t think that Bake can tech any o’ the property, do you?”

“’Course he kain’t,” said Aunt Lizy, before I could recover from the direct appeal. “Anybody knows that.”

“You are right, Mrs. Haynes,” said I, now clothed in authority. “He is not entitled to a single thing. Though, of course, I’ve never heard the whole story. I’ve been wishing some of you would tell me everything just as it happened.”

“Ranz there’ll tell ye,” said Aunt Lizy. “He thinks his tongue’s got a mortgage on ever’thing abody could say about Nathe Ponder.”

“Ef I’ve got sech a mortgage, Lizy, you’re always scrappin’ to git yer name on it.” Then he turned to me. “If I tell it, I’ll have to start at the fust of it. I never could hit the middle an’ go on.”

“All right, Uncle Ranz,” said one of the younger men. “That’s what we want. I reckon this is the last time we’ll all corcus over Uncle Nathe.”

“Y’all keep Lizy from pesterin’ me then, an’ turn that feist out, some o’ ye.”

II

“Nathe took me to live with him an’ Ponnie,” began Uncle Ranz, “when they’s fust married. I wuz about ten years old then, an’ I’ve got to say it fer Nathe, he wuz as good to me as a daddy. He wuz thirty years old when his fust trouble come up, an’ he’d been married turnin’ onto ten years. Him an’ Ponnie had four childern a livin’ an’ two dead.”

“You wuz there, Uncle Ranz,” put in a guest, “the very day o’ the trouble, wuzn’t you?”

“I wuz right there, but ef I’m goin’ to talk it will have to be on my own time an’ not yorn.” There was a chastened silence, then he continued amiably: “Ponnie had been spittin’ fire fer two er three days, an’ the childern wuz dodgin’ her. I wuz grown up by that time, an’ could look out fer myself. Nathe an’ Ponnie had been plum crazy about each other when they got married, but they had black eyes pineblank alike, an’ I’ve noticed that don’t work out as well as when you marry a different color. Nathe’s hair wuz curly, though, an’ Ponnie’s wuz straight an’ long. It wuz powerful thick, too, an’ she could twist it an’ wrap it round her head big as a dish-pan mighty nigh. I’ve _hearn_ she had a drap o’ Cher’kee in her----”

“That wuzn’t so, Ranz,” Aunt Lizy interjected. “Me an’ Ponnie wuz the same age, an’ run together from the time we’s out of our cradles, an’ ef there’d been any Indian in her I’d ’a’ knowed it.”

“You’d ’a’ had to know her gran’mother, I reckon. Anyways I’m jest tellin’ what I hearn. There wuz a woman up on Sawmill Creek that folks said wuzn’t much good. She had hair as yaller as honey, an’ as sprangly as a stump full o’ gran’daddies. It begun to seep around that Nathe wuz slippin’ over there, an’ Ponnie got holt o’ the talk. After that, Nathe dassent stay away from home all night, she’d git so ruffled up. He come to me one day an’ ast me ef I couldn’t ride over inter Tennessee an’ look at some mules he wanted to buy to trade on. I thought he ought to go hissef, ’cause he knowed a mule from the tip o’ his nose to the kick in his heels, so I says: ‘Nathe, you kain’t afford to let Ponnie ruin yer business. Air ye a man, er air ye not?’ That’s what I said, an’ I reckon I ought to ’a’ kept my mouth shut, seein’ how it turned out, an’ gone on inter Tennessee. Nathe walked off an’ saddled up, an’ told Ponnie he’d be gone four er five days. She’d come out to the gate, an’ when he told her that, I saw her kindle up, an’ she turned square around an’ went inter the kitchen. After Nathe rid off I went in too, an’ I saw Ponnie wuz workin’ hard an’ tryin’ to git easy. We talked about what a good man Nathe wuz, an’ what he wuz doin’ fer his fam’ly, an’ how the neighbors thought sech a sight o’ him, an’ what he wuz goin’ to make agittin’ mules out o’ Tennessee an’ tradin’ on ’em, an’ she quieted off an’ seemed all right till Nathe got back from his trip. When he come in she wuz mighty glad to see him. He told her he’d done well, an’ she’d be stringin’ di’monds in that black hair some day, an’ they ’most had a little courtin’ spell. But Julie Mack come in the next day to help Ponnie put up fruit an’ bile off apple butter, an’ Julie’s mother lived up on Sawmill Creek not fur from that woman.”

“Ol’ Sis Mack could split a truth an’ make two lies out of it!” said Aunt Lizy, and Uncle Ranz loftily accepted the interpolation.

“That’s what I told Ponnie when she come out to the orchard where I wuz shakin’ down apples. She said that Julie’s mother had seen Nathe ridin’ down Sawmill Creek road, an’ I told her what I thought of ol’ Sis Mack’s tongue. ‘He may ’a’ jest rid by innercent,’ I says. ‘Innercent!’ says Ponnie. ‘It wuzn’t yisterday she seen him, it wuz the day before.’”

“‘Well, ef it’s so,’ I told her, ‘it ain’t so bad as buryin’ Nathe.’ I reckon that’s another time I spoke wrong, fer she said she didn’t know about that, an’ went off a-studyin’. But she come in an’ got supper, tryin’ to smile peart, an’ Nathe didn’t know nuthin’ wuz wrong. Next mornin’ she got to studyin’ agin, an’ come round to me about ten o’clock. ‘Ranzie,’ she says, ‘I’m goin’ to kill Nathe,’ an’ I says: ‘You need him too bad, Ponnie, to hep raise yer childern.’ ‘I kain’t raise ’em at all,’ she says, ’ef he keeps me bothered this a-way. Nathe’s my man, an’ I ain’t goin’ to have him runnin’ here an’ yander.’ I went to Nathe then, an’ told him that Ponnie knowed about him an’ he’d better get it fixed up with her. He said nobody could lie hard enough to git anything fixed up with Ponnie, an’ I said: ‘What ef she took a notion to kill ye, Nathe?’ He laffed big at that, an’ said: ‘Ranz, you don’t know Ponnie like I do. She’d keep me here jest fer her temper to bite on.’ ‘She ain’t so awful high-tempered,’ I says. ‘She works hard, an’s raisin’ yer four childern. She’d never say a hot word, leastways to you, ef it wuzn’t fer the way folks say you run around. Ef it’s so, I’d try to quit it till she gits to where she don’t think enough o’ you fer it to bother her.’

“‘Lord, they ain’t no hope o’ that,’ he said. ‘But don’t you worry ’bout her killin’ me.’ An’ he went off to hep some men we had workin’ in the fodder. I kep’ busy in the orchard, an’ ’long a little ’fore twelve I wuz goin’ inter the yard with a tow-sack full o’ winesaps on my back when I seen Ponnie comin’ from the smoke-house with the big butcher-knife in her hand, an’ seen Nathe a-crossin’ over to the spring. They come up close together, an’ she put out her hand an’ took holt o’ Nathe’s hair right above his forehead. He had powerful curly hair then, like I told ye, an’ black as sut. She turned his head right back, an’ says: ‘Nathe, I’m goin’ to cut yer throat.’ That sack dropped off my back, but I wuz so cold I couldn’t move. Nathe looked right at her an’ laffed. ‘Go ahead, Ponnie,’ he says. ‘I reckon that’s what you ought to do.’ She let go then an’ made like she wuz playin’ with him, but she says, ‘Some o’ these days I’ll mean it,’ an’ went inter the kitchen. In about haf an hour she come to the door an’ called ever’body to dinner. We’s all in the yard, washed up by that time, an’ we went in. Ponnie had made apple pies that mornin’, an’ had chicken an’ dumplin’s, ’cause that wuz what Nathe liked, an’ she’d set the table out nice, an’ put on a white table-cloth, which we didn’t have only fer company an’ Sundays. She hepped ever’body, an’ picked out the drumstick fer little Rosie, an’ made the boys, Herb an’ Sam, stop scrappin’. Then she says: ‘Hep yersevs, I’m goin’ inter the big room fer a minute.’ We went on eatin’, an’ Nathe called out she’d better hurry up, the dumplin’s wuz goin’ fast, an’ right then we heard a shot. When we got in, there she wuz lyin’ on the floor stone dead, an’ Nathe’s ol’ rifle there to tell it. Nathe fell down on the floor an’ kept sayin’, ‘You don’t mean it, Ponnie, you know you don’t mean it,’ over an’ over till I’s about crazy. He’d rub her black hair like he wuz techin’ a baby, an’ swear that he’d put his eyes out ’fore he’d look at another woman agin. ‘You know you hear me, Ponnie,’ he’d say, ‘you know you do.’”

Uncle Ranz paused feelingly, and when another voice took up the narrative, the help was tolerantly welcomed.

“Yes,” said Uncle Dan’l, “I’ve hearn Ben Goforth tell it. He wuz one o’ the men workin’ there that day, an’ they pulled Nathe away from Ponnie an’ inter the yard, till the women could lay her out. Soon as she wuz dressed fer her coffin he went back an’ laid on the floor till they carried her off.”

“He got over it, though,” said Serena, who could never linger in gloom.

“Purty slow, purty slow, but when he did put it by--well, sir, he _put it by_.”

“Slow it wuz,” said Aunt Lizy. “I remember, as well as Ranz, er anybody here, ’bout that next winter an’ spring. Nathe kept lookin’ like he didn’t keer whether he wuz in this world er the next, an’ he wouldn’t put in no crap. Ranzie here had the whole farm on his hands, an’ I’ll say it fer Ranz that ef it hadn’t been fer him them little young-uns would ’a’ gone hungry that year, er lived off the neighbors. The deacons fin’ly went to Nathe an’ ast him ef he thought he wuz heppin’ Ponnie any by neglectin’ her childern, an’ said he ort to git somebody who would take keer of ’em. They told him to marry some good woman that ’ud look after them like Ponnie wanted. An’ after they’d pestered him a while, he says: ‘All right, I’ll marry, but I don’t want a woman that’s crazy about me, an’ I don’t want to git crazy about _her_.’ He told ’em to find somebody that would be good to the young-uns an’ he’d be satisfied. The deacons went all around then, an’ got their wives to go, an’ they talked to all the single women as fur up as Sawmill Creek an’ as fur down as Nighthawk, but they’s all skeered to marry Nathe, an’ no wonder when he kept stuggin’ round the country lookin’ like the hind wheels o’ destruction. They thought there must be something awful quare about him er Ponnie wouldn’t ashot hersef. There wuz jest one widder----”

“Ay, Mary Kempit,” said a voice, as Aunt Lizy paused, a little short of breath. “She had five young-uns.”