Part 16

“Why wouldn’t he be satisfied?” said Aunt Lizy, “with pore Lindy doin’ ever’thing fer him while he rid aroun’, an’ went over to Ann’s whenever he took a notion! An’ folks never stopped him from bein’ deacon.”

“What proof did they have agin him, I’d like fer ye to tell me,” said Uncle Ranz. “They couldn’t do nothin’ without proof. It wuz his own mill, an’ ef he wanted to set around there fer a while, onct or twict a week, he had a right to. Nobody but me knowed what he’d said about Bake, an’ I never told it till to-day.”

“To-day!” exclaimed Aunt lazy. “I’ve heard it a hunderd times ef I have onct!”

“Well, I may have told _you_ a time er two, Lizy, but I never went round the settlement a-tellin’ it. I reckon folks thought ef Lindy didn’t want to act up about Ann, _they_ didn’t have no call to make trouble. Lindy had her hands full anyhow, there wuz always so many runnin’ in an’ out o’ the big house. The boys got married, too, an’ some o’ the childern wuz comin’ an’ goin’ all the time. It wuz quiet over at Ann’s, an’ she wuz a lot easier in her mind after Curt died. She growed stronger, an’ begun to ’tend to the mill hersef. When her mother died, she kept right on tendin’ it. An’ she wouldn’t take nobody to live with her. Her brother’s fam’ly wuz so close she didn’t need nobody, she said. Folks would come to the mill, an’ talk pleasant, an’ hep with the liftin’, an’ Nathe couldn’t make her give it up.”

But Aunt Lizy must add a bitter touch. “It’s a pity,” she said, “that he didn’t try to make Lindy give up some o’ _her_ hard work; she’d ’a’ lived longer.”

“I know she worked hard,” said Uncle Ranz, “an’ the gals wuz aggervatin’, but she seemed satisfied, an’ Nathe never interfered with her about nothin’.”

“I reckon,” said Uncle Dan’l, “them twenty-odd years he lived with Lindy wuz about the best o’ Nathe’s life. An’ she never opened her mouth about Ann.”

“You’re fergittin’ what she said when she wuz dyin’. Lindy wuz proud o’ her nice things--all the quilts she’d pieced, an’ counterpins an’ kiverlids she’d wove, an’ rugs, an’ table-kivers, an’ curtains. When she wuz dyin’ she ast Nathe not to let Ann come in over ’em soon as she wuz dead cold. Nathe promised her he wouldn’t. ‘Ef I bring a woman in here, Lindy,’ he said, ‘she’ll have to be as smart as you’ve been.’ That pleased Lindy better’n anything he could ’a’ told her. Nathe kept his word too, an’ married a fine widder from out around Waynesville. She wuz up in years, but healthy, an’ could turn her hand to anything. Nathe wuz proud o’ the Widder Stiles when he brought her in.”

“I knowed her boy, Zeb, out in Jackson County,” said Uncle Dan’l. “He wuz a smart feller, an’ went off an’ made two kinds of a doctor of hissef, a rubbin’ doctor an’ the other kind. I seen Doc Stiles when he went through here last summer.”

“His mother could ’a’ come inter Silver Valley without puttin’ on airs, though,” Aunt Lizy informed us, in a tone savoring of keen reminiscence.

“She had different notions from Lindy, an’ that’s what Nathe wuzn’t expectin’,” continued Uncle Ranz. “She never ast no questions, an’ nobody told her nothin’, but she looked around fer hersef, an’ it didn’t take her long to make up her mind about Ann. When they’d been married about six weeks, she told Nathe she believed she’d go fer a visit to see how her folks wuz gittin’ on. Nathe said all right, only he’d ruther she wouldn’t stay long an’ it harvest-time. He hitched up, an’ took her to Scatter, an’ she got on the train an’ never come back. Nathe went over to Waynesville after her, but he had to come home by hissef. Seemed like he wuz tuk down about it, an’ never got back his spirit. ’Twasn’t long till he couldn’t ride over to Ann’s, an’ after that he went off fast. Angie Sue left her second husband, an’ come to live with her daddy, an’ Herb’s wife wuz dead an’ him an’ all the childern wuz there, an’ pore ol’ Nathe had to die ’thout anybody in the house to make things run easy an’ peaceable.

“Angie Sue is claimin’ ever’thing her daddy had fer takin’ keer o’ him, but ef it hadn’t been fer the things Ann cooked up an’ slipped over to him by me an’ the neighbors, he wouldn’t ’a’ teched a bite fer three weeks ’fore he died. Angie Sue quit takin’ her stuff in to him, ’cause all he’d say wuz: ‘Git out o’ here with that pizen.’ The day he wuz dyin’ he sent me to tell Ann that Bake would take keer o’ her. She knowed that, but he wanted to be sendin’ some word. She wuz settin’ by the winder holdin’ something in her hand when I come inter the yard. I went to the winder, an’ she paled off a little an’ ast ef he wuz gone. When I told her what he wanted me to, she says: ‘You give him this. He’ll know what it is.’ I looked, an’ it wuz a big ol’ shiny chestnut, so light I knowed they wuzn’t nuthin’ in it but dust. ‘I picked it up,’ she says, ‘that day about a minute ’fore Lu saw us.’ I took it, but Nathe wuz dead when I got back home.”

III

At Scatter the next morning Serena and I waited for the up-train to Beebread. A little mother and her big son were waiting for the down-train going east. Serena went over to the mother, who was Ann Lindsay, and they chatted softly. I kept aside, not precipitating an introduction. Was she not a nugatory survival, who, by all laws of fitness, ought to have been on the hill ’longside the others? But the “others” would have removed their dusty skirts; and Bake had said that Jenny would be good to her. That expectation was apparent, I thought, in her quiet assurance. And suddenly, unreasonably, I felt that her departure was a desertion.

I recalled the futile Angie Sue, the innocuous Herb and Sam, the negligible Rosie, and thought of Nathe with all his vital insistence buried so “proper” in an untended grave. Then I looked at big Bake, whose resolute posterity would shoulder through, undoubtedly, to the end of a needy world. Here, for the breath-time of earth, at least, Uncle Nathe might hold oblivion in check.

The whistle of the east-bound train blew, a mile away. I had overheard enough to know that Bake and his mother would leave the train at Carson and motor over the new highway, out and down to their lowland home--that highway, monstrously magical, so rapidly obliterating the Unakasia of my intimate care and delight. Within a few years, the ways and customs of Atlantis would not be more dim in time.

While the whistle of the train was still keen in the air, Elmer Jenkins walked on to the platform. He spied Baker Lindsay, and went to him at once.

“I saw you at the funeral yesterday,” he said.

“I saw you too,” said Bake, his smile implying that no one could have missed the master of ceremonies. Mr. Jenkins was pleased, and his glance of response included the pretty, white-haired woman at Bake’s side. When he was introduced, the lawyer would have offered his hand, but Ann, unfledged in new air, was too timid to note the gesture.

“I suppose you were out yesterday, Mrs. Lindsay,” he said, and she dropped a soft negative.

“Too bad you missed the ceremony! It was unusual in a district so remotely rural. I was glad to be instrumental in getting a good turn-out from the Carson lodge, though Mr. Ponder had not been in attendance for some years. These fine old mountaineers are passing--passing. It was a very interesting funeral. Very.”

“I reckon it was,” said Ann, as Bake, gently dominant, lifted her to the train.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.