Iris sat silent
at Uriah’s side as he drove the buggy the rest of the way up to the Hitt farm.
He eyed her a couple of times, as though to judge by her reaction what had
taken place, but her face was impassive. For a while, he whistled tunelessly,
and from time to time he grinned to himself. It was plain that he thought
himself one heck of a fine fellow, a first class lover. Iris was his first
virgin. All the other women he had taken had been second hand goods: bored or
abandoned wives; an occasional good time girl; chance encounters in barns or
hay ricks, or by summer waysides; furtive and hurried. But this woman was his,
to have as he would, whenever he might please, and he liked the idea mightily.
Nothing could give a man a better appetite.
He was
whistling again when he pulled the horse to a stop in front of the Hitt home.
He waited on the bench as though he expected a right royal welcome.
Jedediah
came down from the step in front of the cabin to inspect his son, and looked at
Uriah slyly. ‘Well, Gawd-Dayam, boy. Ain’t you jes’ grinnin’ like a baked
possum?’ He came down from the step in front of the cabin to inspect his son,
and his voice was robust. He was a tall man, gaunt and rangy, back in his
working clothes now, with a long full beard that gave him the air of a Biblical
prophet. His tone was somewhere between envious and jovial, and his manner was
earthy. ‘Damn. She mus’ve been purty good.’
He did not
look at Iris, except in one quick sidelong glance that swept across her. She
bit her lip to prevent herself from reddening. This old man might have been for
all the world discussing the local stud servicing some farm animal, rather than
his son and his bride.
Uriah
jumped to the ground. He held himself proudly, like a banty rooster. It wasn’t
every day a man brought home a freshly broken fifteen year old as a trophy.
‘Yeah, Paw. I got me a good ‘’un’. I could tell I was breaking new ground.’
The two
men beamed at each other in a moment of male bonding, and Jedediah spat out a
long stream of tobacco juice. ‘Well son, you done good.’
Then
Jedediah looked at Iris directly for the first time, raising one finger towards
the brim of his hat. But his finger stopped midway, and it was plain that he
thought better of the gesture. She was Uriah’s woman now, part of the household.
There was no sense letting think she deserved any fancy treatment. ‘Git
yoursel’ down, girl. Capitola’ll be looking for you to help get dinner on the
table. ‘Riah and me got work to do.’
Iris
lowered herself to the ground gingerly just as Uriah clucked the horse into
motion towards the barn. She was still aching from his assault, and stumbled
awkwardly as the step jerked from under her foot. She waited for the buggy to
move away, and then climbed the cabin step and pushed the door open.
Capitola
was busy frying ham in a big skillet, with hoe cakes on a griddle. Iris
wrinkled her nose at the smell of food. She realized that she had eaten nothing
since the previous night: normally she ate after serving Woodrow, but breakfast
had gone lacking.
She stood
respectfully behind the older woman. ‘Kin I help, Maw?’ She thought the
question the right thing to say, for she felt she needed to be on good terms
with Uriah’s mother.
Capitola
Hitt did not turn around. ‘Ain’t no call for you here, Missy. An’ I ain’t your
Maw.’ Her tone was cold, all her chapel goodwill wholly gone. ‘Jes’ you stay
out’n ma way.’
Iris
persisted. First impressions are lasting impressions, and she guessed Capitola
was the only ally she might have. ‘Kin I at least turn the cakes for you, Ma’am?’
Capitola
pushed at the ham in the skillet, then turned around, holding the long handled
fork like a weapon in front of her. Iris backed up.
‘I done tol’ you to stay out’n ma way, girl.
Out’n ma way means jes’ that: out’n ma way. That’s plain American.’ Capitola’s
eyes blazed for a moment, and then turned cold again. ‘Uriah done hisself a
fool thang, haulin’ you out heah.’ She was a dark woman, with fierce black eyes
and black curly hair, and her voice held just a trace of a Southern accent.
Jedediah claimed he had brought her up from Louisiana after a spell working on
the flatboats. But some said her folks had been slaves, while others claimed
she was part Indian. ‘He didn’t have no call to go and find hisself some po’
white trash thing like you. He coulda had him a town girl, sumpin’ fine.’
Iris’ eyes
hardened, but she stayed where she was. She was tempted to tell her
mother-in-law that Jedediah had sent her in to help, and comment tartly that no
town girl would spare a second glance for a shuckberry like Uriah, but she bit
her words back. Capitola plainly wanted to make her feel small, and shuffle her
nicely into the part of a servant girl, but it would take a sight better than
this old woman to string a ring through her nose. However she did not speak, because
she was fresh into the house, and she had no call to fight.
However,
her closeness still seemed to bother her mother-in-law, and the older woman
waved towards the wall beyond the big pine table. ‘You git your stuff over
yonder, and get yourself washed up.
Then go busy yourself outside. I ain’t got no call fer you in heah.’ She
turned back to her stove, speaking to Iris without looking at her. ‘I cooked
for my two men, man and boy, fer the best part of two score years, an’ I reckon
I kin go on cookin’ another two score. You go out mess with them chickens, and
tend that cow you brung with you. Go do somepin’ useful.’
Iris
circled round the table, and looked down at the dirt floor in surprise. A large
straw mattress lay pushed to one cabin wall, close up by the door, and a second
smaller mattress rested in a corner. But the smaller mattress looked to be just
big enough for one person, and too small for a couple. It was something she
would have to remedy, because she did not imagine Uriah would take kindly to
sleeping all on his own.
She was
also more than a little taken aback at the way the two mattresses were set so
close. A lot of the poorfolk cabins around the hollers in Coates only possessed
a single communal room, used for cooking, eating and sleeping. But decent
people generally managed to have two rooms at least, boarded off one from the
other, and the Hitts were not poor folk, for she reckoned they must be pulling
in a good cash crop every year from their still.
‘Y’all
make sho’ your man do what he gotta do out in the barn, too.’ Capitola spoke
again, and now her voice was threatening. ‘I ain’t gonna have you a’snufflin’
and a’pantin’ around when ah’m tryin’ to get ma sleep.’
Iris
reddened and bit her lip. Now she really felt like showing Uriah’s mother that
she could also wield a sharp edge to her tongue, and deal back as good as she
took. But she held herself in. One day the right time would come. But not yet.
She turned
her back on Capitola and undressed quickly, changing into the feed sack dress
she kept for work. Then she picked up the dress she had stained with her blood
and walked quickly to the cabin door. She needed to get out into the fresh air
and feel free. She looked around, and saw a well pipe by the cabin step, with a
half-gallon well bucket hanging next to it, and a galvanized pail hanging from
the porch beam, and began to work methodically, first lifting down the well
bucket, then filling the bucket and emptying it into the pail, then filling the
bucket again. When she judged she had enough water, she placed her soiled dress
in the water to soak.
She heard
a movement as she finished, and looked up. Capitola was standing in the cabin
doorway, glowering at her. Uriah’s mother stepped forward, lifting her hand,
and slapped her across her face, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. Then
the older woman stepped back, and her eyes were fierce. ‘Just what the
tarnation do you think you’re doin’, Missy?’
Iris
looked down, studying the ground at her feet, and thought back - perhaps for
the first time in her life, fondly on her life with Woodrow. She scuffed her
bare right foot in the dirt. ‘I’m just trying to get my blood out of my dress
before it sets. Uriah told me. . .’
Capitola sniffed
and leaned towards her until their noses were almost touching. ‘I don’t care
what ‘Riah told yo, Missy.’ She spoke in harsh, angry jerks of sound. ‘This is
ma house and you don’t belong heah. You don’t touch a thang around this place
less’en I warrant yo kin. Yo get that?’
Iris
nodded.
‘Right.’
Capitola paused for a moment, triumphant. ‘Well, since you already got the
water drawn, you might as well get the wash tub out. It’s hung on the shed out
back. But let that be the last time you be drawin’ water for your own washin’
less’en you wash for the rest of us. We ain’t got enough water for that.’
Iris
fetched the wash tub down, and walked slowly back to the cabin. She felt
miserable and downhearted, though she knew that she should make an effort to
hold up her head. A dog might expect better treatment. She collected a
pile of dirty clothing, dropped it into the tub, and then went off to find
Daisy. At least she could expect her cow to show her some gratitude at being
milked.
She found
herself a stool in the Hitt’s barn, and sat, resting her forehead against
Daisy’s warm and comforting flank, whilst the familiar rhythm of milking slowly
brought her peace of mind. She felt oppressed: she reckoned Capitola would do
her best to tread her down, and knew that any attempt to hold her own would
lead slowly an inexorably into a long and bitter war. But she also knew that
the only other path ahead of her led to slavery. She weighed her two choices as
she milked, and her mind seemed to turn round and round in long slow circles,
and the circles twined in each amongst one another like children’s spinning
hoops. She thought of Uriah, the man now her husband, and his father, and
played for a moment with thoughts of trying to turn them against the woman in
the cabin. But she was the newcomer, facing three people who shared their
lives, and she knew that she would need to amass a great deal more power than
she possessed to overcome the three of them. She thought briefly of running
away. But she had no place to go, for Woodrow would certainly never take her
back, and she had no education to help her make her way in the world.
She
thought of Uriah again, and shivered momentarily, even though it was a warm
summer day. He had violated her, and taken her innocence, and she knew that he
would return, and force himself on her, and into her, and take his pleasure of
her, and that she would be unable to gainsay him, however much she might want
to resist him. She wondered how she could again bear the weight of his body,
and his panting and grunting, without feeling physically sick within herself.
She
sighed, finishing her milking, and stood up, taking her two milk pails in her
hands. She had come in a space of a few hours from being a carefree girl into a
new life as a careworn woman, and the thought made her want to weep. But then
she straightened her back, and began to walk towards the cabin, and her
straightening was a sign from within her. She was not a dog for Uriah and his
parents to kick. She would watch and wait, and bide her time, and patience
might well reward her. Woodrow had sometimes taken her fishing in the creek
below the Bethpage cabin, and taught her to build traps from woven sticks to
catch crawfish. Crawfish could be crafty, and elusive, but they could also be
caught by stealth. She would be crafty in her turn, and use craft to shape her
future.
She
carried the two buckets onto the porch step, and stood them in a shaded corner
to cool. Uriah and his father and mother were already sitting at the table,
eating. Capitola looked up her.
‘Yo’ kin
help yersel, now that we’re sat.’ She waved with her fork at the skillet on the
stove. ‘We ain’t got no call to wait on sluggards.’
Iris
pretended not have to have heard, and shovelled a hoe cake and some ham out
onto a cracked plate. It was greasy looking provender, grey and unappetising,
as much bacon grease as corn meal around the edges, but it was food, and she
was hungry.
The four
ate in silence, and then she got to her feet, leaving her dirty plate where she
had been sitting. The two men looked up at her curiously, and she sensed,
without any need for speaking, that Uriah wanted to take her out into the barn,
and that his father felt envy for his son.
Capitola
frowned. ‘Ain’t you going to clean up, Missy?’ It was plain she knew what was
in her son’s mind, and wanted first to exact her own tribute.
Iris
tossed her head. ‘You tol’ me to take the mess out to the chickens, and thet’s
jes’ whar I’m going.’
She
glanced at Uriah out of the corner of her eye as she spoke, and noted with a quick
spark of pleasure the way his face fell. The cabin was silent for a moment, and
she made purposefully for the door. The Hitts could hatch out their own
priorities.
She had
brought six hens along with her rooster, and found the birds all pecking equably
with Capitola’s fowls in a patch of grass under a big old oak tree at the back
of the Hitts’ barn. She smiled as Albert, her rooster, gave off pecking every
now and then to have his way indiscriminately with one of her hens, or one that
she saw must belong to the Hitts. He seemed to be the only cockerel in sight,
and must have decided that he had come to hen
heaven. She thought she
might, in her own mind, rechristen him Uriah.
But she
pushed frivolity out of her mind as she looked into the big coop behind the
oak. The coop was absolutely filthy: it seemed crusted with several years’
deposits of chicken droppings, and urgently needed cleaning. She needed a
shovel to clear the mess out, and she guessed she would find one in the barn.
She found
Uriah instead. He was standing by the barn looking shifty, and Iris knew
immediately what was in his mind. She decided she had best treat him as she had
treated Woodrow when he had been drinking.
‘I need a
scraper to clean out the coop.’ She stared Uriah straight in the eyes. A woman
must start the way she means to go on.
Uriah
leered. ‘I need you, ‘cos yer mine.’
Iris
snorted. ‘You ain’t havin’ none of me ‘til I got some work outta you.’ She
stared at him, matching hardness for lechery, and Uriah looked down, avoiding her
eyes.
He was
silent for a moment, before looking up again, and now Iris could see that he
was uncertain. ‘That ain’t right, talkin’ to me that way.’ He made a move to
catch hold of her arm, but Iris was too quick for him, and stepped back, out of
his reach. ‘Yo’re my woman now, I got rights.’
She lifted
her chin. ‘Yo’re my man now, and you got work to do.’ She pointed towards the
barn. ‘You go get in there, and find me a shovel, and some kind of thang where
yo’ can shift thet stuff. Mebbe we kin use it as fertilizer, to make stuff
grow.’
Uriah
remained undecided, and Iris judged that he was not much of a man for rushing
to make himself useful. She decided to add a small carrot. ‘You help clean out
the coop, an’ we’ll see whar’ we get from there.’
Her husband’s
eyes narrowed. She could see that he was accustomed to bargaining. ‘What does
thet signify?’
‘That don’ signify nuthin’, les’ you
get to working.’
‘And
then?’
‘Then?
Why, wait ‘n see.’ She smiled slightly, and squared her shoulders back, making
the line of her body stand out against her sacking dress. It was the first time
in her life that she had done such a thing for a man, and she did not know why
she did it. But she saw Uriah’s eyes gleam, and realised that she had begun to
tempt her crawfish into its trap. ‘But make sure you find some clean hay first
fer what y’re thinking about. I ain’t lying around in no grass again with
varmints running around.’
Uriah was
a good worker when he put his mind to it, with powerful shoulders and a broad
back. Iris shovelled chicken dirt out into a heap at the mouth of the coop, and
Uriah filled a wheelbarrow to cart it away. He looked at her hopefully from
time to time, but she pointedly ignored him. She wanted to tire him out, and
maybe he would only be fit for a nap.
The work
took them both perhaps a couple of hours, but then they were done. Uriah waited
for her to come out of the coop, and pointed wordlessly at the barn. It was
time for his reward, and he would not be denied.
Iris pretended
to hesitate, though she knew that she was committed. ‘You found clean straw?’
‘I did.’
‘You ain’t
gonna force down on me again?’
Uriah
shrugged. ‘A man does what a man does.’
‘I guess
so.’ Iris took a deep breath. ‘Well, let’s get through with it.’
She
followed her husband into the barn, and stood by a rough bed that he had spread
out, and waited.
Uriah
shucked his bib-alls, and stripped off his shirt, letting it fall around his
ankles. He was wearing a pair of grubby long johns beneath them, and dropped
these in their turn. Iris tried not to stare at the way he was made. But she
did not move, as she stared at the naked man facing her.
Uriah
seemed discomforted. ‘Ain’t you gonna do nuthin?’
‘Like
what?’
‘Ain’t you
gonna take off yer dress?’
She reached
down to lift the hem of her sacking dress a little. ‘I don’t hev to do that. I
kin jes’ lie on my back.’
‘That
ain’t the same.’ Suddenly Uriah pounced, seizing her arm, and forcing her down.
‘You take a good look at me, woman, and see what I got fer you.’
He reached
down, tearing at her sacking dress in an attempt to rip it from her. But Iris
was too quick for him. She rolled away sideways in the straw, and sat up. ‘You
ain’t getting nuthin’ from me, the way you want to beat it out of me.’
They
stared at each other. Now Uriah’s eyes were burning, and Iris judged that she
must surrender, or risk provoking him too far. She reached down to pull up her
dress, widening her legs and lying back with her arms limp at her sides.
‘You do
what you got to do, and that’s all you git.’
It was a
brief encounter. Uriah moved on top of her, and Iris began to understand why
some women made so much of going with men. But it was all finished almost
before it had begun, and she rolled away from under him as he panted his completion.
Yet, nevertheless, she realised that practice might enable her to control what
had driven him, and she stored the thought in her mind.
They
dressed again, and walked back to the cabin. Iris saw something move, out of
the corner of her eye, as they crossed the open ground, and could have sworn
that someone, perhaps Capitola or Jedediah, had been near the barn when Uriah
had been panting. But she was not sure. She might have seen a mule grazing.
Capitola was at her stove again, but Iris saw that the table had been cleared. Uriah’s mother swung round to face her, her face contorted.
‘What you been up to out theah’, girl? Cain’t
you keep your hands off’n ‘Riah? You bin out there after him like some bitch in
heat.’
Iris
looked to Uriah for support, but realised that he was gone. She shook her head.
She was a woman now, and she would not be forced into slavery. ‘We cleaned out
the hens.’
‘And then
took him in the barn?’
Iris heard
a sniggering sound and turned to see that Jedediah had come in silently behind
her. She sat down at the table. ‘No, ma’am, he did the takin’. He figgered I
owed him somewhat fer makin’ him work.’
Capitola
looked at the doorway. ‘Thet true, boy?’
Now Uriah
was standing in the cabin entrance. He grunted angrily. ‘I ain’t a boy no more.
I’m a married man. I got rights.’
‘Rights?
You got rights to go be like an animal in the straw out theah?’ Capitola’s
voice rose sharply. Iris could see that she was accustomed to ruling the cabin
in her own way, and had begun working herself up into a fury. ‘You got rights?’
Suddenly
Jedediah stepped forward, and slapped his wife hard with his open palm. ‘Quit
this fool talk, woman, and fix us somethin’ to eat.’
Capitola
stared up at him, and it looked for a moment as though she might swing her
skillet on him. But then she lowered the heavy cast iron pan back on to her
stove. ‘Leave me be.’
It was a
surrender. But she only filled three of her cracked plates, and Iris had to
help herself again. The hoe cake she was left was only partly heated, and Iris made
up her mind that - come what may - she would eat better on her next sitting
down.
The four
of them ate in silence again, and then Iris got to her feet, and stepped out
into the open air. She had no reason to pick a fight that she might well lose.
She set out for the barn: she had seen several stalls set along one side, and
one might do well for Daisy. She also planned to take a look at what the Hitts
kept for a vegetable garden. She had already eaten two meals at the Hitt table,
with never a sight of a potato or vegetable of any kind, and she found their
victuals very dull. Then she needed a churn, to make up some butter - she had
seen none of that, either.
But the
barn presented more work. Uriah and Jedediah plainly kept their mules in the
stalls when the weather turned bad, because they had mucked them all out. But
they had dumped all the manure in a big heap at the back, and that needed
shifting. Iris felt Daisy deserved a proper whitewashed stall into the bargain,
because a dairy cow rates a good deal higher than a mule when it comes to
shelter. She stepped out of the barn again. The Hitts did not seem much for
working - perhaps that was why they made moonshine. But moonshine was good
money, when the sheriff’s men were paid up good and proper to keep looking
elsewheres. Maybe Jedediah and Uriah were just too idle to brew up more than an
occasional batch of liquor.
She walked
around the cabin to find Capitola’s vegetable patch. She did not expect to find
much, because she now knew the woman for a lame sort of lazy thing. But a patch
can always be developed. However she found nothing. She circled the cabin again
in disbelief, to find Uriah standing waiting for her, midway between the cabin
and the barn, with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.
‘What y’re
doing?’ His voice was conciliatory. It was plain that he liked taking her in
the hay.
‘Where’s
your Maw’s garden patch?’
The gleam
faded from Uriah’s eyes, and he shook his head. ‘She don’t do nothing like
that.’ He made as though to move towards her, but Iris stepped back, safely out
of his reach.
‘Nothing?
Never?’ Iris’ voice rose in disbelief.
‘She buys
all that stuff when she has call fer it.’
She was
still unpersuaded. ‘Taters come dear in winter.’
‘The still
pays for ‘em.’
Iris was silent. Now she understood what
happened to the proceeds from brewing up moonshine: the money financed
Capitola’s idleness. She frowned. ‘Ain’t you never tempted by a good mess of
corn and tomatoes?’
Uriah’s
eyes gleamed again. But this time they showed a different kind of hunger. ‘I
git to eat stuff like that when I goes visitin’ folks, but Maw won’t allow it.’
She smiled
faintly. ‘Mebbe you could get me a little stove, an’ I c’ld cook fer you.’
Now Uriah
looked alarmed. ‘She’d never allow that.’
‘Up by the
still mebbe?’
‘It’d have
to be secret.’
‘Like the
still?’
Suddenly
Uriah smiled. ‘You want to go up there?’
‘Ain’t got
no hay there?’
‘It ain’t
far.’
Iris
scuffed her bare foot in the dirt. It was still light, but she disliked strange
places. ‘I ain’t goin’ up there fer no messin’ around.’
Uriah held
out his hand. ‘I’ll show you the place, and I’ll bring you back.’
Now it was
Iris’ turn to smile. ‘Don’t count on too much.’
Uriah
grinned. ‘I ain’t countin’ on nothin’, gal. But mebbe we’ll be walkin’ back
after sundown, and you’ll need a man to keep the b’ars from gittin’ yer honey.
You gotta keep close for that.’
Iris took
his hand. Maybe the world held worse men than Uriah, and she knew now that she
could manage him. She also knew that she would have to line him up alongside
her if she were to combat Capitola. Maybe they could find a cabin of their own.
Woodrow might think of moving, if he took up seriously with Widow Law, and she
would be more than happy to move back into her old home as its mistress. But
Uriah would need some persuading. She began to think she might have been a
little shortsighted, going so cold on him in the barn. Uriah was not a bright
man, but he might be made manageable.