Iris woke early next morning.
She stretched carefully, to avoid attracting a volley of abuse from her
mother-in-law, and suddenly realised that she had no mother-in-law to worry
about. She was in her own home, her old home, again, with only Uriah and her
unborn child to concern herself about. She stretched again, luxuriously this
time, and found herself backed up against Uriah. She judged that it must be
somewhere midway between four and five, maybe a bit earlier, by the way the
cabin was still mostly dark, with just a fitful glimmer of light at the
windows.
Uriah stretched in his turn,
surfacing with a kind of snuffling sound. He turned on their mattress, and reached
out for her, putting his hand to her belly as though to reassure himself that
his progeny was alive and well inside her, and a moment later they were
embracing in a way they had never previously embraced of a wakening, and it was
a pleasure for both of them.
She savoured her enjoyment to
the full, and then rolled away from him, for she was both a wife and a
practical woman, and there was work to be done. ‘You go see to yer needs,
husband, while I fix you coffee and biscuits.’
Uriah was busy trying to pull
her up against him again, but he stopped. Iris had baked him a plate of
biscuits the previous night, to accompany his catfish, and they had been light,
and airy, popping in his mouth like small dreams, and infinitely better than
any his mother had ever made.
‘Mebbe with some fried eggs
and a coupla nice thick slices of bacon, if you move fast.’ Iris beamed, and
then bit her lip. She hoped she was not giving a hostage to fortune, because
hens can be tricksy birds, and sometimes need a little time to settle in, and
become familiar with their surroundings. But she reckoned they would have been
busy enough laying, seeing as they were back in their old home, and safely out
of Capitola’s reach. She also reckoned she would be able to find their eggs as
easily in the half light of dawn as the full light of day, and she knew Woodrow
had left a ham and part of a side of good bacon in the smokehouse - maybe he
had figured on keeping the cabin as a refuge. Bacon and eggs would start
Uriah’s day well.
She watched him stand, and
stretch, and head for the cabin door, and knew she was gaining the measure of
her man. She had won a righteous battle in prizing him away from his parents,
in particular from his mother, and she intended keeping her victory. Uriah
might not be the best in the world, but her was her man, and the father of her
unborn child, and she intended making of him what she could. She would feed him
well, because she also liked to eat well, she would support him, as she
expected his muscle and labour to provide for her, and she would pleasure him
in the measure that she enjoyed being pleasured. She would bear his child, and
make the best of the world around her. However she also knew that she must
manage him with care. She had learned in a hard way that he could be quick to
violence when angered, with a fiery and unpredictable temper born from his
mother. She did not doubt that they might face difficult moments in the future.
She took a deep breath, and blew hard on the few embers that still smouldered
in a corner of the stove. Life must always be what you made of it, and she
would try her very best to make it good.
Uriah returned just as she was
coaxing the stove into a good blaze. She waved at the coffee mill. ‘Grind me up
a handful of beans, husband, that’s man’s work for you.’ She smiled impishly.
‘I’m goin’ after those eggs.’
She found half a dozen, just
where she had expected, and returned in triumph. ‘Right, husband. You go out
and fodder Daisy and the mules, whilst I get to fixin’.
Iris spent the next half hour
or so in a burst of energy. She brewed up coffee, and mixed up milk and flour
and lard for her biscuits, fried four eggs, along with a couple of big slices
of side meat, and felt proud of herself in her activity. Feeding Woodrow had
always been a chore, starting off a day for a grumpy and often hung-over old
man. But she regarded feeding Uriah in the same light as she regarded feeding
Daisy, or the hens, or the mules. She was readying her man for a hard day at
work.
Uriah might have had other thoughts on his
mind as he mopped the last traces of eggs from his plate. He was sated, and he
felt good. But Iris was brisk, her new head of energy propelling her forward.
She pushed him away as he attempted to sidle close to her when she was clearing
the table.
‘No, husband, we both got work
to do.’ She pushed him towards the cabin door. ‘You go talk to your Paw, and
settle what mules we can have, whilst I feed and milk Daisy, and see to the
chickens. Then we gotta find ourselves a new rooster, and you might go over Roy
Cline’s, on the other side of the hill, and see if you can trade some of yer
‘shine fer a coupla shoats. We could do with some more good bacon come cold
weather times. Mebbe they’ll have a cockerel to go as well. Then you go can tek
a gun out in the woods and find us a nice turkey, or mebbe a couple of
bob-white for supper. Mebbe biscuits again, ‘cos we ain’t got a deal to go with
it, mebbe a mess of ‘maters, and some squash if Woodrow left my cannin’.’
She watched Uriah hitch the two mules to the
Hitts’ wagon, and pressed both her hands to her stomach. She was not in pain,
like she had heard some other women talk of pain ahead of their first delivery.
But she felt sick, deep into the pit of her stomach, with a sickness that made
her stomach churn, forcing her to spit out her bile. She sat for a moment, to
regain her strength, and then remembered Daisy. She had a cow to milk, and
feed, and muck out. She had no time for self-indulgence.
Daisy was ready and waiting
for her as she reached the barn. She patted the big Brown Swiss companionably
on her boss, dumped a scoop of grain into her manger to keep her occupied,
wiped her udder with clean water, and positioned her milk pail. Then she
lowered herself gingerly onto her milking stool. She was growing, and sitting
herself so low called for some careful maneuvering, but it was better than
having to squat. There would be a time for that later. She leaned into Daisy,
pressing against her like a nursing calf, and began her morning milking.
This was her thinking time, the time when
she could plan her day, and deal with trials and tribulations. She had figured
her daily dealings with Woodrow in her milking times, and figured her life with
the Hitts. Sometimes her figurings had caused her to wipe away an errant tear
or two. But Woodrow and Capitola and Jedediah were out of her life now, and she
would only admit them again of her own choosing.
She filled her first pail, and
started on her second. The regular spurts of milk made a pleasing, relaxing
sound. Then heard a movement from the stalls alongside the barn and paused.
Someone was out there.
‘I’m goin’ now.’
It was Uriah. He must have
already harnessed the two mules his father had lent him.
Iris levered herself to her
feet. ‘Don’t ferget the shoats an’ the cockerel.’
‘I won’t, ma’am.’
Something in Uriah’s tone made
her want to look into his eyes. She found him smiling, standing by the wagon
with a whip in his hand, and she knew
in her inspection that she was paired with a fine figure of a man. She looked
down demurely, in a woman’s gesture of submission.
‘Them war’ good biscuits.’
Uriah paused. ‘An’ good bacon.’ He added the words reflectively, as though
pondering whether to ask for more.
Iris smiled slightly. ‘Be back
here when the sun’s full up.’
‘Thar’ll be more?’
‘Biscuits?’ Her voice was
arch, for the first time since he had first taken her.
Uriah looked a little
bewildered.
‘Yo’ won’t hev nobody
watchin’.’
‘We kin be as we want?’
‘Ain’t gonna be nobody
watchin’ over yer shoulder.’
Uriah stared at her, and then
raised his hat high, executing a kind of clumsy shuffle. ‘Full up in the sky?’
‘When yer belly tells yer it’s
time.’
‘With biscuits ‘n more bacon?’
‘’N all yer could be wishin’.’
Iris laughed as he bounced up onto
the wagon bench and jerked the pair of mules into a clumsy slow gait. There is
something in late summer sun that swells the needs of a woman as much as a man,
and she was now her own mistress. Uriah had forced himself on her in the
beginning, and taken her brutally. But familiarity had now tempered them both
into a need each for the other, in the moments when their blood grew hot, and
now they could create a small world of their own. Pregnancy is a preparation, a
step on the path of creation. But it is not a path that closes.
She carried her two pails of
milk back to the cabin when she was finished with Daisy, covering them both
with cloths before setting them in a corner to cool, and wondered whether
Uriah’s share from ‘shine would run to buying a second cow. She could run two
head on Woodrow’s land and make some handy cash from selling butter and cream
to Mr. Whiteside: the money would come in handy for buying fabric for baby
clothes. She sat down heavily at the cabin table. She liked the idea of becoming
a mother, it would give her a new purpose in life.
Then she got to her feet
again. It was no time for wasting, she had work to do. She went back to the hen
house to feed the chickens and turn them out, and then dragged the mattress she
shared with Uriah to the door and managed, with a little difficulty, to hoist
it over a rail at the end of the porch to air. Then she fetched the big besom
from the porch and swept the cabin through thoroughly. She would wash her
laundry before baking up some more biscuits, and take a look at the peach tree.
She knew there were a couple of jars of sorghum syrup in the storehouse, and
maybe she could bake up a cobbler. She imagined Uriah would savor that -
Woodrow had always praised her baking. Then she would take look at her
vegetable patch. She remembered some melons coming along, and some squash. She
and Uriah would eat properly after the misfortunes of Capitola’s cooking. Iris
screwed up her mouth in disgust. The old woman had baked biscuits into chunks
of rock, and cooked bacon straight into leather. She wondered that such a woman
had ever managed to find herself a man. Perhaps she had bewitched Jedediah with
some strange Southern love potions.
She was hanging out her
washing when Uriah returned. He came back on a mule after taking the wagon back
to Jedediah, and she could not help but burst out laughing, because he had two
sacks tied across the mule in front of him, and another tied to the cantle of
the saddle, and the sack tied across the mule in front of him was squealing and
struggling fit to all get out, whilst the second sack was flurrying angrily and
making furious clucking sounds. She hurried over to take the first of the two
sacks tied in front of him, opening it gingerly, and held it up to let the
contents fall out. A fine looking young boar rolled in the grass at her feet,
and then righted itself, blinking little piggy eyes in bewilderment. She
quickly emptied the second sack, and found herself looking down at a miniature
sow, a little smaller than its brother. The two shoats grunted a couple of
times to show their disapproval, and began to root around in the grass for
something by way of breakfast.
She smiled approvingly. ‘You
done good, husband.’
Uriah nodded, with the
satisfied look of a man well pleased with himself. ‘We’ll grow ‘em into real
big hogs.’ He was already unfastening the sack tied to his saddle. But he
opened it with care, because an angry young cockerel can be a fearsome thing,
with spurs capable of slashing a nasty flesh wound. He placed the sack
carefully on the ground, cutting the neck a little way open with his Buck
knife, to make sufficient space for the cockerel to struggle out. It came out
with a good deal of angry clucking, and it was a fine bird, with good spurs and
a glossy mane of feathers. But it looked distinctly annoyed at having traveled
in such discomfort.
Iris ran to the barn to fetch
a scoop of grain and scattered it on the ground around them. The sound brought
some hens from scratching in the grass around the cabin, and the cockerel took
one look at the grain, another look at the hens, and knew immediately what was
expected of him.
‘Well, ain’t thet a thang.’
She giggled. ‘He sho’ knows what he’s here fer.’
Uriah advanced on her. ‘I’ve
got the same sort of needin’, wife.’
Iris backed away, but
provocatively, staying just out of his reach. ‘We gonna hev fresh biscuits.’
Uriah pounced.
‘And eggs, and bacon, and -
lawdy me - a peach cobbler.’
Her exclamation came as a
small shriek, because Uriah had swept her up off the ground, and was questing
for a kiss. They kissed, and it was the first time they had kissed out of bed,
for there had been some kissing the previous night, as they lay together for
their first night in Woodrow’s cabin, and then they kissed again, and they were
both flushed, because desire is a flame that grows fast when it is fanned.
Uriah put Iris down carefully,
and began to shuck off his bib-alls. But she gestured towards their mattress,
still airing over the porch rail. ‘I ain’t aiming fer no wood splinters in my
butt.’
He turned, and nodded,
sweeping the mattress of the rail as though it were no more than a feather
pillow, and then they were lying together, and moving together, and making the
same sounds in unison, and they smiled at each other when they were done, because
each had pleased the other.
Iris made to roll away, but
Uriah pulled her back to him. ‘I don’ reckon I’m done yet.’
‘Yo’ want more?’
‘I’m needin’ more.’
He was looking down at her as
he lay on the mattress at her side, and he bent forward to kiss each of her
swelling breasts. ‘These are gonna feed
ma boy.’
Iris nodded, watching him, and reached up
to put her arms around his neck. ‘There’ll be time fer thet later.’ Her voice
was soft, little more than a whisper, and Uriah came to her with the same gentleness,
and this time they prolonged their loving.
But good things must end at
some time or another, and in the ending they were sated.
Iris brewed up coffee, and
baked biscuits, whilst Uriah sat at the cabin table. He was silent as she
worked, and it was plain that he was thinking. He watched her slice bacon thin,
so that it would fry quickly, and break eggs into her skillet over the meat,
and stared as she set a knife as well as a fork alongside his plate.
‘Maw ain’t never done thet.’
‘Huh?’ Iris eyed him in
bewilderment.
‘She never set no knife on no
table. She figured knives called haints out of the woodland.’
Iris sniffed. ‘Ain’t no haints
never comin’ near me, husband.’
He began to eat, then paused. ‘My,
this is good.’ More eating, then another pause. ‘I’m goin’ down Coates this
time nex’ week. They say the railroad is hirin’ now.’
Iris refilled his plate,
waiting to see where this news would lead.
‘Sheriff Wilkes’ been out on
the rampage with five deputies. He come up
on the Jones boys, jes’ as
they were packin’ jars of apple ‘shine on the back of a mule, right out the
back of their still. Seems they offered him a share, but he smashed the jars to
pieces, then set to work on the still, with a coupla’ the deputies standing
shotgun in the background.’
Iris filled her own plate and
began to eat, watching him. All the county knew Sheriff Wilkes for a godfearing
man, with a strong antagonism towards liquor, particularly liquor brewed
outside the law.
‘They say they flattened the
place, right down to the ground, even though ol’ Miz Jones tried to stop them.
They say she were weepin’ and wailin’, and sayin’ they needed the ‘shine to pay
fer lil’ Jenny’s
wedding.’
Iris smiled thinly. Old Mrs.
Jones regarded herself as being a distinct cut above all her neighbours, and
had planned a real big party for her only daughter. But something caught at her
mind. ‘How come apple ‘shine?’
Uriah grinned without humor. ‘Some man bin brewin’ up applejack, asked them to run it through their still, half what came out fer them. They thought they had a mighty good deal, half a bunch of apple ‘shine for no real workin’. The man came to collect his half, and then someone told Sheriff Wilkes.’
‘Mebbe the man with the
applejack din’ want no competition?’
‘Paw tol’ me it were durn good
‘shine. Guess the man wanted good money fer it.’
‘They won’ tek kindly.’
‘Paw sed the boys hev’ gone
out huntin’.’
Iris nodded. Moonshiners were
a hard, competitive breed, trusted by none, and always seeking to run each
other to ground. She imagined blood would flow. ‘Yo’ gonna lay off fer a
while?’
‘Paw figgers thet’s best.
We’ll finish what we got, and ship it out over the county line. Wait ‘til the
rumpus dies away. Sheriff Wilkes ain’t got no interest in cold stills,
leastways not whilst others are cookin’..’
Uriah had finished his plate
and cleaned off the remnants with a couple of spare biscuits. He sat back from
the table and belched the belch of a contented man. ‘Goddang, but thet were
good.’
He eyed Iris hopefully, but
she was already on her feet. ‘No, husband, ye had yer crowin’, leastways if’n
yer wants cobbler.’
She was already maneuvering a
hefty chunk of cobbler into a bowl, and covering it with thick fresh yellow
cream. ‘Yo go eat thet, and then tek yersel’ huntin fer dinner. I’m gonna tek
stock of what we got while yo’re out. I reckon we’ll need a mountain of stuff
to feed yo’ through the winter.’
She sat for a while on the cabin porch, after she had cleaned up and Uriah had gone off with his long-barreled hunting rifle, resting her hands on her stomach. Her bouts of sickness were more irritations than real trials - they would come at unexpected moments, and pass away quickly enough. But it is not a pleasant thing to spend several minutes heaving and fearing the whole of your interior is about to turn itself inside out. Then she took a deep breath and got to her feet. There was work to be done in her vegetable patch. Weeds had sprouted up around the tomatoes, and some would need picking today. More had gone to ruin, with Woodrow gone. The rotted fruit lay between the plants, half eaten by groundhogs and possums. She also needed to check to see if the potatoes were close to digging, and to make a home for some turnip greens - she had heard it said that greens strengthened the bones of unborn babes, and they would make a good winter standby with a touch of fatback.
A
bee passed her head,
buzzing on its way, and she watched it with interest. She could hunt for wild
honey, but it was a perilous task, because the bees often nested in rotten
trees where snakes liked to slither. But a couple of hives of good tame
honeybees would be a real treasure. She imagined Uriah would take well to a
hunk of her bread dipped in honey, and little Susan would be able to help her
collect the combs.
Iris smiled to herself. She
knew Uriah had set his heart on her having a boy for her first-born. But she
was strong, with wide hips built for bearing, and a little girl would come in
right handy as her second child. She would be able to teach her all she knew,
and learn to read and write better herself, because she was still a bit slow
with her letters. She would turn the cabin into a good home, for Uriah to value
when he was through with his day on the railroad, and he would mellow for her,
and become a better man, conscious of his duties and responsibilities, shedding
the harshness of his parents.
She fetched a hoe and set to work. Uriah
would come back with a good catch for dinner, and they would eat their fill,
and then lie in the dark, and continue their learning. Country life pleased
her, to be independent and free, and they would fashion a fine future.
Uriah returned as the sun
touched the hill crest. He whooped as he came up to the cabin, and Iris clapped
her hands together in glee, because he was carrying perhaps the biggest old tom
turkey she had ever seen.
‘He’s got meat, ma’am.’ Uriah
held the dead bird high. ‘He’ll feed us real good.’
‘I’ll roast him.’ Iris eyed
the turkey cock with a cook’s expertise. ‘You go get him plucked and drawn,
whilst I get the stove going good and hot. I got some new ‘taters jes’ right
fer roasting alongside him, and I’ll put in some onions, ‘n I kin tek his
drippin’ fer gravy.’
She went back into the cabin
to pile wood into the stove, stoking it up until the metal glowed. Then she
went back out onto the porch to see how Uriah was faring. He was surrounded by
turkey feathers, and she picked out two of the brightest and stuck them in her
hair, laughing at him. ‘Now I’m a redskin squaw.’
He beamed at her. ‘You want me
to split it?’
‘Along the backbone.’ She drew
a line with her forefinger along the plucked carcase. ‘Split ‘im thar’, and
clean out the innards.’ She looked around, and picked up a galvanized bucket.
‘Dump it all in thar, and throw it out down the hill where the possums kin hev
it. I don’t want them botherin’ my chickens at night.’
Uriah used a small wood axe to
split the turkey carcass deftly, wrinkling up his nose as he pulled out the
innards bulging with the bird’s grazing. ‘It don’t smell too good.’
She laughed. ‘They’s guts,
husband. What’d you expect?
It’ll
taste fine.’ Iris balanced the carcass in her hands, inspecting the meat. ‘He
war a well-fed bird. Mebbe a bit tough, but we both got our teeth. I’ll fix him
with some onions and wild garlic, to flavor un’ up, and you’ll never know you’d
eaten the like of it.’
She washed the turkey quickly,
then pierced the meat at intervals to insert a handful of bulbs of wild garlic,
and set it on roasting pan, washed a basin of potatoes and peeled some wild onions to set either side of the
carcass, shielding her hands in an old dress to slide the pan into the oven.
Then she wiped her hands.
‘We’ll eat in ‘bout an hour or
so.’
Uriah picked at his teeth
thoughtfully. ‘Woodrow still got of his ‘shine stashed away? Waitin’ makes a
man mighty thirsty.’
Iris shook her head. ‘You
drink water, husband. ‘Shine’s gonna to tek your strength away fer after yer
eatin’.’
Her husband’s eyes lit up. ‘We
got an hour of waitin’.’
Iris shook her head again, and
her face was very determined. ‘Yo’ wait, husband. I got things to do whilst
thet bird’s a-roastin’, and I ain’t getting’ them done on a mattress. Yo’ keep
away from Woodrow’s ‘shine. Yo’ drink thet stuff, and it’ll weaken yo’ from yer
purpose.’
Uriah looked a little
aggrieved. ‘It was my makin’..’
Iris sniffed. ‘Yo’ kin hev ‘shine when yo’
got men with yo’, and yo’all set around chawin’ the day away. Yo’ got better
things to do here.’
She backed away, because Uriah
had begun to advance on her, with a set look in his eyes that she knew very
well. She brushed against the table, and her hand touched the haft of her meat
cleaver, and she raised it, her hand high, and the blade towards him.
‘I don’ intend harmin’ yo’,
husband. But I know how to use this.’
Uriah stopped, with the sulky
look of a small boy deprived of a prize, and she relented a little. ‘Go get
some more peaches off’n the shelf in the back of the barn. Yo’re taller than
me, and you won’t need no box to stand on.’
She watched him go out of the
cabin, and laid the cleaver back on the table. Uriah was a man accustomed to
violence, and he respected violence in his turn. She wondered what would have
happened, had he taken another step towards her, and then pushed the thought
from her mind. Some things are better left unthought.
The turkey was a fine bird,
and they both ate hungrily, mashing their roasted potatoes into the gravy
before cleaning their plates with chunks of biscuits Iris had baked from flour
she found in the Indiana cabinet. She had sifted it well, and found none but a
few weevils, nothing to bother about, and they had made a treat for Albert, her
new cockerel, because she had named him for Capitola’s victim.
She cleared the table after
they ate, and they sat for a moment on the porch, watching the setting sun, and
they were both well-fed and companionable. Uriah cut himself a chaw of tobacco,
and chewed at it thoughtfully. ‘We c’ld do with a dawg.’
Iris nodded approvingly. He
needed a hound to take hunting with him, maybe a mountain cur or a coon hound.
Something able to warn him about rattlers.
‘I’ll see if I kin find
me
a pup when I go down to the depot.’ He looked at Iris sideways. ‘Yo’ want a
cat?’
She nodded. ‘Keep mice out’n
the corn crib.’
‘They’ll grow up together.’
‘They’ll give the children
pets to play with.’
‘Guard them an’ all.’ Uriah
stopped short. ‘Children?’
Iris smiled at him. ‘Yo’ll mek
a good Paw.’
‘More than one?’
‘Mebbe a dozen.’
Suddenly Uriah grinned. ‘I’ll
need feedin’ up good to do thet.’
‘I’ll feed you good.’
He held out his hand to her,
and their fingers entwined. ‘Yo’ll mek a better man of me than Paw ever was.’
Iris shrugged slightly. It was
on the tip of her tongue to reply that she was not Capitola. But some things
are better left unsaid.
‘I’ll go down the depot
Friday.’ Uriah hesitated. He seemed to have something on his mind, but to be
unsure about saying it. ‘I guess I’ll drop in to see the folks...’
Iris did not reply. She had no
wish to see Uriah’s parents again, leastways not for a good long while. But
again it was not a thing for the saying.
‘Yo’ want to come to Coates?’
She shrugged.
‘Mebbe trade some butter an’
stuff?’
She was silent for a long
moment and then nodded reluctantly. ‘Mebbe. But we ain’t stopping long, an’ I
ain’t goin’ into the house.’
‘I’ll ask Paw if he wants to
ride down to Coates with us.’
‘Yo’ kin do thet.’ Iris
shrugged again. She had a feeling that Capitola would hold a visit very much
against her, if it meant her going into town with both Hitt men. But she could
hardly stop Uriah seeing his parents. She would ride on the mule, and stay in
the saddle. That way would seem less aggressive, her being with child and all.
Uriah spat his chaw
into
the dirt, and pressed her fingers. It was now dark.
Iris levered herself to her
feet. ‘Come on, husband. Time fer yo’ to be dreamin.’
They both laughed, because
they were both young, and in need.