Highland annals

I

WE were on our way to see Uncle Nathe Ponder buried. Serena was as happy as she could be with decency, considering our solemn destination. She had not been away from home for several months, and her joyous reaction could be suppressed only intermittently. But, at any time, her laughter was pleasantly low of key, as if she were softly trying it out before subjecting you to the full flow that never came.

And Serena was infectious. I had set out with my mind meditatively intrenched on the going down of men into the grave; the passing of man himself, of earth, of suns, of systems, with no full-grown hope of any immortal salvage; but Serena, pulsingly aware in a significant world, soon restored me to stature as a member of a community bent on giving due honor to one whose days among them had been spent with the vividness that amounts to virtue among a people who look to life for their drama instead of the stage and the morning papers.

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.”

“That’s her,” said Aunt Lizy, coming back with some haste, before Uncle Ranz could weld his broken narrative. “She said she’d try it, fer Nathe had a fine farm, an’ Bune Waller said the same. Bune wuz an old maid with one leg crippled up ’count of a snake-bite when she wuz little. The old folks thought Bune would suit better’n the widder, not havin’ any young-uns to mix up with Nathe’s, so they went to him an’ told him that Bune wuz the best they could do. I’ve always wished I could ’a’ been there when they told him. Uncle Joe Withers, he wuz senior deacon then, he said Nathe cut his galluses an’ went straight up. When he come down an’ got his breath, he says to ’em, ‘Who’s counted the finest-lookin’ single woman in Silver Valley?’ an’ they ’lowed Callie Brown wuz the takin’est one, sence she’d come back from South C’liny, where she’d been workin’. But she wuzn’t keen to marry, not a mountain man anyway, fer she wouldn’t look at Mince Peters, who wuz runnin’ a payin’ sawmill, an’ the best ketch ’twixt Cherokee an’ Hiwassee. Nathe ast ’em would she be good to the childern, an’ they ’lowed she would, she looked like she’d jump out o’ the way of a worm ruther’n step on it, but he couldn’t git her, they said, not ef he’s as rich as cream in a cracklin’ gourd. She didn’t have no call fer holdin’ off though, Uncle Joe told him, fer she hadn’t saved a brownie workin’ in the mills, put it all on her back, he reckoned, an’ she didn’t have no home, her folks all bein’ dead. ‘But ef you go to see her,’ he says, ‘you’ll ride back jest like you come. She’s livin’ at my house, an’ I know Callie.’ Nathe never paid no more ’tention to what they said, an’ fixed hissef up fer courtin’.”

“Fixed hissef up!” Uncle Ranz bore in, returning with vigor to his own. “I reckon! I wuz right there, an’ the way he shaved an’ slicked an’ combed an’ dressed would take me all day to tell ye. We wuz exactly the same size, me an’ Nathe, an’ he walked in on me an’ says: ‘Ranz, you let me have that new suit o’ yorn, an’ I’ll give you that white sow an’ them three shotes you been a-wantin’. I’ve got to have it right now,’ he says. He’d let his clo’s run down till a skeercrow wouldn’t ’a’ swopped with him ’thout a smart chance o’ boot. But when he wuz all growed inter my suit, an’ rid off on a big bay mare he had, thinks I yer my own half-brother, but it ’ud take some travellin’ to find yer mate fer looks. He went over to Joe Withers’, where Callie wuz stayin’, an’ in two weeks they’s married. When he wanted to, Nathe had a way o’ talkin’ that folks said would put heart in a holler log, an’ I reckon Callie wuz all heart, the way it turned out. As fer holdin’ hersef high, I never seen none o’ that after she come to live with Nathe. She made him a good wife, an’ got to likin’ him powerful, but he never seemed to take to Callie. ’Twuzn’t thinkin’ about Ponnie, though, that kept him from likin’ her, fer when he did drap his troubles he drapped ’em hard. It pestered me awful the way he went on fer a while, huntin’ up ever’ woman he could hear of that wuzn’t much good. I said to him onct that Callie seemed to be doin’ her part, an’ he said: ‘Ef you don’t think I’m adoin’ mine, Ranz, jest keep a-thinkin’ it.’ An’ I dassent say any more, fer Nathe in them days wuz wearin’ his temper outside his shirt, an’ you had to tech him keerful er go round. When Callie wuz fust married she didn’t know much about housework an’ takin’ keer o’ farm stuff, but she went at it steady, an’ in less’n a year she wuz runnin’ ever’thing like it ort to be, an’ nobody would ’a’ knowed the childern wuzn’t hern ef she hadn’t been too young to be their mommie.”

“Ay,” said Aunt Lizy, “they went under her skirts like they belonged. Nathe lost a lot of his luck when he buried Callie Brown.”

“How long did she live?” I asked, and Uncle Ranz seemed to approve of the sympathetic query, which perhaps reminded him that he had a new and perfectly safe pair of ears for an old tale.

“She lived four years full, an’ inter five, from the time she married Nathe till we put her in the graveyard in the row above Ponnie an’ her two. We wuz lookin’ fer Callie’s baby, little Rufe, to die, an’ Nathe ’lowed they could lay there together. That soft look Callie had turned out to be weak lungs, an’ the cotton-mills hadn’t hepped ’em any. The hard work at Nathe’s pulled her down to a shadder. I own it, I got to thinkin’ a heap of Callie. Looked like she wuz tryin’ her best an’ never botherin’ Nathe, er lettin’ on she wuz any more to him than a hired woman. When I seen it wuz killin’ her, I wuz druv to say something. I’d tried Nathe, an’ that didn’t hep any, so I went to Callie an’ told her straight out that she could git a divorce from Nathe any day she wanted it, fer the whole country knowed how he wuz runnin’ on, an’ the deacons had been to him about it. I said she wouldn’t have to go fur, nuther, to git somebody to take keer of her right. She wouldn’t have to go blood-naked ner eat acorns, not by a thousan’ mile, while I wuz drawin’ a workin’-man’s breath. When I said that, Callie turned her back on me an’ begun to cry. I waited to see what she wuz goin’ to say, fer a woman’s cryin’ might mean one thing an’ it might mean another. When she turned round she says: ‘Ranzie, I’ll fergive ye ef ye’ll go to church reg’lar.’ An’ I went to meetin’ from then on, till Callie died, though it wuzn’t easy to set still an’ listen to ol’ Silas Mack a-whinin’ from the time he got up to preach till he set down two hours afterwards. Barrin’ that, I ain’t ever been sorry I let Callie know she could git away ef she wanted to. I told Nathe about it after she wuz dead, an’ he said he wouldn’t hold it agin me, seein’ he never hurt hissef makin’ it easy fer Callie, an’ he told me to stay right on with him an’ hep look after the farm. I thought ef he didn’t want to make a fuss, I wouldn’t, an’ I staid right on till he married Lu Siler. He wuzn’t slow about pickin’ up Lu. She hadn’t been a widder more’n three er four months, an’ chainces wuz thick with her, ’cause she had a house an’ lot in Carson, an’ a fine piece o’ land on Little Horse Branch. When Nathe got ready he walked right in an’ took her. She wuz a little older’n him, an’ short on looks, but there never wuz a better woman than Lu, leavin’ out Callie, an’ she wuz awful proud o’ Nathe. She wuz the one who got him inter this Freemason business, bein’ Eastern Star hersef, an’ a lot o’ her folks an’ friends belongin’. Nathe took to it fine, an’ went as high as he could as fast as they’d take him, an’ always held a big hand afterwards in whatever they had goin’ on, till late years when most o’ the old members had drapped out er wuz buried, an’ he seemed to sort o’ fergit about it. He went around with Lu, an’ treated her respectful, like he ort, with her deedin’ him ever’thing she had an’ cuttin’ out her own folks. He sold the house an’ lot in Carson an’ built the big house on the farm the first year he was married to Lu. He said he wanted her to have ever’thing as nice as she had it in Carson when she wuz livin’ with Jim Siler. It wuz in them years that Nathe sort o’ stept up in life.”

Uncle Ranz was forced to take breath, though he knew that Aunt Lizy would be in at the breach.

“Nathe never got bigetty though,” she said. “It wuz about that time that he got to lookin’ round an’ heppin’ folks in hard luck. He wuz always ready with the loan of a cow fer a widder, er a plough-critter fer new-married couples, er a sack o’ meal, an’ sometimes a bit o’ money that he wuzn’t too pertickler about gittin’ back. I’ve said many a time that Silver Valley owed a lot to Lu Siler fer makin’ a changed man out o’ Nathe.”

“You want to start that old argyment, Lizy, an’ you can have it. I say, an’ I’ll always say, it wuz Ann that changed Nathe, an’ not Lu Siler.”

“Ann!” The contempt of the elect was in Aunt Lizy’s voice. She reached into her pocket for her snuff. Only snuff could reconcile her to the existence of Ann. Uncle Ranz turned to his more passive hearers.

“There ain’t any man, er woman nuther, in this country,” he said, “who knows more about that than I do. It begun ’long in the last year o’ Callie’s lifetime, an’ I reckon I wuz purty keen on what wuz happenin’ round Callie. Nathe had a little ol’ mill on one end o’ his farm, fer grindin’ corn fer hissef an’ his neighbors. It’s there yit, only it’s been built all over. An’ he had a little ol’ log house settin’ close to the mill, where he kept a fam’ly to ’tend to the grindin’ an’ hep on the farm. He ’lowed the man could work on the farm, an’ his wife could tend to the mill, in a pinch anyways. Well, Curt Lindsay, he come over from round Cowee an’ ast fer the place. He said he wuz married, an’ his wife’s mother wuz livin’ with ’em, an’ she could handy ’tend to the mill. His wife wuzn’t much stout, an’ he didn’t count on gittin’ anything out of her but a little housekeepin’, an’ maybe hoein’ in the patches. An’ Nathe told him to come on. Curt wuz a big feller an’ looked like he’d make a good hand. I told Nathe so mysef, an’ there’s one more time I’d ’a’ done better ef I’d kept my mouth shet. Well, they come on, an’ the mother looked like all she knowed wuz hard work an’ more of it. But Ann, Curt’s wife, she looked like a hummin’-bird round a rosey-bush. The mother, that ’uz Mis’ Baker, told me Ann had never been much strong an’ her daddy, up till he died a little ’fore that, had never let anything be put on her too hard. Ann wuz willin’ enough, but they had to put it on her light, er she’d git down sick. Curt didn’t keer one way er another so the work got done. Ann had married him when she wuz fourteen, an’ she wuzn’t more’n up’rds o’ fifteen when she come to live on Nathe’s place. Nathe wuz a little above thirty-five, an’ had seen his troubles, but they hadn’t put the years on him. When he wuz smoothed up, folks said ef his good looks wuz divided around, they’d make ever’body in the settlement look passable, even countin’ Sary Copp, who had a caved-in nose an’ scrofula o’ the jaw. But Nathe wuz fur from bein’ as good as he wuz good-lookin’. I reckon he wuz the furdest from the Amen row right then that he ever wuz in his life. He’d put a mortgage on his farm to git spendin’ money, an’ he wuz runnin’ round spendin’ it. ‘Ranz,’ he says to me, ‘I don’t keer much about women, but what’s a feller to do with hissef?’

“An’ then Ann moved in. ‘Let’s go over,’ Nathe says to me one day, ‘an’ see ef Curt’s got settled. Maybe he’ll need some hep about something.’ ‘All right,’ says I, an’ we went. Looked like there wuzn’t nobody at home when we come up. Nathe walked up big an’ pounded on the door till I wished there wuzn’t anybody in there to hear him. Then Ann opened the door. Nathe hadn’t ever seen her ’fore that, an’ when she looked up, a bit skeered, an’ her eyes as blue as a prize ribbon at a fair, Nathe fell back inter the yard like she’d pinted a gun at him. I ask her how her folks wuz, seein’ Nathe wuzn’t goin’ to talk, an’ she said they’s well, an’ her mother wuz in the house, wouldn’t we come in, an’ Curt wuz gone to Carson to git some things they needed fer housekeepin’.

“‘What things?’ says Nathe, gittin’ over his lock-jaw, an’ when she told him, he says: ‘Tell yer mother to come over to the house an’ my wife’ll give her anything you’re needin’.’ Then he went off. I follered him, an’ he walked along like a wooden man till we got nigh home, then he says: ‘Ranz, I reckon I’d better look after things round here a little closer’n I been adoin’.’ An’ from that minute Nathe wuz changed, an’ he hadn’t ever set eyes on Lu Siler. Callie wuz still alive, an’ she seemed awfully hepped up about Nathe. She talked to me of how he wuz takin’ holt like he raley owned the place, an’ it wouldn’t be long till he’d lift the mortgage, an’ maybe send Angie Sue to Carson to school. But Callie wuz too worn out by that time fer any change to do her downright good, an’ she died in the spring, like I wuz tellin’ ye. Then Nathe married Lu. I ain’t sayin’ my own half-brother married a woman fer what she had, but I do say that he’d got to be sort o’ cravin’. Where he’d spent a dollar before, free as water, looked like he wuz tryin’ to save three. He wuz runnin’ the farm close, an’ raisin’ ever’thing we et purty nigh, but coffee an’ sugar, an’ wuz watchin’ his tradin’ right sharp, though when Lu got there he built her a nice house, like I said, with her own money, an’ he went around the country with her whenever she wanted him to, an’ didn’t mind spendin’ on his lodge a bit ’er heppin’ folks like Lizy wuz tellin’ ye. I quit livin’ at Nathe’s an’ went over inter Tennessee. Callie wuz on my mind, more’n when she’d been livin’, seemed like, an’ on top o’ that I wuz afeard Nathe an’ Lu were goin’ to have fallin’ weather. I thought ef he wuz in fer a mess I’d seen enough o’ his troubles. But he kept writin’ fer me to come back, an’ when I’d been gone about two year I come home. I found ever’thing runnin’ like sugar-water in sap-time. Nathe never went round the mill, er where Ann wuz, so fur as anybody knowed. When something had to be ’tended to over there, he’d git Lu to go.

“‘Lu,’ he says one night at supper, ‘looks like we ortn’t to live here in this big house with ever’thing comfortable, an’ water piped from the mountain yander, an’ the fam’ly that works fer us puttin’ up with that smoky little hut over at the mill. When yore folks wuz out from Carson the other day I wuz ashamed to tell ’em that shack wuz on our farm. What you think about takin’ what I make tradin’ this year an’ fix ’em up a place they can keep clean an’ make look like something? Mis’ Baker’s always ready to come over here an’ give you a hand at anything, an’ we ort to make it easier at home fer a hard-workin’ woman like she is.’

“‘I’d hate to fix up a place fer that rowdy, Curt Lindsay,’ said Lu. ‘He stays drunk half o’ his time now.’

“‘You fix it, Lu, an’ I’ll drive him off er make him do better. The women-folks there are human, same as us, even ef Curt ain’t.’

“‘Yes,’ says Lu, ‘I git awfully sorry fer that pore little Ann. I don’t know what keeps her spirits up. She’s always singin’ when I go over there, er diggin’ in the yard round her flowers, an’ they say Curt beats her, too.’

“Nathe jumped up then, like he’d swallered a crumb too quick, an’ went out to the water-bucket. When he come back he wuz a little hoarse from chokin’, an’ he says: ‘You do what I told you, Lu. You know more about houses than I do. Fix it up so we won’t be ashamed of it anyway, an’ I can git a better man to live there ef I have to drive Curt off.’

“Lu ast me to hep her, an’ we got Mose Kimpit to boss the job, him that married Angie Sue afterwards, an’ I hired some men, an’ in no time Ann wuz livin’ in a little house that looked like a pickcher, but Curt wuz drinkin’ harder than ever.

“‘You’ll have to get rid o’ him, Nathe,’ said Lu, an’ he said: ‘Well, let’s go over there an’ see about it.’ ‘Come on, Ranz,’ he said; ‘Curt might jump onto me an’ I might want some hep.’ Nathe wuzn’t afeard o’ nuthin’ this side o’ Jordan, an’ I laffed an’ went on with ’em. When we all got in a hunderd yards o’ the house we heard somebody screamin’, an’ Nathe got white as a dead man. ‘It’s Ann,’ says Lu; ‘he’s a-beatin’ her,’ an’ she begun to cry. Nathe says to me: ‘You stay here with Lu. I’ll fix him,’ an’ set off runnin’ like he’d gone mad. He didn’t open the door, jest kicked it in like it wuz glass. There wuzn’t any more screamin’, an’ when he come out he says: ‘Go in there, Ranz, an’ hep patch that feller up. I’ve give him two hours to git up an’ crawl off. He knows what the law does fer a man that lays his hand on a woman in the fix Ann’s in, an’ he’ll go. He don’t want to spend the next ten years in the pen.’

“Well, Curt went off, an’ Mis’ Baker wrote fer a son she had over on Cowee to come an’ take his place on the farm, an’ they all lived there in the little house quiet as could be. The whole country wuz braggin’ on the way Nathe had settled with Curt, though some said he ort to have tuk him up an’ let him go to the pen. Anybody that ’ud beat a little thing like Ann ort to git the worst the law could lay on him.

“In about three months Ann’s baby wuz born, an’ Lu acted like she thought it wuz hern, the way she took keer of it, an’ wuz over there half the time. She begged Nathe to go with her to see it, but he wouldn’t. That wuz woman’s business, he said. Things went on quiet-like fer two or three years, maybe four. Angie Sue got through school an’ married Mose Kempit. She didn’t do much fer hersef, considerin’ the chaince they give her. She had Ponnie’s temper, too, but Ponnie had a big heart along with her temper, an’ Angie Sue never had no more heart than a hornet’s got. Little Rosie wuz a-growin’ up, an’ the boys, Herb an’ Sam, wuz nearly men. They wuz quiet boys, not wuth much one way er t’other. Ann’s brother got married, an’ Nathe fixed him a house not fur from the other one, an’ Ann an’ her mother lived by thersevs. Mis’ Baker, she ’tended to the mill. The boy wuz named Baker, fer Ann’s father, an’ folks called him little Bake Lindsay.

“Well, we’s livin’ along, an’ ever’body comfortable, when one day in the fall when the woods wuz a-turnin’, Lu says to me: ‘Ranz, s’pose we take Rosie an’ the boys an’ go hunt chestnuts to-day? I ain’t been in the woods this year.’ That suited me, an’ we all went over to the big hill about a quarter of a mile to the back of Ann’s house. Nathe wuzn’t along. He’d got a letter the day before tellin’ him to come to Carson about a trade, an’ he’d set off walkin’ that mornin’, not lettin’ the boys drive him to Scatter to hit the train. It wuz too much trouble, he said, an’ he liked to walk. He wuz in fine health then, his skin clear pink, an’ not a gray hair in his head. Lu wuz feelin’ a little lonesome, I reckon, after he set off, an’ that’s what made her hit on goin’ fer chestnuts. We had a good time, an’ picked up a lot, but we didn’t go up the big hill any furder than the oak spring. Me an’ Lu an’ Rosie set down by the spring to rest a bit, an’ the boys said they’d shammuck along home an’ carry the chestnuts. We had about two flour-pokes full. While we’s settin’ there, me an’ Lu an’ Rosie, we heard somebody laffin’ way up at the top o’ the hill. ‘There’s somebody else out to-day,’ said Lu. ‘Let’s wait an’ see who it is.’ We knowed from the way the voices sounded that whoever wuz up there had started down. I sort o’ felt like I knowed the man’s voice, the way he wuz laffin’, an’ I set there with my eye-teeth a-gittin’ loose, till right out o’ the woods about fifty yards above us come Nathe an’ Ann. They come on down, not seein’ us till they wuz right on us, but we saw them all right. An’ I’ll say to ever’body here, an’ Lizy too, that they may have been as mean as the old boy, but they looked like they’d got to Heaven an’ took up. Nathe’s face wuz like halleloo, an’ Ann wuz flutterin’ ’s ef she wuz made out o’ wings. She saw us ’fore Nathe did, ’cause he wuzn’t seein’ nothin’ but Ann, an’ she give a little scream an’ set right down on the ground. Nathe looked around then, right at Lu. They stood there lookin’ at each other, an’ Nathe couldn’t move his eyes fer a minute. Ef there’d been a hole anywheres handy I reckon he’d ’a’ drapped into it, but he didn’t have any hidin’-place, an’ Lu—Lord bless her!—maybe she wuz sorry fer him, she said, ‘Let’s go home, Rosie,’ an’ turned off an’ we come home.”

“Ay,” said Uncle Dan’l, “Lu wuz a good woman. I wuz thinkin’ when that Jenkins wuz here an’ we wuz talkin’ about who ought to lay ’long o’ Nathe, that Lu had paid fer the place, even if she didn’t git it.”

“Maybe so, but I am glad it wuz Callie got it, an’ I hope she knows it,” said Uncle Ranz, a bit snappishly. “I wuz sorry fer Lu, though. Nathe come in about midnight an’ went to bed in the room next to the one where him an’ Lu always stayed. But he didn’t sleep none, an’ about three o’clock he come an’ woke me up an’ ast me what Lu wuz meanin’ to do. I told him she hadn’t said yit, he’d find out to-morr’. But next day she couldn’t speak fer a cold she’d caught settin’ by that spring. She wrote on a piece o’ paper that she’d git a divorce an’ they’d divide the property fair. Nathe got down by the bed an’ begged her not to do that. He said there wuzn’t anybody to blame but him, an’ it ’ud kill Ann to be disgraced, which wuz what he ortn’t ’a’ said to Lu, but Nathe wuz so tore up I reckon he couldn’t think o’ pickin’ his way. An’ Lu wrote, ‘Is Baker yore boy?’ an’ Nathe said he wuz. I s’pose he thought lyin’ wouldn’t hep him any with Lu lookin’ right through him. I could see the big tears rollin’ down Lu’s face, an’ she wrote: ‘I’m goin’ soon as I git up.’ But she didn’t go, an’ there wuzn’t any divorce, fer her cold turned inter double pneumony. In three days she wuz dead, an’ we laid her up there in Callie’s row next to little Rufe.

“It wuzn’t long till talk wuz floatin’ round ’bout Nathe an’ Ann, though I don’t b’lieve he went nigh her, an’ I reckon Rosie started the talk. Nobody but me had heard Nathe say that Bake wuz hisn, but Rosie told Angie Sue what she’d seen that day by the spring. An’ they thought it wuz fine to act smart about it.”

“The gals thought a heap o’ Lu,” said Aunt Lizy, irrepressible as justice. “I don’t blame ’em fer takin’ her part.”

“I ain’t blamin’ ’em,” said Uncle Ranz. “I’m sayin’ they wuz mighty hard on Ann. Angie Sue said she wuz goin’ to tell her father he had to turn Ann off the place. I never heard her tell him, but I seen her go into the room where he wuz. When she come out she looked like she wuz fallin’ to pieces, an’ milk couldn’t be whiter. As fur as I know that wuz the only time she ever named Ann to her daddy. Nathe wuzn’t bothered about Angie Sue, but he walked mighty keerful on Ann’s account. He kept goin’ to church right along, an’ travelled over to Carson faithful to his lodge meetin’s, an’ acted a little more’n fair in his tradin’, an’ kept his name right up. He wuz gittin’ to be wuth something too. I reckon his farm, an’ stock, an’ what he had in the Carson bank, would ’a’ come to more’n anybody else in Silver Valley could ’a’ spelt. So the deacons let him alone, as they ort, with no more proof than what me an’ Rosie saw, an’ him behavin’ right an’ payin’ the preacher reg’lar, besides givin’ him a suit o’ clothes an’ a fine pair o’ shoes at Christmas.

“Folks sort o’ made it easy fer Ann too, fer ever’body thought a sight of her.” Here Aunt Lizy gave the narrator a glance that drove him to an emendation. “Barrin’ a few o’ the women that wuz so good they didn’t have no use fer the New Testament. Most o’ the folks would go to the mill, like they’d been doin’, an’ act frien’ly, an’ make a heap over little Bake. Ever’body knowed that Ann had had an awful time with Curt, an’ Nathe wuz twenty years older’n her an’ could talk water up-hill. Nobody could prove nothin’ anyway, ’cause walkin’ in the woods one time wuzn’t no proof, not what the law could handle anyhow.

“Lu had been dead runnin’ onto a year, an’ the talk had died clean out, when Nathe told me to go to Mis’ Baker an’ tell her to take Ann to Carson an’ git a paper from the judge sayin’ she wuzn’t Curt’s wife. It wuz the law in them days that if a man an’ his wife didn’t live together fer three year they wuz nachally divorced ’thout goin’ inter court. I b’lieve they’ve changed it to five year now, but it wuz three then, an’ Curt had been gone four year an’ up’ards. I found Ann all in a trimmle an’ cryin’ hersef to death. She showed me a letter she’d got from Curt sayin’ he wuz comin’ back to settle with Nathe—that he’d heard whose boy Bake wuz, an’ he reckoned Nathe wouldn’t be so spry about havin’ him arrested ef he come back. She said she wouldn’t marry Nathe, fer Curt would be shore to slip in an’ kill him. That’s what Curt said he would do in the letter, an’ she didn’t have no more sense than to believe it. I went home an’ told Nathe, an’ he swore like no human bein’ ort to, an’ went straight off to Ann’s. When he come back, I knowed from his looks as fur as I could see him that his tongue hadn’t hepped him fer onct.

“‘I told her,’ he said, ‘I’d marry her, an’ take keer o’ her the rest o’ her life, like no woman wuz ever tuk keer of in Silver Valley, an’ ef Angie Sue come home she’d have to begin smilin’ at the gate er she’d never git inter the house, an’ Ann told me to find me a good woman an’ let her alone!’

“‘She’s afeard Curt’ll come back an’ kill ye, Nathe,’ I told him.

“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘Curt’s comin’ to kill me! That’s why he sent in his brag. So’s I could have my trigger ready.’

“‘Shucks,’ I said, ‘he’s a big coward; he’ll never come.’

“‘’Course he won’t,’ says Nathe, ‘but that don’t hep me ef I kain’t make Ann believe it. Git me a good woman, she says, an’ let her alone! It ’ud serve her almighty right ef I did.’

“‘You won’t do that, Nathe,’ I says, an’ he said: ‘No, I’ll hang around Aim fer the rest o’ my life, waitin’ fer a chance to lick her shoes!’

“‘That won’t be much to do,’ I told him. ‘Her shoes ain’t bigger than a thimble.’ ‘No, they ain’t,’ he says, an’ took the all-over trimmles. ‘I’m clean crazy, Ranz,’ he says.

“He mulled around fer maybe a month, kickin’ at his luck, an’ tryin’ to break pore little Ann, an’ the very day Mis’ Baker told me that Ann couldn’t hold out agin him much longer, he tied up with Nan Tittiewad.”

Uncle Ranz paused once more, and Aunt Lizy, always at the gap, and now evidently big with information, darted in.

“Her name wuzn’t Tittiewad. I knowed her folks that year me an’ Dan lived out in Jackson County. Her name wuz Benson, an’ her fam’ly wuz sort o’ bigetty. She married Jim Sluter the fust time. Jim’s father wuz called Taterwad ’cause he stole a wad o’ ’taters onct, not more’n a good mess, an’ wuz carryin’ ’em home when he wuz ketched with ’em. His name wuz Ham Sluter, but folks called him Ham Taterwad after that, an’ from him it went to his whole fam’ly. When Jim married Nan Benson, they called him Jim Taterwad after his father, an’ Nan would git so mad about it they told her they’d change it to Tittiewad ef that ’ud suit her better, an’ the madder she got the tighter that name stuck to her. Jim an’ her didn’t git along. They fit up an’ down the road, till fin’ly Jim left her, an’ nobody ever knowed what become of him. He got clear away from Nan. But they kept callin’ her Nan Tittiewad, the same as ever, ’cause it fitted her, I reckon, an’ it follered her wherever she went. I could ’a’ told Nathe all about her, but he wuzn’t sayin’ much to folks around home right then. He met Nan one day in Carson, an’ went round to the boardin’-house where she put up. They talked all night, an’ the next mornin’ they went to the court-house an’ got married.”

Aunt Lizy was breathless from the hurried discharge of her burden, and Uncle Ranz came in leisurely.

“I never knowed nothin’,” he said, “till I seen ’em drive up an’ Nathe hepped Nan out o’ the buggy. She wuz tall, an’ had a fair sight o’ flesh on her, but you couldn’t call her fat. She had red hair, but nobody wuz ’lowed to say it wuz red. She said it wuz orbun, but that didn’t change its color a bit. Her skin wuz white as a white egg-shell, an’ her eyes sky blue, not dark blue like Ann’s, an’ her lips as red as shumake heads. She wuz the fust woman Nathe had laid his hand on in nigh to a year, an’ I reckon, considerin’ what his nater wuz, it jest made him swim off. Nan sailed inter Lu’s house, an’ in less’n half an hour she’d been in ever’ corner of it. Her lip wuz curlin’ considerable, but when Nathe come in she ’peared to be satisfied. I b’lieve she wuz raley took up with Nathe at first, an’ he went about with his head lookin’ over all of us, heppin’ do ever’thing she wanted, pullin’ the furniture here an’ yander, an’ takin’ the pick o’ the parlor set to the room where they slept, an’ all sech crazy work. But when they’d been married about three weeks, an’ Nathe begun to think o’ settlin’ down to work like he ort, she said at breakfast one mornin’ that seein’ they’d done without a honeymoon, s’pose they tuk a trip to Californy er Flurridy. She’d always wanted to go to them places, she said. Nathe ’lowed he didn’t have enough money in the bank fer the trip, an’ didn’t have time to go ef the cash wuz layin’ handy. She got mad then, an’ said: ‘Well, I ain’t got time to wash yer dishes an’ sweep yer house an’ cook yer meals, nuther.’ Nathe told her he thought Rosie had been doin’ most of the work, but ef it wuz too much fer her, he’d let Angie Sue come home a while. She’d been wantin’ to come, ’cause she’s havin’ trouble with Mose Kempit, the man she married the fust time. An’ Nan said: ‘Oh, Lord, don’t bring any more peek-eyes in here! I’m smotherin’ to death now!’ Then she got up an’ walked down toward the creek, but she come back fer dinner, an’ from that time on it looked like the devil wuz runnin’ the house from top to bottom. Nathe fin’ly said he’d give her the money to go to Californy on ef she’d stay when she got there, but she told him she wuzn’t that easy, he wuz goin’ to do more than that fer her. She said she’d have to be paid good fer comin’ to sech a hole an’ livin’ with an ol’ squeeze-pocket that had killed three wives an’ kept another woman too. I reckon she’d picked something out o’ the neighbors, an’ Rosie had told her about Ann, fer she wuz powerful thick with Nan the fust week she wuz in the house.”

Uncle Dan’l was growing restless. “I say, Ranz,” he put in, “I never b’lieved Nan wuz near as bad as she made hersef out. She wuz tryin’ to git Nathe to drive her off, so she could sue him fer support an’ live where she wanted to.”

“’Course she wuz,” assented Uncle Ranz. “I found that out right away, an’ me an’ Nathe talked it over. ‘You want to be keerful, Nathe,’ I told him, ‘an’ keep yer hands off her an’ not give her any claim agin ye. She’ll wear hersef out ’fore long.’ ‘You reckon she will?’ Nathe ast me, an’ I told him I wuz shore she would ef he kept still no matter what she done. That seemed to hep him, an’ he set his teeth an’ tried to stand it. He didn’t dare go to see Ann, fer that wuz what his wife wuz watchin’ fer. He knowed she’d find him out, day er night, an’ he walked straight as a shingle. The whole neighborhood thought Nathe wuz actin’ fine, an’ anybody would ’a’ been sorry for him the day that Nan called Ann’s name an’ put something else to it as plain as the Bible speaks it. Nathe set still, like he’d never move till jedgment-day, an’ her tongue hurtin’ him worse than rippin’ fire. I b’lieve Nan felt kinder discouraged after that, thinkin’ she’d never git him riled enough to beat her er drive her off.

“It wuz awful the way she made a destroyment of things in the house. One day she wuz settin’ in the big room with Nathe, an’ she tuk a little penknife she had an’ begun to cut the threads out of a cushion that Lu had worked all over with little birds an’ leaves. ‘Don’t do that,’ said Nathe. ‘Lu made that hersef.’ An’ Nan says, ‘It’s mine now!’ an’ throwed it inter the fire. Nathe jumped up to grab it off the blazin’ logs, an’ Nan got right afore him. He’d ’a’ shoved her down, I reckon, if Cricket Sawyer hadn’t been there an’ held him back. Crick knew what Nan wuz after, the same as the rest of us, an’ she got so mad at him she never spoke to him afterwards, though they set at the same table three times a day.

“She found out where Nathe kept the aperns an’ trimmin’s an’ things he wore at his lodge meetin’s. He thought more o’ them cooterments than anything he had. Nan got the key to the drawer, an’ when he come in one day she wuz all rigged out in ’em. ‘Don’t I look purty, Nathe?’ she says, walkin’ up an’ down ’fore him. An’ he wuz afraid to say a word, fer he knowed what she’d done to that cushion. ‘You won’t be wantin’ ’em any more,’ she says, ‘’cause yer lodge’ll turn ye out soon as I tell ’em what you’ve got over yander at the mill.’ Then she walked out an’ down the road with them things on, an’ Nathe never seen a stitch o’ the riggin’ afterwards. I fixed it up that she tied a rock to ’em an’ throwed ’em inter the creek.

“We’d had about seven er eight months o’ Nan when Nathe begun to look thin an’ show he wuz losin’ out. I b’lieve he got to thinkin’ that Nan wouldn’t mind heppin’ him off inter the next world ef she could do it sly. He kept Crick Sawyer hired, but I couldn’t find out what fer, he wuz so lazy an’ slept half of ever’ day. I got to teasin’ him about drawin’ pay fer gittin’ his breath, an’ he fired up an’ told me that Nathe had hired him to watch Nan at night, he’d got so skeered o’ what she might do when he wuz asleep. I felt ashamed o’ Nathe fer that, an’ I never let him know I’d found out what Crick’s job wuz. But I says: ‘Crick, ef Ponnie er Callie er Lu left here owin’ Nathe a hard time, Nan has shore paid it fer ’em.’

“She never done a thing to hep round the house, but she wuz always on time fer her meals. She’d take the head o’ the table, too, like she wuz the queen bee, though she hadn’t warmed kiver with Nathe sence the fust month she wuz there. She’d talk an’ laff an’ make fun o’ Crick, an’ wouldn’t let a soul pour the coffee but her. One day when she’d poured a cup fer Nathe, it sparkled up quare, an’ he throwed it inter the fireplace. It wuz that day that he went off to Carson an’ come back with a cousin of ourn, Lem Thatcher, who’d went out West an’ done well, an’ come back to see his kinfolks. He wuz a widower, an’ a little younger’n Nathe, an’ tolerable fair-lookin’ too. When Nan found out he had some money she put on her best dressin’ an’ smiled like a pickcher. When she wuz all flossied up an’ shiny, a man would have to look at her sort o’ easy out o’ one eye, till he found out her ways didn’t match up. We’s all past the place where Nan’s looks counted fer anything, but Lem wuzn’t, an’ when she’d plumb her eyes at him he’d wriggle an’ turn red. Nathe seen his chaince then, an’ told Lem he had to go inter Tennessee fer a few days, but fer him to make hissef at home an’ not think o’ leavin’ till he got back. He staid about a week, an’ when he come home Lem an’ Nan had been gone three days. I reckon they’s half-way to Californy by that time. She left a note tellin’ Nathe the sooner he got his divorce the better it would suit her an’ Lem, an’ he could keep the few dollars in his old sock, she said. She didn’t have no use fer ’em, an’ his boy, Baker, might need ’em. She had the note tacked up outside the front door. I wuzn’t at home the mornin’ they left, but Crick told me she made Lem tack the note up, an’ her laffin’ till you could hear her to the pasture gate.

“Nathe got a divorce soon as he could, but it wuz a year er two ’fore anybody could speak to him about Nan ’thout him takin’ out his big handkercher an’ wipin’ his for’ed, he’d got inter sech a habit of it while she wuz around. As fer his house, it shore needed a good woman in it, Nan had been sech a tear-down.”

“He got a good woman when Aunt Lindy Webb went there,” said Serena, anticipating Aunt Lizy, and making it known that the story had reached a stage familiar to her generation.

“Ay, Nan had sort o’ shattered him,” said Uncle Dan’l, “and he made up his mind he wouldn’t make no mistake the next time.”

I wanted to hear about Ann. A depression was upon me, as if she had died. Then I remembered that she was going to South Carolina with Bake. But it was a relief when Uncle Ranz uttered her name again.

“Of course Nathe went to see Ann first, but she stuck to what she’d said before, an’ Nathe didn’t take it so hard this time. He could see fer hissef that Ann couldn’t run his place, an’ he wuz shore needin’ somebody that could. Rosie had got married, but her an’ Angie Sue kept comin’ home to stir up trouble with anybody that wuz hired on the place, an’ Nathe wuz beginnin’ to show his gray hairs. Ann had been sick fer a long spell. She tuk down dreckly after he married Nan, an’ when Nathe seen her fer the fust time in nearly a year, he give right in an’ told her she could have her own way about ever’thing an’ he’d stand by her jest the same. She begun to pick up purty soon, and in a little while wuz as peart as ever. I don’t reckon it made any difference ’tween ’em when he married Lindy Webb. Lindy had been married before——”

“Twice,” said another voice, younger than Aunt Lizy’s.

“That’s so, twice,” said Uncle Ranz, “an’ she had shown clear as gospel what a good woman she wuz. Nathe ast about her from fust to last ’fore he ever went to see her. He wuzn’t takin’ any chainces. Lindy’s fust man would run away ’bout ever’ other year, an’ she would make the crap an’ take keer of it, an’ have his plate at the table ready fer him ever’ meal she set down to, in case he drapped in. Ef she had a little money saved up, he took holt of it right away. Onct she saved seventeen dollars makin’ syrup, runnin’ the cane-mill night an’ day, an’ he took ever’ dollar soon as he come in. He went off at last an’ staid so long that Jim Webb wanted to marry Lindy, so he went round ’mong the neighbors an’ called a meetin’. They voted she could marry Jim, but she couldn’t take up with any furriner that might come along an’ want her farm. She married Jim then, an’ he would ’a’ made her a good husband ef he hadn’t hurt his leg tryin’ to break a yoke o’ steers hissef, ’stead o’ lettin’ Lindy do it like she wuz used to. It didn’t heal up, an’ Lindy had to wait on him hand an’ foot fer ten years, an’ make the livin’ fer both of ’em. Jim wuz quarrellin’ all the time, an’ Lindy said he wuz fractious ’cause he wuz so disappinted in not bein’ able to hep her like he’d set out to do. He died about the time her farm wuz run through with, ’count o’ him wantin’ ever’thing, an’ livin’ on almanac medicine, but she had nice things in her house an’ she brought ’em all to Nathe’s. It wuzn’t long till she had Nathe’s place lookin’ as well as it did in Lu’s time, an’ she had more in the cellar to eat an’ drink than Lu ever had. There wuzn’t nuthin’ Lindy didn’t know how to do er to make. She wuzn’t burnin’ jealous nuther, an’ told me hersef she wuzn’t goin’ to keep Nathe miser’ble by tryin’ to change his nater. She’d leave that to the Lord, she said.”

“That wuz the only thing,” said Aunt Lizy, “that I held agin Lindy. She wuz too easy about Ann.”

“Well, Ann never bothered her. She never set her foot in the big house, an’ she told Nathe she’d never cross the doorstep after that day she met Rosie in the road, an’ Rosie mewed up her mouth an’ drawed back her skirts. Nathe come to see that Ann wuz right. Lindy had a strong hand on the girls, an’ kep’ his house so he could set in it peaceable, which wuz more’n Ann could ’a’ done. He told Ann she could always do as she pleased about ever’thing except one. He said Bake would have to go away to school. He put it that the other childern might treat him like he wuzn’t as good as they wuz, an’ Ann give in. But I had an idy he seen she wuz gittin’ all wrapped up in Bake. Nathe couldn’t stand bein’ left out like that. Anyway he sent Bake off, an’ he growed up a fine feller, comin’ back fer his vacations, an’ to hunt ’possums Christmas, an’ ever’body likin’ him same as ef he’s raised right here.

“About a month after Nathe married Lindy, somebody writ Ann from Birmingham that Curt had died down there, an’ Nathe sent me to Alabam’ to make sure it wuz so, an’ I found out it wuz. I thought Nathe would be terr’bly cut up when I told him, ’cause ef he’d waited a little, Ann might ’a’ married him with Curt out o’ the way. But he ’lowed it wouldn’t ’a’ made any difference, he couldn’t let Ann come inter the big house where the girls would keep her miser’ble even ef she’d been willin’ to try it, an’ it wuz too late fer him to go away from Silver Valley an’ begin all over. I could see he wuz gittin’ satisfied with things as they wuz.”

“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.”