Chapter 13
It is a hard thing to try and sleep
against a background of haunting memories, in our paradox world where
exhaustion may sometimes only exhaust, without sapping consciousness. Both
Uriah and Iris tossed and turned restlessly on their respective beds through
that night � though Uriah had to make do with a couple of old horse blankets
and a straw-filled pallet where Iris slept under a feather comforter on a
mattress packed tight with horsehair. Perhaps each thought of the other in
their sleeping, but perhaps both of them were too much bound up in their own
travails.
Eulalia woke Uriah the following
morning by banging a metal ladle on a pan outside his door just after half past
six. �C�mon, Massa Hitt. Miz Evelyn sez yo� gotta eat good, �fore you go out,
and I�se gotta rightly bowl of griddle cake makin�s jes� waitin� fer yo.�
Uriah emerged into the thin dawn
light and stretched. He was scowling at being roused, for he knew he must ride
out to the farm again to give his father proper Christian burial, and feared
secretly that he might find himself face to face again with his mother.� But he was also hungry. He drenched himself
quickly at a pump in the Kingmans� yard, shaking water from his head and
shoulders like a dog shaking itself after swimming, and fastened his overalls.
It was turning chilly, these fall dawns, and he needed something comforting to
start his day. Iris would have suited him better, for bodily warmth on waking,
and food on his plate. But he would content himself in his eating, in the
knowledge that he would have his wife back with him soon.
He eyed Eulalia a little askance as
he stepped into the Kingmans� kitchen, for he was not sure how he should be
with a nigra woman feeding him. But Eulalia only beamed, pointing to a place
laid at the kitchen table, with a blue and white china plate already set high
with a steaming stack of griddle cakes, a small crock of syrup next to it
alongside a tin mug filled with strong black coffee, and a big dish of fresh
butter. �There yo� go, massa. Yo� want to give thenks to the Lord thet made yo�
fust, or yo� want a big cut of ham?�
Uriah was already sat, and eating.
He was a godfearing man, but he had never called down the Lord on his eating,
because praying tended to make food grow cold. He nodded as Eulalia held a big
carving knife over a side of ham. �I�ll tek kindly to thet.�
He was surprised to hear himself
speak, because folk in the holler had never had any dealings with colored
people, regarding them with suspicion and distrust, and precious few ever came
to Coates. But a good cook knows the way to a man�s heart.
Eulalia cut him a hefty slice, and
began to busy herself making a second stack of griddle cakes. She had never
come across a man, colored or white, who would pass up her breakfasts, whether
they might be ordinary food in the regular way, or fancy cooking like the
Kingmans ate, like oatmeal porridge and milk and honey, or omelettes with
yellow dry land fish mushrooms shaped like hearing trumpets in them. She had a
dish in her larder waiting for Miss Evelyn�s breakfast, and Miss Eveleyn had
been most particular about their cooking, wanting them first fried lightly in
butter, just to sweat them out a bit, and then cooked in an omelette that
stayed a little runny at the center. Why, Lord, people back in her childhood
days down in Alabama would never have touched such things, considering them
mighty poisonous, and even folks up here in the hills would only look at them
when they had been fried to a crisp in bacon grease. Yet here she had heard
with her own two black ears Miss Evelyn tell her that such things fetched
almighty high prices on the Coast. She took a deep breath as she lifted her
cast iron skillet from the wood stove. Folks could be mighty strange in their
ways.
She waited for Uriah to finish, and
then swept the second stack deftly onto his plate, and watched him smack his
lips. There is something in the assuagement of hunger that makes a man mellow
up a deal, and he beamed up at her. �Yo� doin� fine.�
Eulalia might have blushed, had she
been younger. �Aw, shucks.� She pushed his compliment away. �Miz Evelyn told me
to feed you up good, and I�se doin� ma best.�
Evelyn entered the kitchen as she
was speaking, and Eulalia beamed at her proudly. �See, ma�am, I�se fillin� him
up.�
Evelyn looked at Uriah eating,
though his jaws were moving a little more slowly now than when he had started,
and smiled. �I can see that you are.� She pulled a chair out from the table to
sit facing him, and Eulalia watched approvingly. She could see that Franny�s
mother was a woman who knew just the right way to handle people. Some might
have remained standing, or expected a man to stand to them, but Miss Evelyn
just got on plain and simple with what she was planning to do.
�Uriah, Mr. Kingman will be ready
for you, just as soon as you have had a moment with your wife.� Evelyn spoke
slowly, watching to see how Uriah would take her words. She judged him
headstrong and stubborn, the kind of man who could be wrong-footed with a tone,
or an inflection, let alone a wrong word, and she wanted everything to run
smoothly.
Uriah swallowed hard. He had been
eating, and it had been a pleasure, but now he was being summoned back into a
different world. He shook his head as Eulalia held her skillet up enquiringly,
though he knew he was mightily tempted, for there is something in a man who has
known short commons in his lifetime that makes him want to fill himself even
beyond fulfilment, just in case his next meal may be some time coming. But he
knew that he had filled himself fuller than the stuffing in a big old turkey
tom come Thanksgiving. �I�m done now, ma�am.�
�I�ll tell Mr. Kingman that you�ll
be ready to ride out in a minute.� Evelyn got to her feet. �I think you can go
up to Iris now.�
Uriah climbed the Kingmans� stairs
reluctantly. He still did not hold with his wife being kept away from him, and
he was sure that sleeping in a fancy bed would put bad ideas in her head. But
he was now too full now to be tempted by lust. He knew that being sent away
would deprive him of those moments that a man can rightly expect of his wife,
and that seemed an injustice to him. But the world is not always just.
He pushed the door to Iris� room
open, and stopped short. Two girls in white dresses and pinafores laced with
matching blue ribbons were seated on the far side of the bed watching Iris, who
had her arm around a third small girl, pointing to a page in a book.
��That says Alice met a White Rabbit, with gloves and a hat on, and
cute little britches.� Ellen Kingman stopped short, and all three Kingman girls
looked up in alarm.
Uriah scowled. These children were
taking Iris down a wrong path.
Iris pushed Ellen gently away. �You
must go and have breakfast now. Your parents will be waiting for you.�
Uriah waited for the three children
to leave the room. He sensed that somehow Iris had already begun to change,
speaking more precisely, using words such as �breakfast� and �parents�. He did
not like the way things were progressing, not one little bit.
�Yo� gonna be up here long, wife?�
Iris winced as she turned towards
him. She was still uncomfortable, and her breasts were painful, though Doctor
Carter had given her some oil of camphor to rub into them, and Eulalia had
helped bind them tightly to slow her lactating. She had also woken in tears at
the memory of her loss, and thought Uriah might have given some thought to
that.
�Doctor Carter�s coming up, later
in the day. He stitched me up some.� She began to cry� a little again in her effort not to mention what happened,.
Uriah looked down at her awkwardly.
He had seen Iris cry, in the early days of their marriage, after he had whipped
her, and her tears had then been a mark of his superior strength, and her
yielding. But now he did not know what to do.
�Oh, husband, I did so want to give
you a son.� Now Iris was sobbing openly. �I wanted thet so bad, and he was
taken from me. Jes� give me time to mend, an� we�ll raise a whole family.�
Uriah swallowed hard. He had never
before known the feeling that was in him, and he did not know how to deal with
it. He stepped up to the bed, and laid his hand on Iris� shoulder, and then
turned away, back to the door. �I must go and bid goodbye to ma Paw.� His words
stumbled out of him, and with them he was gone.
The four men rode up to the Hitt
farm through the dawn mist, and it was a time of reckoning. Evered had already
arranged Floyd Conover�s funeral with Brother Ezekiel Hicks, the new minister
sent out from Gallatin to tend the Lord�s flock at Coates, and he imagined
Brother Hicks would call up a storm over Zack Benton�s coffin as well � it is
not often that a new servant to the Lord can appeal twice in a day for
contributions, and contributions come in very handy, even if they only call in
a dime at a time.
They rode slowly up to the Hitts�
cabin, with Uriah in the lead. But there was no sign of life, and no sound.
Uriah dismounted by his father�s grave, and the three other men slid from their
saddles. There was a chill in the fall air, as though ice had been around,
though it was too early for freezing.
Macdonald walked to where the earth
had been turned, and pulled his Bible from his coat pocket. It was a
well-thumbed book, used much in his work of burying, baptizing, and marrying,
and he knew its meaningful pages pretty much by heart.
�The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures�� He began to read the words
of the twenty-third psalm. Kingman and Evered listened neutrally. They were
performing a duty they felt incumbent on them. Uriah seemed lost in a reverie.
The Methodist clergyman read
through his service in measured tones, and then began to intone the Lord�s
Prayer. Kingman and Evered muttered the words with him, whilst Uriah looked
around, as though expecting his mother to appear. Then it was all over, and the
four of them were riding back to Coates. Four silent men, each bound up in his
own thoughts.
Uriah followed David Kingman and
Turner Evered as they reached the railroad depot, and the three men dismounted.
Pastor Macdonald had already broken away. �We�d better fit you out.� Kingman
spoke briskly. Half an hour later Uriah was the proud owner of two new pairs of
fireman�s overalls, a pair of new boots with steel tips inside the toes, two
pairs of woolen socks, a fireman�s soft peaked cap, and a brand new lunch pail.
Kingman and Evered both beamed at
him. �You�ll find the engineer and the incoming crew waiting down by the
train.� Kingman pointed to where a big locomotive was steaming and hissing at
the head of a couple of boxcars, a string of lumber flatbeds, and a lone passenger
carriage tacked on at the rear. Men were already busy hauling timber onto the
flatbeds, using a primitive steam-driven crane. �Mr. Evered will take you
down.�
Uriah bridled. �I kin shovel coal
as good as the nex� man, sir.�
Evered clapped him on the shoulder.
�I guess you can, son. But these engineers can be mighty particular people.
He�ll expect me to vouch for you, and he�ll want to know that you can do a good
steady sweep, moving coal from the tender into the firebox. You have to keep it
flowing smoothly.�
Uriah followed him. He believed
himself as good as any man in using his muscles, but he recognized the
rightness of expertise. He would shovel coal from Coates to Baltimore, and
become a fireman of renown, and then, in the fullness of time, he would come to
rank as an engineer, driving trains across America.
Whilst Kingman and Evered were
inducting Uriah, Ezekiel Hicks, the new Baptist pastor in Coates, was making
preparations for two funerals after riding in from Gallatin the previous day in
an elderly wagon piled high with his belongings, two small children who feared
him quite a deal, and a worn-down wife. Hicks was a short, fiery man with
ginger hair, yellow eyes like a cat, and a large opinion of himself. Coates was
his first congregation all to himself in the ministry, after some time helping
out over the Kentucky line, and a spell before that riding the circuit, and he
intended to make himself known and his views felt. He had already heard talk of
witchcraft in the town, and unmentionable rites on outlying farms, and he
planned a root and branch cleansing.
�I�ll get these people to fear the
Lord, by heck I will.� He was talking to his wife Martha after breakfasting
with Judith Conover, for the Hicks had been promised the Conover home behind the
chapel, and Judith was already packed to leave, bound with her teenage son for
a married sister in Ohio. �I�ll raise up the Good Book, and smite the powers of
darkness, and Satan will back off from this place.�
Martha nodded silently. She was
always of a piece with her husband�s opinions, for she had long since learned
that taking any other view led inexorably to slaps, and sometimes even punches
� it was said that Hicks had fought as a prizefighter in his youth, before
seeing the light.
�We�ll hev some good fighting hymns
for the service, mebbe Onwards Christian Soldiers to open. We need to drum up
some spirit.� Hicks spoke dreamily, already assembling thoughts for the
peroration he planned to deliver over Floyd Conover�s coffin. �Then I�ll tell
them how Brother Conover has gone to knock on the Gate of Heaven, and will
surely be admitted, not like some of the folk hereabouts, who will find the
angels barring their path because of the evil things they have done. Then I�ll
throw some hell fire at them, and mebbe yell a bit about the evil things thet
live in the minds of some local folks, and call down the wrath of the Lord on
those who transgress his path by practicing wicked, wicked deeds.�
His voice was now rising, as he
worked himself into the right way of interpreting divine inspiration, and
Judith Conover quickly cleared the remnants of breakfast from the table, for
she had seen Floyd fire himself up on numerous occasions for the Lord during
his lifetime, and he had invariably sent plates and cups flying in his
gathering fervor.
But Ezekiel had paused, as though
searching for his next step, and when he spoke next, his voice was quiet. �I�ll
summon them.� His voice rose a tone. �I�ll call them.� His voice rose again,
and he held his right arm outstretched above his head, pointing towards heaven.
�I�ll call them, and summon them, and bid them leave their evil thoughts and
practices behind, and come to Jesus.� Now his voice was a shout. �Come to
Jesus, brothers and sisters, come and be saved in the holy waters of Jordan!�
Judith Conover and Martha Hicks
both stared at him wide-eyed. Faith, and perhaps a measure of hubris at having
his first congregation of his very own, had filled Ezekiel with the spirit, and
both women half expected to see parted tongues, as it were of fire, dancing on
his brow.
But Ezekiel was not done, though
his voice, now hoarse, had returned to near its normal level. �I will call
them, and summon them to open both their hearts and their pockets to the Lord,
and the Lord will carry the good fight forward.�
Martha got down from her chair and
knelt at the table, and Judith and her son, and the two small Hicks children
followed suit. Martha had seen husband Zeke preach on many occasions, and
sometimes she had been impressed. But she had never been as impressed as now,
and she knew in her admiration that Zeke�s first collection in Coates would
probably bring enough to keep them comfortable well through the winter. For
whilst the Lord may not always hear the prayers of the needy, his faithful are
always stirred by passion.
The service went every bit as well
as Ezekiel hoped. Coates came to the Baptist chapel in force, for Ezekiel had
spoken at length to Bob Thornton, the proprietor of the Commercial Hotel, on
his arrival, and Thornton had cleared his Assembly Room for a collation to
follow the service.� The good people of
Coates knew that Thornton claimed to be acting for Jesus, and would limit
entrance to the faithful � though some whispered a little unkindly that
Thornton sought rather more to celebrate, than mourn, Conover�s death. It was
well known that Conover, in preaching on the two previous Sundays against the
evils of alcohol, and the even more wicked sins of the flesh, had been
referring in only slightly veiled terms to those who provided shelter for such
wickedness. It was widely supposed that Ezekiel Hicks in this new alliance
would always look elsewhere for his targets.
Collection plates passed round, and
the congregation felt a collective stir of pride, for they glimpsed the gleam
of gold amongst the silver coins, and some paper as well. Coates had come to
take the measure of its new shepherd, and was minded to follow Bob Thornton�s
lead in approving him, and decided to show its approval in the very best way.
Ezekiel preached, and his sermon roundly excelled his breakfast practice run.
Several members of the congregation began to weep and wail as he began his
exhortation to seek salvation, and soon there was a line of ten men and women
waiting to be called forward towards the Lord, and he counted himself fortunate
that he had asked Bob Thornton to fill an ornamental pond at the back of the
Commercial Hotel rather fuller than usual.
Ezekiel was a practical man, as
well as a fiery preacher. He pushed Zack Benton�s funeral through at speed on
the coat-tails of Brother Conover, for he knew that� the good people of Coates considered Zack Benton pretty much of a
coward for killing Jedediah Hitt on his own farm at first light � Saunders had
sworn a long and very detailed description of the killing before being taken
off to Gallatin. This time the chapel�s collection plates yielded comparatively
little, and nobody stepped forward to answer his call.
He launched off a few words to speed Benton on his way, and then the service was done. The congregation flocked out to the back of the Commercial Hotel to watch him immerse his new faithful, and then swept on into the hotel to partake of Bob Thornton�s cold ham and fresh biscuits and hot sweet milky tea, though some who were privy to his friendship were seen sipping at mugs of tea that were black, and not milky at all, and might have been thought to smell rather strong. Ezekiel noted with pride how Thornton had set out cakes baked by the congregation on a table to make an impressive display, and naturally let himself be prevailed on to sample a little of each and every one, for he was a man with a sweet tooth. He also noted how the good ladies made much of his wife Martha and his two children, and he knew in their admiration that he had found a new home.