Gap Creek (32 page)

“I figure these colors will suit either a boy or a girl,” Joanne said. Her fingers looked too rough and swelled at the joints to do any knitting. I leaned down and hugged her I was so touched.

“You have both saved me a lot of work,” I said.

“When a baby comes, a woman don’t have time to make clothes,” Elizabeth said.

I set down and held the baby clothes on my lap and just looked at them, stroking the soft flannel and the warm knitted yarn of the cap and booties.

“Do you crave sour things or sweet things?” Joanne said.

I hesitated to say I craved either one, because it sounded so silly.

“Sometimes a woman craves salty things,” Elizabeth said.

“I never heard of that,” Joanne said.

“I guess I always had a sweet tooth,” I said, and giggled.

“Well, I brung you this,” Elizabeth said. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out something dark. It was a jelly jar. “This is cherry preserves,” she said.

“How did you know what I craved?” I exclaimed.

“I was just guessing,” Elizabeth said. “I remember how I craved jams and preserves.” Her face was wrinkled and she had a few gray hairs, but she looked utterly happy, happy the way people are when they give to somebody or please somebody.

Cherry preserves was one thing I hadn’t had in years. It was something different from blackberry and grape and apple jelly. I felt like gobbling it up right there. There was nothing Elizabeth could
have brought that would have been more welcome. “How can I thank you?” I said.

“And I brung you some of this,” Joanne said. She reached into her other coat pocket and brought out a jar. The jar looked almost black, but when I held it up to the firelight I seen the contents was deep red.

“It’s raspberry,” Joanne said.

I put the two jars on the mantel and felt tears in my eyes when I turned back to Joanne and Elizabeth. “I don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

“Nothing but a little jelly and some castoff clothes,” Elizabeth said.

“Best way to thank us is to have a healthy baby,” Joanne said.

“The world wouldn’t have lasted this long if women didn’t help each other,” Elizabeth said.

“The world would be a better place if people helped each other more,” Joanne said.

I held up the baby things with their fine stitches and knitting done for little arms and legs and heads one by one. “You all are mighty good to me,” I said.

“It’s the least we can do,” Elizabeth said.

THAT NIGHT AS I laid in bed, I kept thinking about how kind Joanne and Elizabeth had been to me. It made me feel growed up and kind myself to be treated that way. It made me feel like I was a bigger person. They made me want to be better.

There was a crack, like a shotgun blast, not too far from the house. Hank jumped up in bed like he hadn’t been sleeping sound either.

“What was that?” I said.

“I heard it in my sleep,” he said.

“You must not have been asleep,” I said.

We listened in the cold dark. It was the coldest night I could remember. The air in the bedroom felt prickly and needled with cold. The house creaked in the roof, as a house will when the temperature drops to zero.

“I know what it was,” Hank said.

“What was it?” I said.

“That was a tree exploding,” Hank said.

“How can a tree explode?” I said.

“When it gets real cold and the sap freezes in a maple or poplar, some tree where the sap is starting to rise. And when the sap freezes it will bust a tree wide open.”

I laid in the dark thinking of a big poplar that had busted to splinters. I had heard of such a thing a long time ago but had forgot about it. The tip of my nose was cold and firm.

“I guess a person would explode if they froze,” I said. I thought of some poor soul like Timmy Gosnell that might have lost their way in the dark and fell in a sinkhole.

“People has too much salt in them to freeze,” Hank said.

“People freeze to death,” I said. “Drunks freeze to death.”

“But they don’t freeze solid and explode,” Hank said.

There was another blast come out of the dark. It sounded like a hammer fell out of the sky onto a big rock. It sounded so loud it hurt the air. The sound echoed off the sides of the valley two or three times, off the cliff I called Old Fussy Face.

“Sounds like there’s a war going on,” Hank said.

“I’m glad I’m inside,” I said.

“And I’m glad the baby is warm inside you,” Hank said. We laid in the dark talking like that. I could remember hearing Mama and Papa talking in the dark when I was a little girl. It felt good to talk when you couldn’t see anything. Under the warm quilts we laid like we was in a nest or a tent, or maybe a cave.

“What are we going to name the baby?” I said.

“If he’s a boy we’ll name him Lafayette after my daddy,” Hank said.

“That’s a long name for a youngun,” I said.

“People will call him Fate,” Hank said.

“We could name him after Papa,” I said.

“But he will be a Richards,” Hank said.

“What if the baby is a girl?” I said.

“Then we’ll name her after your mama,” Hank said.

I was glad he had said that, for I sure would hate to name my daughter after Ma Richards. “Delia is a beautiful name,” I said.

There was another pop, but it was in the house, and it was not as loud as the others. We laid still and listened to the creaks and groans in the house. And then there was a crash in the attic, like a ham of meat had fell.

“This house is going to fall apart,” Hank said.

“Its bark is worse than its bite,” I said. We both giggled. And then there was another explosion out in the woods across the creek where a hemlock or poplar, or maybe a cucumber tree, had busted wide open in the cold.

I’D HEARD THE rumor that Timmy Gosnell had been arrested in Greenville for public drunkenness and was being held in the county jail. And it must have been true, for I hadn’t seen him on the road in weeks, though sometimes his name come up when I was talking to Elizabeth or Joanne, or the preacher’s wife.

“Poor Timmy,” they would say. “Ain’t he the saddest case.”

“He never was no count,” one would say.

“I reckon his daddy was worser than him.”

Elizabeth asked me if it was true I had run Timmy out of the yard with Mr. Pendergast’s walking stick.

“I was so mad I didn’t hardly know what I was doing,” I said. I was ashamed to think of that day.

“He scares me,” Joanne said, “the way he stares at you sideways, and the way his voice rips out in such an ugly way.”

“He could mark a pregnant woman’s baby,” Elizabeth said.

“How come?” I said.

“He’s got a demon in him that makes him drink,” Elizabeth said. “He’s possessed by a devil that will mark a baby.”

“Mark it how?” I said.

“Mark it so it’ll stagger and roll its eyes and won’t have good sense, just like him.”

HANK AND ME was eating dinner on Saturday when we heard somebody holler from the road. All we had was cornbread and green beans, but they tasted mighty good. There come this holler from out front, and it sent a shiver through me, for I knowed on the spot who it was.

“Piieendergaasss!” the voice yelled.

“Is that Timmy Gosnell?” Hank said.

“I think it is,” I said.

“That drunk,” Hank said. “I thought he was in jail.”

“I thought so too.”

“Piieendergaasss!” the voice hollered, “come outch hhhrrrrr.”

“He can’t come here and bother us this way,” Hank said. I seen Hank was scared, because this was something he wasn’t used to facing. And because he was afraid I was afraid. But I wasn’t as much afraid of Timmy Gosnell as of what Hank might do that he’d be sorry for later. When Hank was scared was when he lost his temper. And Preacher Gibbs wasn’t here to help out this time.

Hank pushed back his chair and hurried to the front door, and I run after him. When he flung open the front door I seen Timmy
Gosnell standing halfway between the road and the steps. He had on his long black coat, but he had lost his hat and his head was mostly bald. There was a scab on top of his head like he had been hit or cut there.

“Where’s Piendergaasss?” he said, and gulped, when he seen Hank and me on the porch.

“Mr. Pendergast is dead,” Hank said.

Timmy Gosnell stood in the sun like he was trying to take in what Hank had said. He bowed his head and looked at us through his eyebrows. “Piendergaasss is hiding,” he said, “cause he ooowes me money.”

“We don’t owe you money,” Hank said again, and moved toward the steps.

“You’re by G-g-god lying,” Timmy Gosnell said.

“Don’t call me a liar,” Hank said, and his voice rose with the strain of anger.

Timmy Gosnell looked sideways and squinted in the sunlight. “Piendergaass is hiding,” he said.

“Get out of the yard,” Hank said. “You go on home.”

“Ain’t your house,” Timmy said.

“Get away from here,” Hank said.

“The hell you …,” the drunk man said and waved his arm at Hank.

Hank looked around and seen a rocking chair on the porch. It was a chair I sometimes set in on warm days to mend socks. Hank grabbed the rocker and held it in front of him as he descended the steps. “You get on away from here,” he said.

“Don’t do nothing,” I said to Hank. I could tell how scared Hank was. I was afraid he would lose control of hisself, like the night of the flood.

“You stay out of this,” Hank said to me.

Timmy Gosnell shaded his eyes and looked at me like he hadn’t
noticed me before. “That woman has got Piendergaass’s money,” he said.

“You shut your mouth!” Hank said. He shoved the chair into the drunk man’s chest and he fell backwards.

“You can’t cover up,” Timmy said. “Piendergaass knows what he done.”

“Don’t hurt him,” I said. “He’s just a drunk man.” I was afraid that if Hank hurt Timmy Gosnell, the sheriff would come and arrest Hank. After all, we was the newcomers on Gap Creek. I remembered what Elizabeth had said about Timmy being demon possessed and apt to mark the baby of any woman that looked into his red eyes. I tried not to look at him directly.

“Get on away from here,” Hank said, and pushed the drunk man down on the ground again.

“You don’t hold water,” Timmy said, as his voice rose to a scream, “going to church and stealing Piendergaass’s money.”

“I ain’t took nobody’s money,” Hank said.

“Let him go,” I said. I reached out to take Hank’s elbow but he jerked away. And then it was like everything happened at once. I seen Timmy Gosnell pull the knife out of his coat pocket. It was not a pocketknife and not a butcher knife, but maybe an old hunting knife. And at the same instant I felt Hank lose control of hisself. It was what I had been afraid of. He drove the chair into Timmy’s chest and face, hitting him in the mouth with a rocker.

“Go on ahead, kill me,” the drunk man laughed, “’stead of paying me.” He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and laughed again like he didn’t feel no pain.

“Get on away from here,” Hank said. He swung the chair and hit Timmy upside of his head. I seen blood on the bald head where the scab had been knocked loose. Timmy laughed again and held his ear.

“Hank!” I yelled, but Hank wasn’t listening to me. He tossed the chair aside and grabbed Timmy by the collar of his coat. He drug
him backwards across the yard to the road. There was blood on the drunk man’s chin and on his forehead. He squealed like a hurt pig. Hank drug him across the road and pushed him over the bank into the creek.

“He’ll drown,” I hollered, and run to the creek bank. Timmy Gosnell was laying in the water like he was too weak to get up. He thrashed around and raised his head out of the water. In the black coat he looked like an animal that had crawled out of the mud.

“He’ll freeze to death,” I said.

“Let him freeze,” Hank said, out of breath, and rubbed his hands on his pants like he was trying to get rid of filth.

“And you’ll be arrested for murder,” I said. “And then where will we be?” I worked my way down to the creek and tried to take hold of Timmy under his arm. He was heavy as a sack of rocks.

“Drown me, all I care,” Timmy said and spit through the blood in his mouth.

I stepped into the water to get a hold on him and still couldn’t move him. I pulled him a little way toward the bank before Hank come down and helped me. It took both of us to haul the drunk man out of the water and drag him through the weeds back up to the road.

We got Timmy on his feet and the water appeared to have sobered him a little. He was bleeding from his nose as well as from his mouth. “I’m gone tell Mama and Daddy what you done,” he said. He started walking, taking short steps. His coat was wet and covered with mud and pieces of straw.

“You’re so crazy you think your mama and daddy is still alive,” Hank hollered after him.

“Gone tell them,” Timmy cried and kept going.

“He’s an idiot,” Hank said.

“That was awful,” I said. “He don’t know what he’s doing.”

“Maybe that will teach him a lesson,” Hank said. But I could tell
Hank was beginning to be embarrassed, the way anybody is after they lose their temper. I had a bad feeling as I watched Timmy Gosnell shuffle on down the road.

“Would you just let him insult you?” Hank said.

“He’s a drunk man,” I said.

IT’S SHAMEFUL TO admit that you have been hungry, that you have been hungry as a grown woman, as a married woman. It’s even more embarrassing to admit you’ve been hungry while carrying a baby. We made do with what we had on the place and what church members give us. But there was a time in the late winter when things got lean and hard, and we just had to outlast them.

By the end of March all our meat was gone, down to a little fat-back. The smokehouse smelled bare and stale. The taters was gone, and the canned stuff that had survived the flood was all eat up. There was nothing left in the house but a little cornmeal and grits from the corn we had saved from the flood.

Hank took Mr. Pendergast’s shotgun and went into the mountains every day, but the turkeys had all been killed by the hard winter, or shot by other hunters. They had disappeared from the holler where they had been so plentiful. It was the wrong season for shooting squirrels and rabbits, but sometimes he killed a squirrel and I would make it into a stew. And then he run out of shotgun shells.