The Waltons 2 - Trouble on the Mountain (14 page)

“Is that something for Grandma?”

“That’s right. Perfume.”

John-Boy felt a little relieved. At least Grandpa was having some guilt feelings too. Apparently he was ready to bury the hatchet.

“How’d you know I was out at the Baldwins’, John-Boy?”

“Ike Godsey told Grandma.”

“You mean Esther went over to Ike’s?”

“Yes, she did. She got all dressed up and was ready to apologize.”

“And Ike told her I went out to the Baldwins’?”

“Yes, he did.”

A slight smile came to Grandpa’s face. “Oh-oh,” he said.

“She wasn’t too happy about it.”

“You mean she was mad, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, she was mad. But you can see what she was thinking.”

“I sure do know what she was thinking. It’s called jealousy, John-Boy. The old green-eyed monster.”

“Well, all you have to do, Grandpa, is give her the perfume and explain how you left it out there.”

“John-Boy, just like I said before, after fifty years I don’t feel a man has to explain his every move. I don’t ask where Esther is all day, and I don’t reckon she has any call to be asking me.”

“But she’s always home.”

“That’s beside the point. These matters go far deeper than you can understand at your age. Now turn left up here at the next road.”

“What for?”

“ ’Cause I’m going over to see my friend, Cornelius Zimmerman.”

“Oh,
no,
Grandpa! Supper’s ready at home, and everybody’s waiting on us.”

“Either turn, John-Boy, or just let me out and I’ll walk.”

Grandpa was smiling at him. But it was a firm, determined smile. John-Boy slowed and turned.

“Grandpa, you know what I think? I think you’re enjoying all this.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Grandpa gave him a hard look and then stiffened, glaring through the wind-shield. “You think I’m enjoying it, do you? You think a seventy-two-year-old man finds pleasure in sleeping on pool tables and begging food from his friends?”

“Well, you know it’s all just a little misunderstanding, and all you have to do to end it is go home and explain everything to Grandma.”

“John-Boy, you disappoint me. If you’ll just reflect on it a minute, you’ll realize that wars have started over little misunderstandings. You’ll also realize that sometimes little misunderstandings are just the tips of icebergs. No, your grandma and me’s got a lot in common. I reckon we’re both a little stubborn. But if she’s going to be jealous every time I make a move on my own, well, that’s hard to live with.”

“You going to sleep at the Zimmermans’?”

“If they’ll have me.”

“I reckon they’ll have you, all right. But how about tomorrow night? And the night after that?”

He considered the question. “I’ve got me a cousin over in Fluvanna County. Ain’t seen him in some time. Maybe after a couple of weeks there I’ll feel different about things.”

John-Boy stopped the truck in front of the Zimmermans’. “This is all silly, Grandpa.”

Grandpa placed the package on the seat and got out. “You give that to your grandma. And be sure and tell her I had to walk all the way out to the Baldwins’ just to get it for her.”

“She ain’t going to come clear out here to apologize, Grandpa.”

“Don’t expect her to, What she does is entirely her business. And what I do is entirely mine. I’m a forgiving person, John-Boy. But I’m also a man. And a man ain’t worth his salt if he ain’t got his pride.”

John-Boy watched while Grandpa went to the door. When it opened and Mrs. Zimmerman invited him in, John Boy swung the truck around and headed home.

John-Boy couldn’t remember ever having gone to bed when the “goodnights” everyone called to each other sounded so subdued. He particularly listened for Grandma’s and felt a pang of sympathy as her voice seemed to be bravely trying not to show any despair.

When he arrived home from the Zimmermans’, they had all listened to his report in gloomy silence. And then his father had banged down his fork. “I’ve got a good mind to just go on over there and get him, Livvy. That old man’s just being cussed ornery for no reason at all.”

But Grandma quietly vetoed the idea. “No, John. I reckon it’s best to just let him be for a while.”

When John-Boy had given her the bottle of perfume and told her about Grandpa’s walking out to get it, she had simply nodded and taken the package to her room. At the supper table she didn’t mention it.

“Well,” Olivia finally said with a forced smile, “I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow.”

John-Boy didn’t mention Grandpa’s remark about visiting his cousin in Fluvanna County for a couple weeks. And as far as telling the Baldwin sisters the truth about the typewriter, John-Boy’s father suggested he wait a day or two. By then maybe they would have forgotten about Grandpa’s wild story of the paper being upside down.

VIII

I
t was clear to Zebulon Walton that Edna Zimmerman was not happy about having late-evening callers. She was even less pleased with the idea of a seventy-two-year-old man spending the night instead of going home to his kith and kin where he belonged.

“We got an extra room, and I reckon you can use it. Since Colin went down to Richmond looking for some kind of work, it ain’t been occupied. But I can’t see no sense to it when you got a perfectly good bed in your own house. I ain’t aiming to be a party to no spatting quarrels ’tween you and Esther. I count Esther as a fine woman and a good friend, and from me you get no sympathies.”

She was a small woman, with narrow, suspicious eyes, and she delivered her pronouncement with her fists on her hips—one of those fists held a heavy chopping knife.

The minute she let Zeb through the door she must have had an idea what was going on.

“Ain’t asking for no sympathies,” Zeb told her. “And I ain’t looking to put you between Esther and me. But I’d be much obliged for the bed.”

“You eat yet?”

“There’s no need for you to be putting yourself out, Edna, I can get along fine without eating.”

“Hmph! And go home and tell Esther I didn’t even give you a piece of bread, I suppose. Sit down to the table.”

Old Cornelius Zimmerman used an ear-trumpet, but it didn’t serve him too well. Through the conversation he swung it back and forth, struggling to get the gist of things. He finally squinted at Zeb.

“Where’s Esther?”

“Home, I reckon.”

Cornelius nodded his approval. “That’s where a woman belongs.”

Edna banged the lids of pots and clanked food onto a plate with a heavy spoon. She thumped the plate down in front of Zebulon and went back to her vegetable-chopping. “Don’t surprise me none,” she said to no one in particular. “Don’t see a man in church on Sundays, won’t see him home on Mondays.”

“Them’s from my garden,” Cornelius said, nodding at the mashed potatoes. “Had a good crop this year.”

“They’re mighty good, Cornelius. Don’t think I ever tasted ’em as good as the way Edna fixes ’em.”

“Fix ’em the same way as ever’one else in Walton’s Mountain,” Edna scowled.

“Edna fixes ’em good, don’t you think, Zeb?”

“Mighty good, Cornelius.”

Zebulon felt better once his plate was cleaned. He pushed back from the table to give his stomach room, and smiled. “A fine meal, Edna. Much obliged. It’s a real pleasure to sit down to a good meal and eat in peace.”

She took the plate, rinsed it, and left it on the sink. “Don’t know about you two,” she said untying her apron. “Suppose you’re going to sit up all night talking. But I got work to do in the morning.”

“What’d she say?” Cornelius asked.

“Said she’s going to bed.”

Cornelius nodded and waved her off. “Get on to bed, old woman! Zeb and I are going to talk.”

“Hmph!” she snorted, and disappeared.

They talked about the weather for a while. Cornelius thought the winter of 1858 was the worst one he had ever seen. But ’93 was bad, and so was the one that had just passed. When that was all settled, Cornelius turned his ear-trumpet toward the bedroom and listened to Edna’s soft snoring for a minute.

“Don’t reckon you’d be objecting to a little Recipe, would you, Zeb?”

“Judge Baldwin’s Recipe?”

Cornelius struggled to his feet and gave Zeb a sly smile. “Nineteen and aught-three. Finest batch the judge ever made. Give it to me personal, ten gallons of it.”

Zeb was amazed, delighted, and speechless. He knew the Baldwin sisters had a small supply from before the judge’s death. But he had no idea there was any left going back thirty years. He watched Cornelius hobble over to the fireplace and work a stone out from the bottom. He came back with a mason jar two-thirds full.

“Look at that color,” Cornelius said reverently. He got his ear-trumpet to hear Zeb’s response.

“I declare, Cornelius, I ain’t ever seen anything like it.”

Cornelius got two coffee mugs and filled them halfway. “Got a touch of cinnamon. Judge used to make it that way. Can’t hardly taste it, but it’s there.”

Zeb sniffed it. He rolled it gently around his cup and took a small, tasting sip. It was a pure, soft, golden nectar, gathered by angels. It touched the tongue, caressed and soothed it, and then gently stung it with a faint whisper of cinnamon.

“By golly, Cornelius, it’s plain sinfulness for anything to taste so good.”

Cornelius’ eyes were sparkling. He lifted the cup to his mouth and then looked off, smacking his lips. “Ahh,” he smiled. He took a bigger sip and shook his head. “You know, Zeb, I’m going to be ninety-seven years old come my next birthday. I reckon if it hadn’t been for the good judge’s Recipe, I couldn’t have kept going past eighty.” He lifted his cup. “To Judge Baldwin!”

“And to his two charming daughters,” Zeb added, and drank heartily.

“Yep, they’s fine little fillies, that Mamie and that Emily,” Cornelius agreed, easing back in his chair. “If I’d have been a younger man, and if I hadn’t met Edna after Carolina died, I’d have been over there a-courting them ladies.”

Zebulon thought about this. He took another drink to help his thinking, finally shook his head. “If I had it to do all over again, Cornelius, I don’t know as I’d have gotten married at all.”

Cornelius emptied his cup and thought about that. “Lot to be said for bacheloring,” he agreed. He refilled both cups. “But I reckon bachelors don’t eat so good.”

“There’s other things, Corny. There’s being independent. Ain’t no good eating good if a woman’s nagging at you all the time. Man’s got to have some independence. Man’s got to have his prideful right to be a man.”

Cornelius nodded. “ ’Course a man’s got to have a woman around so’s he can be reminded he’s the man of the house and he’s got those prideful rights.”

“So long as she remembers that, and knows it’s her bounden duty to be reminding him.”

“That’s the pure truth, Zeb. It’s a natural law.”

“A natural law,” Zeb agreed.

They both gazed at the table for a while, and Zeb thought about those days back before the turn of the century when he was still single. He had good times then. Dances every Saturday night. He and his brothers taking the buggy down to Charlottesville. Getting in fights. Drinking that old mountain whiskey Clarence Buford used to sell them for a dollar a jug.

“I ever tell you about Amy, Cornelius?”

The ear-trumpet had slipped from Cornelius’ head. He got it back, and Zeb repeated the question.

“Amy? Don’t think you ever did, Zeb.”

“Prettiest little thing ever come down the pike. Black hair. Brown eyes. And a real snappy dancer. Almost married her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Zebulon looked sadly across the table. “Died of scarlet fever. Right in the prime of life, Corny. And that little girl loved me like nobody’s business. Man can’t help wondering what things’d have turned out like ’cept for fate.”

Cornelius nodded, then frowned thoughtfully. “That wasn’t old Lafe Kincaid’s daughter, was it? Amy Kincaid?”

“Yep. That was her. Reckon Lafe Kincaid was about the richest man in Charlottesville. Owned the bank and ’bout half the farms in the county. Man can’t help wondering how things might have turned out if he’d done different fifty years ago.”

Cornelius shook his head. “Streak of stupidness in that Kincaid family.”

“How so?”

“Lafe lost everything he had. Invested it in some kind of steam-engined aeroplane. And them other two daughters of his was about as flighty-brained as he was. Ended up in a loony-house from what I hear. Reckon that youngest one, that Amy, she was lucky she died so young.”

Zeb straightened and blinked at the old man, not too sure he had heard exactly right. But Cornelius was staring at the table, shaking his head. “Reckon you’re lucky, Zeb, not getting mixed up with them folks. That Amy, I heard she was falling in love with about every young buck in the county. You say you knew her?”

Zeb ignored the question. He emptied the cup, amazed at how smooth twenty-five-year-old Recipe tasted. It went down like water.

“No,” Cornelius said, “I reckon about the prettiest girl we ever had around these parts was your Esther. Now she was really something. ‘Sissy,’ they used to call her, didn’t they?”

“Ummh,” Zeb grunted. “’Course, being a good-looker ain’t everything, Corny.”

“And couldn’t she dance!” Cornelius smiled. “Why, I remember her and that square dance-calling fella one night; I reckon they must have danced four, five hours without stopping. And everyone watching an’ clapping hands. Just like some kind of tent show revival meeting.” He suddenly looked up. “You remember that fella’s name?”

“Fred Hansen,” Zeb muttered.

“Yep, that’s it. I guess he never did get married, did he? Surprising, such a good-looking fella. Ain’t seen him around here lately.”

Zeb put his hand to his stomach, suddenly feeling a dull ache. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Judge Baldwin to put a touch of cinnamon in the Recipe after all. “Well, Cornelius, I reckon I’ll be going off to bed.”

Cornelius got his trumpet back to his ear. “How’s that?”

“I’m much obliged for the Recipe. If you’ll show me where my bed is, I reckon I’ll be using it.”

“Oh. Right over yonder, through that door. You feeling all right, Zeb?”