Mrs. Crouch gave her apron an indignant flap. "That Fronie's so wrapped up with th' angels she can't have any heart for her man's own blood kin he took by force to raise. Th' other day when I saw her up at Hedricks', I says to her, "Well, I reckin you're aimin' to send Delph away to Town to th' County High School this fall."
"An' she rung in Jake Barnes's oldest girl, I reckin," Juber said.
"Jake Barnes is right. Soon's I mentioned Delph why Fronie started rollin' down her eyes an' actin' pious. 'Look what happened to Jake Barnes's oldest girl when she went off to Cincinnati,' she whispers to me. 'I've tried hard to raise Delph right, an' get her to join th' church an' give her heart to God,' she says. 'But sometimes I think my pains'ull be fer nothin,' she says, an' whispers on, a noddin' that red head a her'n so broken hearted like. 'You recollect Delph's paw, an' you know th' stripe her maw was cut frum, marryin' agin an' leavin' th' country when her man was hardly two years in his grave.' "
Old Willie rattled his cane and opened his eyes. "A better man never lived than Reuf Costello. He was a man, if'n he did shoot up th' country, an' git hisself killed before he died," he said in a loud argumentative voice.
"'Delph's a good girl,' I says," Mrs. Crouch began, but stopped abruptly with her mouth open and her head tilted in an attitude of listening. "Ain't that wheels comin up on th' other side a th' hill?No wonder th' mail's late if he's tryin' to make it in a wagin."
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Juber listened, too, with his knife suspended above the hazel nut basket. "It's wheels all right, but sounds uncommon light fer a wagin."
Young Willie cupped a hand to one ear, and the hound dog lifted his head, looked up the road, then got up and trotted toward the sound. "Must be that well shooter an' his cart, frum th' way Colonel Lee's actin'," Young Willie decided.
Mrs. Crouch looked both frightened and curious. "He shorely wouldn't come down this way with a load a nitroglycerin, when th' nearest wells are better'n four mile away."
Young Willie quieted her fears. He believed the cart to be empty and reckoned the nitroglycerin man was just driving by, maybe going to the Memorial Service at Big Cane Brake three miles on the other side of the creek.
"He's got no dead in this country. What business would he have a goin' up there?" Mrs. Crouch wondered, while Juber reckoned aloud that any man who did such dangerous work must be an awful fool.
"They's good money in it," Young Willie said, and added, "He's dropped by our place three, four times, an' a body can tell he's got plenty a sober sense by th' looks a him."
"He looks too damned sober to suit me," Old Willie called. "Reminds me uv a mule a holdin' itself in. An' gittin' a word out a him is like pullin' a penniwinkle out a its shellless'n he's swearin' an' then it's pure sin to hear him."
"Well, sensible or foolish I cain't see th' good a money when a man's blowed to Kingdom Come, an' as long as he does that kind a work he cain't ever marry an' settle down like a man ought. I've heared say they won't let married men haul nitroglycerin," Mrs. Crouch said.
Juber smiled at the postmistress's foolish ideas on oil men. "Who ever heared uv a oil man a settlin' any place long. They ain't built that way, else they wouldn't be oil men," he argued, and got up to get a better view of the light nitroglycerin cart with its driver, and drawn by two big-bodied horses, just clearing the crest of the hill.
The outfit was coming on at a smart pace, when Mrs. Crouch gave a troubled cry of, "Lord, Lord, look at that fool hen. Leadin' th' chickens right in th' middle a th' road. That Logan Ragan flyin' around in his car just missed killin' one this mornin'."
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"It 'ud be just like a oil man to come smashin' right down over 'em,"Juber said, and all were silent as they watched the oil man and the badly flustered mother hen dispute for supremacy of the road. He pulled his team to a slow walk, and when the hen continued to go clucking straight ahead with her chickens scattering on each side, he halted and sat a time and looked at them.
Mrs. Crouch sighed with relief. "He's got a heart in him," she said, and when at last the hen and her sunburned chickens were safely out of the road, and the cart was coming on again, the post mistress picked up the zinc water bucket by the door, emptied it of its stale water and hurried in back for water fresh from the well.
From his seat in the cart the driver appeared to be a youngish man of medium build and medium height, straight-backed and square-shouldered with a body sparsely covered with flesh as that of a hill man. His gray eyes, however, and the little of his bright pale hair that could be seen from under the battered black felt hat he wore, marked him as a stranger to the Little South Fork Country. "He's a quair mix up, but he's got a pretty team," Juber said in a low voice, and wondered why he had come this way and where he was going. Certainly not to church, for he wore an old blue cotton shirt, thread bare at the elbows, faded with sun and sweat across the shoulders. His dark brown corduroy trousers were little better than his shirt, and a few days growth of whiskers, the same bright color as his hair, made the hill men fresh from Saturday shaves and in clean overalls seem well dressed by contrast.
His team was sleek and well fed in oiled and polished harness, and the plaiting of the horses' tails and smoothness of their manes showed signs of unusual care. He turned from the road and drove down among the beech trees where the saddled mules and Maude were tethered, and selected a well-shaded spot for the cart. The men on the porch continued to watch him as he unhitched and led his horses to the creek for a drink. They drank slowly, pausing at times to lift their heads from the water and blow windy sighs through their nostrils, while he stood patiently in the hot sun with their bridles over his arm. When they were finished at last and he had hitched them in the shade, he did not come immediately to the post office, but stopped to examine his lead horse's left hock, that showed a slight thread of red like a scratch from a nail or sharp bit of limestone.
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He came on then, but stopped uncertainly at the edge of the porch with his hat in his hand. The sunshine on his hair made it bright like red tinged silver, but the light seemed not to touch his eyes. They were gray with something of the sheen of a slate rock in the rain, dark and quiet under stiff short black eyelashes, and contrasting sharply with the brightness of his hair and whiskers. He was a square faced, straight-mouthed man, with a jaw that, though not unduly large, hinted that it was made of bone.
Young Willie and Old Willie nodded in greeting, while Mrs. Crouch pointed to the sweating water bucket and invited, "Come have a drink."
"Thanks," he said, and Young Willie, watching him, asked when he had finished three dippers full, "Your lead horse get a scratch?"
He flung drops of water from the dipper, and answered in a low quiet voice that matched his jaw and his eyes, "That damned fool of a Logan Ragan scrouged me out a th' road comin' up. If it hadn't a been that my horses will stand up to anything I'd a had a runaway.He was gone 'fore I could get at him."
Old Willie came to sudden life, sputtered and pounded his Bible then cried, "Since that one of th' Ragans got that fine job with th' Standard Oil in town where he can keep hissef clean an' tell other folks what to do, he goes larrapin' around like a addled somethin'scarin' hosses."
"Somebody ought to take him down a peg," the oil man said, and went to sit on the edge of the porch near Juber.
Mrs. Crouch studied him with kind, concerned eyes, "He mebbe meant no harm, jist hurryin' to see Delph Costello. Nearly killed one a my chickensbut wellif I was you I'd jist forget it."
Juber and Young Willie nodded. "He's one a th' Little South Fork Ragans, a triggery breed like th' old Costellosgot three brothers," Juber said, and gave the oil man a sidling speculative glance.
The stranger eased his back against a porch post and glanced toward his lead horse with darkened, narrowed eyes. "I can use my fists," he said.
"Boy, they'd never give you a chance to use your fists," Young Willie warned, and added soothingly, "That looks like a little scratch, an' to my mind won't ma
ke a scar."
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The front legs of Old Willie's chair came down with abrupt violence, and the iron shod tip of his cane rang on the floor. "Pretty soon nobody in this country'ul keep horses any more. My Maude an' John Costello's Silver are about all th' good ones left, an' then they run us out a th' road. Th' ones that git any money from oil or timber they go away, or else they buy 'em cars an' go fistin' around where th' roads are good like that Logan Ragan."
Young Willie pulled his father's coat sleeve. "Now, Paw, you'll have a coughin' spell, gittin' so excited like."
And the oil man turned to Old Willie and comforted, "There'll always be horses in th' Bluegrass country." His eyes glowed as if he smiled, though his mouth did not change. "Th' thoroughbreds around Lexington, they're pretty things," he said.
"We've never had that kind in th' Little South Fork Country," Juber answered, "but I'd jist as soon or ruther have a good hunter of a five gaited saddle mare that 'ud take blue ribbons at th' fair.Delph, she's th' niece a th' people where I live, she had one like that about two yer back, but her Uncle John sold her. Delph rode her so wild, a jumpin' fences like a heathen an' a lopin' down hills. We was afraid she'd break her neck."
"I'll bet th girl hated it when they sold her mare."
"Aye, she was mad a plenty an' give 'em a piece uv her mind, but I don't think it was th' mare she loved so much as th' runnin' an' jumpin' uv her."
Mrs. Crouch turned from her business of watching for the mail. "That's always been Delph's trouble. If she'd cry an' beg to John 'stead a talkin'up to him she'd mebbe git more a what she wants."
Juber polished the hazel nut basket with slow strokes against his knee. "Th' ones that naiver let on, them's th' ones th' world cuts deepest," he said, and added sorrowfully, "so many times she says to me, 'Juber, I wisht they'd let me go away an' learn things like singin' an' such.'"
Mrs. Crouch smiled as over the foolish whim of a well-beloved child, "Pshaw, like as if she needed to learn to sing, when she's th' best soprano they've got up at Big Cane Brake. I've heated Preacher Dodson say many a time he'd taught her about 'bout all he could, an' he's one a th' best singin' teachers in th' county."
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"She don't want to sing jist church songs. She wants." But Juber stopped abruptly, and seemed like a child caught in the crime of giving a secret away.
"What does she want to learn? Dance tunes?" Young Willie asked with a note of condemnation in his voice.
"An' supposin' she does want to learn dance tunes?" Mrs. Crouch demanded with a belligerent out thrusting of her chin toward Young Willie. "I square danced when I was a girlan' turned out decentbut thank God I was never raised by a Fronie Butler Costello. But if Juber, here, don't quit fiddlin' dance tunes for her when John an' Fronie's not around, he'll be puttin' notions in her head."
"But she likes th' lively music so," Juber answered, and stared out through the grove of heart and initial scarred beech trees.
The oil man followed his glance and studied the trees. The initials and hearts cut into the smooth gray bark were grown high into the limbs and so enlarged and distorted by the swelling growth of the trunk that they seemed to have sprung from the ground with the tree. He twisted his head in an effort to read the initials, but stopped when Young Willie said, "Aye, you'll never make 'em out. No stranger ever could. Lots a people frum away off, th' ones that have gone away, they come a lookin' in th' beech trees same as they go a lookin' in th' graveyard. Th' last time Doric Dodson Fairchild was down this way she stopped an' walked all through them trees a tryin' to see where her man, he's dead fer more'n a dozen yearsdied uv drink an' goin' wildhad cut his name an' hers up in a heart on a beech tree mor'n forty years ago when they was young like an' he was visitin' here."
The oil man smiled, a slow bright smile that touched his eyes, "I'd like to see Old Doric. Not many can beat her at farmin'."
"She's never fergot her raisin'," Juber said with pride. "Them thirty or forty miles 'tween here an' Burdine never keeps her away from Big Cane Brake Memorial Day. You know her? You ought to go on up to th' church an' have a bite a dinner an' speak a word with her. If she liked ye onct she'll allus recollect ye. She's a Dodson through an' through."
"I saw her not long back on my way up here to work. Sometime in th' spring it was. I recollect th' black locust bloom in her back
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yard. I don't know her so well, not th' way you do. I stayed with her a time six or seven years back when I was drillin' down by Burdine."
"Better come an' go along with us," Juber advised, and got up and squinted at the sun above the beech trees.
The oil man thought he'd wait until the mail came, but after much advice from Young Willie to Old Willie concerning such matters as keeping out of the sun and over eating, the two older men rode away, but at the bridge Juber must turn back to call, "Permelie, if'n anybody comes up this way recollect to send Delph's mail, less'n you want to be bothered with it."
"I'll take it," the stranger suggested to Mrs. Crouch. "I know her.I mean I've seen her a few times in town."
The post mistress studied him, then asked with a sly pleased smile, "I wonder now is that what could be takin' you up to Big Cane Brake?"
"Hell, no," he said, and asked abruptly, "I wonder is there any mail for me. II've sort of been expectin' some. Marshal Gregory is my name."
Mrs. Crouch shook her head. "There's not been a strange letter in this post office for weeks."
"It wouldn't a been a letter."
"Well, soon's th' mail comesif it ever doesI'll unlock an' have a look through th' stuff I ain't handed out. Mostly advertisin' stuff or old election candidate trash. I don't generally hand that out, till th' election's over. Th' August primaries always cause too much trouble anyhow, an' men like John Costello go around for weeks with nothin' in their heads but politics. You interested in politics?"
He shrugged uncomfortably. "I hardly ever stayed in one place long enough to vote."
"You a native born Kentuckian?"
He nodded. "I was born up in th' Bluegrass."
"Your people still live there I reckin?"
"They left when I was little like, an' mostly they live all over.I think I'll go down an' look at my horse's hock again," he said, and got up and walked quickly away.
Not long after the mail came; a battered Ford truck loaded down with boxes of empty fruit jars, sacks of sugar, and sacks of mail fattened by catalogues. The driver, a thin, sun-burned young man with
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a rakish tilt to his hat was heard to be delivering his opinion of the Little South Fork Country women who ordered goods from Sears to come by mail, and so received catalogues as a further burden on the mail. His most pungent remarks, however, were reserved for Fronie Costello who, because the summer's fruit harvest was an abundant one was apparently not content to can for a winter only, but from the dozens of fruit jars and hundreds of pounds of sugar he had hauled and was hauling out for her, she was evidently canning for the next dozen or so years to come.
The oil man came and helped the horse shoe pitchers and Young Willie in the unloading of the mail. That finished, he went inside to stand by the wicket gate that separated the post office from the store, where several other men had gathered for the sorting of the mail. Mrs. Crouch finished the letters quickly, for the bundle was thin, then glanced about the room and said, "None a you all got any letters, 'ceptin' Mrs. Willie Burnett, an'," she turned to a slender rabbity eyed young man with flax colored hair who had stepped expectantly forward, "No, Willie you're not takin' it. Ruthie told me she didn't want you bringin' any more a your mail. You're liable to lose it like you done that last.Wait, don't none a th' rest a you be leavin' either. I want to get rid a these catalogues."