She looked down at the floor, and you could see she was awful happy about something, and then she said: “You know about Danny?”
“Who’s Danny?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“Is that Danny in there crying?”
“He won’t cry after he’s fed. Kady took the truck and ran into town for a lot of things he’s got to have, because all you’ve got here, that he can have, is milk. But she’ll be back soon. And as soon as he gets a little something in his stomach he’ll be sweeter than sugar.”
“What’s Moke got to do with him?”
“Have you see Moke?”
I told her what had gone on in the hollow, and she doubled up her fists and said: “I hope I don’t see him. I might kill him.”
“Hey, hey, none of that kind of talk.”
“Moke took Danny.”
“First my wife, then my grandson.”
“Say that again, Jess.”
“He is, isn’t he?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember it.”
“I don’t forget much.”
“What Moke did, and how today I caught up with him, that’s part of what’s so wonderful. Last week, on account of Kady being gone and my mother not much caring one way or the other, little Danny was mine, and it was heavenly, because maybe I’ll never get married, but still I had one of my own. Then when I came home from the store one day he was gone, and Moke was gone, and I went almost crazy, but I knew it had to be Moke that took him, because he was so crazy about him.”
“Moke loves somebody?”
“Oh, he gets lonely too. And there I was, fit to be tied. Because Kady, that was my whole life before, was gone I had no idea where, and now with Danny stolen it was more than I could stand. But my mother said if Moke took him, he had to have some place to bring him to, and he still had his shack up in the hollow, and maybe it was there. So she drew it out for me how to get there, and I took the bus over from Blount, and even before I got to it I could hear Danny laughing and Moke playing to him on the banjo. So I wasn’t going to take any chance on a fight with Moke. Maybe he wouldn’t let me have Danny, but then he’d know I was around, and might run off again, somewhere else. So he said something to Danny about a drink, but I noticed there was no well out back.”
“He gets water from a neighbor.”
“I thought he might, and right away he came out with a pail and started across the clearing. I went in and grabbed Danny and ran down the path, and when I got to the road I made a man with a wagon give me a ride, because he said he was going as far as the bus line. But then, as we passed this cabin, who should I see but Kady out back, hanging out clothes! Jess, I jumped down, and ran over to her, and I wasn’t crazy any more, I was the happiest person on earth, because I had my two darlings back, my little baby, and my sister that I’d loved ever since I could remember.”
“How does Kady feel about it?”
“She loves it.”
I didn’t love it, and if Kady did, that wasn’t how she told it to me, the last time she had mentioned Danny. But when she came in with the stuff she’d bought, her eyes were like stars, and she went in the back room with Jane without even a hello to me. I sat there trying to tell myself it was all right, it was just what I’d been praying for. If she could love her child, and stop all this drinking and dancing and carrying on, it was the best thing all around, and I could get some peace from her, and not be teased into having thoughts about her that made me so ashamed I hated to own up to myself they were there. It didn’t do me any good. If she’d had a child, and she hated it, that squared it up, and I didn’t have to remember it. But if she didn’t hate him, it was between me and her, and would be, always. I sat there, while out back Jane explained how to mix this and how to cook that, and pretty soon they began feeding the baby, and his crying stopped and Jane began talking to him and telling him how pretty he was, and all of a sudden Kady was sitting beside me and picking up my hand.
“Want to see my baby, Jess?”
“I guess not.”
“He’s a pretty baby.”
“So I hear.”
“And he’s your grandson.”
“I know.”
“It would make me happy, Jess.”
“It wouldn’t me.”
“Then if that’s how you feel about it, I won’t try to change you. I’ll take him away. There’s a reason I can’t go back to Blount just yet, but he and Jane and I can stay in a hotel at Carbon and you won’t be bothered.”
“I didn’t ask you to leave.”
“If my baby’s not welcome, I’m not.”
“You’ve changed a lot, that’s all I can say.”
“Didn’t Jane tell you why?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Didn’t she tell you why Moke took him?”
“She said he was lonesome.”
“He loved Danny, and specially after the way Belle began fighting with him, just before I left. He was crazy about him, and then when he found out he was to be taken away, he went off with him.”
“Who was going to take him away?”
“Jane ran into Wash.”
“The father?”
“Yes.”
“Or it might be shorter just to say rat.”
“He’s no rat.”
“He skipped like a rat.”
“His father made him. And then, a week ago, Jane ran into him on the street, in Blount. And he asked about me, and Danny, and was friendly, and pretty soon Jane came right out with it and asked why he didn’t marry me, and give his little boy a name, and stop being—”
“A rat.”
“Anyway, Jess, what he said was wonderful.”
“What was it he said?”
“He said he was always going to, soon as he was twenty-one, whether his family liked it or not. He’s only twenty, Jess, one year older than I am. But now, he said they would give their consent too, before he was twenty-one. Because an awful thing happened to them. His sister, the one that married into the coal family in Philadelphia, had to have an operation, and now she can’t have any children any more. And now they know if they’re to have grandchildren, it’s got to be through Wash. And now they feel different about Danny. And—so do I. I’m so ashamed how I treated him before.”
“Well, it’s all fine.”
“Are you glad at all, Jess?”
“To me, a rat’s a rat.”
“Not even for my sake you don’t feel glad?”
“I rather not say.”
Tears came in her eyes and she sat there making little creases in her dress. It wasn’t one of those she’d been buying, but a quiet little blue one, that made her look smaller and younger and sweeter. I said she should stay on till it suited her to go and I’d go to Carbon, but she said she’d go, and I hated it, the way I was acting, and yet I couldn’t help how I felt. And then Jane was there, putting something in my lap, and looking up at me was the cutest little child I ever saw, all pink and soft and warm, with nothing on him but a clean white diaper. Kady reached over to take him, but I grabbed him and went over to one of the settles by the fire and sat there and held him close. And for a long time something kept stabbing into my heart, and I’d look at him and feel so glad he was partly mine that I wanted to sing. His diaper slipped down a little and I almost died when I saw a brown bug on his stomach, or what I thought was a brown bug, just below the navel. I reached for it with my fingers, but Jane laughed.
“That’s his birthmark.”
“I thought it was some kind of a moth.”
“It’s his butterfly.”
“It almost scared me to death.”
They went in the back room with him again, but I called Ka out. “I take it back, everything I said. He’s so sweet I could eat him.”
“But if you’d rather I went—”
“I couldn’t stand it if you did.”
“I can understand how you feel.”
“But I don’t! Not any more. It’s all gone, the devilment
that’s been in me, and the onriness, and all what I’ve been thinking about. I want you to be happy. And if the boy wants to marry you, he’s not any rat, and I want you to have him.”
“I’m so glad, Jess.”
“Me too.”
“I want to be your little girl.”
“And I want to be your pappy.”
“Kiss me.”
I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and it wasn’t like those hot kisses we’d been having, but cool and sweet like the kiss Danny gave me just before they took him away.
C H A P T E R
6
Why she couldn’t go to Blount right away she didn’t tell me till one day when all four of us were sitting out under the trees and I spotted a big car coming up the creek from the state road. Then she owned up she had wired the boy, and yet she wasn’t going back till he came and got her. So she and Jane ran in the house with Danny to get slicked up and in another minute there he was, kind of a tall, dark boy in slacks and blue shirt. He didn’t put on any airs with me at all, but shook hands quick, and went around the cabin looking at it, and said it was just like the one his uncle had on Paint Creek, where he used to spend part of every summer. So then it turned out his father had got himself a mine, but his family were mountain people, like us. So that went with his bony look, and made me feel still better about him. Then when Kady came out and he took her in his arms, I had to begin fooling around with my shoe for fear they’d see the tears in my eyes. Then when he saw Danny for the first time in his life, in Jane’s arms laughing and trying to talk as she brought him out, he went over and bent over and looked and bent down and called him old-timer and shook hands just like it was somebody he was being introduced to and could say something. Then he tried to brush off the butterfly, just like I had, and we all laughed and had some Coca-Cola and were friendly. But when they went in to get supper he said he’d have to leave for a little while. “If you’re going back to town, I’ll ride along with you. There’s some things I ought to get.”
“I’m going up the creek.”
“There’s nothing up the creek.”
“There’s a heel named Moke Blue.”
“You know Moke?”
“I’ve seen him and I guess I’ve spoken to him, but I’ve never shaken his hand and until I got Kady’s wire I never even thought about him. I’m thinking about him now, though. And I’m putting him in jail for kidnapping my boy.”
“You’re taking him in, yourself?”
“That’s it, Jess.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You mean we’ll do it together?”
“Soon as I get my rifle.”
“I won’t need it.”
“How you know?”
“He’s got no gun, I’m sure of it.”
“He could get one, and anyway, all he’d have to do is holler and about eighteen brothers and in-laws and cousins would be there, and at least half of them have guns.”
“If we bring a gun, Jess, I’ll kill him.”
“Maybe we better not.”
We got in his car and rode up as far as the church, then got out and walked up the hollow to the end of the path, then followed the gully up to Moke’s shack. Nobody was in it, and except for some beans in one corner that didn’t prove much, there was no way to tell if anybody had been there for the last two or three days, or had just stepped out and would be right back, or was up the hollow or down the creek. But while we were whispering about it he held up his hand and I looked. Through a cornfield, just below us, a boy was moving on tiptoe, toward the woods on the other side of the gully.
“You know him, Jess?”
“Birdie Blue. He’s Moke’s cousin.”
“He’s gone to tip him.”
“Then he’ll be back, to keep watch.”
“If we time him, we’ll know how far he went.”
He took out his watch, and we waited and I kept an eye on him, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. He didn’t talk, but kept staring at the place the boy had to cross on his way back, and he had that mountain look in his eye that said if it took a week he’d still be staring, but he’d do what he came for. In a half hour the boy showed, and then all of a sudden Wash got up.
“We’re a pair of boneheads, Jess.”
“What we done now?”
“The banjo’s gone!”
“Well?”
“If he was in hell waiting to be fried he’d still have to pick the damned thing. Come on.”
There was no window in the back of the shack, but there was a loose log, and we pushed it out and crawled through. Then we crept up the gully, keeping the shack between us and the boy, where he was squatting in the bushes, keeping watch on my hat, that we left in the doorway to keep him interested. It was around sundown, and the mosquitoes were beginning to get lively, but we kept from batting them somehow, and pretty soon we came to a place where Wash stopped and looked around, and whispered if there was any sounds in the neighborhood, we’d catch most of them here, because sound travels upward. And sure enough, there were all sorts of things you could hear, from the creek going over the stones near the church to people talking in cabins and birds warbling before going to sleep. And then he grabbed my arm, and we listened, and there was the sound of the banjo. He stood up, and turned first one way, then the other way, then covered one ear, then the other ear, and in a minute he knew where it was coming from, and we crept over there. And when we got there it was a little stone well, with a frame over it and an iron wheel, and Moke was sitting on the rim, his head lopped over on one side, the banjo across his belly, plunking out sad chords that weren’t like the comical tunes he used to play, and looking so little he was more like some kind of a shriveled-up, gray-haired boy than what he was, a man. Wash crept around the well from behind him, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and jerked him over on the side, so he let out a little whimper. “What you doing to me? Wash, what are you doing here?”
“Didn’t the boy tell you I was here?”
“How would he know? He said Jess and a man.”
“I’m taking you to Carbon City.”
“What for?”
“Put you in jail. For what you did.”
I stepped out then and told him to shut up with his bawling and told Wash to cut it short with his talk. Because you pass three cabins on the way down, and four more up the mountainside that you can’t see but they see you, and if we ever gave them a chance to wake up to what was going on we might see something cutting the leaves. We hustled him down to the car and Wash drove and I sat on the outside. So when we got to my cabin, the table was set out under the trees with some candles on it and both Kady and Jane were looking down the creek to see what had become of us. Wash began talking to Kady. “Don’t wait for us. We’ll be back soon as we can after we get this thing booked, but don’t let the stuff get cold waiting for us.”
“Booked? What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t he kidnap our boy?”
“He didn’t mean any harm.”
“It could have cost Danny his life.”
“Wash, Moke is a friend of my mother’s, and she’s not well, and maybe she needs him. He’s not any more than half-witted anyhow, no matter what he did, so why can’t we forget it and go about our business instead of putting him in jail for the next five or ten years, where’s he’s not any good to anybody?”
“Maybe I’m not so half-witted as you think.”
“Maybe a skunk don’t stink.”
It was me that said that, and then I told her there were some things that can’t be forgotten, and that Moke was lucky we didn’t shoot him, as that’s what he had coming to him. But while I was talking she kept looking at me, and then she said: “Jess, you’ve had plenty to say since I’ve been living here about things that had to be fought if they were wrong and they were in you, and all I’ve got to say is that remembering things long after they do you any harm is another thing that people might fight a little bit, specially if the
y live up the creeks in this part of the country, and got the habit of remembering things long after anybody could remember what they were trying to remember.”
“Do we take him in, Jess?”
“Let’s go.”
He had cut his motor, but now he started it again, and she stood aside. “All right, Wash, but you’re taking a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“You think it’s for nothing?”
“He’s not yet your child.”
“He will be tomorrow.”
“I’m not talking about what he will be. I’m talking about what he is, and what he was when he was taken. If they ask me, I’ll tell them I’ve got nothing to say, and if the mother won’t sign the writ, that ends it, unless of course the child has a father.”
“Kady, why are you standing up for Moke?”
“Jess, are you crazy? Who’s standing up for Moke? I’m standing up for myself, and for my little boy that nobody else is thinking about that I can see. Do you think I want this in the papers, and then have it come out that Danny is what they call a love child, and God knows what else they would think up to put in?”
“It’s not any piece for the papers.”
“A kidnapping?”
She stepped up to the window and talked straight at Wash. “Haven’t you done enough to me without this, and for no reason except to give a simple-looking imitation of a West Virginia bad man?”
“I’m turning him over to the law.”
“You can’t even do that, right.”
“So you know a better way?”
“You’re turning him over to Carbon County when the crime was committed in Blount? Gee, but you’re smart, aren’t you? Gee, but you’re going to look wonderful when you get to Carbon City with him and they say, sorry, son, you’re in the right church but the wrong pew. Gee—”
“Suppose you shut up.”
For a minute, steel had been facing steel, but now they weren’t anything but a pair of kids jawing at each other, and next thing they were laughing and he got out and she said he was so dumb it was pitiful but there was no steam in it and the fight was over. So I got out and told Moke to get out of there and get quick. So he got out and started up the creek. So Wash, he ran after him and gave him a kick that knocked him over on his face. So he got up and began to cuss out Wash, mean, whispering cusswords, all covered with spit. That was when Kady walked over and slapped his face, and told him he’d got off pretty lucky. He stood there panting, and once or twice he stared to say something, and didn’t. But when Jane got his banjo, where it had been pitched in the car, he went.