"I don"t know what to do now, so I"m going to ask you."
She paused and Chris was silent, but he was thinking, and she waited.
Presently he looked straight into her eyes, still silent.
"What do _you_ think I"d better do?" she insisted.
"I reckon you got to whoop me, Miss Hildy."
"But you know I can"t whip you, Chris. I never whip anybody."
Several times a child had offered to whip himself, had done so, and she wondered whether the boy would propose that, but he repeated, obstinately and hopelessly:
"You got to whoop me."
"I won"t--I can"t." Then an idea came. "Your mother will have to whip you."
Chris shook his head and was silent. He was not on good terms with his mother. It was a current belief that she had "put pizen in his daddy"s liquer." She had then married a man younger than she was, and to the boy"s mind the absence of dignity in one case matched the crime in the other.
"All right," he said at last; "but I reckon you better send somebody else atter her. You can"t trust me to git by that still"--he stopped with a half-uttered oath of surprise:
"Look thar!"
A woman was coming up the road. She wore a black cotton dress and a black sunbonnet--mourning relics for the dead husband which the living one had never had the means to supplant--and rough shoes. She pushed back the bonnet with one nervous, bony hand, saw the two figures on the edge of the creek, and without any gesture or call came toward them. And only the woman"s quickness in St. Hilda saw the tense anxiety of the mother"s face relax. The boy saw nothing; he was only amazed.
"Why, mammy, whut the--whut are you doin" up hyeh?"
The mother did not answer, and St. Hilda saw that she did not want to answer. St. Hilda rose with a warm smile of welcome.
"So this is Chris"s mother?"
The woman shook hands limply.
"Hit"s whut I pa.s.ses fer," she said, and she meant neither smartness nor humor. The boy was looking wonderingly, almost suspiciously at her, and she saw she must give him some explanation.
"I been wantin" to see the school hyeh an" Miss Hildy. I had to come up to see Aunt Sue Morrow, who"s might" nigh gone, so I jes kep" a-walkin"
on up hyeh."
"Miss Hildy hyeh," said the boy, "was jes about to send fer ye."
"To sen" fer _me_?"
"I been drunk agin."
The mother showed no surprise or displeasure.
"Hit"s the fourth time since sorghum time," the boy went on relentlessly.
"I axed Miss Hildy hyeh to whoop me, but she says she don"t nuver whoop n.o.body, so she was jes a-goin" to send fer you to come an" whoop me when you come a-walkin" up the road."
This was all, and the lad pulled out an old Barlow knife and went to a hickory sapling. The two women watched him silently as he cut off a stout switch and calmly began to trim it. At last the woman turned to the teacher and her voice trembled.
"I don"t see Chris thar more"n once or twice a year, an" seems kind o"
hard that I got to whoop him."
The boy turned sharply, and helplessly she took the switch.
"And hit hain"t his fault nohow. His stepdaddy got him drunk. He tol" me so when he come home. I went by the still to find Chris an" cuss out ole Jeb Mullins an" the men thar. An" I come on hyeh."
"Set down a minute, mammy," said Chris, dropping on the log on one side of St. Hilda, and obediently the mother sat down on the other side.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"Mammy," he said abruptly, "I"ll stop drinkin" if you will."
St. Hilda almost gasped. The woman lifted her eyes to the mountainside and dropped her gaze presently to her hands, which were twisting the switch in her lap.
"I"ll stop if you will," he repeated.
"I"ll try, Chris," she said, but she did not look up.
"Gimme yo" hand."
Across St. Hilda"s lap she stretched one shaking hand, which the boy clasped.
"Put yo" hand on thar, too, Miss Hildy," he said, and when he felt the pressure of her big, strong, white hand for a moment he got up quickly and turned his face.
"All right, mammy."
St. Hilda rose, too, and started for the house--her eyes so blurred that she could hardly see the path. Midway she wheeled.
"Don"t!" she cried.
The mother was already on her way home, breaking the switch to pieces and hiding her face within the black sunbonnet. The boy was staring after her.
THE LORD"S OWN LEVEL
The blacksmith-shop sat huddled by the roadside at the mouth of Wolf Run--a hut of blackened boards. The rooftree sagged from each gable down to the crazy chimney in the centre, and the smoke curled up between the clapboard shingles or, as the wind listed, out through the cracks of any wall. It was a bird-singing, light-flashing morning in spring, and Lum Chapman did things that would have set all Happy Valley to wondering. A bareheaded, yellow-haired girl rode down Wolf Run on an old nag. She was perched on a sack of corn, and she gave Lum a shy "how-dye" when she saw him through the wide door. Lum"s great forearm eased, the bellows flattened with a long, slow wheeze, and he went to the door and looked after her. Professionally he noted that one hind shoe of the old nag was loose and that the other was gone. Then he went back to his work. It would not be a busy day with Uncle Jerry at the mill--there would not be more than one or two ahead of her and her meal would soon be ground. Several times he quit work to go to the door and look down the road, and finally he saw her coming. Again she gave him a shy "how-dye," and his eyes followed her up Wolf Run until she was out of sight.
The miracle these simple acts would have been to others was none to him.
He was hardly self-conscious, much less a.n.a.lytical, and he went back to his work again.
A little way up that creek Lum himself lived in a log cabin, and he lived alone. This in itself was as rare as a miracle in the hills, and the reason, while clear, was still a mystery: Lum had never been known to look twice at the same woman. He was big, kind, taciturn, ox-eyed, calm. He was so good-natured that anybody could banter him, but n.o.body ever carried it too far except a bully from an adjoining county one court day. Lum picked him up bodily and dashed him to the ground so that blood gushed from his nose and he lay there bewildered, white, and still. Lum rarely went to church, and he never talked religion, politics, or neighborhood gossip. He was really thought to be quite stupid, in spite of the fact that he could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rock-p.e.c.k.e.r" from the Bluegra.s.s.
To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering coal signs and tracing them to their hidden beds, and wide and valuable knowledge of the same.
Once the foreigner lost his barometer just when he was trying to locate a coal vein on the side of the mountain opposite. Two days later Lum pointed to a ravine across the valley.
"You"ll find that coal not fer from the bottom o" that big poplar over thar." The geologist stared, but he went across and found the coal and came back mystified.