Chapter Fourteen

I reckon the first time Miz Rowe had ever laid eyes on Annie was the day she came over to see her a corpse. There wasn’t any flowers to be had, it being wintertime, but she’d picked some green vines, ivy I reckon it was, and made a kind of wreath of it, and she brought it along. Junie was there, and several other women of the settlement. Junie said Miz Rowe never said much. Just went in to look at Annie in the casket and laid her vines on it. It was Junie took her in to see her, and she said Miz Rowe looked at her a long time. Never shed a tear like most feeling people would of done. Just looked, and stood there white as a ghost, until Junie got afraid maybe she was kind of sick. Some folks can’t stand to look on death, and Junie didn’t know but what Miz Rowe was like that.

Rady was in the fireplace room when she came out, but she never spoke to him at all. Didn’t, as far as Junie could tell, even so much as look at him. Junie misdoubted Miz Rowe had any great liking for Rady, but the whole settlement thought it kindly of her to come look at Annie. She never went to the funeral, but seeing as she’d already been as mannerly as she was called on to be, nobody faulted her none for that.

Nobody knew, of course, of the meeting between her and Rady the next day after the funeral, when she had cried and cried and cried in Rady’s arms, not able to tell him why, and not able to stop. He’d held her until she got hold of herself and could talk. “I hated her,” she said, “until I saw her. Looked down on her lying there dead and still and gone. And then I loved her. It was like we were the same woman, loving and caring and feeling. And it was like part of me lay there, in her, dead and gone past caring. And part of her was in me, still alive, to keep on living and caring. Both being hurt by the same things. Both being hurt by you … and you not caring And I hated you!”

“Why would you say I hurt you both?” Rady said, puzzled-like. “I never hurt Annie that I know of. I wouldn’t of, knowingly. I alius done the best I could by her. An’ I wouldn’t hurt you, neither.”

Miz Rowe stared at him. “You don’t really know, do you? You honestly don’t know!”

“Know what?”

“That just by being yourself you hurt!”

“What is a man goin’ to be but hisself?”

Miz Rowe laughed. “Nothing. Nothing at all. And a woman just has to go on being hurt.” She was quite a time before she went on. “They say she was going to have a baby.”

“I never knew that,” Rady said.

“No. You probably didn’t. But it wouldn’t have stopped you, would it?”

“Stopped me from what?”

“From … from us …”

Rady never knew what she wanted him to say, but he told her the truth. “No,” he said, “wouldn’t nothin’ on God’s green earth of stopped me … from us.” He waited a minute and watched her. He couldn’t tell from her face what she was thinking. “Would you of wanted it to?”

Her mouth twisted. “I wish I could say I would have. I wish I were that kind of person. Honest and clean and honorable. No, you crazy, damn fool I wouldn’t have wanted it to stop you I would have hurt her as much as you would have I’m just as twisted and hard and ruthless as you are … in my way. I want what I want, and nothing to stop me. And in some ugly black hole deep inside me, I’m glad she’s dead And I hate myself for being glad!”

She commenced crying again and wouldn’t let Rady touch her. But as she calmed down she turned to him and clung to him. “I’m scared,” she said, “Rady, I’m scared!”

“No need to be,” he told her, smoothing her hair and gentling her. “No need to be at all. It’s over an’ done with now. No need to be feelin’ nothin’ about it. Annie’s gone, an’ ever’ thing’s goin’ to be all right.”

Annie was killed right after the turn of the year. First week in January, facts is. I recollect it had been unseasonable warm till the day we dug the grave. Then the ground froze under a hard blizzard and we had a heap of trouble with the digging. We never had so much trouble with Mister Rowe’s for it was September then, and right after a hard soaking rain at that.

Some was surprised that she wanted him buried in the graveyard on the ridge. Allowed she would of sent him back east where they came from. And she made no explanations. Not even to the sexton when she went over to see about a grave site. Just asked him if she could buy a lot. And when he told her they were all free, she went out and picked one and that’s where he was put away. Over in the corner at the far side. The funeral went the queerest of any we’d ever seen on New Ridge. Not no services at the church, with the opening of the casket and folks filing by to take the last look, nor any sermon, nor nothing we were used to at all. Just a gathering at the graveside, and a preacher saying a prayer, and that was all. Junie thought it went plumb heathen. She misdoubted Mister Rowe’s soul could get very far towards heaven with such a scant send-off.

“Junie,” I says, “hit ain’t the kind of funeral a man has gits him to heaven, fur as I’ve heared tell of. Hit’s what he’s been an’ the way he’s lived.”

“An’ what way is that?” she wanted to know. “Hit just goes to show,” she says, “an’ it’s jist as well she never wanted no preachin’, fer what man of God could git up an’ truthful say a good word of a man has drunk hisself to death!”

To my mind there’s sins a heap worse than drinking, if it’s kept under control. A drink or two, or even a fine roistering drunk once in a while don’t do nobody any harm. But it was true, and there for all to see, that Mister Rowe had plumb drunk himself into that grave on the far side of the cemetery. It was common knowledge that since early spring he’d been drunk and sick and drunk and sick until that was all he was all the time. Drunk and sick. He never got over one till it ran into another, until time was when you might say he never drew a sober breath. It was a pitying thing to watch. And there was no keeping it from the whole settlement.

He’d come home from Louisville after that sick spell, weak and trembly, and for a time during the winter he was housebound and ill. But it looked like he’d commenced getting better along towards February and March. I saw him out in the yard one day when it was warmer than common for that time of year. He was walking around looking at the snowdrops and first March lilies. He looked a little stouter to me. I stopped a minute to talk and asked him if he was feeling any better. He was white and shaky, but I thought he’d fleshened up a mite.

“A little,” he told me, “I think I’m stronger. When it gets warm so I can get out I’ll have more strength, perhaps.”

I allowed he would too, and passed on.

I saw Rady that same day. He was burning his tobacco beds, and I passed the time of day with him.

He’d been making out by himself since Annie died. Been doing his own cooking and cleaning and getting along as best he could. And as near as I could tell he was making a fair out of it. He could always turn his hand to nearly anything, though, and do good with it. But folks allowed it wouldn’t be long till he was casting his eyes around for another woman. A man don’t stay a widower long on the ridge. It’s too unhandy. I thought to joke him a little about it and asked him if he had anybody in mind yet.

“Shore,” he said, laughing hearty, “I got her all picked out.”

“Well, now, that’s fine,” I says. “I dislike to see a old stallion like you goin’ to bed by hisself of a night. Git out of the habit first thing you know!”

“I dislike to do it,” he says, “an’ Fm some afeared of fergittin’ how myself. Fm aimin’ on takin’ steps jist as soon as it’s proper.”

“Would it discommode you any,” I says, “to tell me who you got in mind?”

“It would,” he says, “it would discommode me like hell. It ain’t none of yore damn business. Besides, you’d tell Junie an’ Junie’d tell ever’body on the ridge, an’ it would end up me not gittin’ to do my own proposin’!”

I couldn’t help but laugh, for that’s exactly what would of happened, had he already had one picked. People sure do have a habit of gossipin’.

And then I recollected seeing Mister Rowe. “Jist seen Mister Rowe,” I told Rady. “He looks some stouter to me than he did.”

“Outside, was he?” Rady asked.

“Yeah. He was walkin’ around in the yard. Might be if he’d lay off likker fer a time he’d git all right.”

“Hit might be,” Rady said.

It was getting on in the evening by then and I had to get on back and help do up the work. I said so and got up off the stump I’d been setting on.

“I see,” Rady says, grinning, “Junie’s still got you henpecked.”

It always hackles me for anybody to accuse me of being henpecked. I ain’t. But a man’d be a fool not to take the easiest way he can to get along with his woman. Specially if she’s strong-minded like Junie. It even hackled me a little with Rady, who had a way of kidding a man could take. “You jist wait,” I says to him, more than half-way meaning it, “till you git yore next woman I hope she’s as ill-grained as a dominecker hen! I hope she jist tromps all over you an’ keeps yore nose to the grindstone till it’s whetted down I hope she’s got a tongue forked like a snake’s! An’ I hope she slicks the hide offen you with it! I hope she’s crosseyed, buck-toothed an’ got a wart on her chin!”

Rady commenced laughing. “My, my,” he says, “mebbe I better stay single with all them hopes of yore’n!”

“Jist don’t call me henpecked!” I says.

“Why,” he says, “you know I think a heap of Junie. Ain’t no better woman on the ridge than Junie. An’ smart! She’s as bright as a tenpenny nail!”

“An’jist about as unbendin’,” I says.

And then we both commenced laughing and I went on home. Something about having a little set-to with Rady always made me feel good. He set as easy with me as a pair of old shoes. Common and comfortable and roomy. You could kid with him, or fight with him, drink with him, hunt with him, fish with him … and he fitted smooth and fine. Being with him always made me feel good.

It wasn’t much after that, when the weather had faired considerably and we could all stir, that Mister Rowe commenced drinking again. I don’t know what Miz Rowe would of done without Rady. For he stayed by, much as he could spare the time from work, and helped with Mister Rowe, nursing him through the crazy, violent times, setting up with him nights when he was the sickest, waiting on him, doing for him. He stayed by right to the last, and was there when he died, in the midst of the craziest spell of all.

I was there that night too, for Mister Rowe had got so bad one man couldn’t handle him, and Rady sent for me. He said Miz Rowe oughtn’t to see him like that. And he was a sight to see, without any doubts. Thinned down to a skeleton, and pasty white, his eyes sunk deep in his head, and his hands looking like picked bones. It was enough to scare a body the way he’d gone down. We had to hold him on the bed, and he kept screaming and trying to tear loose from us. He kept begging Rady for a drink. As crazy as he was, he was enough in his right mind to keep begging and pleading for a drink.

“Rady!” he’d scream till you could hear him all over the house. “Rady!” And then he’d moan and grab at Rady and beg. “Rady, you’ve not ever let me down. You’re not going to make me do without are you? Just one, Rady. Just a little one. I’d have died, Rady, if it hadn’t been for you this summer. You aren’t going to let me down now, are you?” Over and over again, but keeping his voice down low except when a pain would hit him and he’d scream Rady’s name. It was like he was whispering something only him and Rady knew.

Finally Rady got up and went to the clothes closet and got a bottle down. He give him a big slug. Mister Rowe got quiet right straight, and Rady stoppered the bottle and instead of putting it back in the closet, he put it in his own hip pocket, kind of absent-minded like. He stood looking down at Mister Rowe, and then he looked at me. “He would of died soon or late anyhow,” he said. “I figgered the pore sunovabitch might as well die happy.”

It came over me when we’d laid him out later, and were keeping the watch the rest of the night, that I’d been wrong when I’d said one time that Annie couldn’t help Rady get old man Hall’s place. She’d helped him after all by dying. And it came over me, too, that the brown maid wasn’t the only one had a house and land. Fair Elinore had a house and land, too. But for once I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t allow this was a time Rady would want to be reminded of either one of them.

It was a funny thing, too, that Miz Rowe never put a headstone for Mister Rowe. She planted a rosebush at the head of his grave instead. Junie was passing the day she planted it and stopped to help her. “Is it a climbin’ rose,” she asked.

“No” Miz Rowe said, “it’s a hybrid. The name of the rose is Peace.”