Five years of planting had levelled the soil of the clearing. Sugar-cane and corn had flattened the fields. Sweet potatoes had been hilled and the hills knocked down again for the digging. Planting, growth and harvest; planting, growth and harvest; they had smoothed the sandy loam to a counterpane flung down between scrub and hammock.
Lantry was late with his corn. It was April. The whippoorwills had been calling for a month. The cane was well advanced, but he was only now planting his field corn. Crows made question and answer in the neighbouring hammock, waiting for the seed to fall. The birds interrogated raucously the man and mule moving steadily, sideways to the high sun. The corn dropped like gold nuggets from the one-horse planter. The crows would drift down like shining leaves of burned paper and would dig it up again.
Hearing them, the man felt an instant of despair. If there were not crows to fight there was drought; if not drought, insects, incessant rain or mildew. Yet he had prospered in his five years in the scrub. The fringe of hammock soil had produced with a lushness startling to his experience. Corn had grown higher than his head, so that he had moved through it like a bearded prophet. He raised a small patch of tobacco for his own use. It had a fine flavour. Yams had grown bigger than Piety's thigh. His money crop, the cane, had made sugar and syrup of choice quality. But he had had three sons at home to fight with him. Now they were leaving him.
Abner, the alien among them, had married a cousin and moved back across the river to the piney-woods. Zeke was homesteading half a mile to the north, duplicating his father's clearing. He had married and built a one-room cabin soon after New Year's. Thaddeus was courting. He had promised not to leave until the spring crops were well along, but he worked half-heartedly. Martha was of little use at field-work. His wife he discounted. She helped to plant and hoe and dig potatoes, but her querulousness was a constant offense. He preferred to leave her in the house and yard, complaining over her pots and pans, throwing water at the chickens in a sudden pet. After this spring, only Piety would be left to him.
The girl was turning beds for sweet potatoes in the north clearing. She drove a pony-like white horse and small plough. The plough handles pulled at her armpits, so that her shoulders jerked at every roughness and her bare feet flew up behind her. She held the plough steadily and the lines of her beds were true. Lantry watched the small figure on the other side of the clearing as he turned his corner. As he looked, the plough point caught a root and bucked. The girl plunged forward in a somersault. The man dropped his lines to run to her, but in a moment she was on her feet. He could see her brush the dirt from her face with her arm and take up the plough-lines again.
He thought, "She don't weigh enough to hold herself down."
He heard the girl's high shrill voice call to her horse. She spoke seldom, and the small thin tones invariably stirred him. Hearing her, he felt for a moment that he was not alone in this place. He clicked to his mule. He finished his planting before Piety was done. There were two hours of daylight left and the April sun was warm. He fed and watered his mule at the shed west of the house, then turned the animal to graze in the fenced pasture. He went to the girl.
"Leave me finish here, Py-tee," he called to her. "The way the plough done wasted you, cain't be you got much breath left."
"Hit didn't harm me none," she laughed, shaking her small head at him. "Whoa!" She lay back on her plough-lines to stop the horse. "I ain't no-ways tired."
"That's what you say, honey. Then time you gits to the house, you're a-settin' to the table nigh asleep and a-drappin' into the bed like a sack o' meal."
"Well, I wants to finish. These is my pertaters!" She defied him, laughing.
"Look at you," he derided her. "A gal no bigger'n a hammock wren, standin' there a-claimin' a hull pertater field. Dogged if you ain't gittin' impudent as a cricket."
He squatted on his haunches and stuck a straw of broom-sage in his mouth.
"Go ahead, finish your hills. I'll wait on you and quarrel with you if you don't do it good."
The straight thin back marched away from him, the soles of the dirty bare feet turned back at him. He chuckled to himself, his eyes glowing, watching her pride in the evenness of her furrows. The broom-sage dangled against his beard. As she swung back at the far end and moved towards him for the turning of the last bed, he could see that her deep-lidded eyes were fixed far over his head. She had picked out a distant tree to run by. It made him lonely.
They walked side by side to the shed to put up the plough and care for the horse. The cow had come to the gate to be milked. Piety let her in and brought the gourd while Lantry fed her. The girl rubbed the hard head of the animal as the man milked. The sweet scent of the smooth-haired hide, the perfumed breath, mingled with the crunched corn and the sweaty acridity of the human bodies. In the cabin Mrs. Lantry lifted her voice above the kitchen clatter. Martha answered, her voice dull through the pine wall.
The milking was done. Piety took the gourd of milk in her two hands. They walked slowly to the house. The breezeway and kitchen had been added at the rear. At the steps of the breezeway Lantry said, "Hold steady now." He picked up the girl by the waist and lifted her high, the brimming gourd level in her cupped hands. Her bare toes reached for the floor as he set her down.
"That's the way not to waste no milk comin' up the steps."
They laughed at each other. Mrs. Lantry grumbled at them.
Martha said, "Ma, 'pears to me like you'd be used to them cuttin' the fool."
Lantry said, "Yes, Marthy, but she's used to quarrellin', too."
Mrs. Lantry said, "Py-tee, you he'p now."
There was no reality except the work of the house. The woman knew the field work was hard. Yet when the girl came into the house, she made an aggrieved claim on her.
Martha said in a low voice, "Supper's about done, Py-tee. You go set down. I'll finish."
The older girl was almost a woman, phlegmatic and maternal. She had Lantry's red coloring faded to sandiness. Her plain, solid face was spotted with yellow freckles. The younger girl sat on the top step of the breezeway, leaning her head wearily against the wall until supper was called. After supper Martha made her a sign that she would take care of the dishes. Piety washed her hands and face, her grimy feet and legs, and slipped into the dusky bedroom. Twilight filled the room with a shadowy coolness. She got into her nightgown and stretched her legs against the one rough clean sheet. She drew a quilt over her and lay drowsily while the twilight deepened into dark and bull-bats darted past the window.
Before the girl dropped to sleep she heard voices on the breezeway. Zeke and his wife had walked the half-mile from their clearing to pass an hour before bedtime. Zeke was lonely after the bustle of a family. He came a little wistfully to offer the details of his homesteading for discussion. He was a tip-nosed, ash-headed little fellow like a faded chipmunk. He had bright small eyes of robin's-egg blue. Piety pictured his eyes as he talked, his hair turning up forlornly from his neck in pale drake's-tails.
Lantry listened as his son spoke of the stick-and-clay fireplace he had completed that day; of the cooking-rack in the yard, with hooks suspended to hold pots over the fire; of the hog-pen he would build, planning to make hogs his money crop. The animals ran wild in scrub and swamp and hammock, fattening on pine and acorn mast, on huckleberries and palmetto berries, large and black and low-growing.
Lantry asked a question now and then but gave no advice. Zeke was a man and able to run his own affairs. He knew as much of stock-raising and of farming as his father. He sometimes recognised in the older man the touch of the novice, so that he wondered how he had previously earned his bread. He did not ask.
Zeke's wife, Ella May, said to Martha, "I seed your feller when we was to Eureka Sat'dy."
The sandy face flushed.
"That sorry Syl Jacklin, I reckon."
"When you and him fixin' to take up together?"
Martha shrugged her shoulders.
"I ain't in no hurry. I ain't fixin' to take up at all, lessen he'll come live over here."
Lantry looked at her sharply. He had not understood that the courting had gone so far.
"None o' them Jacklins likes the scrub," he said.
"Well, they's one of 'em'll like it, or he won't git to marry me." She added, "And he better make me a livin', too."
Piety, almost asleep, thought, "I wouldn't figger that-a-way. If a man done his best."
She was aware by how narrow a margin Lantry had escaped disaster with his crops. There was something about the most fertile field that was beyond control. A man could work himself to skin and bones, so that there was no flesh left on him to make sweat in the sun, and a crop would get away from him. There was something about all living that was uncertain.
Ella May asked, "Where-all's Py-tee?"
Martha said, "In the bed. She's been beddin' sweet pertaters. I mean, she's give out. Field work's too hard on her."
Mrs. Lantry said, "Hit don't hurt her none. Seem to me she do it jest to git away from the housework."
Lantry rumbled angrily, "Don't none of you know what you're talkin' about. She perfeckly enjoys it. She's got a knack for it, hit comes to her natural. Hit's a heap harder'n the piddlin' ol' jobs to the house, but she likes it. I got to have me some he'p."
Zeke asked. "Where-all's Thad?"
"Acrost the river, he'pin' Abner round up some cattle. Ab's gittin' him a fine bunch o' cattle."
Zeke said, "Long as he don't keer whose calves he runs in along of his own."
"Abner wouldn't steal calves, no more than you and me!" Martha flashed at him.
Zeke began to whistle indifferently.
"Mebbe not."
He said after a moment, "Ab's got him one thing I'd give a pretty for. He had him more syrup and corn than he'll use, and he takened a couple o' barrels and made him the nicest ten gallons o' whiskey I ever did taste."
Ella May asked, surprised, "Did! Where'd he git the still?"
"Used the wash-pot to cook the buck. Fixed him a cypress cover and daubed clay around the edge to make hit tight. Fixed him a pipe outen the top, and a gutter for the pipe to run through."
"Well, I do know."
Lantry chuckled. "Ella May, I've seed stills made outen a lard pail, a hog trough and a gun barrel."
"Well, now!"
Mrs. Lantry complained, "Yes, and makin' ten gallons to a time, he'll be raisin' up as bad a fuss with it as them Moss Bluff fellers."
"Sho, hit's a sight better to make hit than to buy hit." Lantry stroked his beard. "You know what you're drinkin'. I'm fixin' to make me a few jugs, come fall, and my cane juice plentiful. I don't use much liquor, but fifty cents a quart comes high."
"You mighty right." Zeke nodded maturely at his father.
"Ain't it agin the law, makin' whiskey?" Ella May inquired. "'Pears like I've done heard somethin' 'bout hit bein' agin the law."
"I dunno," Zeke puzzled. "I cain't see why. Cattle-stealin' is onlawful, and hog-stealin'. And murder. I cain't see no harm to makin' whiskey."
Lantry stretched his long legs.
"Why yes," he said, "hit's agin the law. They's a tax on whiskey, a gov'mint tax. You kin make it, but you belong to git a license and pay a tax. But sho, nobody don't pay no mind to a feller makin' a leetle jest to drink and enjoy and treat his friends and kin-folks."
He straightened, electric in the dusk.
"But now the gov'mint is mighty pertickler in Caroliny and West Virginny. The revenooers is just bounden determined nobody won't git to make none. But sho, they jest as good to stay to home and put their noses over their own pots. They cain't half ketch them fellers makin' moonshine up in them mountings. When they do come up with 'em, they're like to git buckshot in their breeches for their trouble. I mind me—"
"You been there, Pa?" Zeke leaned towards him eagerly. Lantry drew a vast breath and was silent. He lit his cob pipe and sucked on it. The light glowed against his beard. His eyes were half closed.
"I'm tellin' you what folks has tol' me," he said reprovingly. "I'll quit tellin' you, do you interrupt me."
"Well Pa, revenooers don't never mess up with nobody in these parts, do they?"
"I never heerd tell of 'em botherin' ary man. Floridy is a fine state that-a-way. Folkses here is the best in the world to mind their own business and not go interferin' in nobody else's."
Zeke said, "Dogged if I wouldn't like to make whiskey for a livin'."
Mrs. Lantry slapped at her legs.
"I'll be layin' a fire in the smudge-pot, iffen you're fixin' to set up much longer. The skeeters is a-comin'."
"Don't make no smudge, Ma." Zeke and Ella May rose. "We got to be goin'. We got a half-mile between us and the bed."
Piety heard the talk trailing away like fog. She wanted to call after them, to say good-night to Zeke, but her eyes and mouth would not open. She could hear the frogs in the swamp, louder now than the voices moving towards the gate.
"Pa, how come you never made you no liquor from the cane juice before?"
"I dunno, son."
Lantry's deep tones washed over her in a last misty wave.
"Jest someway never got around to it."