Dead limbs were falling in the swamp. It was a certain sign of rain. They fell from the trees before and after, as though some dropped in terror of the moist burden, and others resisted a little longer. Limpkins were crying, and it would not be long before the grey curtain over the scrub and river dissolved into a sweep of rain. A drop spattered now and then like lead on a palmetto leaf. Lant and Cleve poled the rowboat noiselessly up the creek.
Lant said, "We kin git us them ash saplin's right yonder."
Cleve did not answer and he headed the boat between cypress knees. Cleve in the bow hauled it over a twisting mass of black rattan and looped the chain around a sweet gum. They clambered over fallen palmettos through the black muck of the cypress swamp. In wet weather the swamp was a bog, but the winter had been dry. Occasionally a spot was deceptive and they sank over their shoetops in mire.
Lant had used the same canopy over his still during the years he had been 'shining, changing the palmetto fronds each season. The sapling supports had buried themselves in the creek muck until the canopy came now too low for comfort. It would be easier to cut and sink new poles than to root out the old ones, only, perhaps, to find them rotting.
Cleve lagged behind while Lant picked ash saplings of the proper length. He felled each of the four with half a dozen axe-strokes. Cleve helped to trim them down. They walked lightly back through the swamp with the long poles over their shoulders. Cleve trailed them in the water against the boat-side while Lant paddled down-stream towards his whiskey outfit. He took the creek curves neatly, so that the poles should not become entangled in the overwhelming foliage. He made a comment now and then on the impending rain. Cleve made no answer.
Mash was working in the barrels on the platform. It was not yet ready to run, and they stirred it with heavy paddles. Lant scooped up a handful of the fermenting liquid from each barrel in turn and tasted it critically.
"'Tain't fur from ready," he said.
He covered the barrels again and climbed an overhanging sweet gum to drive the sharpened point of the first sapling deep into the mud. He sat in a fork of the tree and wrapped his long legs around the trunk and drove the sapling with the axe-head. The entire outfit stood exposed, barrels, coils, cooker and drums, to any one who should come up the creek. But no one came except Cleve and Zeke and Abner. The Poseys, whose outfit was a mile and a half to the south, knew only the approximate location. There was only one entrance into the creek. It was masked and seemingly impenetrable.
As they worked, driving in the fourth sapling, they heard a distant whistle like a bird-call. It was almost certainly a hunter indicating his position to a companion on a deer-stand, but they took no chances. They dropped their axes and small equipment hurriedly in the boat, jumped in and were away in silence in an instant.
"Mought be the wrong cat-bird whistlin'," Lant said.
They poled out to the river and cut in again at Otter Landing. Lant hid the paddles and an empty demi-john in the myrtle bushes. They went a hundred yards farther south and into Lant's car to drive to his house.
The rain had begun when they reached the clearing. Large drops were falling like hail.
Lant said, "You comin' in, ain't you?"
Cleve spoke for the first time.
"I'm goin to Zeke's."
"You best take the car then. You'll git plumb drownded time you git there."
"I don't want your damn car. I'd rather walk."
"Suit yourself. Hit's your business if you want to cut the fool."
Cleve slammed the car door and stalked down the road in the rain. His round pasty face was sullen. Lant left the car at the gate and hurried up the lane to the house. Piety shaded her half-blind eyes to see him.
She said, "I thought shore I heerd you speakin' to somebody."
"You done so," he agreed in exasperation. "Hit were Cleve. I be dogged if I know what ails him. He won't work and he won't work. He's been sulling from a ways back, and now he's actin' jest purely ugly. Ary other man, I'd crawl his frame."
"Wa'n't your wood up today neither?"
"Hit weren't up, and the last strand he cut were so sorry hit didn't outlast my second firin'. I had to git out and scratch for wood in the middle o' the run."
He sat down by the hearth and took off his wet shoes and stretched his feet to the fire.
"I b'lieve he's fixin' jest to walk out on me and go work for Poseys. I don't no more look for him to come back tomorrer than I look for the moon to drap in the river."
"If he'd only tell you," she said, rocking close to him, "you'd know how to figger."
"That's it. If he'd jest say. If he'll keep the work, I'll put up with it, and him so sorry. He talked all mornin' 'bout Poseys havin' a nigger to cut the wood. Then all evenin' he had nary word to say."
"Leave him go to Poseys," she said. "You don't keer, long as Kezzy and them young uns has somethin' on the table. Cleve's jealous, he's jest perfeckly jealous."
"Since I painted the car," he agreed.
"Since you painted the car and put a top on it. He cain't stand to see you goin' decent."
"I've done offered him a half interest in the outfit, if he'd divide the time. I need he'p bad. I could sell twicet as much agin, with a bigger outfit and good he'p."
"He won't do it," she said vehemently. "He jest won't do the work. You be glad if he do go to Poseys."
In the morning Lant went early to his outfit. His mash was ready to run. He had a small supply of ash wood. Cleve did not appear. Lant started a fire in his furnace and when his buck made its turn-over in the cooker, he capped it, slowed down his fire and went looking for Zeke. Zeke was not at home. Lant went home and called his mother from her work in the garden.
"Ma, you jest got to come watch my fire and my pot whilst I cut me some wood."
"I got a leetle stove wood here you kin have, and welcome," she told him.
They took the stove wood in their arms and she followed him back of the house to the swamp. She sat on her thin old haunches and tended the fire under the still. She heard him chopping in the lower hammock. He returned with armfuls of ash. Towards noon Zeke joined them.
"My old woman said you was lookin' for me," he said hopefully.
Lant said, "I don't miss it. Zeke, how good you these days, swingin' a axe?"
"Them ash saplin's, I kin cut them all day."
"Well, you got you a job right now, then."
"Cleve quit you?"
"Hit look that-a-way." He added, "Now I tell you, Zeke, if Cleve was to come back, I'd figger the work was his, right on."
Zeke agreed. "I wouldn't take the work from him, noways. But I jest as leave tell you, I'm glad to git a chancet at it. We ain't been eatin' too reg'lar to my house lately."
Zeke's strength was adequate for the wood-cutting. He turned out a comfortable strand a day. For three weeks there was no word from Cleve. Then Lant passed him on the river. He was with the Poseys. Lant saw their boat turn up the creek that led, he knew, to the Posey still.
The hunters left the scrub and the swamp. The red-bud bloomed above the river, the limpkins cried, the eagles nested and it was spring. Cleve worked at the Poseys' still until May. Then Jim Posey fired him. Lant saw Kezzy at the store at Eureka.
"I hear Jim fired Cleve," he said to her.
She nodded.
"He got work agin?"
She looked at him.
She said quietly, "He ain't tried. I ain't hurryin' him this time, Lant. I got cow-peas and collards and meal, and a leetle bacon in the smoke-house. You know how Cleve is. Leave him loaf as long as I kin make out, is the way I figger it. Then when things gits bad agin, time enough for me to romp on him to git to work. God knows I cain't keep him at it all the time."
Drought set in early in June instead of the usual summer rains. Lant looked at his mother's parched garden.
He said, "If Kezzy's cow-peas and greens looks like ours—"
Lant went to his outfit on the first of July. He started, seeing a slouched figure on the platform. Cleve was waiting for him.
Cleve said sulkily, "I jest as good to cut your wood agin."
Lant said, "I've give that job to Zeke. You know that." He asked quickly, "Did Kezzy send you?"
Cleve said, "Yes."
"You lyin'. Kezzy said you should go anywhere but me. Didn't she?"
Cleve narrowed his pale eyes and did not answer.
"Kezzy told you not to interfere with Zeke," Lant said. "I ain't goin' to interfere with him. He's got to eat, same as you. He's been faithful. I ain't goin' to turn the ol' feller off and then you work a week maybe and go off the way you done before."
Cleve said, "Zeke don't need work. He's got money hid out."
"He do not. No use for you to talk, Cleve, I've give Zeke the work and you cain't ask me out of it."
Cleve said hotly, "All right. You be biggety now. You jest go right on bein' biggety."
He plunged angrily through the swamp to his boat.
At dinner Lant said to Piety, "Cleve come askin' for the wood-cuttin' back agin."
"You give it to him?"
"I ain't turnin' Zeke off for nobody."
"You got Kezzy to think of."
"I'm thinkin' o' Kezzy. She do better with Zeke workin' than Cleve. Zeke sends her money when things gits thick for her."
"You're makin' a leetle more'n we need. Seems to me you could save the quarrellin' and look out for Kezzy yourself."
He frowned.
"I cain't git her to take nothin'. I don't understand Kezzy noways. Now and agin she'll take it from Zeke, but I be dogged if she'll take it from me."
In mid-July Jim Posey stopped Lant as their rowboats, loaded with meal and sugar, passed on the river.
Jim asked, "Lant, you been missin' ary thing from your—place o' business?"
"Nary thing."
Jim flushed.
"I reckon they's no use you and me actin' too private. I jest as leave tell you, they's been ten gallons stole from back o' my outfit." He spat in the river. "Dog take it, I got no use for a thief. I make my money honest."
Lant said, "You got ary idee who 'tis?"
"I kin come all around namin' you the man."
Jim released his hold on Lant's rowboat and they began to drift apart.
Jim said, "If it's who I figger 'tis, I reckon you're not like to be bothered. The sorriest kind of a feller don't gin'rally steal from his own kin."
When his day's work was done, Lant sat in the cool of the July twilight, picking abstractedly at his banjo. Piety, watching his face, questioned him.
"Cleve's fixin' to git hisself into trouble," he admitted, and refused to tell her more.
Dog days came in and lay like hot lead on scrub and river. The August sun blazed on the pine trees and scorched the corn in the field. Chickens went with wings lifted to cool themselves and hounds panted in the shadows underneath the houses. Folk went to bed exhausted and awakened at daybreak smothered in an invisible blanket. The mocking-birds stopped singing and the snakes began to shed. Every one stepped warily, for the rattlesnakes had become blind and vicious. Sand gnats swarmed in clouds and passed the sore-eyes from one baby to another. Women who had saved May-water from the rains in May doled it out to cure the affliction. Children whimpered and fretted in the heat. The old folks grew irritable. Even soft-cooked grits did not feel smooth and good against the palate. Chills and fever went the rounds. Tempers were short.
On a white blinding day Jim and Martin Posey met Cleve on the Eureka bridge. They were riding in their car and Cleve was on foot. They stopped him.
Jim said, "I been wantin' to ask you about some whiskey o' mine showed up at Lynne."
Cleve said, "I don't know nothin' about your whiskey."
Jim said, "You say that oncet agin."
Cleve jumped on the running-board and leaned into the car. His right arm hung behind him, as though he held a gun. Jim picked up a hunting knife on the floor of the car and sliced at Cleve across the cheek and ear. Cleve dropped back with his hand against the bleeding streak. The Poseys drove on quickly.