JOHN dipped the wash pan into the black iron pot. It was early morning of baptizing day. Emma had been there before him to light a fire. He and Bonnie must wash all over with hot water. For their brother Basil, her oldest son, was to be baptized. She had a feeling that all of them must be cleansed outwardly on the day that Basil became white as snow inwardly, washed clean of his sins by the blood of the Lamb.
At a protracted meeting that summer which lasted a week, Basil joined the church the second night. The Lord claimed him. Perhaps Basil had always belonged to the Lord. He had certainly attended church regularly every summer since John could remember. Though since he was older, there were times when he got drunk and became anything but religious. Drink made Kirk happy and cheerful but it made Basil glum and ugly for days afterwards. Granpap’s defiance of the preacher had made Basil plunge deeper into religion, as if he wished to make up for the old man’s defection. He had long talks with the preacher, and afterwards went about looking very important and full of news.
John set the pan of hot water on the wash bench. Off came the jeans and shirt Emma had washed the day before. He hung them carefully on a bush and began to make suds with the homemade lye soap. Disgusted sputtering sounds came from his mouth as he rubbed the suds lightly over his face. They stung his eyes until one hand groped for the jeans and rubbed the soap out.
As a special concession to cleanliness he broke off a soft green twig of sassafras from the bush and cleaned around the navel which protruded a little from his body. Looking down he watched his body curiously. It was not often he saw himself naked, for clothes were made to be worn day and night. The protruding navel, he knew, had something to do with his birth and the fact that Granpap had cut the cord instead of some woman who knew her business. He knew because he had ears with which to listen to the grown-ups talk. He was a little vague about all the details of the business. But it must have been very important, for it had brought him into the world.
To wash the rest of his body John raised the pan high above his head with both skinny little arms and tipped the pan. The water came down on his head and shoulders. It splashed from his shoulders and touched the prominent parts of his body, and trickled along the curved indentation down his back that was like the shallow bed of a stream.
He ran up and down the spring path in the early sunshine to dry. He trotted like the preacher’s horse, as it came up the road to church. At the end of the trot he halted at the sassafras bush and nibbled at the leaves. His upper lip curled back and his teeth clicked together, except where two were missing. Reluctantly he put on his jeans when he heard Emma calling.
At the cabin Emma looked him over and was satisfied. With his hair slicked back with water, the boy looked as clean as a peeled hickory.
Basil was having trouble with his shoes. Preacher Warren had given him an old pair of his own. The day before to make them bright and shining Basil had taken some molasses and mixed it with soot from the chimney into a black paste. Rubbed with the paste, the shoes looked quite new. In his pride Basil had put the shoes on when he got up, though he would have to take them off later to walk across Thunderhead. From the very first moment he put them on the flies began to settle on the molasses. Basil shook one foot and then the other. Some of the flies left the shoes, but most of them were stuck fast. Those that had left came back again and settled so that their legs were caught in the mess. And after getting stuck from their own foolishness they buzzed their distress and struggled frantically to get off.
Their distress was not greater than Basil’s. At last he was forced to scrape off the whole mess, flies and molasses together, with a stick, and wipe the shoes clean with leaves. He still looked harassed as he went up the trail, with the shoes in his hand and the bundle of baptizing clothes slung across his back. Kirk did not go with him. He waited until Basil was out of sight and struck off to the left, making for the short cut over Barren She Mountain.
On the meadow side, near Laurel Creek, the gray cliff of Barren She Mountain was split open from top to bottom. In the space between the two walls there were enough jagged projections to make a rough stairway to the top. From these the trail led to the McClure cabin. This short cut was a hard climb both ways and few people used it from the south side unless like Kirk they wished to pass the Hawkins’ cabin that was at one side of Swain’s meadow. But there was an important reason for the use of the trail from the north on the meadow side. In a little hollow halfway up the mountain there was a small still. The narrow stream that ran by this still dripped over the face of the cliff. Occasionally when some careless person dropped sour mash full of carbonic acid and alcohol into the stream the stink was strong enough to make a pig squeal. Sometimes cattle pastured in Swain’s meadow had been known to get drunk from licking the water that came over the face of the cliff. This had happened perhaps once, only. But the tale went around and even the children knew where the still was located.
Because of it Emma was sorry to see Kirk taking the short cut. She knew he had begun to drink, and she meant to say nothing against it. He was almost a man. But on this day when his brother was to be baptized she wished for Kirk to be sober and thoughtful. She, herself, went about looking sober enough for both of them as she prepared the lunch. Her two oldest were grown men—almost. They were going different ways. And where those ways would lead them only the Lord could tell.
Across from the upper end of Swain’s meadow, Laurel Creek made a bend around the base of Little Snowbird Mountain. At this bend was Fraser McDonald’s cabin. Just before it was the old ford. Now there was a rough log bridge built across. The road that led from this bridge went past Fraser’s cabin and followed the creek around the base of Snowbird until it turned into a sledge trail further on. About a mile beyond Fraser’s a sand and rock beach in the creek sloped down into deep water. This was where the baptizings were held.
Baptizing day came early in August. Whether a person was religious like Basil, or defiant like Granpap, they all attended Baptizing. It was an occasion for neighbors and kin who had not seen each other for a year or more to meet. People came from miles around, some even from the distant South Range neighborhood. In some way the news traveled that on such a day there would be baptizing on Laurel Creek; and the poorest and most isolated tied up some corn pone and cold potatoes in a cloth and set out before day to reach the place in time.
On the other side of the creek a low hill rose up almost from the water. Behind the hill were higher mountains enclosing the place. On the beach side there was more room. Little Snowbird had a gentle slope at the bottom with few trees and some thickets of calico plant and laurel scattered between the rocks. Between the road and the creek there was a wide bank covered with green grass. This was a favorite place for those who had brought lunch. They could use the flat rocks for tables and sit around in comfortable family style. Those who did not have jugs of cider went to the creek side and drank.
Granpap, who had accepted something stronger than cider from a neighbor, nevertheless took a drink of creek water. He came back to the place Emma had selected for their lunching place and spoke to Basil who was eating his piece of corn pone and bacon.
“Now,” he said to Basil, “the preacher can’t baptize ye. I’ve swallowed the creek, holy ghost and all.”
Basil did not answer. With his bread in one hand and the bundle of clothes in the other he walked away up the road toward the place where the men were to dress.
“It was ugly of you to say that,” Emma reproved Granpap.
“Shucks, Emma,” Granpap said. “He knowed I didn’t mean anything.”
“You should talk better before the young ones,” Emma went on. “It’s you that helps Kirk in his bad ways.”
Granpap was silent. He would not defend himself too much before a woman. Emma began again to wonder about Kirk. He had not appeared for dinner. She was keeping his part of the lunch and wanted to find him. Jesse McDonald, Fraser’s son, passed and she called him.
“You seen Kirk?” she asked.
“No’m,” Jesse said, and went over to the Frank McClure group where Sally was helping Ora with the younger children. Sally was faithful that day for she was to be baptized. She was full of a spirit of helpfulness. Jesse did not tell Emma that he had been looking for his friend. Kirk had vanished. And since he could not find him among the company, Jesse had decided that Kirk must have gone to visit the still again.
“Come along, Son,” Granpap said to John. “Maybe we can find him.”
They walked off together, John tagging along at Granpap’s heels like a faithful puppy. Emma and Bonnie joined Ora McClure.
“Now, you run along, Sally,” Ora said taking a sly look at Jesse who was hanging around, waiting to get a chance to speak with Sally. “You run along, Sally. Emma’ll help me. But remember, you’re going to be baptized with water to-day.”
Sally blushed almost to her fingers’ ends. Sometimes her mother said the most indecent things. Sally could bear it very nicely when other girls whispered with her and they spoke of experiences that were ahead of them. But when her mother said them she was ashamed, especially when Jesse McDonald was waiting as she well knew to walk down the road with her until it was time to dress.
“No,” Sally said firmly. “I’m a-going to stay right here.” And she blushed again for Jesse was looking at her steadily.
“You go right along,” Ora said, sorry now that she had confused Sally. Taking him all in all, Jesse was a good boy, the son of a good father.
“But,” Ora said to Emma when the two had stepped off up the road, “I hope she remembers she’s a-marrying with the holy ghost to-day.”
“She’s a good girl,” Emma said, and Ora nodded. She had raised her child right, in the fear of God and man.
Granpap wandered about with John at his heels. People were scattered along the banks in groups and on the side of the hill there were others. Now that dinner was over there was a breathing spell until time for the preacher to come. He was having a regular table dinner at Hal Swain’s.
The sun was very bright and the women’s dresses made fine irregular patterns of color. Up on the hillside some rosepink calico plants were still blooming and there was wild honeysuckle, a rich orange. The dresses seemed to be growing there just as the flowers and when a woman moved it was as if a plant got up and made a new place for itself or joined itself to'another to make a new color against the grass or the gray of some rock. Not all the dresses were bright. Some of them had been washed many times and were faded. And among the older women were several wearing dark homespun or flannel. Granma Wesley wore a brown homespun dress, dyed with walnut juice. Her mother had woven and dyed it. At a distance it did not stand out as the flimsier but more colorful dresses of the others. But it was carefully woven and sewed with small stitches.
The old woman walked in front of Granpap and John across the road. They could not see her face for she had on her sunbonnet and she looked neither to the right nor to the left but straight ahead as if she was making for some goal. Behind her walked Sam Wesley’s young daughter. Her waist was blue calico. But the skirt was homespun, dyed red with pokeberry juice, and around the bottom were bands of blue and yellow woven in. The child was twelve years old and the skirt dragged on the ground, for Granma Wesley would never allow her few pieces of home-spun to be cut.
Granpap watched them. “Pore old Granma,” he said. Since she had risen from her sick bed Granma Wesley had not been exactly right in her mind. She wandered about looking for her sheep. She could not or would not believe they had been killed. Just as soon as he could make the money Sam planned to buy two others exactly like the old ones. He hoped that would ease her last days on this earth.
“We’ll go to the bend,” Granpap said to John. “Maybe Kirk will be a-coming along from Fraser’s.” The old man did not sound very hopeful. Like Jesse he had his own notion of the place where Kirk might be found.
Down the road near the bend, drawn apart from the others as if they did not belong, or as if they felt they were too good, was a group of people. The men had not left their wives and children to mix with the other men along the road, and the women sat listlessly on the bank of the stream as if they expected no company and wanted none.
These people were from near South Range and Granpap knew them. On one side they were kin of the rich Tates who had taken Granpap’s land. But the Tates did not recognize them as kin. This branch of the family had intermarried with the McFarlanes. They lived in a little settlement on Pinchgut Creek, ten miles from South Range. While Granpap talked with one of the McFarlane men, John stood behind the old man and looked around his legs at the people. They paid little attention to him. A dog barked at him and one of the children about his age opened its eyes and peered around Granpap to see this boy of six or seven who had come so near. The child had a pale face splotched with red. Its hair was whiter than John’s, and its ears were larger than any John had ever seen on man or child. He went closer, edging around Granpap’s knee and saw that the women and men, too, had mottled faces and big ears.
Granpap spoke about them as he and John got on the road to go back the way they had come. Years before, the first Tate that made money had driven the McFarlanes off the land. The McFarlanes had gone far up a mountain into a cove by Pinch-gut Creek. Later the same Tate had driven some of his own kin away and the McFarlanes had taken them in. Way up there on the creek they had married each other till the Lord only knew which was brother and which sister. And the result was before them. The Tate-McFarlanes had pop eyes and skin that would bleed if you took a straight look at it.
The rich Tates got richer and the poor ones had come to this. It seemed that the Lord took pleasure in shearing his poor sheep and fattening the rich ones. Maybe he did it on purpose so that in heaven the sheared ones would enjoy their riches more, and in hell the rich would burn better for their fatness.
To Preacher Warren all the people in the company were pinchfaced and uninteresting. As he tethered his horse and got his bundle of baptizing clothes from the saddle bag, he felt a load in his heart because as far as he could know he would be doing this very thing summer after summer. He longed with his whole soul to live in town, where his children might grow up in the proper manner, and he might have a congregation of live people. In the whole place only Hal Swain and his wife Sally knew how to live. Preacher Warren felt grateful to them, for if it were not for those two he would have no salary from the community. The occasional pennies and nickels dropped into a hat on Sundays hardly counted. Sometimes resentment filled his throat when he thought that at dances the collections were larger than at church. But he was ashamed of such resentment and when it occurred prayed to his Lord to cleanse his heart of the secret sin.
His early life had been pinched, and he wanted something more . . . a church with stained glass windows, a baptizing pool under the platform and a regular Bible rest where his big Bible would stay from week to week. If he had met John in the road he would have seen just another pinch-faced child with a careless walk, who would grow up to be a careless, slovenly man, living on the lusts of the flesh—his woman or his women, his drink and his food.
As the preacher left his horse some girls came out of the bushes at the side of the road. One of them had her dress still raised. And as she saw him and dropped it hurriedly the others giggled. As they ran down the road he heard them laugh. They were all like that—lewd, coarse. He wanted refinement and reserve. And he had not found it among his own people. He thought of those he was to baptize that day. Sally McClure, Minnie Hawkins, Eve McDonald and the Wesley girls, three boys beside Basil McClure. Of them all, boys and girls, Basil was the only one he felt he could count on.
Sally Swain and Hal arrived soon after the preacher. Sally took up most of the buggy. She was a long time getting out, but once on the ground her feet were light and energetic. For a time she rummaged in the back of the buggy handing out certain bundles to Hal. These they carried to a place further down the road where four trees some distance from each other made an almost perfect square.
Soon Emma, Ora, and several other women were there helping Sally put up the sheets. They were making a dressing room for the girls. In this space the girls were to put on their robes made from unbleached cloth sold at Swain’s. Sally furnished the safety pins, and along with them she gave advice. Before the girls were half dressed everyone was wishing her out of the way. But they were too shy to speak, and all of them owed money at Swain’s. They knew that Sally was really good-natured. Yet everyone felt like saying “Why are you here?”
“Pin Sally further up on that side,” Sally Swain called to Ora. “Or she’ll trip sure as gun’s iron.”
“Here, Eve,” she called to Eve McDonald, forcing her to leave her mother’s fingers. “That’ll never do. You look like you was sent for and couldn’t come.” And she took the whole robe off, leaving Eve naked except for some flimsy drawers. Eve hid her face in her hands. She might have said the coarsest words to Sally Swain if she had the courage. She knew them. And she was not afraid of being naked. Only Sally Swain’s pudgy hands tearing the robe off seemed to violate her, and she wanted to hide herself from the others.
When Emma and Ora came out to take their places on the bank everyone had settled down except a few men who were still talking in a little group on the road. As soon as they saw the preacher coming down from his dressing place in the white baptizing robe, they too walked slowly to the bank and before the preacher reached the creek had found themselves seats in the grass.
Preacher Warren walked sedately through his flock, stood a moment on the bank, then picked his way carefully over the rocky beach. He entered the water up to his knees. Everyone was still. There was not a breeze. Nothing moved except the water that flowed over the rocks and tugged at the ends of the preacher’s robe. He was forced to stand with his feet wide apart, for the current was not weak and there were slippery rocks on the bottom.
Facing the flock he gave out a hymn and the people sang after him line by line.
The beginning of the song was a signal. The girls came out from the curtained place and walked slowly in single file toward the preacher. And down the road came the boys with Basil leading. As the song ended they were standing on the beach facing the preacher. The five girls stood in their cream robes with hair combed out down their backs. The young men had new jeans and white shirts—all bought at Swain’s at a special price.
The preacher spoke some words to them. Three words, he said, they must make the ideal of their lives. These words were temperance, soberness, and chastity. The girls must be temperate in speech. They must not be coarse in language or in actions, and must not backbite their neighbors. The men must not look on wine, for “the drunken and glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” These words, he said, came straight from the Good Book.
Drink had ruined men, and laziness had overcome the women of that country. So that they went about in poverty and sometimes even in rags. On earth, he said, they must prepare for their heavenly home. And in the heavenly home all was pure and fair and refined. So all must become pure and fair on earth in preparation. They must work and save and live better. If they did this the Lord would bless them and welcome them into his everlasting home. Amen.
The preacher beckoned to Sally McClure who was first in the line. She went forward, feeling the way with her toes for she had walked the creek barefoot before and knew how treacherous the rocks could be. It would be a disastrous thing, remembered for years by the whole community, if she slipped and fell.
Leading Sally by the hand, the preacher backed out into the water until he was up to his waist. Sally shivered as the cold water struck her body. And she was shivering partly from excitement already, for she knew the eyes of the congregation were on her. At a certain spot, when the water was just above Sally’s waist the preacher turned her toward the congregation. He put one hand behind her head, the other on her forehead, and saying the mystic words, dipped her until she was completely covered with water. She came up coughing and he held her until she recovered and could walk to the edge of the creek. There Sally Swain met her with a blanket from the store and covered her. This covering was for warmth and also for modesty. The wet robe stuck fast to the young girl’s body.
Minnie Hawkins was next in the line of girls. She had just reached the preacher and was ready to be immersed when a low sound went up from the congregation. The sound was like a hive of bees beginning to swarm. It swelled in places and as it died down in one place grew louder in another. Minnie tried to raise her head, for she heard the commotion distinctly. The preacher paid no attention and held Minnie’s head firmly under his hand. These excitements sometimes happened and he had found it best whether in church or outside to pay no attention, but to let the excitement pass off of itself.
His back was turned and neither he nor Minnie, whose head he held fast, could see Kirk McClure sitting astride a horse on the opposite bank of the stream. Kirk had ridden up so quietly no one had seen until the horse’s forefeet were already in the water. He must have been waiting behind a thicket for the moment when Minnie Hawkins went in.
He was riding the preacher’s horse. Everyone recognized the saddle bags. Kirk began to cross the creek. No one ever found out what he had expected to do. Perhaps his coming was simply a show for Minnie. The water came up to the horse’s belly and in places above it. The horse slipped on the stones and splashed the water over Kirk. It glittered over him in the afternoon sunshine. All this took only a moment, that moment when the preacher laid his hand on Minnie’s forehead and began saying the words over her. At that moment Kirk reached them. He had on his old felt hat, turned up in front. Leaning across the saddle he took the hat off with a flourish right under the nose of the preacher. Minnie saw him as he had meant her to. She jerked away from the horse and rider with a single startled movement. And she slipped on the rocks. As she slid into the water both her hands grasped at the preacher’s robe. His feet teetered on the round stones and in another second he was under the water with Minnie. The two scrambled and fought under the water and might have choked each other if help had not come. At first people were too shocked to move. They were shocked into a stillness like death. Even Kirk sat on the horse without moving, a dazed look on his face. But he was the first to get in the water. And it was Kirk who forced Minnie’s arms from around the preacher and set them both on their feet. Before the men could reach them, Kirk had swung the horse around and splashed out of the water. He rode through the excited crowd of people on the bank and galloped up the road.
It was some time before the baptizing could proceed. The preacher was helped on to the bank and sat there panting until his breath came regularly again. Sally Swain wrapped Minnie in the blanket and took her to the dressing place.
There was so much excitement, it was not until the next day people began to ask themselves and each other whether Minnie Hawkins had actually been baptized. The preacher had begun the words, but no one had heard him finish. And he never told anyone. Since he never again asked Minnie to join the church, many people came to the conclusion that he had finished the words and Minnie was saved. But others disagreed, and this baptism was the subject of many discussions for years afterward, especially when Minnie herself later became the chief subject of talk in the community.