LADY IRON-HEELS[3]
OneSaturday in May I was hurrying from mountainous North Carolina into mountainous Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of alarm, I was followed by the Seven Suspicions. I was either a revenue detective in pursuit of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by revenue detectives, or a thief hurrying out of hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuing a thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying toward a Tennessee feud, actually an armedrecruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditary enemy and was eluding his avengers, or I had bought some moonshine whisky and was trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall. These suspicions implied that the inhabitants admired me. Yet I hurried.
I came upon one article of my creed, the very next day, Sunday. But Saturday was a season of panic, preparation, and trial.
The article of my creed that I won as my reward might be stated in this fashion: “Peace is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose.”
I was accustomed to the feudist and the assassin. Such people had been good to me, and I had walked calmly through their haunts. But now the smothering landscape seemed to double every natural fear. The hills were so steep and so close together that only the indomitable corn and rye climbed to the top to see the sun. The road was in the bed of a scolding rivulet. People in general travelled horseback. Cross-logs for those afoot bridged high above the streams every half mile. There was a primeval something about the heavy chains of the cross-logs, binding them to the trees, that suggested the forgotten beginningof an iron people, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. This impression was strengthened by the unpainted dwellings, hunched close to the path, with thick walls to resist siege.
What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a nest, with a ring of houseless open country round them? A traveller was more shut from the horizon than in the slums of Chicago. The road climbed no summits. It writhed like a snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves on every other cross-log.And there was never a flower to be seen.
An old woman, kindly enough, gave this beggar a noon-meal for the asking, but the landscape had struck into me so I almost feared to eat the bread. For this fear I sternly blamed my perverse imagination. Refreshed in body only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged by occult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as though I had reached the very heart of the trap when I stepped into the streets of the profane village of Flagpond, Tennessee.
It was early in the afternoon. The feudal warriors had come to the place on horseback, dressed in poverty-stricken Saturday finery: clothes tight and ill-dyed, with black felt hatsthat should have slouched, but did not. The immaculate rims stood out in queer precision. The wearers sat in front of the three main stores, looking across the street at one another. Since there was no woman in sight, every one knew that the shooting might begin at any time. The silence was deadly as the silence of a plague. I checked my pace. I ambled in a leisurely way from store to store, inquiring the road to Cumberland Gap, the distance to Greenville, and the like. I was on the other side of the circle of dwellings pretty soon, followed by the Seven Suspicions, shot from about seventy-five lean countenances, which makes about five hundred and twenty-five suspicions.
One of the most indescribable and haunting things of that region was that all the women and children were dressed in a certain dead-bone gray.
About four o’clock I had made good my escape. I had begun to mount rolling, uninhabited hills. At twilight I entered a plain, and felt a new kind of civilization round me. It would have been shabby in Indiana. Here it was glorious. They had whitewashed fences, and white-painted cottages, glimmering kindlythrough the dusk. Some farm machinery was rusting in the open. I climbed a last year’s straw-stack, and slept, with acres of stars pouring down peace.
Now the story begins all over again with the episode of the well-known tailor and the unknown florist. Just off the main street of Greenville, Tennessee, there is a log cabin with the century old inscription,Andrew Johnson, Tailor. That sign is the fittest monument to the indomitable but dubious man who could not cut the mantle of the railsplitter to fit him. I was told by the citizens of Greenville that there was a monument to their hero on the hill. So I climbed up. It was indeed wonderful—a weird straddling archway, supporting an obelisk. The archway also upheld two flaming funeral urns with buzzard contours, and a stone eagle preparing to screech. There was a dog-eared scroll inscribed, “His faith in the people never wavered.” Around all was, most appropriately, a spiked fence.
But I was glad I came, because near the Tailor’s resting-place was a Florist’s grave, on which depends the rest of this adventure, and which reaches back to the beginning of it. It had a wooden headstone, marked “John Kenton of Flagpond, Florist. 1870-1900.” And in testimony to his occupation, a great rosebush almost hid the inscription. Any man who could undertake to sell flowers in Flagpond might have it said of him also, “His faith in the people never wavered.”
And now in my tramping the spirit of John Kenton, or some other Florist, seemed to lead me. My season of panic, preparation, and trial was over. It was indeed Sunday on this planet for awhile. I passed bush after bush of the same sort as that marking Kenton’s place of sleep. The sight of them was all that I had to give me strength till noon. I had had neither breakfast nor supper. People would have fed this poor tramp, but I love sometimes the ecstasy that comes with healthy fasting. And now that I reflect upon it, it was indeed appropriate that the Religion of the Rose should begin with abstinence.
I have burdened you further back with anelaborate description of the landscape of Flagpond. Now that landscape was repeated with the addition of roses. And what a difference they made! They quenched the Seven Suspicions. They made gray dresses seem rather tolerable. On either side loomed the steepest cornfields yet, but they did not make me tremble now.
At noon I turned aside where a log cabin on stilts, leaning against its own chimney, stood astride a little gully. It was about as big as a dove-cote. Straggling rose-hedges led to the green-banked spring at the foot of a ladder that took the place of steps. The old lady that came to the door was a dove in one respect only; she was dressed in gray.
She was drawn to the pattern of the tub-like peasants of the German funny paperSimplicissimus. I told her my name was Nicholas. She took it for granted that I wanted my dinner, and asked me up the ladder without ado. She did an unusual thing. She began to talk family affairs. “You must be kin to Lawyer Nicholas of Flagpond.... He defended my son ten years ago ... in a trial for murder.”
I said: “I am no kin to Lawyer Nicholas, but I hope he won his case.”
“No. My son is in the state’s prison for life.... He surely killed Florist Kenton.” But she added, as if it nullified all guilt, “they were both drunk.”
She was busy cooking at the open fireplace. She turned to the boy, about ten years old. “Call your Ma and your Aunt to dinner.” He climbed the steep and shouted. Presently two figures came over the ridge. The larger woman took the boy’s hand.
“That’s my daughter-in-law, the boy’s mother,” said Mrs. Simplicissimus.
I judged the second figure to be a woman of about twenty-eight. She carried a fence-rail on her shoulder. She was straight as an Indian. The old woman said: “That’s my daughter. She was going to marry John Kenton.” The only influences that could have induced a mountain-woman to unburden so much, were the roses, just outside the door, leaping in the wind.
The procession soon reached us. The wood-carrier threw the log into the yard. “There’s firewood,” she sang. She vaulted over the fence, displaying iron-heeled brogans, thick red stockings, and a red-lined skirt. There was asmear of earth on cheek and chin. Her face was a sunburned, dust-mired roseleaf. She swept off her hat. She bowed ironically. She said: “Howdy. What might be your name?”
I did not tell my name.
She fell on her knees. She drank from her hands at the spring. I could feel the cold water warring with the sunshine in her sinews. She would never have done with splashing eyelids and ears, and cheeks and red arms and throat. The rosebushes behind her leaped in the wind. The boy and his mother and the grandmother knelt at that same place and splashed after that same manner. Then the grandmother nudged me.
“Wash,” she said.
I washed.
We climbed into that dove-cote block-house on stilts. We ate like four plough-horses and a colt. We consumed corn-bread and fat pork, then corn-bread and beans, then corn-bread and butter. I ate supper, breakfast, and dinner in three quarters of an hour.
Working a farm of fields that stand on edge, without men to help, and without much machinery, makes women into warriors or kills them. The grandmother and mother were no longer women. Even when they caressed the boy their faces were furrowed with invincible will-power. But Lady Iron-Heels still a woman, was confused in the alternative of manhood or death. She was indeed a flower not yet torn to pieces by the wind, greatly shaken, and therefore blooming the faster.
There was a red ribbon streaming over the gray rag-carpet. Lady Iron-Heels stooped, gave the ribbon a jerk, and a banjo came snarling from under the bed.
She sat on the warring colors of the crazy-quilt, and played a dance-tune, storming the floor with one heel. She grew pensive. She sang:—
“We shall rest in the fair and happy landJust across on the ever-green shore,Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (by and by)And dwell with Jesus evermore.”
“We shall rest in the fair and happy landJust across on the ever-green shore,Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (by and by)And dwell with Jesus evermore.”
“We shall rest in the fair and happy land
Just across on the ever-green shore,
Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (by and by)
And dwell with Jesus evermore.”
Her neck had a yellow handkerchief round it. A brown lock swept across her leaping throat. Her cheeks and chin were bold as her iron heels. Underneath the precious silken sunburn, the blood was beating, beating, and trying to thicken into manhood to fight off death.
After the music the ladies dipped snuff in the circle around the dim fire.
I made a great palaver to Iron-Heels about giving me the banjo ribbon. She consented easily. Coquetry was not her specialty.
“What might be your name?” she asked.
There was no dodging now. The old woman spoke up as though to save me pain: “His name is Nicholas. But he is no kin to Lawyer Nicholas of Flagpond.”
After a long silence the girl said: “We came from Flagpond, once upon a time.”
She had been looking out the door at the clear bowl of the spring, and the reflection of the tall bushes, leaping in the wind.
I thought to myself: “She herself was John Kenton’s chief rose.” I thought: “He had her in mind when he set these ameliorating bushes through the wild.” Possibly the girl could not read or write. Yet she was royal.
Democracy has the ways of a jackdaw. Democracy hides jewels in the ash-heap. Democracy is infinitely whimsical. Every once in a while a changeling appears, not like any of the people around, a changeling whose real ancestors are aristocratic souls forgotten for centuries. As the girl’s eyes narrowed, she became Queen Thi, the masterful and beautiful potentate of immemorial Egypt whose face I have seen in a museum, carved on a Canopic jar. She was Queen Thi only an instant, then she became a Tennessee girl again, with the eyes of a weary doe.
She said: “Them roses give me comfort. That’s all the church I get.”
I asked: “Why are there so many roses between here and Greenville and none near Flagpond?”
It was her turn not to speak. The old woman as though to save her pain, answered: “The flowers of these parts were all brought in byJohn Kenton. He lived in Flagpond, but could not sell them there.”
And the mother of the little boy, the man-woman, whose husband had killed Kenton, broke her long silence: “The only flowers we have to-day are these he brought. I think we would die without them.... How do we get through the winter?”
Lady Iron-Heels and her sister-in-law took a swig of whisky from the jug under the table, and lifted up their hoes from the floor. The boy whimpered for a drink. They said: “Wait till you are a man.” All three climbed the hill.
Lady Iron-Heels was the last to go over the ridge. She saw me gather buds from both those bushes by the spring. She made a gesture of salute with her hoe.
I never travelled that way again. I passed by quickly; therefore I had a glimpse of what she was intended to be. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” I see her many a time when I am looking on scattered rose-leaves. She was a woman, God’s chief rose for man. She was scorned and downtrodden, but radiant still. I am only saying that she wore the face of Beauty when Beauty rises above circumstance.
The buds that I had gathered did not fall to pieces till I had passed by Daniel Boone’s old trail on through Cumberland Gap, on over big hill Kentucky into the Blue Grass. On the way I wrote this, their poor memorial, the Canticle of the Rose:—
It is an article of my creed that the petals of this flower of which we speak are a medicine, that they can almost heal a mortal wound.
The rose is so young of face and line, she appears so casually and humbly, we forget she is an ancient physician.
Yet so much tradition is wrapped around her stalk, it is strange she is not a mummy. Her ashes can be found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, in everlasting companionship with the ashes of the lotus and the papyrus plant. Her dust travels on every desert wind.
No love-song can do without her.
No soldier and no priest can scorn her. There were the Wars of the Roses. And there was a Rose in Sharon. Our wandering brother Dante found a great rose in Paradise.
There are white roses, sweet ghosts under the pine. There are yellow roses, little suns in the shadow. But the normal bloom is red,flushed with foolish ardors, laughing, shaking off the gossamer years. She remembers Love, but not too well, if love is pain. There is no yesterday that can daunt her and keep her dear heart-laughter down. In springtime her magic petals bring God to the weary and give Heaven’s strength to the wavering of heart.
She can turn the slave to a woman, the woman to something a little more than mortal. Oh, how bravely, with the same life-giving red, with the last of her virgin strength, she blooms and blooms on almost every highway. We find her on the road to Benares, on the road to Mecca, on the road to Rome, and on the road to Nowhere, in Tennessee.
Her red petals can almost heal a mortal wound.