IIIUNCONSCIOUS MENTALITY
What their acquaintances called an “understanding,” existed between Arsula Jordan and Thaddeus Garrett and he had taken her with him up on the mountain to consult Dan Cutter about hauling the timber for a new house. Their horse, Beauregard, having taken the road leisurely, eleven o’clock found them winding along the downhill road but still two miles from their homes in the village.
On their right the Junaluska swirled between its wooded banks. The moon was on their right too,throwing shadows across their road, dense or skeleton, as evergreen or deciduous trees obstructed its radiance.
“I think I see things a-skulkin’ ’cross the road,” said Arsula, crowding Thad more closely; “do you reckon any wild-cats could have come down off the Bald?”
“It’s only the shadders a-shiftin’ theirselves when the wind bends the trees; I didn’t reckon you was that scary, Suly; why there’s nothin’ to be scairt of;I’mhere Suly! AndIain’t scairt of anything that travels these yer mountings—leastwise not of anything in flesh and blood.”
“Well I ain’t scart of anything thatisn’tflesh and blood.”
“You say you ain’t?”
“La, no; I don’t b’lieve in ha’nts.”
“You say you don’t?”
“No I don’t; I b’lieve that when a body’s once plumb dead andburied in the ground, he ain’t goin’ to show hisself on the top side of the earth again till judgment day.
“Oh lawdy!” the ejaculation was only aspirated, and Thad brought Beauregard to a stand without speaking to him. They were at a bend of the road where it crossed the river. Above the ford, dark hemlocks arched the stream and the foot log lay in their dense shadow. Upon it something moved like a pale gray cloud, not outlined against the blackness, but softly blending with it.
Beauregard saw it too and pricked up his ears. Thad wound the reins round his right hand and even brought his left into action though with a soft apology to Suly:
“Looks like I might want all the hands I’ve got to hold him. You take a tight holt of me,” he counselled under his breath and, as the spectre neared the farther side, proceeded chidingly: “It’s powerfultriflin’, Suly, to go to talkin’ ’bout ha’nts when you’re out in the woods at night—it’s tollable sure to call ’em up”—a rustling among the dry leaves under the bushes changed the course of his remarks.
“If the durn thing ’ud move a little faster, I’d drive into the water and stand a spell; witches and ha’nts and all them things is shy of water.” There was a closer scurry among the leaves and at a twitch of the reins Beauregard drew them into the ford and stopped there in obedience to another silent signal.
Above the rustling they heard a panting breath, and another ghost, a nimbler one, was on the log, a light, flying shadow against the dark, stationary ones.
“Sho,” said Suly, “it’s only a dog.” She started to whistle but Thad clapped his hand over her mouth:
“For gracious sake, Suly, don’t do that—it’s awful darin’.”
She was gurgling and spurting in an effort to regain her right of free speech when together the apparitions seemed to slip off the log upon the other side.
“I tell you it’s Colonel Ledbetter’s Dixie,” she cried as a dog frisked out into the moonlight; “and sure’s you’re born that’s little Grover Cleveland! and he’s walkin’ in his sleep again—poor little soul! Git up Beau!” She clutched at the reins, but Thad caught her hand.
“Poor little soul!” she repeated. “His gran’daddy’d go plumb distracted if he knowed that little soul was out on the mountings this time o’ night; nothin’ on him either, I reckon, but just his little shirt! Thad, if you don’t drive on right now, I’ll jump into the crick, I vow I will! I want to get my hands on him—poor little soul!”
When Beauregard trailed out upon the other side Suly leaped to the ground. “I want to see how he looks when he’s took this-a-way.”
The boy was several rods ahead trudging abstractedly along, his little, faded, blue-checked shirt playing about his knees, his bare feet taking the road unhesitatingly, his half-closed eyes looking neither right nor left nor seemingly before him. Curious, pitiful, Arsula walked beside him for a few steps in silence. He didn’t hear her nor the creak of the wagon behind her. His physical senses were in suspension. He was intently acting out some dream that dominated his little brain.
Head and tail adroop, Dixie was following so closely that now and again his muzzle touched the little loosely hanging hand. He seemed to take no more notice of Arsula as she came abreast than did his childmaster; buthewas not walking in his sleep, for, though his dejected head never swerved, his eyes turned sidewise in their sockets and his lips wrinkled in very unbecoming folds above his teeth.
“Grover Cleveland,” Suly spoke softly, for, despite her brave common sense, she felt awed in this presence of a ruling, supernatural mentality; besides she wanted to spare the little favourite the shock of a too sudden awakening. But the boy walked on.
“Grover Cleveland, oh, Grover Cleveland!” she said more emphatically and gently put out her hand to take him by the shoulder.
“Gr-r-r-r-r-r!” said Dixie.
“Now look here Dixie Ledbetter,” she scolded severely, “you needn’t go to putting on any such airs as that when I’m around. I wouldn’t do Grover Cleveland mean a mite sooner’n you would, and you knowit. And more than that, if I’d been in your place I’d have found some way to wake him up before he’d tramped this far in the cold. And more than that, t’other side the ford you went tearin’ off after a rabbit or a ’possum or a coon, and left him to find his way all by hisself. Now you get over there and don’t you say no more tome!”
Ashamed of his shortcomings or awed by her gestures, which were imperious, Dixie slunk to the other side of his master who, partially recovered by the unusual tones, came to a stand dazed and trembling.
“Poor little soul!” she said dropping to her knees and putting her arms about him. “Wake up, dear, and don’t you be scairt a mite, for it’s only Suly; you know Suly, don’t you?” her voice broke and a tear or two ran over her cheeks.
The child, coming slowly back toconsciousness, gazed blankly into her face, then turned and peered into the woods, drawing his breath in hard, dry sobs. Then he recognized Dixie and felt of his tattered ears with a weakly caressing motion.
“Yes, Dixie’s here,” coaxed Suly, “and I’m here and Thad’s here with the wagon and we’re goin’ to carry you right home to your gran’daddy.”
By now Thaddeus was beside them. “Well, what about it!” was all he could say, but he acted promptly upon Suly’s bidding and lifted the boy into the wagon.
Suly wrapped him in a time-worn blanket of confederate gray that had been doing duty as a cushion and set him between them.
“Now where was you a-goin’ to?” interrogated the amazed Thaddeus, taking up the reins and driving slowly on.
“I—don’t—know,” sobbed the child.
“Why he was going home,” kindly assisted Suly.
“Where have you been at?” persisted Thaddeus.
“I—don’t—know.”
“Well how’d yougithere, anyway?”
“Now Thad, you quit pesterin’ him,” commanded Suly.
By now the boy was quite himself and making desperate efforts to breathe without sobbing. “It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help,” he faltered, and the girl essayed to change the current of his thoughts.
“You knowed your Aunt Carliny and little Jakey had come back here to live, didn’t you, Grover Cleveland?”
“She done gran’daddy mean,” answered the boy and added after a long, tremulous breath, “Jakey’s shoes is wore out.”
They drove on in silence. Whenthe boy had become quiet and too sleepy, Arsula believed, to take notice of what she was saying, she ventured to relieve her mind of some of its distracting emotions.
“If Carliny was where she’d ought to be, a-keepin’ house for her father, this little soul’d never get out of the house at night without her knowin’ it—I’m plumb sure of that. To think of her livin’ away off up there in that gully where nary somebody passes, month in and month out, in a ole hut with nothin’ but a dirt floor and no window; and chinks between the logs that you can put your hand into and her father the best-off man round yer! What you reckon he’d say if they was found froze plumb to death? And he such a powerful pious man and a-standin’ way up high in the church! Free-handed too—where he takes a notion—givin’ the preacher his rent freeand all the wood he’s a mind to cut and haul and all the apples and corn and potatoes he’s a mind to harvest; and a-pilin’ up fodder stacks close to ole Mis’ Jimson’s fence and a-pullin’ out a rail with his own hands so’s her ole cow can get her head through and help herself.
“Carliny told me with her own lips that after she and her boy had come all the way from Yancey County—mighty nigh every step afoot too—her father wouldn’t let her in. She wouldn’t have come—for she’s got along tollable since she’s been a widow—only but she heard that he and Grover Cleveland wasn’t doin’ any good a housekeepin’ by theirselves; and it hurt her powerful to think that her sister Missouri’s little boy wasn’t gettin’ the right kind of care.
“Everybody’s clean done out about it. The preacher, he set outto labour with him, but Colonel Ledbetter he give him to understand that he was oversteppin’ his authority and since then nary neighbour darst speak up. But I’d give a pretty to tell Colonel Ledbetter whatIthink of him, and I aim to do it this very night.”
“Don’t you, Suly; ole man Ledbetter ain’t pleasant to talk to when he’s riled.”
There came the sound of some one tearing through the woods, and Thad brought Beauregard to a sudden stand. “Here we are,” he shouted.
“You-all got him!” called a quavering voice out of the darkness.
“Got him sure-’nough, Colonel Ledbetter. Captured him way off down by the ford!”
“I been trampin’ the woods for a hour lookin’ for him and I’m hoarse as a crow callin’ for him. Is he dressed up much?”
“Not much. Some durn fools would have took him for a ha’nt but I don’t never run from nothin’ and Suly here, she’s some spunky too.”
They drove slowly to the house the old man keeping abreast. The door stood open and from within shone the light of a flickering hearth fire.
Grover Cleveland shed his blanket, sprang over the wheel while it was yet in motion, and fled into the house and out of sight.
The old man chuckled. “The little feller’s right much ashamed of hisself when he’s found out in one of his spells. I reckon he cried some when you-all woke him up—he gen’ally does.
“Them that’s had nothin’ to cry for’s the ones that’s done the cryin’,” teased Thad.
“I don’t care if I did,” said Suly preparing to accept the invitation to “stop in by a spell.” “It mustbe a mighty nasty feelin’ to wake up in the woods at night and not know how you got there.”
“So it is, so it is,” said Colonel Ledbetter leading the way into the house. “I ain’t no mind to be stern with him, for he comes true and honest by the trick. I done it myself when I was a boy.”
He replenished the fire and lit a candle.
“He sleeps right there betwixt me and the wall,” he pointed to a bed in the corner, “and I can’t contrive how he manages to give me the slip so often; he’s got some sort of sleepin’ slyness that he ain’t no more notion of when he’s awake, than a angel. Barricadin’ the door ain’t no good. One night I tied him fast to my wrist so’s he couldn’t move without wakin’ me up, but that seemed to hurt the little fellow’s feelin’s powerful an’ I didn’t try it again.”
Nothing was to be seen of Grover Cleveland. Suly went to the bed.
“I should think he’d smother to death,” she said, “he’s drawed the Valley of the Mississippi clean over his head and he’s fast asleep.” She arranged a little breathing place for him.
The old man came and stood beside her.
“I helped quilt this quilt,” she went on, carefully folding it away from the face of the child, “it was the first quiltin’ party I ever went to and I took the tuck out of my frock to go. This was the first Valley of the Mississippi ever seen round yer and Missouri was mighty proud of it; she had the pattern sent from Georgy.”
“Them blue pieces over there,” said the old man, “is pieces of her frock; it was a store frock; and these yer streaked pieces on this side” (he traced them with an unsteady finger),“was my wife’s. Grover Cleveland, he calls that side his, because it’s pieces of his mother’s frock, and this side mine and he won’t never get into bed till his half’s on his side.”
Suly lifted a corner of the quilt into the light; “Here’s some of Carliny’s frock,” she led, but he would not follow.
“I bought Grover Cleveland a pair of boots this mornin’ and he was the proudest little somebody you ever looked at. Now where is them boots at?”—he was looking under the bed—“he set ’em up right here as careful as if they was glass and they was there after he went to sleep.”
This owner in fee-simple of eleven hundred acres of land, more or less, was living in one room and dishes, cooking utensils, clothing, shovels, rakes and various paraphernalia of his farming and housekeeping operationswere littered about in bewildering confusion. He moved everything in his search for the boots, Arsula assisting.
“Carliny’s a mighty good housekeeper,” she remarked as she shook out and hung up some wearing apparel that had been piled in a corner. “She’d make things look a heap different if she was here.”
“Was he barefoot when you come acrost him?”
“Yes. Carliny, she’d manage it so that poor little soul wouldn’t go caperin’ about at night.”
“Them boots has taken to theirselves wings.”
“I’m afraid Carliny’s goin’ to freeze to death up there this winter—or starve—one.”
“Them boots had blue tops; they was Grover Cleveland’s own choice; blue always takes his eye.”
“It’s time we was movin’ on, Suly,” said Thad going to the door.
The girl had to stop beating the bush. “Carliny and Jakey ain’t a-doin’ any good up there, Colonel Ledbetter; they’re both a-lookin’ puny. She wants you and you want her, and Grover Cleveland, he wants her powerful, poor little soul! ’Tain’t right, nor Christian, nor human, nor common sense, nor horse sense, nor nonsense, nor any kind of sense for you to be so set. She’s your own flesh”—she stopped, awed by his steady stare at her.
“You go home,” he said, “and you sew the tuck back into that ar frock you wore to Missouri’s quiltin’ and you wear it and be a little gal again till you’re smart enough not to handle no such talk as that in my house. Carliny, she made her own bed and thar she must lie. I told her when she married that ar no-’count that she shouldn’t never put foot into house of mine again; and you go ask your daddy if heever knowed a Ledbetter to go back on his word. And I’m bringin’ up Grover Cleveland the same way; he believes like I do; he thinks Carliny’d ought to go her own gait now.”
Arsula went out of the house with her hand to her eyes.
“I ’low you mean right,” he said softening a little, “and I’m a heap o’ times obliged to you for bringin’ him home, but you ain’t no call to go to interferin’ inmyfamily affairs.”
All the next day Grover Cleveland hunted for his boots. “I sot ’em right here,” he said, “and I ain’t touched ’em since.” In the house he had turned every thing over and over again, had gone through the barn and out-houses in the same way and at sundown was searching the woods when Arsula a-mule-back rode up to the house. Colonel Ledbetter was chopping wood but he put down his axe and went to her.
“I’ve come from Carliny’s,” she said, “and here’s them blue-top boots. Carliny found ’em outside her door this morning and she’d no more notion than the dead whose they was or how they got there, till I told her ’bout last night.”
The old man turned them in his hands confusedly. “If Grover Cleveland took these boots up thar last night,” he said, “his sleepin’ opinion is a heap different from his wakin’ opinion. When he’s awake he ’grees with me; he thinks if she was so set on goin’ her own gait, now she’d ought to keep on goin it.”
Arsula rode off and he went into the house and tucked the boots out of sight.
By the by his grandson came in dispirited and weary, ate a little supper, and crept away under his side of the Valley of the Mississippi.
“He ain’t eatin’ as much as he’dought to,” mused his grandfather as he scraped the remnant of their meal upon the hearth for Dixie. “If Missouri was alive she’d make somethin’ to tempt his appetite, but I ’low I ain’t got the sleight o’ cookin’.” He went to the bed and tucked the quilt closely about the child’s shoulders.
“He’ll lay quiet enough to-night; I never knowed him to get up two nights runnin’. Seem like he gets scairt and keeps still a spell. I’m mighty nigh beat out myself, bein’ up so late yesterday evenin’; I reckon I can sleep without any rockin’,” and he went to bed.
He awoke after a three-hours’ nap. The room was cold and his first thought was to see if the Valley of the Mississippi was doing its duty by his grandson. It was not; and when he attempted to pull it into place he found there was no grandson there; neither did there appearto be a complement of the Valley of the Mississippi.
“Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland!” he shouted and the only answer was a stampede of rats from the hearth. He got up, lighted his candle, and held it low over the bed. The boy was surely gone. He pulled the quilt toward him and as he did so the big old shears that served them in their various household operations fell to the floor. The quilt had been cut through from end to end; the side containing the striped pieces had been left in its place but the blue had disappeared!
He got into his clothes and hurrying out among the shadows of the moonlight night took his direction with the certainty of prescience. When he set foot upon the highroad, he began to follow by sight, for, excepting where the shadows were heaviest, he could discern the littletrudging figure of Grover Cleveland, its outline marred by something slung in man-like fashion across his shoulder and by the dog following closely.
He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second. Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false step”; and, like Suly, he was awed.
As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but, though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat ready for a plunge if emergency called for it.
They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a furlongor more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was ordered into line again.
Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man put aside with his hands.
At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin, built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay and stonesthat showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood.
Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.”
Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his fists. Suddenly he shouted:
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! here’s the Valley of the Mississippi cut plumb in half and your part’s here and”—he wriggled to the floor and grabbed his gran’daddy by the shoulder—“where’s my half gone to, gran’daddy?” Without waiting for an answer the child went back to the bed and made a more thorough examination.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! don’t you reckon ’twas a mighty low-down somebody to do that trick?”
“I ’low ’twas, Grover Cleveland—that is, if he knowed what he was doin’, ’twas.”
The boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“Maybe you been a-performin’ in your sleep again, Grover Cleveland.”
“No I ain’t gran’daddy, no I ain’t,” the blue eyes were very earnest. “I done been in bed close up to you all night.”
“Maybe you have, Grover Cleveland, but ’pears like you overslept yourself a spell this morning. There’s the pone and some bacon keeping warm for you by the fire.”
Puzzled that his grandfather didn’t take a more active interest in the calamity that had befallen him, the boy ran half-dressed to the door.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! whatyou got Bonaparte and Butterfly geared up to the cart for?”
“I been down to Junaluska. And now you eat your breakfast quick, and we’ll go hunt up your half of the Valley of the Mississippi; and you put on them blue-top boots Grover Cleveland; them old shoes lets the water in.”
“Why them boots is done gone!” he shook his grandfather as if to wake him up, “don’t you ’member—oh-ee-ee,” he went diving under the bed and, coming up again with the blue-tops hugged close to his breast and another pair in his hand, stood before his grandfather dumb as to the vocal organs but his eyes questioning wildly.
“Them red-tops is for Jakey.”
“You aim to carry them boots up to him, gran’daddy?”
“No, gran’son, I aim to bring Jakey down to the boots.”
In the Ledbetter home thatafternoon Carolina dropped the broom as two little boys came frolicking about her, and capturing the larger one, she squeezed him rapturously!
“If you ever get out of this house at night again, Grover Cleveland,” she said, “you’ll be smarter than I am; that’s what.”