The Saints of Swallow Hill(15)

When she went in to see what she might do to help, only wanting to ease his suffering, before she could speak a word, he barked at her, “It ain’t a thing to be done but to let me be!”

This short temper wasn’t like him. It was the pain speaking, so she said nothing and backed out of the room. Butch happened by, and she really wasn’t in the mood for his wisecracks, but after going in to see Warren, he came back out, his face filled with concern.

He said, “You ain’t got him no doctor yet?”

Rae Lynn shook her head. “He don’t want one, Butch.”

“Maybe you ought to get him anyway. Don’t listen to Warren, he’s always been like’at.”

“He won’t let him see him, even if I did.”

Butch scratched his head. “I reckon that’d be like him too.” He looked back toward the room, and Warren wheezed out, “I can hear you. No. Damn. Doctor!”

Rae Lynn raised an eyebrow, and Butch shrugged, then left.

Evening became nightfall, bringing a hint of relief from what had been a hot, humid day. The sun was below the trees, and the creaking of crickets and tiny blinking orbs of fireflies at the edge of the woods signaled day giving in to night. Under normal circumstances, they’d sit out on their porch, her shelling peas or maybe doing some mending by the dim light of a lantern. Warren would roll a cigarette, have him a smoke, and talk about the next day, what they might get done. She stepped outside now and took several deep breaths as a light breeze sifted through the pines, whistling soft and low. It stopped, then came again, as if Mother Nature breathed with her. She turned her face into it, and a tear or two slid off her chin. Aggravated, she rubbed her face dry. It would be all right. Tomorrow when the sun rose, Warren would be better, she told herself as she hugged her arms tight around her body. She had to believe this.

After a couple of sunrises and sunsets, Rae Lynn started losing track of how many days had come and gone. She’d had little sleep, so little in fact she almost dozed off while standing at the stove frying fatback one hot morning. Why cook? She was the only one able to eat, and she didn’t feel much like it any more than Warren. He did nothing but stare out the bedroom window, maybe traveling in his mind on where he ought to be, or what he should be doing. Every once in a while, he glared at her, and she thought maybe he resented her refusal to help him the day it happened. It got to where when she entered the room, no longer would he turn his head toward her, speak to her. They had argued about the doctor once more. Sometimes he acted confused, fretful, and if he didn’t act that way, he yelled at her. The day before, he’d even started crying. She’d never seen him cry before except over his old hound dog, Bessie, and it had scared her.

She’d rushed to the bedside, asked him, “You hurting, is it pain?”

He apparently wanted to drown her out, because he wailed louder, beating his fists against the sheet. She went to take his hand, and he pulled it away.

He gathered enough strength to say, “Leave. Leave me alone.”

“But, Warren . . .”

“Out. Out!”

She didn’t know what else to do but as he said. She left his side, certain the gloomy heaviness within the room was Death, watching patiently from a corner.





Chapter 5


Del


At the crossroads, Tom pointed to a sign tacked to a big oak tree, crudely painted with the words SWALLOW HILL WORK CAMP and an arrow pointing right. The sun was overhead, high noon. Del made his way to the front, and Tom reached out a hand.

Del shook it and said, “Thankee kindly.”

Tom said, “Good luck.”

He pulled away and Del stood for a moment, watching the three blond heads bobbing in the back. He gave another little wave, and the oldest boy returned it. The walk was easy, and Del’s legs felt fresh, rested from the ride. He made his way along a narrow dirt road where mule-drawn wagons had destroyed anything growing in the hard-packed soil, except for the hardiest of weeds. He swung his arms, suddenly filled with anticipation at being in a different area. As he walked, the wildflowers occasionally offered a bright spot against a dry, sunburnt landscape. Everything had its moment in time. Maybe here he could start afresh, put the grain bin incident behind him, return to normal. Be his old self again.

He smelled the camp before it came into view, the pungent odor of the turpentine still, the smoke of wood burning, and the scent of pines. He came from North Carolina, the state once a prime producer of naval stores. Eventually, the longleaf pines were tapped out, and the industry migrated south to Georgia and Florida like birds do. All too soon, the longleaf version once so abundant in all the Southern states was decimated, and a lot of the trees ended up on the ground. Wooden corpses. Not from the scarification to create the signature “catfaces,” but from the old technique of chipping boxes to hold gum at their base. When strong storms came through, it would sometimes push them over. Ultimately the trees could no longer be worked because the chevron patterns reached as high as a worker could get, even when using a special tool called a puller. At that point, some were harvested for timber, while many remained, their ghostlike catfaces stamped on the trunks, a symbol of bygone times.

His family history was in turpentining. His granddaddy had worked as a woods rider in the camps, and so had his pap. Del was always right by their sides and learned about chipping, dipping, and tacking tin from a variety of teachers, coloreds and whites alike. His granddaddy had planted trees on the land where he’d grown up, alongside his own granddaddy, for a turpentine business one day, they said. Those trees were coming into maturity now. It took at least fifty years, and though Del had yet to return home to work them, he thought about it often, knew one day he’d go back, when the time was right.