Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You Page 5

  “But she wouldn’t give her say, not to Jimmy Keiller so big and strong and willing, nor to Paul O’Dell, who was as wiry and clever and sharp-eyed as a terrier. The reason she would neither yea nor nay was because of her daddy. Daniel was not a cross-grained man except with his daughter. She was his honey darling, the apple of his eye, the one earthly treasure he cared about except for his wife, Martha, and, I suppose, his two ungainly lunkhead sons, Perce and Harry. But Vonda was his favorite. Whenever she came into the room, his face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern and looked mighty nigh as silly as one, to hear Martha tell it. But she was only funning—or, she was mostly funning, being fond of Daniel’s fondness. She did foresee trouble coming with Vonda’s courting days and had advised her daughter to stay quiet and keep her own counsel. ‘Because, daughter,’ she told Vonda, ‘you know your daddy don’t want you to wed, not now nor in time to come. He will have to bow to it someday but will be long a-bending. So if your heart is set on one of these boys, whether it’s Paul O’Dell or Jimmy Keiller, your daddy will be dead against him and will play up the virtues of the other. You had better let him make a choice, and once you’ve seen how the wind blows, you can begin to plan how to do for yourself. And if you do favor one of them, don’t tell me, or your daddy’ll be worming at me night and day to find out.’

  “So that’s what she did, Vonda knowing how canny and experienced her mother was in the ways of her daddy. She smiled at one suitor and she smiled at the other and elsewise kept her mouth still. Her mother might’ve guessed which way her affections tended stronger, but she never said a word, either, and they both waited for Daniel to make some little signal. The boys, Jimmy Keiller and Paul O’Dell, waited, too, but of course didn’t know what they were waiting for and after a while grew impatient, and the warm rivalry began to change into black looks and ugly feelings.

  “Which was a shame because they were both of them worthy young gallants and not the least bit alike. Jimmy was a big strapping lad, dark-haired and pale-complected except when his feelings ran high and his face turned as scarlet as beet juice on a white dinner plate. He was renowned as a fighter in the hamlets and hollers and would go a bout with any boy that looked at him sideways. There was plenty that did; the boys of that generation loved ginger soup and would scrap with one another just to see the stars at noontime. He was well-off, too. His daddy owned the gristmill in the big crook of Buckhorn Creek and had amassed a fortune, according to the rumor. I have doubted about that fortune myself, but the mill brought in a brisk business, and Jimmy was there every day to help his daddy, shouldering the sacks of cornmeal and growing stouter and stouter.

  “His rival for the hand of Vonda was of a different breed. The O’Dells were a silent tribe that mostly kept away from other folks. Not dark and mean and suspicious like the Buggses that lived up by Beaverdam—I’ll tell you about them sometime. But only just quiet and watchful and as poor, as the saying goes, as Job’s turkey. They got to be so silent, I expect, from living on the edge of the forest, where it pays to walk soft and be observant. But you never heard a word against them, not one. People wondered about them but didn’t gossip much. They made their living off the woods, hunting and trapping and collecting herbs and, like as not, learning to go hungry when they had to. Paul was the youngest of four children and didn’t show any sign of breaking with the O’Dell ways. He had spent most of his days and many of his nights deep in the mountains, under the trees. But once he’d glimpsed Vonda Rathbone, he came out into the open like a groundhog to a kitchen garden.

  “So you can see how the choice was not between a Ben Davis apple and a Stayman apple but between two creatures altogether opposite to each other. Between, you might say, a sturdy workhorse and a swift-coursing hound. And you might take for granted that Vonda’s daddy would light on the Keiller boy as his favorite, him blessed with a family business and being a big stout feller like Daniel himself and right well-spoken, too, though maybe a little too loud inside an ordinary dwelling house.

  “But when Daniel made his first little remark, it seemed he was more interested in Paul O’Dell. Of course, the truth was he’d rather have the both of them in the bottom of a well deep in the land of Jericho than mooning around his daughter, but they’d been coming to the house for so long that finally he must’ve reckoned he had to take some notice, so he said, ‘I wouldn’t’ve thought it right off, but that O’Dell boy has some sense in his head.’

  “That was the clue that Vonda and her mother had been waiting for, and they began to examine it as anxiously as a fice dog at a rat hole. What did he mean, saying such a thing? What was Daniel’s plan? Was he trying to smoke Vonda out, or was it just a remark he happened to make between a bite of corn bread and a swaller of coffee? The two women would wait until all the menfolk were out of the house and then they’d debate that one sentence like it was some new verse of Holy Writ. Of course, Martha didn’t tell everything she knew about Vonda’s daddy and his plans, and Vonda was careful to argue both sides of every point equally because she wasn’t going to let her mother know which way she was leaning, not yet. The discussions were fascinating but fruitless, the impasse not breaking until Vonda said, with as careless an air as she could muster, ‘Well, Mama, it seems to me that Jimmy Keiller has advantages as plain to see as the nose on your face.’

  “Martha nodded, just like she had expected all her life to hear this sentence spoken, and then said, ‘I believe the best thing would be to drop a hint to your daddy that you share his interest in Paul O’Dell and then watch him swing over to Jimmy. Then if we can keep him straight in that furrow for a while, we may make some headway.’

  “So that’s what they did, Martha and Vonda both. They began to play up the O’Dell boy, praising his quiet manner and evident thoughtfulness and his clever ways in the woods. Vonda said it was sweet the way he cast his eyes down to the floor when he talked; she didn’t care much for these big old boys with their bold stares. Martha claimed she’d heard he was the best rifle marksman in the region; it was a talent she had never praised before in anyone.

  “When they began to talk in this vein, Daniel turned his mind around, just as his wife had said he would do. He began to speak, though grudgingly, of the favorable qualities of Jimmy Keiller, that boy who was as stout almost as a horse, and showed the spirit he had by speaking out like an honest man, and who possessed no fear to fight any man or boy in Harwood County. Besides all which, there was Jimmy’s daddy and his gristmill and those sacks of money you heard whispers about. But he sang these lauds with such a melancholy air, they sounded like a funeral dirge. He had seen the inevitable coming but hadn’t adjusted his mind to it yet.

  “So, things were going about like Martha expected, pretty much the way she hoped they would. Trouble was, they had not and could not tell the boys what progress was being made, and the situation between those young bucks was not cordial. In fact, it was so stormy, it had to come to blows, and on Tuesday, March eleventh, 1911, it did.

  “Jimmy and Paul betook themselves to Jason Crouch’s old falling-down barn up in Ivy Cove—that was a favorite battling place for youngbloods in those days—and had it out with each other. If money had been bet, it must undoubtedly have been placed on the head of Jimmy Keiller, but the boys told no one about the fight until afterward, and then we learned that it was a battle royal and went on from two o’clock in the afternoon till sundown. That little Paul O’Dell had more grit in him than the bravest fighting cock and managed to score a split lip on his opponent, but the struggle ended the way everybody thought it would.

  “Jimmy was not a brutal boy, but when Paul showed up at Plemmons’s little grocery store in the settlement next day, it was obvious he had got the worst of it in a most unmerciful way. His head was swollen up like a candy roaster and lumpy as your aunt Ticia’s mashed potatoes and was a rainbow of suffering: red, blue, purple, yellow, and even a little green about the cheekbones. It was startling to think a young man could take such punishment and still stand, and y
ou could see, of course, only the outside of him. No telling what ruination he had experienced on the inside. But he hobbled around the store, smiling the best he could with his puffed-up mouth and broken teeth, trying to put a cheerful face on his dreadful defeat. The look of him might have turned some folks against Jimmy, but they knew he was the stouter and it was a fair fight with feet and fists and maybe a handy stick or two, but no weapons made of iron. All that being so made it Paul’s personal business and he had invited nobody to poke into it.

  “Anyhow, Jimmy sent word to Daniel Rathbone—along with a sealed private note to Vonda—that he was coming over Sunday to begin his courting of the girl in the formal manner, sitting with the family in the parlor till it was time to go home and then bidding good-bye to Vonda out on the porch. In summer or winter she would have walked with him down to the cow-lot gate by the barn, but now in March the ground in front of the house was awful muddy. Daniel had been proud to build this fine two-story house with a southern exposure, it being so cold in winter back there where they dwelt in the holler. And he never could get a stand of grass in the front yard, and in the thawing spring and the rainy fall it was pure mud. But they had a big deep front porch that ran the length of the house and in mud season everybody left their boots out on the porch and went inside in their stocking feet. Might be, when they had visitors, you’d count a dozen pairs of muddy boots out on the porch amidst the other truck: plow points and washtubs and dinner pails and a broken-down little coal stove and even an old corn sheller Martha had told her boys a score of times to lug down to the barn. But they were lunkhead boys and couldn’t remember.

  “Jimmy had won his fight with Paul and he seemed to believe that made him the one eligible suitor, and when he sent word to Daniel he was coming courting, he knew Daniel wouldn’t like it but would have to bear it. What nobody expected was the effect this news would have on Vonda herself. She swooned dead away when she heard it was Jimmy ready to come to her parlor. Turned as white as buttermilk and sank to the floor as graceful as the virgin maid of a melodrama and had to be put to bed. There she turned her face to the wall and went as dumb as any stone.

  “‘What is it?’ Daniel asked his wife. ‘Was she favoring that little Paul feller all along?’

  “‘I’m not real sure,’ Martha said. ‘Maybe she’s overcome with joy.’

  “That was clearly not a correct diagnosis, because Vonda was not to be moved from that bed on Thursday or Friday or Saturday. She had read Jimmy’s note and wadded it up and flung it away. Quiet and pale she lay, her eyes beseeching God or the plaster ceiling to deliver her from her hideous fate. But her daddy was not pleased. No daughter of his was going to be afflicted with sinking spells and convulsions of the spirit. If he could get used to the notion of Vonda marrying, then she could, too. It might be harder for him than for her, he told Martha, and so he wanted Vonda out of that bed by Sunday evening; he wanted to see her sitting modest and proper in the parlor upon the hour that Jimmy Keiller came to call.

  “When Martha delivered this command, Vonda at first made no response but to leak silent tears like an icicle melting. Then, with what seemed the mightiest of efforts, she told her mother she would acquiesce, as an obedient daughter, to her father’s will. It would cause her pain and sap her vital strength, but she would do it. Only she begged to be let off from going to church Sunday morning. ‘Don’t make me go, Mama, where people can stare at me like a marvel. I couldn’t bear it.’

  “She gained that one little point, at least, and when Martha and Daniel and Perce and Harry started for church on Sunday morning, they left Vonda supine in her bed of sorrow, her eyes still searching the ceiling for aid and comfort. They boarded the wagon that Perce drew up to the porch steps so they could avoid the mud and, with heavy hearts and maybe a little resentment toward Vonda, they rode away. They hoped the preaching and the hymns would lighten their souls.

  “But when they arrived back home as hungry as grub worms, Vonda was absent. Her bed was carefully made up, the room was clean and neat, but her new button-up shoes and three prettiest dresses were gone off with her.

  “Her daddy thundered and her mother rained. ‘She has run off with that little O’Dell weasel and it’s your fault for spoiling her,’ he said, and she said, ‘You was always too hard on her and now we’ve paid the price.’

  “They searched without success for a letter or a note. She had only just put a few things in a paper poke—not having any valise of her own—and departed, leaving no more trace than smoke going up the chimney.

  “But then when Perce drove the wagon to the barn and unhitched the horses and stalled them and was slopping back to the house, he noticed something and called them all out to have a look-see. In the yard mud and leading up to the porch steps were two sets of tracks, one set going and one returning.

  “‘That’s it!’ cried Daniel. ‘That just proves it. It is the sneaky little O’Dell boy that has abducted her away.’ Then he named Paul some bad names and expounded upon the damage he would wreak upon the lad and upon all his kin.

  “‘But looky here, Daddy,’ Perce said. ‘This wouldn’t be Paul’s track.’

  “His observation was just. The boot track was a large one, clearly outlined in the red mud, and with a row of double x’s cut into the heels for traction.

  “‘Too big for little Paul,’ Perce said.

  “Then Harry remembered he had seen that same exact track before but disremembered where. They pondered on the fact for a while, until it came to the three men at once that they noticed it every time they carted corn to the mill for grinding. There in the dust of those meal-slick floors the double x heel marks followed Jimmy Keiller every step he took.

  “‘And looky here again,’ Perce said. ‘You see his tracks going to the house and you see them coming out, headed the other way. Look how much deeper the second set is than the first. He was toting a right fair weight when he left.’

  “They looked at one another and knew it was Vonda. Jimmy had kidnapped her without getting a speck of sticky red mud on her.

  “Perce follered the tracks as far as he could, but they ended up in the grassy patch below the barn by the rocky road that led out of the holler. He thought he spotted some scrapes on the road stones but couldn’t be sure because they’d just brought their own team and wagon up this way.

  “Well, to tell the truth, Perce wasn’t what you call an eagle-eye tracker.

  “So it was evident what had happened. What they couldn’t figure out was why. Jimmy had established himself as the one and only suitor and that meant—barring divine intervention—that he and Vonda would declare before the preacher in a month or two. Daniel had got mollified to the situation, Martha favored whatever her daughter desired, and Perce and Harry didn’t count.

  “‘If we was willin’ to the marriage, I don’t see why he had to abduct her. I could’ve got used to Jimmy. We ain’t got nothing against the Keillers,’ Daniel said.

  “Martha said, ‘Well—’

  “Daniel began storming afresh. ‘You mean you think the Keillers might have something against us. Like we ain’t good enough for them. Like Vonda ain’t. By God,’ he said, ‘we’ll be seeing about this.’ It was his thought to go on the instant to the Keiller house and call out whoever was in it and face them down. Nor was he going without Perce and Harry and two pistols apiece and a shotgun.

  “Martha held him back from his bloodthirsty urge and talked quick but soft, trying to gentle him down. She kept saying they couldn’t do nothing till they had found out what had truly happened. ‘You wouldn’t want to start bad blood over just a set of boot tracks,’ she said.

  “He vowed he wasn’t going to set around driveling when his only baby girl, his honey dumpling Vonda, had been kidnapped and no telling what would be happening to her right this instant. What did Martha expect them to do? What was her idea?

  “‘We’ll go see Aunt Sherlie Howes and ask her advice,’ Martha said. ‘You must promise not to do nothing till we�
�ve heard her out.’

  “He grudged and grumbled but finally agreed, saying he would do it if it was done within the hour. He was a patient and forgiving man, he told his wife, but he wasn’t going to be looked down on by the Keillers nor nobody else. Then he told Perce to rehitch the team and bring the wagon back around to the porch. And to be quick in the doing.”

  * * *

  “Aunt Sherlie Howes received the four of them with quiet courtesy into her trim little cottage. She offered herb tea and cider and other such comforts, but the Rathbones were not taking, Daniel being so all-fired headstrong. Martha spied the piece that Aunt Sherlie was working on, a christening dress of delicate linen laid out on the sewing table by the window. She admired it for a while and the women conversed about the Bartons, whose infant the dress was going to grace in church two Sundays hence. The men stood glowering and looking foolish till Aunt Sherlie seated them in the straight chairs that ringed the wine-colored armchair where she sat sewing and offering advice. The right arm of the chair was like a big pincushion, stuck full of gimlets and needles dangling threads of different colors.

  “When she asked about their business with her, Daniel and Martha told the tale by turns, the boys looking on with expressions that did not suggest total comprehension of the narrative.

  “In truth, the story did get rather confused with husband and wife telling it at the same time, backing up and shooting forward and contradicting each other as often as not. But Aunt Sherlie listened patiently and you could see she was used to sorting out such tangled skeins. When Daniel and Martha reached the stopping point—or maybe just gave up talking—she said nothing for a long time and only sat meditating. She took a silver thimble from the arm of her chair and began turning it in her fingers while she thought. If you could look into her mind, it would be like watching her at her needlework, patient and careful to make her stitches neat and straight, piecing swatches together almost seamless.