Teeftallow/Chapter 28

IN THE camp for the construction men Mr. Tim Fraley and Mr. Zed Parrum were talking lightly of a light matter. Mr. Fraley winked.

"Ab Teeftaller showed a better head in his little kick-up than you did, Zed—his gal ain't got no daddy."

Mr. Parrum put little heart into his return wink. His involuntary marriage was a sore point with him.

"Yeh—live an' learn. . . . Have you talked to Ab lately, Tim?"

"Nope, I seen him walking around the camp here pretty offish, figgered he'd got the big head over this sheracketty an' didn't want to talk to a common feller like me."

"You done him wrong," defended Zed at once. "He ain't stuck up, he's worried."

"What's he got to worry about?"

"Tim, he's got the darndest fool idyah I ever heard of."

"What's that?"

"Why, he's figgerin' on marryin' that Sutton gal, after all that's happened."

Mr. Fraley stared, finally blurted out in slow bewilderment, "The—hell—he—is!"

"Yep. I tried to persuade him out of it, but you know that damn fool Ditmas is backin' him up in it."

"I thought Ditmas was his frien'."

"I reckon he is a frien' accordin' to his lights, but I shore say, 'Damn his lights.'"

Tim agreed profanely, then assembled his information about the engineer.

"It's like this, Zed. Ditmas is a Yankee, an' you know them Yankees ain't got no sense of honour like we got here ​in Tennessee. They tell me a Yankee'd as soon marry an unvarchuous woman as look at 'em."

"Ditmas was arguin' that bein' it was Abner hisse'f that done it . . ."

"Hell far, if a feller tries one out an' she shows up bad . . ." Here Mr. Fraley recalled that his companion had not lived up to the strict Tennessee code of honour; he stumbled in his speech, and finally muddled out, "Well—down here we do our damnedest. . . ."

"Uh-huh," mumbled Zed uncomfortably, then he remembered that he had to see a fellow and started off rather awkwardly through the tented street. He had not gone far when he heard Mr. Fraley behind him wheezing with a stifled laughter, and he thought in disgust, "Damn fools won't never quit laughin' at that."

Which was quite true.

This same hill feeling of what was honourable halted Abner Teeftallow on his way to the unsheltered platform which served as a railway station for the construction camp. The youth did not know whether he wanted to go to Irontown that afternoon or not. Everyone except Ditmas advised him against it. Nessie was in trouble. He would better stay away. No telling what might bob up. All his friends, except Ditmas, considered any other action mad.

As a matter of fact, all the gossip about the girl seemed to change her from the simple, affectionate creature he had known into a woman whom he could not quite trust. The scandal was like tinted glass, which gave the girl, viewed through it, a new and disturbing colour. But Abner's natural fondness and tenderness for Nessie kept breaking through this feeling, and for a moment he would remember her as gentle, trusting, with an affection for him as enduring as her life. At such moments he would take a few determined steps toward the platform where a half-dozen persons awaited the afternoon train.

Then he would grow undecided again and walk up and ​down the track, harrowed between the clash of his impulses. Finally he decided that he would not go to Irontown. He could do nothing for Nessie. He could not marry her—he would not dare to. A hill adage popped into his head, "Who faithless is before she wed, will faithless be to marriage bed."

This decided Abner. No, he'd be damned if he'd go!

Here the shriek of a whistle caused him to look down the track. The construction train was coming. Then something deeper than his adage seized the youth and moved him toward the platform. But his rebellion toward Nessie was still in progress. And a plan popped into his head how he could, as it were, both go and not go at one and the same time. As he passed the caboose he shouted to the engineer, "Hey, cap, lemme ride, won't ye?"

"What the hell you want to go to Arntown fer?" growled the engineer. "Looks like you'd be goin' t'other direction."

Evidently the whole world knew of his affair.

"That's the point," explained the youth earnestly. "I wanted you to kinder slow up an lemme off before we reached town—got to git my clothes," he lied, to conceal all trace of his tenderness.

"It's against the rules. All I can do is to tell you to keep off."

This meant Abner could ride. He climbed up into the caboose and a few seconds later a voice shouted, "All aboard!" The grimy one moved levers and wheels; the mass of iron came to life and started panting down the new uneven track.

Abner stuck his head out of the caboose window, and the cold rush of air somehow comforted him. He thought to himself, "I won't go plum into Arntown, I'll sorter scout aroun' an' see how the lan' lays, an' then . . ." Here his thoughts drifted vaguely and wistfully toward Nessie. He caught a vision of himself holding the girl in his arms, fondling her, weeping over her, saying, "Nessie, did ye think I wuzn't comin' back? Why, honey, I'd wade through fire ​an' water before . . ." Here he blinked the moisture out of his eyes and shouted across the cab to the engineer, "Partner, I wish you'd kinder slow down about even with old Squire Meredith's place. I want to git off there."

The greasy one gave a wooden nod.

Some hour later the teamster jumped from the cab and landed with a jar on some freshly turned earth alongside the track. He waited till the train had gone and then set out across the field in the direction of the Meredith home. As he walked he could see the gray gable of the old house and the slender column of a pear tree above the shoulder of the hill. In the yellowing sunshine this formed a picture, but its line and colour were lost on Abner. To him it was simply Squire Meredith's old house which he could see from the foot of the pasture hill, and he veered off at an angle toward the highway.

Once Abner placed himself on the familiar road a dozen memories of Nessie Sutton arose in him and filled his heart with a sharp desire to see her again, and with an anxiety about her welfare. The Meredith house recalled the time he had carried Tug Beavers's note to Mary Lou, and the row the old justice had raised. He remembered how he had stayed all night with the Squire and had cried for homesickness. He recollected talking to Nessie in the Lanesburg courthouse yard—how beautiful and unattainable she had looked standing there silently on the lawn. . . .

Now he was passing the hill where the mob had lynched Peck Bradley. He would have seen the tragedy had it not been for Nessie's surrender to him. The mere thought of this moved Abner to an exquisite tenderness and desire for the girl.

Suddenly, he decided he would marry her. He would rent a car at the Irontown garage, go to Lanesburg with Nessie, marry her, and end this gossip at a stroke.

He was striding down the hill now, filled with this warm impulse composed half of generosity and tenderness and half of desire. He felt it was distinctly a generous thing to do, to ​marry a girl after she had given herself to him. Somehow it was a condescension on his part, a stooping. But he loved her. The thought that he could sacrifice himself by marrying her filled him with a sort of high pleasure. He really was a noble fellow. The villagers might jibe, as they were sure to do, but he would stoop and rescue a weak girl from their clamour!

He strode along in quite a cavalierish mood, when he saw a Negro coming up the road at a slow trot, head tucked down, arms drawn up for long-distance running.

Now it is the invariable practice of any white man in the rural districts of the South to stop any running Negro and question him closely as to why he is running, whence he came, and whither he means to go. It is a relic of the apprehension of runaway slaves.

Abner acted according to this custom. He put aside his own anxieties, placed himself in the middle of the road ready to fight or chase as the exigency of the occasion might demand; then he called roughly, "Hey, nigger, where you goin'?"

The black boy started as if someone had fired a gun under his nose; flung up head with white eyes.

"N-nowhere, suh!"

"You're in a hell of a rush to go nowhere—" Then he broke off. "Well, I be damned, it's John! John, where in the hell are you goin'?"

At this turn the chore boy's fright changed to delight.

"Well, 'fo' God, if it ain't Mastuh Abnah! Mastuh Abnah, Ah sho is glad to see you!" He came up to Abner, apparently on the verge of embracing him.

"What's the matter?" asked Abner, stirred and somehow uneasy at John's emotion.

"Mastuh Abnah, Ah Jess seen Miss Nessie packin' her trunk." The chore boy's face was sorrow-stricken.

"Seen her packin' her trunk?"

"Yes, suh, she's goin' tuh haff tuh step out."

Abner stared. "The hell she does—where to?"

​"She don' know—jess some'er's. She's all tore up about hit. Ah jess carried huh huh dinnah."

"Is she sick?"

"No, suh."

"Look here, who the hell's goin' to make her get out?" demanded Abner furiously.

"De"—John glanced up and down the empty road and whispered—"de whitecaps."

Abner stared at him. "Whitecaps!"

The Negro nodded, white-eyed, and whispered, "Don' you tell Ah tole."

"What for?"

"Er—uh—um—" swallowed John, then blurted out, "You knows what fuh, Mastuh Abnah."

Came a silence, then, "Of all damned outrages!"

"Yes, suh—yes, suh," bobbed the chore boy rapidly, "white fo'ks sho is supuhstitious 'bout dat, Mastuh Abnuh."

"And besides that," raged on Abner, "they can't do it. Why, damn it, I'm the daddy of them whitecaps. I got 'em to hang Peck Bradley. They can't do nothin' to my own gal!"

"Th-they say they is gwi'n' do it, though," stammered John.

"But I tell you I started 'em!"

"Yes, suh, Mastuh Abnuh, but startin' 'em ain't stoppin' 'em. Ah started a pair o' mules once . . ."

Abner did not wait to hear the conclusion of the story. He strode off down the road, cursing, and determined to take a strong hand in the matter of the whitecaps. And this determined him positively to marry Nessie.

The black boy watched the hillman leg it down the road, then he turned and resumed his endless trot in the other direction, placing as many miles as possible between him and Irontown before nightfall.

The road entering Irontown from the direction of Lanesburg leads within two or three hundred yards of the ​crap-shooting grounds, and Abner decided to make a detour and see if he could find any of the village reformers and determined, if possible, their plans for the night. So when he neared the Negro huts on the outskirts of Irontown, he turned out through the woods to the bare circles on the ground used by the gamblers. He had not gone far before he was rewarded by a warning whistle form an outpost.

Abner looked about until he discovered the fellow and then approached him with a fraternal wink.

"Anything on for to-night?" he inquired.

"They usually is," returned the fellow distrustfully.

"Big game?"

"Of its kind."

This alarmed Abner and he asked in a different tone, "What sort o' game is it?"

"I reckon you've heard the rule, 'Ast no questions an' hear no lies,'" returned the fellow with sour philosophy.

Abner passed by him to a circle of gamblers who were very elaborately doing nothing in the presence of a stranger. Abner glanced over the group and was relieved to see two or three faces he knew.

"Willie Purvis," he nodded at one of these, "lemme see you a minute."

Willie arose from his haunches stiffly and followed Abner into the bushes. They paused behind a huckleberry bush.

"Look here, Willie"—Abner's tone was serious and confidential—"have you boys made up to do anything to my gal to-night?"

Mr. Purvis became ill at ease. "Look here, Ab, I ain't got a thing in the worl' to do with this. I think it's tom-foolishness. I say if you chase all these women out o' town, the men'll jest foller 'em."

"Good God!" exploded Abner in a hot undertone. "You ain't puttin' my gal in that class! She's a nice gal, Willie!"

Willie waggled a sophisticated head. "They're all nice gals to somebody. If you don't give up yore nice gal an' ​me mine, an Tom, Dick, an' Harry their'n, this town never will git cleaned up."

Abner was amazed at such a view. He always had felt so profoundly the innocence of Nessie's yieldings to him that Willie's view dumbfounded him.

"By God!" he cried in an ill-coördinated effort to refute, "if—if you think that—you're no friend o' mine!"

"Why, Ab, you know it ain't right. Now, I leave it to you, is it?"

"All I got to say is, it looks damn funny to me! That's all I got to say!" He turned and began smashing his way through the bushes.

Mr. Purvis, peace-loving by nature, hung on to the teamster's flank.

"Now, look here, don't git mad at me. But you know it ain't right. And besides that, Perry Northcutt's kinder talkin' agin' you, too. Says the boys would make a good job if they chased you out, too."

"By God, try it, if you feel like it!"

"Hell, I'm jess tellin' you. I told 'em if you start chasin' the men out for that, they'd haff to move 'em in gangs, an' the last man would haff to march hisse'f off."

But Abner was not conciliated by this cynicism. He tramped on off through the woods, determined to marry Nessie Sutton out of hand, and to hell with what anybody thought about it. He wouldn't let any spike-headed bank cashier tell him what he could do or where he could stay. Here his soliloquy fizzled out as he entered the purlieus of the villages again.

By this time the sun was down. Against the flare of the sunset the woods which Abner had just left were picked out in a gamut of textures from the lace of willows through the progressively darker spotulations of sycamore, elms, maples, to the solid blackness of cedars and pines.

Unmindful of all these traceries against the scarlet west, Abner hurried into the silent village streets which were de​serted during the supper hour. His object was to find Nessie, take her away, and marry her.

As he turned toward the Scovell House he heard the faint shriek of the evening train as it blew for some distant crossing. It brought to Abner its habitual implication of danger and uncanniness and hurried the youth's steps. Then he formed a plan for him and Nessie to catch this train and so escape the rising mob. He thrust his hand into his pocket, felt some bills. That would be enough to start them somewhere.

Under the urgency of his thoughts he began trotting through the silent thoroughfares, between rows of gray houses tinted with the yellows and reds of the evening sky. Presently he sighted the scraggly mulberry before the Scovell House. The teamster slowed up, entered the gate, and without pausing to knock at the door, walked on into the dining room.

There were a number of guests at the table and Miss Scovell was waiting on them. When Abner opened the door he saw the landlady's ungainly figure leaning over the table offering her guests hot biscuits. The chore boy was gone again. A glance showed that Nessie was not at the table, and this sent a quiver of apprehension through the teamster. Amid the clinking of knives and plates, he blurted out anxiously, "Miss Scovell, where's Nessie?"

The landlady looked around and broke into instantaneous wrath.

"Look here, Ab Teeftaller!" she began in a tense undertone which implied that her guests were not supposed to hear or mark what she was going to say. "Don't mention no disreputable names in my house, an' don't come hangin' aroun' here yo'se'f! You jest git out o' here! You've done enough dirt to this hotel already!"

"B-but, Miss Scovell," stammered Abner with lips stiff from embarrassment, "I-I got to see her! It-it's important!"

​"Well, she's up in her room, but you kain't go up there!"

"I-I'll call her from the hall!" stuttered Abner, turning brick-red.

"We-ell . . . I reckon you can do that," she acceded grudgingly.

The landlady gave the youth a look of hatred as he turned swiftly to the hallway. A constriction passed over her thin face. As she turned to the kitchen she trembled in an undertone, "Scan'alous! Him to have the face to come an' ast for her!" It was a cruel thing, this tragic love affair in her loveless hotel.

A moment later she could hear Abner calling Nessie's name from the foot of the stairs in edged tones. He tried to restrain his voice not to disturb the diners.

"Nessie! Oh, Nessie! Nessie Sutton! Oh, Nessie Sutton!"

At last Miss Scovell could endure these anxious trembling cries no longer. She came angrily into the hallway.

"Do shut up! I'll go tell her! You've made my place the talk of the town as it is! What do you want with her?"

"I-I want to m-marry her," shivered Abner.

"O-oh, you—" A shudder went through the withered woman as she hurried stiffly up the stairs. She had no idea why this moved her with such a sense of her own frustration. She could but sense, not analyze, the logic of these facts—if an illicit love finally could be rewarded with peace, then her own solitary inhibited life had been in vain. The punishment of evildoers was a sort of negative dividend that fell due on Miss Scovell's negative investment in morality. If that failed, she would be a bankrupt indeed!

She hurried up the stairs and very quickly came down again with anxiety and yet a sort of malicious pleasure in her face.

"She ain't in her room, Abner! I don't know where she went to—well, no matter where; it's good riddance of bad rubbish!"

While the landlady and the teamster stared at each other, ​both really anxious about Nessie, there came the shriek of the evening train and a moment later, the rumble of the cars slowing up for the station.

A solution of their riddle flashed on Abner.

"She's goin' off on the train!" he cried, and the next moment dashed out of the hotel, up the dark street toward the station.

The teamster sprinted along at top speed because he knew that the train tarried at Irontown only two or three minutes. If he did not reach it in time Nessie would be borne away from him for ever. Now that he was about to lose her his whole desire focussed on marrying her. He ran down the block full tilt, whipped around the corner at the garage. Here four or five voices shouted at him, but he paid no attention to them. The street from the garage corner was unpaved and sloped down an incline. Abner drove down it at enormous strides, his feet plopping against the ground. As he ran he could hear the slow panting of the locomotive as it stood at the station; then a turn in the dilapidated street showed him the brilliant glare of the headlight washing the track in front and a string of faintly illumined car windows behind it. Against these lights moved silhouettes of people. Forward on the platform he could sense the movement of freight and baggage. He was running harder than ever when he heard the conductor shout, "All aboard!" and the bell began ringing.

Abner was halfway down the hill. Without realizing what he was doing he began yelling, "Wait, conductor! Hold on! For God's sake, wait!"

The measured puffs of the engine answered him. The glowworm of the cars moved off after the brilliant torch of the headlight. As the train gathered speed the rumble of the cars reasserted itself. Abner came to a halt.

He stood panting in the darkness, feeling tremulous and empty as if someone had torn out his bowels by some painless but numbing operation. There seemed to be nothing further for him to do—or think. Presently he realized that ​from his first step toward the train in the railroad camp he had meant to marry Nessie. Every movement of his mind or body had been directed to that end. Now Nessie was gone and their marriage impossible.

He stood watching the tail lights of the express diminish, draw close together. At last they coalesced into one faint light, and presently this vanished in the night.

When the noise of the train fell to silence, Abner still stood in the poor street, feeling numb and stricken. There was nothing at all to do. He might as well stand there in the street as to do any other useless thing.

Up on the main street of the village he could hear someone starting a car. The self-starter purred at the cold engine. At last the unwilling motor began a rush of coughing and was presently throttled down to a slower tempo. Came the rasp of a clutch let in by some unskilful hand. Then the car also murmured away into the night. This sound increased Abner's impression of loss and desolation.