Teeftallow/Chapter 4

ABNER TEEFTALLOW had been thrown out upon the world to make his own living in the unforeseeable fashion in which come nearly all the crucial events of life. There was something dismaying in it; this abrupt whirling about of his fortunes and his own utter helplessness to control anything. They boy followed the men to the yellow office with the strangeness of his new position already fallen upon him. The short, powerful Mr. Sandage walking just in front of him was no longer his foster-father but a man with whom he presently would part and go his way alone into the untried experiment of keeping himself alive. This quality of estrangement permeated the way Mr. Sandage walked and extended even to the little blond curls of hair over the top of his blue denim shirt. Abner glanced at his foster-father from time to time with rather a drawn feeling in his face and a lump slowly growing and pressing the back of his throat.

Presently the three climbed the steps into Railroad Jones's office. The magnate had a list of names and Abner was directed to sign this or make his mark as a contract to work in the railroad gang at Irontown.

The fat man watched the boy stoop over the table and begin writing his name in a great unformed hand. As Abner wrote he moved his under jaw in and out with the making of each letter.

"Well," buzzed the magnate, "he can write his name, after all."

"Yes, an' he can read some, too," added Mr. Sandage. "He jest picked it up hisse'f."

"Uh-huh, bad habit," nodded the rich man. "Childern'll ​form 'em if you don't watch 'em." Then, suddenly breaking away from his moralizings, "Well, Abner, I've got Square Meredith to carry you over to Arntown with him. He'll be by in a minute. The Square's a good ol' man. He'll look after ye tull ye git a boardin' house an' collect your first week's wages, an' here's a couple o' dollars to run you tull then." The fat man drew two silver dollars from his pocket and handed them casually to the boy. As he did so the noise of a wagon drawing up in front of the office sounded through the door, and looking outside Abner saw a gray-haired teamster sitting on the hounds of his wagon frame driving two roan mules. As he came to a stop he called out in a cracked voice, "Got that there boy in there, Railroad?"

"Yeh, comin' right out," called the fat man, moving himself and his two guests in front of him toward the door. He extended a pudgy hand. "Well, Abner, I wish you well. You're startin' out now in life, an' I hope you'll git on with ever'body an' not have no trouble."

Abner swallowed at the lump pressing in his throat. "No, sir, I'll—try not," he managed to say.

Abner was staring at Mr. Sandage, who looked back at the boy he had reared. Again it did not seem possible to Abner that he really was separating himself finally from Mr. Sandage and Mrs. Sandage and Beatrice Belle. Mr. Sandage held out his hard hand and cleared his throat.

"Well, so long, Abner."

Abner pressed the poorhouse keeper's hand and swallowed.

"So long, Mr. Sandage."

"I'll have Mammy send over yore things by partial post, Abner."

"All right, Mr. Sandage."

"I reckon that'll be all right, won't it, Mr. Jones—jest direct it to Arntown?"

"Shore! Shore! agreed the fat man cheerfully, "Abner Teeftaller, Arntown, Tennessee. In a day or two you can go down to the post office an' call for yore things, Abner."

Abner nodded and said, "yes, sir," in a pinched voice.

​Mr. Sandage was resaying, "Well, so long, Abner, an' good luck to ye."

Abner tried to repeat the so longs and good lucks but his throat was aching so dismally as to stop all articulation whatsoever.

Mr. Sandage patted him on the back; they were now marching him out on the porch into the yellow light, down the steps toward the wagon. He stumbled a trifle on the top step, which caused the mules to start. Old Squire Meredith called, "Whoa there, Sam; whoa, Lige!"

Everything was blurred to Abner. He groped his way to a place on the wagon. The old Squire sucked his lips at the mules and Abner saw the blur of them lunge and felt himself jerked forward. The wind struck his face; the wagon set up its rattling, and the boy was off on the unsure adventure of manhood.

Abner eased himself over the bolster on to the backhounds where he could wipe his eyes with his shirt sleeve unobserved. Squire Meredith was too much engrossed in passing the slower-moving wagons and giving the road to automobiles to pay much attention to his guest for a while. The wagon rattled along merrily over stones and ruts, causing the world to dance before Abner's blurred eyes. Presently, when the traffic on the road was strung out and had eased somewhat the strain on the old man's attention, he began drawling, "Well—votin' about them school books—I reckon I done right, but I don't know as it makes much diff'runce one way or t'other, as they'll never be printed noway."

"Won't they?" asked Abner, under the erroneous impression that an old man wanted a young one to answer his monologue.

The Squire drove on silently and presently began on a new tack: "You know, in these murder trials, they could save a lot of time and expense by jest turnin' the man aloose an' lettin' him give the lawyers a mortgage on his farm—come to the same thing."

Abner did not follow this at all.

​"Peck Bradley," proceeded the Squire, ruminating on the trial then in progress, "is jest as shore a broke man as he killed old man Shelton. The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard, Abner," the old fellow clicked at his mules, shook his reins, and added in melancholy tone, "Ay, Lord—Buckingham Sharp fer his lawyer . . ."

Abner gave his eyes a final rake and sat staring at the passing landscape, which was growing yellow in the last rays of the sun. As the wagon rattled down some declivity, Abner could feel himself entering a cooler layer of air, and then as the mules climbed the ascent on the other side, the temperature rose again to summer warmth. This alternation of warmth and coolness, mingled with the wraithlike sweetness of wild cucumber, set up a poignant homesickness in the youth. It was through just such perfumed strata of warm and cool air that his foster-sister Beatrice Belle was driving home the cow from the pasture at this very moment.

The old Squire broke in upon his mood with unconscious kindness and shattered it by saying, "I seen you sparkin' Nessie Sutton in the court yard to-day."

Abner looked around in amazement. "Wha-at?"

"Sparkin' Nessie Sutton," repeated the Squire woodenly.

Abner jolted along for upward of half a minute, staring at his host. Finally he asked with the drawl of his kind, "Who is Nessie Sutton?"

"You nee'n' to deny it," nodded the old man solemnly. "I knowed you-all was sparkin' by the way you stood aroun' not able to say nuthin'."

"Why, I don't even know who Nessie Sutton is," cried Abner.

"Don't know the gal you was a-talkin' to in the courthouse yard 'long about dinner time!" exclaimed the Squire, astonished in his turn.

"Was her name Nessie Sutton?"

"I swan," cried the old fallow, "was you stan'in' there sparkin' a gal you didn't know!"

"Well, I wasn't exactly sparkin'."

​"Oh, yes, you wuz."

"Where does she live?"

"In Arntown."

This information picked up Abner's spirits in a most extraordinary manner.

"She does—well, I be blamed!" A sort of warmth came into his face and he beamed on the old Squire. "Now, don't that beat you?"

"Ay, Lord," grunted the Squire misanthropically, turning to his endless gazing at the rumps of his mules. "The gal had to live some'er's."

Abner marvelled that he had got the girl's name after all—"Nessie Sutton" . . . a nice name, a pretty name—"Nessie Sutton." The syllables seemed to fill some empty space in his thoughts, to settle in his head as if they always had belonged there.

The old Squire gave his reins a twitch which did not provoke his mules out of the walk which was in keeping with this hour of the day.

"Ay, Lord," he said, shaking his head. "You young folks of this generation nee'n' be thinkin' about marryin' an' raisin' famblys." Here he reached into a pocket, drew out a disreputable pipe, looked at it, and put it back.

Abner listened to this opinion with a certain curiosity.

"Why hadn't we ought, Mr. Meredith?" he asked at length.

"'Cause you an' that gal ain't got no time to be marryin' in, that's why."

"Ain't got no time?" puzzled Abner. "Ain't we both young?"

"Ay, lad, you're young," assented the old man, "but this earth air in her last days, my boy. She ain't goin' to last long enough for no more marryin' an' givin' in marriage."

"Square Meredith, what in the worl' do you mean?" ejaculated Abner, straightening up out of the hump in which all hill folk ride a wagon.

"Why, Abner, I mean the worl's comin' to a end, my boy. ​She ain't goin' to last no longer than the sixteenth of next October. Then the heavens is goin' to unroll an' the graves give up their dead, an' the Lamb o' God is goin' to come down an' jedge the wicked an' the righteous; the quick an' the dead."

The roll of the old hillman's rude eloquence moved Abner with a strange emotion. It filled the quiet evening with a sense of queer impermanence.

The sun, a vast ball of fire, was sinking behind a distant fringe of trees. The wagon was now on a hilltop and the valleys were filled with dark blue shadows, while the tops of the hills, rising above them, were emblazoned with the dying day. In the west the sky was an abyss of green light which merged at the zenith into the profound blue of coming night.

The old man went on with his monologue:

"And not them as say 'Lord! Lord!' shall be carried up into Heaven in the arms of the Lamb, but them that doeth the will of the Father."

The far-flung colours of the evening lent a sort of corroboration to the old man's chanting.

"What makes you think it ain't goin' to last but tull next October?" asked Abner in an awed tone.

"Why, that's all in the Bible explained jest as clear as day. Ay, Lord; it's comin' jest as shore as we're drivin' over this hill, Abner. I don't reckon you never read the works of Reverend Solomon Molner? Well, it ort to be taught in ever' school to young an' old. It's called, 'The Word Unveiled.' It comes in 'leven volumes an' it makes it jest as clear as day. It shows you all the signs an' warnin's of the end of time, an' they're happenin' now, Abner, right now! Ay, Lord!" The old man shook his head, fumbled out his pipe, blew through the stem, and put it back into his pocket.

"But next October?" questioned Abner, frightened.

"Well, in the ninth chapter of Revelation, John says, 'Nine hundred an' ninety-nine. Yea, the beast had six horns.' Now the Reverend Solomon Molner shows that each ​one of them horns was a dispensation, an' five of 'em's gone. The flight of the childern of Egypt, the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans, the reign of the Emperor Napoleon who was the Anti-Christ mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Now, multiplyin' these by nine hunderd an' ninety-nine gives you the limit of Time, an' that ends on the sixteenth of next October. Then Saint John says, 'The heavens shall roll up like a scroll an' pass away; an' there shall be a new heaven an' a new earth. An' Satan shall be chained for a thousan' years, an' after that the Lamb o' God shall come down to—"

In the midst of this dithyramb a shudder ran through Abner, and he pointed, gasping, "Oh, Mr. Meredith, Look! Look!"

The old Squire looked. A meteor had flamed suddenly against the lemon-coloured west. It moved with deliberate brilliance across the sky and faded.

The old mystic looked at the burning sign without an extra heart beat. Christ Himself, walking down the sky along the lanes of light, would not have disturbed the rhythm of his thought, so many times had he imagined exactly such a scene. He turned to the boy.

"That's a sign from God, Abner," he said solemnly. "It's a sign to me an' you who b'lieve in Him and who trust His Holy Word. Jest a few more short months an' all this will pass away."

He made an awkward gesture over the blue-and-orange evening, and then the mules, impelled by the coming night, suddenly trotted down the hill with the wagon and men into the chill and gloom of the valley below them.