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“It ain’t good for one’s constitution, being that clean and such. You can give yourself the pneumony.”
He liked to kid around, and did sometimes, but turned back to serious pretty quick. He was most intent on making sure there was food on his table.
Opportunities arose regular as night turning to day, and he had to be careful one didn’t find out about the other. There was danger in it. Excitement. Close calls. They were addicted to him, tender toward him, most important of all, protective of him, swearing everlasting loyalties. They seemed needy for something only he could give, and he was willing.
He caught the scent of her, lilacs and lust.
Maybe she could interpret he’d had such thoughts, because he caught the change in her expression, a knowledge she was aware she had an effect on him.
Warren said the house was called a “shotgun” shack. She said, “Why’s it called that?” “’Cause if someone shoots at the front door, the bullet will go straight out the back and not hit nothing. If all the doors is opened.”
Woot said, “I ain’t ever known nobody who come out of one a them after being buried and live to tell it.” Hicky said, “I ain’t either. This here’s one lucky son of a gun. God done laid His very hand on him.”
He felt dizzy, sort a strange, and his mind was on Moe. He didn’t trust the man not to try again.
He didn’t like to hightail it and run. It made him look bad, like he was weak, scared, or plain worthless. These days, a man’s name and his reputation were all one had, and the most one could hope to keep,
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.
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.
About the same length as a coffin, that’s exactly what it resembled. He’d heard of something like this being used as a disciplinary measure. It was called a sweatbox and for good reason.
The newly made marks allowed gum to run toward the tin gutters positioned to guide the thick, syrupy runoff into a clay cup. He recognized the clay cups and gutters as a new technique invented by a man with the last name of Herty, known as the Herty system.
Crow lifted his gaze from his tally book and for the first time seemed interested in conversing. “I recommended it. I don’t like cutting boxes at the base of a tree. It tends to make’em go weak, makes’em susceptible to falling over during storms. Bad enough when a lumber company comes in to tear’em down, but ain’t no need in not giving the tree a chance, especially if there’s a better way.”
Del thought, That kind of camp. Maybe this had been a mistake, but, he was already indebted. Leaving when one owed meant the boss men could do what they wanted. They were law unto themselves—would, and could, do as they pleased.
He figured he’d give it some time, see how it went, see if what he’d seen so far was typical or not. He only wanted to blend in, get his work done. Find the rhythm to his days here.
His pap once explained the trees could survive five hundred years.
Del’s dream continued with him imagining himself teaching his own boys about how land and trees like the longleaf were richer than any money they might earn.
She murmured, “I love you with all my heart, Warren Eugene Cobb. You was such a good husband to me,” and squeezed the trigger.
Swallow Hill’s an interesting name.” Nolan said, “S’posed to be ’cause a them barn swallers nesting in some of the buildings, but I say it’s ’cause what goes on round here is hard to swaller.”
“It’s a new finding. They got a name for it. Crown shyness.” Del started to repeat the words, but Crow cut him off, still reflecting on what he’d learned. “Trees of the same age and type don’t touch the branches of other trees at the top. It’s the order of nature, see. They think it’s ’cause healthy trees are trying to avoid the spread of disease that might damage them.
“Every living creature knows to protect its species. Even the damn trees. I ain’t into muddying the waters. The white race needs to remain strong.”
“Some seventy years ago when Lincoln wrote that emancipation shit, boy, that done it. It ain’t been the same since. One thing’s certain. It don’t count for nothing, not in these woods. I like keeping things as nature intended. We got to remain elevated, see. Stay clean, and pure.” Crow leaned forward all of a sudden and whispered, “You ain’t one a them lowly nigra lovers, are you?”
The coloreds were cautious, filled with distrust whenever he tried to strike up a conversation. Del noted Crow had a tendency to appear out of nowhere, overly interested in Del’s attempts at being friendly.
Burning their marriage bed was purifying in a way she couldn’t describe, as if by doing this, she was also burning the memories of what happened.
All she knew was, she wasn’t about to leave her future in the hands of these two men; neither was trustworthy.
She gathered the shorn hair where it lay around her feet, like some sort of boneless, skinless animal, and took it to the fresh mound near the line of old catfaced trees. She tossed it softly across the fresh dirt of his grave, as if scattering seed, leaving him this one last thing, a small token of her love.
She silently thanked him once more, for not only giving her love and a home, but for also teaching her new skills.
He went and sat, continuing to take in the atmosphere, one that held an air of tension, a suggestion of something about to happen.
The sunset glowed like a long thread of orange laced through the pines, transforming the woods, and making them appear as if they were on fire.
She didn’t say anything else and he didn’t either, both of them standing with hands shoved in pockets like they were having an impromptu social visit. As the silence expanded to the point of being uncomfortable, she realized, since she was a “man,” it was expected she ought to be investigating what was wrong.
She wasn’t inclined toward being friendly. She’d only come up with this idea a couple days ago, had already seen how being Ray Cobb was rather exhausting, always having to watch what she said and how she said it. Having to watch how she walked. Not mess with her hair. Not forget the voice she was supposed to speak in.
the sights and sound of the camp appeared innocuous, nonthreatening, but he was becoming aware of an undercurrent, more apparent the longer he was there. It was all a smokescreen, like stepping in quicksand. That was what the camp was, quicksand. The more you struggled to free yourself, the deeper you went.
He couldn’t read their faces, he didn’t know them well enough, and besides, most coloreds were used to hiding their thoughts and feelings.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you!’”
Outside he found himself adjusting his frame of mind around the idea of the feller he’d come to know as the kid actually being a woman.
“I bet you had your reasons. We always do what we have to do, what’s necessary, don’t we?” Women folk, is who Cornelia meant. They were most often the ones to bend, sometimes until they broke. Or got broken.
“There’s different kinds a hard, and being with someone like him, waiting on when he’s gonna get mad when I don’t do something to his liking, that’s the kind a hard that can make you think on thoughts you ought not be thinking.
talk of longer hair brought to mind cutting hers off and how she’d scattered the strands over Warren’s grave. The boiled peanuts lost their appeal as Rae Lynn was once again thrown backward, thinking how only a few months before, her daily routine had been pondering what she might fix for supper, washing clothes, tending the garden, and any one of the other many things that consumed her and Warren’s days. She would cut her hair again if she wanted, no matter what Del Reese liked.
Pap hadn’t been the easiest man to love because Mother said he was hardheaded. Funny, ’cause Pap said the same of her. He reckoned he’d come by some of it himself. What they’d had was what he wanted. Someone by his side, who loved him despite himself. He wanted stability, to know how each day would end, and to share it with one person. He hadn’t been sure of this until Rae Lynn Cobb. The biggest question about his future rested on her, and she didn’t even know it.
“I reckon she’s got her reasons for doing what she done, the disguise and all. A woman doing such sounds desperate.”
Their days were filled with good, hard work, and after supper in the evenings, everyone went out on the large wraparound porch, sat in the rockers, fanning themselves, while Norma and Joey played in the yard.
Rae Lynn loved the routine of running a household, the day-to-day steady schedule, no surprises, rarely any change with given days of the week set aside for certain chores, including certain meals.
Even while applying a fictional narrative, I hope I have in some small way honored the Southern states that were part of this history and, more important, offered a tribute to the original tar heels who lived and toiled in the deep piney woods of the South.
