Jes' Natcherel Meanness

Franklin P. Harry

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Long, lank, grizzled, raw-boned old Eph Moulter, mountaineer, and Ann, very ditto, his wife, were, in the language of their locality, “on the outs” with each other.

She had vowed not to speak to Eph until certain demands she had made of him had been complied with, and he, realizing the inconvenience she had created for herself, added to it by refusing to say anything directly to her.

He knew, from long experience, that she was a woman of her word, but he wanted to make sure. And so the quarrel, which had begun last fall, had dragged through until the corn was sprouting in the small clearing on the side of the mountain and the early potatoes had come through. And still Mrs. Moulter held out.

They lived way up in the upper end of the valley, three good miles from the little settlement by the branch-line railroad station and their nearest neighbors. Unable to write her desires, and with no one dropping in through a long winter, it seemed that she must give in. But Eph's Ann, like Shakespeare's, always had a way up her sleeve.

She wouldn't speak directly to Eph—and that kidded the old man as much as if she had kept rigid silence—but talked to him, when it was necessary, by addressing her remarks to anything about the room that was handy, just so her matrimonial fraction was within earshot. And Eph could do no better than carefully follow suit. It sounded uncanny.

There fell a night with unusually high winds that whined in the tops of the budding chestnuts, and Mrs. Moulter refused to go to bed until the embers in the stove had died down more, for she lived in continual fear of a fire breaking out.

Eph, nodding over a game of solitaire at the kitchen table, finally gave in and drifted into a sonorous nap. A handful of cards he still held fell, after a bit, and at the sound she stopped her sewing and bit off her thread. For a moment she regarded him, then with a sigh she began to roll up the long length of carpet rags she had been working upon. Unnecessarily loud, her voice sounded, as she spoke to the lumpy ball.

“My Carpet Rags!” she observed. “Listen t' thet wind! It's enough t' take the ruff off!”

Mr. Moultert's head came up with a sudden jerk.

“I—aw—Jack o' Diamonds! I was pert near asleep! Windy as all get out o' doors!”

“Ef a fire'd break out things 'd burn like powder.” She tucked a string end under a preceding loop to hold it in place. “One o' these days it'll happen, too,” she prophesied. “An' not a cent o' insurance on the place or the house stuff!”

Eph carelessly yawned into the face of the uppermost card to whom he was holding converse.

“Old house's b'en standin' yere forty year an' better. Burnt nigh half the mount'n in thet ol' fireplace an' yander ten-plate stove an' not a spark's ketched t' anything. Insurance!”

He spat out the word disgustedly. Mrs. Moulter patted the fat ball in her lap and the steel thimble upon her calloused old finger flashed in the lamp-light.

“Things happen when y' least look fer 'em,” she said ominously. “Some day it'll be too late. An' once,” darkly, “everything's gone, what's t' become o' me an' some others I might allude to?”

Fell a moment for the question to sink in, then:

I seen 'em take Sim Gilly t' the poor- house!” she went on. “He didn't want to go, nuther!”

And with that, their pet argument and the cause of their getting on “the outs” was again on the table.

Mr. Moulter's smile gradually widened and his eyes took on the intent stare of one gazing inwardly at some mental picture.

“Who knows,” he drawled, “but Ol' Sim's jes' as well off? I guess folks kin play cards in the poorhouse. Sim cert'nly was a slick hand at 'em, though I've licked him!”

His wife, refusing this opportunity for a side argument, stuck rigidly to the main issue.

“It's wuth the little money it 'd cost t' feel safe,” she sighed. Her restless fingers began to fray the raw edge of the calico strip uppermost.The storekeeper told me he counted it wa'n't no more'n hoss-sense t' p'tect your property. An' the agent, hisself, said it only would cost a few dollars!”

“Only a few dollars, Ace o' Hearts!” the old man mimicked derisively, shuffling the greasy deck, “fer dern foolishness! When I pay out good money I want somethin' fer it.”

“Somethin' in a bottle er a demmy-john!” Mrs. Moulter flared, holding, by the superb strength of her strong mind, her angry eyes to the non-committal future carpet she wanted him to think she was talking to. “Half the mount'n could 'a' b'en insured fer what's come up this holler in a jug!”

That ended the argument, as it had ended it on each other occasion, even the first time, at the birth of the quarrel; only on that occasion Mr. Moulter, after his wife had vowed not to speak to him again until he had come to his senses and insured the place, had gone out and almost uprooted the hinges from the door in making his exit.”

Down in the store in the village she had heard, for the first time in her life that one need not lose everything they possessed just because a fire happens to wipe things out. Interested, she had listened while the storekeeper and a fire- insurance agent had explained it to her, and she had come away profoundly impressed.

She later explained it to Eph, warmly and undiplomatically, without the slightest glimmer of success. He sat cold beneath the fire of her eloquence. Sparks flew. It merely ended by a strain on the hinges of the door and on their feelings toward each other.

Shuffling his feet, Mr. Moulter stiffly arose, put the cards up on the mantel, glanced stealthily into the woodbox to see if there was plenty of dry kindling for Ann, and lifted the lid of the water pail to assure himself that she would not need go to the spring.

His wife had begun puttering anxiously about the old-fashioned, many-lidded stove. Only a handful of coals remained, but blast after blast of wind was sweeping down upon the old house, and with each gust the dying embers flared spitefully.

Again and again she tried the door at the side where they poked the long hickory sticks in, hammering at it with her clenched fist that its iron catch might drop deeper into its groove. She knew that the stove was old and burned dangerously thin. At any time a spark might creep through some tiny crevice. She evened the damper in the pipe again and moved a drying dish-cloth to a safer distance.

By this time Eph had succeeded, by the aid of the gaping, V-shaped mouth of the old bootjack, in hooking off his boots. He dropped them noisily, one after the other, by the steps. Then, lamp in hand, he stood and waited for her.

But Mrs. Moulter, not satisfied, was once more poking into the top of the stove with the poker, now using the tea-kettle which she had moved back, as a confident.

“Thet little handful o' wood's as contrary as him thet cut it! If a body wanted it t' burn, now, it'd jes' natcherly go plumb out!”

She jabbed viciously until a splinter of yellow flame, still flickering, died lingeringly away.

“Hottest handful o' coals I ever witnessed,” the old man grumbled with impatient sarcasm, probably to the bit of red flannel in the lamp. “I guess,” maliciously, “the old kettle 'll hiss on fer another hour!”

He grinned with a screwing of his eyelid as the poker she was attempting to hang on its accustomed nail fell with a crash to the hearth. She faced about and regarded him for a long, tense second. He saw her lips move in preparation for hot retort he knew lurked there, and his halted in exultation. Would it be directly to him?

But the second passed and in silence they went up the stairs and closed the trap-door down after them.

It was one of those little pegged-to-the-sideof-the-hill log-cabins in which they lived, with chink-an'-dob between the logs; a room below and above with a low, one-story lean-to in the rear for a storeroom. The stairs led directly up out of the kitchen, and as a space saver, a trap-door closed down over that flush with the uncarpeted bedroom floor

Almost half a century ago it had been their honeymoon cabin when Eph had brought Ann home there, on horseback. It had sheltered them ever since through long, bitter winters, and hard, lean years. Probably because they had no children they had preferred to stay there rather than follow the trend of civilization toward the valley settlement at the railroad.

Though theirs had not been a blissful existence, yet no serious quarrel had ever risen between them until last fall. Possessed of an acrimonious turn of speech, Mrs. Moulter would possibly—usually the day after Eph had come up the hollow with his jug—point out his shortcomings in language picturesque, pointed, and unvarnished. Yet these little flurries rarely lasted more than a day.

But this insurance affair not only had dragged through a whole winter, but also gave every indication of going on indefinitely.

Nightly, as to-night, they lay side by side in the same bed—they had but the one—beneath the same old worn, red blankets, his last act for the day having been to carry the lamp up for her and let down the heavy trap-door, and hers to reach over softly, when she was sure that he was asleep, and tuck the red blanket down carefully over his rheumatic shoulder.

And at meal-time she continued to sweeten his coffee for him with the two heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar that his taste required, and to see that he got the brownest of the potatoes, for the habits of forty years can't be laid aside in a day. And painstakingly, unlike most mountain men, he remembered to do the odd jobs about the place that would have taxed her strength. They had the name, among mountain folk, of being “soft” about each other.

Things seemed to go on between them much as it always had save for the fact that they would not speak outright. Eph tried his best to trip her, but she wouldn't trip. When the house and everything on it had been insured she would speak to him, and not until then.

That night the pitcher that she claimed would go to the well once too often, came away smashed. The expected happened; the dreaded came to pass.

That night the fire came.

One spark, in some unaccountable way, maybe in the soot-clogged old chimney, maybe in the greasy bosom of the old rag rug before the ten-plate stove, smoked, glowed, and broke into flame.

Little spirals of smoke began coming up through the plank flooring which, whitewashed underneath, served as the ceiling of the room below, and were fol1owed swiftly by heavier curls that drifted into a thickening cloud in the peak of the dim rafters overhead. The sleepers began to stir restlessly.

Suddenly, with a gasp, the old man awakened, and his wife, through long habit, hearing him, also woke. They both sat upright at the same instant as though propelled by the same arm.

The room was alive with an ominous roaring, spluttering from below stairs, and the cracks in the floor had become long, yellow slits in the choking, gray gloom. For a moment the fright and bewilderment of it held them speechless, then, for the first time in months, forgetful, Mrs. Moulter addressed her husband.

“Eph!” she cried hoarsely, fearfully. “Fire! The house's afire!”

Instantly he was out of bed, spluttering and coughing back reassuringly to her.

“Don't be skeered, Ann! We'll git out alri— Ouch!”

His bare soles struck the heated planks and he made a step or two before the wires became clear, and their tender, protesting surfaces could communicate with his brain.

“Floor's like the top of a stove!” he gasped, but he kept right on.

The trap-door was but a few feet away, yet his rheumatic old joints were hard put to it by the teetering, buck-and-wing shuffle he was necessarily put to in crossing. He raised the trap a trifle, and a wreath of angry flame and yellow smoke sprang up about it.

“Stay where y' are!” he shouted, replacing the door. Mrs. Moulter was sobbing excitedly from the foot of the bed.

She paused obediently and watched him hopping grotesquely through the blistering, yellowish glow toward the back window that opened above the lean-to.

“Sizzlin' tomcats! Whe-ee!” he groaned. Like all mountain folk, they looked upon the night air as being “pizin,” and the window had been nailed down since last fall. A stout old hickory stool that he had made for her in those first housekeeping days crashed against his unprotected shins. The next moment, even thankfully, he drove it straight through the window, carrying sash, glass and all in a jangling crash.

A great blast of fresh air swept in. On the instant, from below, came to their ears a mightier roar, as the flames felt the power of the tremendous draft.

Mrs. Moulter was clambering over the footboard of the bed when he got back to her. In his arms, with as many of the bedclothes as he could drag with her, he carried her to the window and pushed her through. The slanting roof of the lean-to began at the sill and sloped off to within three feet of the ground.

A few minutes later, safe on the hillside, thinly clad and sharing fifty-fifty with the red blanket, they stood and watched the flames tear through the roof that had so recently sheltered them. The wind was carrying the sparks out across the cleared ground; the stable and old Charlie, the horse, were in no danger from the sparks.

Mrs. Moulter was talking fast enough now.

She huddled close under the blanket, and Eph's arm, and her tongue flew. And every other remark seemed to either begin with Eph or end with it. The old fellow stood on first one foot and then the other, and grinned, too tickled to interrupt her. It was a poor triumph, but he enjoyed it keenly.

“And, oh, Eph!” she said presently, tabulating her losses, “I had two crocks o' apple butter I hadn't teched yit—an' all them carpet rags!”

Something told him that the next thing in her mind would be the recollection that they were not insured.

“Huh!” he said swiftly, in an attempt to divert her mind. “I'm a heap sight more consarned about a pair o' britches an' my boots! My feet's got blisters on 'em bigger'n aigs, Ann! Great day in the mornin'!”

He felt at the spots tenderly.

Instantly she was on her knees, all sympathy, and had begun to tear recklessly at the blanket— the only thing in the world she possessed save her sleeping clothes—to bind his blistered feet with the strips.

“If I only had that mutton taller now,” she murmured regretfully.

Dawn was creeping into the valley when they finally left the hillside. Limping to the stable, Eph found a discarded pair of ragged overalls and donned them. Then he threw a bridle over old Charlie and led him out.

Mrs. Moulter had seated herself upon an overturned bucket by the open doorway. Reaction had set in, and it was with moody, sick eyes she was contemplating the picture before her. So many times before, at dawn, she had looked across from the stable to the cabin, and seen the smoke curling upward from the breakfast fire.

Now, her eyes could not get used to it, and there was nothing but an ugly, smoking, black patch among the new spring green. Her little dominion that those four chinked log walls once represented had crumbled and disappeared. The blossom on the crab-apple tree by the stone chimney were no longer clean and white and pink. Only the stanch old chimney still stood, as though on guard, by the ruin of their cabin.

It had happened, just as she had so often predicted it would. Everything was gone, and the utter tragedy of it all was overwhelming her. For once she was not in the humor to remind Eph that she had told him so.

Old Sim Gilly, bitterly protesting, had gone away to the poorhouse. It was Eph's and her turn to go now. For what else was there to do?

The old man in the stable door noticed, stood with the bridle over his arm regarding her. He saw her, with her face still sorrowfully turned toward the burnt spot, mechanically wipe the tears from her eyes with the back of her rough age-marked hands.

He left old Charlie and sidled over to her— his absurd old red-mocassined feet were making no sound upon the soft grass—and dropped an embarrassed hand upon her bony shoulder.

“Never mind, Ann! I'm aimin' t' go down the holler an' git some clothes for us an' some grub. An' Ann,” he faltered— “Ann, the storekeeper's got the insurance papers in his safe. I had the whole business fixed up last fall after we had that rumpus. But I wanted t' make y' speak fust, so I wouldn't tell y' about it. It was jes' natcherel meanness I reckon. But you're beat— anyhow!”

She looked up at him when he finished speaking with dim, reddened eyes. Suddenly over her sharp features there broke an unbelievable smile that was wonderfully forgiving.

“Jes' natcherel meanness,” she murmured, and then in her mountainous tender, tolerant, tinged with a wisp of admiration:

“You-old-rapscallion-you!”