Those Across the River

CHAPTER FIVE

“‘DEAR MISTER AND Missus Nichols,’” Dora read aloud from a note in her hand. She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom where I had slept in yet again. “‘Welcome to Whitbrow. I hope that you will attend the Social tonight so you can meet your neighbors who want to meet you. Signed, your neighbor, Ursula Noble.’”

“Who is she?” I said, sitting up and involuntarily making what I recognized as an old man noise as I did. I was sore from baseball.

“Not a Greek, but bearing gifts all the same,” she said, setting a basket beside me. I blinked at it uncomprehendingly, then looked in it the way a little boy might examine a defunct wasp’s nest. No wasps, but two chicken eggs, a few horehound candies and a generous offering of wildflowers tied together with a blade of tall grass.

“She’s the eldest daughter of the neighbors, a short walk up the road away from town. It’s the only other house as nice as this one. Her dad owns the barbershop and that last filling station we passed just before we got off the highway. Ursie. Cute name. She fell all over herself introducing herself to me in town while you were being a Chicago Cub.”

“Is she going to be one of yours?”

“Yes. She’s fourteen. Doesn’t write so badly, even if she leaves out the occasional silent g.”

“Hmm,” I said, trying to decide if this was going to be some drab church function.

“I want to go,” Dora said.

“Really?”

“Sure. What else are we going to do?”

AROUND NOON WE walked down the road into the village of Whitbrow. It was another brilliant August day. The sun shone powerfully on the shops downtown, replicating itself in their windows (where there were windows) and on the windscreens and headlamps of the very few cars. The breeze blew like a draft from a steelworks. She swung my hand playfully while we took one lap around the town square, which consisted of an ancient pump well and a small garden of tea roses boxed by recently painted green benches. The rest of the town was falling to hell, but those benches sure were smart.

Dora and I sat down and looked at each other, and then laughed at how sloppy with sweat we were. Her hair was pasted to her head at the temples and my shirt was darkening and clinging unbecomingly to my chest.

“They need shade here,” she said, “a great big shade tree.”

“Yes, but then people might actually sit on the benches, which would block the view of this fine English garden.”

“Oh.”

“Soda?”

“God, yes.”

HARVEY’S DRUG EMPORIUM sat at the southeast corner off the square, next to the decrepit town hall. It was not until the door shut behind us that the counterman noticed us, so we got to enjoy the slice of opinion he was serving up to his passive customer, bending over the poor man with his arms extended like he expected to fly soon.

“…And it’s a good thing that once they got electric lines through here I put the machine in or I’d be boarded up same as the jeweler. Folks hit hard times, they go back to they grandmama’s poultice, cain’t be spendin on Vicks VapoRub, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they don’t find change for a cold soda when the weather turns… ’Scuze me, Mike. Afternoon! Hep you folks?”

I ordered two vanilla sodas.

“Say, you must be that pretty new teacher takin Dottie’s place over at the school.”

She allowed that she was, then quickly introduced me as her husband in the hopes that he might temper his unsubtle gaze. He did.

“So that makes you the nephew. Yeah, I guess I see that in the eyes. Pleased to meet you folks. I’m Harvey, but you probably guessed that already if you looked above the door afore you come in. This here’s Mike. He’s lazy.”

The man at the counter, who I now noticed was missing his closer arm, nodded hard once and went back to spooning ice cream into his mouth. I remembered him now, standing over the checker game.

“You folks goin to the Social tonight?” Harvey asked.

“What time does it begin?” Dora said.

“Soon as the swineherds get back.”

Swineherds? Did I hear that right?

“And what time is that?” I said.

“Looks like nobody’s told you two about the Chase. Sort of a Whitbrow spectacle. They leave at two from the church and by the time they get home and cleaned up, it’s right about eight.”

“No, nobody’s told us about this.”

“Well, you might want to watch this one. There’s talk that this might be the last one til times get better. Or til never.”

Harvey set the sodas down in front of us.

“Do you know if Mr. Gordeau will be at the Social tonight?”

“Which Gordeau?”

“Lester.”

“Well, I sure hope he’s gonna be there. He’s one a the swineherds.”

THE CHURCH, WHICH also served as schoolhouse for elementary and middle school students, sat beaming and white on a tract of well-kept land on the far side of the square. A crowd of forty or so had gathered to see the Chase begin, and Ursula Noble was one of these.

“There you are!” she shouted when she spotted Eudora, and she walked bouncily away from the gathering towing a two-year-old by one chicken-poxed arm. Ursula was a young-looking fourteen, still more girl than woman, wearing a faded floral print dress and boots that were too big on her. Her hair was so black it had bluish highlights. I thought of the Cherokee, how we dismantled their nation and shipped it west to die, but not before it pumped a gout of blood into the veins of the conquerors.

“I’m Ursie, the one that left the basket. And this is Sadie. Sadie, say hello.”

Sadie looked at Eudora and me as if she were considering us for some post, but then became more interested in her finger and began biting the end of it. I noticed Sadie’s eyes then. She was simple.

“So you’re Ursula,” Dora said.

“Ursie, ma’am. Ursula sounds like a bear.”

“It is a bear.”

“I know. You can call me that if you like, but I just sign that on letters cause letters is formal. Mama calls me Ursula just afore Daddy gives me a whippin.”

“And this is Mr. Nichols. Orville Francis Nichols when he’s bad, which is pretty often. I thought I would bring him out to see the Chase.”

“Well, come on then,” Ursie said, taking Dora’s hand with her free one. Dora took mine in turn, and Ursie led us all to the yard of the church in a sort of lopsided wedge. It was just at this moment that a smallish man in black stood up on the front step facing the crowd.

“That’s Pastor Lyndon,” Ursie said. “Don’t let him see you slouch. You’re not slouching now, but he says the Devil knows you ain’t got the Spirit in you if he sees you hang-doggin around.”

If good posture was the measure, Pastor Lyndon had Spirit all right. He held himself painfully erect like a proper little soldier for the Holy Host. As he prepared to speak, he brushed back a forelock that was just beginning to grey. He looked around at the congregation for a moment, giving them all time to stop talking to one another as his gaze lit on each of them. The gaze reminded the young ones he had married them and the old ones that he would speak over their caskets soon. It was a good trick. When they were ready to receive him, he spoke.

“Brethren and friends. We gather here as we do each month to give thanks to the Lord for His infinite bounty, and to show Him that we, as dutiful sons and daughters, know how to thank our Father. Even as it was of old that Jehovah commanded Abraham and his sons to make burnt offering to Him, so are we called, in our way, to keep covenant with Him, offering to Him the best fruits of our fields.”

With that, Lester Gordeau approached one side of the steps, leading a massive, hairy-eared hog on a rope. Another young man led a slightly smaller sow to the other side of the pastor. I had to wonder if they were going to slaughter and burn the animals right there on the lawn of the church. Then of course husbands could bed their wives’ handmaidens while widows lay with their brothers-in-law.

“Hold Sadie. I have to go do my part now,” Ursie said, passing the toddler’s small hand into mine. I felt a very unchristian distaste noticing how cool and wet it was. Eudora noticed this and laughed at me. Ursie trotted around to one side of the church to join other young girls who were readying something.

Pastor Lyndon went on.

“Let us remember this Sunday of the waxing moon that our food does not come to us of our own hand. No one of us can make the corn to stand high, nor the grain for our bread to flourish, nor can any man here call the chick forth from the egg until the good Lord shall say Let it be so. If any man before me can do these things, then let him take these pigs for his own and carve them shoulder and leg for his own plate. But if he cannot, then let him bow his head before the power of our Lord; let him take up flowers to throw before these blessed swine; and let him give thanks as a child gives thanks, humbly, and in the sure knowledge that, but for the kindness of his Father, he should have neither meat for his belly, nor door to bar against the beasts of the night.”

Ursie came back into view with the other girls, and they tied wreaths of wildflowers, mostly daisies and black-eyed Susans, around the necks of the pigs.

“Now we know where she got the wildflowers,” Dora whispered.

Pastor Lyndon spoke.

“Before we take these fine animals, let us remember that they have come from the pens of Miles Falmouth and his family, as is scheduled in the registry; and let us remember that Miles suffers a weakness of the back and hips that makes his work on the land very hard for him. And that his son is not yet at the fullness of his strength. Where we might lay down one coin to relieve a whole man’s sacrifice in giving of his herd, let us lay down two for our brother Miles Falmouth. If you cannot give today, we will be passing the plate at regular service on Miles’ behalf all month.”

With this said, Lester and the other swineherd took up an earthenware dish and a heavy silver collection plate and passed them among those in the crowd, who began, with some reluctance, to search their pockets for coins. I put in a silver dollar for both of us. Dora gave me a look balking at the amount.

“It’s worth it,” I said. “You don’t get a show like this every day. Pigs and flowers? Oh they’re Jesus Christing it up, all right, but this looks more like some pagan-rooted festival from the south of France. And like the man said, this might be the end of it.”

Pastor Lyndon spoke.

“Now let us send these beasts into the wilderness and give no more thought to their flesh, which belongeth now to the Lord, and which, though it might nourish the body of whichsoever of us should eat it, would surely damn his soul.”

The swineherds took the ropes from the necks of the pigs and took up long branches twined in green ribbon, using these branches now as crooks or goads. They herded the pigs across the square, taking care to keep them away from the tea roses, and then turned them left onto the small road that went past several dozen houses and then dwindled to become the path Lester and I had followed, the path the Federals took on their way to fight Savoyard, the path that led to the river.

The townsfolk followed them, singing hymns that neither Dora nor I had ever heard, stopping at the last house as the two pigs and two men headed into the woods. Only when they were out of view did the gathering begin to disband.

Ursie Noble, shining with sweat, discreetly fanned the top of her dress and then took her sister up in her arms, heading for home.

“See you tonight! At the Social!”

Sadie looked back over her shoulder at us for a long while.