The Mustydines Was Ripe

I

ONE Thursday fifty years ago this September I was walkin’ a little sandy road through the woods. It was in ’77, and I always remember that the mustydines was ripe when I found Patsy. The sun was goin’ down fast and I had a crokersack on my shoulder with all my belongin’s in it, and I was a little blue and dead tired of strollopin’ around. I remember just as well how the sun looked. It was like a ball of fire. I was dressed in homespun and homemade from top to bottom, had a few dollars in my pocket, and had strolloped on foot all the way from the Savannah River in Georgia. I’d been gaddin’ about workin’ as a hireling since I was sixteen, and I was twentyone then. I had started to Toadvine, and some men in Birmingham had directed me. Birmingham was a wide place in the road then — just six years old.

I was thinkin’ about a place to stay all night and draggin’ the sand beds when I seed some young squirrels cuttin’ hickernuts up a little bitty hickory tree. I took a red flint rock about the size of a Dommer hen egg from my pocket and throwed it at the bunch of squibs. I killed one of ’em — but I had n’t expected to — and I picked it up thinkin’ as how I’d give it to the madam of the house where I stayed all night that night. I thought to myself that they was plenty of game and lots of timber and some good land in this country, and I said to myself that I’d like to settle here and live.

I set down by a bank spring on the side of the road and took out my knife and gutted my squirrel. It was a little boar just big enough to kill. You know and I know what good eatin’ that is. It was a good spring of water. It tasted good. And it was cold. That spring made me think more about livin’ in this country. It minded me of a spring back home in Georgia. A good spring of water in one country the good Lord made makes that country kin to any other country He made with good springs of water in it. A spring’ll do that more’n most anything else. I’ve studied that out. You just notice it and you’ll see that that’s the way it is.

The sun was gone and it was gettin’ dusty and I got up and started on. Old Darkus would catch me in the timber if I did n’t move on, I thought to myself. But I just had to stop at a big mustydine vine up some pines before I’d made many steps. I shook the vine and they peppered to the ground. They was dead ripe and black as bess bugs. They’s nothin’ better in this world, I figgered to myself, as I eat a dog’s bait of ’em. This made me think more good thoughts about the country I had strolloped to. When you eat a bait of good mustydines in a place, you never do get over it. You always do love that place after that. So I walked on thinkin’ as how if I could find me a good nice young woman I would n’t mind endin’ up here bein’ buried in the same hole with her. I was n’t feelin’ much blue if any, and I had forgot that I was so tired.

II

I got to a house just ahead of Old Darkus and stopped to see if I could get to stay ail night. It was a comfortable-lookin’ place. The livin’ house was a big log house most hid in a cluster of big white oaks, and all the outbuildin’s showed that this was a good farm. A big yaller cur dog run out at me and barked and took on. He like to a bit me. Somebody said, ‘Hush your mouth, Cæser,’and the madam of the house come to the door. I muched the dog and he smelt of me good all over and then sidled off. I axed the madam if a body could get to stay all night there. She said, ‘My old man’s out at the lot feedin’ his oxen. Go see him about it.’ I walked out to the lot and the man of the house was seein’ to his beasts and talkin’ to ’em. He called ’em Buck and Ball. They’s big blackand-white spotted steers. I axed him could a body get to stay all night at his house. He sized me up and said I could stay. I told him my name and where I’s from, and where I’d started to.

A grown girl was milkin’ a red cow in a big gourd. Her pap spoke to her and called her Patsy. She was barefooted and was just makin’ the milk talk in the gourd with both hands. By the time I took her in, the milk had ’come witched and was singin’ a tune in the gourd. I did n’t know the difference. I did n’t know what it was all about any more ’n I knowed what the katydid song all around us and over us was all about. It would a took a Solomon to have ’splained all them mysteries. But everything was laughin’ with me. I knowed that much. I told the girl that I could milk good and to let me help her. She was shy, but she smiled at me and said I could if I wanted to. She said Pied would n’t care for me milkin’ her. She give me a rope to rope Pied’s calf; and I roped the bull calf and he tried to butt me and the girl laughed. But I let him suck to get Pied to give down her milk, and then I milked with one hand while I held the gourd she give me with the other hand. I did n’t mean for the cow to turn the gourd over, so I milked as hard as I could with one hand to make the girl see that I was a good milker. The girl finished her cow and roped Heifer’s calf and started to milk, and by then I’d finished. She said Heifer would n’t let me milk her, and while she was milkin’ Heifer I skinned my squirrel and told her I killed it for her to eat, but did n’t know it at the time. She smiled at me and thanked me when she took it and put it in her apron, and then I walked to the house with her pappy.

A strong wild varment of a somethin’ got hold of me and made me want Patsy. It got in me and jumped and urged me to stay at the lot with the girl. I never in all the days of my life had wanted anything half as bad. And no wonder. The way she was built up and the way she moved minded me of a well-pastured filly. I knowed she was the she-un I would like to be buried in the same hole with. I was sick all over for Patsy. She could a took a little bran in her apron and a tolled me to the jumpin’-off place. All the things that made Patsy a woman had got to me and was makin’ me groan and take on to myself.

At the supper table we begin to get acquainted and everything they was hummed to the tune of Patsy. I’d catch her castin’ sheep’s eyes at me. Her pappy told me that he needed a hand and that he wanted to hire me. Then if we suited each other I would n’t need to go on to Toadvine at all. We’d make a trade in a day or two. I knowed we could satisfy each other, I told him. He said yes, he thought we’d suit.

The supper was a good one and hit the spot. They had plenty to eat at this house. I seed that. They had flour bread and corn bread raised on the farm and plenty of garden stuff at a time when garden stuff was sca’ce, and good meat from the smokehouse. They had milk and butter from the spring and fried peach pies. The squirrel had been salted and put in a pan in the spring for breakfast.

I told ’em about the dog’s bait of mustydines I had had, and the girl said she eat a bait of ’em somewhere every day. She said she had her lots of vines nobody else knowed where was. I believe that’s all she said at the supper table that night. Well, in spite of the mustydines I had put down, I eat a hearty supper that night. It was fun to eat a bite when Patsy did and look across the table at her and catch her lookin’ at me. I seed by the fatlighten’d torch that Patsy was purty in the face and that she had long dark purty hair. I seed this better than I could out at the lot. I thought she had blue eyes and I was right. She had that purty hurt look that all girls has that makes a decent boy want to be kind to ’em and take good care of ’em. Even girls that ain’t purty has that look. And it makes them purty. But when a purty girl that’s well built up has that look it’s a sight for sore eyes. When I got older and knowed more about women I understood that that purty hurt look all girls has is callin’ for a mate. Patsy, she was seventeen then, and that look of hern seemed to be askin’ me to be her mate.

Patsy’s pappy and mammy told me things about theirselves that night at supper and I told ’em things about myself. Since I was goin’ to stay with ’em I axed ’em not to call me Mr. Freeland, but to call me Benny. And they did. They had two other girls, they said, who had married their cousins and was homesteadin’ now — one of ’em over on Lick Creek and the other one down on Mud Creek. They said Patsy’s pap was jerked up by the hair of the head down in Canebrake near the river and strolloped off up to the Piney Woods and hired out to her pap and married her. They married five years before the war and homesteaded their place on Rock Creek adjoinin’ her pap’s place. They’d just got the title to it when Patsy’s pappy went off to the war. Patsy’s pappy told me how her mammy kept the place goin’ and looked after her three babies while he was away. She was just a girl herself, he said; and he was just a boy three years older, his wife put in. She had a hard time in more ways than one, he said, but he come back from the war and found everything all right. When I got older I heard men talk about how Wed Tucker come back and found his true-blue Minnie waitin’ with open arms and no secrets and somethin’ to eat at the house and in the ground. It made ’em sympathize with me when I told ’em how the war ’stroyed my pappy’s and mammy’s worldly goods and broke us up, and how pappy never did come back. And when I told ’em of how mammy had died and how all of us children had strolloped over Georgia and Alabama ever since, Patsy’s mammy looked tender-like toward me. She said I’s j ust the age of her oldest girl. But best of all I could see that Patsy had tender feelin’s toward me.

Soon after supper I went to bed in a good bed in a side room and lay awake thinkin’ that Patsy would be worth her weight in gold to me there in the bed with me. There was just a wall between us, but I went to sleep thinkin’ that that wall was mighty big. I meant to sleep with Patsy by Sunday night if I could work that fast. I did n’t think I could stand it any longer than that.

III

The next mornin’ after we eat a hearty breakfast of eggs and cured meat and coffee and flour bread Patsy’s mammy cooked over the big fireplace in the kitchen, and I’d watched Patsy gnaw the squib’s bones and would n’t touch it myself, I went to the field to pick cotton, and glory be if Patsy did n’t go with me. Her pappy yoked Buck and Ball up to the plough and went to ploughin’ in his wheat patch by the cotton patch. He was fixin’ to sow his wheat.

Patsy was shy, but she’d talk when I talked to her. I axed her if she had a sweetheart and she said she did n’t have— that they was no boy around she wanted for a sweetheart. Her sisters growed up with their cousins and went to lettin’ ’em kiss ’em for pleasure, and the first thing she knowed they upped and married and went off to homestead some land of their own. But there was no boy for her. I said I’s glad of that and she axed me why. I told her cause I wanted to be her sweetheart. She axed me if I left a sweetheart in Georgia and I told her that I did n’t, but that I had my mind set on her. She smiled at me, but did n’t say nothin’ to that. We picked more cotton and carried our rows on a little fudder, and I axed her if she’d ever been kissed. She said she did n’t know nothin’ about that kissin’ business, but that her sisters said it was the very thing. She said good girls was n’t supposed to go to kissin’ before they found ’em a husband. I axed her if she wanted a husband and she laughed, but did n’t answer me. She axed me if I wanted a wife and I told her yes, that I did, and that I wanted her to be it. She laughed, but did n’t say nothin’, and I could n’t get her to give her ’sponse to that. She’d just laugh when I’d try to get her to say somethin’. Well, that laughin’ of hern made things like a tune to me, and I picked cotton to that tune. And she picked on, keepin’ her row about up with mine, and played that tune. She seed she had me eatin’ out of her hand, and pickin’ the cotton was n’t hard for her. She just smiled and looked at me, and her hands went from stalk to stalk like little song birds.

Every time we’d see a little old bird we’d speak to each other about it. I found out that she liked birds and knowed as much about ’em as I did. We had a lot of fun tryin’ to catch a mole, and she told me all she ever had heard about a mole. We seed some field mice and she knowed all about them, too. I said to myself that here was a purty female that was as stout as I was and liked the ground and everything on top of the ground as good as I did. We’d even as much as talk about a lizard or a scorpion when we seed one. When a body’s interested the way we was, even a little old butterfly is enough to get up excitement. When I’d try to get her to talk about love she would n’t do nothin’ but smile or laugh; but when we seed anything alive or looked out over the timber toward Rock Creek she was all tongue. She said she sometimes waded in Rock Creek when she’s by herself, and I don’t guess she knowed how such a purty sight in my mind made me nearly jump out of my skin. I just picked cotton and thought about that sight. I wanted to see that sight.

She said she sometimes seed little fawns down in the creek field when she’d be lookin’ for the sheep, and she told about how her pappy loved to deer-hunt. I told her all I knowed about deer and little deers. She told me she liked to go fishin’ down on the creek. She said she knowed how to catch ’em and I told her I knowed all about fish. Then she said she’s goin’ down on the creek the next week and gather mustydines to make wine. I axed her if she’d let me climb the trees for her and she said she could climb ’em herself and that her pappy and mammy would n’t let her go off down there with me by herself. That was n’t the way good girls acted. I said they would n’t care for it if we got married Sunday, would they? She laughed and said no, they would n’t care for her goin’ off in the timber with me if that was to happen, but that to get married Sunday was somethin’ else.

By the time we’d filled our sacks we got us some guinea watermelons in the cotton patch and I busted their hearts out on a stump. Some was red-hearted and some was yaller-hearted and they all tasted sorter like the fall of the year and was as cold as the dew and shade could make ’em. Well, from then on till dinner time we picked cotton and talked about things the good Lord made and what we liked to do, and eat watermelons and emptied our cotton in the pen. Her pappy was right, close so we could hear all his words to Buck and Ball every time he spoke, and we never did get out of his sight ’cept when we’d go in the cotton pen. I talked love mighty hard and she listened good, and I soon got to touchin’ her with my hands when we’d go in the cotton pen. Then I got her to puttin’ her hand on me when she’d smile.

Before dinner I made a believer out of her by fast work on how I did n’t have nobody but myself, and how I wanted her to take what I did have and let me take her and us make the best out of it. And the last time or two when we’s emptyin’ our cotton I got to huggin’ and kissin’ of her, and we worked up a weddin’ for Sunday if her pappy and mammy would give in. She said she loved me and liked to look at me and for me to hold her and kiss her. Enough said. I’d won a wife. Back in them days when a girl got to lettin’ a boy hug and kiss her and handle her it meant a weddin’ would soon take place. On the way back to the house for dinner I watched her climb over the rail fence and I seed her leg above her knee. It was somethin’ to see a good nice young girl’s leg back then. And it was more good luck than hardly ever come to a young buck to get to see a purty girl’s leg ’bove her knee. Then it’d be a accident like this was. Well, that sight made me crazy. She axed me if I seed her knee. I fessed up that I did and she cried. Nice girls was like that way back then. She said I ought n’t to a done it. I told her I knowed I ought n’t to, but I just could n’t help it. But as we walked on to the house ahead of her pap I made her believe it was n’t a sin and did n’t matter much, and had her smilin’ as we entered the yard gate.

IV

Well, she smiled all through dinner that day and laughed with me all that evenin’ in the cotton patch. She said she’s as happy as a little old bluebird in April and let me kiss her every time we could catch her pappy not lookin’. All that evenin’ I’d pick cotton and help her fill her apron when we’d get the sacks full, and she’d just stand there between the rows and let me hold her hand and feel of her arms. Sometimes some tears would come in her eyes and she’d tell me she’s just so happy she could n’t keep from cryin’. That hurt look that stays in every girl’s eyes kept me busy bein’ good to her and sayin’ kind words to comfort her. Girls is funny that way. They’re not at all like boys. I felt duty-bound to that girl. I did n’t mean for a thing to harm a hair of her head as long as I could help it. And that feelin’ for Patsy never did leave me.

I broke the news at the supper table and Patsy stuck it out with me. The old folks axed us if we was certain sure we knowed our minds. We both made ’em believe we did. Her mammy said that it minded her of her own sparkin’ days ’cept that I had worked faster. Her pappy said they both liked my ’pearance and that they seed at first that me and Patsy liked each other’s looks, but that he’s afraid we did n’t know one another well enough. But me and Patsy kept to our side, and by the time we’d finished supper they both ’greed with us that this way of waitin’ about gettin’ married after a weddin’ had been worked up was not to their way of thinkin’. They’d been through the same mill together that me and Patsy was goin’ through together then, and that helped us win ’em to our side. It did n’t matter much if I had worked faster than Patsy’s pap did. The cases was similar. You know a good catch did n’t come to girls often in them times. The boy mostly had to grow up with the girl and be kin to her. And Patsy had been left out that way. Not many girls got to marry strange boys back then. And strange boys fascinate girls. The old folks said my pappy’s Irish blood and my mammy’s Dutch blood ought to mix well with Patsy’s English and Scotch-Irish blood and that if nothin’ else would do us we could go on and get married Sunday. But they would have to make one request of me. They’d have to axe me not to never take Patsy away from ’em, but to let her live on with ’em or always in hollerin’ distance of ’em, and me be one of ’em. Their other girls didn’t live by ’em and they’d lost their two youngest children, and they wanted to keep Patsy with ’em. We closed our bargain that way.

That night after supper I sparked Patsy on the porch and made no secret of it. But we did n’t leave the porch. Girls was modest way back in them times and did n’t go away from the house with boys much to do their sparkin’. The old folks went to bed inside and lay on their bed with the wall between us and the door standin’ open. We could hear ’em talkin’ about us and about the ways of a man with a maid. They could hear some of our words and some of ’em they could n’t, for lots of our words did n’t need a audience. When a hog or somethin’ would come up, Ca’ser he’d run out and bark at it. One time he barked terrible at Patsy’s sheep when they come up behind the smokehouse.

That night we did n’t feel much need for King David or somebody to be there with us and ’splain the hollerin’ of the katydids and everything like that. It just drawed us closer together and made us kiss and hug and handle one another more, and the world did n’t need ’splainin’ then. A old whoo owl dowm about the spring made her want me to hold her tighter. All that was needed was for Patsy to say somethin’ like, ‘Listen at that little old cricket,’ and I’d think that was Bible wisdom. Everything ’splained itself that night. But people knowed all about the mysteries and feelin’s of the timber back in them times anyhow. Everybody knowed a lot about everything like that. The good Lord was on the fur side of it and people was on the near side and that ’rangement. kept the good Lord and the people purty close together after all. Everything Patsy’d say that night I’d think she’s the smartest girl that ever was and the cutest little trick that ever lived. Like when she said, ‘I try to catch every purty thing I see that’s alive and I know won’t hurt me.’ She said them very words. I mind ’em just as well. And she said somethin’ else I mind well. She said, ‘I love the wild flowers lots better’n I do the tame ones, but Mammy she don’t.’ Finally me and Patsy went to bed in different beds that night, but it was mighty hard on both of us. Patsy had found her a mate that would stay with her, and she could n’t foller out the good Lord’s best design for a grown girl that night, but had to go to bed by herself.

V

The next mornin’ we had company from Toadvine for breakfast. Uncle Jake Smith was riding his horse to Birmingham and had made it there in time to set down at the breakfast table with us. Patsy’s pappy introduced us and ’splained that me and Patsy was goin’ to get married the next day. Uncle Jake said that I looked like I’d be all right and that he knowed Patsy was above an average, and that they was no use in puttin’ it off even if it was fast work. He was goin’ to town so he could see some friends there that Saturday night and stay with a friend and be on the jury Monday mornin’. He said I could ride his horse part of the time and walk ’longside him and up about Hueytown or Rutledge Springs I might catch a ride on a wagon. ‘You help him fix everything up with Judge Mudd, Jake,’ Patsy’s pappy said. Uncle Jake give his word and said he’d be as good as his word, and we got up from the table and left the house together with me walkin’ ’longside the horse.

Me and Uncle Jake had a big time talkin’ and gettin’ acquainted that mornin’. His pappy and mammy had come to the Warrior River from the Savannah River in Georgia and I had to tell him lots of things about Georgia. But he told me a lot more about Alabama. I caught a ride with a man drivin’ a team of mules at Rutledge Springs and rode on into town and Uncle Jake rode his horse ’longside the wagon. The first thing when we got in town we went around to the courthouse and he helped me get the license. Then we went to a restaurant and ordered two big beef stews and coffee. After that we went to a saloon and had two good drinks and separated.

I walked all the way back to Piney Woods. I walked mostly in the night and got to the roof over Patsy’s head at the first blue crack of day. Patsy was still in the bed asleep, but her pappy bit the floor about the time I walked up on the porch and her mammy went to the kitchen by the time I got in the house good. I went to Patsy’s bed and as I looked at her lyin’ there asleep I thought she was too purty and too sweet for any man but me. A man’ll think that. You just notice and you’ll see that he’ll think that about the girl he’s sparkin’ and goin’ to marry. When I woke her up and showed her the license she looked at it and at me in such a way with that hurt female look in her eyes that I thought to myself that grown girls was not supposed to sleep by theirselves. It was not natural and was not intended to be that. way. The good Lord made it the most natural thing in the world for them to bed up with a mate. I went on to the big kitchen and set down by the fireplace till her mammy got breakfast on the table. Then Patsy come in with the license and we all set down to breakfast and looked at the license.

I got up from the breakfast table and went to bed and went to sleep, and slept till nearly the middle of the day. Patsy spent that mornin’ lookin’ through quilts she had quilted and the blankets she had wove ’ginst. the day she got married. And she worked with her best dress and looked at it and handled it and got out her shoes and stockin’s and talked to her mammy about the weddin’ that was about to take place. After that she told me how she’d walk to my bed and gaze down at me and think of how we was about to give ourselves to one another for keeps. I’d brought her stick candy of all flavors and she sucked on that while I was sleepin’.

VI

While I was asleep Patsy’s pap walked up to Uncle Tillman Salter’s, who did n’t live far away, to gas off with Uncle Till and Squire Joe Lisper. Squire Joe was the justice of the peace and we all called him the country lawyer. Him and Uncle Tillman spent most of their Sundays together talkin’ law and politics. They was goin’ to start to town together sometime in the night hours of Monday and be on the jury with Uncle Jake Smith the next week. And all the people in the country said that Squire Joe and Uncle Till had to be in town on such occasions to help Judge Mudd run his court. Patsy’s pap went on up to the house early to tell Squire Joe to wait till we got there right after dinner to get married. He would eat dinner there and wait for us.

Right after dinner me and Patsy walked up to Uncle Till’s. I don’t believe any man ever got to feelin’ close to a new country as quick as I did this country. It seems like I was already feelin’ my roots in the place while me and Patsy walked along armed up goin’ to get married. But Patsy — she was the cause of this. It takes love for a woman to make a man feel at home in a place. Without that a man never can be nothin’ much more’n a stranger on top of the ground in any country. I don’t care how much a man loves to be on top of the ground. He needs to have a woman on top of the ground by his side. Saint Paul did n’t love no woman and no woman loved him, else he could n’t a talked so about bein’ a stranger on earth. It ’ll do that to any man. You just notice it and see if I ain’t right. No man’s ever been won to a place ’cept by some woman. No man’s goin’ to be won to life at all ’cept by some woman.

Well, we got married and that’s enough to say. I had a jovial time with the older men in the time of it and always did feel close to them and Uncle Jake after that. Patsy, she had a bashful time amongst ’em. She blushed a lot and talked to Uncle Till’s girls while we was there gettin’ the knot tied. We walked back towards home by ourselves. It was gettin’ dusty when we got to the big mustydine vine up the pines, and I led Patsy through the timber to it and shook the vine till the ground was covered. And Old Darkus caught us in the timber together not far from the mustydine vine. From then on to now it’s been me and Patsy.