menu_book Chapter 8

Section 8 of 1916 First Chapters Collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. 1916 First Chapters Collection, Section 8 Leatherwood God by William Dean Howells. A storm of the afternoon before had cleared the mid-August air. The early sun was hot but the wind had carried away

the sultry mists and infused fresh life into the day. Where Matthew Braille sat smoking his corn-cop pipe in the covered porch way between the rooms of his double log cabin, he insensibly shared the common exhilaration and waited comfortably for the breakfast of bacon and coffee which his wife was getting within. As he smoked on he inhaled with the odors from her cooking the dense

rich smell of the ripening corn that stirred in the morning breeze on three sides of the cabin and the fumes of the yellow tobacco which he had grown and cured and was now burning. His serenity was a somewhat hawk-like repose but the light that came into his narrowed eyes was a rather amused liking as a man on a clay bank course rode up before the cabin in the space where alone it was

not hidden by the ranks of the tall corn. The man sat astride a sack with a grist of corn in one end balanced by a large stone in the other and he made as if he were going on to the mill without stopping but he yielded apparently to a temptation from within since none had come from without. Whoa! he shouted at the clay bank which the slightest whisper would have stayed

and then he called to the old man on the porch. Fine morning Squire. Braille took out his pipe and spat over the edge of the porch before he called back. Won't you light and have some breakfast? Well no thank you Squire the man said and at the same time he roused the clay bank from an instant repose and pushed her to the cabin steps. I'm just on my

way down to Brother Hingston's mill and I reckon Sally don't want me to have any breakfast till I bring back the meal for her to get it with. Anyway that's what she said when I left. Braille answered nothing and the rider of the clay bank added with a certain uneasiness as if for the effect of what he was going to say. I was up pretty late last night and I reckon I overslept he parlayed. Then as

Braille remained silent he went on briskly. I was wondering if you heroned about the curious do-ins last night at the camp meeting. Braille said without ceasing to smoke you're the first one I've seen this morning except my wife. She wasn't at the camp meeting. His aquiline profile which met close at the lips from the loss of his teeth compressed itself further and leaving

the whole burden of the affair to the man on the clay bank and his narrowed eyes were a line of mocking under the thick gray brows that stuck out like feathers above them. Well sir it was great do-ins the other said wincing a little under the old man's indifference. Braille relented so far as to ask who was at the bellows. The other answered with a certain inward deprecation of the

grin that spread over his face and the responsive levity of his phrase. There was a change of hands but the one that kept the fire going the hardest and the hottest was Elder Grove. Braille made honk in the scornful guttural which no English spelling can represent. Yes sir the man on the clay bank went on carried forward by his own interest but helpless to deny himself the guilty pleasure of

falling in with Braille's humor. He had him going lively about midnight. Now I tell you whooping and yelling and ripping and staving and falling down with the jerks and pulling and hauling at the centers to get him up to the mourners bench and hurrah over him as fast as they was knocked down and drugged out. I never seen the beat of it in all my born days. You don't make out anything very

strange Abel Reverdy Braille said putting his pipe back into his mouth and beginning to smoke it again into a lost activity. Well I ain't come to it yet reverty. Apologize I reckon there never was a bigger meeting in Leatherwood Botan anywhere. Folks there from 20 miles round just slathers I reckon there was a thousand if there was one. Honk. Braille would not trouble to take out his pipe

and make him the sound now. The smoke got into his lungs and he coughed. Reverdy gained courage to go on but he went on in the same strain whether in spite of himself or not. There was as many as four exhorters keeping her up at once to different tunes and praying and singing everywhere so you couldn't hear yourself think. Every exhorter had a mourners bench in front of him and I

counted as many as 80 mourners on him at one time. The most of them were sitting under Elder Grove. He was pounding the kingdom into him good and strong. When the spirit took him he roared so that he had the hounds just flaxed out. You couldn't catch a yelp from him. Many hounds Braille asked in a sort of cold sympathy with the riotous outlaws known to the religious by that

name. Mount been four I got there but by that time I reckon they was most of them on the mourners benches. They ought to tar and feather some of them fellers or ride them on a rail anyway coming round and making trouble on the edge of camp meetings. I didn't hear but one toot from their horns last night and either because the elder had shamed him back into the shadow of the woods or brought him

forwards into the light there wasn't a hound not to call a hound anywhere's. I tell you it was a sight Squire you ought to have been there yourself. Reverdy grinned at this notion. They had eight campfires going instead of four on top of the highest stages yet so the whole place was lit up as bright as day and when the elder stopped short and sudden and the other exhorters held back their Tommy

hawks and all the Saints and sinners left on they're groaning and jerking to see what was coming. Now it was a great sight I tell you Squire. The elder he put up his hand and says he let us pray and the blaze from all them stages seemed to turn itself right onto him and the smoke and the leaves hung like a big red cloud over him and everybody had their eyes fast and tight on his face like they couldn't turn them anywhere else that they tried. But he didn't begin praying straight off he seemed to stop and then says he what shall we pray for and just then there came a kind of a snort and a big voice shout out salvation and then there come another snort like there was a scared horse got loose right in there among the people and some of them jumped up from their seats and tumbled over the benches and some of them

bounced off and fell into fits and the women screeched and feigning thick as flies. It gave me about the worst feeling I ever had in my life went through me like a axe another said the same some of them said it was like being scared in the dark or more like when you think you're just going to die. Able Reverdy stopped for the effect on Braille who had been smoking tranquilly throughout

and who now asked quietly and what was it what was it a man a stranger that nobody seen before and nobody's suspicion was there till they hear him give that kind of snort and they seen him standing right in front of the elder grove's pulpit he was in his bare head and he had a suit of long glossy jet black hair hanging down back of his ears clean to his shoulders he was kind of

pale like and sad looking and he had a roman nose some like yours and eyes like two coals just black fire kind of he was pretty thick set around the shoulders but he slimmed down towards his legs and he stood about six feet high but the thing of it reverdy urged seeing that Braille remained outwardly unmoved was the way he was dressed I suppose the rest being all in brown jeans and lindsay

wools he made us notice it more he was dressed in the slickest kind of black broadcloth with a long frock coat and a white cravat he had on a ruffled shirt and a tall beaver hat the color of the fur and a pair of these here high boots with his breeches strapped down under him Braille limbered himself from his splint bottom chair and came forward to the edge of the porch as if to be sure

of spitting quite under the clay bank's body not until he had folded himself down into his seat again and tilted it back did he ask going to order a suit oh well said reverdy with a mingling of disappointed hope hurt vanity and involuntary pleasure if he had been deeply moved by the incident which he had tried to make braille see with his own sense of its impressiveness it could

not have been holy with the hope of impressing braille that he had stopped to tell it his notion might have been that braille would ridicule it and so help him throw off the lingering hold which it had upon him his pain and his pleasure both came from braille's leaving the incident alone and turning the ridicule upon him that was cruel and yet funny reverdy had inwardly to own as it touched the remoteness from a full suit of

black broadcloth represented by his hickory shirt and his butternut trousers held up by a single suspender passing over his shoulder and fastened before and behind with wooden pegs his straw hat which he had braided himself and his wife had sewed into shape the summer before was ragged around the brim and a tuft of his yellow hair escaped through a break in the crown it was as far from a tall hat of fur-colored beaver as his bare feet were from a pair of high boots

such as the stranger at the camp meeting had worn though his ankles were richly shaded in three colors from the road the field and the barnyard he liked the joke so well that the herd of it could hardly keep him from laughing as he thumped his mare's ribs with his naked heels and bad her get up she fetched a deep sigh but she did not move better light braille said you wouldn't get that corn ground in time for breakfast now i reckon reverdy said aloud but to himself rather

than braille and with his mind on his wife in the log cabin where he had left her in high rebellion which she promised him nothing but a bag of cornmeal could reduce she don't need to wait for me exactly she could grate herself some of the new corn and she's got some bacon anyway better light braille said again the sound of frying which had risen above their voices within had ceased and after a few quick movements of feet over the punch and floor with some clicking of knives and

dishes the feet came to the door opening on the porch and a handsome elderly woman looked out she was neatly dressed in a home woven lindsey woozy gown with a blue check apron reaching to its hem in front and a white cloth passed round her neck and crossed over her breast she had a cap on her iron gray hair braille did not visibly note her presence in saying the woman will want to hear about it hear about what his wife asked and then she said to reverdy good morning

abel won't you light and have breakfast with us it's just ready i reckon sally will excuse you well she will if you say so mrs braille reverdy made one action of throwing his leg over the clay banks back to the ground and slipping the bridle over the smooth peg left from the limb of the young tree trunk which formed one of the posts of the porch my he said as he followed his hostess indoors you do have things nice i never come here without wanting to have my old shanty white

washed inside like your nears and the logs plastered outside the mud and moss of that chinking and daubing keeps falling out and letting all the kinds of weather there is in on us and sally she's at me about it too she's worse than i am if anything i reckon if she had her say we'd have a two-room cabin too and a loft over both parts like you have miss braille or a frame house even but i don't believe anybody but you could keep this floor so clean them knots in the

punchings just shine and that chimney piece with that plaster of pears samuel praying in it well if sally's asked me for samuel once i reckon she has a hundred times and that clock it's a picture he looked about the interior as he took the seat offered him at the table and praised the details of the furnishing with a reference to the effect of each at home in this he satisfied that obscure fealty of the husband who feels that such a connection of the

absent wife with some actual experience of his is equivalent to their joint presence it was not so much to praise mrs braille's belongings to her as to propitiate the idea of mrs reverty that he continued his flatteries in the meantime braille who came in behind him stood easing himself from one foot to the other with an ironical eye slanted at reverty from under his shaggy brows he dropped his head now and began walking up and down the room while he listened in a sort of

sarcastic patience ain't you going to have anything to eat mr braille his wife demanded with plaintive severity braille pulled at his car pipe which muttered responsibly not so long as i've got anything to smoke gets up he explained to reverty and jerks it out of my mouth when we haven't got company i reckon abel knows how much to believe of that mrs braille commented and reverty gave the pleas chuckle of a social inferior raised above his level by amiable condescension

but as if he thought it safe is to refuse any share in this intimacy he ended his adulations with the opinion i should say that if these here two rooms was thowed together they'd make half as much as the temple braille stopped in his walk and bent his frown and reverty but not in anger this is the temple temple of justice justice of the peace do you people think there's only one kind of temple in leatherwood reverty gave his chuckle again well square i ought to know anyway

all the log roll and i've done for you last election time i didn't hardly believe you'd get in because they said you was an infidel where you couldn't deny it could you grail ass with increasing friendliness in his frown no i couldn't deny it squad but the way i told him to look at it was ms braille was christian enough for the whole family said you know more law and she know more gospel than all the rest of leatherwood put together and that was what elected the family

was it braille asked well i hope mrs braille won't refuse to serve he said and he began his walk again tell her about that horse that broke into the meeting last night and tried to play man reverty laughed shaking his head over his plate of bacon and reaching for the corn poem which mrs braille passed in you do beat all square the way you take the shine off of religious experience while he addressed himself to mrs braille it wasn't much as far as anybody could

make out it was just the queerness of the whole thing reverty went over the facts again beginning with deprecation for the squire but gathering respect for them in the interest they seemed to have for mrs braille she listened silently and then she asked and what became of him well that's where you got me mrs braille don't anybody know what become of him just kind of went out like a fire when the power was working the hardest and wasn't there next time he looked where he been

kind of thowed cold water on the meat and folks begun going home and breaking up and turning in well it was pretty nice sun up anyway by that time i don't know made me feel all over it seemed like i've been dreaming and that man was a vision reverty had lifted an enraptured face but at sight of braille pausing in sarcastic pleasure he dropped his head with a snicker i know the squire will laugh but that's the way it was he'll laugh the other side out of mouth someday if he

keeps on mrs braille said with apparent reproof and latent pride was sally at the meeting with you well no she wasn't reverty began and braille asked and did you wake her up and tell her about it well no i didn't square that's a fact she woke me up i just crept in quiet and felt out the soft side of a punch in for a nap and the first thing i know was sally having me by the shoulder and wanting to know about getting that corn ground for breakfast my i don't know what she'll say

when i do get back reverty laughed at fearful pleasure but his gaiety was clouded by a shadow projected from the cabin door well i might have noted a voice that once found and threatening called to reverty's quailing figure the owner of the voice was a young woman unkempt as to the pale hair which escaped from the knot at her neck and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its

main strands together the likeness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment and her large features were respectively lank in their way nose and chin and high cheekbones her eyes wobbled in their sockets with a sort of inquiring laughter that spread her wide loose mouth she was barefooted like reverty on whom her eyes rested with a sort of burlesque menace so that she could not turn them to mrs braille and the attention which man was required

of her even when she added i just spishened that he had turned in here as soon as i smelt your breakfast ms braille and the deer knows whether i blame him so much neither then you'd better draw up to selling mrs braille said without troubling herself to rise from her own chair and glancing toward another for mrs reverty oh no i couldn't mrs braille i only just meant how nice it smelled i got me something at home before i left and i ain't a bit hungry well then you eat breakfast

for me i'm hungry the squire said sit down you couldn't get able away now not if you went on an hour don't separate families well just as you say squire mrs reverty snickered and she submitted to pull up the chair which mrs braille's glance had suggested it beats all what a excitement there is in this time about the goings-on at the camp meeting last night if i've heard it from one i've heard it from a dozen i suppose abel told you she addressed herself impartially to mrs braille across

the table and to the squire tilted against the wall in his chair smoking behind his wife not a word the squire said and his wife did not trouble herself to protest reverty opened his mouth in a soundless laugh at the squire's human and filled it with bacon and corn pone and ducked his head in silence over his plate what goings-on while that man that came in while elder grove was snatching the brands from the burning and snorted like a horse but i know abel's told you i just

like one of your jokes squire braille ain't it mrs braille sally referred herself to one and the other you won't get either of us to say sally mrs braille let the squire answer for both you'd better go on i couldn't hear too often about a man that snorted like a horse if abel did tell what did the horses hitched back of the tents think about any of them try to shout like a man well you may laugh squire braille sally said with a toss of her head for the dignity she failed up

she slumped forward with a laugh and when she lifted her head she said through the viddle that filled her mouth i don't know what the horses thought but the folks believe it was a apostle or something who said so abel oh sure do you suppose i believe anything abel reverty says and this gave reverty a joy which she shared with him he tried to impart it to mrs braille and passively pouring him a third cup of coffee i just met miss lennard coming up the crossroad

and she told me she saw our clay bank hitched here and i spishened abel wasn't fur off and that's why i stopped the husband wife looked across the table and feigned fear and threat that gave them pleasure beyond speech she didn't say it was your clay bank that snorted the squire gravely inquired squire braille you surely will kill me and the husband joined the wife in a shout of laughter now i can't hardly get back to what she did say but i can tell you it wasn't nothing

to laugh at plenty of them keeled over where they sought and a lot bounced up and down like it was an earthquake and pretty near all the women's screen but he stood there straight as a ramrod and never moved an eye winker she said his face was something awful just as solomon still he never spoke after that one word salvation but every once in a while he snorted nobody's seen him come in or ever seen him before till he first snored and then they didn't see anybody else the preacher

he preached along and tried to act like as if nothing had happened but it was no use nobody didn't hardly pay no attention to him except in the stranger himself he never took his eyes off elder grove some thought he was trying to charm him like a snake does a bird but it didn't faze the elder elder too old a bird the squire suggested yes i reckon he might be sally innocently assented and when he gave the benediction the snorter disappeared in a

flash with a strong smell of brimstone i suppose why that was the thing about squire he just stayed and shook hands with everybody pleasant as a basket of chips and he went home with david gillespie he was just as polite to the poorest person there but it was the big bugs that took the most to him well the squire summed up i don't see but what your reports agree and i reckon there must be some truth in him who's that up there at that pike crossing he did not trouble himself to

do more than frown heavily in the attempt to make out the passer mrs reverie jumped from her chair and ran out to look well assure as i'm alive if it ain't that gillespie girl i bet she'll know all about it i'll just catch up with her and get the news out of her if there is any say say jane she called the girl and she ran up the road with the cowlite gate which her swirling skirt gave her the girl stopped for her then in apparent haste she moved on again and sally moved with her out

of sight her voice still made itself heard in uncouth cries and laughter braille called her into the kitchen where reverie had remained in the enjoyment of mrs braille's patient hospitality here's your chance abel chance reverie questioned back with a full mouth to get that corner of yours ground and beat sally home well squire reverie said i reckon you're right he came out into the open space where braille sat well i won't forget this breakfast very soon he offered his gratitude

to mrs braille over his shoulder as he passed through the door you're welcome able she answered kindly and when he had made his manners to the impassive squire mounted his clay bank and thumped the horse into motion with his naked heels she came out into the porch and said to her husband i don't know as i liked your hinting him out of the house that way braille did not take the point up but remained thoughtfully smiling in the direction his guest had taken the idea is that

most people marry their opposites he remarked and that gives the children the advantage of inheriting their folly from two kinds of fools but abel and sally are a perfect pair mental and moral twins the only thing they don't agree in is their account of what became of that snorting exhorter but the difference there isn't important if an all-wise providence has kept them from transmitting a double dose of the same brand of folly to posterity that's one thing in favor of providence

he took up his wife's point now if i hadn't hinted him away he'd have stayed to dinner you wouldn't have hinted him away if he'd stayed to supper well are you going to have some breakfast his wife asked i'll get you some fresh coffee well i would like a little with the head on martha that's a fact have i got time for another pipe no i don't reckon you have his wife said and she passed into the kitchen again where she continued to make such short replies as braille's discourse

required of him he knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still up tilted chair as he talked one fool like abel i can stand and i was just going to come in when sally came in sight and then i knew that two fools like abel would make me sick so i waited till the creator of heaven and earth could get a minute off and help me out but he seemed pretty busy with the solar system this morning and i had about given up when he sent that galepsis girl in sight i knew that would

fetch sally but it was an inspiration of my own to suggest abel's chance to him i don't want to put that on your maker martha it was your inspiration to get him to stay in the first place mrs braille said with him no martha that was my unfailing obedience to the sacred laws of hospitality i didn't expect to fall into their condemnation a second time though mrs braille did not answer him by the familiar scent from within braille knew that his coffee must be nearly ready

as he dropped his chair forward he heard a sound of frying and charl motha he called you're not getting me some fresh bacon did you suppose there'd be some left she demanded while she stepped to and fro at her labors her steps ceased and she called well come in now matthew if you don't want everything to get cold like the poem is braille obeyed saying oh i can stand cold poem and at side of the table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it he mocked tenderly now just to

reward you martha i've got half a mind to go with you to the next meeting in the temple i don't know as i'm going myself she said pouring the coffee i wish you would just to please me he teased end of section eight leatherwood god by william dean howells chapter one