Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 18

· 18 · N EXT MORNING it was raining again, a slow cold drizzle that sheathed the fence wires in ice, and beaded the twigs of the trees. Marsh as he walked across his upland pastures from Higginbottom's where he had spent the bit of night that was left after coming away from Delph, felt rather than saw the icy rain. Though it was long past his usual breakfast time, the murky dawn seemed more the ending of night than a beginning of day. He walked slowly with his legs feeling curiously light, and his head, too; and his eyes felt strange as ifpropped open with sticks and sprinkled with sand. Still he wasn't sleepy. He wasn't tired or hungry . He felt nothing as he plodded through the rain. He reached the brow of the pasture hill and stopped and studied the brick house, but found only the upper windows yellow in the heavy gloom. Caesar came whimpering by his feet and laid his nose against his knees. Since the flood Caesar had somehow changed from an overgrown playful pup to a dog, given sometimes to wrinkling the brown spots on his forehead and talking with his eyes. When his master stood so long in the rain he cuffed a leg of his overalls and looked up at him, but Marsh continued to study the brick house windows with no glance for Caesar. When he had waited a time and the kitchen windows did not brighten, he swore a long bitter oil man's oath and went on over the hill toward his lower farm, stopping every step or so to turn and look back at the brick house until it was lost to his sight. None of them would be up till noon, he guessed, worn as they must be from caring for Delph and the baby. Dr. Andy had not started for Burdine and 242 243 his other patients until the small hours of the morning. But Delph would be all right he had said. Pneumonia side by side with child birth was bad, but what would have killed another, Delph would throw off in a few weeks' time-already her fever was not so high as it had been. She would get along fine-if she didn't fret herself to death over the baby. And Dr. Andy had spoken but briefly of the child. True, it had come only a bit too soon, but it was thin, not fat as he had expected the baby of a healthy young couple to be, and a child born from a woman with pneumonia must be bottle fed from its birth, and that was not a promising start for a delicate baby. Marsh thought of Dr. Andy's words and wished for some hard heavy work for his hands. At the spot where the road turned over the bluff, he stopped and tried to see what was left ofhis lower farm. Through the night the river had drawn almost to the willow trees, though pools of water in the fields shone dimly like black islands in the seas of yellow mud. He saw the toilet that had stood at the back of the garden facedownward on the other side of the barn. The chicken house lay in what had been the melon field. Rails and limbs of trees and paling slats were strewn about with the half of what must have the roof of a barn up the river, lying by an upper corner of the house. He saw wire fence broken and sagging under walls of dripping debris, and long stretches of paling flat on the ground or carried away. He looked a time in silence, then whistled to Caesar who had circled away, and walked on, and did not stop until he reached the house. He studied it a time; already the water-soaked weather boarding had loosened in spots, here and there were broken window panes gaping like torn eyes, stones in the foundation had slipped to the ground, and heavy layers of mud reached halfway up the second story windows; but such things seemed no more than scratches on some battle scarred warrior. The house stood firm and true and straight, moved no whit from its foundations, with roof and walls and floor that showed no signs of sagging. He circled the tool house, the smoke house, spring house, and barn and found them in more or less the same condition; wounded but not...