Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 22

· 22 · SOMETIMES AT Lewis's store or on the courthouse steps or in the little saloon at the end of Maple Street just around the corner from the Baptist Church, men would pay Marsh Gregory the highest compliment they ever paid to a stranger; one they never gave to Mr. Elliot or the strange preachers and teachers and doctors they now and then had. In addition to agreeing that he was tough as a hickory switch in the spring, they also said sometimes that somewhere behind him there was good blood, and that some of his generations must have been a fine breed of people. As proof they would speak not only of himself, his farm, the remarkable child that was Burr-Head, but of the good wife he had picked for himself, since it was a well known fact that a man could not be judged by himself alone, but through his wife as well. There were others, the older, more skeptical ones, who said that Delph had made him what he was. Most any man with red blood in his body and sense in his head would go the limit for a woman like Delphine Costello Gregory. Pretty she was, not young girl pretty as she had used to be, but a fine full figure of a woman with a straight strong back and a proud high head, and hands and shoulders that could turn off a sight of work if need be. She could run the cultivator through the corn or sit quiet and lady-like mending his overalls; it was all one to her. And everybody remembered how she had peddled and helped him through that first hard summer. And her mind was strong as her body. It was from her most likely that the child got its bright quick ways. Look what she had done 312 313 and was doing for the little Creekmores. She had decided one day that they ought to learn to read and write and figure. So through the winter months the five oldest came to her for a few hours almost every day, and Emma said they learned a lot, especially geography and singing. The maps on Delph's walls and her gift for song made her school ideal for such subjects. And if anyone asked her why she took so much time over five little negroes, she was apt to laugh and say that she liked to be busy at something, especially through the winter when there was nothing much to do. Even Dorie wondered how Delph did all the things she did. If the school or Salem church planned a program or ice cream or pie supper, Delph could always be counted on to do her share, not only in baking a cake or pie but in helping the children learn their pieces, and their songs. "I feel better bein' full-handed all th' time," she always said if someone marveled at the help she gave. She sang at many churches as well as Salem Sunday School, and people never tired to hear her sing. There was a wonder in her voice. To look at her strong straight body she seemed more made for earth and rocks and growing corn than song. Still, her eyes never burned so blue in her weather browned face as when she sang, and the strength of her body grew dwarfed in the strength of her song. During the great revival meetings, hardened sinners, whom words of preachers had failed to frighten or beseech into grace and the life everlasting, would listen to her sing and go begging forgiveness for their sins. Her voice was filled with a something that none could name or explain. One of Quarrelsome Sexton's boys who had joined the church and quit his drinking, gun-carrying ways, described it one night to the early crowd gathered about the stove in Salem Church as they waited for the services to begin. "I heared her sing an' I felt th' eternal damnation of doin' without th' grace of God. I could feel th' wantin' an' th' wishin' an' th' beggin' after in her singin'." Brother Eli had listened and smiled secretly in his beard, then said with his eyes on the ceiling, "There is no greater strength nor beauty than that of the soul that can dream on of seeing God-after he had learned and knows that he never shall see God." The Sexton boy frowned in a...