9. CHAPTER IX.
HAS GOD FORGOTTEN SHOCKY?
“PAP wants to know ef you would spend to-morry
and Sunday at our house?” said one
of Squire Hawkins's girls, on the very next evening,
which was Friday. The old Squire was thoughtful
enough to remember that Ralph would not find it
very pleasant “boarding out” all the time he was entitled to
spend at Pete Jones's. For in view of the fact that Mr. Pete
Jones sent seven children to the school, the “Master” in Flat
Creek district was bound to spend two weeks in that comfortable
place, sleeping in a preoccupied bed, in the “furdest corner,”
with insufficient cover, under an insufficient roof, and eating floating
islands of salt pork fished out of oceans of hot lard. Ralph
was not slow to accept the relief offered by the hospitable
justice of the peace, whose principal business seemed to be the
adjustment of the pieces of which he was composed. And as
Shocky traveled the same road, Ralph took advantage of the
opportunity to talk with him. The Master could not dismiss
Hannah wholly from his mind. He would at least read the
mystery of her life, if Shocky could be prevailed on to furnish
the clue.
[ILLUSTRATION]
SHOCKY.
[Description: 556EAF. Page 082. In-line engraving of the head and shoulders of a boy
holding a book, wearing a jacket with a ripped shoulder.]
“Poor old tree!” said Shocky, pointing to a crooked and
gnarled elm standing by itself in the middle of a field. For when
the elm, naturally the most graceful of trees, once gets a “bad
set,” as ladies say, it can grow to be the most deformed. This
solitary tree had not a single straight limb.
“Why do you say `poor old tree'?” asked Ralph.
“'Cause it's lonesome. All its old friends is dead and chopped
down, and there's their stumps a-standin' jes like grave-stones. It
must be lonesome. Some folks says it don't feel, but I think it
does. Everything seems to think and feel. See it nodding its
head to them other trees in the woods, and a-wantin' to shake
hands! But it can't move. I think that tree must a-growed in
the night.”
“Why, Shocky?”
“'Cause it's so crooked,” and Shocky laughed at his own conceit;
“must a-growed when they was no light so as it could
see how to grow.”
And then they walked on in silence a minute. Presently Shocky
began looking up into Ralph's eyes to get a smile. “I guess that
tree feels just like me. Don't you?”
“Why, how do you feel?”
“Kind o' bad and lonesome, and like as if I wanted to die,
you know. Felt that way ever sence they put my father into the
graveyard, and sent my mother to the poor-house and Hanner
to ole Miss Means's. What kind of a place is a poor-house?
Is it a poorer place than Means's? I wish I was dead and
one of them clouds was a carryin' me and Hanner and mother
up to where father's gone, you know! I wonder if God forgets
all about poor folks when their father dies and their mother gits
into the poor-house? Do you think he does? Seems so to me.
May be God lost track of my father when he come away from
England and crossed over the sea. Don't nobody on Flat Creek
keer fer God, and I guess God don't keer fer Flat Creek. But
I would though, ef he'd git my mother out of the poor-house
and git Hanner away from Means's, and let me kiss my mother
every night, you know, and sleep on my Hanner's arm, jes like
I used to afore father died, you see.”
Ralph wanted to speak, but he couldn't. And so Shocky, with
his eyes looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph's presence,
told over the thoughts that he had often talked over to
the fence-rails and the trees. “It was real good in Mr. Pearson
to take me, wasn't it? Else I'd a been bound out tell I was
twenty-one, may be, to some mean man like Ole Means. And I
a'n't but seven. And it would take me thirteen years to git
twenty-one, and I never could live with my mother again after
Hanner gets done her time. 'Cause, you see, Hanner'll be
through in three more year, and I'll be ten and able to work,
and we'll git a little place about as big as Granny Sanders's,
and —”
Ralph did not hear another word of what Shocky said that
afternoon. For there, right before them, was Granny Sanders's
log cabin, with its row of lofty sun-flower stalks, now dead
and dry, in front, with its rain-water barrel by the side of the
low door, and its ash-barrel by the fence. In this cabin lived
alone the old and shriveled hag whose hideousness gave her a
reputation for almost supernatural knowledge. She was at once
doctress and newspaper. She collected and disseminated medicinal
herbs and personal gossip. She was in every regard indispensable
to the intellectual life of the neighborhood. In the matter
of her medical skill we can not express an opinion, for her
“yarbs” are not to be found in the pharmacopœia of science.
What took Ralph's breath was to find Dr. Small's fine, faultless
horse standing at the door. What did Henry Small want to visit
this old quack for?
