well.
“You the one what killed him?” she asked bluntly, her voice louder now.
He stared back at her and drew a quiet breath. “I...don’t know.”
“Well, at least you ain’t a liar,” she said after a moment. “These here hills is full of liars and I can’t abide any of them.”
“Where’s the Garth cabin?” he asked, still hoping to get some information out of her.
“You going to help or hurt?”
“I told you. I don’t mean Thomas Henry’s wife or his little sisters any harm.”
She continued to stare at him and the minutes dragged on. “You wait for me,” she said abruptly, as if she’d suddenly made up her mind about something. “I’m going to get my sunbonnet. Make that there horse come up here by the porch.”
He considered it an encouraging sign that she left the musket leaning against the door frame, and he walked the horse forward. She returned shortly, wearing the blue-flowered cotton bonnet she’d gone to fetch and carrying a basket. The bonnet was faded but clean, and her withered face had disappeared into the deep brim. He thought she would have a horse of her own someplace to get her to wherever they were about to go, but she had other plans.
“Hold that,” she said, shoving the basket into his hand. “Well, let me grab your arm. How do you think I’m going to get up there?”
He shifted the basket and the reins to his other hand while she awkwardly caught him by the forearm and swung up behind him. She was much stronger than she looked. He expected to have to help her a lot more than he did.
“My name’s Rorie Conley,” she said when she was situated and he’d handed the basket back. “And yes, I already know—you ain’t got one. That’s Rorie Conley. Try to remember that. I’m a old widder woman and I don’t suffer fools gladly. That’s something else you need to remember. That way,” she added with a broad gesture that could have meant anything, and poking him in the ribs for emphasis.
He set the horse off in the direction she’d more or less indicated.
“That basket’s heavy. You got a revolver in it?” he asked after they’d gone a short way.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she countered.
“I would,” he said.
“I ain’t telling you.”
He waited for a time, but apparently she meant it.
“Well, they say ignorance is bliss. I’m not feeling particularly blissful, though.”
“Life’s like that, ain’t it?”
He smiled to himself and urged the horse back onto what may or may not be the path.
“You ain’t the first one,” she said as the way grew more wooded and more precariously downhill.
“The first what?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Soldier without a name. No-name soldiers been coming to these hills ever since George Washington had an army. Some men just don’t like armies, I reckon.”
“Not much to like,” he said.
“Don’t reckon there is,” she said agreeably.
“How far are we going?”
“Why? You got a train to catch?”
He couldn’t keep from smiling. “No, ma’am. No train.”
“This trip ought to work out real well, then. I ain’t catching no train, either.”
They rode for a while in silence. He could feel the air growing cooler as they descended farther and farther down into the wooded hollow. He could hear water flowing somewhere, and every now and then a bird flew up or something scampered off among the bushes and undergrowth. There was nothing to do but follow the path he could barely see, in lieu of more specific directions.
“Jeremiah,” he said when they finally reached the bottom and crossed a small but bold stream and started up the other side. “My name’s Jeremiah.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “You got yourself half a name. Well, I’m proud to know it. Half of something’s better than all of nothing, ain’t it, Jeremiah?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That it is.”
“Did you up and run off from somewhere?” she asked, verifying what he already suspected regarding her penchant for bluntness.
“War’s over,” he said, assuming she was asking if he was a deserter.
“More things to run from than a war, Jeremiah. Must be one of them other things, then.”
He wasn’t about to ask what she meant, but she continued as if he had.
“You don’t look like you got no money, so I ain’t thinking you up and robbed a bank. Don’t look like no gambler what can’t pay his loses, neither. Must be something to do with a woman,” she said. “You running from somebody’s mad husband?”
He didn’t say anything, and she chuckled softly. “Didn’t take you for one of them, Jeremiah. Still, men ain’t the smartest creatures God put on this earth. They get themselves in all kind of messes and don’t never know for a gnat’s second how they got there. That’s how we ended up brother-fighting-brother these here last four years, to my way of thinking—and poor Thomas Henry Garth dead.”
That remark seemed to have ended the conversation.
For a while.
“I’m worried, Jeremiah,” she said, but he had lost sight of the path and wasn’t really listening.
“That way,” she said, pointing over his shoulder. “I’m worried and that’s why I’m running on so. Well, I like to talk anyway, and I don’t get much chance except when I get down the mountain to church. So when I’m all vexed like this—well, it just comes out and I’m a sight. I’m right fond of all of them Garth girls—Beatrice and Amity and Sayer. If the Lord takes them, it’s going to break my heart—and I told Him that, too. Don’t know that He sets much store by what’s going to happen to my old heart if He does one thing or another, but I figured it won’t hurt for Him to know for sure I ain’t going to be happy. I been real good about not asking for things for myself for a long time now—didn’t even mention how bad my knees is been paining me. But then it come to me—right out of the blue—right when I was of half a mind to shoot you for a bushwhacker. I thought, ‘Quit your yammering, Rorie Conley. Get that boy with the horse and go see about ’em.’ So here we are.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, because she had stopped talking and seemed to be expecting him to make some kind of response.
“Sayer, now, she’s a outsider,” Rorie continued when he’d obliged her by using the small space she’d given him. “She ain’t from these here mountains, but she tries. Thomas Henry’s mama showed her how to cook.
