Read Online The Devil's Dream by Lee Smith - Free Book Online Page B

there, and even using snow finely to try and stop the bleeding, but nothing worked.
    Daylight come and the whole cabin was a wet bloody mess and Mamma was going, she did not know us. The baby whined in its cradle but Mamma did not appear to hear it. For a long time her hands was still clutching and clutching at the air, but then she stopped that. Her hands closed up, her fingers curled like fiddlehead ferns. Her eyes was wide and staring until Granny Horn closed them. Granny Horn stood up then, finely. She must of been six feet tall.
    â€œClaude, where is yer likker at?” she said, but Daddy would not leave Mamma, he was laid acrost her bosom weeping like a child.
    â€œClaude!” Granny Horn said sharp.
    â€œI’ll git it,” I said then, for I knew where he kept it in the loft, and I clumb up there and found a jar and brung it down to her. Granny Horn took a big swig of it, it was white likker, and looked at me directly for the first time.
    â€œHoney, you go and lay down now,” she said, and I done it. No sooner did I hit the bed tick than I was fast asleep, the soundest sleep in the world, I reckon, for I slept all that day until night again, and when I woke it was dark and the fire was going and Mamma was not there, nor Daddy, and Granny Horn was cleaning with a great pot of water and the baby was crying hard. Granny Horn gave me some johnnycake then and said to eat it and then said to go back to bed, and I done so, and when I woke again it was morning, another day, and the sun was shining offen the snow all around, but it would be some several more days afore you could get in or out through the gap.
    I do not remember these days too good, to tell the truth. They seem to me now as a blaze of light, sun offen the snow. I know what happened, though.
    Granny Horn laid Mamma out on a plank they rigged up in the springhouse, and we kept her there until it thawed enough to bury her. So Mamma was laid out and froze, finely and fectually, in the springhouse.
    When it got to where Granny Horn could get through the gap, she done so, taking the baby, as Daddy would not leave Mamma. Granny Horn took the baby to a woman that had one, so it could get some titty, and while Nonnie was gone, I played like she had never been borned. I played like I was the baby.
    Then Granny Horn come back, which I hated, for she was so big and rough, she was the furtherest thing in the world from my sweet mamma.
    Sometimes I would go out to the springhouse and see my mamma, although they had said not to, but I had figgered out the latch and sometimes I’d steal out there and talk to Mamma laying on the plank. They had covered her face with a camphor rag which smelt terrible; in fact you could not stay in the springhouse long because of it, you’d start choking. Once I helt Mamma’s hand, but it was so cold I let go of it directly.
    I don’t have no memory now of exactly how long Mamma stayed in the springhouse, but it was a good long while. I got used to having her there, and was sorry when it thawed enough to where the neighbor folks come up and buried her.
    Now Daddy acted awful all this while, he would not look at nobody, nor talk to them, and when the neighbor folks left, he would not talk to me either, not for the longest time. Then one time when I brung him some food, he said, “Well, Zinnia, I reckon you will have to be the little wife around here now,” and I said I would, and I have done for him the best I could, ever since. Nobody could have done better.
    But now it seems to me that the one who is there all the time, the one who is cooking and mending and fetching water and just doing in general what needs to be done, well, that one gets precious little attention. It is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease every time. And I have gotten mighty little appreciation over the years, all because of that hateful little Nonnie.
    I say hateful. And she was hateful, but she had everybody fooled but me. She