Crockett of Tennessee Page 3

“That’s just my belly a-rumbling,” Persius replied. “I don’t feel nothing.” He got up and left the cabin.

  David followed. He was going to stick close to Persius Tarr for the rest of the day. When that wormweed began doing its job, he intended to be there to see the results. He knew from experience they would be quite interesting.

  John Crockett’s eyes were fixed on his trencher of pork and corn, so far untouched. His expression was doleful, with occasional flashes of bitterness; that mood also was reflected in the faces of his family. All were present except David, who had headed out into the woods with Persius and hadn’t returned, even though Rebecca had called them both several times. At the moment, Rebecca’s eyes flickered between her husband’s face and the closed door as she waited for her wayward son and Persius to come back.

  “The mill can’t be rebuilt—Tom and I agree on that,” John said. “He hasn’t the will for it, and I haven’t the money, and that is that. So it seems we’ll have to be moving on.”

  Rebecca’s voice had a strained quality, evidencing the worry she still tried to hide. “But where can we go?”

  “Well, there’s the three hundred acres on Mossy Creek, ours fair and legal by grant of North Carolina,” John replied. “Perhaps we could build there, farm it or find some other means of living on it.” He studied his wife’s face from the corner of his eye; Rebecca usually tried to mask her reactions, but never succeeded. Everyone in the family could read her with ease.

  Rebecca’s eyes met his, dropped, flickered to the door and back. “I wonder where David and Persius have got to?” she murmured.

  “Never mind them boys—they’ll be in soon,” John said. “As I was saying, there is the Mossy Creek land. Or …” He paused, and during that pause Rebecca looked up in an urgent manner. “… or we could move into a cabin that Tom Galbreath has offered to us over in Jefferson County on the road to Knoxville. There’s land belonging to a Quaker, name of Canaday, that might give opportunity to enter business of the kind we’ve talked of before.”

  “A tavern?” Rebecca asked.

  “Aye, yes. It may be the best means left open to us, now the mill is gone. Perhaps the only means.”

  “How long would we stay at Mr. Galbreath’s cabin?” Wilson asked.

  “Can’t say. Until we could situate ourselves better. Until we could get our feet back under ourselves.”

  Betsy ducked her head and looked beneath the table. “Our feet is already under us, Pap.”

  Rebecca smiled, but Betsy’s childish misunderstanding seemed to irritate John. “Hush up, girl, till you’re old enough to talk good sense!”

  “John!” Rebecca remonstrated gently. She put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “It’s just a way of speaking, Betsy. That’s all. It means, until we can make a good living for ourselves, and get past our troubles.”

  Betsy blinked, fighting tears, and scooted closer to her mother. John Crockett could be fearsome to a child when he was angry.

  Rebecca, glancing toward the door again, said, “Well, I like the sound of moving to Mr. Galbreath’s cabin. I’ve never wanted to live on the Mossy Creek land, as you well know.”

  “I know,” John said. “Though I’ve never notioned out just why.” He looked over the faces of his children. The anger in him remained, but he felt vaguely sorrowful at having upset Betsy. He strained for a softer attitude and tone of voice. “So what would you think of it, young Crocketts? Would you like to move to a new home? Maybe build a tavern for us to run?”

  The answer was a babble of affirmatives. John smiled and picked up his two-prong fork. “Very well. So it will be. So it will be.”

  The door burst open as he finished. David, eyes wide and manner excited, bounded into the room. Every face turned toward him.

  “Everybody!” he heralded with excitement. “Come see! Persius is outside a-pooting worms!”

  John Crockett flipped his spoon over his shoulder and rolled his eyes heavenward in disgust. “Well, that puts an end to my supper! Boy, you think folk want to hear such as that when they’re at their food? Lord a’mighty!” He shoved his trencher away so hard the food was knocked out of it.

  His children didn’t share his disgust. The younger ones erupted off their seats and bounded out the door, shamelessly eager to see the amazing sight for themselves. The older ones departed directly after, though with less haste, trying to preserve some appearance of dignity. Rebecca stared at David reproachfully, but with an underlying sense of amusement. She glanced toward her husband when he stormed up from his seat, stomped over to the mantel and began fumbling with his pipe and tobacco.

  Eager to see again the spectacle outside, David turned and scurried out the door into the dark, his bare feet slapping the mud. Rebecca closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “That boy! What a thing to come talking about at suppertime!” She chuckled, eyes shifting to her husband, searching for some sign his mood was improving.

  John was lighting his pipe, eyeing her back through the puffing smoke. His mood in fact was not improving. “You think it funny, do you? I don’t like it. David’s got a way sometimes of making me mad. He’s gone and ruined my supper.”

  “Oh, sit down and eat, John.”

  Muffled, childish exclamations of astonishment, combined with shouts of anger from Persius Tarr, unwilling showman, came through the cabin wall. Rebecca smiled and said, “Poor Persius! I’ll call in the children and leave him in peace. I don’t think he likes them watching him doing what he’s doing, and you can’t hardly blame him.”

  “Leave them outside,” John ordered. “God knows I seldom get any peace from having them around. Sometimes I think it would be better not to have children. Eating you out of house and home, ever babbling and getting sick and costing you money and ruining your supper talking about somebody pooting worms—God! I wish I had a good stout drink right now!”

  Rebecca hunched her shoulders, lowered her head, as if she was trying to draw into herself. She despised it when her husband was like this. Hated it. To talk of it being better not to have children … did not such words tempt providence? What if the children should die because of their father’s unfettered talk? What if the baby growing within her right now should not survive? Rebecca Crockett lived in a world that was harsh and stern, a world in which such symbolic retribution did not seem inconceivable.

  Silence held in the little cabin. John puffed his pipe, pacing and glowering. Rebecca nibbled without spirit at her meal, then shoved her food away. For a time she sat wordlessly, feeling the baby move inside her and saying a prayer of thanks for this evidence of its health. A little later she realized her spirits were on a fast, downward spiral, something that happened often when she was pregnant.

  She had no time for moodiness. Standing, she went to the door and called for her offspring to return to supper and leave poor Persius Tarr alone.

  Chapter 4

  Persius Tarr ran off from the Crockett house the next day, and David was the first to detect his absence. He felt troubled; knowing Persius had probably run off out of embarrassment at what had happened the night before, and out of anger at him for having turned it into a public spectacle. After it was over, he had called David aside and cussed him thoroughly, cussed him better than he had been cussed by anybody in his life, including his oldest brother, who could swear the air blue around him. David had been quite impressed. Here was yet another aspect of Persius Tarr to stand in awe of.

  He decided on the spot to track Persius down. Lately he had been trying to make a good tracker of himself, so that he could someday become a great hunter. Here was a challenge indeed: tracking a human being.

  Finding Persius’s trail proved much easier than he had anticipated, mostly because Persius had made no effort to cover it. He had stomped right through a muddy portion of the cabin yard, out around the woodshed, and into the woods. From the look of the tracks, David guessed he hadn’t left more than twenty minutes before.

  Fetching a long, curving stic
k whose shape reminded him of a rifle’s, David proceeded into the woods, keeping his eye on the path and picking out Persius’s footprints. After a time it hit him that tracking Persius was turning out to be unneccessary altogether; obviously he was keeping to the path. David felt disappointed. It would have been fun to sneak like an Indian through the forest, tracking down an unwary traveler. He lifted the stick “rifle” he carried and smacked it against a tree, breaking it in half. Now the half retained in his hand was a war club, and he was a painted Cherokee warrior on the vengeance path, trailing an unsuspecting but doomed white hunter, soon to be dispatched and scalped. Aiiieeee!

  Losing himself in his fantasy, David bent slightly and began moving on the balls of his feet, his face fixed in a vicious snarl. Beware, Persius Tarr! he thought. Your scalp will hang on my belt before the sun reaches the crest of the sky!

  He anticipated catching up with Persius very quickly, but found his quarry was moving swiftly. After a while the Indian fantasy faded and the chase ceased to be fun. David was growing concerned now. What if Persius really did get out of reach and never returned? He didn’t want that to happen; he was growing to like Persius, and see him as a source of companionship far preferable to what his brothers could provide. His brothers, after all, were … well, brothers. They were overly familiar, uninteresting, even dull, when compared to the still-mysterious Persius Tarr.

  David was circling up a bend in the trail that led to a fire-balded hilltop when he heard a shot. He guessed it came from maybe half a mile away, and judging from the sound, was probably a light charge of bird shot. Some hunter … but now he stopped, confused. What was that weird howling coming from somewhere ahead?

  That’s Persius’s voice! Somebody must have shot Persius!

  He raced ahead, running until his breath came in ragged, hurting gasps. He slowed when he saw Persius ahead, sitting on a log and examining his left forearm. Sure enough, there was blood on his sleeve.

  “Persius!” David yelled. “Are you hurt?”

  From the sharp way Persius looked up, David knew he hadn’t realized he was being followed. When Persius saw him, he glowered.

  “What’s it look like? You see the blood, don’t you? I been shot!”

  David came up close, bent over and examined the arm. It appeared that a load of shot had mostly just fanned across the arm, cutting the skin enough to bleed but doing no other damage. “You’re lucky,” David said. “That could’ve hurt you a right smart.”

  Voices and movement in the ravine that lay off to the right side of the trail caught their attention. David’s throat tightened and he stood up straight when he saw Hez Caine, thirteen-year-old resident of a cabin about three miles from the Crockett mill, come striding up through the trees with his three ever-present accompaniments: a smirk on his face, an old hound named Big Tick at his feet, and his little brother Nahum at his side. Both boys carried flintlock shotguns.

  “Well, look here!” Hez said in a beligerent tone typical of him. “What’s this, Crockett?”

  “You shot him, it looks like,” David replied. “You fired up the slope toward the trail, didn’t you!”

  “So what if I did?” Hez glanced at Persius’s scratch. “He ain’t hurt. You little children-on-the-tit need to keep out of the woods till you’re old enough not to get in the way of hunters.” He glanced at the stick in David’s hand and grinned nastily at his little brother. “Look there … he’s got him a stick to play with, Nahum!” Then he eyed Persius up and down. “Look here. I believe this one’s a real live redskin.”

  “You’d best not talk that way to him,” David said. “Persius’ll whup you if you make him mad. He’s got true pluck, and he ain’t a redskin.”

  “Oh, he’ll whup me, will he?” Hez edged up to Persius. “Well, you hatchet-faced coon, get to whupping!” He laughed in Persius’s face.

  Wordlessly, Persius reached over, took the stick from David’s hands, and broke it across the crown of Hez Caine’s head. David chortled with joyous surprise. He had despised Hez ever since being bullied by him the first time they had met, months before. Hez grabbed his head and cursed, then raised his rifle and tried to butt Persius with it. Persius grabbed the weapon in mid-swing and jerked it out of Hez’s hands. He tossed it aside and waded in, fists hard and swinging.

  Out of sheer exhilaration, David launched into Nahum, punching him twice in the jaw before the nine-year-old boy knew what was happening. Though he was older than David, he was very small-framed and hardly any bigger. He swung back at his attacker, but David ducked and put a solid blow into Nahum’s belly. Persius, meanwhile, was working over Hez most efficiently, having bloodied his nose and pounded both eyes sufficiently to guarantee they would be black as coal by night.

  When the Caine boys were at last on the run, David grinned at Persius. “Reckon we whupped them good.”

  “Reckon we did.”

  “Don’t go off, Persius. I’m sorry about calling the others out to see you … you know. The worms and all.”

  Persius, panting, considered the apology and accepted it. “Didn’t want to leave no how,” he said. “No place in particular to go.”

  “You’ll come home?”

  “Yes.”

  David beamed. “I’m glad. I want to be a friend to you, Persius Tarr.” And he did want it, very badly. Persius was the kind who didn’t hold back—he just did what he wanted to do, not worrying about rights and wrongs or outcomes. Even something as daring as breaking a stick over a head that sorely deserved it.

  Persius said nothing, but flashed a quick smile that told David what he wanted to know. His offer of friendship had been accepted. He could hardly restrain himself from laughing joyously right out loud. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason at all that Persius Tarr couldn’t become part of the Crockett family, just like he had been born into it. Nothing would suit David better.

  David at his side, Persius Tarr walked back to the Crockett place. And for the next several days, he and David were never apart. They fished together, hunted, carved their mark on trees, threw rocks at jaybirds, swam in the creek. From time to time David would see his father watching Persius with a look of concern on his face, but he thought nothing of it. John Crockett was always looking concerned about something or other, and most times it turned out to be nothing worth worrying about at all. Or so it seemed to David.

  The young ones slept. Betsy, using the salvaged beaver hat as a pillow, snored in volumes remarkably loud coming from so petite a source. Persius Tarr, sharing sleeping quarters with the Crockett sons, snored too, but not so loudly. Clouds and rain had returned, though lightly, a far cry from what the storm had been. Raindrops sizzled against the banked fire after falling through the open hole where the chimney had been.

  John Crockett lay on his back, looking up at the underside of the loft where the boys slept, his right arm around Rebecca. Passing days had lessened the frustration and anger that had caused his outburst at the supper table. He regretted it now, even though he hadn’t apologized to Rebecca for it. There was some shortfall in his personal makeup that made him generally unable to apologize in words. He knew Rebecca would like to hear an occasional expression of sorrow from him when he offended her, but it just wasn’t possible for him. Surely she knew he was sorry. That would just have to be enough.

  Tonight he and Rebecca had been talking quietly and seriously since the children had been asleep. The subject was the delicate problem of Persius Tarr, a problem John Crockett had already made up his mind about, and even taken the first steps toward resolving.

  “We can’t keep him, Becky,” John said softly but emphatically. “I’ll be doing well just to keep our own fed. We can’t take in stray orphan boys like you’d take in a stray cat.”

  “Well, it don’t seem right that a stray cat can find a home and an orphaned boy can’t.”

  “They ain’t the same thing at all, Becky, and you know it. He’s a boy, and he’ll take feeding and clothing and maybe schooling. I fee
l sorry for him, just like you do—but we can’t take him in.”

  Rebecca sighed and shifted her posture, making the bedding rustle. “Then what will become of him?”

  John paused a moment before answering, knowing she would not like what he was going to say. He cleared his throat. “The Orphan Court.”

  Rebecca tensed and did not relax. “I knew that was what you would say. It seems so cruel!”

  “It’s not cruel. It will provide him a chance for a home, and to learn a trade. Lord knows he needs that! From what he tells me, that father of his was a thief and a scoundrel. He’s got bad blood in him, and bad blood can’t be cleaned up except with good honest labor. That’s what my own pap always told me.”

  “It’s so sad that he’s alone. I’ve never asked him about his mother. She’s dead, I suppose?”

  “Yes. He says he never knew her. She died when he was small.”

  Rebecca was silent, then sighed. “It’s such a sad thing—an orphaned boy, no place for him to go.”

  “There’s many a sad thing in this world, wife. All we can do is firm ourselves and struggle on through them. And he does have a place to go. The Orphan Court will set him up with someone who can take care of him proper. I’ve already talked to Saul Greer about it, and he’s agreed to give me some help.”

  “It’s such a sad thing.”

  “Sad things are just a part of life, Becky. You get past them and go on. All you can do.”

  Three Days Later

  David Crockett sat beside his father on the hard seat of the wagon, wishing he had been allowed to drive the team today. He glanced over his shoulder at Persius, who sat in back of the open wagon, facing the rear, shoulders hunched sorrowfully. Sadness pricked David again. He had come to like Persius in their brief, shared time, and it seemed a shame that he soon would be gone, probably to some distant corner of the huge county, bound off to someone by the Orphan Court. There he would learn to make barrels or shoe horses or some other such trade so as not to be a burden on society. And the Crocketts would be miles away, in a new home over in Jefferson County. David believed that after today he would probably never lay eyes on Persius Tarr again.