Issue 3:1 | Fiction | R. T. Smith

Rampskin
R. T. Smith

Who?

He skulked through deep weeds with a junebug on a string. He pulled the nectar tongue of honeysuckle and whispered his song: "Lily by the greenbud, lady by the creek, azaleas by the swamp path blaze the devil's flame. I will be a feather father. Dream yourself to sleep. You will never in a gillion guess my name."

From cypress beyond the Indian mound he fashioned a cradle. Mussed and wizened but rat-agile, he scrubbed in the crawdad mud amid the windfalls and spoil. He bleached croakers to diaper rags. He fashioned a doll from shucks, rattles from cooter shells and pebbles. He was mad as a snap but lonesome. He wanted a freshcut person of his own.

But Everything Starts Somewhere

It began by the turnpike near Byhalia when the gaunt horseman spied a lurking girl named Lilatis between the cotton rows glowing white as camisoles and corn blades waving a green "so-long" to the whisper wind. He had been bargaining his crop at the Rabbitton market and was prideful and weary but awake. Her golden hair against the evening shone. His eyes were gray flint, absorbing. "Dip me the gourd, child," that one called, and up close, peering over the fluked creek water and the silvered pommel, he saw that she was thresholding, sure to awaken as a full-bloom woman some dew-dawn very soon. A little fretty, he could reckon in her eyes, shy but nearly ripe, with laughter coiled in her silence, a true trove. He dug his spurs and passed on.

Because her mother was under the wild roses, "ASLEEP IN JESUS" and dates hacked Roman into stone, Lily spoke to not one soul of the stranger and the smells of horse lather, man sweat and saddle, his eyes hover-hunting her form.

A Ransom

That night, summoned from table by the mule boy with a lantern, her father stood uneasy on the porch to the big house. The evening star trembled. The master lingered, still in scarred riding boots, boards complaining as he shifted his weight like a bateau in current.

"If she is fair match, I would marry your daughter, Mr. Jewel." He was more than colonel of the guard, and his voice was pitched to match the turning of a sorghum mill, the larch pole rasping against gimlet stone, the syrup dark. "What are her skills?"

"She can dance till the music breaks. She can trill the language of birds. I have taught her the weave and willow caning, soap-scolding, tallow draw, the art of the hoe. She can scald a hog and spice up sausage, save every morsel from snout to squeal. Swain hopefuls in Meatcamp and East Appleton stand in a line to swear under moonlight how she might could ballad the corn's gold to true silver. Her heart is a sparkle, her hands are surely magic in the back kitchen, at tanning, in the hyssop and mint and orchard fruit. Needlework and scrubbing. She don't hardly yield to nature's laws. She's a never-touched, an unsullied. She can scratch her history on a bead of corn, and for a wench, she can hold her tongue."

What the Father Got

A fowling piece with powder, a Catahoula hound with one sapphire eye, six dollars, three pounds of sugar and one less mouth.

Made in Heaven? Enter a Stranger

The banns followed then the vows, a dollar in the wine-faced preacher's hand, but Lily was unready for the weight of a man; she was too frail and touchy to be torn. She spoke slowly, staring downward. One of her clear words was "no."

Two figures of stone stared across the wedding table as a servant shuffled and went. The groom simmered in wrath and disdained to speak. He locked her in the shadow attic. "If you are so much a marvel, if you are worth your weight, you must use this thread to weave a coverlet bright as a peafowl's feathers," and there in the wake of his going she wept alone.

Then that antic man from the deep woods climbed up the haw tree by the wall. junebug in his fob pocket, rag cap from the rebel war on his fringey pate. His breath was the wild reek of swamp onions and rampion. She ceased her sobbing to say, "You are a curious, smallish man." He licked the air like a snake.

And when she raveled her plight, when she showed him the wreaths her husband's grip rubbed on her wrists, the sprite said, "I will take your spools of cotton to my bough house yonder. I will work my work and fashion a wonder. Gal, you've only got to stall. I will save your bacon, but what will you sweeten for me?"

"I have a silken bridal scarf, its folds as smooth as skin, and other goods will surely follow. My husband will forgive and he is a right rich man."

A token, but ample.

As Anyone Would Guess

When three days passed and she faced the glareful, thwarted husband with his riding crop smacking boot tops, with his spurs and moustache like a blacksnake, she unfolded the coverlet that was a wonder of ancient figure and device, of inexplicable sheen like a flower meadow in moonlight. Only a moment was wasted in delight, and he thought to harvest more.

"Are you prepared to carry the weight of a man? Not just any man but this man, your lawfully joined? To feel his force and rush and shudder, his hot cry for a son? Lily, are you yet ready?"

But she was still girlish, too shy and frighted, so he locked her in the smokehouse where the hung shoat was still bleeding into a milk jug, the drops marking time like a clock. "Here is your knife, Lily girl. See if dealing in the grue and spill of meat will alter your mood. Waste not eye, tripe, chine or bristle. Waste not the headcheese nor heart. Work me a wonder of carving. Be of some simple use, if you scheme to be wife only in name, which is to all my people abomination and shame."

There she sat with the candle and a nicked blade like war, and her tears were abundant, salt sparkling on the smokehouse floor. The flametongue hissing against the lantern glass was her meager comfort, the wax drizzle, the wick's wither, smoke.

Just before midnight, he oozed through chinking. He entered like a fever. She smelled the scallion smell as he came to form before her. He was nimble and peppery as a skink. He was pussle-gutted, raw-palmed, his jaw already rough as emery just an hour after the razor moves on, and yet, she saw him as her ally and crossman.

"I am sore in need."

So the bargain was struck: he would whet and slice, skin and rend and hack, rive down to the bone, and she would pay penance, all she had left. In the corner she gawked while he danced and fenced with the carcass, singing, "O my bonie, oh my snout and brisket, my darling fly-summon, my pickling brine, my honey ham, my jowl." And she would give what was left for her to give.

"In three days I will make you the star of butchery in all of Beat Three, from misery to Memphis. All you got to do is stall."

She cozened the angry groom through the boards of a sprucewood door, "Dear husband, I am needing a trice of days again for to make my spell. When you return, all will be settled well."

So it was, or seemed, and when the strange and elf-like fellow brought his portion of the contract all neat and red from the ribs and giblets to a gourd of souse, Lily went back to her corner where the wicklight did not shine, and she reached up under her wedding skirts and stepped aside. She pulled out her pants frilly as fancy lettuce, and as soon as his fingers met the silk, he was smirky and gone.

A Course Altered

Vigiling till dawn, she felt the hard air between her legs and wished to be sure, wished to be ready, and yet, she was coming to understand the seam of cruelty that ran through her husband's cold veins. She had heard the mule boy whimper under the whip. She had heard the boar dogs howling. The sounds did not summon increase of desire. At daybreak, she was not yet ready. Her fear was aflame.

"I don't pretend to know the nature of conjure creature you are, woman, but long as you will not accept the recipe to be a wife, I will portion you work worthy of your pagan spells."

He led her, thonged at the wrists, to the barn where corn ears by the hundred, the kernel rows even as pews, were stashed and binned.

"Here is your chance to work your greatest magic. I don't care if you sing it or dance it or get on your fours and bark like a gut-shot hound, you will scare every kernel to sheer wealth for your lawfully wedded. This is the sun's best gold. Dream it to spending silver. It is a bride's task. I will be back from the Oxford market in nearbout a week. Don't tarry. If you fail, you will go to the fields."

She tried to pray, to hymn God into a listening mood, but something had put the bile in Bible for her, something had soured the Word. She wept to know the puck would come, and she had nary a trinket nor token to swap.

Wherein the Moral Refuses

If she had been a skimp or fuss or straggle, a drudge or sass or dally prone to fritter, who could blame the proud powers for treating her such? But Lily was righteous and cheerful and kind, only afrighted of the act that carves a pain in marriage, that cleaving. So where does justice lie?

He came. His arms like tent pegs, his skin like rickets, his voice like mill grist between the set stone and the one that turns. "You need a hand, I reckon, deary dear."

"Not even you can help me now, old mister. I got nothing to trade with, and yonder is a mountain of corn he wants whispered to silver in just a week. I don't even follow what he thinks he means."

Flicking his eyes up and down the high summer corn, the creature grinned and offered up his pact.

"Only blood will lend itself to silver, and I law you will find the marriage bed softer than you expect, though an unsteady carriage. Promise me your firstborn chap to come and live with me where the owl hunts and the wildcat prowls in laceweed. I will swirl a cooling worm and cut the seasoned logs. The vat and passage that spirits it from corn to mist and drip as dew. I know a fire that can still corn to the staunchest silver, the shine called out of the moon to quench a mortal's direst thirst, to make him prance and giggle. That is my price, Missus Lily. Even I would have a son to make the winter night shorter and less sharp."

She refused, but as he coaxed, she saw no other course before her. He told her to claim excuse after it breeched, to say how a fever came for the babe by night mist, as often happens. She could give herself to her man again and again. After the first, there could be other chaps. He would be sated with the one.

There wasn't much she could figure but give in, thinking she might outwit this little gnarl of a gnome once she was settled in her conjugals, once she had crossed over to be a full woman and maybe acquired spells of her own.

Thrift and Stealth: Blaze-eyed, He Cooks Shadow Whiskey

In the hour between the hawk and owl when the vixen and hare bid each other farewell on the edge of a spent orchard amid a briar-snarl prone to host haints and misfit Chickasaw, just there the little man danced about pungent mash as it burbled and sang,

"I am the blacksnake in the bluebird box. I am the stillness behind the crickets' chitter. I will have a playmate for my tramp and traipse. I will raise him fierce and fitly bitter." When he smiled at the high moon, his teeth were a ripsaw's and his eyes were black as scorched spiders. His feet scuffled and jittered in the hepatica, in the bloodroot and plantain and rampion. He was a storm of pleasure.

What he brought to her barn in a tumbrel cart was prime corn squeezings in two dozen jugs, stump jump whiskey precious as any ore.

"I can't bear to abandon my own blood child," said Lily. "Give me a chance to wager back my own."

Her weeping nearly moved him. He scraped his palm along his chin with a noise like matches striking, and his eyes lit up like amber.

"One chance, missy, one resort. If you can puzzle out my natural name, I reckon I'll forgive the debt. All in the spirit of sport, you understand, but don't rile up your hopes cause you can't, no more than you could skin a ram with your pretty fingers. I expect I'll see you again just a close bit before birthcry," and he faded like a rumor into the starlit fields.

Another Bargain Born

With his teeth the Colonel pried the cork from its jorum and slung the vessel across his arm, then tilted his head and slugged. It was the rare silver of a full moon, cash crop of ridge walkers and shadow men, the cool burn of dream syrup. That owner of horses and muzzle-loaders, of a cider press, a race mill and a bellow forge set to on acres of bottomland with dirt as fine as gunpowder, that squire was so amazed he let a smile crease the leather of his face and said, "My dear, you must be starved."

At the table she sipped sharp coffee and ate rolled biscuit with red beans and spicy rice in bliss, knowing she was now ready to yes his question before he decreed another ordeal.

"And do you believe now," touching match flare to his Carolina panatella, "that you are ready to bear the weight of a gifted passion man? Can you bear my aspect, my flesh and caress? Will you give me a son?"

She averred she was ready.

Wax and wane, the sky moved, seasons slipped, time raveled. But there was no pleasure in matrimony for Lilatis. She labored and ached but did not glow rosy. His love was cold. He was a barrel upon her, a thrashing of iron limbs, and soon even the fireflies seemed a burden, even the wild rose thorn an ordeal. She swelled with ripeness and hoped to find comfort in the cries of a child, but nightly she dreamed of the rumpled man. He was the gall on every oak wand, the fly in the butter, beetle in the pine. He was the dark one's cunning sergeant in the garden.

One Saturday near her time, while her husband was at sheep auction and she was sobbing as she worked the churn, the mule boy Fess came up from the forty with harness to mend. Now when he heard the sounds of woe, he asked the wrong that had spurred his mistress so, and when she told him her sorrow, Fess promised to scour the county, to ferret and seek, to pioneer off the paths into swamp islands and the arrowhead woods. To map and blaze until he found the hive of the come-sudden wildish man.

"Please," she whispered, "rush back and tell me all the doings. I would give all I have to hear his name."

Collection

Boughs shivered with wind, rain hissed in the leaves. The woodkern caught her by the wellhouse.

"Soon now, miss lady, right soon, unless you know my secret."

His laugh was the sound of a tin roof ripping.

Desperate, she tried: "Is it Woodjack? General Pickett? Is it Cash or Gilman Oakheart, Dizzy-me-frenzy, Creasy Greenman, Zachariah, Chickasaw Reddle, Howard, Sourpuss, Yocona, Big Grady, Crake, Ishmak of Siam?"

The tin roof of his laughter ripped. Overflow in the drain ditch slurred and rippled. He howled and grinned. He vanished behind a wave of his hand.

Three days later he ambled back, and she guessed Dabney, Blondell, Lad, Seamus, Sweet William, Possum Pete, Osric Bone and a hundred others her desperate tongue struck on, but he just swiveled his head back and forth so quick his yarny hair bounced and swirled.

Filled with jubilee, he strutted through deep woods with a junebug on a string.

Hide and Seek

Fess hacked through bramble and climbed the red royal oak to sweep the vale. He lay on the ground to sniff and listen. Squirrels skittered and grouse drummed, crows chattered and oared their own darkness hard into the night. The stars glided. He believed he could hear them snarl.

But no trace, not a snapped twig or break in the spider's snare on the crests, across the meadow, in the gumbo slough. Twice he looped back to the farm to tell her.

"But the pains come closer. Any day now," and she placed her cold hand on her melon belly. "I would give you all I have."

Fess slipped again into the cane thicket, working the circles of his heart's compass, his senses tuned like a fine fiddle, while a witchy mist ascended, and then as he was about to despair and surrender, sparks appeared from a clearing down in Drowsy Bottom where he had neglected from natural fear. It was the Nolachokala Indian mound, where the eyesore elf slept with the ancient dead. The sparks might have been fireflies or sparkles of Wisp Will, but Fess thought "campfire," so he dropped to his knees and crawled. On the scald bluff, spying down through the wild grape and sparrow shrub, he saw the cookfire of unscrolling sycamore logs and locust, and the ragged man wrinkled as a pickle and dancing about the stewpot. He did the shuffle-ball and the wagon wheel. He cross kicked and scuffled, heel-toe, toe-heel. He squatted and jumped like a Russian. He spun like a savage, and as he moved, he rolled his red eyes and sang, "Riddle me a river, gamble me a game. Spit over the shoulder and shear the blackface ram. Kiss my rump and give me your birth-damp kin. Weep like a willow and take the blame, for you will never in a gillion summers guess that Rampskin is my name."

For a nit's minute, Fess thought to save Miss Lily himself. Swelled with a valor, he looked about for a clobber stone to smash the creature still, but then he remembered the fiend's spook craft and powers and thought the better of it. Careful as an eft he slithered and skipped, silent, down the slope, back into the mist, and he ran like a buck deer back to the farm.

Riddance

She kissed and wept, wept and kissed him, then sent the hero back to the barn, as the child in her belly kicked and tumbled like a little man.

By the grist mill's spillway, under the gnarly boughs and the midnight sickle of moon, she met the woodjack, and he strutted, he preened and cockcrowed and teased. "This is your end-all, your come-down, your sweepstakes occasion. Tell me, Lily Dilly the second sight, tell me diviner, you sister sooth: what do they call me in the trees in the foxfire in the rusty creek?"

She was unsure, she was vexed and all a-fidgit. She looked at the woodpile and the clang bell for dinner, she stared at her feet and decided to risk it.

"Is it Redstick? Is it Cedar? Goat Step? Could it be Gristle or Mistletoe or Joe Sneak?"

He laughed till his eyes leaked. He jerked on the dangling junebug and popped out his watch. "You waste my time, moonshine girl, mistress butcher, needle queen the unsullied. The owl hour is on us, and you have one guess left before your own name writes itself in blood on the bottom line," and with that he produced the contract inked on chewed calfskin, the conditions sounding stern and legal as a bailiff's knock .

Seeing it, she caught the gooseflesh. She shivered and winced. "I can't figure or seer it out, sir, unless Ð and this is just my pillow angel guessing in my ear Ð but could your name by the powers that lurk above and watch over us be some sound akin to Rampskin?"

His breath came like a freight train and he shook his head like a hornet had stung his lip. She could hear a pileated's thrattle behind his eyes. His feet began to framble. He cut a wild buck and wing till the ground under his stomp softened and burned. He yawked and slobbered in his rut snort voice. He roiled and steamed, and down he sank, down, under ash dirt and leaf litter and smoke, into the root world, into the worm country, and all he left was a stink like hellebore in rain at Easter and on the closed earth a single stunned junebug glowing chard green.

That night she sloshed the jug's corn silver down her gullet till she cackled, touching the promise-swell of her belly with an owl feather for sharp eyes, and when her husband came in two days later she put the pig knife to new use, emptied the windpipe, showed hard blood how to be free. He was aghast, twitching to stillness, not so smart after all.

Next, Lily rolled her lawful wedded torment in the coverlet without his voice, then touched her red handprint above the front lintel and dragged him to the crib with shucks and cobs. She touched fire to the remnant corn with her companion candle and walked off like a waltz. The blaze was a ladder of gold no mortal could climb.

"I will call him Ready," she said, and when she had pushed the baby out with her rushy breath in the byre, she cut cord and made the tether knot. "Ready." Off she traipsed, calling the mule boy's name, which she learned was Festival Quickly.

In the Wake

They were happy briefly, the best any fugitive can hope. A knife, a poke of hog meat, a clay face jug of homebrew, a coverlet too elegant for troubled sleep: they made their way in the world but suffered. Rumor is that the child Ready lived to be an outlaw fiddler in the Smokies, and if this tale is written in bloodscript, all the more reason to heed. The world is not a wet nipple. There are worms in the bacon, there is smut in the tassel. Even a lily withers, even a rapt listener yields to sleep. Moonlight glows lonely on the corn.