I said: “Jed’s awful good, a’n’t he?”
“Oh, a saint!” And she went on about how generous he was, and thoughtful, and how he’d explained everything about the way to Abraham; when they got their little place in Vairmant they were going to have sinners in every day to hear the word, just everybody, any freeman that would come. Dear Vilet, she was out of her gloomy mood and all aglow from thinking of it, sitting there by the pool naked as a jaybird and patting my knee now and then but not trying to rouse me up because it wasn’t our day for it. “Jed, see, he’s got a great lot of sin-trouble too. ’Most every day he remembers something out’n the past that sets him back because it needs repentance. Like frinstance yesterday he recalled, when he was five, going-on six he’d just learned about fertilizer, see? So here’s his Ma’s bed of yalla nasturtiums she was so peart about, and he wanted to do something real generous, make ’em twice as big and purty right away, so he pees the hell all over ’em, specially a big old gran’daddy nasturtium that’s sticking up kindly impident — well, I mean, by the time he sees it a’n’t turning out just right it’s too late, he can’t stop till he’s emptied out.” Vilet was crying a little as well as laughing. “So the bed’s real swamped, petals fiat on the ground, and he don’t tell, it gets blamed on the dog and he dasn’t tell.”
“Oh,” I said, “that sumbitchin’ nasturtium was purely askin’ for it.”
“Ai-yah, I laughed too when he told me, and so’d he, just a mite, still it’s ser’ous, Davy, because it kindly ties in with a real sin he done when he was nine, poor jo. He done it to the little neighbor girl and his Ma caught ’em into the berry patch. The girl she just larruped on the backside and sent her home bawling, but she didn’t whip Jed. He says it’s how he knows his Ma was the greatest saint that ever lived, for all she done was weep and tell him he’d broke her heart after all she done givin’ him birth in pain and tryin’ to raise him up to something. And so ever since he a’n’t never put it into a woman, except once.”
“He what? He never?”
“Except once. That God-damn Kingstone whore he talks about, after his God-damn fishing trip… Well, anyway — anyway he’s a saint now, and all’s he ever wants me to do is take my smock off and tromple him a little and call him bad names — he says it purifies him and so it’s bound to be pleasing in the sight of God, like the whipping, only he a’n’t had me do that lately, not since we come away from the A’my.” She sighed and stopped crying. “He’s so kind, Davy! And he always knows how ’t is for me too, so sometimes he like helps me with his hand or like that, he says that’s just a little sin, and anyhow we’re both getting stronger and stronger in the Lord all the time now. Calls me his little brand from the burning, and I know that’s Book of Abraham language but you can see he means it — why, sometimes he can hold me in his arms all night long and never get a hard on, a’n’t that ma’velous?”
Those weeks in the cave were also a good time for learning a little about the playing of my horn. I gave it at least an hour of each evening, from deep twilight into full dark. In daylight there was too much danger of a stray hunter hearing and approaching unseen. After twilight not even bandits are likely to stir away from camp, in the Moha woods. I studied my horn, and I took part in our making of plans.
There was my plan about Levannon and the ships, but when I learned that even Sam was unhappy at the notion of my signing on aboard a ship, I shut my mouth about it, and though it didn’t perish it remained in silence.
There was Jed’s and Vilet’s plan about the Vairmant farm. They were sure about the sinners but they kept altering the rest of the livestock. Vilet held out one long rainy day for goats while Jed stood up for chickens, and it began in fun but he wound up bothered and ended the discussion by saying goats were too lascivious, a word Vilet didn’t know so it shut her up.
Sam, when he was well again, was more concerned about immediate plans. We wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, he pointed out, so long as we had to travel in beat-up Katskil uniforms, a smock of the same dark green, and the gray loin-rag of a Moha bond-servant. He claimed he could see two good ways of acquiring suitable garments, both dishonest, and one honest way that wouldn’t work and was fairly sure to get at least one of us jailed or hanged.
“Dishonesty,” said Jed, “is a sin, Sam, and you don’t need me to tell you so. What’s the honest way?”
“One of us go to the nearest vifiage and buy some clo’es. Got to walk in naked is all. Be had up for indecent explosion right off. I don’t recommend it.”
“I could say I lost ’em some place,” Jed suggested. It was like him to take it for granted he ought to be the one to stick his neck out and get it chopped off. “I think I could justify that to my Maker as a white lie.”
“But maybe not to the storekeeper,” said Sam. “Anyhow you don’t look like the type jo that would get deprived of his ga’ments casual-like — you be too big and important. And me, I look too mean.”
“Maybe I say I lost ’em into a whirlwind.”
“What whirlwind, Jackson ?”
“A ’maginary one. I just say it blowed down the road a piece.”
Sam sighed and looked at Vilet and she looked at me and I looked at my navel and nobody said anything.
“Well,” says Jed, “I could hang leaves around my middle and make like lost in the woods, like.”
Sam said: “I couldn’t no-way justify pickin’ innocent leaves for no such purpose.”
“Look,” I said, “it’d have to be me, account you don’t none of you talk like Moha…”
“Sam, boy,” said Vilet, “just purely for cur’osity and the sake of argument, which so’t of dishonest ways was you in mind of?”
“Might hold up a pa’ty on the road and take what we require, but Jackson theah don’t hold with vi’lence, me neither. Somebody’d get hurt or they’d run tell policer. Another way, one or two of us could shadow-foot it into some village or outlyin’ fa’m and so’t of steal something.”