My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

“That was very kind of you, Aunt Doe.”

As she lay again in the bed the avenue ran down to the stone wall and turned sweetly to the gate, which was perpetually white. Slowly in mind she walked down the avenue, step by step, stopping to look at each minute occurrence, as the wild fern by the side of the drive, the small gray imagined birds that flocked over the stems of the low pasture weeds and took imagined flight at her step. Her foot twitched lightly under the quilts. When the birds had flown she passed on, going slowly, undetermined whether the way should slope downward or extend outward, shaping it to her will. She would step slowly to make the walk last the longer. The clover at the side of the path was white and rank, and the grass and weeds of the pasture ready for cutting. The path she went ran along the side of the drive although from the window she could see that there was no path there now, for none ever walked that way. There were wagon prints on the drive, however, marks of tires, and she shuffled her toe in the faintly marked rut and wondered what habitual coming had made it. Each day she prepared the walk, clinging to it with fervor, returning to it as to a consolation. After five days no wheels had sounded on the stone and gravel of the way.

The great hounds would come to her room each day, now one and again another, and they would sniff at the bed or turn about lazily on the carpet. She would call the names until some flicker of recognition would denote that the beast had been rightly called—Roscoe, Nomie, Tim, Speed, Old Mam, Tilly, True. There were some younger dogs, unnamed and unbroken, but these came little to the house. She would hear them running on the hills and hunting their prey. She clung to the daily walk to the gate and back and built the path minutely for comfort, gathering herself out of a running slant of historic actuality to the more comforting actuality of the path beside the drive where the ruts of some never-heard wagon wheels threaded constantly down to the highway. One day it was the shade of the elms that was intensely realized, or another the sounds of the beetles and crickets, until, being minutely sensed, the path brought her to the white flowers, queen-anne’s-lace-handkerchief, clustered in tall masses before the stone wall. The old dogs walked up and down the stairs, sniffing at her bed. True brought her stiff old limbs laboriously up the hall and turned about on the carpet to lie down at the foot of her bed. Below on the hearth in Doe Singleton’s room some great pones of cornbread were perpetually cooking on rough old iron pans, bread for the old dogs.

One morning after the journey below had been accomplished, while she lay resting from the difficult ascent of the stairs, a low purr of muffled noises flowed through the hallways, and the front door was opened and closed. Then a white cloth was hung on the vine by the door and the steps receded and became the uncertain tread of her aunt on the pavement beside the house wall. The hour was long and sunny, undefined, mingled now with some anticipated event which pointed to the white cloth that hung by the pillar. Later a yellow truck came up under the elms, fitting its wheels to the ruts, and the words, Perkins’ Liniments, grew, boldly defined, on the yellow sides of the car which backed about at the door. Leaning on her elbow she took a gayety from the yellow of the wagon and the bold design of the printed words and from the brisk man who sold packages to her aunt with a clatter of good-will and gossip. Tea in packages, coffee, sugar—the best cane—and did she need any spices this trip? Liniment, salve, mange cure, soap, oil, baking powders, ointment, camphor, ginger, orris root, sal hepatica, lice eradicator—for hens, cures mites, chiggers. Any extracts? flavors? perfumery? cake color? ice-cream powders? sage?

“The coffee and sugar is all.”

“A sight of rain over in the creek country. Water outen bounds.”

“Anybody drowned?”

“Nobody drowned, but a heap of swollen branches and some stock washed off. Old Man Tumey’s chickens, and Lige Smith lost a calf. They say prices are a-goen high this time, money for everybody. Corn sold this week for around two dollars. Old Miss Bee Beach is right sick, they say. Bound to die, I reckon.”

He shouted his words before the house and his rough voice struck the corners of the room above and quickened life where it had declined in her breast. His steps were rough and strong on the gravel of the roadway. When the purchase had been made he ran quickly through his list again and closed the rear door of the truck with a crash. Then he swept off his hat to mop his head with a dim handkerchief of some yellowed silk, sponging his face and neck. He plunged the handkerchief inside his collar-band, and he stretched his legs and his back, a tall man with a dark vigor about him. Theodosia leaned on her arm to watch him, amused at the painted words on the car, the long rheumatic letters that spelled the liniment to the afflicted of the county. His vigor reached her where she lay crumpled under the bed clothing, and she had a quick vision of herself, arisen, going about her ways of life. She watched every gesture as he climbed into the car and set it in motion, she concentrated to his burning darkness, her throat dilated in response to the unaccustomed man’s voice. When he was gone she sank weakly back to the bed and presently she made the minute journey to the roadside gate, step by step, negotiating intricately with the roadside birds and grasses.

Some days later she heard the throb of another car on the driveway and presently a voice spoke to Doe Singleton at the door, the voice turning away, saying that it would come again. This would be Frank, she reflected. Her aunt would not bring him to her room because she was in bed and the aunt moved among a few old signs and tokens. None but the old dogs ever walked on the stairway except when she herself replied to the call from below, “Come on now, it’s ready.” Summer having advanced, the night-noises made a great swinging water, a vast throbbing sea of sound beating continually and arising in shrill waves, the crickets, the frogs, the toads, the treetoads, the katydids. An old voice then, a joyous rise and skurry of man’s speech, acutely remembered in all its inflections.