“’Cause if someone shoots at the front door, the bullet will go straight out the back and not hit nothing. If all the doors is opened.”
Through the front door was the living room. The next room was the bedroom, and after it came the kitchen with a back door leading to the yard, and a little farther, the outhouse. Beyond the house sat an old tobacco barn, a smokehouse, and a chicken coop, which was attached to one side of a bigger barn. Though she looked for signs of his first marriage, it was apparent he’d been there for some time on his own. A woman’s touch was lacking given the disarray that greeted her. There were stacks of books beside the chair where he read at night, along with various newspapers, turpentine containers, tools, rags with all sorts of stains, and dirty plates collected here and there. She noticed the dishes. They were milk glass, rimmed in pale blue, and Rae Lynn believed they might’ve belonged to his first wife, Ida Neill Cobb.
“She had a bad heart,” Warren told her, “in more ways than one.”
Her gravestone was a little ways off, set in small clearing nearby. They’d had a son, Eugene, who now worked as a lawyer down in South Carolina.
Surrounded by crisp scented pines, this was the first house she’d ever lived in, and she made it her own. Hung the curtains she’d sewed at the windows. Scrubbed every inch of it from top to bottom. Talked Warren into painting the kitchen. One afternoon, soon after they were married, Warren stood with her on the porch, one hand on her shoulder, the other pointing out the varieties of pine they had.
He said, “And over there’s the most important kind, the longleaf, shug.”
He’d taken to calling her that, and she liked how he drew the word out in a long drawl, like shoooog.
Warren had come from a long history of North Carolina turpentiners. Over the last seven years, he’d taught her all about chipping and dipping, so now she worked alongside him, sunup to sundown. Together, they’d certainly seen their fair share of labor, her and him, toiling like fools to keep from starving. She admitted, only to herself, she sometimes wondered had he married her because he needed a helping hand. She tried not to think it was just that. She believed he loved her, in his plain, no-nonsense sort of way.
Used to, there’d be others needing work, eager to do anything, like Billy Doyle here now, his first day. Rae Lynn watched him struggle and was concerned. Anytime she worked with Warren and a new hire, she got nervous. Billy, and everyone else who lived in rural areas, were finally feeling pinched by the Depression. The prices had gone so low, farmers had to find other work to add to the little bit of money they made in order to feed their children, and pay bills. Everyone had heard of them Hoovervilles, such as they were called, springing up right outside of cities. Crude accommodations barely better than living outside. Nobody wanted to be forced to live like that, but even big landowners couldn’t hang on forever when the bank came calling. Along with soup kitchens, children going without decent clothes and barefoot, everyone was in need.
Desperate, but determined, most weren’t choosy, except with regard to the Cobb turpentine farm, where word had got out working with Warren Cobb could be a foolhardy thing to do. His reputation had made its way around the county like a brush fire out of control. If they were lucky, most went home with mashed this or that, a few with burns, a couple with broken bones. Those who didn’t get hurt, and only had a close call or two, didn’t return, which was saying something. Not being able to work was too chancy for them. Warren liked to cut into the bases of pine trees to form bowl-shaped areas called a box, to catch the pine gum. This was the “old-fashioned” way of collecting it, one he preferred instead of the newer Herty system of clay cups and tin gutters like most had moved on to, though others had told him he could get more gum. Warren, he certainly was set in his ways. When a man died after a tree fell on him, the same tree Warren had been cutting a box into the day before, Rae Lynn suspected it was the final straw. The flow of workers dried up like an old pine that’s done give out of sap.
She didn’t want to think about how she’d lost part of her own finger, but her mind took her back to that day anyway. They’d been married only a week. She hadn’t yet learned how treacherous it was working alongside Warren, but her first lesson was only seconds away. He had a propensity for not paying attention at the most critical times. Prone to being a bit too fast, a bit careless. That day, he’d said, “Hey, shug, come over here and take ahold a this here for me.”
He handed her a sign with COBB TURPENTINE FARM painted on it. She’d been smiling and he’d been smiling, excited at the prospects of this new undertaking after he’d finagled a deal with someone who’d buy gum from him. Warren had flipped his box ax around to use the blunt end like a hammer. She held the sign so he could nail it to the pine tree, and next thing she knew, he’d whacked the end of her forefinger. She yelled, and he promptly dropped the ax, which landed on her foot. Both hurt, but it was the sight of her fingertip that made her shut her eyes, feel sick to her stomach. It had been hit hard enough, it spread out like a paddle. The entire end of her finger filled with blood, the nail bed turning purple. She sank to the ground, cradling her hand. Warren had paced around her, cussing himself for being a clumsy nitwit.
After a minute, when the sharpness of pain had dulled a bit, she said, “Warren, it ain’t nothing, don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”
She got up, went inside, used some of their endless supply of turpentine as a disinfectant, and wrapped it in a soft strip of cloth from an old apron. She worked the rest of the day, but by nightfall, it hurt in a way that deprived her of sleep. Every heartbeat came out through the end of her finger. It felt enormous. It was odd, she’d thought, how big the pain, for such a small injury. The end felt sort of mushy. She believed he’d crushed the bone. After two days, she hadn’t been able to stand the throbbing anymore. The entire finger was an off color and swollen.
Warren said, “Look a here, I got just the fix for it.”
She sat at the kitchen table watching as he took a coat hanger, straightened out the curved end, and held it over the wick of an oil lamp.
When the end glowed orange, he’d said, “Gimme your finger.”
Dubious about his “fix,” she’d been hesitant, but he’d promised her it would work.
He’d said, “I seen my own Daddy do this for hisself.”
Reluctant, she gave him her hand, and he pressed the glowing tip onto the center of the blackened nail. A tiny puff of white smoke appeared and in seconds, a hole was burned through to the nail bed.
He’d squeezed it, and she’d yelled, “Ow!” as blood shot out, right across the table. To her amazement, the pressure was relieved, the throbbing less intense.
He’d said, “See?”
She had to agree, it did feel some better. She’d kept it wrapped and was sure it would heal now. But no, after a couple of weeks, it took to smelling bad. The pain came back, worse than before. The skin blackened, and she felt sickly with the fever.
Warren had sent for Doc Perdue, who took one look and said, “You got the gangrene.”
Rae Lynn had said, “What can you do?”
“Got to take it off at the first joint, maybe a touch more.”
Mouth open, she’d looked over to Warren, his hangdog expression hard to read. Doc Perdue had pulled a metal syringe out of his black leather bag and injected her finger with something to numb it. From that moment on, she’d not been able to watch, but she heard, smelled, felt what was happening because the numbing solution didn’t work completely. Pressing her lips together at the snipping sound, her stomach protested again, especially after the few seconds of sawing. She felt the tug and pull as he stitched her finger, and started to feel some better. After it was over, her finger resembled the end of a pillow, and she hadn’t been able to quit looking at it.