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Title: The Lord's Own Level
Author: John Fox [
More Titles by Fox]
The blacksmith-shop sat huddled by the roadside at the mouth of Wolf Run--a hut of blackened boards. The rooftree sagged from each gable down to the crazy chimney in the centre, and the smoke curled up between the clapboard shingles or, as the wind listed, out through the cracks of any wall. It was a bird-singing, light-flashing morning in spring, and Lum Chapman did things that would have set all Happy Valley to wondering. A bareheaded, yellow-haired girl rode down Wolf Run on an old nag. She was perched on a sack of corn, and she gave Lum a shy "how-dye" when she saw him through the wide door. Lum's great forearm eased, the bellows flattened with a long, slow wheeze, and he went to the door and looked after her. Professionally he noted that one hind shoe of the old nag was loose and that the other was gone. Then he went back to his work. It would not be a busy day with Uncle Jerry at the mill--there would not be more than one or two ahead of her and her meal would soon be ground. Several times he quit work to go to the door and look down the road, and finally he saw her coming. Again she gave him a shy "how-dye," and his eyes followed her up Wolf Run until she was out of sight.
The miracle these simple acts would have been to others was none to him. He was hardly self-conscious, much less analytical, and he went back to his work again.
A little way up that creek Lum himself lived in a log cabin, and he lived alone. This in itself was as rare as a miracle in the hills, and the reason, while clear, was still a mystery: Lum had never been known to look twice at the same woman. He was big, kind, taciturn, ox-eyed, calm. He was so good-natured that anybody could banter him, but nobody ever carried it too far except a bully from an adjoining county one court day. Lum picked him up bodily and dashed him to the ground so that blood gushed from his nose and he lay there bewildered, white, and still. Lum rarely went to church, and he never talked religion, politics, or neighborhood gossip. He was really thought to be quite stupid, in spite of the fact that he could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rock-pecker" from the Bluegrass. To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering coal signs and tracing them to their hidden beds, and wide and valuable knowledge of the same. Once the foreigner lost his barometer just when he was trying to locate a coal vein on the side of the mountain opposite. Two days later Lum pointed to a ravine across the valley.
"You'll find that coal not fer from the bottom o' that big poplar over thar." The geologist stared, but he went across and found the coal and came back mystified.
"How'd you do it?"
Lum led him up Wolf Run. Where the vein showed by the creek-side Lum had built a little dam, and when the water ran even with the mud-covered stones he had turned the stream aside. The geologist lay down, sighted across the surface of the water, and his eye caught the base of the big poplar.
"Hit's the Lord's own level," said Lum, and back he went to his work, the man looking after him and muttering:
"The Lord's own level."
Hardly knowing it, Lum waited for grinding day. There was the same exchange of "how-dyes" between him and the girl, going and coming, and Lum noted that the remaining hind shoe was gone from the old nag and that one of the front ones was going. This too was gone the next time she passed, and for the first time Lum spoke:
"Yo' hoss needs shoein'."
"She ain't wuth it," said the girl. Two hours later, when the girl came back, Lum took up the conversation again.
"Oh, yes, she is," he drawled, and the girl slid from her sack of meal and watched him, which she could do fearlessly, for Lum never looked at her. He had never asked her name and he did not ask her now.
"I'm Jeb Mullins's gal," she said. "Pap'll be comin' 'long hyeh some day an' pay ye."
"My name's Lum--Lum Chapman."
"They calls me Marthy."
He lifted her bag to the horse's bony withers with one hand, but he did not offer to help her mount. He watched her again as she rode away, and when she looked back he turned with a queer feeling into his shop. Two days later Jeb Mullins came by.
"Whad' I owe ye?" he asked.
"Nothin'," said Lum gruffly.
The next day the old man brought down a broken plough on his shoulder, and to the same question he got the same answer:
"Nothin'." So he went back and teased Martha, who blushed when she next passed the door of the shop, and this time Lum did not go out to watch her down the road.
Sunday following, Parson Small, the circuit-rider, preached in the open-air "meetin'-house," that had the sky for a roof and blossoming rhododendron for walls, and--wonder of wonders--Lum Chapman was there. In the rear he sat, and everybody turned to look at Lum. So simple was he that the reason of his presence was soon plain, for he could no more keep his eyes from the back of Martha Mullins's yellow head than a needle could keep its point from the North Pole. The circuit-rider on his next circuit would preach the funeral services of Uncle Billy Hall, who had been dead ten years, and Uncle Billy would be draped with all the virtues that so few men have when alive and that so few lack when dead. He would marry such couples as might to marriage be inclined. There were peculiar customs in Happy Valley, due to the "rider's" long absences, so that sometimes a baby might without shame be present at the wedding of its own parents. To be sure, Lum's eyes did swerve once when the preacher spoke of marriage--swerved from where the women sat to where sat the men--to young Jake Kilburn, called Devil Jake, a name of which he was rather proud; for Martha's eyes had swerved to him too, and Jake shot back a killing glance and began twisting his black mustache.
And then the preacher told about the woman whom folks once stoned.
Lum listened dully and waited helplessly around at the end of the meeting until he saw Martha and Jake go down the road together, Martha shy and conscious and Jake the conquering daredevil that he was known to be among women. Lum went back to his cabin, cooked his dinner, and sat down in his doorway to whittle and dream.
Lum went to church no more. When Martha passed his shop, the same "how-dye" passed between them and no more. Twice the circuit-rider came and went and Martha and Devil Jake did not ask his services. A man who knew Jake's record in another county started a dark rumor which finally reached Lum and sent him after the daredevil. But Jake had fled and Lum followed him almost to the edge of the bluegrass country, to find that Jake had a wife and child. He had meant to bring Jake back to his duty, but he merely beat him up, kicked him to one side of the road like a dog, and came back to his shop.
Old Jeb Mullins came by thereafter with the old nag and the sack of corn, and Lum went on doing little jobs for him for nothing, for Jeb was a skinflint, a moonshiner, and a mean old man. He did not turn Martha out of his hut, because he was callous and because he needed her to cook and to save him work in the garden and corn-field. Martha stayed closely at home, but she was treated so kindly by some of the neighbors that once she ventured to go to church. Then she knew from the glances, whispers, and gigglings of the other girls just where she stood, and she was not seen again very far from her own door. It was a long time before Lum saw her again, so long, indeed, that when at last he saw her coming down Wolf Run on a sack of corn she carried a baby in her arms. She did not look up as she approached, and when she passed she turned her head and did not speak to him. So Lum sat where he was and waited for her to come back, and she knew he had been waiting as soon as she saw him. She felt him staring at her even when she turned her head, and she did not look up until the old nag stopped. Lum was barring the way.
"Yo' hoss needs shoein'," he said gravely, and from her lap he took the baby unafraid. Indeed, the child dimpled and smiled at him, and the little arm around his neck gave him a curious shiver that ran up the back of his head and down his spine. The shoeing was quickly done, and in absolute silence, but when they started up Wolf Run Lum went with them.
"Come by my shack a minit," he said.
The girl said nothing; that in itself would be another scandal, of course, but what was the difference what folks might say? At his cabin he reached up and lifted mother and child from the old nag, and the girl's hair brushed his cheek.
"You stay hyeh with the baby," he said quietly, "an' I'll take yo' meal home." She looked at him with mingled trust and despair. What was the difference?
It was near sundown when Lum got back. Smoke was coming out of his rickety chimney, and the wail of an old ballad reached his ears. Singing, the girl did not hear him coming, and through the open door he saw that the room had been tidied up and that she was cooking supper. The baby was playing on the floor. She turned at the creak of his footstep on the threshold and for the first time she spoke.
"Supper'll be ready in a minit."
A few minutes later he was seated at the table alone and the girl, with the baby on one arm, was waiting on him. By and by he pushed back his chair, pulled out his pipe, and sat down in the doorway. Dusk was coming. In the shadowy depths below a wood-thrush was fluting his last notes for that day. Then for the first time each called the other by name.
"Marthy, the circuit-rider'll be 'roun' two weeks from next Sunday."
"All right, Lum."
[The end]
John Fox's short story: Lord's Own Level
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