The Quickening | Page 7

inadequate.
Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry twigs,
found none, and fell headlong--not from the rock, but from grace.

"_Damn!_" he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse:
"Oh, hell, hell, hell!"
The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in
deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave
her a cramp.
"Now you've done it," she remarked. "The devil'll shore get ye for
sayin' that word, Tom-Jeff."
There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of
him. He was prone, writhing in agony. She knew the way to the top of
the rock, and was presently crouching beside him.
"Don't take on like that!" she pleaded. "Times I cayn't he'p bein' mean:
looks like I was made thataway. Get up and slap me, if you want to. I
won't slap back."
But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of
cedar needles and begged to be let alone.
"Go away; I don't want you to talk to me!" he groaned. "You're always
making me sin!"
"That's because you're Adam and I'm Eve, ain't it? Wasn't you tellin' me
in revival time that Eve made all the 'ruction 'twixt the man and God? I
reckon she was right sorry; don't you?"
Thomas Jefferson sat up.
"You're awfully wicked, Nan," he said definitively.
"'Cause I don't believe all that about the woman and the snake and the
apple and the man?"
"You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess you'll believe," said
Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively.
She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to

him.
"What's that for?" he asked suspiciously.
"You eat it; it's the kind you like--off 'm the tree right back of Jim
Stone's barn lot," she answered.
"You stole it, Nan Bryerson!"
"Well, what if I did? You didn't."
He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core.
"Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked.
Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major
Dabney naming it one day last week."
"Well, it's shore comin'--right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was
goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right
smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard."
"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be
doing all that time? He'd show 'em!"
A far-away cry, long-drawn and penetrating, rose on the still air of the
lower slope and was blown on the breeze to the summit of the great
rock.
"That's maw, hollerin' for me to get back home with that bucket o'
water," said the girl; and, as she was descending the tree ladder: "You
didn't s'picion why I give you that apple, did you, Tommy-Jeffy?"
"'Cause you didn't want it yourself, I reckon," said the second Adam.
"No; it was 'cause you said I was goin' to hell and I wanted comp'ny.
That apple was stole and you knowed it!"
Thomas Jefferson flung the core far out over the tree-tops and shut his

eyes till he could see without seeing red. Then he rose to the serenest
height he had yet attained and said: "I forgive you, you wicked, wicked
girl!"
Her laugh was a screaming taunt.
"But you've et the apple!" she cried; "and if you wasn't scared of goin'
to hell, you'd cuss me again--you know you would! Lemme tell you,
Tom-Jeff, if the preacher had dipped me in the creek like he did you, I'd
be a mighty sight holier than what you are. I cert'nly would."
And now anger came to its own again.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Nan Bryerson! You're
nothing but a--a miserable little heathen; my mother said you was!" he
cried out after her.
But a back-flung grimace was all the answer he had.

III
OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN
Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Caleb the elder, was an old man before
his son, Caleb the younger, went to the wars, and he figured in the
recollections of those who remembered him as a grim, white-haired
octogenarian who was one day carried home from the iron-furnace
which he had built, and put to bed, dead in every part save his eyes.
The eyes lived on for a year or more, following the movements of the
sympathetic or curious visitor with a quiet, divining gaze; never
sleeping, they said--though that could hardly be--until that last day of
all when they fixed themselves on the wall and followed nothing more
in this world.
Caleb, the son, was well past his first youth when the Civil War broke
out; yet youthful ardor