A Daughter of the Morning

I went in the house. Mis' Bingy was not there, up-stairs or down. I went back to the door and asked about her.

"Why, she's gone home," says Mother. "You didn't s'pose she was going to live here, did you?"

"Home?" I says. "Where that man is?"

"We can't all pick out our homes," she says, scrubbing the boards.

Pa heard her. He was just coming in from the barn with the swill buckets to fill.

"That's you," he says, "finding fault with the hands that feeds you. Where'd you be, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for this home and me? In the poorhouse."

Mother straightened up on her knees by the well.

"Mean to say I don't pay my keep?" she says.

For a minute she seemed young and somebody, like when she was asleep.

"Not when you dish up such pickings as you done this morning," says Pa.

She screamed out something at him, and I ran across the yard toward Mis' Bingy's. They were going on so hard they forgot about me.

The grove was still. I wished he could have seen it. As soon as I got in it, I forgot about home, and the time before come back on me, like some of me singing. That was it – some of me singing. But I see right off the grove was different. It was almost as if he had been in it, and had showed me things about it. I begun looking out at it the way I thought he'd be looking at it. There seemed to be more of the grove than I thought there was. Then I thought how he'd never be there in it, and how I'd prob'ly never see him again, and something in me hurt, and I didn't want to go on. What was the use?.. What was the use?.. What was the use?..

Mis' Bingy's house lay all still in the sun. The sunflowers and hollyhocks by the back door and the chickens picking around looked all peaceful and like home. I thought Mr. Bingy must be sleeping off his drunk, and her keeping quiet not to disturb him.

The kitchen door was standing open and I stepped up on the porch. And then I heard a terrible cry, from right there in the room.

"Go back – back, Cossy!" Mis' Bingy said. "He'll kill you!"

All in an instant I took it in. She was sitting crouched on the bed, shielding the baby with a pillow. And he set close beside the door, sharpening his hatchet.

He jumped up when he see me. I remember his red eyes and his teeth, and his thin whiskers that showed his chin through. Then he sprang forward, right toward me and on to me, with his hatchet in his hand.

I donno how I done it. For no reason, I guess, only that I'm big and strong and he was little and pindling. I know I never stopped to think or decide nothing. I dodged his hatchet and I jumped at him. I threw my whole strength at him, with my hands on his face and his throat. He went down like a log, because I was so much bigger and so strong. But that wouldn't have saved us, only that, as he fell, he hit his head on the sharp corner of the cook stove. He rolled over on his back, and the hatchet flew out on the zinc.

"You killed him!" Mis' Bingy says. She sat up, but she didn't go to him.

"We ain't no time to think of that," I says. "Get your things and come."

She didn't ask anything. She took the baby and run right and got a bundle of things she'd got ready. I see then that she had on her best black dress, and the baby was all dressed clean and embroidered. I picked up the hatchet, and we went out the door, and shut it behind us. She never looked back, even when we got to the door; and I noticed that, because it wasn't like Mis' Bingy, that's soft and frightened.

"I don't mind what he done to me," she said, "but just now he took the baby – and touched her hand – to the hot griddle."

She showed me.

"I hope he's dead," I said.

"Where shall I go?" she says. "My God, where shall I go?"

"Ain't you no folks?" I asked her.

"Not near enough so's I've got the fare," she says. "Anyhow, I don't want to come on to them."

We was in the grove at the time. I donno as it would have come to me so quick if we hadn't been there.

"Mis' Bingy," I says, "let's us go to the city together, you and me. And find a job."

I thought she'd draw back. But she just stopped still in the path and looked at me round the baby's head.

"You couldn't do that, could you?" she says.

"Yes," I says. "I didn't know it before, but I know it now. I could do that."

She kep' on looking at me, with something coming in her face.

"You couldn't go to-day, could you?" she says.

I hadn't thought of to-day, but the thing was on me then.

"Why not to-day as good as any day?" I says.

"Your Ma – " she says.

"This is different," I says. "This is for me to do."

We come to the edge of the grove, and across the open lot I could see Mother. She was spreading out her scrubbing cloth on the grass to dry. I went up to her, and I wasn't scared nor I didn't dread anything because I was so sure.

"Mother," I says, "Mis' Bingy and I are going up to the city together to get some work. And we're goin' to-day. But first I've got to go and find somebody. I donno but I've killed Mr. Bingy."

I don't remember all the things she said. All of a sudden, my head was full of other things that stood out sharp, and I couldn't take in what was going on all around, not with what I had to think about. Mis' Bingy sat down by the well-house and went to nursing the baby, and Mother stood up before her asking her things. I left 'em so, and ran down the road to the Inn. That was the nearest place I could get anybody.

It was about ten o'clock in the morning by that time. All this had happened to me before it was time to get the potatoes ready for dinner. I remember thinking that as I run. There was the Inn – and Joe was out wiping off the tables in the yard, with the same dirty cloth, and straightening up the chairs.

"Joe," I says, "I ain't sure, but I think I've hurt Mr. Bingy pretty bad. Is there somebody can go up to their house and see?"

Joe stared, his thick, red, open lips and his red tongue looking more surprised than his little wolf eyes.

"What?" he says.

When I'd made him know, he got two men from the field and they run up the road toward Bingy's. On the Inn window-sill was the same kitten I'd played with while I was waiting for the coffee. I went and got it and sat down at the table where we'd been. It seemed a day since I was there. I seemed like somebody else. For the first time I wondered what would be if Keddie Bingy was dead. But it wasn't the being arrested or stood up in the court room or locked in jail that I thought of, and it wasn't Keddie at all. All I kept thinking was:

"If Keddie's dead, I won't never see him again."

I sat there going over that, and holding the kitten. It was a nice little kitten that looked up in my face more helpless than anything but a baby, or a bird, or a puppy. I felt kind of like some such helpless things. The world wasn't like what I thought it was. More things happened to you than I ever knew could happen. I always thought they happened just to other folks. The tables and the bare, swept dirt didn't look as if anything was happening anywheres near them, and yet down the road maybe was a dead man that I'd killed. And a mile and more away by now he was, and a little bit ago he'd been here, and the me that set there with him had been somebody else. And the me that had been awake before daybreak that morning probably wouldn't ever be me at all, any more. Everything was different forever. I saw something on the ground, down by the arbor. It was the pink phlox I had picked. They threw it away when they wanted to wash the glass. It seemed so helpless, laying there without any water. I went and got it and put it on my dress.

Pretty soon I heard them coming back, talking. Joe and one of the men come in sight, and Joe sung out:

"It's all right. He's groaning. Ben's gone for a doctor. What happened?"