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By Root 1987 0

just touching but mashing very hard and rubbing harder, and before I knew it I had begun a different kind of shaking, not of nervousness or chill but of fulfillment of the exertion and labor of love. I cried out. Maybe, even, I passed out, because the next thing I was aware of, and it seemed time had gone by, he was no longer trembling at all. He was perfectly still, except for his breathing, and he had thrown the covers off us, and I wondered if the weight of all of me on top of him was mashing him uncomfortably, but he didn’t seem to mind, and I didn’t want to move from that position just yet, because I knew that once I did, I would never find myself like that with him, ever again.

At last I rolled off and lay there beside him, not touching him anymore, giving him up to whoever would claim him that he belonged to. I just looked at him, with love but also with a little wondering: had he maybe just faked his shaking in order to get me to do what I’d done? Because he wasn’t shaking the least bit anymore. He was smiling, and I know it was just a smile of being friendly and maybe a little embarrassed, but it also seemed like a smile of having tricked me into that enjoyment.

Then he said, “You went over the mountain.”

“Yeah,” I said, as if to let him know that I knew what he meant saying that. “I got over the mountain.”

“You’re not Viridis,” he said, as if he’d just noticed.

I had to laugh. “I wish I was,” I said. “I sure truly wish I really was. But don’t you even know me?”

He smiled again. “Some ways, you’re better than Viridis,” he said.

“What ways?” I wanted to know.

“You’re home folks,” he said. “You wrote and told me about this hideaway. And I do honestly misdoubt that she’d have warmed me up the way you jist now did. Or gone over the mountain.”

“Aw, I had to climb that mountain,” I said.

“I know you did,” he said. “I shore appreciate it, what-all you’ve done.”

“You’re not shakin no more,” I observed.

“No, you see, Latha, I’ve got the two-day ague, and the way it works is, I shake like crazy for an hour, and then I’m burnin up, like I am right now, for another little spell, and then I commence to sweat like a stud horse—’scuse me, Latha—I get soppin wet for a time, and then I’m okay for another twenty-four hours, and it hits me again the next day.”

“I’ve never had that,” I declared, “but I’ve heard of it. You’ve done been skeeterbit.”

“Yeah, that’s what causes it,” he said. “Skeeters.”

“You’d best let me run and fetch Doc Swain,” I told him. “And of course Viridis too. She’d be real mad at me if she knew I’d come up here by myself.”

“You don’t have to tell her nothin,” he told me.

“I’ll make up a story,” I said. “I’m pretty good at that, don’t you know?”

“I reckon,” he said.

I stood up and straightened my dress and patted my hair into place. “Can I get you anything ’fore I go? A drink of water? Anything to eat?”

“Just maybe a sip of water is all, right now,” he said, lying there in the pain of his high fever.

“And we’d better hide that .22 before Doc Swain sees it,” I announced, and tried to think of a safe place to hide it.

“How come?” Nail wanted to know.

“How come? Well, his dad is still justice of the peace, don’t you know, and they’ve already been up here checkin when they came to get Sull’s body, so naturally Doc would put two and two together and know it was you.” Nail just stared at me as if he hadn’t the faintest idea what I was talking about, and I began to wonder if maybe he really didn’t. “That is your rifle yonder, aint it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How long have you been here? What day did you get here?”

He shook his head. “I honestly aint got the foggiest notion.” Then he asked, “What did you say about Sull’s body?”

Somehow, the way he asked that, I knew he really didn’t know anything about it. Maybe he had done it in his delirium, but maybe he hadn’t done it at all. “Nail,” I said, “day before yesterday morning, right down the trail yonder, Sull Jerram was shot off his horse with a .22 bullet.”

The way Nail looked, I knew he was, if not innocent, ignorant of the act. “What