The Devil's Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

story.
    One side of Kate’s pretty face was black and blue, and her eye was swole shut. But Moses was the one in torment, Mamma said, gnashing his teeth over what he had done, and moaning deep moans, and a-praying out loud to God. Kate never left his side, Mamma said, nor took a thought fer herself, and it appeared to Mamma that Kate loved Moses more than ever, despite of what he done. She said Kate’s face gave off a light that calmed all who come around her that day, and so before long, Moses hisself calmed down, and Mary and Zeke come back and Moses kissed them, and then Mamma come on home. Hit fair broke my heart to hear what she had to say.
    But Jeremiah never come back home.
    One, two days passed.
    â€œHe was right there with us,” Mary and Zeke said. “We was all together in the woods,” they said. But he never come back home. Moses felt awful about it, fer Jeremiah was his eldest son, and if the truth be told, his favorite.
    And then Kate remembered how Moses had told Jeremiah he’d have to leave iffen he ever took up the fiddle, and they determined that Jeremiah must of gone over Lone Bald Mountain by hisself to stay with Kate’s family at Cana.
    So Moses saddled up his horse and went over there to get Jeremiah and bring him back. But when he got halfway up the mountain, Moses seen all these ravens around the rock cave, wheeling and dipping in the sky. He rode over there to take a look. And sure enough it was his own son Jeremiah, two days dead, having fell down the rocky clift in the dark a-trying to get to Cana. And the ravens had et out his eyes.
    Well, a course Moses put his son’s body acrost his saddle and brung him back, and we buried him there under the cedar trees, for Kate would not let us taken him back up the mountain where the Bailey burying ground lays. “I want him home,” Kate said. She said it real calm, too calm, and her eyes was too big in her head. But everything was done as she desired. And then she appeared to go on as usual, cooking and churning and gathering eggs and such-like, and speaking reasonable to all the neighbor folks that come by bringing this or that to help out. Kate never said nothing about Jeremiah whose grave you could see from the porch, nor yet about Moses who had gone off again, wandering the mountains, it is said, praying out loud and mournful at all hours of the day and night. Some said they had seed him down on the Monongah, or over at White Oak, or at Bee. Two fellers swore they heerd Moses a-praying as they rode through Flat Gap going toward Sisterville, but they couldn’t roust him outen the forest.
    Well, time passed, and hit was full summer, and finally Moses come on back home. But he come home only to die. We reckoned hit was the pneumonia, fer he laid there thin as a rail with a rattle in his chest and coughed hisself to death. But whenever he weren’t coughing, Moses continued to pray aloud.
    I questioned Kate on this.
    â€œOh no, he has not lost his faith,” Kate said, bright as a new penny. “He has bent hisself to the rule of God, which we cannot hope to fathom,” she said. “He hopes he may hold out faithful to the end.”
    Now as you might imagine, word got out, and folks come from all around to hear Moses pray and to see him thataway, and they was some several folks converted on the spot. But they wasn’t nobody present excepting Kate when Moses coughed his last and died. Or as Piney used to say, “when he crossed over to the other side.” Piney was a good old woman. I wish I had loved her better, I wish I hadn’t give her such a time. I reckon she’s on the other side now, old Piney is, iffen they is one. I don’t reckon I’ll be joining her over there, neither. I tell ye, I hold with old Sid Bailey on that, “Ye’ve got to walk that lonesome valley by yerself,” and I ain’t looking fer company.
    Now I’ll admit to ye, I might of had some