All’s Good What Ends Good

The descending sun painted the sky in an amber glow. Soft white clouds danced to a gentle breeze’s beat. The ascending moon tossed a quiet light over the plains, that separated the wilds of nature from what passes for civilization. The birds bid farewell in a rhythmic chorus. The lovers smiled at each other, in peaceful content.

Twigs crumble under pained stress. Footsteps draw closer, stilling their thoughts, and chilling the night…

“Omigod!” the girl whispered to her lover, splayed nekkid as a jaybird on top of her behind one of the many cottonwood bushes at the forest’s edge.  “It’s my papa!”

The boy turned to get a better look through the leaves.  “Oh, foot!” he sighed.  “He’s got his shotgun, an’ he looks wound tighter’n a clock!”  As quietly as he could, he slid off the girl and lay beside her, all ardor dissipated.

“Where’s my frock?”  The girl peered frantically around, but her dress was out of reach, lying with her slippers where she’d dropped them in her haste to disrobe.  The boy’s breeches, tunic, and boots lay beside them on the lichen-covered ground.

The man with the gun stopped on the footpath between the forest and the grainfield, not twenty feet away, his back to them, apparently gazing at the setting sun.  The gun was cradled lazily in the crook of his arm.

“Omigod!” the girl moaned.

“Jes’ hush up!” the boy hissed.  “He ain’t seen us.”

“Not yet,” the girl whispered, “but he’s damn-sure lookin’ fer me.”

“Maybe not,” the boy breathed.  “He was lookin’ fer you, he’d be callin’ yer name.  Or he’d have brought the dog with ‘im.”

“Well, why’s he out here at twilight, then?”

“Don’t he often go out after supper?” the boy whispered.  “You told me he goes walkin’ a coupla nights a week when you an’ your mama is cleanin’ up the dishes.”

“Omigod, Samuel, if he turns this way an’ spies us…”

“Now you hush, Maybelle, else he’s gonna hear us.  We jes’ lie real quiet, he’s gonna tire of standin’ there by hisself an’ keep on goin’.”

At that moment, the man bestirred himself, turning in a slow circle, gazing all around.  The two lovers pressed themselves into the ground, its earthy smell assailing their nostrils.  They prayed they wouldn’t sneeze.

Just as the man’s eye fell on the cottonwood bush shielding them, the full moon rose above the trees, and the man lifted his head to watch it.  His moonlit shadow spilled behind him across the grain-stubbled field.

A sudden scuffling on the footpath from the direction opposite to where the man had come distracted him.  He peered through the lowering light, and the two lovers saw him sweep his hat from his head in his best imitation of a courtly bow.

“Mrs. McCoy,” he said.

“Mr. Hatfield,” the woman replied.

“Jumpin’ Jehosophat!” Samuel exclaimed in Maybelle’s ear.  “That there’s my mama!  What in tarnation is she doin’ out here by herself?”

As if in answer to the question, the woman moved swiftly into the man’s arms, and their two shadows melded into one.  His shotgun lay forgotten at their feet.

The two young people could only stare, utterly shocked, at this unimagined tableau.  After a lingering kiss, the woman allowed herself to be led off the footpath to the forest, toward the cottonwood bush behind which Samuel and Maybelle cowered.  There was no time to change hiding-places.

By the time the woman reached the bush, she had doffed her calico dress and camisole, and was hopping from one foot to the other as she pulled off her shoes.  The man, likewise, had taken off his homespun shirt and was struggling out of his overalls.  The gun lay where he’d dropped it on the footpath.  As they came around the bush, the woman was pulling the hairpins from her long, auburn tresses, allowing them to fall across her shoulders.

When she stopped dead in her tracks, thunderstruck to find two people already occupying their usual love-nest, the man bumped into her from behind.  The woman immediately crossed her arms protectively across her bosom.

“Hello, Mama,” Samuel stammered, hands covering his private parts.  “I’m…I’m almighty sorry to startle you like this!”

As he spoke, Maybelle scurried to fetch her frock, sorely embarrassed to be caught nekkid by her father.  It occurred to her that he, too, was almost fully unclothed, clad only in his socks, but she daren’t look his way.

“Maybelle?” the startled man cried.  “Maybelle?  What in the great Beelzebub are you doin’ out here with…?”  He stopped when the obvious answer occurred to him.

Then, as if by mutual agreement, the four star-crossed lovers quickly and without comment scrambled back into their clothes.  When all were dressed, they stood awkwardly before each other—shocked, shamefaced, shattered to have their secrets so suddenly sundered.

It took them until almost midnight to come to grips with their new reality, their new world-order.  Consensus was reached when they realized cooperation, not anger and condemnation, was their road to salvation.  The other way would bring a mutually-assured destruction. 

Samuel’s mother summed it up.  “As I sees it, ever’ one of us here is a sinner, but we’re happy doin’ what we’re doin’, an’ nary a one of us wants to stop.  So this is the way it’s got to be.  If’n Mr. Hatfield an’ me is gonna continue seein’ each other, then so’s Samuel an’ Maybelle. Y’all agree, I’m sure, all’s good what ends good.”

Once accord was reached, the only thing left to do was determine which nights each couple would rendezvous at the cottonwood bush.  Nobody wanted a repeat of tonight’s excruciating double-booking.

To no one’s surprise, the arrangement worked. Samuel and Maybelle were wedded seven months later—also to no one’s surprise, given the bride’s condition. When the twins arrived, his mother, Delilah, and her father, Ezekiel—two of the the babies’ grandparents—were also named godparents. And no one ever breathed a word about Zeke and Dee, and their cottonwood-bush encounters—which, according to family lore, went on for many a subsequent moon.

It truly was a good end to the generations-long feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2021}