Free Gap Creek by Robert Morgan Page B

washpot?” I said.
    “I like a little starch in my shirts,” he said.
    I stepped out to the back porch and looked in the yard. Like in any backyard, there was a woodshed and a smokehouse, a clothesline, a path to the toilet on the right, and a path to the spring on the left. And further out there was a barn and hogpen. The washpot was on the trail to the spring. And there was a table and a wooden tub on the trail next to the pot. I looked around the porch and found a washboard and a bucket. And by the water bucket was a cake of Octagon soap.
    I grabbed that bucket and carried several gallons of water from the spring and poured them in the pot. And then I got some kindlingand wood from the shed and started a fire under the pot. There was a little wind, and the fire whipped around from side to side. But I put on more pine to make it blaze up.
    It took me four trips just to carry Mr. Pendergast’s clothes out to the wash table. With my arms loaded I tried not to smell all that sour cloth and soiled long handles. But when you have a filthy job the only thing to do is jump in and get it done. Won’t hurt your hands to get dirty; you can always wash them. The quicker I got the clothes in the boiling water the quicker I would be done. I tried not to even look at the dirty clothes, but dumped them on the table and went back for more.
    “Don’t boil my linen with the overalls,” Mr. Pendergast said as I passed through the kitchen. I could see now he was whittling the figure of a naked woman from the piece of pine. He was picking with the point of his knife at the rounded shape of the buttocks. “Don’t want the linen to fade,” he said. I didn’t even answer him. He lived in such filth and never washed or cleaned up, and here he was worried about his clothes fading. Anything I said would just show him how angry I was, and I didn’t want to quarrel on my second day on Gap Creek. It was not what I had thought the beginning of married life would be.
    As soon as the water was boiling, I dumped in underwear and light-colored shirts. I heated the water extra hot to scald away the filth and grease in the clothes. Nothing will purify and sterilize like boiling water. The water bubbled and churned up into foam and flattened into spreading scars. I dumped the dirty long handles in and stirred them with the troubling stick, then let them boil for a minute and lifted them out with the stick and dumped them smoking on the wash table. I dipped two buckets of boiling water and mixed it with cold water in the tub. And then I took the washboard and the cake of Octagon soap and started to scrub every piece of underwear and every shirt. I rubbed them up and down, up and down, on the washboard,and the soapy water steamed up into my face. My hands got red from the soapy, hot water.
    There is something chemical about the heat of washing, like the fire burns away filth and the soap turns the dirt into something clean. The bitter soap melts grease and soil. The slick soap eats away filth and oily stains. Much as you hate it, doing washing makes you feel you’re starting out new. You have put your face in the smoke and steam, and your hands in the dirty slick water. And then you lift the pieces out and rinse them in fresh water and wring them out in the wind.
    I took each piece of Mr. Pendergast’s clothes out of the rinsing tub and twisted it hard as I could. The water squirted out and the cloth was merely damp as I hung it on the line, in the cool breeze. The line run along the trail to the spring, and I hung the clean underwear and shirts and socks along the big thread. And after that I hung the overalls so they looked like people walking as they flapped in the breeze.
    “Have you washed my socks?” Mr. Pendergast called from the back porch.
    “Done washed them,” I said.
    “Don’t you lose none,” Mr. Pendergast said.
    “Wouldn’t think of it,” I said.
    When the washing was done I felt a little better. For even Mr. Pendergast and