I
She was not an unalloyed joy that first year of our friendship. Her
imperturbability did not always seem as a restful evergreen wall, in
whose shadow I could sit until perplexities lost their heat. At times
it was a “no thoroughfare” with the meadows of desire gleaming beyond.
I called one day and found her churning by the spring, a pleasing
picture, too, under the trees. Her rounded, youngish figure gave
no hint of her seven-fold maternity, and however ragged the rest
of her family might be, she always magically managed to be neat.
She was singing leisurely and churning in rhythm--a most undomestic
performance; but my eye was not Mrs. Poyser’s, and if it had been, it
could not have embarrassed Serena.
“I’m takin’ my time,” she said, “fer this is my last churnin’ fer a
good spell, I reckon.”
“Your last? Why, is the cow sick?--dead? And you have just bought
her?” I asked, my concern sharpened perhaps by the thought of a very
inconvenient loan that had gone abysmally into her purchase.
“She got so many sweet apples last night she’s foundered herself--clear
light ruined, granpap says.”
“Surely you didn’t turn her into the orchard?”
“Why, a few apples wouldn’t hurt her. But there was a whole passel on
the ground that I couldn’t see fer the weeds an’ briers. An’ she got
’em.”
“But I lent Ben my scythe to cut those briers.”
“His poppie needed him in the field, an’ he couldn’t git the time right
off. When he did, we couldn’t find that scythe nowheres. I hate it
about the cow,” she assured me cheerfully; “but it had to happen, I
reckon.”
I looked about me. At that moment I could see nothing artistic in Ned’s
half of a shirt looped about one shoulder; there was only pathos in
little Lissie’s naked, buttonless back; and I could not placidly think
of Len, as I had passed him a few moments before, showing ankles as
sockless as ever was Simpson. But perhaps it was the thought of that
loan, with its indefinite time extension, that made me wish to set a
shade of anxiety on Serena’s unclouded brow. At any rate, I began to
sermonize on the merits of discontent and the virtue of ambition.
Her face brimmed with astonishment that finally broke into speech: “But
I’ve four beds, and bread on my table! What more do I want?”
What more could I say? So man, in some grateful season, may look up to
the seated gods: “I’ve four religions and a bumper crop; what more do I
want?” And what can the seated gods do but smile patiently?
I retreated, seeking my usual solace after all defeats--the
unreproachful woods. Near a small clearing, in the quiet shield of some
bushes, I overheard the latter end of an argument. One voice was Len’s,
the other a neighbor’s.
“A tater’s a tater, anyhow,” the neighbor was affirming.
“You might as well say a woman’s a woman,” came the retort from Len.
“Well, ain’t she?” said the neighbor.
“Lord, no!” said Len, with contempt freely flowing.
“Oh, course there ain’t nobody like Reenie. Pity the Lord didn’t think
o’ makin’ her fer Adam. We’d all be in Eden yit, loaferin’ by the river
of life, ’stead o’ diggin’ taters out o’ rocks.”
“When you’re spilin’ to talk about a woman, Dan Goforth, you needn’t
travel furder’n your own doorstep,” answered Len, his voice, like
drawling fire, creeping on without pause. “Reenie mayn’t be stout
enough to wear out a hoe-handle, but she’s never jowerin’ when I come
in, ’n’ there’s always a clean place in the house big enough fer me to
set my cheer down in, I ain’t layin’ up much more’n debts, but they’s
easy carried when nobody’s naggin’ yer strenth out, a woman’s smile
ain’t no oak-tree in harvest-time, but it’s jest as good to set by, my
coat’s raggeder’n yourn, but I’d ruther Reenie ’ud lose her needle onct
on a while than her temper all the time, neighbors can go by my house
day or night an’ never hear no fire aspittin’, which kain’t be said
o’ yourn, an’ you scootle from here, Dan Goforth; don’t you tech nary
nuther tater in this patch!”
The neighbor scootled, backward it seemed, to the road. I took the
trouble myself to go down to a trail and come up casually from another
direction, in full view of Len. He was working mightily, digging up a
hill with two strokes of his hoe.
“Dan gone?” I asked indifferently.
“Ay, he lit out. Old Nance wanted him, I reckon. He dassen’t stay a
minute after she fixes the clock fer him.”
“That’s a kind of trouble you and Reenie don’t have.”
“You’ve said it now. Reenie don’t keep no time on me. If I want to drap
over the mountain to see if I can git old man Diller’s mule fer extry
ploughin’, ’cause the crab-grass is elbowin’ along the ground ’most
rootin’ up my corn, an’ tells Reenie I’ll be back by twelve, an’ I find
the old man spilin’ a ox-yoke, an’ I shapes it up fer him an’ stays to
dinner, an’ comes back by the meetin’-house where they’s puttin’ in
the new windows an’ not gittin’ ’em plumb, an’ I stays till sundown
settin’ ’em in so they won’t make everybody ’at passes think he’s gone
cross-eyed, an’ I remembers we’ve got no coffee, so I slips round by
the store an’ stays till dark talkin’ with Tim Frizbie about the best
way to grow fat corn an’ lean cobs, ’cause I know you want me to git
all the new idies I can, an’ when I strikes Granny Groom’s place she’s
at the gate wantin’ me to talk to her Lizy’s girl who’s fixin’ to leave
an’ strollop over the country, an’ I says to that girl when you’re at
home you’re eatin’ welcome bread, and when you’re out in the world you
don’t know what you’re eatin’, an’ a lot more that was aplenty, an’s
I pass Mis’ Woodlow’s, who’s got a powerful bad risin’, I thinks I’ll
stop an’ see if her jaw’s broke yit, an’ I finds ol’ Jim so out o’
heart about her, I stays to help him put over a couple o’ hours, an’
when I walks in home about midnight, Reenie she’s gone to bed sensible,
an’ says there’s bread an’ beans in the cupboard. Now that’s what I
call some comfort to a man, to know he can take what happens ’long the
road, an’ know his wife ain’t frettin’ till her stomach’s gone an’
she’s as lean as a splinter like ol’ Nance Goforth.”
“You nearly got what you wanted when you married, didn’t you, Len?”
“Well, I reckon, but I didn’t know it from the start-off. Reenie was
powerful to be agoin’, an’ I couldn’t git used to draggin’ off every
Saturday night to stay till Monday mornin’. But I felt different about
it after I’d nearly killed her an’ the baby.”
“Gracious, was it that bad?”
“I didn’t do it a-purpose. It was back in Madison, where I married
Reenie, an’ jest two days ’fore Christmas. She’d put in to go to her
pap’s, an’ I thought I’d git up a nice lot o’ wood, make me a big fire,
an’ have my Christmas at home. I’d told her I thought she’d feel
different about stayin’ in her own house after she’d got a little ’un
in it, but she ’lowed her sight an’ hearin’ was as good as ’fore she
had a baby, an’ she could enjoy usin’ ’em just the same. So I got out
by good daylight an’ went up the hill above the house to cut a big,
dead chestnut that I was tired o’ lookin’ at; then I means to slip over
to By Kenny’s an’ git him an’ his wife to come over fer Christmas ’fore
Reenie got away. There’d come a skift o’ snow a few days back, bare
enough to make the ground gray, then a little warm rain, an’ on top
o’ that a freeze that stung yer eyeballs, an’ you never saw anything
as slick as that hill was ’fore the sun riz that mornin’. When my
chestnut fell she crackled off every limb agin the hard ground clean as
a sled-runner. Boys, if she didn’t shoot off, makin’ smoke out o’ that
frost! I saw she was pinted fer our little shack an’ I tries to yell
to Reenie to git out, but I never made more’n a peep like a chicken.
When the log struck, it shaved by the corner o’ the house an’ took the
chimbly. Boys, it made bug-bites o’ that chimbly! I knowed Reenie was
settin’ by the fire with the baby, an’ I’d killed ’em both. I felt
’most froze to the ground, an’ I thought if Reenie was only livin’ I’d
let her do her own ’druthers the rest of her days. An’ when I got down
to the house an’ sees her an’ the baby not hurt, with the rocks all
piled around ’em, I says to myself I ain’t ever goin’ back on what I
promised her unbeknownst. An’ I ain’t.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was jest settin’ there.”
“What did she say?”
“She ’lowed we’d got to go to pap’s fer Christmas. An’ we did.”