Serena tried. Her lifelong acceptance of things as they happened had
kept her unaware of the complexities of an occupation made up of a
jumble of industries, as farm life must ever be until the ferment
of organization begins to heave effectively in the mind of the last
individual, the man on the land. But she was favored by nature with a
good brain, and began to be pleased when she found that it would work.
A neighbor made a dress for Lonie and the product was so hopeless a
bungle that Serena, perforce, had to attempt remaking it. With no help
from me except the initial urge, a trifle imperious, perhaps, she got
at it, and the result was so charming that I asked in surprise why she
had taken it to Mrs. Hite.
“I didn’t feel like foolin’ with it.”
“But you see you did have to fool with it. And you had to wash for Mrs.
Hite in exchange for the sewing.”
“Washin’s easy if I’m feelin’ good. It kinder bothers my head cuttin’
an’ sewin’. But Lonie is takin’ on so about that dress, I reckon I’ll
have to mess with her clo’s from now on.”
“No, teach her to make them herself.”
“Lord-a-mercy, she’ll have to pick it up like I did. Don’t you git to
pushin’ me, Mis’ Dolly, an’ maybe I’ll make it through like you want me
to.”
She had the same success with the boys’ shirts. They had been
accustomed to one sleazy shirt for Sundays and rags for work-days.
Now, released from the commercially constant grays and drab blues of
the cheaper ready-mades, they could, for the same money, buy material
for two and have the thrill of selecting from an assortment of specks
and stripes and colors of their heart. One Sunday when Len and Serena
halted by my doorstep on their way to “preachin’ over the ridge,” I
noticed that Len was uplifted by a modest lavender stripe. “I’ve been
wearin’ them ol’ dingy shirts to meetin’ fer twenty years, an’, Lord,
I’m sick of ’em,” he said, with a proud eye on Serena, the worker of
miracles.
No more time was spent in following an ever-dwindling flock of ducks.
Serena and I, with the help of Ned, patched the cover of an old
building, treated it with mite-proof whitewash, and with planks and
clean straw made nests irresistible to any hen worthy of her keep. For
the diddlies, we carried strips from an old sawmill and made coops
which we could set about in sunny places. And Len sowed an acre of rye
for green winter picking; also a “skiver of wheat” which was to be all
Serena’s, as a basis for “feed,” but I suspected that the hens would
anticipate that harvest--and they did.
In the spring, over at Len’s, a bountiful garden was in the ground
early. It had been my onerous but measurably happy custom, if my
intermittent journeying permitted, to cultivate a garden for my own
needs, the surplus going, as kisses do, by favor, which meant that
Serena had her share. But now--could I not buy of _her_? I had derived
from my gardens a savory pleasure, superior and cryptic, but with
ever-growing rebellion I realized that my method was the method of the
spendthrift instead of the canny reckoner.
Take, if it please you, the most responsive of plants, lettuce.
Consider its history from its origin in a seed catalogue (carefully
conned instead of that haunting, unopened book of essays) to its final
surrender on your dining-table, gold-white in its depths, and crackling
crisp from an earthen jar set in your clear, cold spring. Think,
if the nuances of appetite permit, of the digging, the fertilizing,
and the pulverizing of the soil, the preparation of new beds for
transplanting, the transplanting itself at the time most propitious for
the product, however inopportune for you, the guarding against heat,
against cold, against drouth, against beating rain, the covering, the
uncovering, and the rising early at last to uproot it with the night
cool in its heart; all demanding a thousand thoughts and movements
before its æsthetic finality can complete your dinner scheme and
perish, it may be, under a tooth indifferently devouring mere lettuce.
And so with those tender, early limas. So too, and a little more, with
that dish of creamed something. And if your nucleus is broiled chicken,
as it must often be, the alternative being some form of hog--chicken
brought up from the egg under your proprietary eye; if your periphery
include blueberries that did not fall of themselves from the ridge on
the peak to ennoble your meal; and if the cream is the velvety sequence
of a wet and weedy climb to the top of the pasture in pursuit of a
thankless cow, pampered from your own corn-crib, that merely lifts
her head and watches your stumbling, bedrabbled arrival to the last
inch; the thought of being able to “buy from Serena” will be a warm
and driving glow in your heart. For such an end I, prudent at last,
was willing to forego any mystic succulence to be secured from the
participation of this my hand in the birth and growth of my edibles.
The injustice of letting the burden fall to Serena did not trouble me.
She had a family to save, I had none. With her it was duty; with me it
was an interruption of duty. But if my reasoning _was_ fallacious, if
my aim was besmirched with selfishness, if my intended liberality as to
prices was only the bare gesture of reciprocity, I was ready to say, so
be it. I was under the spell of that most alluring of hopes, the hope
of combining the simplicities of nature, the abandon of the wilderness,
the austere ecstasy of solitude, with the flowing market of the city
voluptuary.
And so there was a bountiful garden at Len’s. It required tact
amounting to technic to get all of the family help necessary in its
preparation, and when finally it shot up with its promise of abundance,
I felt that I had perspiringly insinuated it into and out of the
ground. However, there it was, and the summer passed, leaving us
affluent with the plunder we had wrung from it.
But happiness had fled the mountain. Slowly, reluctantly, in my contact
with the family, I became aware of the desertion--even felt it in my
own denuded days. Formerly I had accepted Serena’s occasional help,
knowing so well that I was not withdrawing her from imperative tasks
at home. Now that was changed, and with a vengeance that demanded more
than a reversal of favors. My time was never my own, calculated and
indubitable. Daily it became more difficult to comfort myself with
thoughts of “next year” when Serena’s reformation would be thorough
and her work so adjusted that she at least would have time to run over
to my cabin and remove the ashes from my big fireplace. I could never
take out those relentlessly accumulating ashes without a protest to the
stony gods; while Serena had often declared that she enjoyed doing it.
“It makes the place look so clean and purty,” she would say, and go
at the work with the heart of an artist. My thoughts began to linger
tenderly on the days that were gone, days adorned with a dilatory,
unprovident, laughter-loving Serena, who could always find time to take
out my ashes.
I recalled that she had had a special gift of service for each of
us, and began to see in that the secret of her power. Ben cared
for nothing so much as to have his one pair of trousers pressed for
Sunday morning, when overalls were cast aside and he arrayed himself
for courtship. Serena, unfailingly in the old days, had made this her
Saturday-night job. Len could strain contentedly through the longest
day of work if Serena would sit down after supper to hear his tale of
it, and his plan for to-morrow; and it was her habit to take her seat
by his side as soon as he had left the table and cut off his “chaw” of
tobacco. If the children washed the dishes, very well. If they didn’t,
or wouldn’t, cleaning up was deferred until morning, without protest
or friction. Lonie loved music, and Serena not only traded her pet pig
for a banjo, she never interrupted her daughter’s strumming, giving it
an importance above any urgency of the moment, such as bringing water
when the kettle was sizzling dry, rescuing a line of clothes from an
advancing shower, or pulling a toddler from the bank of the stream
that ran through the yard. Such minor duties Serena unhesitatingly
assumed if Lonie happened to be lolling on the bed, her eyes on the
ceiling, and her banjo on her stomach, while she drew out the chords to
accompany such highland classics as
“Richard courted Mandy,
And he come to court me.
Boy, on your pallet
There’s no room for three.”
For her own pleasure, Serena demanded a neat appearance. Others
might sling their rags and wear caked overalls, but a trim garb was
her unquestioned privilege. Of late it seemed to me that the imp of
untidiness had more than one finger upon her. That certainly meant
unhappiness for herself. Then what did it indicate for the others?
Their special right, too, was ignored, along with my fireplace.
But what began to give me real anxiety was the change in Serena’s
expression and bearing. She was showing a network of fine wrinkles on
her forehead, and beginning to walk with a slight, straining stoop,
akin to Len’s--a stoop that had begun to reproach me in my dreams.
I was pondering all this one morning when I heard the chirp of Aunt
Janey Stiles. “Why’n’t you go to preachin’ to-day? You’ve got a
meetin’-house face on ye.”
“Oh, Aunt Janey! Did you stay on the mountain last night?”
“Yes, I wuz so tired when I pulled up from Beebread yisterday that
I stopped at Reenie’s an’ slept there. I ain’t goin’ to do it agin
though.”
“What’s the matter, Aunt Janey?”
“The devil, I reckon. When I woke up this mornin’ I thinks fer a
minute I’m at Dan Goforth’s, where the roarin’s as steady as the wind
in Peach Tree Gap. I couldn’t b’lieve I’s at Reenie’s. They all slept
late, ’cause it’s Sunday, an’ Ben got up an’ built a fire. Then he
kept tryin’ to git his mother up, ’cause she hadn’t pressed his pants
the night before, an’ he wuz aimin’ to go to meetin’ on Nighthawk. He
kept stompin’ around, and jerkin’ the cheers about, and then he begun
to swear. Right then Len bounces out o’ bed. Maybe he wuz sleepy er
something, an’ didn’t understand it, but anyway he jumps up when Ben
begins swearin’, an’ takes up a cheer an’ runs him out o’ the house
with it, an’ him ’thout shoes on an’ hit frosty.”
“Len didn’t do that!”
“I ain’t _astin’_ you to believe it.”
“But he’s foolish about Ben.”
“He’s a sight bigger fool about Reenie though, an’ I reckon maybe he
thought Ben wuz cussin’ at her.”
“Aunt Janey, this is terrible!”
“I thought I’d drap by an’ tell ye. I felt like you ought to know
there’s something spilin’ the peaceablest family in the settlement, and
you’d better find out what it is.”
Aunt Janey went off, leaving me to unhappy reflections. Toward night
I had a visit from Len. Of old it had been his habit to call out some
witty greeting as he approached, but now his appearance was pathos
unrelieved. He took a chair and began to talk of far-off matters, but I
refused to be led around Robin Hood’s barn, and hurried him, slightly
bewildered, to the object of his visit.
“We wuz gittin’ along all right,” he said, “till Reenie began to want
’tater patches in the moon.”
“You are getting along all right now, Len. Isn’t that old store debt
nearly paid, that you used to say kept you awake nights?”
“Ay, that’s quit brogin’ round my bed, but I don’t mean things like
that. I mean they ain’t any satisfaction in livin’. It’s been nigh
three weeks sence Reenie set down by me an’ kept still long enough
fer me to tie the first word to the next one. She’s cleanin’ up,
er churnin’, er gittin’ the childern’s clo’s fixed fer school, er
clearin’ something er other out o’ the way so she can put in a full
day to-morr’, she says, like next day wouldn’t have any hours at all.
She don’t hardly take time to nuss little Ross, an’ him lookin’ like he
ain’t goin’ to be here another year.”
“You’re looking better yourself, Len. You weigh more, don’t you?”
“Oh, I know we’ve got more to eat an’ to put on, but I’d ruther wear
a feller an’ a wench, an’ set down to corn bread an’ coffee, an’ see
some satisfaction. Lonie slips out with her banjo an’ goes to Bob
Ellis’s, an’ that boy o’ Bob’s ain’t fit company fer my girl. It’ll
come to something bad shore. An’ Ben is cuttin’ up like he’s goin’ to
marry that no-’count girl o’ Jem Ray’s. It’ll be a sorry day fer Reenie
ef he brings that thing in. Reenie’s worried to the bone, an’ coughs
haf the night so she kain’t sleep. I don’t want her to be like Dan
Goforth’s wife, a-strainin’ up hill and down, pickin’ strawberries, an’
blackberries, an’ buckberries, an’ dryin’ fruit, an’ cannin’ peaches,
an’ runnin’ after chickens, an’ if ever she sets down a minute he says:
‘Nancy, looks like ye’d take better keer o’ that something er other,
an’ me workin’ so hard to keep the fam’ly off the county,’ an’ she
ups an’ goes at it agin. Her pore little hands, you could see to read
through ’em, an’ she’s so scant you could put her in a matchbox mighty
nigh, an’ hit full. I don’t want Reenie to git thataway. When I married
her I didn’t count on gittin’ much help. I knowed she wuz like her
father, Uncle Lish Bates, out in Madison. He wuzn’t a workin’ man by
natur. Six hundred acres o’ land wuz what he owned, an’ when one o’ his
fields got wore out he would pick out the richest piece on the place,
where the big timber growed, an’ cut a dead-ring around the oaks an’
chestnuts an’ poplars, an’ next year when they’s dead he’d chop out a
hole in ’em an’ set fire in the hole, an’ it ’ud never go out till the
tree wuz burnt up, less’n it rained, so he didn’t have clearin’ to do,
only pilin’ brush. In the winter he’d go out an’ git him a big bunch o’
wood an’ bring it in an’ stack it up in the corner, high as he could.
Then he’d make a big fire an’ set an’ tell the masterest tales so long
as they wuz anybody to drap in an’ listen, an’ when they wuzn’t he’d
jest set an’ sing. He couldn’t read a book-word, but he knowed ever’
song from Noher down. Nothin’ ever made him mad, an’ he wuz so clever
round his house that folks said ef the devil wuz to come along, Uncle
Lish would set him a bite an’ sing him a song, then tell him the way
to the next place. I thought I wuz gittin’ something like that when I
married Reenie. I knowed I could work hard enough fer both of us, an’
ef I wanted to do it I wuz my own fool an’ nobody else’s. But here’s
Reenie goin’ against her own sef, seems like, an’ so different I’m
about to fergit where I live. I want you to go an’ talk to her, Mis’
Dolly. That’s what I’ve come fer. She’ll listen to what you say.”
“Hadn’t you better talk to her yourself, Len?” I asked, feeling
appropriately uncomfortable.
“She might snap me up. She’s never done that in her life, an’ ef she
did, I’d never fergit it. I ain’t goin’ to resk it. If I kain’t live
peaceable with my own wife, we’ll bust the quilt right now an’ quit.”
He knew, of course, the part I had played in the change that afflicted
Serena, but in his eyes, pleading so humbly for her restoration, there
was no reproachful sign. I made him no promise further than agreeing
to talk with her next day, but that was enough to send him home in a
hopeful mood. Something had to be done, but it was not yet my intention
to advise Serena to abandon her industrious course. A way of adjustment
must be found. Contentment ought, and surely would, follow thrift.
It was nearly sundown the next day before I could feel ready for the
promised talk. I found Serena sitting in her kitchen, flapping a straw
hat to cool her reddened forehead, though we were well into autumn. A
bucket of wild gooseberries was on the floor by her chair. She had just
come from Three Pine Ridge, she explained. The gooseberries were very
thick up there.
“Didn’t you get tired, Serena, with such a climb?”
“Tired wuzn’t nothin’. I reckon the ground hurt fer fifteen feet around
me. An’, Mis’ Dolly, I’ve quit.”
There was a brief silence between us, then she entered upon her defense.
“’Tain’t no use fer you to say you’ll hep me any more’n you do now,
’cause you kain’t. Len said last night it looked like you wuz gittin’
sort o’ keen an’ sharp-natered, an’ I told him it was on account o’
you runnin’ over here so much, an’ me no time to go to yore house an’
hep ye out in a pinch. He said he’d a lot ruther I wouldn’t do so much
at home an’ hep you a little, ef that wuz what it took to keep you
easy. But it looks like from the time I begin in the mornin’ to git the
childern off to school----”
“And how well they are doing, Serena! The teacher has been telling me.
They look so happy in their new clothes, and Lissie and Tom are getting
fat too.”
She took no notice of my trivial interpolation.
“An’ find all their caps an’ ’boggins an’ fix their dinner to carry,
an’ something always to be mended ’fore they can start, and the cows
waitin’ to be milked, an’ you tellin’ me to milk ’em on the stroke o’
the clock, the same time ever’ day----”
“And you’ve been having plenty of milk and butter. That’s a triumph,
Serena, in a big family like yours.”
“An’ ever’ dish an’ pot to be washed, an’ the house to redd up, all
before I can _begin_ a day’s work, an’ Lonie a-sulkin’ ’cause I want
her to take holt o’ the sewin’ while I’m puttin’ up stuff, an’ Ben,
he used to think there wuzn’t nobody but me--” Here her voice shook
slightly and she tacked about rebelliously. “But I ain’t keerin’ what
they all think, I’m goin’ by my _own_ feelin’s. An’ I’ve quit. I come
to it up there in the late roas’in’-year patch. I went by there as I
come from the ridge with this big bucket o’ gooseberries, which was
heavy enough without a pile o’ roas’in’ years in my apern, but you said
I must git another big mess ’fore the frost struck ’em heavy, an’ that
field was plum full o’ pack-saddlers. One stung me ever’ time I laid
my hand on a roas’in’ year. Hit hurts worse’n a hornet fer a minute,
an’ it’s harder on a body’s temper than a hornet is. Hit makes you feel
bad all over an’ inside too. An’ this mornin’ I put on them sandals you
give me to easy my feet, an’ by four o’clock they had me broke off at
the ankles. I reckon my feet take a different kind o’ easin’ from yorn.
An’ here’s these gooseberries got to be legged ’fore I can git supper,
so’s I can cook ’em while I’m bakin’ bread, an’ save stove-wood. Ben is
rearin’ an’ pitchin’ all the time now ’bout me usin’ so much wood, an’
leavin’ me to git it mysef haf the time. I’m so tired I know I ain’t
goin’ to sleep none to-night.” Then, with a desolation in her voice
that made my eyes suddenly hot, she added: “My sleep is all I git.”
I was stricken silent, and she began again. “They’re goin’ to bury
Uncle Nathe Ponder to-morr’, an’----”
“Oh, Serena, is Mr. Ponder dead?”
“He died a Saturday. The Freemasons are comin’ out from Carson to
bury him proper, an’ here I am tied up with fixin’ things to eat next
winter! I ain’t had a chance to look inter the door at Uncle Nathe’s,
an’ him been sick three months.”
“He was a good man, by all accounts.”
“Yes, I wonder why the Lord didn’t take shif’less ol’ Med Pace ’stead
of a good man like Uncle Nathe, but I reckon He don’t want _all_ the
culls. ’Course Uncle Nathe had his way ’bout most things, but he was
shore a good man. Never was a widder that couldn’t go to his mill an’
git a bushel o’ meal when she didn’t know where else to go. They got
to callin’ the bottom o’ the meal-sack ‘Uncle Nathe,’ round in Silver
Valley where he lived. When the meal was out they’d say: ‘We’re gittin’
down to Uncle Nathe.’ The Freemasons ought to give him a proper funeral
ef they’d give it to anybody. Len says Arn Weaver wants to take a load
o’ folks in his car, ef it don’t rain. Ef it rains he kain’t git over
Red Hog Gap. I’ve never stept inter a car, an’ it would put heart inter
me to git to go. I didn’t even see the baptizin’ on Nighthawk when
they’s fifteen hit the water. An’ there’s Sis Long’s baby I ain’t ever
looked at. It’s the first one she’s had in three year an’ they’re all
so proud they’re buttin’ stumps about it. Hit don’t seem right to lay
sech store by eatin’. Ef we ain’t got time fer dyin’ an’ bein’ born,
what _hev_ we got time fer?”
“Serena, how big is that car of Arnold Weaver’s?”
“It’ll hold seven scrouged in the seats, an’ you can pack in as many
young-uns as you want to.”
“I don’t suppose you could get the children ready to go to the funeral
to-morrow.”
“No, I’d have to wash their clo’s all around, an’ do some mendin’. I
couldn’t git ’em ready if I stayed up all night.”
“When Len comes in I want you to tell him to get word to Arn that we’ll
go in his car to-morrow. We’ll leave Ben with the children and take
Lonie with us.”
“You kain’t git Len to stop fodder-pullin’. He never done that in his
life. Him an’ Sam ain’t brothers when it comes to takin’ fodder.”
“He’ll stop, Serena.”
Her eyes were like great jewels. “Them gooseberries’ll sour ’fore I git
back.” But, as if afraid that I would take second thought, she appended
hastily: “I don’t think much o’ gooseberries anyway. They’ll look about
as good to me a-spilin’ as a-keepin’.”