Sometimes Lily Garrett, in a shapeless flowered dress, walked up the

road to sit in the kitchen heat and visit awhile. “You make such pretty

jam,” Lily said. “Why don’t you take some to the county fair at Seven

Mile Run? Mama does. She got a prize last year and hers was clouded.”

Ellen held the jar to the sunlight; the jelly glowed. “I do favor redcap

jelly.”

“Well, you should go, Ellie.”

“What color’s the first prize?”

“Blue.”

“You going to, Ellie?” asked Frankie.

“There’s no harm talking.”

“Get it out of your head, girl,” Maria was speaking. “I begged Mester

Gaddy ten years ago. He said it was foolishness.”

“I know.”

Lily was showing Frankie how to make a special kind of cherry preserve.

“The receipt named this Barrier Cherries, Frankie. Takes apple vinegar

and strained honey.”

Maria’s face was sweated and reddened in the heat of the stove fire. She

reached back into the dimness of her memory, to when she had run in

crying to a grayed old woman, “Mam, there’s a booger scratching my eye.”

The woman had licked the eye with her soft tongue to remove the foreign

substance, then set Maria on a three-legged stool outside the door to

work the dasher of the churn up and down. “Stone churn ain’t good enough

for you, girl,” she said to Ellen, suddenly.

“What did you say, Ma?” Ellen was startled.

“Old-timey days we had a stone churn. And when Pap was home sometimes

he’d bring us a runty possum, or maybe a coon. Summers now, we ate

good.”

“Did you store up like we do against winter?” asked Frankie.

“I like to lay up when there’s plenty,” Maria admitted. “But the most

Mam did was to dry corn and herbs. Folks didn’t figure to eat then like

now. Once or twice a day was all we sat to table.” She reflected a

moment. “I allow I didn’t miss hit. And my folks thought a heap of me

till Mester Gaddy came along.”

“Tell, Ma. Did you pine for love of him when you saw Pa?” Frankie cried.

“Mester Gaddy gave me a fine snuffbox. It was mother-pearl. And a deal

fair to hold in the sun.”

“I ne’er saw that box, Ma,” said Ellen.

“Show us.” Frankie was eager.

“No. Mester Gaddy was forced to sell hit once when he was short cash. I

always regretted that.”

“When did you start honing after Pa?” persisted Frankie, slim and frail

beside Lily, stirring the kettle at the stove. “For love.”

“He rode a big gray mare and there was nothing so tall as he. See, I was

a tedious plain girl and my folks were old already when I was born. They

hadn’t looked for me. So they fretted on what was to come. Mester Gaddy

rode o’er to Seven Mile Run and talked to Pap.”

“And then Mester Gaddy courted you?” Lily inquired.

“Go on,” Frankie pressed.

“Pap had scrimped for a dowry that was to come with me. Pap was bound to

care for me proper. You’d ne’er have thought it the way we lived so

poor-like while he was putting by.”

“I ne’er thought about Pa being young once,” said Ellen. “Was he

different from now?”

“No. Except his hair was red and thick. I came with him to this farm.

Here I been since. He hitched that gray mare to a two-wheel cart and I

set up beside him and figured I was a lady.” Her dull eyes sparked.

“E’er do as Mester Gaddy says, girls.”

“There was Pa on a horse,” Frankie said. “I’d just as lief have seen

that.”

“Oh, all the folks rode horses those days,” said Ellen.

“That’s right,” Lily assented.

“Don’t go talking to Mester Gaddy about those days,” Maria was warning.

“He’s disremembered them. Watch your cherries don’t burn there, girls.”

“They’re doing right, Mrs. Gaddy,” Lily said. “You were gone a powerful

time in spring, weren’t you, Ellie?” Curious, Lily was sniffing after

gossip to brighten her wishful youth.

Ellen took up the basket, leaving the table where she had been stoning

cherries. “I’m getting in some corn for supper,” she called as she was

going down the porch steps.

“Ellie’s so contrary.” Lily watched Ellen stride down the field. “She

won’t talk with me proper-like.”

“That’s her for you,” Frankie said.

“I reckon she doesn’t like me.”

“Oh she does, Lily.”

“No.”

“Ellie’s just bossy that way.” The two girls embraced abruptly. The pot

boiled. The sugary odor was filling the kitchen, seeking darkened

rafters where smoke from years long past dwelled.

“Would you be best friends with me, Frankie?” The big girl was effusive.

“I will. Ellie doesn’t tell things to me ever.” They clung, whispering,

comforted, sharing their trepidations. They returned to their stirring

of the Barrier Cherries.

* * * * *

Ellen had made the land to her since she returned, and the creatures and

birds spawned upon it. In hot night she would hear hoot owls ululating

in the oaks, and sometimes a mocker-bird would hang on the stones of the

garden fence, quavering through marbled moonlight. I came through. The

fear is past and I’m home. She stood by while Rhodie was yeaning a kid.

The doe stamped her little hoofs nervously, pawed the straw and

crouched, straining. With a worried blat, she expelled a spotted kid.

Ellen was tearing the caul lining to free it in a flood of water. She

cleaned the mucus from its gasping mouth, gazed on the odd-looking

animal with ears like a hound. “Where’d you find the buck?” she asked

Sam.

“Well, I says to myself in March when she commenced to wag her tail,

Ellie’d want her caught. So I took her over to a pied billy the other

side of Millville.”

“I ne’er saw a skewbald goat, Sam. And those drooping ears.” Penny’s

maternal instincts were aroused at the sight and smell of a newborn one;

she vied with Rhodie in cleaning it. Rhodie was stretching her head and

yawning as animals will do in discomfort. The kid staggered up to nurse

the tiny nipples. “I’ll call it Pie,” Ellie decided. “There, Pie.”

In the mornings when she left her goats at the pasture, she took the

path around the farm pond. Tiny green frogs were camouflaged in the

reeds and grasses, and blacksnakes lived among haw and alder roots along

the marshy bank. One would slip into the shadowed water, head crooked

like a twig held upright as it moved across the unbroken glass. When the

speckled thrush was buzzing and flapping by the path, she ran to find a

snake twined around a sapling cottonwood. Its head was in the nest and

the mother bird was darting at it, crying shrill. A single fledgling

remained, beak gaped for food. Ellen seized a stick, striking the

reptile until it twisted dying from the tree. She crushed its head, slit

the body with her pocketknife to see if there was life in the swallowed

birds. They were limp and she dropped them in an open field while the

bird continued the alarm clatter. “You’d as well feed the one you got

left if you can find your way to go back to that serpent-smelling nest.”

Afterwards buzzards wheeled. Ellen knew they were scenting the dried

rotted nestlings. One huge bird descended and sat hunchbacked on a rail,

glassy eyes fixed on her. “Stinking brat.” Jack stalked it until it made

grunting low sounds and flapped away.

Only once since that day in late July when she had come home did a sharp

edge touch the smooth progression of Ellen’s hours. She awoke in the

night to hear Anton speaking to Maria in the hall below. “What’s amiss

with your daughter? There’s no young men coming to the door.” Maria

whispered to him and they were gone. Ellen lay awake a long time. But in

the morning when it came to her mind, she thrust it from her. “It’s not

my fault if they don’t come.”

Anton stepped aside on Sunday to speak with Craig Hedrick and his

widowed mother about a boar he wanted to buy. On the way home he looked

over his shoulder at Ellen. “That Hedrick boy’s got a motorcar.” He was

shouting above the cart’s rumble, “And he’s done proud with that farm

since his old man was killed. He says, Ellie’s a comely thing.”

She felt all her being grow still, watching the dusty road glide from

under the wagon. Craig had been one of the bigger boys in the grammar

school, a few years older than she. His father, Moses Hedrick, had had a

cleft palate and though the boy had no actual reason for a speech

impediment, he would talk in nearly the same tongue-tied manner that had

characterized his father. Craig had been good-natured, his dog followed

him to school, he was big enough to force the smaller boys from their

torturing of turtles and frogs and insects that fell into their hands.

But while Ellen’s pity made her kind, her nature had been revolted by

the boy’s way of speech, his dirt-ingrained fingernails and pocked face,

the sour odor that arose from his unwashed winter clothing. She did not

reply to Anton now. The blood rose hot in her face and her pulse beat

heavily when he said, “You’re seventeen, Ellie. Where’s all those young

men?”

“You’d best take hold.” Maria wagged her head while the wagon jolted.

“Lest you be caught an old maid. Get your man while you’re still

blooming, for you’ll be a rag soon enough.”

“Young Hedrick’s a Catholic, as well,” said Anton.

Their words rang with finality. She closed her ears to them. Her hands

were folded in her lap on last summer’s dress of blue-dotted Swiss. She

clenched them tightly. The steel-rimmed wheels turned in rhythm, hate

and hate. Wish I was dead like old man Moses Hedrick with a pitchfork

tucked between my shoulder blades.

* * * * *

There came, early on a sultry afternoon, the yellow-billed cuckoo’s

moan, “Kow, kow, kow.” Ellen lifted her head from her churning, spoke to

Frankie going by with a pail of hog slop. “Raincrows. Hear them cry?

Reckon it’ll come on a storm?”

“I ain’t scared.” Frankie laughed high. “Teacher Peyton’s coming and I

got my lesson ready.”

An hour later the sky began to darkle. Ellen walked down the lane to

look toward the pasture. She could see her goats, hoofs upon the gate

bars. The cows lay in their usual spot, chewed their cuds, complacent.

Almost imperceptibly the air was taking on a greenish cast. A

fresh-smelling wind yawed and swept the field of rye grass. Green beyond

green under the sky mass, the grass was weaving, bending to it. Over all

heaved the blooming sunglow, golden and omnipresent. A rumble was

sounding faint, a flash of light flicked in the west. The wind was

subsiding, the heat smoldered oppressive and in the gloom of the sky the

sun withdrew. Darkness ruled. Sam appeared at the lane head, waving like

a tiny distracted spider, his face grimaced. “Afore Gawd, get the cows,

Ellie. Could rile up a twister.”

She was running to the field. The dog rounded up the cattle, drove them

in at a lope, milk-sacks swinging about their skinny legs so the white

fluid spurted. Ellen took Pie in her arms. The others bounded after as

she ran to the woodshed. Rhodie snorted and jumped sidewise

stiff-legged, her bearded chin tucked in. The girl laughed, “You daft

one.” She shut them in the pen. Lightning streaked, a thunderclap

crashed upon the ground. “If you were out in a storm, you’d be safe

beneath a cedar or a white birch. So Sam says. Beware the ash and the

oak for it’s their nature to tempt lightning.” She was wending up the

path to the house, searching cloud drifts for a down-sucked tail that

could betoken the birth of a tornado. Thunder drummed, light cracked the

horizon. The sweeping wind had ridden off the burdening heat.

The topmost branches of the hackberry lurched and swayed and she felt

her heart catch. “It’s so fair. So enduring fair a storm be.” Tears drew

into her eyes from the gladness. The wind reeled upon her so the flimsy

gingham clung flattened along her young hips and the hard nipples of her

breasts. She sensed her strength quicken, fathoming for an instant how

she, eternal, would through the ages walk the long green soul of man.

Standing there, she heard Frankie’s scream. She turned to the porch

steps. “It can’t storm. I got my grammar lesson.” The voice was

protesting, “I’m afraid, Pa.”

Anton mocked her, soothing. “Haw, Frankie. Now you ne’er seen a

twister.”

“I’m afraid. Afraid.”

The wind shrieked, the loft door slammed. In the kitchen a pot of

scented geraniums on the window sill was spun across the floor. The

noise crackled. Anton, from the parlor door, was roaring at Ellen and

Maria. “Get the windows shut, you oomen. And draw those shades. Open

windows are what sucks the bolts.” He was lighting a lamp in the parlor,

pulling the shades. He looked at Frankie in the subdued light, drawn up

rigid and white in her chair. “Hit’s just an old-timey commotion out

there now.”

There came the splintering noise of a falling tree. In the instant

Frankie sprang up, shook her fists helplessly, shut her eyes and

clenched her teeth. “Everyone’s against me. Hit’s coming to get me.”

Under the storm’s tension, her inhibitions mounted to the surface. She

was sobbing in her reedy voice, “I’m going to die. Really I hate you,

Pa. I hate you. I don’t want to go off to Chicago.” Maria and Ellen had

come in. Frankie turned her tear-drenched face to them. “Everything’s

Pa’s fault. What’ll I do, Ellie?”

“All I can say,” Ellen told her, “is I’d as lief it would rain and get

it o’er. This thunder’s souring all the milk.”

Lightning sizzled, then cracked, a flare skirting the window shades.

Behind came the bolt, reverberating through the hollows of the house.

The young girl lamented in desperation, her breath spasmodic, “I don’t

want to get those lessons. You’re hateful, Pa. You’re fore’er pushing

me.” The voice was a pale shriek. “I’m afraid!”

“Here, girl. Hold your sass. Those are baneful words.” Anton’s eyes were

slits. “Want I should set you on your knees and whip you? I’ll do it.”

“No.”

He turned to a chair, taking up a journal. “I mind,” he drawled and

settled into the low seat, “when there was a storm like this two-three

years ago. Twister came flailing through Bethel killing four.”

Ellen stayed by the door. Not for long had she seen him so wrought up.

Maria had taken up her sewing, pursed her mouth over it in the lamplit

room. Anton was directing his words to his younger child who cried now

in abject penitence. The convulsive sound came sadly into the still of

the room as the noisy gale tottered and staggered upon the vegetation of

the earth.

“Three old Chester brothers were batching with their ninety-year-old ma.

Folks say it was because they were terrified of the storm but all three

went off their heads and murdered one another. The old lady too.” Anton

smoothed his palm over his balding hair. Dry tobacco juice marked the

edges of his mouth, his long jaw thrust upward. “The plumber man came to

fix the pump next day. Found them lying about in a mess of blood. Old

ooman’s throat ripped with a razor. One batch was gored, the other two

were filled with shotgun holes.”

Heavy drops slammed on the windowpane and Ellen spoke in timid relief,

“There’s the rain, Pa.”

“Still fixing to die, Frankie?” prodded the man.

“Hit was the dread, Pa,” she pleaded and in time was drawn to sit

shrived on his knee.

“Now tell, would her pa let harm come to her that’s my pretty poppet?”

The rain was beating strongly, steadily, washing down banks along the

road, mingling with dust and traveling through stones and suckling earth

until it gained the water pan far below. Over the pond a silver sheet

was draping until the water rose over the sides to flood the meadows.

The swaggering wind was in full strength. Moisture softened the earth

about the roots of a giant basswood that had matured before the father

of Jules Gaddy built his lean-to and set up a rail fence for his mules

and hogs. A sudden blast slammed into the aged trunk; it fell sluggish,

reluctant, upon its side with a wounded noise, gashed roots exposed.

Tree branches grappled and fought the gale and were broken, some borne

by the wind and slung against the house roof, making staccato sounds.

“When you were just a mite, Frankie, I told you thunder was a potato

wagon going across a bridge. Wasn’t any fear in you then.”

“Will Mester Peyton come at all, Pa?”

“Roads are so bad he’ll likely be hindered. Do what I tell you, Frankie,

for that’s what’s right.”

The orgasm of the tempest was done. In the clearing sky, white fluffs

were drifting in remote wind tides. The man went to survey the

destruction left in the wake. His daughters were sent with hatchets and

string to gather fallen branches for kindling and to fagot the twigs.

“My sir used to recount,” Anton said, before he walked out, “how in the

forests of the old country they were given leave to break off all the

boughs to the height a standing man could reach. For firewood. There

wasn’t any rotted trash like in this new country. And it was soft as

carpeting underfoot.” He took his ax and wedges and went to join Sam,

who was bringing the team up the lane, hitched to a whiffletree. Sam was

balancing on his shoulder a bucksaw and a two-man crosscut. They headed

toward a yellow locust spraddled across the road past the farm entrance.

“Locust does right smart for fence posts, Mester Gaddy.”

“I’m glad that tree came down. I was minded to cut it anyway, Sam.”

By the pond frogs were shrilling, in the field near the orchard a

buzzard sat hunched on a stump, the black dampened wings held

motionless, outspread to dry, the naked head tucked into the wrinkles of

its bare neck. “I ne’er meant what I said,” Frankie was telling Ellen.

“For I love my pa and he’s good.”

“You carried on like you were taken with a fit,” admitted Ellen. “Makes

me puke to see you that way.”

“Thinking of me always, he is.” Frankie tied a bundle of twigs and threw

it to a pile they were making at the field’s edge. “Poor Pa.”

Ellen heaved a rock at the buzzard and watched it soar effortless. “The

wind’s flattened that cornfield. There’s a mort of damage been done.”

* * * * *

The leaves had been touched by the first frost and nearly overnight

strident colors were emerging on the countryside. Ellen and Frankie were

cleaning the musty litter from nest boxes, stuffing in fresh oat straw.

“Wonder how come we ne’er tried a doorknob in the nests, Frankie? A

porcelain one might coax them to lay. I’ve heard of it.” She harked back

to little Clate hanging to her dress hem.

The cows were restless, feeling the new season, the sluggish summer

shaken off. On dark mornings Ellen would wear her rough brown sweater,

torn in the sleeve, against the chill. The cows heaved themselves to

their knees, then to all fours. She put her bare feet in the warmed

straw where they had lain. A heifer plopped her hoof in the fresh foam

and held it there, stubborn head low, flanks whitened with the splash.

The lantern light blinked and Sam was shuffling in. He gazed at the

white-spattered wall, belched gently. Ellen caught the whisky scent.

“Don’t ill at her, Ellie,” he advised, “or she’ll fore’er mistrust you.”

“Who’s illing?” She carried the pail to the pump to clean it.

He was following, garrulous. “My old-old-old man always said, don’t ill

at a creature which does your work,” he nodded, sanctimonious, “and

fills your belly.”

“There’s the milking to do, Sam. You’re late. Pa’s waiting on you.”

“Old-old-old’s sort of a byword with us Offuts. When Pa was getting on

in years, I sassed him once. He’d started in to say I shouldn’t talk

back at my old man. He commenced to say old and he couldn’t stop.” Sam

cleared his throat, spit phlegm into the cold bushes. “I told it on him

after that. Old-old-old, we Offuts always say.”

Ellen sighed. Sam’s milking would wait on his tongue.

11

The car was puttering up the lane, a trailer hitched behind. It was a

day in early October. Ellen drew back from sight, hearing Craig

Hedrick’s high-pitched halloa. Anton was coming from the barnyard where,

with Sam, he had been forking manure onto the wagon for broadcasting

over the fields. Ellen fled along the fence line, down to the pond and

the tranquil woods beyond. “I aim to get a mess of shaggy-manes to stew

for supper,” she was promising herself. Most of the afternoon she stayed

in the woods, finding few of the big mushrooms she hunted although there

were some overripe ones. These she kicked to see the sootlike powder

billow as they split. Jack ran a rabbit and barked at squirrels and

woodchucks. Ellen was leaning idly on a fence rail, looking over the

tawny sedge grass of a neighboring field. A red-shouldered hawk circled

in flight, uttered its squeal like escaping steam. She mocked him,

“Kee-yoo! Get you a passle of crawdads, you old hen-thief.”

She put her chin in her hands. A mass of midges vibrated in the

sunshine, minute wings whirring swifter than eye could follow. You take

a flower now. When it goes to raise out of its leaves, it stirs

everlasting slow, unfolding. It’s a case of time, it would seem, and

man’s caught between. How quick we must appear to the trees, and how

draggy to the midges.

Back she walked in the late day up the fallow hill field, new-plowed for

autumn wheat. “Wish I was an earthclod, nary a care.” She stubbed her

shoes against turned furrows.

In the wagon bed that was rumbling in from the field her father swayed,

standing spraddle-legged. His face was shadowed with a beard, his sateen

shirt was open, baring his chest. The dun horse shook its mane and the

mare nickered to its yearling colt trotting in the pasture beside the

lane. “Whaw,” Anton was shouting. The chomping of bits and movement of

harness on the sweating animals made tinny bright noises. “You’re a

great one for roaming, girl. Where you been?”

“I took a notion to gather shaggy-manes for supper, Pa. I hunted but

there weren’t any.”

“Hit’s a sight too dry for mushrooms. I could have told you.” He looked

down from his vantage on the wagon. The muscles swelled on his freckled

forearms and he was holding the reins careless. “You just missed young

Hedrick. He came to visit and trade off our old boar for a thoroughbred

one I wanted. It’s more than twice the size of the old one.”

“I’ll take a look at it, Pa,” she told him.

“He asked after you. That young man.” He shrugged with satisfaction.

“Whup.” The wagon was rolling by her.

She replaced the pole barriers. “There. That hammer-tongue Craig.”

The next afternoon she was gathering herbs and seed pods for drying. It

was warm while she worked, for the garish sun heated the withering

earth. Craig Hedrick’s Model T was turning into the yard. He came up,

throwing himself forward as though there were many miles to go before

the end of the day. His sandy hair curled woolly and his small nose

turned up, his upper lip protruded slightly, which gave him a hounded

expression. “Hey, Ellen.” He stood ungainly as she nodded. He was

hitching the belt to his blue serge slacks, adjusting the knot of his

purple rayon tie.

“Good-looking hog you traded to Pa, Craig. What do you call those spotty

ones?”

“He’s a Poland China,” he said in his tongue-twisted way. “They’re bred

for lard. Not what you call a bacon pig.”

She laid aside her seed harvest and came to sit on the porch steps with

him. Anton walked out. “Hey, Hedrick.”

His presence eased the younger man. “Bought me a manure spreader, Mester

Gaddy. You own one? Chops straw and dung up and sifts it like my old

lady straining wheat flour on her bread board.”

“Hum.”

There was a long pause. All three watched the progress of a flicker

hammering up one side of the hackberry trunk. Craig was lifting his arms

slowly as though he held a gun. He sighted the woodpecker on the red

band across the back of its head. “Pow.”

Anton grunted, appreciative. He lit his pipe with a match he struck on

his overall pants, drew the smoke into his lungs and exhaled. “There. I

allow you got that high-hole.”

Craig was adjusting his position on the step, uncomfortable. “Well.”

Anton asked, “Heard the comical one about the hen that laid the

oversized egg?”

“How’s it go?”

“It wasn’t comical to the hen.”

The young people were still, uncommunicative. “Come on, see my Ford,

Ellen.” Craig was going in his springy stride to the black two-passenger

automobile. He held his gait down to match Ellen’s. She was conscious of

the smell of the man, could scarce speak for her contempt. Yet there

were the pleading eyes and the wounded way of a beast about him. “You

know where I live, Ellen? Just a piece from Tomkin’s Ditch.” He fought

with his flaw of speech. There was a rich section, he was confiding,

adjoining his, that he hoped to buy and add to his own. He had many

plans.

Ellen knew it was because of the way he looked upon her that he was

pushing out his chest and leaning awkward against his polished

automobile. He was tall in his shining shoes and Sunday wear. Her dress

was torn. All the while though, she felt he was the pitiful one. She

stood apart from her own body and watched this Ellen Gaddy, her

forbearance, her dignity. She was gentle. “I got chores to do now.”

“Well then.” He started the motor, drove hastily off.

In days to follow Craig would stop to talk with her. Ellen, aloof, would

listen as he rambled. Her mind would stray on whether Pa would remember

to get the sorghum syrup or whether Sam had mended the split butter

paddle as he promised.

The fields were being prepared for winter wheat, the horses and plow

working over the land. The disking and harrowing were now in progress

and the blended figures of man and team moved over the horizon to

disappear and return again. Ellen could see them from the potato patch.

She was digging in the rows with a fork, and she stuffed the tubers into

towsacks. The dust rose; her nostrils were clogged with it. A bluebird,

lingering before it flew south, was beading its sad autumn cry,

“Far-away, far-away!”

It was then that the days of a summer came upon her and she thought of

the man on whom she had laid a curse. She wondered if she could remember

his looks and ways, if meeting him she would know him. It’s past and

done. He can’t ever hurt me more. Down the row slowly she worked. It’s

past. She was testing it. But then it was as if Christian Ay emerged

from the shadows and stood by her in the row. She ceased digging, there

in the ragged dress, her hair bound by a bit of twine, her feet dirty,

black outlining the toenails. The north wind of late October was blowing

and the shadow fell across her. It seemed he was broad and strong, he

laughed greatly and she loved him in a way that her being ached. She was

trembling, water flowing down her face. She stood a while in her

surprise, frightened by the issuance from what she had thought a safe

memory. Its pain stirred her.

In that night the wind was changing. She heard it, felt its veering. And

the whippoorwills came up, calling in the cool caves of morning.

* * * * *

The next day Craig hunted until he found her in the orchard where her

goats were grazing on crisp fallen leaves. She was leaning against an

apple tree, listless. “Hey, Ellen. Hit’s Indian summer.”

She made no reply. He stood restive before her. A yellow insect hovered

whining about his tight-curled hair. “There’s a news-bee, Ellen.” He

reached out to catch it and it flew off. “Wonder what it came to tell,

Ellen?” The fragrance of the girl’s blown hair as she leaned on the

armor of the old tree, brought him yet again to speech, his face on

fire. “I’d get two-three nanny goats if you’d a mind for them. You could

have honeybees too, and by the doorside I’d set out petunia flowers.”

She turned to him, absent, her face wan, her gray eyes sorrowful. “Think

I’d have a poor rake such as you?” After a time she looked up from where

she bent her head to see he still was standing there. He wore a bruised

look and his underlip sucked in. “I ne’er meant to say that. It’s

because I’ve no notion for marrying, Craig. It’s nothing against you.”

“E’er seen my farm, Ellen? Out by Tomkin’s Ditch? You’d only to see hit

to change your mind. I was fixing to paint the house, too.”

His dreams left her unmoved. She was watching two winging birds come to

settle in a tree. “There’s a pair of doves.”

“I might even build on a porch and put up screening.”

“If one dies, it’s mate’ll mourn till it dies too. E’er find a dove

lying dead, no mark on it?”

“I’d set out young shade trees, Ellen, to put a chair under.”

“I came on a dove in the path one time. It ne’er had a sign nor wound on

its body and was still warm.”

They returned to the house. Anton was under the hackberry, pulling on

his pipe. “Set to dinner along with us, Hedrick.” He was poking the

young man with his elbow. “Ellie made a wild-plum pie this morning.

She’s one for kitchen chores.”

After their first hunger was spent, Anton was talkative. “A sight of my

corn ruined in that summer storm. Might have to buy a load come spring.

You lose any crops?”

“I reckon I’ll make out. I’ve got a herd of steers. I’m going to take

them to the auctions in Louisville.”

“You fattening steers? Well.” Anton pushed his food with a knife onto

the fork he held in his left hand. “I call to mind my sir gave me two

matched bull calves when I was a youngen. I set store by them, made them

a little yoke and learned them to drag a stone-boat and mind hawp and

gee. My sir waited till they were two-year-olds to cut their balls. That

was to allow them to get a good crest.”

“What did you name them, Pa?” asked Frankie.

“I mind the off one was Brown. I disremember the near one’s name. I was

proud of them for a shirt-tail brat.”

“What happened, Pa?”

“My ma sold them under me. She needed cash for my brother Marc, who was

getting his learning. I hunted the barns and meadows, came in squalling

someone stole them. What do you mean, your ox-team, Ma says, cash is

cash.” Anton pursed his thick lips. “Now, they were so slick you could

hunt for a loose hair. I used to file the horns and grease them.”

“Your maw give you a cut on what they sold for, Mester Gaddy?”

“I ne’er seen hit.” He asked Craig, “Have you worked oxen?”

“You couldn’t law them on me. I’m one for mules. Steady, and easy

keepers. But to tell you true what I mostly hanker for is a tractor. I

aim to get one some day.”

“And where’ll your manure come from then?” Anton gloated.

They were pushing back their chairs. The two men went out on the steps

while the women cleared. Frankie was drying plates and laying them

upside down, ready for the evening meal. Ellen took the butter and milk

jars out to the dry well near the porch. “Go to mass in my auto

tomorrow, Ellen?” Craig asked when she passed on the step.

Anton answered, “She’ll go. Be pleasured to.”

Ellen would give them no glance though Craig murmured, “Ellen?” as she

was going by up the stairs and into the kitchen. She heard them. “I aim

to take a drive later, Mester Gaddy, if it makes no nevermind to you.

Ellen’s not seen my farm and my maw’d be proud to meet her.”

“That suits.”

“How’s that seed-boar I traded you?”

“He’s a crapping mean sonofabitch, Hedrick. Set on rutting up his fence

all the time.”

“I noticed he liked to do that. Always breaking through. But I wouldn’t

say he was mean. That’s hog nature.”

“Maybe so. I call him Luther.”

“That’s a foreign name. Spot would fit him more.”

“After Martin Luther. A crapping bastard Dutchman Brinker worships.

Heathen.”

“Say. Bet that’s the first hog e’er to go by that name in this county.”

* * * * *

“Ellie, how come Craig’s pa got killed?” Frankie was asking as they lay

in their beds in the muddled dark of their room.

“Oh, it was in hay time. Craig and him were working with a watch-eye

hand. Craig and that man were in the loft stacking hay back. His pa was

down on the wagon. Well, that watch-eye man was fixing to jump down and

pitched his fork ahead of him. It stabbed Moses Hedrick in the back

between his shoulders. There he was, holding to the hay frame and the

handle sticking out of his back. They said the prongs came out in front.

Said he died standing there before he fell down.”

“Oh my, I’d think a one-eye man would guard against such a

happenstance.”

“I reckon he couldn’t gauge distances so good.” They lay awhile in

silence. Then Ellen was speaking in the dark, “Craig took on the farm

then. You can say that for him. And he was still going to the grammar

school.”

Ellen wore the blue crushed-satin hat that Garland had brought her last

Christmas. In Craig’s Model T, she was heading for the Catholic church.

She kept her eyes straight ahead on the little ivory crucifix fastened

on the dashboard. Under her feet the carpeting was torn; the car smelled

of dust. The young man was voiceless, his tension exhibited in his

handling of the machine. His collar was starched; the ill-fitted suit

constricted him. “Here it is.”

They were walking in stiffly. When his arm touched her, she moved away.

At mass when the bell rang, Ellen knelt by him. But while heads around

her bowed in the incensed air, she was staring about. Anton was with

Maria and Frankie in a back pew. Pa’s trying to trap me with Craig. She

held her head rebellious among the bent ones. What’s all the begging and

praying about? I don’t care for this way of loving Him. I’ll get my

peace out on the fatness of the earth that is His footstool. And the dew

and the smell of the fields.

“Stand up, Ellen,” whispered Craig.

Father Tompert was reading out to the people in the clapboard church the

beginning of the gospel of John. Ellen listened, brooding. They can’t

make me marry him. “Thanks be to God,” said the priest and the people

moved to go.

Craig was driving a mile or two along a cart-rutted road on the other

side of Millville, unfamiliar to Ellen. “There’s Tomkin’s Ditch,” he

nodded to a joint post office and general store by the deserted

roadside. “And here’s that section of land I’m fixing to buy. I aim to

rent it the first two years to make the payments.” He halted the car,

gazed upon an overgrown field. “Hit’s all virgin. A virgin piece. Ne’er

a plowshare been put to it. Corn’ll grow ten feet tall with not a

handful of fertilizer.” He moved the hand throttle and the car was

lurching forward. He steered down a winding approach to a weather-beaten

red house set barren of trees before a barn of the same color. “Let me

point out the sights. Then you can meet Maw.”

Ellen left her blue hat on the car seat. She came to where Craig leaned

on the lot fence. Steers, deep in muddy manure, idled around troughs of

corn. A yellow hound wagged up to her, sniffed her dress. She patted its

smooth head; it wriggled, threw itself with a grunt on its side in the

rutted road, waving its feet, ingratiating.

“That’s Sooner.”

“Hey, Sooner.” She was stroking it.

“Sooner stay as come.” An elm grew by the fence. Craig cut a twig from

it and offered it to Ellen. She shook her head. “Hit’s a slippery elm.”

He was picking his teeth with the little stick. “Keeps off throat

trouble.”

He hung his coat on the fence, rolling his sleeves, uncovering blond

hair that grew long on his arms. He walked with caution around the mire

of the lot and climbed into the shed loft. The steers licked at the dry

stalks he was forking down; they gazed at Ellen with deep-lidded eyes.

Craig shouted, “Nothing to do but eat, hey, Ellen?” He was strutting

over to her. “Rather watch them eat than feed my own face. You know?”

“Well.”

He spat out the twig. “I took on a man’s ways when I was yet a

stripling. I dragged this farm up from a poor bit, starting the day Paw

was killed. It’ll make some folks set up.”

“Your ma take to it out here?”

“Don’t you study on her, Ellen. Maw says the day I bring home a wife to

do my cooking she’ll go to live with my sister up Indiana way.”

“Craig,” Ellen warned, “I’m not marrying. I told you. If you will talk

so, you can take me home.”

“But I figured on it, Ellen.”

“I’m not beholden to your figuring.” A thrill of fright ran through her,

seeing he had raised up tall and pulled in his lip. He was looking upon

her as though she were changed. He leaned over, gripping her upper arm,

swathed in the winter coat. “I told you no, Craig.”

“I heard a girl was taught to say no to lead her sweetie on hotter. You

playing games?” His hand was tightening.

“Craig, Pa’d kill you if he saw how you’re acting.”

“Mester Gaddy’s thirsting to foist you off on me.”

“But I got ne’er a liking for you, Craig. You have to give me time.” If

she could but stave him off until she was safe at home. Home was distant

and dear.

“Don’t you e’er get hot, Ellen?” He was thrusting his hand within her

coat, roughly hunting her breast.

She pulled from him. “Maybe I would if you were good and waited.” She

tried to soothe him. “Let’s go meet your ma now.”

He was dragging her to his pock-marred face with an arm that was a band

of steel. “You virgin, Ellen?” The scent was there, an odd mingling of

moth balls and urine and hair oil. His lips were striving upon hers

while she struggled. His hand was pressing her back, holding her against

his body that was a rock. She felt the hard prod of him and a streak of

flame ran through her, overlaid with disgust. I mustn’t go wild, it’s

like with a mean boar, like Luther. You have to deal easy with him. She

forced her body to slacken and felt him relax. She drew her mouth

stiffly aside. “Give me a chance to breathe.” She smiled, forcing it.

“There, Ellen. You do like me. See?”

She twisted like a snake, darting free. Upon her heels she heard him,

his breath an angry roar. The five-tined pitchfork was leaning against

the fence bars where he had placed it after throwing hay to the cattle.

She grasped it, flailing with the prongs turned backward. It smote him

across the face, leaving white streaks. He stumbled, gasping amazed. She

swung again.

“Bitch,” he hissed, “I’ll prick you yet.” He grappled for the tool.

She tore it loose, driving at him strongly. He was staggering backward,

tripping in a road rut, falling. He threw up a protecting arm, blood

oozing from a tine-mark on his forehead. Mud covered his Sunday vest and

pants and striped shirt. She turned, speeding across the stubble field

toward woods beyond. The hound, Sooner, was pattering alongside. She

clawed her way through underbrush, aware after a time of a hurt in her

throat where the breath was sobbing. She looked about. The hound had

disappeared. She took the direction that seemed true, cutting across

country, skirting the few houses. She climbed a rail fence and her dress

caught, ripping. She shook her head, “I’ll have to mend that.”

The afternoon was wearing on. A chill breeze was born. A faintness

enveloped her. She startled when a twig cracked. She stopped to

consider, speaking into the stillness. “It’s the fright makes me

light-headed. I must have got my bearings turned. I should have come on

the pike by now.” She was going at a slower gait; she remembered, “Now

my hat’s in his car.”

She was following a stony path bordered by thimbleberry bushes. It led

onto the Millville Road which she recognized at once. A mud hen ran

stammering before her, “Butbutbutbutbut!” It vanished in a field. The

rail-birds were seldom seen; Sam Offut claimed that in winter they

changed into frogs and hid in the marshes until spring. Ellen walked

swiftly, head down, as automobiles and later a buggy came from behind

and passed. Then she was at the house steps and slowing her pace.

Anton was in the kitchen with Frankie who sprang from a chair. “Hey,

Ellie. Is your beau with you?”

“I’ve got no beau,” Ellen said stonily. She stood a moment plucking

beggar’s-lice from her coat while her fingers shook. She turned to her

father. “That was a whoreman you set on me, Pa.” She began to weep

freely as anger overcame her.

“You greening me? Speak up.”

“You were bound and determined to sic that Hedrick on me, weren’t you?”

Ellen whimpered.

“Speak up,” shouted Anton.

“He wanted to show me his farm. Then he came after me. I said let’s go

meet your ma, but he wouldn’t.”

“Tell what he did,” Anton threatened, fear glowing in the gray pupils of

his eyes.

“I grabbed a dung-fork and hit him. Then I ran.”

“You seem to be safe enough, girl. The Lord God takes care of you.”

Anger caught her up again. “It’s not that. With you it’s always root hog

or die for me, and you know it.” The words fell biting as her tears

washed. “It’s not because of God’s help I be home again.” She was

running to her room.

Later she appeared, pale and sullen, to do her chores and help with

supper. When Anton came to the kitchen, she whispered, cold, “I ne’er

meant those words, Pa. I was unsettled, I reckon, by all that walking.”

“Were you out walking then, Ellie?” asked Maria. “I thought you were

with that young man.”

“I don’t take trifling from a youngen,” said Anton, contemptuous. “Got

worries enough hanging from my neck without you laying more on.”

“I ask you to overlook it.” She strove against the alienation.

“Root hog or die, such talk after all that’s done for you. And taking

God’s name. Whoso curses his father, it’s said, his lamp shall be put

out.”

“I ne’er cursed,” she breathed.

“I saw you holding your head haughty in church this morning at the canon

of the mass when all good souls were waiting on God. Now bend your head

proper, girl. And don’t disgrace me. Mind.”

Before they blew the candles in the bedroom that evening, the sisters

were sitting in their shifts on the beds. Ellen looked out the window

where the curved horn of the waning moon bobbed in scuds, and the wind

coursed high upon it. “It’s wild out there tonight. The Indian summer’s

on the decline.”

“Ellie, what did Craig do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“I’d ne’er let a man touch me. I’d hide like Ma in the wardrobe closet

first.”

“I’ll see that come the time.”

“Well tell, did he kiss you?”

“No.”

“Tell about girls, Ellie. Why are there girls and then men?”

“Go to sleep. Why can’t you let it be? You’re always going on.”

“I want to know if a man’s secrets are more like a ram or a stallion.

Wish I knew.”

“You say more and I’m going to tell Pa you’re asking such stuff. He’ll

whip those notions from you all at once.”

Frankie lay restless, drawing the quilts up to her chin. She sighed. The

candles by the bedside flickered, and upon the slanted roof beams

shadows were wavering like wings of pinned moths.

Ellen slept. She was dreaming of Christian Ay. And in the dream he had

knowledge of her. It seemed this time she was willing. She came awake

wondering at the vividness, sheltering its guilt. Maybe it all befell in

another world as Miss Gentry the school teacher had claimed. Once Ellen

had related a childish nightmare to her and she had replied, “Some say

the soul is freed while you’re asleep, Ellen. And that’s when evil’s got

its chance. And there’s some can prophesy from a dream. Now others go

against those old ways, holding modern notions such as dreams showing up

your real wishes, and you having a hidden mind with its own thoughts. I

don’t hold by any of that. I maintain those fancy notions are much the

same as prophesying.”

It was another strangeness to dwell on. Then she recalled the child she

had borne in the Dougherty orchard. She put the memory away with

distaste, separating its being from the love she had held for Christian

Ay as if there were no connection. She closed her eyes again, weary from

the long day.

* * * * *

The spotted boar that Anton had obtained from Craig Hedrick rooted up

his fence in the night, wandering into the lot where the cows were

penned for the winter months. He weighed over half a ton, had an

untrusty temper, an insatiable appetite. Anton and Sam would view him in

his pen when he fed. “Haw. Luther. Old bastard stinks, doesn’t he, Sam?

Luther.”

“He’s ugly, Mester Gaddy. I want to see the pigs he sires to fatten for

market. Say.”

The brute’s jowls below his dish face were touching the ground. His ears

flapped over tiny vacant eyes. His back was arched high and powerful,

his larded sides shook when he trod on his small cleft hoofs. His screw

tail was twitching with excitement. He roamed, investigating the new

territory, growling. He nibbled at the corn he rooted from cow

droppings, at hay fallen under the racks. But he was seeking a tastier

morsel. The heavy milker, Maisie, had been due to drop a calf, the men

examining her judiciously every evening for signs because Anton wanted

to raise it. Now she was down in straw at the corner of the shed,

groaning, pushing forth a heifer calf. As Luther rounded the shed side

he smelled it, half born. He fed his hunger, ripping at the moist

caul-swathed fetus, his eyes glittering.

In the morning Anton had to shoot his mutilated cow. The men strung it

up to skin it and dress out what meat could be salvaged. Anton was

scooping the foul-smelling entrails into a washtub. “When we finish

trimming this carcass, before God, Sam, we’re going to drive locust

posts four feet deep. Build that murdering bastard a barricade that’ll

hold him.”

12

Near the last of November there was a circle around the moon foretelling

the wet weather. The downpour held for ten days, the pregnant sky

slate-colored, the deluge continuous. Muck and soggy manure were deep

now in stables and yards and paths. When Ellen went out to her chores

she would wear Anton’s discarded rubber boots. Maria and Frankie had

sickened when the rain first began. They were lying together in the big

bed in the downstairs room, Anton sleeping nights in the guest bed.

Though the fever of the invalids was abating, their harsh coughs were

hanging on. Anton soaked inner bark of black cherry and elm, boiling it

down to a thick brown brew for them to sip when the seizures came on.

Ellen’s eyes were on him as he was moving about the kitchen, preparing

the medicine. His loose lips drooped in concentration. “Feed a cold and

starve a fever. Hear, girl?”

“Maybe we ought to get a doctor, Pa?” She whispered it, confiding.

“Nary a satchel doctor has set foot in this house, even when your ma

bore you youngens.” His voice surged, “I don’t work with charms and tie

papers on the sick. The way heathen folk do. I use herbs and healing

trees. Like my folks before me and theirs before that.”

“A doctor might know of something new.” She was persistent.

“Now what do you reckon a doctor be? He uses the same herbs as me. He

puts them in fancy bottles and gives them new names. The Word tells,

remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. That goes

for all old-timey ways.”

“I know, Pa.” The sharp-scented steam was filling the kitchen. Ellen

took a bowl of spongy warm dough, overturning it into a bed of soft

flour on the bread board.

Anton set the jar of warm liquid on the table by her. “Hum. Now, that’s

ready for those two.” He pulled on his heavy jacket and fur cap,

departing into the drizzle.

Ellen worked the dough down and covered it with a towel. She would

prepare flannel bags of heated earth when the chills came on Maria and

Frankie, heaping blankets high. Then their fever would be reborn and

take possession again. “Mam,” Maria whispered hoarsely to Ellen once,

“tell Pap he better make up another sweater tea if the back of this

fever don’t break soon.” Red-faced, Maria threw back the covers. Pity

moved in Ellen. When she came from the barn, she would leave her muddy

boots on the porch and wash herself. She wore a fresh apron into the

bedroom. She would bring the invalids a bowl of pudding and a plate of

toasted fresh bread, walking softly.

“There’s a bit for you to try and eat, Frankie. You got to have food, Pa

says, now the fever’s waning.”

“Wish I had ice,” complained the girl. “Go get the chamber pot for me,

Ellie.”

No action, no word or roughness disturbed the tranquil edge of Ellen’s

spirit. She was gentle-spoken. “It’ll be clearing off soon. The red cock

crowed on the fence this morning. First time he’s flown off the ground.”

Frankie was sighing. “Christmas is less than a month away. And I’m

missing all my lessons. I might ne’er get to go with Uncle Garland to

the city.”

“Sure you will, now.” Ellen took them warm water to bathe their faces.

She scrubbed bed linen in a tub on the kitchen floor, wrung the clothes

out, pinned them on the lines she strung through parlor and kitchen. All

the while she bore herself proudly and carefully, feeling her necessity

and how they were all leaning on her. Surely her father saw she was

keeping his house alone now, cooking for Sam and the sick ones, besides

her work out of doors.

At length a fragment of moon reappeared in the daytime sky, and the sun

was there too, embryonic, feeble. Maria came out of the bedroom to grind

beans for breakfast coffee, a long maroon sweater draped over her

flannel nightdress. Anton wrapped Frankie in a quilt and sat her in a

chair at the table. He was filling her plate. “Now you got to eat.”

The slender girl laughed, her skin pallid, her red hair seeming to

prosper unnaturally under the illness, lying abundant. “Do tell at her,”

said Maria, “and my hair’s falling out. When I was a youngen I lost hit

all in the epidemic. Pure bald. Had to wear a string-knit cap for nigh

on a year. He knows.” Her lips continued to move.

“I was thinking, Pa,” said Ellen, striving to keep her newly won role,

“I’ll start cleaning the candlesticks outside after this to get away

from that mess in the sink.”

“This little old thing.” Anton touched Frankie’s hair, beaming. “Just

look at her, you-all.”

The tears stood in Ellen’s eyes. And days that she had made full became

empty once more. She felt her pride and her beauty fall away.

* * * * *

She was cutting down a few of the hard cheeses from the rafters in the

smokehouse. Grady Love would take them in trade for the staples they

needed. There was little to carry in the basket these days. In the

unseasonable weather the hens had nearly stopped laying. She used

water-glass eggs to cook with, put down in a crock during the summer.

There was no cream or butter, the dairy taking all the milk that was

produced. It was late in the day before she got started. She put on her

heavy coat and boots. “I’ll be back in time to fix supper, Ma. So don’t

fret if it gets dark. Days are so short now.”

“Can’t you wait till tomorrow?” Frankie was asking. “Don’t go.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Frankie. I’m strapped for salt and soda. Pa’s out of

tobacco. You try to nap.”

When she finished her trading and was on the way home, Ellen took the

short cut by Bailey’s Woods to visit Amanda York and to warm herself.

She knocked at the door of the double cabin. Amanda was wearing a bright

red dress, her hair made into a gleaming braid down her back. She drew

Ellen to the fire that hissed and sparked. “You know I got a beau,

Ellie?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Jerome Hatfield. Smithy Hatfield’s son. He’ll be coming by soon. Stay

to meet him, Ellie. He’s real nice.”

“You going to marry him?”

“He’s asked me.”

A car was heard approaching. Then doors were slamming outside, and male

voices shouting. “Mandy?”

“Ask your maw can we come in?”

“We got a present for you-all.”

“That’ll be Jerome,” laughed Amanda. “They’ve been drinking, this being

Saturday night.”

“This one’s a heavy basket,” called a twisted voice that Ellen knew.

“Rome Beauties are right solid apples.”

Three young men came in. Craig Hedrick was carrying one handle of a

basket. He hesitated, seeing Ellen, his face frozen. They set the basket

down. She saw a dark scar across his forehead lit by the dancing fire.

“Oh, you boys been tasting bootleg,” cried Mrs. York. “Come have some

soft cider to cool you off.”

Amanda was running to fetch glasses. Ellen followed, whispering, “I’ve

got to go, Mandy. Ma and Frankie are sick in bed and it’s dark by now.”

“Oh, Ellie, I wish you could stay. Craig,” she was crying, “take Ellie

Gaddy home in your auto.”

“No,” Ellen breathed.

Amanda whispered, “I’ll make a match for you, Ellie. He’s a nice fellow.

Got an eighty-acre farm all his own. But he’s afraid of girls.”

“Hurry up with the glasses, Mandy,” called Jerome. Ellen saw him pushing

Craig’s ribs with an elbow. “Take her home, Craig.”

Amanda brought the tray and Ellen hung behind her. “Ellie, you know

Craig here? And Jacob Haas and Jerome Hatfield.” She was pointing them

out with a nod. “The last is the meanest.”

“Pleased to meet you.” The silence was awkward. The three men leaned on

their legs abashed, their faces heated by the fire and the liquor they

had drunk.

“Ah, here we are.” Mrs. York was pouring the cider. Ellen shook her

head, turning away.

“Well, Craig,” persisted Amanda. “Cat got your tongue? Thought you told

me you knew Ellie and went to school with her?”

“Craig took her for a drive once. I heard about that,” crowed young

Haas.

“Did you, Craig?” cried Amanda. “When?”

“Come on, let’s hear. When?”

“I’ll walk,” whispered Ellen. “I’d rather.” The young men were shuffling

near the fire; someone spilled cider on the stone hearth and Amanda was

bringing a mop. Ellen found her basket and boots by the doorway. Outside

in the dog-trot the adjoining cabin was dark, unused in winter. She was

buttoning her coat. The night was chill.

As she reached Sweetincreek Road the wind gathered itself and whirled

strongly about her, up the sleeves of her coat. There was just light

enough to follow the road. She drew her coat to her, fought the wind.

The way was endless, the few dried leaves still cringing in the trees

rattled and the wind had its way with them. In a darkened corn field an

animal was slipping along rows of shocks. She heard a distant car

engine. It became louder, lights were shining faintly behind her. She

was turning into the ditch at the roadside, stumbling down the incline

to crouch there. Headlights beamed close at hand. The car stopped by the

ditch, a voice was calling thickly, “Ellen? I’ll drive you home.”

“I want no help from you, Craig. I’ll walk.” She climbed out and started

up the road.

The car was following. “Get in, Ellen. I’m not going to hurt you.” He

swung the door open. She stepped up and into the seat. There was the

tart whisky trace. With a jerk the car started. He drove fast down the

road, the thin tires bumping over hardened ruts. “Thought you were a new

field of daisies, you whore,” Craig was saying. “You’re nothing but a

brush field where a plowshare drove through. I found that out.”

She held a frightened silence.

“E’er a man in the county has slept in that field. So I hear.”

He’s blind drunk. She stared ahead where the road crouched dark before

the car lights.

“Why won’t you sleep with me too, Ellen? Why did you hit me with that

dung-fork?” He began to sniffle.

“You’re stark crazy.” She put her fingers on the door latch.

“You ran off with a rich fellow, I heard. And got knocked up. Had a brat

off some’eres.” He was making gruff crying noises.

“You’re just simple crazy.”

He was swerving the Ford into the lane of her home. He braked so that

she threw her hands against the dashboard, bruised her fingers on the

tiny crucifix screwed there. Her basket slid across the floor carpet

making a rough sound. “I’m just drunk. Worthless drunk. I’m sorry for

what I said, Ellen.” He was leaning to her and she remembered his hairy

arms.

“Get away from me.” The handle turned. She ran to the house, the basket

swinging wildly. His car remained where it was; she glanced back from

the porch. She was pushing the door open, the kitchen was warm and

smelled of security. She went to the bedroom door, taking off her coat.

“You were gone so long, Ellie,” Frankie whined.

“I had to put the potatoes on,” Maria said.

Ellen tugged at her boots. “I tarried a while at Mandy’s.” She was

busying herself with supper, making a clatter with the dishes. She

hummed and when she sliced the ham she closed her eyes, blinking tears.

He called me a whore.

“I thought I heard a car drive up,” Maria said.

“Someone out on the road, I reckon.” She heard the motor start then.

Craig would drive back to the York cabin. He and the others would sit

around the fire, eating apples and popping corn in an iron basket. They

would laugh about that queer Ellen Gaddy.

Anton came in, his long-jawed face ruddy from the harsh wind. “I brought

your twists of tobacco, Pa. I set them on the shelf o’er there.” I hate

them all. Men are a pack of tormented hogs.

* * * * *

Christmas 1926 was approaching. Preparations were under way for

Garland’s annual visit. Frankie told Ellen with enthusiasm, “I’m just

going to sit and study grammar. So don’t look for help in the kitchen

from me.”

“Oh Frankie, stop worrying about it.”

In the evening the younger girl was arranging dried everlasting in the

parlor vase, the thistle-like blooms shaking palely in her hands. She

turned to Ellen, blithe. “I’m that eager to see Chicago, you know. Pa

says I can get dresses from the catalog. You help me.”

Ellen brought it out and they selected. “You’re like a wild one,

Frankie. Setting such store on the times you’ll have. Just do as Uncle

says and it’ll come out well.”

Frankie had suppressed her misgivings. By her lively chatter and

protestations she covered the small voice of panic beneath.

Anton came in to where they sat. “Order stout, hear? Not cheap. I

declare this is the day. Get her new boots too, girl.”

“She’ll more need pretty slippers, Pa.”

“And get chills-and-fever? She can be warm and comely too, I say. Just

spend it. I got it,” he said recklessly, and went to paint the black

sink in the kitchen in honor of Garland’s coming.

Ellen enjoyed the readying for the holidays. “Where are the straws I

pulled from the new broom you got, Ma? I’m bent I’ll find them to judge

if my cakes are done right. Frankie,” she cried, “stop studying. Come

beat this icing for me.”

“I don’t know, Ellie.” Frankie entered the room, reluctant. “How do I

sound when I talk?”

“Why, you sound like a lady. Whip this up, will you?”

“All right.” Frankie poised the spoon, reciting, “The deluge drowned,

the earth around.”

“That’s real clear, Frankie.” Ellen took pride in her cakes, liked to

start the batter with her hands, feeling the fresh lard blend to the

sugar. “I despise to waste making a cake with fat-drippings. They should

be delicate and light.” She was washing her hands, beating the eggs to a

froth with her mother’s wire whisk. Her health and good will surged

strong from some inner store.

After mass on Sunday, Anton left his women-folk to speak with Joe

Burwell who pressed him, “Borrow my new fence stretcher, Gaddy. Hit

beats a crowbar and pliers to a fare-thee-well.”

“I’ll try it one time. All my fences are rotting on me. Hell, I’d rather

set up rails any day than stretch wire.”

Joe Burwell’s son Dyke was approaching the sisters and Maria on the

church porch. “Hey.”

“Hey, Dyke,” Frankie cried.

The boy was nineteen or twenty, fleshy and large. He was smiling weakly

at the girls, in anguish. Frankie blushed, Ellen looked down, scowling.

Anton was calling them to the waiting wagon.

“He’s cute,” Frankie whispered and looked back.

“You can have him. I heard he does dishes and washes and scrubs for his

ma.”

“I wouldn’t mind. He’s tall. But how come he does her housework?”

“She’s a one-leg. She hitched a horse up without the blinders and it

scared off and ran the spring-wagon o’er her. They had to cut her leg

clean off above the knee.”

“Say.”

“She wore out three wood legs till she took to pushing a chair before

her. Had a baby too,” Ellen concluded luridly, “couple of years after.”

“Well, all the same he’s tall. I’m not so particular.”

In the cold clear weather the cows would seek sunny spots in the

barnyard, at night crowding into steaming groups. The goats found a

plank leaning against the chicken house. Ellen came on the younger ones

bounding madly on the corrugated tin roof, their hoofs rattling. The

daring skewbald Pie snorted and leaped skittishly from the high slanted

roof to the ground. She was galloping back to the plank, short tail

erect, up on the roof again, sure-footed. They seemed like wild animals

Ellen had come on in the woods, unable to contain their spirits. Penny,

who was heavier and not inclined to frolic, stood on the ground, ears

flattened in worry. Ellen patted her and she tossed her beard, fretful.

The girls were gathering walnuts and butternuts. They shucked them and

threw the hulls in the kitchen stove. Dyke Burwell drove up in a buggy

with his father. Ellen saw them through the window. Dyke sat helpless,

holding the reins, while the men met and walked to the barns. Joe

Burwell turned his head, bellowing, “Hitch Blacky to the post, you dang

fool, and get in where it’s warm. You got a corncob for a head?”

At the kitchen door Dyke was rapping, timid. Ellen opened it, her hands

stained with walnut juice. She was blocking the entrance. “Well?” He

cast his eyes to his hobnail shoes. She saw the two men disappear in the

distance. “We’re busy baking.” Cruelly, she closed the door on him.

“Ellie Gaddy!” Frankie was running quick-footed after the stout ungainly

boy. She led him to the parlor where she gave him black and white beans

to string clumsily for decoration. Ellen heard her vivacious voice and

later the piano tinkling and Frankie’s falsetto.

When I was a lady, a lady, a lady

When I was a lady, a lady was I

And this way and that way and this way

And that way

And when I was a lady, a lady was I

“That makes two geese in there,” Ellen told Maria briefly.

* * * * *

On the evening Garland was to arrive, the Gaddys were waiting in vain.

Anton took out the letter that had come from Chicago, studied it again,

squinting through his reading glass. “Hit’s today for sure. That’s what

it says here. Lay down that red carpet on the twenty-second. That’s his

way of saying it.”

“You know, Mester Gaddy,” Maria said, “today the sun entered

Capricornus. First day of winter.”

Anton reflected and went for the almanac. “Hit says unsettled here. I’ve

noticed these folks will often hit it right. Could be he’s run up

against a storm.”

The roast was kept on the back of the stove, reheated until the juices

dried. The chores were finished. The family had dressed for company.

Late dusk set in and Anton grumbled, “Put it out and we’ll eat. I’ll say

grace.” They picked at the food by lamplight. The man spoke suddenly,

“This meat’s not fit for hogs.” He pushed his plate and got up, began to

pack his pipe.

Frankie made sniffing sounds. “He’s not coming, that’s what. I can’t

bear waiting and not knowing.” She ran up the stairs, her footsteps

fading; the loft door slammed mildly from afar.

The next forenoon Garland was wheeling a yellow Reo into the lane; he

pressed the horn, “Ah-roooooo-ga!” Frankie flew out to greet him. Ellen

was hesitating at the door, her hand shielding her eyes from the winter

sun. She saw the familiar derby and Garland’s arm about Frankie as Anton

came from the barnyard. “Broke down at Minetta, An. Had to stay

overnight. Why the hell don’t you have a telephone installed like

everyone else?” Garland was waving at his car. “How do you like it?

Brand-new touring style. The latest.” He clapped his brother on the

shoulder. “Had her up to forty miles on route sixty-six.”

Anton preceded them into the kitchen. Garland was looking at Ellen as he

came to the steps. “Well, puss?” He pinched her thigh, his small blue

eyes gay. “How’s the wandering little wench?” He wagged his finger.

“Reckon I was a poor niece to you last winter after your kindness.” She

gazed at him, candid. “I ne’er meant it so.”

“Put on weight, haven’t you, hon? You look good. Pretty.” The color rose

in her face, relieved that he would let the past rest. “Got a boy friend

yet?”

“No,” she was smiling. He met her eyes. At the sight of the clipped

mustache in the squared smooth face, a part of her loneliness had drawn

away. They walked into the house, his arm on her shoulder.

Maria was in the bedroom doorway, twisting a towsack towel in her hands.

“Who be you?”

“Ooman,” roared Anton, “it’s my brother then.”

“Not peddler.”

“Ooman. You’re plaguing me.”

“Shut up, An. She hasn’t seen me for a year. Hello, Maria, I brought you

a present, too. It’s in my car. A pressure cooker to save you work.”

“Now I forgot it was you coming today.” Maria was suddenly complacent.

“Tinie Bilberry’s got a bread-mixing outfit. Hit’s made to save work

too. The handle turns like a churn and the dough comes out ready for the

pans.”

“Does hit shape the loaves too?” asked Anton grimly. “I allow men are

turning from the Lord God’s ways with these contraptions.”

“Next year I’m going to bring you a sewing machine, Maria. I saw a

treadle one you could use, seeing as your husband won’t put in

electricity till doomsday. You got to look to the future, Anton. Rural

electrification. Let machines do it.”

“Next you’ll say get a newfangled automobile,” Anton predicted.

Ellen and Maria laid out the noon dinner. Ellen was warmed in her

uncle’s love. In the evening she sat by him on the sofa. Or if he was

standing, she linked her arm in his. When he laughed and said Frankie’s

way of speech wasn’t a whit altered from last year and that Anton had

got a reaming on the grammar teacher, her jealousy was assuaged.

But Anton angered, “That fellow’s been coming for a year. And there was

one we had before him that quit on me.”

“Hold on,” Garland was crying easily. “Chrissake, Frankie’ll be all

right. You did what you could.” He nodded kindly to the girl’s stricken

face. “Let’s hear you play something, sweet.”

The next morning Ellen was in late from her barn work. She stopped in

the hall at the parlor door, hearing Garland’s emphatic voice within,

“She’s not well, I tell you, An. You’re so used to her you don’t notice.

But she acts downright queer.”

“Shaw.”

“She needs psychiatric care. Mental aid. Look, I’m worried about her.

Your attitude doesn’t help, God knows. You’re as enlightened as a

bushman.”

Anton laughed, “You modern city folk. Such know-alls.”

“I’m not sure if I should have brought that pressure cooker, either.”

“Well, that’s a fact. I wouldn’t have any truck with it. What’s it got

o’er a good fire for cooking? You tell me.”

Ellen wandered into the kitchen to look at Maria with new eyes. She saw

the two men going to the barn, her uncle clad in one of the country

costumes he affected, jodhpurs and boots, a dark red turtle-neck

sweater. And Anton wearing stiff new overalls and a fresh-made black

shirt.

When the time had arrived for midnight mass, Ellen was taking her place

at the communion rail with the others. She waited while the priest

stopped at Garland and then Anton and Maria. Then Father Tompert spoke

in Latin above her and in the cold church all became quiet. The fleeting

fear washed over Ellen. Am I lost? Pa thinks I’m a pure maid. But his

God knows I’m not. When she was going back to the bench, she fortified

herself. They that stumbled are girded with strength. She had read it

when she searched in her father’s worn Bible. I’ve done no wrong. I have

my God. And she rebuilt her peace.

They were driving back to the farm in the Reo. The girls tucked their

feet in the narrow floor space, sniffed the new interior. They savored

the luxury of the shallow seat. Frankie was giggling, “We’re like soft

city ladies.” Ellen laughed into the dark.

Anton was pulling at his pipe, the fragrant smoke mingling with the

fresh biting wind that whipped from the open windows into the back seat.

Garland inquired, “Where’s your fancy blue hat, hon? With the rose on

it, that I brought you last year? I see you’re still wearing that old

cap.”

“It’s cold tonight,” Ellen was evasive, “so I wore this warm wool one.”

At home, they ate from the laden table. Then the women came into the

parlor, leaving the kitchen in disarray. They sat by the fire that was

cracking as the dry wood caught. “I’m going to help you girls do those

dishes in the morning,” Garland cried. “You’ve got to keep me company. I

used to be in demand as a dishwasher in the old days at some of the best

hotels. Now I insist.”

“Such foolishness,” Anton mocked, lighting one of the fresh cigars and

settling in a chair.

Ellen brought a bowl of wrinkled sweet winter apples. “Have a russet,

Uncle?”

“Ellie, I’ll play if you’ll sing.” Frankie was at the upright piano.

“Go ahead, pusses.” Garland had produced a bottle of bootleg rum; he

poured two glasses. He waved his hand until they finished the tune.

I don’t want no more of your weevily wheat

I don’t want none of your barley

But I want some more of your pretty white flour

To bake a cake for Charlie

“I vote for Christmas!” Garland’s face heated. Ellen was remembering the

party in Chicago where he had seemed a stranger. Here he was his old

self once again. When he came yearly to the farm, the tenor of the home

would be transformed, and Ellen esteemed by him above her sister. She

wondered if Anton ever noticed. I’m strong like their mother, that Nell

they talk of. And Frankie’s not.

Anton finished his glass, set it down. “If you-all want to hear about

it, we saw a crowd of doves once so thick they blacked the sky.”

“Turtledoves?” Frankie asked.

“Passenger pigeons,” said Garland. “I remember them, too. Extinct now.

That was when we were boys.”

“They sounded like a twister when a flock came o’er,” said Anton. “Our

sir took us three youngens to see them. That was in eighteen-eighty.”

“Not that far back.” Garland was yawning.

“Yes it was. For Ma named it time and again. Eighteen-eighty.” Anton was

animated by the memory.

“Well, if you say.”

“You and me were still wearing shirt-tails, Gar. Marc was in pants. He’d

have been about ten. It was down where Maria’s folks lived.” He nodded.

“At Seven Mile Run. They shot them down and left the squabs to die. They

shipped them in barrels till the market was so glutted they had to feed

them out to the hogs.”

“How many you reckon were in that skyful of doves, Pa?” Ellen was

asking.

“Well, when they settled, the flock stretched forty miles long and ten

deep. Then one day they all flew off at once. We went to look at the

giant trees stripped and ruined.”

“I’d fain have seen them,” Ellen said, “darkening the sky.”

“I notice they caught some rumrunners,” Garland said, “sneaking it in

from Canada in a carload of hog carcasses.” He mourned, “No more booze.”

“Prohibition’s nothing to me,” said Anton, “I make what wine I need.

I’ll give you some to take back if you want. Dandelion’s the best, I’d

say.”

“I’ll take you up on that. So they don’t catch me, I’ll label it perfume

for the ladies.”

Frankie was tittering, Garland stretching, and the family found their

beds.

Ellen remained awake. Life, it seemed, was a long quest for love. The

wind was whistling low around a corner of the house. Her mind went on

what Garland had said about Maria being ill. The wind sound was bringing

to memory a fall evening when Ellen was a child and a whippoorwill began

to call near the porch steps, first in low-pitched chucks, then

shredding the night with its cry. Maria had shrieked, “Get him off the

porch, girl.” Ellen ran to open the door, the song ceased as the bird

winged away. But Maria had wept, “When the whippoorwill sings on your

doorstep, it brings bad luck. Hit sung on the night I lost my betimes

baby. It was a little boy.” Ellen had vowed then, it’ll not be so with

me. Life won’t break me whatever comes. The wind was growling, hunting.

She remembered that in Illinois there was a small child of hers. She had

a vague wish to see what he was like. And then, nostalgia like a memory

of the dead drove through her, constricting her throat, for what dwelled

between Luke Dougherty and his wife.

* * * * *

On Christmas, Anton was baffled to find his brother had given him a

battery radio. “Hit’s a contraption, all right.” He was tuning the

stations. Static clattered in, a rasping voice and a sudden blare of

music. Anton was hunching himself over the instrument on the table.

“Don’t help me, Gar. Leave me run hit myself.”

The girls opened black velvet boxes. Ellen was turning a gold chain over

in her hand; she laid it cold about her throat. There were matched

pearls for Frankie who wore her new yellow dress and flitted between

Anton and Garland. “Now, gather ye rosebuds,” Garland was quoting,

“while ye may. Old Time’s still a-flying. The same flower that blooms

today tomorrow’ll be dying.” He thumped the round table with his palm.

“Tell more about Chicago, Uncle. What’ll it be like for me?”

“Oh, Anton thinks you’ve got such a talent,” he was chucking Frankie’s

chin, “he can’t cheat the world of it. You’ll like it, sweet. I’ll let

you take it slow. Afraid I gave your sister too big a dose.” He looked

at Ellen, who gravely returned his gaze. “Remember how busy I was, hon?

Now that’s what I like about Christmas down here. Takes my mind off my

problems.”

“Give me that old-timey religion,” the radio pealed.

“Listen at that,” Anton shouted. “No telling where those barbarians are

singing from.”

The holiday week wore on. Frankie in high excitement, was easily given

to laughter, as easily wept. On the second of January, it was planned,

she would drive in the Reo to Chicago. The sisters were washing milk

buckets in the kitchen when Ellen said, “Be good for you to part from Pa

for a spell.”

“Oh, you just want him for yourself,” Frankie wailed. “He’ll ne’er romp

with you like me.”

Ellen tightened her lips, threw back her head, marched to her goats in

the woodshed. “Scroungy brat,” she sniffed. “That’s not so.”

They were all seated before the fire in the parlor at night. A knock

came at the kitchen door and Ellen went to answer it. “Why, Lily

Garrett. I don’t know when we saw you last. Want to come in?”

The fat girl was encased in a bulky coat, the figure of a youth rearing

behind her. “We want you to come with us, Ellie. Frankie too. We got a

wagon of hay and there’s a moon to see by. Come on, Ellie, ask if you

can.”

“No. Pa wouldn’t let us. Who-all is there?” She leaned forward from the

security of the house.

“A whole wagonload of us. Papa let me go. Said I’d be whipped anyway so

I’d as well. It’s a deal of fun.” Lily was bouncing with energy. “This

is Jacob Haas.”

“Hello,” he said.

“Reckon we can’t go, but I sure thank you for asking. And Mester Haas,

too.” She nodded to the dark figure.

She came back into the parlor and Garland said, “That was your fellow,

wasn’t it, sweet?” His blue eyes were admiring her.

She stepped lightly across the oak floor, containing her gestures. “Oh,

it was only Lily, Uncle.”

“She’s my best friend,” Frankie said. “She told me when Sophie had those

twins.”

“Yes, and those brats came five months after the girl married Buck

Lemmon,” Anton said. “A loose crowd.”

“They’re young, Anton,” cried Garland.

“Rakes and loose girls. Defiling the unwedded has no excuse. I’ll keep

these two chaste.”

On New Year’s Eve, Ellen was putting peas to soak in the iron kettle.

Garland came looking for her. “What are you doing, puss?”

“Don’t you know it’s good luck to eat black-eye peas and sowbelly the

first day of the year?”

“What really happened last spring in St. Louis, hon? It was a man,

wasn’t it? I knew something was going on with you.”

She looked to her work, her fingers trembling. She felt mature,

controlled. “Nothing. I ne’er reached St. Louis.”

“What I can’t figure out is how you managed to get away so quietly. I

searched the stations in the morning for you. Kept it from Anton as long

as I could.”

“Wish I was like you, Uncle. You got all you want.” She said it

unexpectedly. “Purely I’d admire to be you.”

“Seems you could have told me your problems. You’re growing up so fast.

Maybe I could have helped. Why did you run away like that?”

“I wouldn’t be Pa. But I’d be you, if I were a man.” She said it

passionately, won to him by his approval of her, by his broad opinions,

awed with his worldliness.

“There’s no one like you, Ellen,” he was smiling, shaking his head.

Anton called from the parlor door, “Go out and take a look at that

Gladys heifer, girl.”

“I’ll go with her,” Garland shouted back. He took Ellen’s coat from the

hook and held it for her. He was lighting the lantern awkwardly. He wore

a fur-trimmed jacket and was pulling on kid gloves. His esteem seeped

over Ellen, making her movements supple, her youth a fine thing.

The path to the barn was a river of canescent moonlight drowning the

lantern glow. They walked silent until Garland said, “You know how much

like my mother you are?” He reflected. “There was a way she had though,

that came out sometimes. Like she really hated me.” He was speaking

softer. “I’d try to make her notice the way I could work quicker and do

things better than Marc. He was older. She always doted so on him.”

Ellen’s quiescence encouraged him in the cover of the night. “I remember

her sitting with her head up stiff in the seat of her little rig,

driving her pony. Beg her to let me harness it for her, or curry it.” He

murmured, “You know, you’re just the spit of her sometimes, puss. Except

for your hair. Hers was more the color of Frankie’s.” He took her arm.

Ellen felt him shivering. It’s me, causing him to do that. “Venus and

Mars and Jupiter are the evening stars now,” she told him. “Jupiter’s

still up, he doesn’t set till about eight these days.”

In the barn, by fragile lantern light, the pregnant young cow seemed

quiet. They were turning to go. Ellen noticed Sam had stuffed a burlap

sack in the broken window to keep the wind out. Garland spoke again,

“You know I’ve always had a thought about Marc that I never told

anyone.” Ellen was listening in the near dark, amid the pungent animal

odors. “He had brown straight hair and his face was different somehow.

Handsome. He wasn’t like any of us.” He lit a cigarette, leisurely. “You

in any hurry, sweet?” He put his arm about her and she waited to hear

the secret about her dead uncle, Marc. “I don’t think he was Pa’s son at

all. I think my mother married Jules Gaddy because she got caught and

needed a father for her child.”

“Reckon your sir knew of it?” whispered Ellen.

“No telling. He thought the world of my mother, that I’m sure of. She

got her way on everything.” He was blowing the smoke, stamping the

cigarette into the musty bedding. He breathed broken, “Oh darling.” And

his dry mouth was on hers, his old mouth, in desire. He was pulling at

her skirt, fumbling on her thigh with his soft fingers. She tore her

mouth swiftly away, turning her head.

“And Lot went up out of Zoar,” he whispered, holding her to him. “He

dwelt in the mountains and his daughters with him. Didn’t know I could

quote from the Bible, did you, hon? The first-born went in and lay with

her father. Book of Genesis.” Hotly he held her but gently withal.

She was pushing him from her with violent hands. “Come to the house,

Uncle. Now.”

Wordless he followed her up the path where moonlight bloomed cold. In

the kitchen she hung her coat on its hook. She went upstairs to lie in

the chill air, while the dying candle made a puddle of tallow on the

table top. Ellen’s loneliness was an ache, for his kindness had garbed

her. He was aged and knowledgeable. Despair had laid her bare. It’s not

for love of me. He’s got no enduring need of me. His imperfection, his

weakness, had come to stand between them.

* * * * *

In the morning Garland was jovial in a bright yellow shirt piped in red

and a belt with a European clasp fashioned like a horse and rider. Ellen

dawdled over her barn chores, came tardily to the breakfast table. She

didn’t wear a fresh apron, she ate stolid, uncommunicative. Anton was

rapt in the radio, the nasal twang.

She’s pure as the rose, like the lamb she is meek

And she’s never been known to use paint on her cheek

Ellen went from the room unnoticed. She decided to clean in the parlor

first. She lifted a heavy chair, viciously dropped it thudding into its

accustomed place. “Can’t those old fools leave things in order? It’s

clean and redd up, mop and scrub. And then they mess it all up. Hogs.”

She was piling rag rugs in her arms and striding to the porch. The door

slammed after her. She stood on the steps and shook the rugs, snapping

them with loud whacks. The dirt whirled in the cold air. “Dust and

more,” she was muttering.

Garland opened the door. He was holding a cigarette, and traced his

mustache with the small finger of his hand. Behind him she could hear

Frankie’s high inquiring whines and the radio.

“Well, puss?” She continued her work, her soft mouth set in a line. He

came over to her. “You know what you mean to me? _Joie de la vie._ Now

that’s right. I’m past fifty, hon. If I’d have met someone like you

earlier things might have been different in my life.”

She let a rug drop and in a deliberate movement took up another with a

sigh. “I got a tormented lot of work to get through today, Uncle.”

“Just wanted you to know that.” He was tossing his cigarette away; he

lit another and went inside. She heard him in a few minutes.

It’s beefsteak when I’m hungry

Rye whisky when I’m dry

Greenbacks when I’m hard up

And heaven when I die

The Reo was packed, and it waited to carry Garland and Frankie away the

next day. Ellen was instructed to wake the travelers early in the

morning before going to the barn. The household sought their beds not

long after supper. Frankie was protesting in their room, “The particular

thing I’m afraid of is meeting folks, Ellie. Wish you were going to be

there.”

“I’m out of patience with you. You’ve not done a lick all day, flitting

about like a twitting chick.”

“All the same, talk to me.”

“Hush and leave me be. I’m asleep.”

Before dawn Ellen went into Garland’s partitioned chamber to rouse him.

The light of the candle wavered across his face. For the instant she was

confused, thinking it wasn’t her uncle with mouth pulled in withered

upon the gums. She drew her breath sharply, and he was opening his eyes.

“Ell’n?” he quavered, reaching for his false teeth in a watercup on the

stone-topped bed table.

“Are you awake? I have to run.”

When she returned from the barn, Frankie had dressed, her new pearls

were at her neck, her lips pale, her eyes blue-shadowed. “Must I really

go, Pa?”

“It’s what we planned. And it’s for you to do. You know it be my nearest

wish.” He warned her, “Don’t start up.”

“I won’t, Pa.”

He took the girl on his lap. “Look here, Poppet.” The battery set was

clanging to the beat of a banjo, “Off with your coat and wet your throat

with that real old mountain dew.”

“Shut it off for Chrissake,” Garland demanded, and the women started.

“We’re going in a few minutes and then you can listen to your heart’s

content. By God, An.”

The man switched off the radio and they sat to breakfast.

“Gladys isn’t letting her milk down so good, Pa.” Ellen leaned toward

him.

“Tell Sam to let her calf bump it some. It can stay with the old one

awhile. I aim to veal hit anyway.”

“Did you e’er tell Uncle about old Full-pail, Pa?” Frankie was preparing

to prolong the mealtime. “That Dyke told of?”

“Listen at this, Garland. Joe Burwell went to look at a milk cow. The

farmer hadn’t but led it out when his old ooman came squalling, don’t

sell old Full-pail. Pray, don’t sell Full-pail, Mester. Joe’s ears

pricked up. The old lady kept hollering so first thing Joe knows, he’s

shelling out thirty dollars cold cash and hauling the cow home. That

evening he couldn’t milk a teacup. Joe was fit to be tied. Went back and

the farmer said to him, ne’er said how big the pail was.”

“That’s good,” Garland approved.

Before the sun rose much higher the bags had been put in the car.

Garland returned to the porch for the pasteboard suitcases of Frankie’s

things. “Away we go,” he cried.

Frankie was clinging to Ellen. “Reckon I won’t see you-all till next

Christmas.”

“You’ll be too grand for us then, Frankie,” Ellen said.

Garland was getting behind the wheel. “These Reos are demons. Did I tell

you I had her right at fifty on route sixty-six?”

“You take care of that girl, Gar. Don’t drive so reckless.”

“Statistics prove a car’s lots safer than a buggy. You know that?” He

was looking at Ellen, “Goodbye, hon.”

“Goodbye, Uncle.” She waited for them to be gone, for routines to be

reestablished and the ways of peace to come over the farm. She yearned

toward spring, sick of winter’s hanging on.

“So long, Maria,” Garland was calling. Maria waved, walking back to the

house.

“Bye now, Ma.” And the small figure promised, “I’ll write once a week,

Pa.”

The yellow car was going down the lane and turning onto the road.

Stillness descended until it rang like wounded thunder. Anton went

toward the porch where Maria, in her dark red sweater and a discarded

broad-brimmed hat of his, waited to follow Anton into the house. Ellen

walked over to the well, putting her coat collar up. She sat on the damp

covering board and shivered. From her pocket she was taking the

gold-linked necklace Garland had given her. She dangled it where the sun

collected to glint and catch the luster. She held it over the well

before letting it drop.

13

Song sparrows were murmuring. Deep in burrows, woodchucks blinked and

closed their eyes again. Brave white-carved flowers unfolded wearily and

narrow spires of pokeweed started from the debris of winter. A

green-striped butterfly emerged misshapen from a chrysalis and pumped

wet wings. Cows bawled, feeling the season, and rutting male hogs

screamed. Jack carried traces of skunk musk. On Ash Wednesday Father

Tompert marked the foreheads of Ellen and her parents with a cross of

ashes, saying, “Remember man, thou art dust and to dust thou shalt

return.”

From cover of the woods Ellen was watching a dog fox in a fallow field.

It was hunting white-footed mice, repeatedly leaped stiff-legged above

the weeds, brush high. She rested her hands on the thick winter coats of

the three goats at her side. She put her mind on Frankie, who wrote

abrupt letters from Chicago. They brought lines to her father’s face

until Ellen would feel the compassion heating her. She climbed a stile

in the rail fence and her does were clambering after, the spotted kid

leaping, shaking its long ears. Her thoughts had turned to Garland, and

the secret about Marc. Wish I was wise. There were him and Pa both,

grieving as youngens after the love of that mother of theirs, that Nell

Gaddy. And her honing all the while for Marc’s true daddy that had left

her. None of them satisfied. And Pa’d never study out that secret the

way Uncle did. Pa would never think Nell could get caught with a brat

the same as me. Her mind touched on the money she had sent last week

again to the Doughertys. I put the child to a good mother. I never

wanted him. Poor thing. The goats followed as she went up through the

budding, winter-bare woods.

* * * * *

And three years would pass, years of time merged and woven in a pattern

on an endless loom of chores. The color in Ellen’s life would break in

snatches on the cloth of the drab days. By summer the radio Garland had

brought was growing dim. Anton laid his ear to it in the evenings to

catch the feeble sound. “It’s that far off,” he whispered, intent. Then

the batteries were exhausted and the instrument was stored away in the

wagon shed to gather cobwebs and mold. Maria’s pressure cooker would

blow up, rending a gash on the rafter beams. Maria hid in the clothes

press, staying there until Ellen had picked up the torn metal parts and

thrown them out. She wore the same clothes day on day, her light-colored

dresses hanging unused on the ridgepole in her room. Mud daubers

constructed a nest over them, soaring in summer with damp balls dangling

from their legs, in and out the two small windows.

At first Ellen missed her sister, her shrill voice and dependent ways.

She told Lily Garrett, “Frankie would always be after me to stir up a

cake or mend for her. She’d lean on me in her way.”

“Hey, my fudge party was the most fun,” Lily was giggling. “Looks like

you being nineteen now, Ellie, your papa’d let you come. And we shelled

corn too. Craig Hedrick found a red car. There. He kissed me.”

“Is that all he did?” Ellen was picking through a pile of cornhusks,

looking for flat strips to splice and braid into mats. “He talk about

petunia flowers?”

Lily’s carefully arranged curls shook. “I ne’er been kissed so. Reckon I

could catch him, Ellie? Think of me with a baby and a man calling me

wife.”

* * * * *

Changes would take place within Ellen over these three years. Going to

church, following her parents in, she came to feel that those whom she

had seen as pure in the time of her transgression were not so. They hid

their sins, she dared to think, and dressed themselves a poppet God.

When Anton stepped into the confession cubicle and she heard him

mumbling ever too loud as he pled the venial sins, she allowed herself

to think he made his shrift complacently. When he dipped the holy water

she pitied his narrow habits and more than before devoted herself to his

will that he might see she knew her duty.

The God that was hers was not enclosed where the crowd gathered. She set

her mind on it. Hers stood above when she was on the land and alone. His

feet were the hills, his hand the wind that quivered, his eyes those of

the meekest birds. “This one’s my Lord,” she said, solaced.

She was stirred to confide in Anton once. They were standing on the

porch on a summer’s night while a storm was breeding in the south.

Lightning flicked and the hot earth panted for the coming water. “You

can feel the hands of God now. All the unknowing. You feel it, Pa? How

we’re just naught?” She was leaning toward him.

“If you’d take the time, girl,” he said heavily, “to read His word,

you’d know that He formed man of the dust of the ground and you’d know

of the Day of Judgment and the opening of the graves. The sun shall be

turned to darkness and the moon to blood.” He left her sitting on the

stair. Large drops began to fall and the wind swept in a deep sweetness.

Sometimes a young man would look on Ellen as she was standing with Maria

in the churchyard, or when bartering at Love’s. Or one would offer her a

lift in his wagon and would look at the gold-flecked pupils and the ripe

figure. Then she cast her eyes down, surly, or stared at him, bold,

until he turned aside. She was guarding herself against a hurt. Dyke

Burwell came to call, waited on the divan in the parlor while she

slipped away to watch the winging bees, honey-dripped and golden,

working the hives. Anton ferreted after her and bade her keep the young

man company.

“But I’ve no mind for him, Pa,” she protested.

He roared, “What’s awry with you and you won’t be courted? I’ll not put

up with your foldilay ways.” He was thrusting his chin, “You do as bid,

girl.”

So she sat sullen with Dyke. But she baited him slyly and he went away

and came no more.

At Love’s grocery one time, while she was debating on thread and needles

and picking out salt and coffee, a thing happened. Carl Brinker’s hired

man was bartering with Grady. Ellen had seen the new green pickup

outside. He was a dark fellow with a heavy face and fists. “You see, Ay

was my boss’s hired hand before me, Mester Love,” the man droned. “Now,

haven’t you got a bigger clevis pin?”

“What size you want? So his baby died?”

Stacey’s birdlike eyes were on Ellen. “You feeling ill?”

Ellen sensed a danger as she felt the flush rise. She laughed sharply,

“No. I allow I’ve got all Ma needed. Excepting yeast. You got some fresh

sponge?”

“I’ll see if mine’s still working good.” Stacey disappeared.

Ellen’s heart thudded, hearing the laborious speech of Brinker’s man.

“That Ay’s had a tedious run of bad luck. First his daddy passed on,

then his sister ran off. Rose Ay.”

“So?” said Grady. “Tell your boss I got new bridle rosettes in. White

and blue.”

“That Ay’s sister was comely. Biggity but comely.”

“Ay wasn’t much.”

“No. I ne’er knew him well. We used his store some. I’ll tell Mester

Brinker about those gaudies. He’ll buy some for that stallion. You e’er

seen that horse?” The man was slowly scratching his head. “Now what

about the Lord taking that little child?”

“He gives and He takes away,” sighed Grady.

“That’s so.”

Ellen put the warm jar of yeast in her basket, hurried past the two men.

Grady was nodding, “Here’s someone seen an old beau of yours in

Louisville.”

“I ne’er had a beau.”

“Took you to the circus in New Hope, a bird told me.” Grady’s eyes

flickered while he grinned.

“Morning, miss.” Brinker’s man touched his cap, doleful. “You know

Mester Ay?”

“I’ll be getting along now.”

That had happened in the first of the three years. Ellen would ponder on

it. Christian was gone out of her days for ever and all of eternity. She

faced it. He had taken some woman to wife, his sweetheart, his may, for

the rest of their enduring lives. She twisted it and the sharp hurt was

dead.

* * * * *

In that first year too, Garland and Frankie had driven down for the

Christmas holiday in a factory-fresh five-passenger Oakland. Ellen saw

at once that the year in Chicago had altered Frankie. Her old gaiety was

shed. She wore a modish yellow cloche pulled over her brow, her jacket

was long, belted at the hips. Her bright hair was bobbed. Anton was

beside himself, fascinated at Frankie’s apparel and her new manner. “I

declare she’s a little swell, gar.” He scratched his head. “How do you

like city life, Poppet?”

“Very well, Pa.”

“How’s your learning coming on? Are folks setting up? I vow. Hum.”

“Very well. I’ll unpack now, if you don’t mind.” She was going coolly up

the stairs and he watched, silent.

“What happened to that radio I gave you?” Garland asked. “Hell, I’ve got

six in my house now.”

Ellen had dressed the house with holly and bought red candles for the

table. She was making her sister’s favorite desserts. “I threw together

a blackberry cake, Frankie. We haven’t had one since you’ve been gone.”

“I never noticed Ma was so simple, Ellie.”

“Should I top it with boiled white icing or jam?”

“Was Mrs. Quimby at Uncle’s when you were there?”

“How come you ask?”

“I hate that know-all.”

“Does Uncle treat you good, Frankie?”

“He’s different there.”

“I mean, does he make o’er you a lot?”

“No, he’s not much for romping like Pa was, Ellie. He thinks me a little

child.”

And Ellen was satisfied about Garland. “Reckon I’ll use icing and jam

both, Frankie.” Ellen was constrained if Garland came upon her alone,

but in the family group he would seem her familiar uncle. When she

thought of his incestuous overture of the last winter, she would shove

the episode into a cupboard of her mind.

Around the fire in the evening, Anton had poured his tales, overweening,

on the younger girl. “Used to be the only tools a man needed were made

of wood, Poppet. A plow and a harrow and a wagon. Your grandsir used a

peg-tooth harrow with a hickory-wood frame. When a tooth broke off, he

fitted a new one from the woods. Haw. No running to the Bethel Hardware

for a broken piece of this or that. Just like the old country.”

“Speaking of the old country,” said Garland, “you girls know about

truffle hunters?”

“What’s a truffle, Uncle?”

“Grows on roots of oaks. There was an old woman hunted them in this

village in France where your ancestors lived. She’d take a basket and

spade and a pig on a leash.”

“Slut?”

“No, puss, this wasn’t a trained pig. Truffles have a strong odor that

any pig can scent. He roots under a tree and then she drives him off and

digs them up.”

“Such uses for hogs,” Maria was saying, “as you’ve heard of.”

“Sometimes they use dogs, but this woman used a pig. She chained him at

night or he’d slip out and get the truffles.”

“Christmas makes you remember, doesn’t it, Uncle?” said Frankie

suddenly. “Why don’t you tell stories at home?”

“This here’s your home,” grumbled Anton.

Garland was filling glasses with the “imported” Scotch he had brought.

“Now, Frankie,” he cautioned.

“Want to hear more about hogs?” asked Anton.

“All right.”

“When our grandsir came homesteading all he had was a few razorbacks. He

fattened them on oak and buckmast, said it beat corn any day.”

“I don’t see how a pig could be fatter than that spotted boar you’ve

got,” said Garland.

“Luther. He’s ornery, spoiled my best milker and her heifer calf.”

“Say, Frankie’s practiced a Christmas song for you, An,” Garland said.

“Play it, Poppet.”

“I don’t feel like singing now.”

“I ask you to,” Anton glowered.

“She’s got a new singing teacher,” Garland was saying as the girl went

reluctant to the piano. “Makes the third one now.”

“She had two grammar mesters before she went with you,” said Anton. “One

walked out on me and Peyton tried to quit when I fired him. How come

they do that?”

The girl played accurately, accompanying herself in a reedy tone.

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth good will to men

Ellen was bringing in a split-oak basket of persimmons. “I ran onto them

yesterday, Pa. I don’t know why the possums let them be.”

Anton took one of the soft orange fruit. “Used to be they made ’simmon

beer in this county. It wasn’t sharp like city beer, Gar. We used to

roast ’simmon seeds too, when coffee was scarce.”

Garland bit into the mellow sweet fruit. “They’re good. The pucker’s

gone out.”

“The frost seasons them,” Ellen said.

“I know. Used to hunt them when I was a kid.”

“A ’simmon tree’s got a black heartwood in its center,” Anton said,

“with layers of yellow sapwood outside it. It’s the only tree I know

like that.”

“Those rings, now,” said Ellen. “You can count the rings to tell the age

of a tree.”

“Is that black heartwood in the young tree?” asked Frankie.

“And if there’s a drought,” Ellen went on, “the ring’s scarce to be

read, it’s so narrow.”

“I want to know about that heartwood, Pa.”

“Well, you don’t find hit in a sapling, Poppet. It comes of itself as

the tree takes on age.”

“I think it’s there in the young tree,” Frankie said.

“How come you to worry on that, Poppet? It’s no consequence.”

“But I want to know.”

“Now there,” said Garland. “It’s getting on bedtime. I can tell

Frankie’s sleepy.”

“Ellie never sang a song yet,” said Frankie.

“I’ll sing in the morning. We’re wasting coal oil. Come on.”

The girls climbed from the fire-warmed parlor to the loft where winter

rain reeled on the roof. Under dank blankets they were waiting for the

warmth of their bodies to overtake them. Anton’s disputing voice came up

the stairs, “Why’s she act so? Like a highborn one? What are you doing

to her there in that city?” Garland’s voice was heard in murmur. And

again Anton’s rude shout, “Be she e’er seeing men?” And in a moment,

“Well, that don’t mean a thing. N. J. says all his sister e’er did was

set on a fellow’s lap one winter. Said his pa watched them courting by

the range and thought no harm. They hardly spoke but only set there

hugging. Now before God, she came by a child and his pa had to get them

married.”

In the melancholy dark from her bed, over the sound of the sleet

whipping the shingles, Ellen whispered, “You like a fellow?”

“No, I’m a poor country girl there. I hear them laugh. I came on my

singing teacher snickering with Uncle. It was about me.”

“When do you think you’ll start playing in public like Pa wants?”

“I’m the most alone person. It’s because I’m queer, I think. Maybe Pa

made me so. Or else I get it from Ma. The way I talk and act.”

Anton’s voice was audible through the doorway as they came into the hall

downstairs, “And then I heard Ma saying, I’d fain have been a lady but I

married you, little feist. We dragged her down, Gar. We gommed her

desires.”

“Hell, An, you’re drunk. Forget Ma. Like I did long ago. Let’s get back

to the subject. As I see it, Frankie’s doing the best she can. She’s not

got much gumption and she’s plenty like you when she gets stubborn, but

I think she’s beginning to adjust. This is the first vacation she’s had,

what with lessons. I hope I can keep her present teacher. Says he’s got

his hands full. Costs a mint, you know.”

“Hum. If there’s anything I can do for you.”

“You’re my brother.” Garland’s familiar slap on Anton’s back was carried

up the staircase. “Covers a multitude of sins. We’ve got to stick

together.”

Ellen thought Frankie was asleep until she heard the voice threading the

dark. “Seems I got a black heartwood core same as that ’simmon tree.”

The girl’s voice was sated with self-pity. “People can tell it’s there.”

* * * * *

The next day Garland came to the barn where Ellen was cleaning the

goats’ stable, heaping the soiled litter outside the shed with a heavy

fork. An acrid stench hung in the air and the flock of five moved about

her. “Keep you company awhile, hon?”

“If you like.”

“You have quite a bunch of your own here.”

“I set store by them.” She was forking fresh bedding in the pen and the

animals crowded in to lie down, nosing and chewing the straw. She

fastened the gate and leaned to watch them.

“Long time ago,” Garland was saying, “old man Alden used to keep a pair

of nannies in his shack with him. Wonder if he’s still alive.”

“Ne’er heard of him.”