For a while it was very dismal and lonely in the Pippinger household.
Bill continued to send the children to school and made shift to do
the housework as best he could in his slovenly male fashion. When the
little Pippingers got home from school in the gathering dusk of the
gray winter afternoon, there was no mother briskly baking fragrant
cookies or frying corn cakes and sizzling strips of sowbelly. The
untidy kitchen, already in twilight, was usually empty, with Bill
choring about the barn or away doing a day's work somewhere in the
neighborhood. If he happened to be in the kitchen, he sat hunched over
the stove in a half stupor, his quid of tobacco in his cheek, his eyes
fascinated by the gleams of fire that could be seen through the open
sliding draught in front. The twins, now become the housekeepers of
the family, would bustle about, polish the lamp chimney and light the
lamp, brush the ashes from the stove and the hearth with the turkey
feather duster, sweep up the floor and get together the evening meal.
Judith helped, but only under direction. She had to be told to run and
fetch the side of bacon, to get out the mixing bowl and big spoon for
the corn cake batter, and to wash the milk strainer, which Bill had not
washed clean in the morning. Elmer and Craw generally went with their
father to help milk and do up the barn chores; and Judith went too
whenever she could slip away from the twins.
On Saturdays the twins, with Judith's somewhat reluctant help, cleaned
house thoroughly, repairing with feminine housewifely zeal the ravages
of a week of slipshodness. They polished the stove, scrubbed the table
and the floor, dusted the shelves, swept the bedrooms, beat the dust
out of the rag mats, and hung out the bedding to air. Sometimes when
they were busily at work, Bill would come into the kitchen, glance
about and ask, "Where's your--?" then leave the question unfinished,
suddenly remembering that she was not there and never would be there
again. He had always been in the habit of asking for her this way
whenever he came in and did not see her at once.
As time went on and the March sunshine warmed the earth into life, Bill
became more cheerful. Everything takes heart in the spring; and Bill
too felt the warmth of the sunshine in his bones. Like his children,
like Tom and Bob and the cows and the geese and the chickens and the
grass under his feet, he lifted up his face to the light and breathed
deep of the warm, sweet air. He stretched, yawned, shook from him the
heaviness and lethargy of winter, and felt once more that it was good
to be alive. On those rare, delicate days in March when the earth is
full of a promise of spring, a promise more intoxicating than any
fulfilment, he whistled and sang again as he trudged round and round
the field in the long furrow getting the ground ready for the new corn
crop. So the shadow of death passed from the Pippinger family.
All his thoughts now were of his children, all his planning was for
them. They were in school, all five of them; but Craw and the twins
would graduate this year. After that everything would be easier. Craw
would be at home to help him on the farm and the twins would keep
house. Then with Craw's help he would get the farm back into good shape
again. The land was good; and if he could once get the washes filled up
so that it could be plowed, he and Craw would raise as good a crop of
tobacco on it as Uncle Ezra Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of that
lot that felt themselves so much better than other folks because they
had the time and the money to keep their ground in shape to raise good
tobacco. Yes, Bill would show them all right. In the cool, invigorating
March air and heartening sunshine he felt himself filled with a
boundless zest for work and achievement.
Things went better with the Pippinger family after the twins were
through school. Little women already, with a natural zest for
housekeeping, they polished the milk pans, cleaned the cupboards,
churned the butter and washed and rinsed and blued the clothes, all
the time clacking cheerfully about their work and about the new dresses
they were making and the coats they were planning to have before winter
came on and the new shoes they would get when dad got paid for his last
job of hauling and the Fair at Cynthiana, to which they were all going,
dad having promised each of them a quarter to spend. Already, too, they
had a nose for gossip and loved to talk about the neighbors and their
doings. Again and again they told each other how stingy Uncle Ezra
Pettit was and how meanly the Pettits lived in spite of their big house
and all their land and money.
Judith was such poor help about the house that the twins soon stopped
bothering with her and did the work themselves, only insisting that she
look after her own clothes and take her turn at washing the dishes, a
job that none of them enjoyed. These tasks done, she was left free to
follow her father about the barnyard or run the woods and fields. Soon,
however, because she was not lazy and took a deep interest in the farm
animals, she made herself useful by taking over most of the out-of-door
chores. She brought up the cows and milked them, fed the pigs, took
care of the little chicks and saw that all the broods were cooped
for the night. She hoed in the garden and kept the rows of beans and
turnips thrifty and free from weeds. Like a lynx following its prey,
she stalked the turkey hens and found their nests; and she would go out
in any kind of storm to save the tender little turkeys from the wetting
that would be their death.
Living so intimately in the life of the barnyard, the mysteries of sex
were not mysteries at all to her, but matters of routine to be dealt
with in the same matter-of-fact fashion in which you slopped the pigs
or tied the mules to the hitching post. She knew all about the ways
of roosters with hens. She saw calves born and testicles cut from
squealing pigs, from young bulls to change them into fat steers and
from young stallions to make them tractable in harness. These things
interested her, but not more so than other barnyard activities. She
was strangely free from precocious interest in sex matters. At school
she ignored the small dirtiness that lurks wherever many children are
gathered together.
From her own and the neighbors' barnyards Judith had picked up all
the profanity and obscenity that is a part of the life of such
places, and she used it freely, joyously and unashamedly. Bill's mild
remonstrances, "What kind o' talk is that for a little gal?" and the
horror of the twins had no effect upon her.
"I should suttenly think shame to myse'f, Judy, if I was you," Lizzie
May would say, "to talk that air way. What makes you go fer to do it?"
"Well, Craw talks that way, an' the Blackford boys does, an' dad does
too when he's with other men. I ain't no diff'rent from them."
"In course you're diff'rent; you're a gal."
"Well, anyway, I don't feel like one," Judy would answer unrepentantly.
If she could have put into words what she vaguely felt, she would
have said that the language of the barnyard was an expression of
something that was real, vital and fluid, that it was of natural and
spontaneous growth, that it turned with its surroundings, that it was a
part of the life that offered itself to her. The prim niceness of the
twins, suitable enough to them in the world that they were making for
themselves, was for her a deadening negation of life. To have to be
correct and decent in her speech was the same as being forced to sit
motionless on a straight-backed chair in the front room when she was
consumed with a longing to run and jump and whoop and chase the dog and
play at "Hide and Seek" around the barn.
Craw was at home now and able to help his father. But the plans that
Bill had made in the invigorating coolness of early spring did not
bear much fruit. It was one thing to plan work and quite another thing
to do it when the dog days came and the sun baked the hillsides. Then
as he hoed out weeds or followed the cultivator in the heat of the
day, and the sweat rolled down his body in scalding streams, he felt
less enthusiastic about raising a big tobacco crop. Indeed, the task
of reclaiming the farm was so big and formidable that it would have
discouraged a much more energetic man than Bill. It was easier to do
jobs of hauling and the like, and so make enough money to pay the store
bill. Bill had always been partial to jobs of hauling. This also suited
Craw, whose mind was of the routine sort, incapable of planning or
grasping any enterprise however small. Craw was sixteen when he left
school, a big, good-looking, good-natured, well developed fellow, but
slow as a tortoise. He could follow the plow or drive a team or do any
simple task assigned to him, but of initiative he had none. With Craw's
help Bill increased his acreage of corn considerably and hauled out his
long accumulated barnyard manure onto the corn field, thus getting a
much better yield. But neither of them broached the subject of raising
tobacco. Craw, growing rapidly stronger and bigger, soon began to
"work out," and earned his seventy-five cents a day from Uncle Ezra
Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of the neighboring tobacco planters
who wanted a hand. He was a good, steady, plodding worker, and the
neighbors who employed help soon learned to call upon him. Proud in the
possession of money, he liked to patronize his sisters, and brought
them home occasional presents of scented soap, white muslin shirtwaists
and imitation jewelry for the pleasure of listening to their excited
squeals of delight and feeling male and superior. Pretty soon he got to
going with a girl; and after that he never brought his sisters anything.
It was a matter of great wonder and amazement to Bill how quickly the
children grew up. Up to Annie's death he had regarded them as mere
babies. After that they seemed to become young men and women all of a
sudden. Two years after their graduation from school the twins were
wearing long dresses and putting up their hair; and Lizzie May had a
"feller" coming to see her every Sunday. She had known him all her
life, but had become friendly with him at a party the winter before.
His name was Dan Pooler and his folks lived over near Dry Ridge. He
came in a red-wheeled buggy which he had carefully washed down and
polished the day before; and he and Lizzie May would drive forth
grandly. Lizzie May was very proud of her swain's good looks and store
clothes and of the shiny, red-wheeled buggy. When Craw guffawed and
spoke of him as "Dam Fooler," and when Judith teased her wickedly about
him, she became very indignant and haughty.
Judith, too, was rapidly growing up. She had become such a tall,
straight, handsome girl, with such strong, free gestures and such a
ringing, careless laugh, that Bill's heart swelled with pride when
he saw people turn to look after her on the streets in Clayton. She
was learning, too, to smile at the young men, and practising whenever
occasion offered the arts of banter and coquetry.
She began to develop an interest in clothes, and brought to the neat,
but uninspired dressmaking of the twins a sense of form, color, and
picturesqueness.
"You know, Lizzie May, you ought to wear soft, sleazy things an' have
'em nice an' full. Get a blue voile--not a real light blue, but that
there new Alice blue. You'll have to send off for it to get the right
color. An' make it with the waist crossing in front an' a real full
skirt an' a sash tied in a big bow at the back. Then you'd look so nice
that Dan Pooler'd jes have to ast you whether he wanted you or not."
"You shet up an' tend yer own business, Judy," Lizzie May answered. Her
uncertain relations with Dan were making her somewhat irritable. But
she heeded the suggestions about the dress and followed them out as
best she could.
"An' I'm a-goin' to have me a new petticoat that won't be like nobody
else's petticoat," Judy went on. "I thought it out las' night afore I
went to sleep. I'm a-goin' to get some red turkey cotton, real bright,
an' have it in points all araound the bottom an' make three black
French dots in each point. I bet when you two see it you'll both want
one like it."
"You'd better be thinkin' of havin' yo'se'f a warm jacket agin the time
winter comes on," said Luella half reprovingly yet betraying more than
a gleam of interest in the prospective petticoat.
"I'm a-goin' to have braown ve'vet collar an' cuffs on my new jacket,"
put in Lizzie May.
So they would sit together stitching and planning and chattering
happily over their few yards of cheap cotton goods.
The mail order catalogues had of late years come to take a large place
in the lives of the Pippingers and their neighbors, much to the disgust
of Peter Akers, whose store was shrinking instead of growing. They were
a source of endless interest to the girls, especially the twins. In
the winter evenings when the lamp was lighted they would bring these
enormous books to the table and turn the endless pages, never tiring of
the pictures of slim, simpering, abundant-haired young women arrayed in
coats, suits, sweaters, dresses, aprons, nightgowns, corsets, chemises,
union suits: every kind of garment that goes upon the female figure.
The gorgeous colored pages held them longest and often caused Lizzie
May to gasp with admiration and envy.
"My, I wish I was as pretty as that and had that blue silk dress!" she
sighed, pointing out the object of her envy to Luella.
"Oh, land, you're much better lookin' than that gal, Liz!" Judy
exclaimed, looking over her shoulder. "She's got an awful smirk!"
Lizzie May, though not entirely convinced, patted her blond hair with a
gratified expression.
Bill and the boys looked at the pictures of men in overalls and work
shirts, tools, wagons, buggies, harness, and farm machinery. Sometimes
Craw would hesitate over the pages of ladies in underwear, then blush
furiously and turn quickly to the mowing machines if he thought that
any one was noticing him.
The books served many purposes, all and more than does the daily
newspaper in homes where the newspaper enters. The old ones were used
to light fires, to wrap up winter pears, to paste over broken window
panes or cracks in the wall. In the backhouse they did duty as toilet
paper. And Craw, beginning to smoke cigarettes, wrapped the crumbled
native leaf in a bit of the margin and puffed away with the air of one
conscious that he has attained man's estate.
It was about this time that Judith and the twins took to using tooth
brushes. But the boys, exhorted to do likewise, poohooed such vanities.
"Mebbe you gals needs to hoe out your teeth," Craw would say
condescendingly, "but my mouth's clean, same's the rest o' my insides."
The summer that Judith was sixteen she came home from Sadieville one
afternoon in a state of excitement.
"What d'ye think I'm a-fixin' to do, dad? I'm a-goin' over to Aunt
Eppie Pettit's to work out. Aunt Eppie come out to the road as I was
a-drivin' past an' she ses would I like to come over to her place to
work. She's got hired hands a-eatin' there, and four cows to milk, an'
she ses there's too much work for Cissy an' would I come for a spell.
She snapped her false teeth at me a time or two, but I didn't mind. I
'member haow when I was little I used to think she was a-goin' to bite
me; but now I ain't a-skairt of her. So I told her, yes, I'd come; an'
I'm a-goin' to git a dollar a week. Elmer's plenty big enough to do my
chores, so I kin be spared easy enough."
She said air this almost in one breath. Bill, who had been chopping
stove wood, stood with one foot on the chopping block and looked at her
with a mixture of surprise and disapproval.
"Pshaw, Judy," he exclaimed, spitting disparagingly into the chips.
"What do you want to be a-goin' there fer? I wouldn't if I was you.
My gal don't need to go a-emptyin' nobody's slops, let alone old Ezra
Pettit's. I wouldn't do no sech thing."
"Oh, but I'm a-goin', dad. I told her I'd come. Craw works out an'
earns money, an' I want to earn some money too. If I stay there ten
weeks I'll have ten dollars, an' that'll buy me my clothes an' shoes
fer the winter."
Bill saw that she was quite determined, so he made no further
opposition. A couple of days later he drove her and her satchel of
clothes over to Aunt Eppie's place, which was about a mile and a half
away on the road toward Sadieville. The road they traveled was known
as the Dixie Pike. It was the main highroad between Cincinnati and
Lexington. Before the Civil War it had been the coach road between
these two cities; and the very old folk still told tales of prancing
three-team coaches and gay horseback parties galloping by. Now one met
mostly the wagons and buggies of tenant farmers, with an occasional
automobile or a covered wagon occupied by gipsy folk or horse traders.
The house of the Pettits was a long, white, rambling, leisurely
looking place with green shutters and a wide porch supported by square
white pillars. It had been built in ante bellum days for people of a
leisurely habit of life. It stood some distance back from the road, and
between the road and the house stretched a neat bluegrass lawn dotted
with flower beds and shade trees. A low stone wall separated the lawn
from the roadside. From the rear came the cackle of hens, the cooing of
doves and the scream of a peacock. Basking in the morning sunshine the
place looked gracious and peaceful.
Bill reluctantly deposited his daughter and her satchel at Aunt Eppie's
gate.
"Don't take no lip from nobody, Judy. You've allus got a home to come
back to," he advised, as he turned the mules' heads toward home.
Judith swung briskly up the flat stone walk, through the chinks of
which grass was growing, then around by the little side path to the
kitchen door. Here she found Cissy rolling pie crust on a floury baking
board. She and Cissy were old acquaintances. Judith sat down by the
table and they chatted together till Aunt Eppie came in.
Cissy was a middle-aged woman of spare figure, dull eyes, neatly combed
hair and blurred, nondescript features. There was nothing about her to
notice or remember. Some explanation for this lack of personality might
be found in the fact that she had been working for the Pettits since
she was nineteen years old. During that time she had never had as much
as a mild flirtation with any man, nor had she ever been further from
the Pettits' kitchen than Sadieville. For over twenty years the life of
Aunt Eppie's household had been her life. She had gone there a timid
young orphan girl; and in the unbroken routine of these twenty years
had become a dull middle aged drudge. Each week she had received her
dollar, and she was reported to have money "loaned out." Judith looked
at her and thought of this report and envied Cissy. Her young mind
perceived nothing of tragedy in Cissy's long years of celibacy spent
in the routine of a stranger's kitchen. The only thought that passed
through her head as she sat there in her radiant youth was: "My, if I
only had all that money she's saved, wouldn't I have me nice clothes!"
Aunt Eppie bustled into the kitchen and was pleased to find Judith.
She was a tall, large-featured, bony woman and had a protruding chin
and a wrinkled, thin-lipped mouth that shut together with the strong,
swift motion of a snapping turtle. The click of her false teeth lent
realism to this motion and caused her to strike terror into the hearts
of small children toward whom she tried to be affable.
"Well, naow, that's a good gal to come like you said you would," she
condescended. "So often these hired hands promises to come an' that's
the last you see of 'em. Cissy, you take her up to your room an' show
her where to put her things. She might as well sleep with you an' save
dirtyin' up two pairs o' sheets, let alone the wear an' tear on 'em.
An' after that she can he'p you git the apples ready fer the pies an'
shell the peas and scrape the taters fer dinner. An' mind you, scrape
an' not peel 'em, Judy, 'cause they're jes new out o' the ground. It's
a sin to waste the best o' sech taters by peelin' 'em."
With the adaptability of youth Judith drifted easily enough into the
life of the Pettit family. She left most of the indoor work to the
patient Cissy and busied herself with the cows, the chickens, the
turkeys and the garden, as she had done at home. She and Cissy did most
of the work. Aunt Eppie believed herself to be still a hard worker,
but in reality she spent most of her time bustling from one place to
another bossing the girls, Uncle Ezra, and the farm hands. She was
always nosing out all sorts of small, neglected matters and calling
them to the attention of the neglecter.
"Ezry, don't you fergit to fix that garden fence this mornin'," she
would shout into Uncle Ezra's ear at breakfast. "The hens is a-gittin'
in an' a-eatin' into the hearts of all my beets."
"An' Judy, don't fail to coop up all the settin' hens when you gather
up the eggs. I don't want to raise no more chicks this year. What with
the price of eggs so low it don't hardly pay to feed hens." She sighed
heavily. Any mention of money loss, real or fancied, always brought
this sigh to her lips.
When she was not busy directing the other members of the household, she
read the "Country Gentleman," whose rosy tales of phenomenal success
on the farm excited her interest and envy, made log cabin blocks for
bedquilts or cut and sewed carpet rags. She already had carpets enough
to keep the whole house thoroughly padded for at least a quarter
century, but she could not bear to see the rags go to waste.
She was one of the few remaining members of the old "first families" of
Kentucky. Her haughty aquiline nose, broad brow and penetrating eyes
showed that she had intellect and breeding. In the old days, several
decades before the Civil War, her father had purchased hundreds of
acres in Scott County for twenty-five cents an acre. He cleared the
land, realized about a hundred dollars an acre out of the timber and
still possessed his hundreds of acres of fine clay loam, virgin soil,
only needing the seed to produce enormous crops of almost anything. So
he became rich and built this leisurely white mansion. The war brought
disaster and poverty. Aunt Eppie's father was one of the few landed
proprietors who did not move away but remained to begin life over again
as a poor farmer. In the school of penury, Aunt Eppie, applying her
superior intellect and energy, proved to be all too apt a scholar. She
learned not only to be saving but to be niggardly and penurious.
Uncle Ezra had been one of Aunt Eppie's father's hired hands. He was
of much commoner clay than his wife and with age had become a mere
clod. Almost as deaf as one of his own well planted fence posts, he
heard nothing nor cared to hear. He spoke rarely and in half articulate
grunts. His one thought in life had always been how to get the most
out of his land, which was not his, but Aunt Eppie's, as she was not
slow to remind him when the occasion arose. Now that he was too old to
work hard he spent his days puttering about the fields and the barnyard
watching, always watching. He had the reputation of being the hardest
man to work for in the whole of Scott County and he paid the lowest
wages.
Once in a while Aunt Eppie's brother, Hiram Stone, ate a meal in the
house. He was a spare, silent man. Since his wife's death many years
before he had lived attended by one old servant, in the big, rambling
house on his estate. Nobody quite knew how he passed his days. He
had been seen to read, to cultivate a little patch of vegetables and
flowers, and to smoke meditatively on the back porch. In his youth
he had been sent away to college. He always employed an overseer and
had very little to do with his tenants. Nobody ever called him "Uncle
Hiram." This was because he lived his life to himself and his life was
not their life. He was not niggardly and interfering like Uncle Ezra
and many of the other landlords. He allowed his tenants to keep a cow
and pasture it on his land. He put no limit to the number of their
chickens and turkeys. Yet the tenants distrusted and avoided him. They
would rather work under Uncle Ezra, because he was one of themselves
and they understood him.
It caused Aunt Eppie endless worry and chagrin to see the way her
brother mismanaged his land. The overseer was letting it all, she said,
and the tenants did as they liked and stole from him before his very
face. It was a shame and a disgrace.
She said as much to him time and again. But he went his own way. He
treated her always with politeness and deference and only smiled
gently and enigmatically when she nagged him. The smile drove her to
distraction.
Though the Pettits owned over a thousand acres of good land and lived
in a house of seventeen rooms and were said to have money in all the
banks in Scott County, their way of life was not different in any
essential from that of their tenants. It was even more stark and barren
and sordid than most, for in the humbler homes there was sometimes
love and fun, and here there was neither. The meals were eaten in dull
silence except when Aunt Eppie remembered something that somebody
hadn't done or when the hired girls and farm hands, who ate from the
same oilcloth as their employers, got to sparring with each other.
Two hired hands ate at the dinner table, but got their breakfasts and
supper at home. These were Jabez Moorhouse and Jerry Blackford, second
son of Andrew Blackford, who owned a small farm next to the Pippingers.
Jabez, who, when not drunk, usually held his peace, rarely spoke at the
table except to ask for another portion of string beans or to have the
sorghum pitcher passed to him. When he raised his head from his plate
his rather vague blue eyes seemed to be either turned inward or looking
at something a long distance away. Jerry, who had come successfully
through his cat-torturing period, had grow into a quiet, decent, clean
appearing young fellow, blond and ruddy like David of old and good
to look upon in his strong young manhood. He was not more given to
conversation than Jabez.
Fortunately for Judith the blight of bareness and dullness that lay
over Aunt Eppie's household did not extend to the barnyard. There the
morning sunlight fell as goldenly as in princes' courtyards. The geese
were as dignified, the turkeys as proud, and the hens as busy as any
others of their kind, and Judith enjoyed ministering to their needs and
watching their ways.
The turkeys, fifty odd of them, had been little fellows when Judith
came, with flat tortoise bodies and long necks, and Aunt Eppie let them
wander at will among the beets and cabbages. Whenever they saw a bug
or a fly they darted forth these long necks with a quick, snakelike
movement and rarely failed to catch their prey. Soon they grew too big
to be allowed in the garden and roamed the alfalfa and corn fields
for their food. As they grew toward maturity sex divided them into
two groups. The female turkeys kept together in a small, silent band
and devoted themselves mainly to the business of eating, while their
brothers preferred to loaf in the barnyard. A spot speckled with light
and shade under a row of locust trees was their favorite promenade.
With their tails spread fan-shape, their wing feathers scraping the
ground, their heads and necks brilliantly blue and red and the little
wormlike appendage above their beaks inflated and pendulous they would
pace grandly up and down with a slow, dignified movement. The sun,
striking along their satiny backs, made their feathers gleam with
changing tints of rose, gold, green, and copper.
When they grew tired of the parade they loved to slip away and steal
food that they knew was not intended for them. Aunt Eppie's grapes and
peaches were their favorite tidbits. While feeding on these delicate
morsels they talked to each other with little congratulatory gulps of
delight like water gurgling out of the neck of a bottle. Then Judith
would run and chase them out of the orchard, and they would all stretch
out their necks at her and gobble together in indignant chorus.
It seemed a pity that so much beauty, pride, and joy in life should
go to tempt the cloyed palate of some smug bishop or broker who had,
compared with the soul that had lately animated the bit of white meat
on his plate, but a poor notion of what it was to love, to play, and to
enjoy the sun and the fruits of the earth.
"It's a shame fer folks to eat sech critters," Judith thought one blue
September morning, as she watched the turkeys parade under the locust
trees.
She had been slopping the pigs and was leaning on the railing of
the hogpen looking at the turkeys beyond. A female turkey that had
strayed from her sisters was among them and trying to make her escape.
Each time that she made a move to go away, the young Toms for pure
devilishness would intercept her by stepping in front of her, like a
pack of village boys teasing a little girl. When she at last made her
escape and flew back to her sisters, they all reached out their necks
and gobbled after her derisively. Jerry and Jabez, starting out to
the field where they were cutting tobacco, came and leaned for a few
moments on the railing beside Judith.
"Do you know what them young Toms reminds me of?" said Judith, looking
at Jerry with an eye not entirely free from the self-consciousness of
sex. "They make me think of a pack o' fellers a-standin' raound the
street corner in Clayton or Sadieville of a Sunday afternoon dressed
in their good clothes, a-swellin' up their chests an' a-cranin' their
necks after every gal that goes by, an' then a-blabbin' together about
her after she's gone a-past. They'd otta think shame to theirselves for
bein' so vain an' idle. There's the turkey hens all out in the field
a-eatin' corn so they kin grow up quick an' lay eggs an' make more
little turkeys, so Aunt Eppie an' Uncle Ezra kin have more money to put
in the bank. That's haow a turkey'd otta act, 'stead of enjoyin' his
own vain life."
She laughed and looked quizzically at Jerry.
Jerry had no rejoinder to make. He was not quick at repartee. But he
was young, healthy, and handsome; and as he looked from the turkeys
back to Judith, the smile on his lips and the answering look in his
eyes made words an impertinence. Jabez looked at the turkeys and at the
boy and girl and laughed an amused, indulgent laugh. He was fifty-five
and had long known the way of a turkey in the sun and the way of a man
with a maid.
"The young Toms'll be cut off in the pride o' life," he said in his
rich, sonorous voice, "an' jes as well for them that they air. An'
the turkey hens'll live to raise up families. An' the families they
raise'll repeat the same thing all over agin, an' so on world without
end. Amen. Solomon was right when he said there's no new thing under
the sun, an' that which has been is that which is a-goin' to be. An'
yet each new batch takes as much interest in livin' as if they was
the only ones that had ever lived an' was a-goin' to keep on livin'
forever. It's the same with folks. Hain't that so, Jerry?"
Jerry had not heard a word of what Jabez had said and Jabez knew he
hadn't. He had slyly filched two hairpins out of Judith's hair, had
stuck them behind his ears and was pretending to march away with them.
"You gimme back them hairpins, Jerry Blackford. I've got on'y five an'
my hair won't stay up with three. You'd best hand 'em over, 'cause I
kin give you a black eye quick as look at you."
She tried to get hold of Jerry's wrists. Jerry got hers instead and
they struggled together laughing. After a while he let go of her wrists
and allowed her to capture the pins.
"You'd best git along to work," she cried, flushed and sparkling.
"Uncle Ezry'll be out here in a jiffy an'll want to know why you ain't
to field."
"Yaas, the old groundhog'll be diggin' out afore long," grumbled Jabez.
"Come on, Jerry, folks has gotta have their terbaccer. Judy, you go in
an' tell Cissy to cook us a dern good dinner."
As Judith turned away from the hogpen, bucket in hand, she almost ran
into a lean, spry old man, who had come up silently behind her, his
steps making no noise on the scattered straw and chaff of the barnyard.
"Howdy, Uncle Sam. Haow's Aunt Sally?"
His face darkened slightly. "Oh, she keeps smart. Is Uncle Ezry
anywheres hereabouts?"
"He's mos' likely in the kitchen warmin' his feet," said Judith. "Every
mornin' he has to warm his feet the longest time afore he'll step
outdoors. He sets there with his sock feet on the oven shelf, an' sets
an' sets. An' Cissy has to go raound him every time she wants to git to
the cupboard. She says sometimes she thinks he's _never_ a-goin' to git
up an' go aout where he belongs. I'm glad my feet ain't allus a-cold."
"That's haow you young uns allus is," answered Uncle Sam. "No feelin's
for the sufferin's of the old." It was plain from Uncle Sam's way of
speaking that he did not class himself among the aged.
"Andy Blackford was a-tellin' me that Uncle Ezry had some alfalfy
hay he wanted to git shet of 'count of needin' the barn room. I'm a
bit short o' hay this year an' I thought I'd come daown an' see if I
couldn't make some sort of a deal with him."
By this time they had reached the kitchen door. Uncle Sam stepped
inside and found Ezra, as Judith had predicted, sitting with his feet
on the oven fender, his suspenders down, his long gray face set and
motionless. He turned his head as Uncle Sam darkened the sunny doorway.
"Waal, Sam."
"Waal, Ezry. Purty weather we're a-havin'. I hain't seed a purtier
September since '83, the fall afore the coldest winter we ever had to
my knowin'. An' this summer's crops is the best there's been this nine
year. Corn's made an' terbaccer's made; but we'll be needin' a good
rain soon to freshen up the pastures."
Uncle Ezra did not hear a word of any of this, so he grunted for answer
in a non-committal manner. His feet being now roasted to a turn, he
fished out his congress shoes from under the stove and drew them on
slowly and methodically. Then he got up, hitched his suspenders over
his stooping shoulders, took down his hat from its peg by the side of
the door, and stepped out into the sunshine followed by his visitor.
The two old men passed out of the garden gate and walked across the
barnyard side by side.
"I hearn you had a part spiled stack of alfalfy hay you was a-wishin'
to git shet of, Ezry."
Uncle Sam said this not in his former conversational tone, but in a
loud shout close to Ezra's ear; for it was intended to be heard.
"Part spiled nuthin! There hain't a leaf of it spiled. It's all good,
clean alfalfy. On'y reason I want to sell it, I got plenty hay this
year, an' I'm a-goin' to be needin' the room in the terbaccer barn."
"I hearn it was part spiled," shouted back Uncle Sam with brazen
conviction. "Anyway, let's have a look at it, Ezry."
The two men, the one with bent back and plodding legs, the other almost
as straight and spry as a youth, walked side by side down the ridge
path to Uncle Ezra's biggest tobacco barn. To the right of them lay
Ezra's gently rolling blue-grass pasture dotted with cattle and sheep.
To the left stretched his dark green alfalfa fields, his corn, ripe and
ready to be cut, and his field of ripe tobacco, the broad, tropical
looking leaves now turned to a rich golden color. Part of the field
was already bare; and in the distance Jerry and Jabez could be seen
going down the rows with their sharp tobacco knives. With one stroke
they split the stalk of each plant, with the other they severed it from
the root. The cut plants drying on the tobacco sticks set at intervals
along the rows, trailed limply, waiting to be hauled in.
Arrived at the tobacco barn, they found the alfalfa stacked in a
close-packed pile in one corner.
"Why, there hain't much hay here!" shouted Uncle Sam, kicking
disdainfully into the pile. "It's loose as kin be. There hain't no
weight there. It wasn't tromped when it was put in. I bet I cud haul
the whole thing away in two loads."
"Two loads!" snorted Uncle Ezra. "Why, Sam Whitmarsh, there's a good
seven ton o' hay there if there's a paound. It's packed close as it kin
be packed."
Uncle Sam kicked into the hay and succeeded in finding near a crack in
the wall a small mildewed spot.
"It's spiled, Ezry, same's I said it was," he shouted triumphantly.
"Look ye here! All along these cracks the rain's beat in an' spiled it.
An' there's no tellin' haow far that there mildew goes. Spiled alfalfy
hain't no good fer nuthin'."
"Now, Sam, there ain't no use in your a-talkin' on like that," said
Uncle Ezra in the tone of one who deals with facts. "You know well nuf
there hain't but a handful of it in that corner that's been teched by
rain."
"An' see here," went on Sam, "this hay must o' laid two or three days
afore you raked it. Why, half the leaves is off. An' I bet it had a
rain onto it, too, while it laid on the graound. Look what a dark color
it is. Good alfalfy hain't that color."
"It didn't lay ner it didn't see no rain," exclaimed Uncle Ezra, his
voice harsh with indignation. "You know yerse'f, Sam, I cut an' hauled
that hay latter part of las' July; an' there didn't a drop o' rain
fall after the ninth. The alfalfy's a good color if ye see it in the
light."
"Looks to me like it's a bit woody," mused Uncle Sam, rubbing a scrap
between his thumb and forefinger. "An' here's seed on some of it. You
was a bit late a-cuttin' this hay, Ezry."
"Naow, Sam Whitmarsh, you know well's I do, I cut this here hay in the
bloom." Uncle Ezra's hands were beginning to tremble with exasperation.
"Why, I 'member you come by one Friday when we was a-cuttin' an' you
said what fine alfalfy that was."
"Haow do I know this is the same alfalfy, Ezry?" queried Uncle Sam,
darting a swift look from his keen blue eyes. "Don't look to me like it
is. An' I see jes lots o' weeds through it, too. Part of it hain't good
fer nuthin but beddin'. Well, Ezry," with the tone of one coming at
last to the crucial point, "what're you a-askin' for it?"
There was a long, ruminating pause. The subject of price could not be
approached without deliberation befitting its importance.
"Waal," hesitated Uncle Ezra at last, "you've said every dirty thing
you kin think of to say about the hay. But the hay's good hay jes the
same; an' you know it well's I do. An' if I had a place to put it I
wouldn't sell you nary pound of it fer no money. But bein' as haow I
gotta have the room in the barn, I'll take forty-five dollars, an' you
do the haulin'. An' that's dern cheap hay I'm a-offerin' you."
"Cheap, Ezry! Before you'll git anybody to give you forty-five dollars
fer that there little mangerful o' spiled hay, your new barn'll fall to
pieces from old age. An' I guess neither you ner me'll be here to see
that happen, Ezry. Be reasonable now, Ezry. You know there hain't but a
ton an' a half there. I'll give you twenty dollars fer this here little
handful o' hay a-laying before us. An' that's a-payin' you twict over."
"Twenty dollars!" shrieked Uncle Ezra. "Why, there's seven good ton
o' hay there. An' hay's worth sixteen dollars a ton at the cheapest.
I ain't wishin' to give the hay away. If every leaf of it was spiled
it'd be worth more'n that to me to put under my grapes an' peach trees."
"All right, Ezry. Like enough you'd best use it fer that. 'Tain't no
good fer nuthin but manure an' beddin' anyway. I don't know as I'd want
to bother hookin' up to haul it away."
Uncle Sam made as though to leave the barn.
Ezra weakened. He was very anxious to get rid of the hay; he needed
the barn at once for his tobacco. And buyers for hay, he knew too
well, were not to be readily found at this time of year. Also he knew
from sad experience the effect of alfalfa upon tobacco when the two
were left in the same barn together. He had been prepared to make some
sacrifice; but he shrank from making the sacrifice that Sam demanded of
him. Because, what would Aunt Eppie say?
He turned away shaking his head with a final movement, as though
negotiations were ended. But Uncle Sam, casting at him a searching,
sidewise glance, saw the look of irresolution pass across his face.
"You won't take twenty, eh, Ezry? Then what will you take?"
There was a long pause.
"Waal, I'll take thirty."
The four words dragged themselves with the greatest reluctance from
Uncle Ezra's lips.
There was another long pause. Uncle Sam spat deliberately, took a fresh
chew of tobacco, and looked out across the landscape meditatively
through the big barn doors.
"I tell ye, Ezry," he said at last with great deliberation. "Nobody
hain't a-buyin' hay this time o' year. An' if you leave the hay here
an' put yer terbaccer in, the terbaccer'll like enough heat an' spile.
An' even if it don't heat an' spile, it'll turn dark, sure's yer
shirt's on yer back. An' you know what price dark terbaccer fetches.
Naow, Ezry, seem' we've allus been good neighbors together, I'm willin'
to split the diff'rence with ye. Twenty-seven fifty I'll pay ye right
here in cold cash. Will ye take it?"
Uncle Ezra looked beaten and utterly miserable. "Oh, I s'pose so," he
grunted at last.
Uncle Sam had come prepared to clinch matters. He pulled out from his
hip pocket a roll of bills, selected two tens, a five, and a two; then
fished around among his loose change till he found a fifty-cent piece,
and laid the whole in Uncle Ezra's reluctant, yet eager, hand.
Aunt Eppie was waiting anxiously for the result. She had watched the
men set out together.
"Did he buy it, Ezry?" she queried excitedly, as soon as her husband
appeared in the dooryard.
"Yump."
"Haow much did he give fer it?"
"Twenty-seven fifty."
"Twenty-seven fifty! Do you mean to tell me, Ezry Pettit, you sold that
five ton o' good hay fer twenty-seven dollars an' fifty cents, an' hay
worth sixteen dollars a ton if it's worth a dollar! The poorhouse is
where we'll all end up if that's the way you're a-goin' to go on!"
"Waal, I had to git shet of it; an' nobody's a-buyin' hay naow."
Uncle Ezra was too sick at heart to enter into a quarrel. He walked
away as the easiest way of ending the argument, disgusted at the
unreasonableness of womankind.
Uncle Sam, the veteran bargain driver, was as gratified as a boy who
has just traded a watch that won't go for a shotgun that will. It
was a feather in his cap to get the better of old Ezra Pettit. He
bragged about it far and near and received congratulations from all
the neighbors. There was nobody for ten miles around who did not enjoy
a joke at the expense of Uncle Ezra. Being a wag, Uncle Sam could not
resist the temptation to get some fun out of his deal. So he hauled
the hay away in many lightly-piled loads, craftily built to look much
larger than they really were. These loads got on Aunt Eppie's nerves.
When the eleventh load trundled by the kitchen window, she shrieked
hysterically: "Well, Ezra, ye might as well lock the doors an' pull
daown the blinds! The poorhouse is the place fer us! There goes Sam
Whitmarsh with another load o' hay!"
Judith tittered immoderately behind the pantry door. But Cissy, being
a serious and right-minded servant and a stranger to a sense of
humor, felt deeply concerned at the loss of her master and mistress,
considering it in some degree her own.