The summer days came and went, bringing with them the usual routine
that goes with the raising of tobacco in Scott County. After the plants
had been set they wilted and looked as though they were dying. Many of
them did actually die and had to be replaced by new plants. For about
three weeks they scarcely seemed to grow at all. Indeed, they appeared
to shrink, rather than grow; for the outer leaves died away leaving
only the heart alive. All this time, however, the young plants were
establishing themselves, accommodating their roots to the new soil and
putting down deeper shoots into the ground. All at once, and with one
accord, they began to grow with great rapidity. The small specks of
green rose and spread, the leaves lengthened and broadened; and in a
few weeks plant touched plant and shaded the ground.
When the plants were about three feet high, Jerry and Judith went
through the rows "topping" them. With the thumb and forefinger they
pinched off the central bud which, if allowed to grow, would shoot
up and develop into flower and seed. This made the plants shorter,
broader, and stockier and sent all the life into the great, succulent
leaves. When Jerry and Judith worked at this task, their hands became
covered with the thick, sticky, yellow juice of the plants. It took
several changes of water to wash away this rank, poisonous sap; and the
remaining stains were slow in wearing off.
The tobacco worms, too, were things that had to be contended with.
All other plant pests leave tobacco alone, preferring more wholesome
pasture. But there is one worm especially created to feast upon the
tobacco plant. To this creature the deadly juice of the leaves means
health and plenty. It resembles a tomato worm, but it is larger,
longer, greener, and more many-legged. If it is allowed to live, its
depredations are tremendous. Every week or so Jerry and Judith went
through the tobacco plants with an old tin can in one hand and a stick
in the other and knocked these offending vermin into the cans. When the
rounds were completed they took the cans home and burned their contents
in the cookstove.
It was not enough to cultivate the tobacco with the plow. It had to
be hoed, too. To make its best growth each plant required individual
attention. They chopped the ground about the plants with great hoes
made especially for heavy work. The hard clay, baked flinty by the
hot sunshine, resisted the hoes with all its might. It always seemed
to Judith that her row would never come to an end. And when, after
slow and toilsome progress, she at last reached the end, there were
innumerable more rows waiting to be done. She was forced to admit that
Jerry was her superior in the tobacco field. He could hoe three rows
while she was doing one; and at evening, though tired, he was by no
means at the end of his strength. It was very hot in the southward
sloping field. The sun beat down mercilessly and the plants exhaled a
heavy, sickening odor. She could feel the sweat standing out on her
face, and rolling down her legs. It tickled and irritated her skin,
and now and then she stopped to scratch viciously. Sometimes the acrid
streams poured into her eyes and for the moment blinded her. When a
breeze sprang up and swept across the tobacco field, its touch on her
wet body made her feel almost cold. After it had died away the heavy
quiet fell like a great, stifling blanket over the earth and it seemed
twice as hot as before. Still she and Jerry plodded on with the patient
persistence of those born and reared to a life of toil.
Not much visiting went on between Hat and Judith that summer; for the
tobacco field claimed them both.
But Judith was young and buoyant. Tobacco did not have to be hoed every
day; and these seasons of hard and continuous toil gave to the less
strenuous days something of the feeling of holidays. In spite of the
tobacco crop, life remained full of pleasures for Judith. She liked
to work in her garden and see the beans and peas and cabbages making
sturdy growth under her care. She liked to feed her chickens and
turkeys morning and evening and note how fast the little chicks and
young turkeys were growing and how strong and firm were their bodies.
She liked to set hens and care for the little chicks after they came
out of the shell. She planted morning glories and nasturtiums about the
house and trained them up on rude trellises made of tobacco sticks.
The summer was full of radiant mornings a-quiver with sunshine with
sweet smells and the carolling of birds, and cool, quiet evenings when
she and Jerry sat together on the doorstep through the slow-falling
midsummer twilight until the familiar outline of hills and trees melted
into a blur of darkness and the last sleepy twitter of little birds
drowsed into silence. To Judith, as to the growing plants and the wild
things of the fields and woods, the sun still meant joyous life and
growth, its absence, peace and sleep. She was not much more given to
thinking than was the mocking bird in the hickory tree over the house;
and she enjoyed her life even as he.
In September the tobacco ripened. The leaves turned from green to a
rich gold and the crop was ready to harvest. Jerry refused to let
Judith help with this strenuous task and hired his brother Andy
instead. When the two men came in from the field after "cuttin'" their
hands, faces and clothes were smeared thickly with the sticky tobacco
sap and its rank odor filled the kitchen.
After the tobacco had been allowed to wilt in the field, they hauled it
to Hiram Stone's nearest tobacco barn, a big structure built on the top
of the ridge about half a mile from Jerry's field.
It was a great relief to Jerry when the last load was hauled in and
hung up. So many things can happen to spoil a tobacco crop that he had
lived in constant anxiety ever since the plants had been set in the
ground. The weather had favored Scott County that year, and the tobacco
was heavy and of fine quality.
"Naow, by gollies, if she don't up an' heat in the barn the crop's
made," he said to himself.
The outdoor work with the crop was over and the rest was on the knees
of the gods. Jerry now had his corn to work with. As he cut the corn
and stacked it in shocks, and as he and Judith together shucked out
the ears, Jerry watched the weather with an anxious eye. If there came
a warm, damp day, he grew uneasy; and a succession of warm, damp days
sent him to the tobacco barn to examine anxiously the yellowish-brown
bunches and open the doors wider so that the air could circulate more
freely.
"If she heats an' spiles now after all our work, won't it be a dirty
shame?" he said to Judith one day, when she had accompanied him on one
of these visits.
"I wonder if there's anything the matter with the terbaccer, Jerry? It
don't somehow seem to smell right to me," said Judith, sniffing the air
critically. "I allus did love the smell of terbaccer a-dryin' in the
barn. But this kinda makes me feel sick to my stummick."
"Smells all right to me," opined Jerry. "Smells durn good." He sniffed
again.
"Must be sumpin wrong with your smeller, Judy."
"I dunno what's wrong," doubted Judith, "but it sholy hain't got a good
smell to me."
As the days passed, Judith began to notice that other things besides
the tobacco had a queer, unnatural, slightly nauseating smell. She
supposed at first that she had eaten something that had disagreed with
her and that the effect would pass off in a day or so. The trouble,
however, grew worse instead of better. It came on so slowly, so subtly
and insidiously, that she was in its grip before she fully realized
that there had been a change. She thought that the first time that she
had noticed anything unusual in her feelings was the day at the tobacco
barn. But she could not be sure. As she looked back she imagined that
she had felt other queer sensations even before that. The beginnings of
the strange disease were shrouded in mystery.
Some canned salmon that they had for dinner a few days after the visit
to the tobacco barn did not taste good at all. Judith could not
understand why. She had always loved canned salmon. It was a store
delicacy rarely indulged in and hence much relished by the rural
population of Scott County.
"What's wrong with this here salmon, Jerry?" she asked, turning it over
listlessly with her fork. "It hain't spiled, an' yet it don't taste
good, nohaow."
"Tastes good to me," said Jerry. "I cud eat a barrel of it. Gimme yours
if you hain't a-goin' to eat it."
She gave him what was left on her plate and he ate it greedily and
finished the can.
"I'm afraid you've worked too hard in the field this summer, Judy," he
said anxiously. "I hadn't otta let you."
"I don't hardly think it's that," she answered languidly. There was no
trace left of her usual animation. She seemed a different person.
As day after day passed and she got no better, she began to realize
that a great change had taken place in herself and in the world
about her. Nothing seemed at all the same. The fields and lanes, the
dooryard, and particularly the house, were full of lurking, insidious
stenches that attacked her on every hand and turned her stomach.
Everything that she looked at seemed to have something ugly and
repulsive about it. The very morning glories and nasturtiums were
gaudy and tiresome and the smell of the nasturtiums sickened her. She
particularly loathed the sights and smells of the kitchen and fled from
them as often as she could. The odor of frying fat, of burning wood, or
of beans boiling on the stove sent her reeling to the outside. There
she gulped great draughts of the pure air, and as she grew calmer,
breathed long and deep until her nausea had subsided. She found that
she suffered much less when out of doors and would have stayed there
all the time if she had not had to cook for Jerry. She did it as long
as she could hold out. But sometimes it was too much for her, and she
had to lie down in the bedroom and let Jerry find himself something to
eat as best he could.
She detested the kitchen. The oilcloth-covered table, the blue dishes
formerly so much prized, the coffee pot, and the big white water
pitcher were objects of loathing to her. She hated the sight of the
calendars and little pictures that she had tacked on the walls. There
was one picture that particularly irritated her, though she could
not have told why. It was a still life representing dead grouse and
partridges lying on a table. One day she took the picture down from
the wall and stuffed it into the stove, getting at least a momentary
feeling of satisfaction from hearing it crackle up the stovepipe.
There was one dish that seemed to her especially odious, a berry bowl
that Lizzie May had given her as a wedding present. It was made of
imitation Tiffany glass, and she had thought it lovely until this
strange malady had seized upon her. Now she could not bear to look at
the crude bronze and green and purple lights that it cast at her. It
seemed an evil and poisonous thing. She poked it into the bottom of one
of the bureau drawers and covered it up with sheets and pillow slips.
Jerry, too, came in for his share of the general odium. She developed a
great dislike for certain little inoffensive habits that he had, such
as rubbing his hands together over the fire, whistling loudly as he
went about his chores and teasing the pup for the fun of hearing him
growl and snap. When he kissed her, which she now rarely allowed him
to do, she was conscious with a shiver of repugnance that he needed a
shave and that he had been chewing tobacco.
One afternoon, when existence about the house seemed intolerable, she
put on her sunbonnet and started out on the cowpath that led along the
top of the ridge and down into the hollow where Hat and Luke lived.
Hat was plucking geese in the back dooryard. This side of the house
was littered with an accumulation of broken boards, rusty pieces of
scrap iron, old rags, papers, empty bottles, discarded cooking utensils
and rusted-out tin cans. Hat was not the pink-and-white vision that
she had been on the day when she had first visited Judith. She wore
a ragged calico wrapper, faded by much sun and many washings, into a
dismal drab. About her waist was pinned a greasy gunny sack to serve
as an apron. The short ends of her coarse black hair hung in uncombed
rattails about her face; and her great feet, planked firmly on the
ground with the toes turned in, were bare and very dirty. Her clothes,
her hair, and her perspiring face were powdered thickly with the down
from the feathers which fell like snow about her and frosted the ground
for yards around. Between her knees she gripped the goose's head and
with her big, coarse hands plucked away great handfuls of the soft,
white, fluffy down from the breast and under the wings and stuffed them
into a stiff paper flour sack that stood open at her side. The goose
struggled and squawked mightily. Hat only gripped the prisoner more
firmly between her great knees and went about her task more vigorously.
As Judith came up she was greeted by a strong smell of pigsty. Luke had
had a good corn crop and was fattening several hogs that fall. Three
or four lean hounds that were slinking about the dooryard barked in a
perfunctory, spasmodic way, then relapsed into silence. Hat stopped for
a moment to try to brush away with her down-covered hand some of the
fluff that clung irritatingly about her eyes.
"Land alive, Judy, I sholy do hate to pick geese," she gasped. "I
git all het up, an' then the durn stuff sticks in the sweat, an' you
wouldn't believe haow it itches me. But it's gotta be done, an' there
hain't nobody else that'll do it. Feathers is a good price this year.
An' when _these_ feathers is turned into money, it's _me_ that's
a-goin' to handle it. Las' time we sold feathers, Luke he got holt o'
the money an' that's the last I ever seen of it. An' it was me that
raised 'em an' fed 'em an' picked 'em an' done every durn thing."
Hat's voice trembled with anger and self-pity. Judith opened her mouth
to start to say something; but Hat did not wait to hear what it might
be. She was seething with a sense of wrong and glad to have somebody in
whom to confide.
"The men sholy do have it easy compared with us wimmin, Judy," she
continued. "Here all this summer I worked like a dawg in the terbaccer
a-settin' an' a-toppin' an' a-hoein' an' a-wormin' an' a-cuttin'; an'
all the fore part o' the winter I'll spend a-strippin'. An' then along
about Christmas Luke'll haul the terbaccer off to Lexington an' sell
it an' put the money in his pocket an' I won't never see a dollar of
it. An' if I even want a few cents to buy me calico for a sun-bonnet,
I gotta most go daown on my knees an' beg for it. I work jes as hard
in the crop as he does. An' then what does he do while I cook an' wash
dishes an' clean the house an' do the washin' an' tend the chickens
an' turkeys? He feeds an' tends the hosses. That's what he's got to do
outside of his crop. He hain't never picked a goose in his life; an'
he wouldn't pick one if they died for lack o' pickin'. He says pickin'
geese is wimmin's work. I tell you what I'm a-goin' to do. Nex' summer
I ain't a-goin' to touch hand to his corn ner his durn terbaccer crop.
If pickin' geese is wimmin's work, settin' an' hoein' terbaccer is
man's work, an' he kin do it hisse'f 'ithout any he'p from me. I'm jes
sick an' tired of slavin' like a mule an' gittin' nothin' fer it."
She paused on the brink of tears. A large tortoise shell cat arched her
back and rubbed herself against the legs of her mistress, then reached
up her head and sniffed delicately at the goose.
"An' then," she went on in the next breath, "with all his huntin'
foxes most every night an' keepin' all them lazy haounds a-slinkin'
raound the place an' a-eatin' up the feed the chickens otta have, he
can't keep the foxes from gittin' my geese. Las' night when I went to
ketch 'em up to coop 'em I found my biggest goose was missin'. An'
this mornin' when I was a-lookin' up my turkeys, sure nuf I come on
the feathers jes over that little hill yonder. I was that vexed an'
disgusted. Think of it! Him an' all his durn haounds together ain't
as smart as one fox! An' what's he a-doin' naow, while I'm a-slavin'
an' a-sweatin' over these geese? He's a-standin' yonder by the shed
a-chawin' terbaccer an' a-gassin' with young Bob Crupper. He's been
there in that one spot this good two hours, an' he'll be there like
enough till chore time to-night. Men makes me sick; always a-sunnin'
theirselves around the barnyard like flies on a dunghill."
She stopped, exhausted by her passionate jeremiad, and relaxed her hold
upon the goose, which she had finished plucking. It ran off squawking
indignantly. She made a vain attempt to scatter the down from about
her nostrils by blowing upward, then brushed her nose frantically with
her furry hand. "Ouf," she puffed, irritated beyond endurance by the
clinging stuff.
Judith looked in the direction of the wagon shed and saw Luke and Bob
Crupper leaning in easy attitudes against an old spring wagon that was
drawn up outside the shed. From time to time they changed the weight of
their bodies from one leg to the other or spat idly into the scattered
straw. As she was looking, she saw Bob Crupper turn his head in her
direction for a moment and then say something to Luke. Luke made some
reply, and she could see the two men laughing together. Hat, too, had
noticed the little pantomime.
"I wonder what them two was a-sayin'?" said Judith, casting another
look in the direction of the two men.
"Sumpin nasty, I'll betcha," snapped Hat in a tone of disgust. "When
men gits to laffin' together you kin be sure one or 'nother of 'em has
come out with some dirty talk."
Judith knew that there was much truth in Hat's accusation; and she had
a momentary feeling of curiosity as to what had been said, for she felt
sure that it had been about herself.
Hat went to the coop to get another goose and came back carrying the
big white bird with its head under her arm. The intelligent creature
seized a moment when Hat's arm muscles were somewhat relaxed to wrench
its head free and bite her captor viciously on the hand. She screamed
shrilly with pain and anger.
"Damn the critter!" she cried, wrenching her hand loose and stuffing
the offending head back under her arm. "Lord love you, Judy, you hain't
got no idea haow hard a goose kin bite."
"I have, too," answered Judith. "I bin bit more'n once."
"I wisht Luke had," said Hat, glancing darkly in the direction of her
husband, as she settled herself to the task of plucking. "Have you
hearn the last news abaout Ziemer Whitmarsh, Judy, an' the way he's
been a-carryin' on with Minnie Pooler?"
"I ain't hearn nothing lately nor been nowhere," answered Judith. "I
been a-feelin' so bad I ain't cared to go nowhere nor do nothin'. I'd
jes as leave be dead as feel the way I been a-feelin' lately."
"Why, what kin ail you, Judy? You've allus been so strong an' hearty."
Judith began to tell Hat about how she had been feeling for the past
two weeks or so. As she went into the details of her symptoms, a look
of interest, of satisfaction, and of amused patronage came into Hat's
face and widened into a broad grin which seemed to Judith at first
disagreeable and then revolting.
"Why, Judy Pippinger, d'you mean to tell me you don't know what ails
you?"
"Haow should I know? I don't know nothing about diseases."
Hat broke into a coarse laugh.
"You hain't got no disease, Judy, no more'n this here goose has a
disease. You got a young un in yer insides. That's what's wrong with
ye. You was kinda lucky it didn't come sooner."
With the last remark, Hat shot a swift, sharp glance at her visitor.
Judith was so taken by surprise that she scarcely noticed the meaning
glance. It took her a full half minute to absorb the new idea. It was a
possibility that of late had not occurred to her, although the thought
of it had caused her some needless worry earlier in her relations with
Jerry. She felt humiliated at disclosing what Hat appeared to consider
such crass ignorance and disgusted at an indefinable something in Hat's
attitude.
"But Hat, a caow ain't sick when she's a-fixin' to have a calf," she
said at last, looking straight at Hat with her clear, level, searching
eyes.
"Wimmin has troubles caows don't never even dream on. You'll find that
out afore you're married long," said Hat darkly. From this cryptic
prophecy she launched into a description of the pregnant state and went
into the subject in all its ramifications. She did not tell Judith
how it came that she who had never had a child knew so many intimate
details regarding the symptoms of pregnancy. That after all was her own
affair.
Judith listened with a mixture of interest and disgust. She wished to
know all that she could find out on this as on any other matter that
concerned her life. But she was revolted by Hat's whispered undertone
and her air of salacious secrecy. She was glad to cut her visit short
on the plea that she had work to do at home. When she left, the two men
were still standing in the same attitudes by the wagon shed.
As she walked homeward along the top of the ridge, she was glad to look
out over the broad expanse of clean earth, to draw in deep breaths
of pure, hilltop air and to shake from her the close and foetid
atmosphere of Hat's hollow.