Jerry had a fine bed of tobacco plants that year and together he and
Judith set out four acres. Now that the baby was weaned, Judith could
leave him with Luella or Aunt Mary while she worked in the field. Her
help was badly needed this year, for Jerry had no money left to pay a
hired hand. She was glad to do this, for even setting tobacco was a
change from the dreary sameness of the household. At a cost of oozing
rivers of sweat, of untellable weariness, stiffness, lame backs, and
aching necks and hands worn almost to bleeding, the four acres were set
at last and they sighed with relief.
"Naow if there on'y comes a good rain," said Jerry, "they'll git a
start."
But the good rain did not come. Day after day the sky was cloudless,
the flame of the sun clear and hot. Day after day the hard clay
hillsides baked harder and the tobacco plants shrank into themselves,
turned from green to gray, from gray to brown, shriveled and dried up
and blew away in dust.
"Gawd, hain't it discouragin'!" Jerry would say, looking darkly at the
clear, blue expanse of sky.
At last it rained. It rained all day and all night; and the next day
the "season" was on.
With the infinite patience of those who have to humor the caprices of
nature in order to wrest a living from the earth, they went over the
whole four acres once more. Jerry had kept his tobacco bed well watered
and there were plenty of plants.
"Bejasus, if Luke had stole 'em this time," he said to Judith, "I'd a
gone daown there an' bust his jaw fer him. On'y reason he didn't steal
'em, he made his bed clost by a spring this year an' he's got lots of
his own."
More than two thirds of the plants were dead and had to be replaced.
"They're a bit late," commented Jerry, "but if the season's any good,
they'll grow into good terbaccer yet. It don't take terbaccer long to
make itsse'f."
It rained several times through June and the plants began to spread
out green and lusty. Then with July the weather turned dry again and
intensely hot. The clay hillsides baked harder than ever, so hard that
the clods were more like stones than lumps of dried earth. Jerry, in an
attempt to save his crop by making cultivation take the place of rain,
went through his corn and tobacco again and again with the cultivator,
then followed the rows of tobacco with his great sharp hoe, loosening
up the ground around each plant. Judith tried to help him at this task
but had to give it up. The ground was too flinty, the hoe too heavy;
and the sickness of pregnancy which was coming upon her for the second
time made her arms weak and nerveless.
No rain fell during July; and in blinding light and blazing heat August
set in. It seemed to Jerry, who anxiously watched the sky, as though
nature, not content with defrauding him out of the fruit of his labors,
was amusing herself by making a fool of him and playing with him as
a cat plays with a mouse. Sometimes the sky would grow overcast and
all the signs of approaching rain appear, only to be swept away with
the next wind. Occasionally even a light shower would fall, enough to
partly lay the dust and irritate the anxious tobacco growers. Then the
sky would clear again. Often they would see it raining on the horizon,
over near Cynthiana or Georgetown or up toward Cincinnati. But no rain
fell to refresh their own thirsty fields. Sometimes on hot afternoons
great black storm clouds gathered in the west and rolled up into the
sky, then passed away obliquely and disappeared toward the south.
Through the heavy, sultry night, when it was hard to get to sleep, heat
lightning played incessantly around the horizon. This long continued
strain of watching for rain and seeing it approach only to go away
again began to wear on the nerves of both Jerry and Judith. They became
touchy and irritable and snapped at each other over trifling matters.
Judith tried to keep her garden alive by frequent hoeings. But with
the increasing heat and drought it wilted and withered up till there
was nothing left but a few dried stalks. They had the milk from their
cow, some salt meat left over from the winter before and some dried
beans. These with corn meal cakes and coffee made up their daily fare.
By the middle of August wells and cisterns were getting low, and
springs and streams were drying up. Some of these latter were already
bone dry, with the hoofprints of the cattle that used to drink in them
baked hard into the flinty clay. Water for stock was growing scarce.
The Blackfords' well was dropping lower every day, and Jerry, afraid
that it might go dry altogether, would not let Judith use any of the
precious water for washing clothes. When wash day came, he would hook
up Nip or Tuck to the cart and drive her and the baby and the tubs and
the bundle of clothes to a spring further down the hollow where water
was still to be had. The spring was low and the scant water fouled by
the feet of cattle; but it had to serve. Here he had put up a rude
bench on which to set the tubs, and here, as there was now nothing
for him to do in the field, he would help Judith to rub and rinse the
clothes through the muddy water and spread them on the grass to dry,
while the baby crawled about through the wild weed jungle and grasped
with his helpless, chubby hands at butterflies and flecks of sunlight.
These little excursions were not picnics, as they might have been under
more favorable conditions. The failure of their crops had cast a gloom
upon the young couple which was deepened by the change that had come
over Judith. The debilitating effect of the long continued heat added
to the nausea and nervous irritability of an unwelcome pregnancy had
induced in her a state of body and mind in which, in order to endure
life at all, she instinctively closed herself up from it as much as she
could. With something of the feeling of a creature of the woods, she
sought to shut herself up with her weakness and misery. She plodded
through the round of her daily tasks like an automaton. Even to the
lifting of an eyelid, she made no motion that was not necessary. Her
feet dragged, her eyes seemed as if covered by a film and her face
wore a heavy, sullen expression. She avoided meeting people, answered
them in monosyllables when they spoke to her, and took no interest
whatever in the doings of the neighborhood. When Jerry tried to talk to
her, she scarcely looked at him or answered him, until, chilled by her
lack of response, he too would fall into gloomy silence. Sometimes when
Jerry, in his inexperience with the washing of clothes, did something
particularly clumsy and awkward, she would scold him sharply then
relapse into her habitual impassivity. When the clothes were dried and
gathered up, they rode home in silence, Jerry driving, Judith holding
the baby on her lap.
Beat upon by the fierce heat and the hard, white light, the face of
the country took on every day more of the appearance of drought. Each
day vegetation shrank and the exposed surface of bare, caked earth
increased. Corn dwindled and yellowed and bluegrass turned dry and
brown. The alfalfa stretched its deep roots far down into the soil and
managed to keep its rich dark green color, but grew never an inch. The
roads lay under a thick coating of this fine powdery dust, soft as
velvet to bare feet. When a wagon or buggy passed along it traveled
hidden from sight by its own dust and left a diminishing trail behind
like a comet. Hens held their wings out from their bodies and panted
in the deepest shade of the barnyard. In the pastures cattle and sheep
stood all day under trees; and even horses rarely ventured forth into
the full glare of the sun. In the evening when the sun slanted low
and a grateful coolness stole across the fields, all these creatures,
like their human brothers, shook off the torpor of the heat and began
to feel more like themselves. The hens scratched for a living among
the chaff and dung. The sheep and cattle, banded together after their
kind and with their heads all turned in one direction, cropped the
scant bluegrass. The horses, aristocrats of the pasture, went apart by
themselves, scorning the company of these humbler creatures.
The tobacco plants, owing to their sturdy weed nature, lived through
the heat and drought; but they might as well have died, for their
leaves were as thin as paper. By the middle of August the tobacco
growers, including even Jerry, had given up all hope of getting a crop
that year.
With the failure of their crops, every day became Sunday for the men;
and they began to visit in each other's barnyards. Different degrees
of success, with the inevitable accompaniment of work, self-seeking,
greed, jealousy, and disappointment, would have divided them. But the
universal bad luck brought them into community of spirit and ushered
in an era of neighborliness and good feeling. Lounging on the shady
side of each other's barns, whittling aimlessly at bits of stick,
chewing straws and tobacco, the men talked about the springs that had
gone dry and those that were going dry, inquired about the state of
each other's wells and cisterns, and complained about how far they had
to drive their cattle to water. They compared notes on the subject of
prickly heat and other skin rashes, and talked of the hotness of beds
at night. Uncle Jabez Moorhouse quoted copiously from his one book on
the subject of drought, a favorite topic with the prophets, and all
the old men called to mind former dry years, citing chapter and verse
as to the exact date of the arid year, the time the drought began and
the number of weeks it had lasted. The calendar for the past fifty
years was thoroughly gone over from this point of view and each dry
year carefully compared in all respects with the current one. There was
matter here for much discussion and argument among the older men, their
memories often telling stories that were widely at variance with each
other.
The first days of August brought news that sent a buzz of excitement
through the groups of barnyard loungers. Although there was no
newspaper to carry it, this news flashed rapidly into even the
innermost recesses of Scott County. The most unschooled tobacco
grower living in the loneliest hollow did not have to wait long for
its arrival. The more advanced and intellectual, who subscribed to a
religious or agricultural monthly, got the tidings long before the next
issue of their magazine was dropped in the rural mail box. The magic
word war is powerfully and swiftly winged and scorns modern methods of
broadcasting. Standing about the coldly monumental August stove, the
loiterers in Peter Akers' store spat into last winter's sawdust and
talked over the news that the Cincinnati-Lexington train had brought.
Driving homeward in their several directions, they pulled up alongside
of every passing wagon.
"Hey, d'yuh know there's a big war on?"
At home they told their wives, their neighbors, everybody who passed by
the house.
Having done this, they had, however, told all they knew. The words
Germans, French, Russians, floated about in the air, but to most of
the tobacco growers meant nothing whatever except that the war was a
long way off. There was, however, a general realization that it was a
big one, that somewhere far away the world was in great turmoil and
excitement. The outermost ripples of this excitement shivered through
Scott County.
The women inquired anxiously as to the likelihood of their sons and
husbands having to go to war. Their fears relieved on this vital point,
they poohhooed the whole matter and went on about their housework,
instantly transferring their attention to matters of real importance,
such as the rendering out of hog fat and the patching of overalls.
"It's ridiclus," said Aunt Abigail, on one of her visits to Judith,
"the idee o' them folks a-goin' to fightin' each other. It's a shame
an' a disgrace an' it'd otta be put a stop to. Even if they air on'y
ignernt furrin folks, they'd otta know better."
To the men it was meat and drink. When they gathered in each other's
barnyards, the talk was all of war. To sit in the peaceful warmth of a
summer afternoon, placidly chewing the mild Burley of their own fields
and express their views about the fighting of the foreigners was a rare
treat, combining luxuriously the thrills and excitements of war with
the comfort and security of peace. They had virtually no basis upon
which to form opinions; but opinions they had, none the less. They
were as excitable, argumentative, and dogmatic as any group of men in
any other walk of life. Each man held his own convictions in as high
esteem and those of his neighbor in as thorough despisal as if he were
a successful manufacturer of toothpaste or a United States senator. The
discussions on the war were as animated, as heated, as intelligent, and
as generally representative of the different types of male humanity as
if they had occurred in a metropolitan club. The fact that on the shady
side of Jerry Blackford's cowshed the basis of fact was somewhat more
vague and flimsy than that in a Union League clubroom made no essential
difference. Each man aired his own ideas as loudly and impressively as
he could, and paid no attention whatever to those of any of the others;
and there was much honest joy and satisfaction.
"They'd otta have us fellers go on over there an' beat 'em all up. We
cud do it easy," opined Ziemer Whitmarsh, who had a prominent chin and
the long arms and heavy shoulders of a prize fighter. "'Twouldn't be no
chore fer us, would it, Bob?"
"No, siree," chimed in young Bob Crupper. "They'd otta let us at 'em."
Bob's chin did not protrude unduly; but he had eyes fearless and
dreamy, like those of his father. He was ripe for adventure of any
kind: war, women, anything. His eyes wistfully sought the horizon.
"I wish 'twa'n't so durn fur away," he fretted.
Bob's father, old Amos, who was a veteran of the Civil War, had
subscribed to a Georgetown paper, and was thus placed in a position
of authority as regards facts. But it was the romantic and chivalrous
aspects of the war that most appealed to the old soldier, as in the
days of his youth; and out of his rich nature he was quick to set up
heroes to worship and weave a mythical fabric of glory and chivalry.
"Some o' them generals must be powerful men," he would thunder out in a
deep rumble of bass ecstasy. "This here von Kluck, he must be a mighty
powerful man. An' the Roosians is a fine people, a strong, powerful
people. Them Roosians hain't afraid to die fer their country."
"It'll fetch up the price of tebaccer," mused Uncle Sam Whitmarsh,
sagely stroking his lean jaw, "--an' hosses. Terbaccer and hosses is
things they used up fast in war. An' terbaccer an' hosses is what we
got here in Kentucky. An' everything else'll go up too: hog meat and
butter and eggs."
"Yaas, an' flour an' sorghum an' coffee alongside of 'em," grunted old
Jonah Cobb pessimistically. "I mind me in Civil War times--"
"Aw, don't croak, Jonah. War times is good times fer the farmer. If we
kin git a good price for our terbaccer, we hain't a-goin' to kick about
payin' a little extry fer a sack o' biscuit flour."
"A sound of battle is in the land and of great destruction," quoted
Uncle Jabez Moorhouse. "Woe onto them, for their time is come, the time
of their visitation. The earth shall be utterly emptied and utterly
laid waste. Behold, Jehovah maketh the earth empty and maketh it waste
and turneth it upside down and scattereth abroad the inhabitants
thereof. The earth shall stagger like a drunken man."
He loved the sound of the sonorous rhythms and rolled them on his
tongue ecstatically.
"I done heard it was a-coming' this way," hazarded Gus Dibble
timorously. "Did any o' you folks hear it was a-comin' this way? If it
comes this way, they say we'll all hev to go into it."
Gus Dibble was a skinny, pallid fellow with very bad teeth. He had a
wife and two small children and tried to raise tobacco to support them.
He also had consumption, asthma, and a hernia.
"Aw, what kind of a notion hev you got, Gus?" scoffed Bob Crupper, who
from association with his father had become enlightened. "Don't you
know you gotta go acrost the ocean to git to where they're a-fightin'?"
"I dunno," answered Gus, humbly and vaguely. "All I know is they said
it was a-comin' this way."
For Judith Blackford and the rest of the women in the solitude of their
isolated shanties life moved on as stagnantly as usual, except that the
heat and the scarcity of water made it somewhat more disagreeable and
difficult. For them there was no such thing as change nor anything
even vaguely resembling a holiday season. Families must be fed after
some fashion or other and dishes washed three times a day, three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Babies must be fed and washed
and dressed and "changed" and rocked when they cried and watched and
kept out of mischief and danger. The endless wrangles among older
children must be arbitrated in some way or other, if only by cuffing
the ears of both contestants; and the equally endless complaints
stilled by threats, promises, whatever lies a harassed mother could
invent to quiet the fretful clamor of discontented childhood. Fires
must be lighted and kept going as long as needed for cooking, no
matter how great the heat. Cows must be milked and cream skimmed and
butter churned. Hens must be fed and eggs gathered and the filth
shoveled out of henhouses. Diapers must be washed, and grimy little
drawers and rompers and stiff overalls and sweaty work shirts and
grease-bespattered dresses and kitchen aprons and filthy, sour-smelling
towels and socks stinking with the putridity of unwashed feet and all
the other articles that go to make up a farm woman's family wash.
Floors must be swept and scrubbed and stoves cleaned and a never ending
war waged against the constant encroaches of dust, grease, stable
manure, flies, spiders, rats, mice, ants, and all the other breeders
of filth that are continually at work in country households. These
activities, with the occasional variation of Sunday visiting, made up
the life of the women, a life that was virtually the same every day of
the year, except when their help was needed in the field to set tobacco
or shuck corn, or when fruit canning, hog killing, or house cleaning
crowded the routine.
Late in August, when the tobacco and corn were past saving, the rains
came in floods and filled up the wells and cisterns, set the creeks
to running again, washed great gullies in the plowed hillsides and
refreshed the thirsty pastures.
There followed a lean fall and winter. There was no corn to fatten
hogs; so the tenant farmers had to get rid of what hogs they had. The
hogs, being lean and forced upon the market, brought only a poor price.
The stunted, half filled out nubbins that the corn fields had produced
that year were all carefully saved to make into meal for household
use. The hens, too, had to go; for hens are too greedy-natured to keep
through a time of scarcity. Jerry bundled them into a coop and took
them to Clayton and sold them for thirty-five cents apiece, all but a
dozen or so which Judith insisted upon keeping "for company," as she
expressed it. These scratched and ranged for a living, and kept alive,
though they laid never an egg.
Jerry dug his potatoes, most of them not much bigger than marbles, a
slow and disheartening task; and Judith cooked them, while they lasted,
with the skins on, so that no part of them might be wasted. They were
greenish and bitter; but when they were all gone they were sorely
missed. The few dried beans and peas that had managed to come to fruit
before the dry spell caught them were carefully pulled and shelled and
stored away. Hickory nuts and black walnuts were gathered and spread
out on the floor of the loft to dry. There were no blackberries that
year and only a few stunted apples. Jerry searched through the woods
looking for stray apple trees that had sprung up from seed, and brought
home an occasional bushel or so of wormy runts. These Judith made up
into apple butter which she stored away in crocks and jars.
By January all these things were gone and there was nothing left but
some corn.
Work by the day was hard to get; for there were many more men than
jobs, and would continue so until the spring rush came on. Jerry
fretted at his forced idleness and was always on the watch for a chance
to earn a day's wages. When he managed to pick up an occasional job,
he bought flour for biscuits, canned salmon or a piece of bacon. Then
there was a feast royal. These feasts, however, were widely scattered
oases on a great desert of corn meal. This had to be eaten without
milk; for there was not much food for the cow, and the small amount of
milk she gave was all taken by the baby.
Judith was big with her second child. She had recovered from the
sickness of early pregnancy and regained some of her old health and
spirits. Grown accustomed perforce to the life made necessary by
the baby, she chafed less at the monotony and restrictions of the
household. But she was no longer the Judith that Jerry had married.
The year and a half since the birth of the baby, which had made
no noticeable change in Jerry, had left their print upon her. The
youthful curves of her face and body were still there; the youthful
color was in her cheeks in spite of the spare diet. But her body had
lost its elasticity, her eyes their light and sparkle. The buoyancy
and effervescence of youth were gone. It was as if the life spirit
in the still young body had grown tired. She rarely sang any more,
and was not often heard to laugh. Sometimes, in a feverish burst of
gaiety, she would romp uproariously with the baby and seem for a
little while like a child again. Then all at once she would let her
arms fall at her sides as though suddenly tired and go about her work
a little more soberly than before. Sometimes she would sit for a long
time abstractedly looking out of the window at the sweep of hillside
lined against the sky and take no notice that the baby was crying or
tugging at her dress with his strong little fists or eating out of the
dog's plate on the floor. Then she would rouse herself with a start,
as though shaking something from her, and go on about her sweeping or
washing or whatever she had to do.
One Saturday night in late February, the Blackford's door was flung
open and Jabez Moorhouse stalked across the floor and stood warming
himself by the stove. Snow was falling outside and his cloth cap and
broad, stooping shoulders were powdered with white. He loosened the
ragged gray woolen muffler that was knotted about his neck and beat the
snow from his mittens on the side of the woodbox.
"The wind's sholy keen to-night," he said, spreading out his big hands
over the grateful warmth of the stove. "It goes through clothes that
hain't none too new like that much tissue paper. 'Tain't no night to
be a-travelin' the roads. But I come on a special errand. I want you
two and the young un to come over to my place to-morrer long about
'leven o'clock. There's a-goin' to be a s'prise party. Now I gotta
be a-gittin' on, 'cause there's others I wanta bid. To-morrer 'bout
'leven, or any time in the forenoon fer that matter. The earlier the
welcomer. Don't say nothin' to nobody."
He was gone, with a significant parting smile and wink; and Jerry and
Judith looked at each other in astonishment. Behind him he had left an
air of mystery, of wonder, and surmise.
"A s'prise party," mused Jerry. "What the devil has Uncle Jabez got to
make a s'prise party with? He hain't had no work this winter."
"We'll go an' see anyway," said Judith, a glow in her cheeks. Breaking
thus unexpectedly into the dull monotony of their lives, the suddenness
and mystery of the invitation thrilled her with excitement.
Next morning, when they arrived at the little shanty behind the big
hemlock trees, Judith was surprised to find her father and Uncle Sam
Whitmarsh standing talking together just outside the kitchen door where
two walls meeting at right angles formed a sheltered nook, pleasantly
warmed by the midday winter sun.
"What _you_ a-doin' here, Dad?"
"I dunno yet, Judy," answered Bill. "I seem to be a-waitin."
Judith pushed open the door and stepped inside, the baby on her arm.
She was greeted by a smell, an all-pervading, ineffable, intoxicating
smell, the most delicious aroma that ever set a hungry mouth to
watering. As she eagerly sniffed the savory odor, she felt a soft,
pleasurable, almost erotic sensation tingle through her body, and her
lips curved into a smile, such a smile as might have answered a lover's
kiss.
"Looky here, Judy, my gal."
Jabez opened the oven door, which had lost its handle and had to be
operated by means of a pair of pliers, and drew toward the front of the
oven two large sizzling pans, one on the oven floor, the other above it
on the grating. As she looked at these pans and sniffed the appetizing
smell that steamed up from them, Judith felt once more creeping over
her body the same soft, pleasurable, almost erotic sensation and her
lips fell again into that smile which might have answered a lover's
kiss. In each pan was a large, upcurving mass, delicately brown,
casting up a savory steam and oozing succulent juices into the rich,
bubbling gravy beneath. With a big tin spoon Jabez lifted this steaming
essence from the bottom of the pan and poured it over the big brown
mounds. Some of it penetrated into the meat; some trickled appetizingly
down the sides and back into the gravy pool.
"Is it near done, Uncle Jabez?"
There was a strained tenseness in the question.
"You damn betcha. We'll be a-lightin' into it afore ten minutes is
past. The Bible says the full belly loathes the honeycomb; but to
the hungry every bitter thing is sweet. So I reckon them two hind
quarters'll slide daown kinder easy."
Uncle Jonah Cobb, who had been pacing up and down the floor, stopped at
the arresting word _honey_ and looked disappointed when nothing further
was said about it.
"They don't do good 'ithout salt," he mumbled to himself, continuing
his walk.
Corn cakes were frying on the top of the stove. The big table, roughly
made of unplaned pine boards, was drawn into the middle of the room;
and Jabez had unearthed from somewhere a tablecloth that had once
been white. It was yellowed from long lying away and much creased and
crumpled. But it was a tablecloth, and as such suggestive of feasts and
holidays. With a strange assortment of broken handled knives and forks
and cracked and crazed plates, the table was set for eight.
The overpowering aroma, acting upon the intensity of her craving
appetite, affected Judith like a drug which makes the near and real
seem vague and far away. She had afterwards a dim recollection of
people moving restlessly about, striding up and down the floor and
asking if it was time to sit down. But she hardly realized what was
going on about her until she found herself seated at the table.
Silently as if they had sprung out of the earth, Uncle Jonah and Aunt
Selina were found sitting opposite her. Uncle Sam Whitmarsh was at her
right hand and Jerry at her left. Her father and Uncle Amos Crupper
were at the other end of the table.
Jabez brought one of the big roasting pans and setting it down at his
end of the table on top of a piece of pine board began to carve. It
must have been that all the others seated there felt like herself;
for they seemed rapt and taken out of themselves as though they were
religious devotees assisting at some sacred rite. There was a tense
look in every face and every eye gleamed and glittered. Judith thought
she had never seen such a light in any eyes before. She had seen the
light of love, of anger, of jealousy shining from people's eyes. But
such expressions were weak and volatile compared with this. It was a
look that expressed something more basic than anger, more enduring
than love, more all-compelling than jealousy. The eyes were all fixed
steadily upon one object, the roasting pan at Jabez' end of the table.
The silence was tense with ravenous expectancy.
As each guest was served, he fell to eating, without waiting for the
others. Those who were still waiting began to shift uneasily in their
chairs, while their eyes ranged restlessly from the diminished hind
quarter to the plates of their more fortunate neighbors.
At last everybody was eating and Jabez filled his own plate and fell
upon the contents. A silence followed, broken only by the crackle of
the fire and the click of the knives and forks. In a patch of sunlight
on the floor the baby sat and played with a skunk skin that Jabez was
saving to make into a cap.
"Ki-ki, ki-ki, nice ki-ki," he kept saying, as he stroked the soft fur.
When a large cat walked out from behind the stove, purring and arching
her back, he forsook the skin for the living animal.
A heaping plate of corn cakes was set at each end of the table, from
which the guests helped themselves at their will. These, with the meat,
formed the whole meal.
For a long time no voice spoke, no eye was lifted. There was nothing
but the play of knives and forks, the sound of munching, and the
constant reaching out of hands toward the corn cakes.
It was only when the second hind quarter had been carved, served,
and partly eaten that the diners began to lift their eyes from their
plates, lean back in their chairs, and exchange occasional remarks.
Coffee, which had been boiling on the stove in a big granite stewpan,
was now served by Jabez in whatever utensils he could find. Judith got
hers in a jelly glass. Aunt Selina had a granite mug, Jerry a tin cup.
Uncle Jonah was honored with a large, imposing, and very substantial
mustache cup ornamented with pink roses tastefully combined with pale
blue true lovers' knots and bearing the legend "Father" in large gilt
letters.
Down at the far end of the table, Judith glimpsed her father's familiar
habit of turning a spoon over in his mouth. He liked to soak his corn
cakes in coffee and eat them with a teaspoon. He put the spoon in his
mouth in the usual way and invariably brought it out bottom side up.
When Jabez had served everybody else, he used the dipper to hold his
own portion of coffee; and holding it aloft by the long handle, he
stood up at the end of the table and rapped for attention.
"Neighbors," he began, "I wish I might give youall sumpin' better'n
coffee to drink a toast in. But this here's a dry year. I never
reckoned the winter'd come that I'd spend 'ithout a drop o' whiskey on
the shelf. But this is that winter. The Bible says that he that tilleth
the soil shall have plenty o' bread; an' anybody'd think he'd otta.
But you an' me knows, none better, that he don't allus have plenty o'
bread, an' still less o' meat. Another thing the Bible says is that
the poor man is hated even of his own neighbor; an' I reckon there's
heap more truth in that sayin' than in the other one. The earth's a
mean an' stingy stepmother, an' she makes the most of her stepchillun
pretty mean an' stingy too. A hard life makes 'em hard an' close
an' suspicious of each other. They cheat an' they git cheated, an'
oftener'n not they hate their neighbors. But if a hard life breeds
hates, it breeds likin's too; an' it's because youall is folks that I'm
praoud to call my friends, that I ast you to come here to-day. Friends,
let's drink a toast to the health of our landlord an' neighbor, Uncle
Ezry Pettit. This here is his treat."
A perceptible tremor went around the table. Everybody started slightly
and looked half apprehensively at everybody else to see how they took
it; then at the door as if Uncle Ezra might be expected to appear there
at any moment and claim his property. Uncle Sam Whitmarsh chuckled into
his tin mug. Uncle Amos Crupper held his cup poised half way between
the table and his lips, deliberate, thoughtful, turning it over in his
mind. Judith, glancing sidewise at Jerry, saw a look of shock pass
across his face and felt a disturbing aura of disapproval suddenly
surround him. But he went on eating.
"Haow did yuh come to git away with her, Jabez?"
It was her father asking the question. He tried to make his voice sound
off-handed, but it had a strained, unnatural sound.
"Waal, Bill, it was this way. Friday evenin' on towards night I was
a-comin' home raound by the back of Uncle Ezry's old terbaccer barn;
an' there she stud caught in the wire fence. I was jes' fixin' to pull
her aout, when it come over me all of a sudden haow good she'd eat.
After that idear'd took a holt of me, I jes didn't hev the heart to
turn her loose. I tuk a good look all raound, an' there wa'n't a soul
to be seen on hill ner holler. It come into my mind haow Abraham when
he wanted sumpin to offer up to the Lord fer a burnt offerin', faound a
ram caught in the thicket. An' I ses to myse'f a wire fence was jes as
good as a thicket any day fer ketchin' sech critters, an' mos' likely
I needed the ewe more'n Abraham did the ram. So I jes hit her a whack
atween the eyes with the hammer I was a-carryin'. She dropped like a
sack o' meal, an' I drug her into the brush. Come dark night I went an'
fetched her; an' here she is. She was a fat ewe."
"She was that," assented Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, wiping the grease from
his mouth with his pocket handkerchief.
"Waal, I reckon Uncle Ezry won't die in the county house fer lack of
her," opined Bill in the tone of one who has justified himself to his
conscience. "Gawd, there hain't nothin' like a good meal o' meat to
make a feller feel like a man agin. I didn't have no idear I was that
meat hungry till I smelt her a-roastin'. Then wild hosses wouldn't 'a'
helt me back. It sholy feels good to have yer belly well lined."
Bill sighed, stretched out his long legs luxuriously, and reached into
his pocket for a chew of tobacco. The other men pushed back their
chairs and also sought their pockets. Aunt Selina brought out her corn
cob pipe from the pocket of her patched skirt and filled it with swift,
practised movements of her small fingers. Having done so she approached
Judith and sitting down beside her plied her with questions about
herself and the baby.
All the time the old woman's bright, youthful brown eyes sought
Judith's face, as though trying to bridge the gulf of years.
From a child, Judith had been fond of Aunt Selina. There was something
about her alert, birdlike, patched little person, so frail and skinny,
yet so full of a certain humming, quick pulsating life that drew all
children to her, as like is drawn to like. For Aunt Selina, in spite
of her years, her corn cob pipe and her ability to spit like a man,
was still more than half a child. Judith's early liking for her had
persisted through the years; but to-day the old woman seemed a more
than usually attractive person. Judith answered all her questions
with great animation. She told all about the trouble the baby had
had cutting his teeth. She was enthusiastic over plans for raising a
big flock of chickens in the spring; and she discussed exhaustively
the relative merits of stripes, checks, sprays, spots, and all over
patterns in dress goods.
She scarcely knew what she was saying and could remember almost nothing
of it afterward. She only knew that she felt warm, strong, happy,
full of life and vigor, alive with interest in everything. She seemed
to be surrounded by a rosy mist through which things appeared vague
and somewhat removed but replete with infinite possibilities for joy
and achievement. A small amount of alcohol would have had a similar
effect. She was meat drunk. It was the second time in her life that she
had tasted mutton.
The others seemed to be affected in much the same way. From about the
stove where the men had collected came the sound of animated talk and
of bold, assured, unrestrained laughter, such talk and laughter as were
rarely heard in a tenant farmer's house except when whiskey was one of
the guests. The language, however, out of deference to the two women
present, was somewhat restrained and guarded.
"Mebbe you'll call to mind, Amos," Uncle Sam Whitmarsh was saying,
"the day we helped tote Uncle Ezry's bar'l o' whiskey daown into his
cellar. I reckon it's a good thirty-five year past; but it seems on'y
like yestiddy to me. My haow time goes. There was you an' me, an' there
was Ned Tyler that left here an' went over into Indianny an' there was
Abner Sykes that's dead an' buried this thirty year. You mind that day,
Amos?"
"Yaas, I mind that day, Sam; an' I mind well the heft o' that bar'l o'
whiskey." Uncle Amos smiled reminiscently. "We was young men them days,
Sam."
"Yaas, we was young, an' Ezry was young, an' he drunk a heap o' whiskey
in them days afore he got so old he couldn't hold it no more. It was
terbaccer harvest an' we was all there a-helpin' to cut. The bar'l come
that mornin'. After dinner Ezry ses: 'Boys,' ses he, 'I wish you'd
gimme a hand with this here bar'l afore you go back to field.'
"There stud the bar'l as big as a maounting; an' there stud the cellar
steps, steep an' narrer. Ezry never so much as laid hand to it; he jes
stud there an' told us what he wanted did. Waal, we four took a holt
o' that there bar'l an' we tugged an' pulled an' wrestled an' strained
an' sweat till we got her daown them steep narrer stairs. Then Ezry
wa'n't satisfied with that; but he had to hev it put way back into the
fur corner where it was dark an' cool. After we'd got her there an'
blocks set under her to hold her level an' everything all shipshape,
Ezry ses: 'Thanks, boys, you kin go naow.' An' we all troops back up
the cellar stairs as dry as we come. I kin see the look on Abner Sykes'
face to this day. He's dead an' gone, but that look is a-livin' yet.
Yaas, he's got a close fist, has Ezry."
Judith, who had heard this story more than once before, felt herself
dropping to sleep again and again. She would catch herself napping,
straighten up with a sudden start and open her eyes very wide, only to
fall into another doze. The sound of a snore roused her from one of
these naps, and looking in the direction from which it had come, she
saw that Uncle Jonah, sunk into the depths of an old rocking chair, had
fallen fast asleep with his chin resting on his breast. The air in the
room was close and heavy with Sunday afternoon dullness. Her eyelids
kept falling over her eyes of their own weight. She longed with an
intense physical craving to throw herself down somewhere--anywhere--and
sleep, sleep, sleep.
Gradually the men stopped talking and lost interest in what their
companions were saying. More and more they sagged in their chairs,
their legs stretched out lazily toward the stove. Chins dropped, and
the sound of muffled, fragmentary voices grew faint and far away. At
length even these ceased, and only an occasional faint snore stirred
the silence.
Judith was aroused by Jerry gently shaking her shoulder.
"Judy, Judy, it's near night an' time we was home. The baby's awake an'
cryin'."
She roused herself with an effort and fetched the baby from the inner
room where she had laid him on Jabez's bed. The others were all
preparing to go, except Uncle Jonah and Aunt Selina, who still slept on
peacefully.
"Leave 'em take their rest," said Jabez. "They hain't got nothin' to go
home for."
As they were driving home, Jerry suddenly broke the silence.
"Uncle Jabez hadn't oughter of stole that ewe. I'm sorry I et any."
"But you kep' on a-eatin' after you knowed she was stole."
"Well, God damn it all, Judy, I was hungry."
"So was we all. So was Jabez when he knocked her in the head."
Her voice had a dry and final sound.
Jerry could find no words with which to express the complexity of his
feelings. So he kept silence. From time to time he glanced sidewise at
his wife with a look of uneasiness and mistrust. She gave him never
a look, but sat staring straight in front of her over the baby's
head. His mind stirred uneasily with a baffled, futile feeling, very
disquieting to his male vanity, that she did not think it worth her
while to discuss the matter with him. An intangible film which, ever
since the Georgetown Court Day had been spreading itself between them,
seemed to grow momently denser and more permanent in quality.