Two days later, when they got home from Dan's funeral, she thought on
going into the kitchen that it smelled stale. Jerry was outside putting
up the horses. She set the baby in the rocking chair and started to
make a fire. A puff of acrid wood smoke blowing into her nose seemed
all at once to have an intensely disgusting smell. She gripped the
corner of the table to steady herself and her features contracted into
an expression of mingled rage and horror. She knew that she was with
child again.
Wednesday of the following week was hog-killing day for Jerry. Joe
Barnaby came over to help him butcher. From the kitchen window Judith
could see the men going about getting things in readiness, putting up
three sets of crossed poles from which to hang the carcasses, arranging
a scraping table, setting up the scalding barrel at a convenient angle
and building a fire under a large, flaring iron kettle. It was a gray,
frosty morning and they had their caps pulled down over their ears.
Their breath came in white puffs.
Inside she had a roaring fire and the wash boiler on the stove to make
more scalding water; for the hog-killing kettle that they had borrowed
was not a very large one.
"There hain't no day I like better'n hog-killin' day," said Joe,
warming his hands over the fire while they waited for the water to
heat. "Some folks hates to see butcherin' day come. But I say to dress
a hawg clean an' neat is as nice a job as there is a-goin'; an' it's a
job a man kin put some heart into, 'cause he knows he hain't throwin'
his work away. More'n that, he's got company by his side, an' that
means a hull lot."
Joe's long, melancholy face showed its nearest approach to
satisfaction, as he went out with Jerry, who had the sharpened butcher
knife in his hand.
Judith stood over the wash tub rubbing out children's clothes. The
baby crawled about on an old quilt spread on the floor. Billy, as was
his three-year-old habit, had been spending his time getting from one
mess of mischief into another. His latest adventure had been to fall
backward into the slop bucket, from which he emerged with deafening
screams. She had had to take off all his clothes from the shirt out and
put on clean ones. The dirty clothes had gone to join the others in the
tub. The heat and stale smells of the kitchen made her feel faint and
sick. Her head swam dizzily. She wished she could go into the bedroom
and lie down.
She heard the shrill squealing of the pig as its throat was cut, and,
a little later saw Joe and Jerry carrying it to the scalding barrel.
Billy in his red cap bobbed excitedly behind. Snap and Joe Barnaby's
dog careened alongside, Snap with loud barks of joyous excitement, the
strange dog silent and respectful as befitted a dog not on his own
ground. Then men came hurrying in for the boiler of hot water.
"Fill her up agin, Judy--not full, jes half," Jerry called back, as he
hurried away after bringing back the empty wash boiler.
She threw an old jacket over her shoulders and went out to the well for
water. Coming back into the stuffy heat of the kitchen from the fresh,
frosty air, the place seemed more foul and stinking than ever. Her
stomach heaved tumultuously. Her knees trembled and she sank for a few
moments into the old rocking chair.
Through the window she could see the men sousing the hog up and down in
the scalding barrel, pulling him half way out, turning him a little and
plunging him back again. The steam from the hot water rose up into the
frosty air like a cloud of white smoke.
The baby began to cry and she got up wearily and warmed some milk for
him, then crumbled a corn cake into it and fed it to him from a spoon.
Having put him into dry diapers, she set him back on the quilt and went
again to her washing.
The second hog and the third were soon killed, scraped, hung up, and
disemboweled. Joe was a hog butcher of much experience and prided
himself upon the quickness and neatness with which he could do the
work. The three carcasses hung with stiffly spraddled hind legs from
the three gibbets, trim, bright, and spotlessly clean against the
dun-colored frowsiness of the yard. Snap, puffed up with the pride and
arrogance of butchering day, stalked about the carcasses and would not
let even a hen approach the enticing little pools of blood that dripped
from their noses. When the cat attempted to sniff delicately at one of
them, he ran her off onto the nearest fence; and when Joe Barnaby's dog
tried to sidle up unobtrusively, he flew at him with bristling hair.
Ominous growls alternated with sharp, excited barks.
Suddenly the kitchen door was flung open letting in a cold draught of
fresh air, and Joe and Jerry, their coats and overalls streaked with
blood, appeared bearing between them a galvanized iron tub full of
steaming pig guts. They set the tub down in the middle of the floor
with a heavy thump and made for the door.
"You'd better run 'em through quick, Judy, afore they git cold. An'
I think there's one that's cut into. Watch out fer it," Jerry called
back. He was already outside.
She scowled darkly at the tub, her black brows drawing together. The
bluish viscera, bubbling up in innumerable little rounded blobs, filled
it almost to overflowing. Bloody fragments emerged along with the
masses of intestines. The outside of the tub was daubed and streaked
with blood. An unspeakable stench rose from it, mingled with the stale
heat of the kitchen and grew every moment denser, more nauseating,
more unbearable. She gagged and reeled. Then, with a quick movement of
sudden determination, she threw on an old coat of Jerry's that hung
beside the door and a faded cap that she wore when she milked or chored
about the yard, and went out, slamming the door sharply behind her.
Going swiftly through the yard, looking neither to right nor to left,
she passed the two men.
"Where you a-goin', Judy?" Jerry called after her in surprise.
"I'm a-goin' to git away from that tub o' stinkin' pig guts you set in
the kitchen. It kin stay there till it rots afore I'll tech hand to it."
Each word she uttered was hard and sharp, like the point of a nail. She
paused not a second in her rapid walk and in a moment was gone from
sight around the corner of the shed.
Jerry stood looking at the place where she had disappeared with
an expression of dazed bewilderment, changing to annoyance and
embarrassment. His pride suffered humiliation at this open affront from
his wife before another man.
Joe came magnanimously to the rescue.
"That's jes the kind o' tantrums my woman goes into, on'y worse," he
said. "An' she's allus a heap flightier when she's in the fam'ly way.
But I never knowed Judy was given to them fits."
"She hain't," Jerry hastened to assure him. "I never knowed her to
take on in sech a way afore. She's run guts many a time, like all the
wimmin, an' never made no fuss."
"It grows on 'em," said Joe, ominously.
"Well, I s'pose we better pack it out," said Jerry, turning toward the
house. "I hain't a-goin' to bother with the guts. There hain't but
three four paound o' lard there at best. The pigs was too young to have
much fat on their guts. We'll jes take an' heave it out back o' the
shed where the hens kin peck it over."
The last sound Judith heard from the yard as she walked away was Snap
fighting viciously with Joe Barnaby's dog, who had dared to approach
too near to one of the blood pools.
She climbed the hill to the ridge road and walked and walked and
walked. She no longer felt at all tired or sick at her stomach. A sense
of burning indignation gave her power and energy. She wanted to keep on
walking forever and put a longer and longer distance between herself
and all that she had left behind: the hot, foul smelling kitchen with
its odious tub of guts in the middle, the tub of filthy clothes, the
steaming wash boiler, the screaming, insistent children, the men going
smugly about with cheeks reddened by the frosty air, and trying to
foist upon her the only part of the job that was tedious and hateful.
The more she thought about it, the more redly her own cheeks burned
with hot anger. She felt as if she could walk to the end of the world.
Her eyes, instinctively reaching out for freedom, sought the long view
that sweeps from the top of the ridge to the horizon. It lay bleak
and bare under a gray winter sky. Its bareness and monotony of tone
made it more far-reaching than in summer. It seemed endless, as she
imagined the ocean might be. Out of its calm and magnitude a sense of
peace welled up and gradually enfolded her. Her step slackened into a
measured, meditative pace. She half forgot the things that she had fled
from and in a little while felt almost happy with the happiness that
comes of peace and solitude and wide spaces. It was more than three
years since she had been by herself in the open country. It was like
meeting with an old lover who has not lost his power to charm. The cold
air smelled good in her nostrils. She breathed deep and rested her eyes
with a sense of quietness and calm on the long, dun stretches of winter
fields.
Then it came upon her again quite suddenly. She felt that she had
neither the courage nor the strength to go through with it all again,
and so soon after the last time. Her flesh cringed at the thought
and her spirit faltered. And when the child was born it was only the
beginning. She loathed the thought of having to bring up another baby.
The women who liked caring for babies could call her unnatural if they
liked. She wanted to be unnatural. She was glad she was unnatural.
Their nature was not her nature and she was glad of it.
She felt suddenly tired and sat down on a stone under a maple tree, her
elbows propped upon her knees and her chin in her hands. A heavy cloak
of misery hung about her its cold and clammy folds. The thought of
her own utter helplessness against her fate settled upon her like the
weight of something dead. For a long time she sat looking out over the
winter landscape and seeing nothing. Her gaze was turned inward upon
her own horror and despair.
After a while she began to cry, not passionately, but in a slow, cold,
bitter way, as though even the relief of tears were denied her.
In the midst of her misery, thoughts of anxiety began to obtrude
themselves. Suppose Jerry had let the fire go out. If he had, the baby
would surely take his death of cold. Or he might have fallen head first
into the slop bucket. Suppose Jerry had left Billy alone in the kitchen
and he got to playing with matches or to poking bits of stick into the
fire to set the ends burning. He could easily set fire to the house.
And if anything happened to them it would be all her doing, because she
had gone away and left them.
She began to shiver and became aware that her feet were like lumps of
ice. She got up and turned hastily toward home. Looking about she was
astonished to find how far she had come. As she hurried homeward her
anxiety increased. Her heart began to beat fast and she stumbled over
clods and bits of underbrush. The afternoon was fast drawing in to
night.
When at last she reached the house and opened the kitchen door, the
room was almost in darkness. Jerry was sitting by the table with the
baby on his lap feeding him warm milk and corn cake. Billy was sitting
on the floor eating some of the same mixture from a bowl. The room was
frowsy and unswept. The washing was just as she had left it.
She had come back half prepared to be friendly with Jerry. But the
look of aggrieved and self-righteous accusation that he cast at her
as she opened the door was quite enough to kill feelings that at best
were only struggling for existence. Her anger rose again as if it had
never died. She returned his glance with a long, hard, black, piercing
look and went to light the lamp. His sense of injury was changed into
uneasiness and a vague anxiety. He would not admit it to himself; but
he was afraid of her.
Silently she fried the corn cakes and some liver from the hogs that
had been killed that day. When they had eaten and she was clearing the
table, Jerry spoke.
"Lizzie May was here," he said, clearing his throat. "I had to tell
her you'd stepped over to see Hat Wolf. She don't seem to know what to
do with herse'f, poor gal. She feels dreadful about Dan."
"The more fool she. She dunno when she's well off," she answered
brutally in a harsh, grating voice, and went on clearing the table,
slapping the plates together viciously. Her own words shocked her; then
she felt defiantly glad that she had said them.
He started, where he sat by the stove, and looked at her in
astonishment. As she went on silently about her work, he kept glancing
at her askance, questioningly, and with a vague uneasiness.
That spring they moved to another house close to several acres of fresh
tobacco ground. Tobacco exhausts the soil in about three years and has
to go through a renovating period. An old couple who aimed to raise
only a patch of corn and perhaps an acre of tobacco moved into the
house that they had left.
Lizzie May had taken her children and gone back to live with her
father; and Jerry had thought of taking Dan's old house. But Judith did
not feel that she could go to live in the house to which Dan had been
brought home dead.
The house to which they moved was less than a mile from the one they
left. It was built of pine boards roughly nailed together and neither
sealed nor plastered. It had three bare, box-like rooms and a rickety
back porch floored with boards many of which had rotted away from the
nails that once held them. When you stepped on one end of these boards,
the other end flew up into the air. The house stood on the top of a
rather high ridge and commanded a broad view. Near it there was neither
tree nor shrub; but there was a little clump of locust trees by the
horsepond. Like Dan's old house it was bare, stark, and open to the sky.
A large and very dirty family of Pattons had lived there the year
before. They were probably distantly akin to Uncle Joe Patton, although
both families disclaimed all relationship. Judith spent days cleaning
up the house and yard. The walls and ceiling of the kitchen were dark
with soot and pendulous with dust webs. The floor was sticky with a
long accumulation of grease and grime. Frying pan spatterings and the
splashings from dish pan and wash basin showed just where the furniture
of the Patton family had stood.
The yard was littered with rags, broken boards and old iron; and scraps
of baling wire tripped the unwary foot.
She threw the old iron and baling wire into a pile behind the
backhouse, and raked up the rest of the rubbish into several heaps of
which she made bonfires to the delight and excitement of Billy, who
hovered perilously near to the licking flames.
When it was all done there were still left many traces of the former
occupants. In the packed dirt of the yard, old floor rags that had been
trodden into the ground were continually coming to light. When she took
hold of them to pull them out a rotted fragment came away in her hand
and the rest clung obstinately to the dirt in which it was embedded.
Billy, too, was continually crawling under the house and triumphantly
dragging out filthy scraps of overalls, old shoes, stiff, and moldy,
frayed fragments of straw hats, ghastly skeletons of corsets, eaten
with mildew and rust, but preserving faithfully the shape of the female
form that they had once embraced, old, rust-eaten shovels, broken rat
traps, and the frowsy stubbs of ancient brooms.
These things she poked into the stove when Billy was not looking
or relegated to the old iron scrap pile behind the backhouse. But
the child was always bringing out more. It was an enticing mine of
treasures.
As in almost all the other tenant houses, the windows were few and
small, set high in the wall and placed without the slightest regard for
comfort, convenience or symmetry. From the outside the house looked
like a weathered packing case into which some one had sawed at random
two or three small holes.
In spite of the dark rooms and the bare surroundings, Judith liked it
better than the little house in the hollow. It was open to the wind and
sky. From the tiny windows she could see far off. In the morning the
first ray of sunlight brightened the top of the ridge; and at the end
of day the sunset filled the house like a presence.