Chapter I: Part 1

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THE WHEEL OF EARTH

the wheel of earth

HELGA
SANDBURG

McDOWELL OBOLENSKY

All Rights Reserved under Pan-American and International
Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by McDowell,
Obolensky Inc., and in the Dominion of Canada by George J. McLeod
Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-6506

Second Printing

Manufactured in the United States of America by American
Book-Stratford Press, Inc., New York

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are given to Archibald MacLeish for permission to reprint his poem, “What Must,” and to the Folklore Section of the Music Division, Library of Congress, for the use of their reference collection and their Archive of American Folklore.

Acknowledgments are made to the following for permission to reprint lyrics:

FIVE FOOT TWO, EYES OF BLUE (Has Anybody Seen My Girl?). Lyric by Sam Lewis and Joe Young, Music by Ray Henderson. Copyright 1925/Copyright Renewal 1953 LEO FEIST INC. Used by Special Permission Copyright Proprietor.

Nine Songs from THE GOLDEN BOOK OF FAVORITE SONGS. Published by Schmitt, Hall & McCreary Co., Minneapolis, Minn.

To
A. D. G.

contents

part one 1
part two 117
part three 197
part four 287
part five 363

THE WHEEL OF EARTH

part one

We lay beneath the alder tree
Her breast she leaned upon my hand
The alder leaf moved over me
The sun moved over on the land
Her mouth she pressed upon my mouth
I felt the leaf beat in her breast
I felt the sun move in her hair
But nearer than the leaf the sun
I felt the love go deep in me
That has no season in the earth
That has no time of spring or birth
That cannot flower like a tree
Or like one die
but only be

Ellen Gaddy was gathering tart stunted June apples into a peck basket. Drifts of cloud were passive in the blue dome above, where hawks were wheeling. The late afternoon sun was warm on her tanned neck. The dog came up barking, stood close to her, tongue slavering, eager. She patted him and he went to curl under a tree. “There, Jack.” He was half shepherd, sensible in the ways of the farm. Ellen was his choice among the humans so he was restless apart. His limpid eyes were fixed on her as she hunted in the tall grass. Her hands were small and coarse, and in wiping sweat from her face she had left careless dark streaks. She was sixteen, the cups of her breasts hung firm, her belly was small. She wore her yellow hair in braids. Her mouth was facile, somewhat obstinate, and her forehead was high, its creamy texture darkened by the season’s sun. A tiger swallowtail like a falling yellow leaf was drifting by. She sighed to it, “Bear me good news.”

The old brook that fed the farm’s pond was near the orchard. Pebbles lying in the uneasy clear water were glossed, tangled twigs and leaves were forced downstream in complaining whirlpools, marsh grasses along the bank strove for footing in the cruel plashing current. Ellen was shaking tree branches, the fruit rattling about her. Today Penny was due to drop her kid. She had looked it up in the almanac. Gestation Table, She-Goat, 151 days. The kid will follow me, making small noises, wanting to play.

A question of smoke was rising from the yellow farmhouse over the hill, set among black gums, hackberries and locusts. The red barn and outlying sheds held the crest of the rise, settling more firmly with each passing year. Occasionally Anton Gaddy, Ellen’s father, must shore up a door frame or strengthen a sagging rafter, but the buildings would stand long after the people. The barn had been hammered together with hand-cut nails and wood pegs by Ellen’s grandfather in 1870. Some of the outbuildings had been raised in 1846 by his father, a Frenchman who had homesteaded this tract in the year of the Irish potato famine. Back of the yellow house, crowded about by dayflower weeds, were two beehives that would mount tall in summer as the hive supers, one at a time, were stacked upon those laden with combs of honey. There too lay rows of vegetables that Ellen and her younger sister, Frankie, kept clean. Maria Gaddy, their mother, never undertook outdoor chores unless the day were pale or clouded, for she had been sun-struck ten years ago, in 1915, “I dassn’t go out but for Sunday mass,” Maria would claim; “it makes me queer to feel the sun.”

In the valley below the hill was the orchard where Ellen was gleaning apples. Back of it stretched the small woods, where gray squirrels were hunting wild berries and mushrooms. They did this daily in the span of hours from sunrise until mid-morning, and from mid-afternoon until sunset. And overhead red-shouldered hawks would circle, sharp eyes searching branches and boles. A large male squirrel was aware now of a vixen fox crouched in hunger below his tree limb. His black eyes glittered and he lifted his paws, prating at her. He forgot his foes in the sky for a moment. The long wings of a wheeling hawk folded, like a stone it dropped. Ellen raised her gray eyes, watching it rise from the woods, prey dangled in its talons. The other hawks were screaming, “Kee-yoo. Kee-yoo!”

Ellen’s mind was on her young goat. She had warned her, “Now don’t walk under the horses’ heads or for a fact you’ll go eleven months.” Sam Offut had told her that. “So they warn a ooman with child hereabouts, Ellie. See, it takes a mare that long to have a foal and she’s got a power in her when she’s carrying.” Ellen didn’t believe him—Sam told many tales. Penny’s time was up and she was seeking a place to drop it. This morning Ellen had seen that her tail was sunken so there were sockets on either side, and the young sagged low. “There. Maybe she’s freshening now.” Ellen snatched the two baskets of June apples, running in her long skirt through high grass into a new-turned field, up the hill toward the barn. Her bare feet sank into the red soil leaving huge tracks. The dog was yapping, caught in the game.

In a corner of the woodshed she had made a stall, nailing bars and hanging a gate with a latch that the goat could not open. It blatted as she set down her baskets and opened the gate. She knelt beside it in the wheat straw to feed it an apple. Her father’s hired girl, Penny Dougherty, had given her the brown animal, then but a yearling, before going away last summer. Ellen had named it after the girl. It slobbered, chewing on the crisp fragrant fruit. Then it snuffed her forehead and ear, began to lick her face, making soft stuttering sounds. Ellen ran her hand along the curves of the slender horns. It shook its fine-boned head. She stroked the beard. “Say, I’d love a little doe, Penny.”

Ever since Penny Dougherty went away Ellen would sit talking to the namesake goat. Her father had hired Penny last summer to help his wife during a sick spell. Then Penny had left them, married Luke Dougherty, gone to the town of Weems Crossroads way off in Illinois. Because she sang so much, Anton Gaddy had dubbed Penny “that roaring ooman.” But Ellen had grieved over the end to the short friendship. She would sing the songs she had picked up from Penny, gay tunes, meaningless, and lengthy ballads that told of sudden death and unfulfilled love.

I dreamed of my true love last night
All in my arms I had her
Her yellow hair like strands of gold
Came rolling down my pillow

Ellen was lonely. Her mother gave her small heed. Her father, as well. He had turned from her at birth, waiting for a son. Then when Ellen’s sister had been born and Anton learned from his wife that she would be barren thereafter, he named the baby Frankie, and fastened himself upon it forthwith. His voice was heard now, overriding the gentle tune, “Girl, where you at? You got the apples? It’s time to feed.”

“Coming, Pa.” At the corncrib she took an armful of ears and shelling them, fed a flock of ducks and geese, the first of her chores each late afternoon. They were free to roam the barnyard, making nests and raising young at will. One wing was clipped every so often to keep them in the safety of the yard. Heads bobbing, the fowl were shoveling the grain with flat bills. The white ducks made a nasal chatter, a gray gander lowered its head and wove its long neck like a snake, hissed and raised its wings at Ellen. “Don’t you squall at me.”

She kept back one ear of corn, went to the plowed field she had raced through earlier. There she gave a call and from the pond came an answering beat of wings. A Muscovy duck was flying up the hill. It circled Ellen, flapping to a halt at her feet, gathering its wings. Its red-wattled head was cocked to one side. She scattered the corn. “Why don’t you come to the barnyard and be tamed, you wild one?” It was watching her with a wary eye, eating the yellow grain greedily.

She looked off at the Kentucky farmland stretched before her. Orange clouds were assembling behind the brush line of tiny trees. The square fields were hemstitched with stone walls and rail fences. Near the barnyard a black gum was rearing gaunt limbs. When a crested redbird’s dark silhouette dipped through the fragrant orange air into its ragged branches, she was shaken by the sudden beauty. She turned quickly, saying to the feeding duck, “I don’t know. Seems I hate every enduring thing.”

She fed chickens that congregated in the stony yard. She filled their water bucket from the pump, watched the speckled hens dip their beaks and up their heads to let the water run down. She collected brown eggs in a fold of her dress, from boxes nailed along the cobwebbed wall. A hen pecked her wrist as she reached under it for heated eggs. The bird’s breast was hot, bare where it had plucked feathers to line its nest. “You’re broody. Sam’ll put you under the pump to break you up.”

She went up the stairs to the farm kitchen and counted the eggs into a basket. “The hens are laying good, Ma. I’m just one short of four dozen. I’ll trade them tomorrow at Love’s store.”

Maria Gaddy was turning from the stove. “I allow you can get me a length of lace too, Ellie. I need a new collar for mass. My old one’s sleazy.”

Ellen’s mother wore her gray-streaked hair in a tight knot. Her body was warped and thin and stiff. It had turned from what it might have been. Her breasts were flattened and she had swathed herself in a long-sleeved, high-necked print dress that came to her ankles. Her stockings were wrinkled above run-down button shoes. Maria lived in continual retreat. She had been given to her husband with the awesome dowry of fifteen hundred dollars. With it Anton had bought his rights to this farm from his only living brother, Garland. Maria spoke now, “Go get some new water, girl.”

* * * * *

Ellen emptied the blue-enameled pail into the sink. The kitchen was roomy. There was a kerosene stove for summer use and a huge range for winter heat and cooking. A black-painted iron sink stood at the side away from the windows. There was no running water but a drainpipe took away the waste. Fresh water was supplied by a well a hundred feet from the house, to which Ellen went. She drank from the dipper before returning. The family was proud that the water from this well was always sweet and cold. At the windowed end of the kitchen was a long table of red oak that had been dressed with ax and adz long ago by Anton’s father, Jules. The surface was whitened from lye-scrubbing, uneven from the years’ wear. On it was a blue dish of poplar honey, a bowl of salt, a milkglass jar of knives, forks and spoons stacked handles down. A pantry was adjacent to the kitchen, where staples were kept—sacks of flour and meal, curd cheeses that hung in cloths from the rafters, milk that stood in pans and jars to be skimmed, and cream that ripened in a churn. More supplies were stored in the cellar. There dusty shelves were holding jars of jelly, jam, ketchup, honey, red and yellow tomatoes, chard and collard greens, peaches, fried chicken and beef. On the lower shelves were tins of lard. From the ceiling dangled strings of dried apples and quinces. On the dirt floor of a bin, potatoes left from fall softened and rotted in the musty darkness. Root crops of salsify and parsnips lay neglected.

* * * * *

From the parlor came the familiar sound of Frankie practicing the piano, scales and exercises rippling. Ellen carried a can of kerosene from the porch where Sam had placed it to the parlor to replenish the lamps. Over the fireplace a velvet cloth was framed, on it depicted the Golgotha crucifixion in brilliant primary colors. An overstuffed sofa, Maria’s knitting basket at the end, was along one wall. The chairs included a doweled high-backed rocker. A round table bore on its lace-covered surface statuettes of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, a worn Bible, a lamp with painted forget-me-nots trimming the bowl, besides dog-eared farm journals, the 1925 _Farmer’s Comprehensive Almanac_, and a silver-banded reading glass. Braided rugs were scattered over the oak floor, once smoothed with broadax. On a wall was a tinted daguerreotype of a stunted wiry man with heavy chin and thick lips, Jules Gaddy. Beside him posed his red-haired wife Nell, whose long face, high forehead and determined mouth resembled her granddaughter Ellen’s. While Jules had been rearing this house, the couple had lived in an outbuilding that now served for a pigstall. Back of the piano hung a representation of the bleeding Sacret Heart. Nell Gaddy had placed it in that spot long years ago, saying to Jules, “Now there, little feist, it’ll stay.”

Frankie was lifting her hands from the keys, watching Ellen pour the coal oil. She swung her pointed boots as she sat at the bench, pursing her lips. “I’m making believe folks are swooning, Ellie. Because that piece I played was so good.” Frankie was fifteen. Her red hair fell silken on her shoulders, her blue eyes were mild.

“I declare, Frankie, you’re biggity. Go get washed. Pa’ll be in.”

The family were sitting to supper then, making the sign of the cross. Anton pronounced grace. When his daughters had been little, Anton had instructed them on the mealtime prayer. Once he said to Frankie, “Tonight you make the grace, Poppet.” But Frankie had lisped a rhyme she picked up in the parochial school.

Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat the more you toot

Anton roared and the family had to get to their knees on the kitchen floor to ask the Lord God’s pardon for the blasphemy. Frankie had thrown up her supper later while Anton was talking to her. “You be a sinner, child. And the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate. So it’s said in the Bible.”

“Oh yes, Pa,” she had mewed like a kitten.

On their plates now they were piling garden greens cooked with fatback and then mixed with scrambled eggs. And chunks of beef from a platter, and green onions and radishes. They spread pot cheese on beaten biscuits, drank buttermilk kept cold in the old dry well beside the porch and pulled up at the last minute to set on the table. All the milk from their herd of cows went to the dairy for a monthly check, except a three-gallon can put aside daily for Maria’s needs. She set it out in pans for cream and made cheeses from the skimmed milk. The hogs got the whey mixed with scraps and middlings and dishwater. Anton would hold his fork in his left hand, pushing the food with a knife. But the two sisters copied their mother, forks held in the right. So Maria’s mam had told her the woman should eat.

“You make the butter up tonight, Ellie,” Maria was saying, “and take it along with the eggs tomorrow. I’ll give you some cheeses to trade, too. My last batch turned out proud.”

“I will, Ma.”

After supper, Ellen carried the churn of soured cream onto the steps. She turned the crank until butter came together in a lump. She poured the buttermilk into a stone jar and walked out to the well, the churn on one arm, the wood bowl and paddle on the other. The sun was beginning to set in a wash of red sky. She paused while it slipped distorted behind the trees. The sky was fading. A subdued light prevailed of twilight. Ellen sighed, torn by a vague melancholy. She was saying to the dog, “Seems I ne’er been so contented. And did you see that sign in the west? Good crop weather.” She pumped water into the churn, turned the dasher until the water that drained off appeared fresh drawn. Then she worked the butter with the paddle, folding and pressing. She spoke as if disputing with someone, “I love butter that’s made up proper.” One at a time bats that were peering restless from the loft of the barn across the way launched out and downward after night insects, then swerved into the treetops. Soon the air was busy with their bodies darting and zig-zagging and their squeaking high-pitched like mice. A cow lowed in the barnyard as it was kneeling, the alarm cry of a cock sounded as it was crowded off its roost, a gander hissed at a female barn rat that slunk along the wall.

Ellen returned to the kitchen, to press chunks of butter into a daisy mold and wrap the half-pound forms in sheets of brown paper. She carried them to the dry well and pulling up the bucket, packed them in and lowered it down to the cold region. Whenever she came out of doors, Jack would rise and follow her. When she returned to the house, he curled in the cool under the bushes.

She went into the parlor. A lamp was lit, the family sat in their accustomed places. Maria was knitting rapidly; the wood needles made dull clicks. She moved her lips occasionally, her eyes glancing sidewise. Anton’s squat figure dominated the room. He was smoking his nightly pipe, a farm journal unopened on his lap. Frankie brought him a terrarium she had made. In a glass bowl, a collection of bits of mosses and stones and a broken piece of mirror formed a minute scene. “Mandy York made one for her pa,” Frankie was telling him. “I noticed how it was done.”

The man’s heart beat strongly. “I’ll think a heap of it, Poppet. I’ll set it in the window of the bedroom where it’s shady.”

Ellen was leafing through the Bible. “Proverbs says here there are three things stately in their march, the lion and the greyhound and the he-goat. Hear that, Pa? It says the he-goat also.” No one looked her way. There were only the whispers of Anton drawing his pipe and Frankie polishing the glass bowl and Maria’s busy needles. Ellen dropped the book on the table abruptly. “Reckon I’ll go take a bath.”

In the half-dark kitchen she filled a kettle. She lit the kerosene burner and went to stand on the porch while it was heating. The meadows were flecked with fireflies, and along the stone foundations of the old house soft shadows sulked. Ellen was leaning against the porch rail. The summer dusk seeped through her nostrils, warming her blood unreasonably, almost to sadness. She took the tin wood-bottomed tub from its nail, went to the pump for more water. She threw her clothes aside, washed quickly, using the jellied homemade lye soap from the crock. She dried with a white towel from the porch clothesline. Dumping the water into the bushes and returning the tub to its hook, she ran naked up the dark stairs.

She shared the room at the head with her sister. The beds would stand in the center of the floor in winter, away from drafty corners. In summer they were moved to opposite ends, each under a small gable window. A trunk held schoolbooks, Catholic missals, rosaries and childhood miscellany. They folded their clothes into a low chest and hung their dresses from a pole under the slanted ceiling. She closed the door swiftly, breathing as though pursued. She knelt on the bed, arms on the open window sill. The moon was emerging as though pushed from the womb of a laboring earth. When Ellen put a hand up she felt tears on her cheeks, wondered at them. “Reckon I can’t bear for there to be such a fine sight.”

She was turning and groping in the chest for a nightgown. “Seems Pa always favors Frankie o’er me. Some way.” Soon she was sleeping. The moon without became canescent and utterly fair. Its colorless light coming through the window made sharp corners soft. It was like a pale rug on the girl.

She awoke from a dreamless sleep. “I nearly slept through.” She was putting on a dress, in haste. Jack, snuffling and leaping, met her at the door. She lit a lantern that hung from a bent nail, and ran barefoot toward the barnyard. A blank disk of moon was squatting above twisted trees. She stumbled over dry roots in the path and the lantern handle clanged, the sound harping on the night. In the woodshed she held the light high. The goat was in the corner by the wall, down in travail. She bleated to Ellen, who hooked the lantern on a rafter peg and opened the gate. The animal was straining again. The dog whined. Ellen turned on him. “Be still and lie down, Jack.”

The water bag appeared and burst. The doe staggered to her feet, trembling, head down, beard drooping. Uttering quick noises she was licking Ellen’s hand. Then she pawed the ground, urgent, folded her forelegs and went down again as the contractions came on. The nose of the kid appeared, a row of lower teeth visible through a filmy sack. It retreated, then appeared again. A foot came in sight beside the head. The doe bawled. “Holy Virgin,” Ellen was whispering, “help my dear.”

Penny arched her back, threw herself on her side with a guttural sound. Ellen grasped the forefoot, pulling until the leg and bulge of head emerged. Then of a sudden, the kid was slipping out in a pool, mouth gasping. With straw Ellen wiped the clinging mucus from its nostrils, gathered up the struggling limp body and placed it by Penny’s head. The dam began to clean it. Ellen looked under a caul-wet leg. “There. It’s what I wanted, a doe.” A thin wail stabbed the air as the kid protested Penny’s thorough cleansing. “I’ll run get your mash now.”

Ellen took the lantern and sped down the pathway spraying the darkness with yellow light. The dog ran after her. “Now I have three of my own, counting you, Jack.” She mixed wheat bran with hot water and molasses. When she returned with it, she was brought to a halt at the pen door. Another kid had been born, a white buckling. The brown first-born doe was already staggering on its legs. Tiny cries were crisscrossing and cutting the night. Penny was standing over the kids, chewing on a mass of discarded placenta, her pattern fulfilled for the moment. When the pan of mash was held out, she scooped it with her jaws, burying her nose in the sweetened food. And Ellen, rubbing the newborn twins with dry straw, was eased in a measure of her longings.

Mist was steaming up from the land before the hot ball of sun would drag through. Ellen was carrying the fluffy brown kid to the kitchen to show the family. “This is the least one. Penny doesn’t know I robbed her of it. She’s busy eating.” Ellen stood the kid on the floor. It looked about, gave a sidewise spring into the air, cocking its head, waggish. It leaped again, pattering on stiff hoofs to Maria who pulled at her apron and drew back with a low noise. “Oh look, Ma. She’s so pretty. If I hadn’t been there last night she might have died.”

“Haw. That’s what you claim,” Anton said. “They get born all the same.”

Frankie had relaxed, seeing her father was in favorable mood. She let the yeanling suck on her finger, stooping over it. “Say.”

“Don’t you want to hold her, Ma?” Ellen insisted. She knew it worried Maria if an animal was in the house; on cold nights she would slip downstairs to take Jack up to bed, creeping down again to let him out early. But this wasn’t the same as a dog for its breath was gently perfumed and it cried like a bird. “Come on, Ma.”

“Fetch the little thing away, Ellie. I don’t want hit to touch me. I can’t abide the fur against me.”

Anton supported her. “Your ma’s right. Hit belongs at the barn with the nanny. Your chores redded up, girl?”

“I did them real early.” Ellen was cradling the kid in her arms; she carried it to its dam at the woodshed. As she was going back to the house, she saw her father ahead on the path, striding from the barn. He shouted over his shoulder to Sam and continued his way to where Frankie was waiting on the steps. He was cutting the end from a twist of dark red tobacco leaves with his knife. He was clad in everyday garb, faded blue overalls and black sateen shirt.

Anton Gaddy was still winter-fat; by fall he would be lean. He was a short thick-set man. His flewed lips hung loose, his chin was long and heavy-jawed. When young his head had been heavily red-thatched, now at forty-eight was balding. His face was freckled and the sun already had burned his skin, despite the protection of a straw hat, toward the high bronze he would wear all summer. He was one of three brothers born and raised on this farm. He possessed it fiercely as he did all he made his own. In a similar fashion his mother had once ruled, driving her husband and denying her two youngest sons that the eldest might prosper. She had sent this favorite, Marc, to college to fulfill her plans for him. But he had run away, disappeared. Then she was notified he had died, and she had brought back the body. This son’s failure had broken Nell Gaddy. When Anton would think about his mother he sometimes confused her with the Virgin Mary. After her lingering death his passivity had evolved into violence, his brooding silence into action. He had taken over the farm and bought out his living brother’s share. His father, stringy, worn from a life of toil, had dropped dead behind the team one fall, his passing scarce noted.

“Want to ride the mare out to the rye field, Frankie?” Anton was folding his knife. “You can let the foal run alongside. You can play with it in the daisies and feverfews while I’m mowing.”

Sam was bringing up the horses, the bay mare Moll, and Blueberry, the buckskin gelding. A six-week colt trotted alongside, shy at the noise of harness on its dam.

“All right, Pa.” Frankie nodded and went toward the team. Her slight form in the shapeless green dress was moving listless.

“Pa,” Ellen said. “I’m going to Love’s now. I’d be glad to get you somewhat.”

“You can pick up two-three plugs for me. Get Brown Mule.”

“I will, Pa.” At the well she rinsed her face and hands in the rushing stream, ran dripping to the house. She dried with the porch towel and sped upstairs to change her dress.

The crow is black, my love you know
It will surely turn to white
If e’er I do forsake you
Bright day will turn to night

She was taking from its hanger a dress patterned with huge white dots. “It was a sad day for us Gaddys when peddler came to the door with this polka-dot goods that took Ma’s eye. And it purely wears like iron.” She pulled on stockings, laced her shoes, slipped into the long-waisted dress. She unbraided her hair and combed it. She tied it with a string, careless, as she was stepping down to the kitchen.

Maria had packed butter and cheese with the eggs in a big basket. She was calling in her reedy voice from the cellar, “There’s a list on top of the eggs, girl. Trade careful, mind. Watch Grady doesn’t cheat me, for he’ll try.”

Ellen put the list in her pocket.

thred, white and black, elastik, small sack salt and coffee. if
enough money, sack sugar small, also tatted lace for sunday collar.
cinnamon and clove sticks, pepper and spice for pikles. save back
for Mr. Gaddy wants apple baccy. dont you forget. and ask Stacey
Love if she has some east. Mine is worn out.

She petted Jack, told him to stay. He sat back on his haunches to watch her swing down the dusty road. Grady Love’s store, on the outskirts of Millville, was two miles away.

Have you seen the green grass
Trampled under foot
Arise and grow again
Oh love it is a killing thing
Did you e’er feel the pain

The sky was blue banners and white. Young breezes were soughing in the trees’ leaves. Her trading basket was light. A mocker-bird was quavering in a cottonwood and ahead a baby rabbit was loping down the side of the clay road. A buggy passed, whirling red dust into eddies. She crossed the plank bridge that spanned the Sweetincreek. Some of the heavy boards were loose and shifted as she walked across, her footsteps hollow. She inspected a group of lanky red flowers on the bank across the ditch. “I don’t even know your name. You got one, you know.” As she started on her way again, she half paused, as though she were losing something precious, quitting a thing but partly experienced. She wandered along, her face dreamy, the basket swinging idle. As if she were seeking something. “Everything, be it bird or flower or star, has a name of its own. No matter how small it be.”

She was nearing a faded frame store, set before a stubbled field of goldenrod and chicory. Out in front were benches where customers whiled away time or waited to hitch a ride on the milk truck going to New Hope or Bethel or away down to Seven Mile Run. Ellen pulled open the screen door and squinted at the dim interior. She entered and rested her basket on the counter. A few flies were snoring lazily in the air. There were open barrels and grimy shelves, and meal, rice, bran, seed, had sifted into the knotholes and poorly joined planks of the puncheon floor. Grady Love, spare-framed, Jay-voiced, bartered with her. “How’s this lace for your ma, Ellen? Seven and a half cents.” Grady had known Ellen all her life. He pitied the poor Gaddy brat and would favor the trade on her side.

“It’s kind of ratty, Mester Love. Haven’t you got a stouter grade?”

She was stowing the spices, lace, tobacco and kitchen goods in her basket. She consulted her list. “Does your wife have some starter yeast to spare? Ma’s bread isn’t rising so good.”

When Grady returned from his quarters in the rear with a cloth-wrapped jar, Ellen was gazing at dusty bolts of yard goods stacked on a shelf. He offered to lift some down. Her wistful fingers lingered over a filmy white cotton with tiny woven points of blue. “I’d love a length of this. What do you name it?”

“That’s dotted Swiss, Ellen.”

“If Pa’ll let me trade some strawberries, would you hold a piece back for me? We’ll be picking soon.”

“Sure, Ellen. You just send word.”

“Bye now, Mester Love.” She took her basket from the counter and pushed open the door. A fluff of cotton was pinned to the wire mesh to keep off flies, but they swarmed in the blaze of sunlight as she went out. Half blinded, she bumped into the hurrying figure of a young man. She was thrown back with such force that she dropped her basket, the contents spilling.

“I’m sorry. Are you hurt, ma’am?” He was grasping her bare arms.

Ellen pushed him from her, confused. “You plaguing bastard.”

She was kneeling, but he was swifter, retrieving the thread spools before her hands could reach them, setting straight the sack of coffee beans, the yeast jar, laughing.

“I never saw you, ma’am, in the sunlight.”

He was fair-complected with ash-blond hair. His eyes were the color of the miniature blue flowers the country folk call innocence. “You’re foreign,” she stammered. “I don’t know your face.”

“I’m the new hand at Brinker’s farm on Sweetincreek Road. I’m Christian Ay. You know of Carl Brinker?”

Dutchman Brinker was a Lutheran and a heathen. When Frankie was in the first grade of the public school, Pa had got in a brush with Brinker over the prayer the youngens recited before class. Pa withdrew Frankie and put her in a parochial school, though it meant the family had to scrimp more.

Ellen was brushing dust from her dress. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mester. Reckon I’ll get on my way.” Her shoes were gritty with dirt; she was pushing the unkempt hair from her hot cheeks.

“Wait a second. Where do you live? I’m going back down the road.” He was persuasive. “Be glad to give you a lift in the pickup, ma’am.”

“Well.” She accepted and stepped lightly into the high seat of the battered truck. Leaning against the sun-hot leather, she waited while he did his errands. Idly she noted manure clods on the floor and baby shoes dangling by a pair of soiled laces from the dashboard. Musty farm smells permeated the cab.

Then he was back, sliding into the seat and pressing the starter. The motor refused to turn over. “Be just a minute. She likes to be coaxed.” He took a crank from under his feet and jumped down.

“Now, Pa sure would have raised sand,” she whispered to herself.

The motor had caught. He was climbing back while the engine puttered and gasped and the cab shook. He spit on his hand where a fresh cut bled. “Every time that crank slips I slice myself. Can’t get the hang of it somehow. My old man never had a car.” His cheekbones were broad and high, his mouth wide. His laughter was showing even white teeth. These with his tow hair made his face appear darker by contrast than it was. His legs were rather shorter than average, his torso powerful.

“Daddy owns a store in Louisville. It’s like Love’s place only lots bigger.” He made a grimace. “And it’s in the stinking city.”

“I ne’er been to a city yet.”

“Well, they stink. I hate the store. My sister does too.”

“Oh?”

“That Rose. She’s wild to leave, only Daddy won’t let her. They need me too, but I send money every week so they can pay a boy. What a gyp.” The truck was rattling over the bridge. Christian blew his horn at a hound trotting in the center of the road, “Oooo-ga!” It slunk into the weeds of the ditch, nose low. “Once the revenuers came in our place looking for Jake. If you drink too much it’ll kill you. We never sold hooch like some did in back.”

“Pa says Mester Bilberry hired two men who drained the rotted ferment from the bottom of his silo. Till he found out. To get drunk of a Saturday night.” Her voice trailed away.

“Well me, I always wanted to work on a farm. It’s the life.”

“Yes.”

“I’m strong as a bull. Just by luck I got this job. Mr. Brinker’s last man quit and he happened to come by our store. So I wrote him, not thinking I’d get hired.”

“Oh?” Ellen was awkward in her loss of words.

“My sister carried on when I went. She thought she’d get to leave home first. My old man told her he’d tie her up before he’d turn her loose in that sin-ridden city. That’s the way he talks. So I’ve been with Mr. Brinker a month now. Some day I’ll have a farm like his of my own.”

A bump in the road made her clutch the basket on her lap. The little shoes bounced.

“Aren’t they silly? Brinker’s crazy for his kids. Always got the littlest one riding on his shoulders.”

“I’ve got a goat,” Ellen was blurting, “named Penny. She dropped me a pair of kids last night.”

“A nanny? Gosh, Brinkers don’t have a goat. Maybe he’d buy one of yours. His boys could drive it to a wagon. Want me to ask?”

“No, I’d ne’er sell one. See, they’re mine.” She wondered whether this stranger could understand the value in which she held the sloe-eyed beasts.

At the yellow farmhouse Christian halted the truck. Dust was floating disturbed in the air above the beaten roadway. The pattern of the midday sun was weaving and shimmering in the shade of the cottonwoods. “See you, ma’am.” He laughed like he couldn’t help it, like a great joke had come to his mind. “Ellie, that is.”

She made no reply, watched the truck grow small, rumbling toward Brinker’s farm, three miles down the road. She moved to the house. Jack was thrusting his head into her fingers and she stroked it. She smiled as though she understood. “See you, Mester.” She took the cuts of tobacco from among the goods in the basket, slipping them into the pocket of her dress. Maria stood vigilant just within the doorway. “Here’s your basket, Ma.”

“Your dish be setting in the pantry, girl. Soon as you eat, there’s ironing. Hit’s dampened down in yonder basket.” The woman had hung the wash at dawn-dusk, gathered it quickly at mid-morning, wearing an outsize sunbonnet. “This trading sure looks poor, Ellie. Hit pleasures Grady to short me, knowing I can’t go trade myself.”

Ellen went upstairs, came down barefoot. She took her plate from the pantry, ate the fried piece of duck, the boiled potato, curd cheese, biscuits and honey. She was dipping from the blue pail. “I declare this water’s sweet, Ma.”

Maria was sorting the contents of the basket in the pantry. “You ne’er got the pickling spices.”

“There wasn’t enough to trade.”

“Well.”

“I want to stir up a cake this evening, Ma. Can I have white sugar for it?” When their taste for sweets became strong, Ellen and Frankie would ask for store-bought sugar to cook with, although they could get along with sorghum or honey. Flour and meal ground from the farm grain was ready for their use, plentiful as a rule, and drippings and lard, eggs and milk. “I’ll bake that white cake Pa likes.”

“Say,” Maria was frowning. “You remember Mester Gaddy’s tobacco?”

“Yes. I’ll run down to look at my new goats. If Pa’s in the barnyard I’ll give it to him.”

“There’s ironing, girl,” warned Maria. She was holding the new lace in her thin hands.

“I’ll hurry.” Ellen brought an armful of last year’s brown hay and an ear of corn to her goat. “This is all he’ll let me have, Penny. But I’ll gather purple vetch this evening, and before long your yeanlings will be grown enough so you-all can run with the cows.” The doe dug into the corn, using her lower row of teeth against the pad of upper jaw to tear the kernels loose. Her amber pupils stared distant. She seemed oblivious to her young repeatedly butting the new-swelled udder and sucking the moist teats.

“His name’s Christian Ay. Reckon he calls some girl his may? Reckon a man’ll e’er be partial to me, Penny?” She dropped the cob and went to the barnyard. “I don’t see Pa, Jack. And I’ve got to iron.”

In the kitchen she was placing the sadirons on the stove to heat. She brought out the ironing board, patched with bleached feed sacking, and laid it crosswise on the end of the table. She spit on the irons to test them, went about her work with familiar hands. The floor was cool to her dusty feet. Her mind roved to one of the songs she had learned from Penny Dougherty.

All on one summer evening
When the fevers were dawning
I heard a fair maid make a mourn
She was weeping for her father
And grieving for her mother
And thinking all on her true love John

Without the square-paned windows, the musky earth lay under the hand of summer’s sun. Garden rows were in view, rabbits and woodchucks fenced out by a wall of stones that mounted each year as more were turned from the ground. Blooming flowers were crowding outside the barrier, begonias, love-lies-bleeding, marigolds and sunflowers, cranesbills and honesty. Later sweet peas and corn poppies would flower, and nasturtiums and youth-and-old-age. Beyond were nestled the beehives, pale apple-blossom and maple honey already stored in the bottom super. In fall the hives would tower high and the men would rob them, carrying a pan of smoke. The topmost honey would be red-black, taken by the bees from buckwheat blooms. Anton would relish the high flavor, but Ellen would find it turning her stomach, like milk when the cows had eaten wild garlic.

Maria entered the kitchen, set about mixing bread, kneading and thumping the mass of dough on the long table, flour drifting to the floor. “That was good yeast Stacey gave me. It’s raring.”

“Grady said it was new.” Ellen carried starched dresses and folded clothes up to the attic room. She put them away, then combed her hair in front of the oblong mirror that hung on the door. She made her mouth soft. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”

She looked down. Her feet were bare, her brown ankles grimy, the dress with the big polka dots was crumpled and her hands were rough. “There. You are an ugly brat.” She flung the door ajar to hide the glass, braided her hair swiftly, binding the ends. Slowly she went down the stairs.

“Come here, girl. Slop those sows. The two that’s due to farrow. Mester Gaddy said to feed them up.”

Ellen took the pail, crossing the lane to the hog lot. “Soooooeee,” she shouted, “pig-pig-pig-pig!” Grunting and sniffing, the two laden red beasts approached, eying her under horny lids. Shoulders pushing, they vied for the whey, potato peelings, crumbs of dough and flour. Ellen watched them root around for scraps and, still squealing and shoving, move off. She rinsed the bucket, filling it afresh to carry with her. The drowsy odor of green grape blossoms drifted languid from the vines. In the garden she stooped and moved, her toes grasping the earth, her nimble fingers pulling among sprouts, making small piles of weedlings. She transplanted sorrel and mustard, poured water on them, made beds of onion sets, black radishes, corn and squash to stagger the summer yield for the table.

Later on in the afternoon Frankie came to the stone wall. “Pa thinks I’m practicing. I vow it’s hot.” Her sunbonnet was shading her face, her forehead was moist. “Sam’s at the barn drenching Maisie with coal oil. She took sick. Sam says it’s the clover. Hit’s too rich for the cows.”

Ellen stretched her arms and left her work. She washed at the pump, splashing her feet, face and arms, wetting her dress.

“Hurry,” Frankie urged, “you’ll ne’er get a cake baked before evening chores, Ellie.”

“If you’ll keep your eye on the stove, we’ll make hit. How’s Pa?”

“He’s plagued about Maisie getting the bloat. But the rye’s cut and drying good.” She was plaintive. “Wish Pa’d let me go with you sometime to trade at Love’s. Why won’t he, Ellie?”

Ellen was touching the packets of tobacco in her pocket; she would use them to bribe an approving glance from her father. “Hit’s his way.” She sensed the familiar stab of rejection.

They stood idle a moment before Frankie started. “Ellie, we’ll ne’er make it.”

They sped to the house light-footed in the dust and heat. “Oh yes, we will. I’ll use Tinie Bilberry’s rule for a white one. You beg Ma for more sugar to frost it.”

They laughed breathless. The younger girl swung her sunbonnet in her hand. “Show me how that one’s stirred up, Ellie.”

The kitchen was cool, the shades half drawn. Ellen lit the burners under the oven. Frankie went to wheedle sugar from Maria, who was in the bedroom making a new shirt for her husband from a bolt of stiff black sateen. The woman was hunched over, concentrating on perfect stitches in the light from the small windows. In this room two babies had been born and one miscarried. Over the gray-painted iron bedstead hung a heavy crucifix. At the farther wall loomed a commodious wardrobe closet, smelling of camphor and holding Maria’s Sunday dresses and Anton’s black suit. “I’ll spare a teacup, Frankie. I’d rather you’d use sorghum. You girls are wasteful.”

Frankie measured the sugar and was sweeping the kitchen. Ellen was leaning back in her father’s chair, the long apron draped over her stretched-out legs as she turned the batter. “Did you heed what went in, Frankie?” The enthusiasm of her young years lifted her so the breath nearly knotted in her throat.

My true love
Is a blue eyed daisy
She won’t work
And I’m too lazy

The batter had been poured into the pans and they were set in the hot oven when into the kitchen their father’s voice rapped, “Feeding time. Where’s that girl?”

“Keep your eye on the oven, Frankie. Don’t forget.” Ellen was running out the door and down the steps after Anton who strode toward the barn. “Here’s your tobacco, Pa.”

He stopped to take it from her. “Now can’t you e’er get to your chores, girl, without me hunting you out?”

Inside the house, Frankie was turning quietly to the parlor. Soon scale notes rang precise against the ancient paper-covered walls. Maria put her sewing aside, went to the kitchen, pinning a sack apron about her. She kneaded down the bowl of warm raised dough, forming loaves and biscuits, greasing them with soft butter. She put them near the heat of the oven to rise.

In the hills about the farmland the sun-drenched late afternoon air filled with Sam Offut’s voice pleading full and deep, “Sooo-cow. Sooook, sooook, sooo-cow.” Winding up the lane came the line of milkers, chewing cuds, dispassionate, hip-bones swaying, udders distended. Jack tailed them, head down. When one halted to crop a clump of grass, his sharp bark sang and he nipped the bony fetlocks. The old duck flapped its wings, splashed the pond water so crawfish and turtles dove to the muddied bottom. It was lifting its heavy body from the pond, and then circling Ellen on the hillside.

A few days passed. Lily Garrett, who lived on the other side of Millville, stopped by to make lavender sticks with Ellen and Frankie. Lily brought a pale fresh honeycomb, for the Garrett family robbed their hives all summer long, not waiting for a fall harvest like the Gaddys. “Mama says she’ll send a plate of basswood honey in July, Mrs. Gaddy, when the bee trees are busy.”

Lily was fat, and soft as custard; she would rearrange her blond curls constantly, her thick white arms uplifted. She was nimble-minded, giggling often, her chins trembling under her small red mouth. She was as abandoned as a puppy untied from a cord and it may have been because of this that Lily’s father bade her lie across her bed each Saturday night while with a locust limb he whipped her well, saying, “The one who loves his daughter chastens her.”

Lily arrived in a clear forenoon before the high heat of the day. The lavender was in full blow as the girls walked beside the bed, plucking them long-stemmed. “Say, Frankie.” Lily was stripping the leaves away and drawing the blooms into a tight bunch. “I remember Ellie and me were in the second grade when I first braided lavendery wands with you-all. Your papa had just put you to the nuns.”

“I know.” Frankie was tying the flowers into a ball with soft cotton yarn, winding and braiding it among the wilted stems. When the flowers were cured they would fasten on ribbons, keep back a few for scenting their clothes chests, and trade the rest at Love’s store. “What’ll become of us all,” Frankie cried, “in the time to come?”

“You’ll be a famous pianist, Frankie,” said Lily, “you’ll see. And Ellie and me’ll visit you up north.”

“Ellie will marry a rich farmer,” Frankie said, “and have a flock of youngens.”

“Not me,” said Ellen. “I won’t be called Mama. And I’d ne’er do a man’s bidding.” But she was thinking of Christian, dwelling on him like a lovely secret.

“Well,” Lily giggled, bold, “if a man liked me, I’d have him. I wouldn’t be biggity.”

“Lily.”

“Say, I sent off for a thing,” Lily whispered, “to catch a man.”

“What?” Frankie pressed.

“A bust developer. That’s how the farm journal named it.”

“Why do you want that? You’re big, Lily.”

“It said men like you that way. I’m going to try it.”

“Your pa’ll find out.”

“I don’t give a care. It comes in a plain brown wrapper, they claim. He might not see.”

“You’re brazen,” Ellen said.

“If I do catch a man I’ll ne’er have a log cabin chinked with clay like ours. Nor cheesecloth curtains neither. And I’ll have no squalling babies to whip.” Lily sweated in the sun, raising her pillars of arms to her hair. The shy scent of lavender enveloped the three of them.

“Reckon we’ll e’er disremember making these lavendery wands?” asked Ellen.

* * * * *

On Saturday she went to appraise the strawberry bed bordering the fence line of Sweetincreek Road. Through the mulch of old straw the creeping plants were flourishing. “The berries are swelling good. Give them a week,” Ellen said to the dog beside her. “I’m going to brave Pa to let me trade a basket when they’re ripe.”

“Hey, Ellie Gaddy, how’s your nanny goat?” Christian Ay, in blue shirt and overalls, was leaning on the other side of the rail fence amid scraggling hollyhocks and high ditch grass and mullein on the road bank. “I brought you something.” He was leaping the rails, his teeth flashing in his broad tanned face. There was a bundle under his arm. Jack growled, running toward him. He patted the dog and it trotted after.

“Hey.” She waited, the red gathering in her cheeks.

“Brinker gave me the evening off. So I walked down the road. Is this your dog? Here, it’s for you.” He was setting the feed sack he carried on the ground and opening it. A rabbit wriggled its nose and slowly blinked dark eyes upward, grain dustings sifted in its blue-gray fur.

“My.”

“I guessed you’d like it.”

She took it from the sack, holding it in the crook of her arm. She brushed the dust from it and stroked the wiry ears. “It’s trembling.”

“It’s tame. It’s not afraid. Rabbits always do that.”

She sat in the grass, bearing it carefully. “I ne’er had one.”

“Don’t pick it up by the tail. Its eyes’ll drop out.” He grinned, looking down on her and putting his hands in his pockets. “You always lived here, Ellie?”

She nodded, bending over the pet beast, disturbed by the looming stranger, charmed.

“I figured you weren’t tenants.”

“Pa owns this farm outright,” she whispered.

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The wheel of earthChapter I: Part 1

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