Chapter VIII: Part 8

“Come out and look at the stars, Frankie. Please.”

“Go on, you two. I’ll finish up.” Ellen went into the parlor after a few minutes. She sat down by Maria.

Genevieve looked up alert. “I thought Frankie was with you, Ellen.”

“She went out with Dyke a spell ago.”

“Oh, dear,” the woman laughed. “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Gaddy. I’ll be right back. I want to hear more about what you were saying.” The heavy sound of her shoes was heard on the porch.

“Why doesn’t she leave Frankie and Dyke be?” Ellen asked.

Anton was filling his pipe. “She sees the case I’ve got here farming.”

The two came in noisily, hand in hand; Dyke followed. “Here’s your little girl, Mr. Gaddy. I’m afraid this young man was hiding her from us.”

“What do you think, Genevieve,” Anton was asking, “of my daughter becoming a fine musician?”

“Well, in time she could be. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She’s got talent. And she’s a beauty. When I get more money saved, I’m going to get her the best teacher I can find.”

“I just love you, Pa,” cried Frankie. “And this dear house. And Ma and Ellie and everyone.”

“Tsk, tsk, such a little girl,” said Genevieve. She stood by the piano.

Woodman, spare that tree
Touch not a single bough
In youth it sheltered me
And I’ll protect it now

Ellen was pressed to make fudge and coffee. Dyke was left in the parlor with Anton and the visitors came into the kitchen to help. While the two cracked nuts, they chattered in steady rapport. Ellen stepped into the hall, put her hands on her ears. “That ox.” Obscurely, she resented the older woman, missed the old way in which Frankie would turn to her for approbation and counsel. She could overhear Anton in the next room.

“Yes sir, boy, this fellow had a dog to run his treadmill. He sat in the shade and ground axes and knives for folks on the grindstone that dog turned for him.”

“I ne’er heard of that being done before, Mester Gaddy.”

“Hell, I even knew a man that fixed a treadmill for his old ooman’s cat to run her churn.”

* * * * *

They gathered at breakfast. Ellen had set potatoes to boil, fried bacon, and sent Simon to refill the blue water pail. Frankie and Genevieve were coming in sleepy-eyed, clad in gray twill skirts. The girl appeared frail and willowy beside her companion whose broad buttocks and ample breasts were constrained by her clothing. As they were sitting at the laden table, Anton and Sam hurried in. They were late. “The colt’s gone,” Anton worried. “Must have jumped the rails where it’s rotting. Jesus Wept, they’re all falling apart. We’ve got to string fence wire all o’er now.”

“Red horse tired of the meadow,” Simon piped. “He set out for to see the other side.” The child looked through the square-paned window, past the low wall of the garden, to the day that had cast off the shawl of night.

“I tell you, let’s organize a search party,” Genevieve said. “We’ll go get our hats. Don’t you agree, Frankie?”

“All right, Gen.”

“It’s up to you-all to find him. Sam and me can’t help. We got the rails to mend and the hay field to cut. Come on, Sam.”

They left Maria cleaning the kitchen, for she refused to stir without the door. They searched woods and adjacent fields. There was no sign of the missing colt. At noontime the three women met outside the house. Genevieve was bramble-scratched, the smell of perspiration thick on her as she sat with Frankie on the porch steps. “I think I got poison ivy,” said Frankie, “and I tore my stockings.”

“I brought some bug stuff with us. It’s in the bags somewhere. These mosquito bites itch.”

Ellen was bringing water from the well in a dishpan and they got up to wash. The woman grunted as she dried herself. Frankie was laughing at her, wrinkling her nose. Suddenly Ellen said, “Where’s Simon? He was with you, Frankie.”

But Frankie denied it. “He got tired. He said he was going home to get a drink.”

A hand twisted within Ellen. She was running. She heard the calls behind her. “Wait, Ellie!”

And Genevieve, “Let’s be calm.”

But Ellen ran and ran, Jack barking beside her, to fields stretching past woods, and past that, to places she had wandered before her son had gained this hold on her. All the while she cried, “Simon. Simon.” And the dog’s staccato answered.

It was late in the day when she returned. They had all assembled in the yard. “We’ve been looking, too, Ellie,” Sam told her.

“Maybe a snake’s bitten him.” An empty place trembled in Ellen. “And he’s lying some’ere.”

“Nonsense,” said Genevieve.

“He’s too little.” Ellen’s mind tried doors that were barred. “He doesn’t know the country well.” She looked at the ground.

Sam said, “Don’t fret, Ellie. He’s a steady youngen.”

The group was wavering, uncertain. “Appears you could look after your own youngen.” Anton bent for his pitchfork. “That hay’s got to be turned.”

Genevieve took a deep breath as the men went toward the field. “I’m not concerned. He’ll come home. Why, he’s a big boy.”

“Quit jawing,” Ellen said savagely.

Then they heard the men’s shouts, their distant figures were pointing. “There! Look there.”

The blood-bay colt was ambling up the lane, the boy on its back, his short legs spread, a lock of the mane in his stubby hand. His cap was set visor backwards. “I got lost, Mama.”

“Where did you find him?” Ellen ran to take the colt’s headstall.

“Down the road a ways. I got turned about.”

Ellen was leading the horse to the barn. “Well.”

Simon slid to the ground. “I lost Anse’s ball.”

“Should I make you another?”

“No.” He was petting the tall colt’s shoulder. “Mama?”

“What do you want?”

“I’d like a horse to name my own.”

“Maybe someday.”

“Mama?” He stroked the horse, looked up at her, mute. His eyes were wide. He smiled slowly, waiting.

“Fancy you finding the red colt, Simon. When none of us could.” They turned to walk to the house. He swaggered behind her, pleased with himself.

Little Tom Tinker
Got burned with a clinker
And he began to cry
What a poor fellow am I

Anton nearly shot a dog fox a day or so after. The fences, lined with stones and weeds, had furnished ambush for the daring fox. In broad daylight even, it would slip to the hen house, kill three or four, and escape, slinging its latest victim across its shoulders. Anton would smoulder, viewing his dead hens. He told Genevieve, “Years back I had a flock of pullets just starting to lay. One morning I found a heap of thirty dead under that oak. Next week there was eighteen. I’d hear the varmint barking at night. Times he’d screech like a wildcat. I didn’t sleep till I got him. Ne’er did find the earth where the whelps were hid.”

In the hour he was free before milking, Anton had taken his gun. He set out, Jack at heel. He plodded through likely spots, and as he came up out of the woods he heard a crow call, signaling. He glimpsed in the distance the fox they hunted. Its summer fur was scraggly and yellow-red; it was digging at a woodchuck hole on the edge of the field. Jack had seen it too; he fell behind the man, who was slipping noiseless through the high orchard grass.

Then Anton had stopped short. He had come upon Frankie and her friend, sitting with hands about their knees in the grass. The older woman was leaning over to kiss Frankie on the lips. Frankie laughed, tossing her shining bobbed hair. Anton forgot his quarry. Jack whined and growled as the fox clawed at the earth. The man moved in dourly upon the women in the afternoon sun. He stood before them with legs set like trees in the grass. “What’s going on here?”

Frankie lifted her head. “We’re singing, Pa.”

Her companion was getting up. “We were just enjoying ourselves out here, Mr. Gaddy. My, your Frankie’s a pretty thing.”

Anton strode from them. They saw him spit amber juice into the weeds. Jack galloped, yapping, for the fox had slunk off. Frankie giggled, “Oh, Gen. You shouldn’t have.”

That evening the man was stalking restive between kitchen and parlor. Genevieve sought to draw him into a discussion. “I was reading about a new commercial fertilizer, Mr. Gaddy.”

“Shit,” he growled and went to stand on the porch. Car lights glared as Dyke Burwell’s Oldsmobile arrived in the yard.

Dyke called from the darkened window, “Hey!”

“Come in, boy.”

The lights cut and Dyke walked toward the porch. “Frankie home?”

Anton saw suddenly that Dyke was a man now, bulky and tall, stooped somewhat from the weight of his awkward upper body. “Hum. She’s here.”

They stood together, embarrassed by the companionship they felt. They were looking off into the half-dusk of the yard. “Getting hot.”

“Hum.”

“Could rain, Mester Gaddy. Ma says if she can feel toes on her missing leg, it’s rain for sure.” They were leaning against the porch posts. The older man stirred, unhappy. Dyke was talking in a soft monotone, relating a joke.

Anton interrupted him, “I’d like to shoot that varmint.”

“Well, like I was saying, Mester Gaddy, a bird came o’er then and muted on him. Hell, he says looking up, now you know, Lord, this is just going a trifle too far.” Dyke snickered, hopeful, but Anton remained glum. The young man scratched his neck. “You say Frankie’s home?”

They went into the house. Anton’s voice was cold, “Dyke, I want you to take Frankie here to the movie house in Bethel. That way Miss Wheeler and I can talk about the farm.”

“You are sweet, Pa. But I don’t care to.” Frankie yawned, getting up from her chair. “Here we are on this old Kentucky home and why go to the flickers? We see them all the time in the city. But you’re thoughtful, Pa.”

So instead Frankie coaxed Dyke to sing with them. Ellen saw how Genevieve’s black eyes glinted when Dyke spoke to Frankie. She saw Dyke’s confidence wither as he appeared a poor thing. Genevieve was saying, “Frankie told me you keep house for your mother?”

“I help her, Miss Wheeler.”

“I think it’s wonderful you mop and dust like a daughter. That’s an accomplishment.”

Ellen walked out of the room and onto the porch. A shadow was drifting by the hen house fence. “There’s that fox, Pa.”

Anton grasped the gun that stood by the loft stairs. His body mingled with the shadows. His face was vacant-eyed, as he slipped past Ellen, like a cat that spies a bird flutter to its nesting bush. After the family was in bed and Dyke had driven away, Anton returned. He flung the yellow-furred carcass at the base of the porch steps. The dog worried it until Sam arrived at dawn and dragged it into a field for buzzards to pick.

Simon came in dirt-stained to where the family and Sam Offut sat at the noon table. His hair was over his eyes and he brushed it back. He held a box-turtle he had found. He was clutching it to his shirt and standing within the door. Ellen said, “Go clean up. And put that turtle away, Simon. You’re late. Now run.”

But Simon went to stand at Anton’s side. The man continued eating, pushing his food with his knife, his head bent in hunger. Simon spoke so that Ellen knew he had thought how he would say this all the way to the house, ever since he caught the turtle. “Da says they’s seven kinds of meat in a turtle. E’er heard that, Granddaddy?”

“Who’s Da?” Anton threw his knife with a clatter.

Simon was staring, open-mouthed.

“Who’s Da, boy?”

“Da,” Simon blurted, cradling the turtle, the spiny legs scratching his soft flesh.

“Pa, that’s Mester Dougherty,” cried Ellen. “The youngens called him that.”

“Don’t speak his name again. Mind, boy?” Anton picked up his knife. Genevieve and Frankie exchanged small knowing smiles.

Ellen pleaded, “This is a land turtle, Simon. The kind you eat’s a water turtle. Go wash now.”

* * * * *

Later on, the women were clearing the dishes. Anton was puffing his pipe. From the direction of the hog pens came a squealing. Through the screen, Ellen saw a score of young pigs spreading out toward house and barn. After them stumbled Simon, trying with aimless movements to round them up. His face was worried, his body blundering. She pushed the door to go and help him. Anton spoke behind her. “Stay there, girl.”

Ellen knew what had happened. Simon had been sent out as soon as he had eaten, to move the twenty yeanling pigs to new quarters. Anton had directed him to move them one at a time. But the child had tried to shoo them in a drove, the way he did the geese or cows. The baby pigs were fractious and ran out like wheel spokes. Sam was hustling from the barn. Ellen watched the two men break sticks, then shouting, gather the pigs into their new pen. The little boy’s shoulders were rounded, hands dangling helplessly. Sam returned to the barn. Anton called the boy to him. He cut a switch from a locust tree. Simon was moving slowly across the yard. Ellen came out on the porch. “Get in the house, girl. Lest I switch you for your brat to see.”

Ellen went up the stairway to her room. “He’s bound and determined to have it out. But it’s because he’s plagued at Frankie.” She sat dry-eyed on the bed. Her head was throbbing.

* * * * *

Afterwards she found Simon in the field with the goats. He held his hand on the neck of one doe and scratched under its beard. His face was streaked and dirty. “I was bad, Mama.”

“You sure could use a bath. Come on, let’s get the tub down.”

* * * * *

On Sunday the two Gaddy sisters were sitting on the porch. Lily Garrett walked up to them in her shapeless Mother Hubbard dress. “I’ve come to make lavendery sticks for the last time with you-all.” Lily was sweating through her padding of fat.

“What do you mean, last time?” Ellen got up to greet her.

Frankie and Lily kissed. “You haven’t met Gen yet, Lily.”

“I’ve got news for you.” Lily’s face was shaking as she laughed. “Craig Hedrick’s making me his wife.”

“Ellie went with Craig once, didn’t you?” Frankie asked. “I remember.”

“Just to mass,” said Ellen.

“I can’t ask you to a wedding.” Lily was raising her large arms to her hair. “We’re only going to the priest. The bans have been read and we’ve got no time for fancy doings. Craig’s bought the farm next to him. He’ll be working o’er a hundred acres this summer.”

“My,” said Ellen.

“We’ll drive straight home from the priest and go to work, he says. He’s going to get a tractor with lights so he can work nights. Law, he’s a goer.”

“Calling him a goer makes me remember Mandy York,” Frankie was saying. “When she was out hoeing with us that time and she said, I’m smart, I’m a good duster and a good sweeper and a good hoer. We laughed at how it came out.”

“Her baby is doing good on your goat’s milk,” Lily said.

“I still can’t believe Mandy’s dead,” cried Frankie. “But now here’s Gen.”

The older woman came down the stairs. “Who’s this?” She was linking arms with Frankie.

“This is my friend, Lily Garrett, Gen.”

“You certainly look hot,” Genevieve said. The two walked away to the lavender bed.

As they were plucking the flowers, Lily talked softly to Ellen. “Where’s Simon?”

“He’s in the field. Sam lets him ride Blueberry. He thinks he’s a man sitting up there holding on the hame knobs.”

“He’s a pretty child. Does he take after your husband?”

“A mite.”

“Can’t say he takes after your side.”

In the silence, Ellen was binding the stalks with yarn; the sweet oil scented her fingers.

“Craig’s got no use for you, Ellie. Reckon he’ll not let me come down this way when I’m Mrs. Hedrick.”

“You think a lot of him, Lily?”

“It’s like this. I’m built so big most fellows laugh at me. Papa’s glad to get me settled. He’s going to help us where he can. I allow I’m a sight lucky to catch Craig.”

Ellen had never heard the flighty Lily speak so seriously. She seemed nearly sad as she came to this turning in her life.

“You’ll make him a good wife.”

“I aim to. I’d like to have a child like yours.” They worked awhile, the murmurs of the other two coming from the end of the bed. “I don’t know if it’s right to tell such a thing on my promised husband, but I knew you long before him.” Lily’s face fired red. “He says you be free with men, Ellie. Says he could name the ones you’ve slept with.”

“There’s lots of tales told, Lily.”

“Says you weren’t even married.”

“The grapes are grapes of gall,” Ellen spoke bravely. “I don’t care.”

“You’re twisting my words, Ellie. But I’ll say more.” The hot sun drenched them, drew the last moisture from the flower bed. Lily’s curls lay straggled on her sun-browned neck and Ellen waited. “I’ll be glad when Craig won’t let me come here to visit you-all. I know he wanted you for a wife. He tells those tales for the hate he bears you. Being as you slighted him.”

“Lily. There was nothing between Craig and me.”

“I’ve seen a little silk rose he keeps. It came off that blue hat you wore when you went to Chicago that time. How’d he come by it?”

“Oh Lily.”

“You won’t tell. And knowing I took what you wouldn’t have, I’d as lief bide away from you.” Lily’s eyes brimmed as she bent over the handful of pale-purple blooms.

Ellen trembled. “If you feel that way.” She was working down the perfumed rows, away from her childhood friend. “I don’t care.”

* * * * *

The visitors were planning to leave the following weekend. Genevieve Wheeler was due at her desk in the Featherbone Works on Monday morning. On Wednesday night Anton awoke to the stutter of thunder. He shuffled barefoot, to close windows in the kitchen and parlor. As he was returning, he stopped a while at the calico curtains of the partitioned room where his daughter and Genevieve slept. He overheard their whispers. Grinding his teeth, he took the cloth in his violent fist. But he released it and went to the bed where Maria was snoring, mouth half open. “Hail, Holy Mary,” he whimpered. He prayed, envisioning his mother Nell, clad in a blue gown like the Virgin, her bright red hair flowing about her shoulders. He wept secretly, fashioning words he would say as he banished Frankie forever.

The night’s rain drew upward to the hot sky. The sticky air was clinging as the family slowly collected for breakfast. Frankie and Genevieve were seated, Maria was placing a dish of fried potatoes on the table before joining them. Ellen had brought a hot skillet of eggs from the stove. She lifted them onto plates with her iron spatula. “I’ll take two, Ellie,” Genevieve cried. “This country air’s given me an appetite.”

“Oh, Gen, you always take two.”

A bumblebee, caught at the glass, was buzzing. Simon ran in. He had washed at the pump and water was dripping from his hands. “Morning, Simon,” said Frankie. “Why does an old maid go to church so early on Sunday? Don’t tell him, Gen.”

“Let’s see, Auntie.” The child studied his egg.

Anton came in. The screen door cracked behind him like a breaking stick. The people turned. He spoke softly to his younger daughter. “The Bible says, were they ashamed when they committed abomination? Nay, they were not. Neither could they blush.” He wiped his face with an arm dusted with chaff of hay and hair of cows. Ellen heard the bee mumble at the glass and her hand, holding the skillet, was tiring. “You be not welcome under my roof now, girl. The Lord God’ll have a reckoning day for you.”

“What’s this all about, Mr. Gaddy?” began Genevieve.

“Shut your jaw. Unnatural ooman.”

Frankie was still, a paleness blanketing her features. She was wearing a high-throated shirtwaist, the color of her hair brilliant against its whiteness. Her linen skirt fitted her small hips. Her hands rested in her lap. Frankie had turned, after months of terror and insecurity in Garland’s house, to the gentle dominion of the older female. The grip of her father’s hand had gradually fallen away and she had begun to think of the home farm as a place in one of the tunes they would sing, nostalgic and typical.

First the farmer sows his seed
Then he stands
And takes his ease

They were gay in the small Chicago flat. Now the old fear of Anton was absent. She was waiting until he would speak again into the sultry kitchen.

“You be gone.” His voice was a blade cutting a cord. “When Sam and me get back from the wheat this noon. Christ, you be not my daughter any more.” He stalked to the door and out.

“What did Granddaddy say, Mama?” The high whisper spilled into the silence.

“I don’t know,” sighed Ellen.

“Now he ne’er ate his breakfast,” Maria was complaining, “with his fretting. But here comes Sam. He’ll eat good.”

“There’s simply no talking to Pa when he’s set like that, Gen,” Frankie laughed. “He gets so sore.”

“Tell, why does the old maid go so early to church, Auntie?” Simon asked.

“Well, by golly,” said Genevieve, pushing back her chair. “Let’s get to packing.”

Frankie laughed again. “So she can be there when the hymns are given out, silly.” She got up, brushing her skirt. “Oh, Ellie, don’t worry. You know Pa. And we did have our visit. You’ll see, we’ll be back next summer.” Frankie was going to the bedroom.

“Don’t call that much of a riddle,” said Simon. “Don’t get it.”

“You want to go berrying by the lake?” Ellen set the skillet down on the stove. Her voice was unsteady. “They’re real thick, Simon. All you have to do is shake them in the pail. You take Jack for company. Watch out for snakes, mind.”

Sam was coming up the porch as the boy took the lard pail and marched off, his hand on the dog’s back. Simon’s hair was white in the summer sun. His cap, grimy and wrinkled now, perched on his head. Ellen turned to free the imprisoned bee still tumbling at the pane. Maria spoke, “Want these cold eggs, Sam?”

16

Summer had hurled itself on the quailing countryside. The moisture was drawn from the bowels of the land, first from the stony top clay, until finally from the reservoir far below. The few humid clouds were carried away on winds that lived in the upper troposphere and there was no rain. A drought prevailed. As daylight made colors known, an opossum was waddling through the oat field, where stunted stems withered before the white grains could form. It pounced on a fleeing lizard just before Sam Offut shot it cleanly through the skull. He plucked its young, no bigger than a thumbnail, from its nipples and left them in the field. At breakfast he told the Gaddys, “My old ooman’ll bake it. That’s one thing Eadie can do.”

Anton was restless. He walked outdoors, drawing on his cold pipe. “Turning the earth’ll just dry it worse, Sam.”

“No weeds are going to come up anyhow. What’ll we do if it doesn’t rain, Mester Gaddy?”

Simon was watching them from the screen, his nose against the wire. He called, “Granddaddy, which way’s the wind blowing?”

But the men looked at the burning sky. They stood in the yard awhile, then went to the tool shed or scattered old hay to the cows in the dried-up pasture, puttering time away until it should rain. Simon was on the steps talking to the dog. Ellen could hear his singsong. She told Maria, “Simon’s at the aping age. He thinks he’s Sam. Or again he thinks he’s Pa.”

That sweltering noon Anton beat his wife. It had little to do with the drought, although irritation had made his temper short. Anton seldom lifted his arm against Maria ever since a few summers past when she had taken to bed after he struck her. Anton had felt justified at the time, for Maria had been nagging him about the kind of wood for her pap’s coffin. He had given her money enough for a pine box, but she demanded oak. “Oak’s dear, ooman. No more now.” And when he had beat her she was somehow hurt. He had been forced to hire the girl, Penny, to help while his wife was recovering.

Maria was alone in the house in the hot morning. A salesman came to the door, a thin man, wearing a flat-top hat. His striped suit was frayed around the lapels and seams. “Madam, I presume you’re the lady of the house. It’s clear you’re a pious one. I myself am a man of God. I carry the Word.” He was taking a Bible from his worn satchel. It was handsome, gold-embossed, gold-edged. He was showing her how in some sections the first letter was immense, with doves or flowers set into scrolled lines.

Maria coveted it. “But I’ve got no money, Mester.”

“This is such a bargain.”

“If I had the money.”

“Sometimes a farmer will hide money in a mattress. It’s his way. Or again in the rear part of a drawer that he alone uses.”

She began to shake her head, eying him.

“There’s few would think ill of a wife who knew a fine trade. Look at this Good Book.”

She turned the leaves, lingering over the gold letters. “What’s its price?”

“Fifty dollars, Madam. To you, ten.”

“Well.” He sat in the parlor while she found the bills laid in the ticking. She moved her mouth in an inner argument. She took some of them, replaced the roll in the straw. She walked back into the parlor. “Hit seems there be but seven. What do you say, Mester?”

“I’ll make you a special.” He was reaching for the money. “I’ll take it.”

At noontime, when they finished eating, Maria spoke. “There’s a thing I did.” She went to get the Bible, her eyes moist and bright.

The smoke from Anton’s pipe dwelled over the used dishes and his brow drew in puzzled lines. “How’s this?” He was taking the book from her. “Where’d you get the money?”

“Amid the straw then, under the bed.”

“How’d you think to look, ooman?”

“Peddler said it would be there. So he knows is the way of a farmer. I took but seven.”

Then Anton was hitting her on the shoulder from where he sat, because he had been shown for a fool. He rose, seizing his black shirt and ripping it so buttons fell tinkling. His chest was exposed, matted. He struck her again. “Prices are falling so I can’t sell. Rising so I can’t buy. There’s a drought on us, and you have to thieve behind my back.” He lifted up his fist.

She ran to the bedroom where the wardrobe closet stood, and crouched in the camphor-ridden woolens. She whimpered, “Mam.”

Ellen waited until Anton had gone to join Sam in the yard. She picked up the Bible and put it on the table before Simon. Most of the Book of John was missing, and Kings and Isaiah. Later Anton would hunt in vain for Jeremiah, his favorite prophet. But now Ellen was turning to the First Book of Samuel. She had accepted Anton’s violence as she did the drought, linking them in her mind as manifestations of indisputable power. And she would give Maria time to recover, in the same unquestioning way in which the farm folk would woo the land back with seed and share when the rain came. Ellen was reading to Simon, “The Lord seeth not as man seeth. Man looketh on the outward appearance. But the Lord looketh on the heart.”

Simon examined the pictures while she made order in the kitchen. “Here’s varmints I ne’er knew of, Mama.”

The windows were open. Anton had taken a screen down the day before to mend it and Ellen had hung strips of cloth to keep out flies that bred constantly in the barnyard. Simon snatched at those buzzing about him. When he caught one, he would slide from his chair and let it out the door. He returned to his perch and book. “You’re a soft one,” she scoffed. “That fly’s coming right back through the window.”

He smiled in his slow way. “I don’t care.” His eyes were as if he had drawn aside curtains where he was apt to hide himself.

Ellen was making a pot of coffee. She went to coax her mother from the closet. “Come on, Ma.”

Maria stared coldly. “Leave me be.”

“Have some coffee. You were clever, Ma. To get a book like that at such a price.”

At length the woman arose, rubbing her bruised shoulder. “Well.”

Simon gave her the book. “Take it, Granny.”

“We have to cut hoofs, Ma. You drink the coffee.” Ellen set the cup by Maria.

“Go along, then.” Maria was opening the book. “You can take a look if there’s any apples. This is a dreary year for storing up.”

In the pasture, Ellen trimmed the goats’ hoofs with a pocketknife while Simon held their leather collars. The little herd had prospered. There were six, besides Rhodie who still boarded at the Yorks. Ellen walked among her goats and she was the center of the wheel. She knew each and the way it differed from the next, how it placed its foot, how it moved or crowded to be close to her, butting another with a click of horns. Penny was aging and moved slow. Pie, the big skewbald one, had no beard and was slick and fat. There were two shaggy brown yeanlings, saucy and bold. And Leona, the white doe, had yellow eyes in a long homely face.

Simon and she took the does, when they had finished, over to the orchard. “Wonder why goats like to follow after, Mama? And you got to drive a cow?”

Ellen was drawing tree boughs down. The animals craved the young shoots more than field clover; they were rearing on their hind legs, dancing with tongues extended.

“There’s no apples here, Mama.”

“There’ll be a few later. I see some fruiting.”

The goats had their fill and were taken to the pasture again. Then Ellen went up the lane, Simon trailing behind. The does stood their slender forefeet on the gate bars, calling after them. The heat quivered, the land lay gasping, the corn died as clay cracked like a split plate around yellowed stalks. The sun dominated the clear dome as well as the prostrate land. Even Simon felt the menace and reached for Ellen’s hand.

After supper Anton, his anger exhausted, was reading to the boy from Maria’s Bible. He had brought it to the porch. The women in the hot kitchen could hear through the open door. “Now this Elisha was going about the countryside doing miracles. There came forth children out of a city and mocked him. Said, go up thou baldhead. Go up thou baldhead. Elisha he looked on them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. There came two she-bears then out of the woods. They tore forty and two children of them. And then Elisha he went from thence to Mount Carmel.”

Simon’s eyes were large and wary. “They shouldn’t have sassed that man.”

“Take a lesson from it. Heed your manners. Hear, youngen?”

“I will, Granddaddy.”

The women came out with cornhusk fans that Maria once had fashioned. Anton turned pages, seeking the words of Jeremiah. “You got a reaming to top all here, ooman. Go fetch my own Bible, boy. This one’s not put together proper.” Then he read, “Thus saith the Lord. Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths where is the good way. And walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

Ever since Ellen and Anton had visited Father Tompert and she had voiced herself to the priest, Ellen had discovered a new freedom. She had found herself supported by the church in her dispute with it, in her desire to find her own path. It gave her a wholeness and a bravery toward Anton. So she would keep Simon at her side on Sundays while her parents rode to church. Maria was disturbed. “Hope you don’t burn for this, Ellie. Wonder what Jesus would say if he came through Millville today?” Anton had grunted, angry, to the team, “Haw-whup.” Unknown to Ellen, he had spoken to another priest in Bethel regarding his daughter’s departure from the church. This man was old, his face creased in deep lines, and he advised Anton to obey his parish priest and to care for his own soul.

* * * * *

After her sister had gone away with Genevieve Wheeler, Ellen would watch Anton going about his work abstractedly. He would stop now and again to raise a hand or mumble to himself, then startle as though coming out of a dream, and resume his work. He declared no one was to speak Frankie’s name. One day Ellen, rummaging for a lost tool in the shed behind the hog pens, came on the remains of a glass bowl-garden, the one Frankie had made when she was fifteen to please her father. It was smashed and Ellen knew Anton had hurled it there in a smoldering rage.

He began to use certain phrases with Simon such as he had used with Frankie. “A storm is nothing, Poppet,” he said once when thunder moved over the sky, failing to see that Simon had no fear. He baited the boy too, told him to watch the butchering of an old milk cow. “This is man’s work and you just as well learn it early.” He smote the beast with a maul behind the ear. When it staggered to its knees, he used the maul again. Sam cut the jugular with a sticking knife and while the lifeblood flowed, they fastened chains to its hocks and hoisted the limp body up.

Simon brought a pail of water for washing, took the liver and kidneys in a pan to the kitchen. He helped carry meat that the women were frying down in fat for the lean winter coming. He stumbled up the steps to the kitchen with his load. “Granddaddy killed old Jess. While she was looking at him.”

“He needs the money, Simon. She wasn’t good for a milker any more. He’s going to take the hide and one side to Bethel.”

“He could have laid his kerchief o’er her eyes.” He took up the blood-stained pail. With lagging step he returned to his tasks.

Anton found Simon was apt to be slow and chided him. He was scattering handfuls of slaked lime on the hog house floor, sending Simon to refill the pails from the sack in the yard. In the ovenlike heat, the white dust clung to their sweated clothing and skin. “Think menfolk are always going to wait on your lazy ass? Now when I was a youngen I learned on a stick. Haw.”

And sometimes Anton turned on him unexpectedly. When the child heard his steps and ran to open the porch door, the man would say, “Now get out of here.”

“It’s but his way, Simon,” Ellen pleaded when she saw the boy’s eyes following the stocky erect figure.

“I know it, Mama.”

The drought broke toward the end of September. Maria was claiming the Man of Signs had foretold it. “It be the Autumnal Equinox. The sun’s entering Libra now.”

“That’s a fact,” said Sam. “The Scales been balanced toward drought. And now they be tilting the way to the rain.”

Thunder belted the heavens, rattling the timbers of the old house. The moist air was lightened and smelled of a sweetness unknown since early summer rains. Water was pouring from a full sky. In the oat field it hit the cracked clay and bounced off. Washes were beginning where stones formed little dams. Rivulets were taking the paths contrived and becoming foaming streams that roared like rivers and cut gashes that deepened into crevices. Much of the topsoil washed into the valleys. But the land was filled, the water stores replenished. All vegetation sucked and had its fill. And still there was more. “I vow we’ll get wet tonight, Sam. Appears to be just commencing.”

“Reckon I might make a little mess of garden truck yet,” Ellen said, “before the first frost.”

“Mester Gaddy,” said Sam, “I’d as soon set right out in this while I milk. I got a honing to get drenched.”

That night crickets that dwelled in the stone foundations and katydids with leaflike wings and long silken feelers and green eyes, were scraping their wings in the teeming dark. They had been listless through the dry weather, now were voicing themselves in lusty chorus. The red cardinal was singing so softly in the hackberry that it sounded as if it were away down Sweetincreek Road.

The drought had wreaked a stiff toll. A few loads of hay would be brought in but most of the crop was lost. There would be no corn to garner, no small grains. One crib remained from the previous year and from it Anton would eke out the winter feeding. He decided to ride with Dyke Burwell to the auctions in Louisville up on the northern border of Kentucky. He selected four sows to hold over the winter with the breeding boar; he would sell the others and all the yeanling pigs. They were flat-sided, poorly finished. The men hoped that in the city they would get a better price than was paid locally. Dyke had loaded his father’s excess hogs in the Burwell Chevrolet truck. The two were driving off for the seventy-mile trip and would return in a few days.

The Gaddy women and the child watched the load of squealing hogs, bedded in straw, lurch down the lane. Ellen laughed, “Let’s have an outing, Simon.” The air was brightened as the head of the house was carried further and further away. They took biscuits and cheese down to the orchard. Jack accompanied them. When they had eaten, they gathered fallen apples into a bushel; Simon climbed trees, shook down the few that clung to the branches. They went beyond the orchard to a patch of sorghum cane. Being near the farm brook, it had survived the dry spell. They were breaking stalks, sucking the juice.

“Crows don’t always squall, Mama. They can talk soft too. I heard one twittering like a wren, feeding its youngens.” The child wanted to know the ways of the beasts and fowl. “Granddaddy says buzzards will kill a baby pig and steal off with it. Reckon that’s so?”

“A buzzard’s not biggity enough. They’re good but to clean up what’s dead and rotting.”

Returning to the house, they had come on an opossum in the path. The heart of the swooned animal beat faintly, its dull-white jaws, withered ears and skinny tail bore a semblance to death. Simon was plucking it from the dust, cradling it in the bend of his arm. He stroked the coarse fur. “I’ll make it a pet.”

Ellen laughed then. But somehow she was lonely, walking up the hill in the breeze of the afternoon, bearing the basket of fall apples.

“I always wondered if a mole could swim, Mama. Yesterday I saw one cross the branch. Now I know that thing.” She made no reply and he went on, “You reckon those goat-sucker birds truly suckle the cows at night? Sam says it’s so. He says milk snakes’ll do it too. I’m going to spy one time on them.”

Anton and Dyke came back from Louisville. Prices had fallen more than anticipated; the buyers’ eyes had been hard. Anton bought a load of poor-quality hay that was stacked high on the truck. They had had a flat tire on the way home and arrived late at night. Anton was pounding on the door. “Open up, ooman.”

They brushed by Maria who stood in a knee-length sweater, her grayish hair in braids. “Hey, ma’am,” Dyke muttered. They went in the parlor, the stench of manure and sweat about them.

“Paid fifty cents for this lightning.” Anton cradled a Mason jar of clear liquid. “Didn’t tell you, boy, in case we got asked if we had any moon hid in that hay.” He unscrewed the lid and filled glasses.

Ellen went up to bed; she found Simon on the stairway and sent him before her. She heard her father’s shout and Dyke’s growl of agreement as she was drifting off to sleep. She awoke, feeling a hard hand on her shoulder. “What’s amiss?” she whispered, thinking it was Anton.

“Hey. It’s me, Ellie.” She heard the pleading whisper, smelled the sour breath.

“You’re sodden drunk, Dyke. Go downstairs and get to sleep. If you can find your way to the sofa in the parlor.” She spoke severely, heard his clumsy steps descending the stairs, his curse as he stumbled and bumped the wall. In the morning she was serving them breakfast. As soon as the hay was unloaded Dyke would drive home. Ellen could see he had no sure memory of his visit to her room. She caught his covert glance. He thinks it was a fancy he had.

17

In that fall Ellen had a dream of Christian Ay. It was her first thought of him in many months’ time. His figure was unclear, touched with gentleness and warmth; it was apart from her. She fancied he was hurt. He was calling, his voice as if through water. When she awoke she could hear the echo of her own cry. She was musing at the power of the nightmare’s image. “There could be a meaning. Like the Prophet Ezekiel seeing the dreadful wheels. A wheel whirling in the middle of a wheel. And there was a meaning there that certain men read.”

She went downstairs to sit wakeful while the dream was still fresh, in the balmy fall moonlight. Fog steamed in the air, blurring the rims of trees and the porch roof. There was a rustle in the drying grass and though no wind stirred a fallen leaf seemed to move on itself, and presently another, and then the shadow of an embryonic mouse was darting, vanishing before the eye could catch the shape. The shrews were harvesting for the winter ahead; their tiny gray piglike bodies sped soundless; through the movement in their wake one was aware of them. “Sam says folks will dream of a body when they’re in danger. Or when they’ve died. Wonder if a trouble’s come to Christian Ay?” Dwelling on the dream Ellen forgot the curse she had laid once on the man. She buried her injury, turning the old love over gently, painfully, alone on the step.

Winter was casting her days off, one by one. Spring had arrived. Anton’s worrying of Simon had become less pronounced. Ellen heard the child’s high voice repeating the tuneless song his grandfather was teaching him.

It was our William Jennings Bryan
Who told them
Adam was there first
When he fought the battle
With those sons of darkness
At the trial of John T. Scopes

Anton was lifting the big boy onto his knee. “Shaw. Now, here’s this poppet. You know I had a son once. If he’d have lived, I’d been minded to give him my name.” Simon sat stiff at the favor granted. Ellen watched through the door from where she worked, pleased at this new way of Anton’s. “How come you called him Simon, girl?”

“The Doughertys named him, Pa.”

“Anton’s a good name. I don’t favor Simon. There was a Simon in the Bible tried to buy Peter.”

“Oh, Pa. There are lots of Simons in the Bible.”

“Well.” He was turning to the boy again. She had never heard her father sing, and was glad.

They said our ancestors
Were monkeys
Now can’t you see, folks
That’s quite absurd?

And then the days were passing, made of long hours. The months were lengthening into years. The winter following the drought was the first Ellen knew when the table wasn’t amply laid. She had to learn how to stint in the cooking and to curb her generous hand. When weevils got in the meal she would strain them out and mix the meal with water to make a corn pone. In the old days she would have tossed it easily to the hens. The market for the milk and produce worsened. Every fall Anton and Dyke made two or three trips up to Louisville to the sales. They took pigs and steers, chickens, geese and ducks, small grains and root crops. Through the years the Gaddys would manage, for they depended on varied harvests. The one-crop farmer suffered the most. Many of them were driving away from their plots of land, their families and goods piled on wagons and trucks, hoping to find jobs in factories and foundries of the cities. When Anton saw a loaded vehicle go down Sweetincreek Road, he articulated his scorn, “I’d set and eat clay before I’d leave my farm. Those fellows are oomen-farmers, farting with a patch of tobacco. Putting on fertilizer and then burning it off. Laying cheesecloth strips like a ooman.”

“What for, Granddaddy?”

“I vow I don’t know. Then they go to the auction and hit don’t sell for nothing. They buy moon from the patent medicine man and come back with their pockets empty. So go on,” he shouted at the retreating wagon, “and don’t come back.”

“And don’t come back,” cried Simon shrilly.

Anton turned to the boy, his eyes hot. “You stay on this farm, Poppet, and some day maybe it’ll all belong to you.”

Anton slowly was transferring the fervor he used to spend on his younger daughter, Frankie, to this boy, Simon. He was taking him over. As time passed he judged Ellen’s guidance of the child. “You be a fool, girl. You’ll spoil him rotten.”

When the boy remembered and did as bid, Anton was pleased; when he disobeyed, he whipped him, stolid. “Thou shalt beat him with a rod, so it’s said. I’ll take no sass. You do as I say, Simon.”

In his way Simon tried not to make errors that would aggravate his grandfather. He had developed a spasmodic pain in his chest that would come at odd moments. He told no one of it but sometimes when he thought about it, believed he would die. Then he lay vacantly staring upward as he had done in the Dougherty shed in the vague days before he came to live here. At times he dreamed of Anse Dougherty pinching his arm, whispering, “Gaddy brat. Gaddy brat.” He awoke struggling and muttering. When Ellen questioned him, he couldn’t remember the details of the dream. She would sing, soothing, until he slept.

Dear mother, I said, come and bind up my head
You ne’er shall bind it any more
Sweet William he died of the wound that he bore
And Fair Ellen, she died also

In 1934 another drought smote the farm. This time the condition was prevalent over the Midwest, involving dust storms and soil erosion. Over these depression years there were no visits from Garland Gaddy. At Christmas he would send a package through the mail. It would be placed on the parlor table. Ellen’s parents went straight to bed when they returned silent from midnight mass. On Christmas morning the family would find cigars for Anton, and for Maria and Ellen mittens or a wool scarf. Garland was unsure of Simon’s age. When he was six, Garland sent him the book _Ben Hur_, and when eight, a set of ABC building blocks. Ellen wrote to thank him, urged him to come at the next holiday. “Some time,” she told Simon, “I’ll show you Chicago. And your great-uncle who lives there.”

“Don’t I have an aunt there, too?”

“Yes. Some day maybe you’ll meet her. Don’t ne’er say her name to Granddaddy.”

“I know. That’s Auntie. She brought me a yellow hat one time.”

Ellen never heard from Frankie, but once Garland put a card in her package of fur gloves: “Love from Uncle and Frankie.” So she knew that they saw each other and it was a comfort.

The years were sweeping by. In 1935 the Federal dole was stopped and the national relief program got under way. Anton was told that for twenty-five dollars he could have a WPA privy constructed. Since the old one was in ramshackle state, he decided to go ahead. “Christ, Sam, hit must be fifteen feet down.” They stepped within the new-painted door, looked into the openings. “It’ll take a hundred years to fill that hole.”

“More, Mester Gaddy.” Sam paused. “I recollect Pa. He hung the door on the last shithouse we Offuts had. Swung it in by mistake. Said it e’er plagued him after that, for when he sat out there he liked to have a door swing out, so he could watch the neighbors go by along the road. He’d call out to them if he had a mind, friendly-like.”

“Well, I’ll take the cow barn any day. For a fact. It’s a sight more natural.”

Simon was growing. He was nine, stocky and strong, heavy for his age. The bones of his shoulders were knobby so he would appear undernourished when shirtless. Ellen laughed at him for his diffident ways. “You’re shy as a field-raised calf, Simon.” If the boar broke loose though, or if a new heifer kicked because her udder was hot and tender, Simon was fearless. He laid his hands on her when she kicked out, vicious, or walked up to the great angry seed-hog.

Once Anton thrashed the red horse with the lines. It was harnessed with another and when the load began to move, it reared, balking in the traces. Anton whipped it. The boy loved the red horse—he hurled himself before it so the lines were lashing him. Anton saw the white stripes. “What foolishness now?”

“It’s the blinders, Granddaddy.”

And it was true. This horse had always worn the bridle with blinders. The wrong bridle had been put on and he saw things in a new way, frightening him. Simon was sent for the other bridle and then the horse pulled squarely with its mate. “Beasts are plagued fools sometimes,” the man said. But the boy’s eyes were gazing straight ahead, as red welts rose on his cheek and arm. He grit his teeth against the familiar pain searing his breast.

Anton went into Millville to the priest one afternoon and had Simon baptized. When they returned, he told Ellen. She protested, “Pa, it doesn’t matter. But you could have said you were going.”

“And he’s riding to mass Sundays too, along with us, proper pious. I can’t hinder you from being a heathen, but I’ll save my grandson.”

Ellen glanced down at Simon. The man was pressing him, “You want to go along with me, don’t you, boy?”

“Yes, Granddaddy.”

“Well, all right, Simon. You know your mind, I reckon.” She watched them go, saw Simon running to bring the cows and start the feeding.

Ellen was twenty-six. She was quite handsome but there was a coldness in her bearing. Her oval face was sober, gray eyes austere, she wore her hair plaited tightly and pinned in a circle around her head. She never knelt in the honeyed grass at night as she once had, weeping over the lost love and her restive longings. It was as if a scar had formed, protective, and a part of herself was sealed off underneath. She moved quietly through the days as if waiting. And she seemed satisfied.

Simon spent his hours with the beasts of the farm or trailing his grandfather. When he felt the need for Ellen, he sought her out, standing near her. They were alike in many ways, shy, spare of words. She taught him songs, and read to him from the Bible and the almanac. He brought home an average report card and she signed it, “Mrs. Ellen Gaddy.” He queried her, “How come I got no daddy?”

“He’s dead, Simon.”

“Tell, what was he like?”

“I can’t rightly remember. Like you, I reckon.”

“If more comes to you about him, will you tell me, Ma?”

“I will.”

“Granddaddy says he be the same as a father to me.”

“Well.”

* * * * *