part two

part two

Take it up in your arms I said Let it lie where it must At your side on your breast Let it rest Love has life not of love But of us I said Let it lie where it must

                               9

A flicker was piping a thread of shrill notes as it flashed in flight before her. She looked back to where Penny waved from the lane end, a child on her arm. Then Ellen turned and strode down the road, carrying the valise. The heat of the July day was still far off, the morning was new-made. The stiff skirt of the striped dress brushed her legs. She had combed her hair from her high forehead in the old way, tying it loosely with a ribbon. A hot morning wind rippled along the dust of the road, interrupting for a stitch the stilled cool air. Wild morning-glories were twining on ditch banks, and in a distant field a boy drove a diminutive span of black horses through verdant corn rows. It came over Ellen how comely she was and she made her feet light. “I’m thankful for this day and for all that lie ahead.” Her life ran out before her harmonious, like a shining thread. All about there was a singing and a beating of wings and the sun glowed whitely. She was young and there was no ending ever. “Clear through the whole enduring ages, I’ll be.”

My true love up on the mountain Bowing up and down If I had my broadax here I’d hew that mountain down O get around, Jenny, get around All on the summer’s day

On the train, she saw the countryside flowing past the window. The milk from her breasts was dampening her dress and in her discomfort she thought of the child once more. She turned her mind from him easily. She got off at New Hope and hitched a ride with a farmer from Seven Mile Run.

“Those are fine mules, Mester,” she offered.

“Um. They’re Norman mules. They’ll ne’er balk without cause. I got a brother can start a balky mule. One time him and me came on two niggers with a load of straw and a cold-shouldered mule. Well, they were plumb desperate. Built a fire under it, but it only moved up the road a piece. Far enough so’s the wagon began to burn. They had to unhitch the mule and back the wagon off to put the fire out. They were setting there when we came on them. Brother went up to the mule, took hold of its ear and whispered in it. Well, that mule walked right off. The niggers hitched up and went down the road. Told everyone Brother talked witchcraft. Um.”

“Wonder how he did start it?”

“Um. Said he twisted its ear and blew in it. Said that dazzles a beast. Brother can do it just so.” He lapsed into silence, his head drooped in the heat of the afternoon. The mules switched their tails and shimmied their skin to fight flies. Unguided, they were following the road.

When they reached Love’s store, Ellen thanked the farmer, climbed down from the wagon seat to the pike where the clay baked in the molten sun. Stacey was in the screened doorway. “Ellen? I thought you’d left these parts. Grady,” she called. “Looky here. How be you, now? Sam Offut’s taken o’er the trading for your ma. They had a time when first you ne’er came home. Where you been?”

Ellen was smiling and nodding. Grady came around the corner of the frame house; she sought his kindly tight-skinned face. “Hey, Mester Love.”

“Hey there, Ellen. I swear. Come have a glass of my ginger beer. The yeast’s working good now. Two bottles exploded all o’er the place yesterday.”

She followed him, and Stacey came after. Ellen was eager. “I visited my uncle for a spell. Said howdy to you both.”

“That so?” Stacey asked. “He kept you long.”

“Then I went to stay with Mrs. Dougherty while she had a baby.”

“Thought she had hers last year.”

“You remember Penny Dougherty?” Ellen urged. “This is her second. It’s a boy too. A likely one.” Ellen felt Stacey’s eyes searching her for the truth. “I came home to help Pa with the summer work.”

“He’ll be glad to see you,” Grady said.

“Penny wanted to be remembered to you both, Mrs. Love.”

“That’s kindly of her,” Grady said.

“Well,” said Stacey. “You’re looking right pert again, Ellen.” She was fanning herself with Grady’s hat.

Ellen sipped the ginger beer while the woman talked. “Mester Gaddy and that Sam ne’er would say where you were.” Ellen was afraid of Stacey’s tongue, conscious of the milk dried on her dress, and she wondered if Stacey could tell it was there. “I reckoned,” said Stacey, “you met up with a rich Yankee man who made you his wife.”

“Oh, Mrs. Love.”

“Now Stacey,” Grady cried, “stop greening Ellen.”

“I’m beholden for the drink.” Ellen went to the door. “I was parched.”

“Your daddy know you’re home?” asked Stacey.

“Oh yes.” She was hurrying out and down Sweetincreek Road, unconscious of the weight of her bag. Then her gait slowed. A small verging of anxiety had begun and she pushed it back with her will. She changed hands with the valise, passed over the wood bridge where the Sweetincreek flowed, and on the other side, in the swampy earth, was plucking a green-white flower. “I know this one. It’s the lily of the valleys.” She breathed the perfume, studying the stony well-worn road. “Reckon he’ll beat me?”

She turned into the familiar lane, which seemed shrunken now. She heard farm noises. A cow mooing softly in a far place, pigs grunting just off the path, a duck squawking somewhere in sudden protest. The house seemed smaller and the yellow paint was peeled; it was ugly. Hesitant, she went up the sagged steps. The towels on the porch line were muddied, the tin tub was turned carelessly over, the egg basket was torn. She was opening the screen door. There was no one, no sound there in the kitchen. Beyond in the bedroom she saw her mother in a chair under one of the little windows, bent over some work. Ellen looked at her a moment as though she were a stranger. From the parlor came Frankie’s stripling voice in singsong, “I do, I did, I have done. I draw, I drew, I have drawn. I eat, I ate.” The small voice sighed audibly as Ellen entered.

“Sounds right brave, Frankie.”

“Ellie! You just came. I missed you. Was it fun in Chicago?” As they were embracing Ellen saw Frankie’s eyes were dark-shadowed, but her skin was smooth and her hair glistened. She was asking about Garland. “Is he kind, Ellie, in his own house?”

“Of course.”

“I heard Pa say you ran off and left Uncle. Did you, Ellie? I wanted to brave Pa to ask. But he gets riled when we name you. Reckon he doubted you were coming home.”

“I was visiting someone.”

“Where? Where’d you stay?”

“Is he on the outs with me?”

“Pa? I reckon. You went to St. Louis, didn’t you, Ellie? I heard him say it to Ma.”

“You learning grammar again, Frankie?”

“Tell you true, I hate it. Whate’er I speak, teacher stops me and changes it.” She shrugged, resentful. “He’s daft.”

“You let Pa know it?”

“No, I’m in thick enough with Pa now. He’s e’er raising sand. I got to practice all morning now and I’m only to help with housework. Not to milk or hoe the garden.” She looked away. “Wish I was little again.”

Ellen frowned. “You’ve got to study ahead. And watch the ways of turning. That’s a thing I learned.”

The two were silent. Looking back to the freedom of childhood, they chafed at the fretful boundaries, the responsibility that seemed to mark maturity. They went forward because there was no other way. Frankie was looking up, doleful, “Missed your songs, Ellie.”

“Say, how’re the goats?”

“The old one dropped two kids. Reckon it was in April. Sam found them in the morning; one died, the other was a buck, a black one. Pa had Sam cut it. Said they’d butcher it in fall.”

“What about the little doe, Rhodie? She drop one too?”

“I don’t know. I can’t keep it in my head. I think Sam said he took her to a billy. You ask him. Tell you true, Sam’s been doing for them.”

“Oh, Frankie. And me pining for them all this tormented time.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m a poor thing,” Frankie laughed, pleading.

“It’s hot. I’ll go unpack.”

               *       *       *       *       *

In the attic room, Ellen made her bed up for the night, put away her clothes. All the while a thing was waxing heavy in her, leaden, as she thought on her father. “One thing, I’ll ne’er cry. Wish I could make out not to fear him.” She took the statuette of the Virgin to its old place on the round table in the parlor. She could hear Maria and Frankie in the kitchen preparing supper. Loneliness swept Ellen like an empty cloud as she stood, uneasy. Anton came upon her there. Looking at his face she recalled when Blueberry had balked starting a wagon and Anton lashed him coldly about the head with leather lines. Ellen had watched secretly from a barn window, heart pumping, waiting until the rearing horse lunged and moved the load. She was going up the stairs without a word. He climbed gently after, his breathing becoming strident on the way.

He held the belt. His voice shuddered hoarse. His lips were trembling with their weight. “You e’er were froward, girl.” He was hitting her again, holding the strap with a relentless hand, feeling the easing of his own sharp flesh. “I’ll teach you yet. Get on your knees. You were walking and mincing in that seat of whoredom, weren’t you? Did you know my brother Marc died rutting there in St. Louis? And that’s what killed my ma?”

She was enduring the hot bite of the striking leather. She fought within herself as since a child, to hold silence, pinning her will on it.

“How do you reckon Sam favored doing your trading? How do you reckon your chores were done up these months, you plagued dummy?” His voice was a heavy cold whisper and his gray eyes were half closed. “And you stole the Virgin image.”

Ellen was breathless in the sting of tears. It’s his way. It’s for love he does it. He’s trying to teach me what’s right. He must.

“Now, you’ll not go off this farm again,” he was warning in the doorway, “lest I marry you to someone proper.” He paused. “I allow I’ll kill you before you’ll stand against my will.” He was rolling the belt up around the home-forged brass buckle as he went out.

Ellen followed down to the evening meal. She went to Maria eagerly, kissing her, forgetting, in her need, her mother’s preoccupied ways. “How’ve you been, Ma?”

“Tormented, Ellie. He knows.” Maria looked upward with vague eyes.

“I’ll be here to do for you now, Ma. You glad I’m back?” she pleaded swiftly.

“I took count,” Maria said. “Hit’s been six months July fifteen. Mester Gaddy’s been fretted.”

“Quit jawing, ooman,” Anton said. “Set and eat.”

               *       *       *       *       *

After the meal, though the air was close, Anton directed the family to go to the parlor, bade Ellen, “Fetch my Bible.” He took the book from her, leafed the pages. He looked at Frankie, sitting by Maria on the sofa. “Even as these oomen fared, so will hit be with you, Poppet, if you don’t pay me heed.” They watched him take the silver-banded reading glass, peering through it at the page.

“Down on your knees,” he told Ellen, and she obeyed. “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will smite them. And the Lord will discover their secret parts.”

Ellen was tired. She was kneeling by the doweled rocker, her head on the arm of the chair. She closed her eyes and thought about the man who could start balky mules by blowing in their long ears, twisting them so they forgot their orneriness.

“In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets,” Anton cherished the syllables, “and the hoods and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of a sweet smell there shall be a stink and instead of a girdle a rent, and instead of well-set hair, baldness, and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth.”

               *       *       *       *       *

Under the attic window she was lying sleepless, the uncertain moonlight washing over her bed. The cockerels in the chicken shed were crowing intermittently, confused by the unseemly moon’s glare. Her body ached from the beat of the strap. Her breasts were swollen because she had tolerated the child to nurse her over the past days and the milk had not as yet subsided. She would wait and in a week the discomfort would be gone, then she would be done with him. Her mind circled on Penny and Clate, on the Dougherty beasts, the donkey and Brownie and the doe Tiny. She was overcome by devotion to them all. She went further back to the autumn of despair, and to the summer preceding that was fading now as the separate incidents blurred and blended. The night stretched brilliant as she rose and leaned at the window sill. The quavering of the young cocks’ chorus was heard again.

She slipped into her dress and went down. Jack met her at the door, hurling himself upon her. She sat on the steps to pluck burrs that were tangled in his hair. She was listening to the sounds the wind made that sometimes has a business in the high branches, spurning the ground. In the warty-barked hackberry there was a rustle as the leaves resisted the wind, and in the spruce by the road fence an indistinct whisper came and went as many tiny needles rasped gently one on another. The wind sounds were all different in the varied trees. In the black willows by the Sweetincreek there would be a swishing and a swaying, and in the stiff leaves of the catalpa nearly no noise at all. The mockernut was so tall and straight that the soughing was disguised and far away. I might know the particular tree just from the voice of the wind through it. The cockerels were piping again in the moonlight, foretelling the dawn just coming.

               *       *       *       *       *

In the early morning she hurried out to find none of her goats at the woodshed, nor any trace they had been stabled recently there. A setting goose was peering from under the cobwebbed manger; it hissed a warning, hovering over warmed eggs in musty straw. For a moment Ellen stood in the doorway, then she went to the barnyard. Sam was pouring foaming milk into tall cans. “Your nannies are at the field.” Sam looked her over quietly. “Your pa says leave them there.”

“I’m taking them up to the woodshed right now. There’s a silly old goose setting in there.”

“Better ask your pa if you can, Ellie.”

“Well, I’ll help you-all milk first.”

In the barn she drew the first streams onto the ground to clean the udder. Then she was milking steadily, her hands efficient. She pressed her head into the joint of the young cow’s back leg.

“That Sal’s a real kicker,” offered Sam.

“Watch you don’t lose her milk,” Anton said, coming in.

“Ho, suckey.” Ellen would know if the nervous heifer were about to strike out. She stripped the front teats and began to milk the tight back ones. “Ho, Sal.”

Anton gave her leave to take her goats in from the field when she brought the cows. “And you help with the milking hereafter, girl.”

Ellen discovered Penny was thin and her udder flabby, for she ran loose with a black yeanling. Rhodie was slick-haired, rounded with a kid Sam said she would drop next month. They were skittish and Ellen coaxed them to her. She sat in the grass with corn in her apron until they could not hold their greed and curiosity. Penny licked her ear, bleated softly on her neck, remembering her all at once. The black wether was timid and handsome but he came under her hand too. She resented his castration though she knew it was necessary. They were munching the corn grains, pushing against her.

Go through my window My sugar lump And buy molasses candy Blue bird, blue bird, go through my window And buy molasses candy

                               10

The fiery sun of August labored in the sky across the languid procession of days. In the evenings, by the light of kerosene lamps, the women still were finishing canning of peaches, tomatoes, berries. They clamped glass lids on by wire bails and stood filled jars on a rack of laths in the wash boiler. Pits and peelings were heaped in pails in the yard where flies gathered, and gnats and yellowjackets. They put up salt-and-sugar beans, selecting green-tinted jars to protect the color. They dried peppers and sweet corn. They made brine for gherkins and green tomatoes, packed a ten-gallon crock in the pantry with cucumbers and branches of dill. Ellen added horseradish roots to the salty brew, and mustard seeds. On top she placed grape and cherry leaves. “To get a good brine you got to add salt just right,” she said, “till it gets the power in it to hoist a fresh egg from the bottom of the crock and float hit.”

Ellen was making jelly. She strained the cooked fruit through flannel bags and then added sugar or sorghum and boiled the juice. She tested the hot purple syrup. “It doesn’t want to sheet off and tear proper,” she told Amanda York who came to keep her company. “I’ll just wait on it.” She wiped her forehead with a perspiring hand.

Sometimes Lily Garrett, in a shapeless flowered dress, walked up the road to sit in the kitchen heat and visit awhile. “You make such pretty jam,” Lily said. “Why don’t you take some to the county fair at Seven Mile Run? Mama does. She got a prize last year and hers was clouded.”

Ellen held the jar to the sunlight; the jelly glowed. “I do favor redcap jelly.”

“Well, you should go, Ellie.”

“What color’s the first prize?”

“Blue.”

“You going to, Ellie?” asked Frankie.

“There’s no harm talking.”

“Get it out of your head, girl,” Maria was speaking. “I begged Mester Gaddy ten years ago. He said it was foolishness.”

“I know.”

Lily was showing Frankie how to make a special kind of cherry preserve. “The receipt named this Barrier Cherries, Frankie. Takes apple vinegar and strained honey.”

Maria’s face was sweated and reddened in the heat of the stove fire. She reached back into the dimness of her memory, to when she had run in crying to a grayed old woman, “Mam, there’s a booger scratching my eye.” The woman had licked the eye with her soft tongue to remove the foreign substance, then set Maria on a three-legged stool outside the door to work the dasher of the churn up and down. “Stone churn ain’t good enough for you, girl,” she said to Ellen, suddenly.

“What did you say, Ma?” Ellen was startled.

“Old-timey days we had a stone churn. And when Pap was home sometimes he’d bring us a runty possum, or maybe a coon. Summers now, we ate good.”

“Did you store up like we do against winter?” asked Frankie.

“I like to lay up when there’s plenty,” Maria admitted. “But the most Mam did was to dry corn and herbs. Folks didn’t figure to eat then like now. Once or twice a day was all we sat to table.” She reflected a moment. “I allow I didn’t miss hit. And my folks thought a heap of me till Mester Gaddy came along.”

“Tell, Ma. Did you pine for love of him when you saw Pa?” Frankie cried.

“Mester Gaddy gave me a fine snuffbox. It was mother-pearl. And a deal fair to hold in the sun.”

“I ne’er saw that box, Ma,” said Ellen.

“Show us.” Frankie was eager.

“No. Mester Gaddy was forced to sell hit once when he was short cash. I always regretted that.”

“When did you start honing after Pa?” persisted Frankie, slim and frail beside Lily, stirring the kettle at the stove. “For love.”

“He rode a big gray mare and there was nothing so tall as he. See, I was a tedious plain girl and my folks were old already when I was born. They hadn’t looked for me. So they fretted on what was to come. Mester Gaddy rode o’er to Seven Mile Run and talked to Pap.”

“And then Mester Gaddy courted you?” Lily inquired.

“Go on,” Frankie pressed.

“Pap had scrimped for a dowry that was to come with me. Pap was bound to care for me proper. You’d ne’er have thought it the way we lived so poor-like while he was putting by.”

“I ne’er thought about Pa being young once,” said Ellen. “Was he different from now?”

“No. Except his hair was red and thick. I came with him to this farm. Here I been since. He hitched that gray mare to a two-wheel cart and I set up beside him and figured I was a lady.” Her dull eyes sparked. “E’er do as Mester Gaddy says, girls.”

“There was Pa on a horse,” Frankie said. “I’d just as lief have seen that.”

“Oh, all the folks rode horses those days,” said Ellen.

“That’s right,” Lily assented.

“Don’t go talking to Mester Gaddy about those days,” Maria was warning. “He’s disremembered them. Watch your cherries don’t burn there, girls.”

“They’re doing right, Mrs. Gaddy,” Lily said. “You were gone a powerful time in spring, weren’t you, Ellie?” Curious, Lily was sniffing after gossip to brighten her wishful youth.

Ellen took up the basket, leaving the table where she had been stoning cherries. “I’m getting in some corn for supper,” she called as she was going down the porch steps.

“Ellie’s so contrary.” Lily watched Ellen stride down the field. “She won’t talk with me proper-like.”

“That’s her for you,” Frankie said.

“I reckon she doesn’t like me.”

“Oh she does, Lily.”

“No.”

“Ellie’s just bossy that way.” The two girls embraced abruptly. The pot boiled. The sugary odor was filling the kitchen, seeking darkened rafters where smoke from years long past dwelled.

“Would you be best friends with me, Frankie?” The big girl was effusive.

“I will. Ellie doesn’t tell things to me ever.” They clung, whispering, comforted, sharing their trepidations. They returned to their stirring of the Barrier Cherries.

               *       *       *       *       *

Ellen had made the land to her since she returned, and the creatures and birds spawned upon it. In hot night she would hear hoot owls ululating in the oaks, and sometimes a mocker-bird would hang on the stones of the garden fence, quavering through marbled moonlight. I came through. The fear is past and I’m home. She stood by while Rhodie was yeaning a kid. The doe stamped her little hoofs nervously, pawed the straw and crouched, straining. With a worried blat, she expelled a spotted kid. Ellen was tearing the caul lining to free it in a flood of water. She cleaned the mucus from its gasping mouth, gazed on the odd-looking animal with ears like a hound. “Where’d you find the buck?” she asked Sam.

“Well, I says to myself in March when she commenced to wag her tail, Ellie’d want her caught. So I took her over to a pied billy the other side of Millville.”

“I ne’er saw a skewbald goat, Sam. And those drooping ears.” Penny’s maternal instincts were aroused at the sight and smell of a newborn one; she vied with Rhodie in cleaning it. Rhodie was stretching her head and yawning as animals will do in discomfort. The kid staggered up to nurse the tiny nipples. “I’ll call it Pie,” Ellie decided. “There, Pie.”

In the mornings when she left her goats at the pasture, she took the path around the farm pond. Tiny green frogs were camouflaged in the reeds and grasses, and blacksnakes lived among haw and alder roots along the marshy bank. One would slip into the shadowed water, head crooked like a twig held upright as it moved across the unbroken glass. When the speckled thrush was buzzing and flapping by the path, she ran to find a snake twined around a sapling cottonwood. Its head was in the nest and the mother bird was darting at it, crying shrill. A single fledgling remained, beak gaped for food. Ellen seized a stick, striking the reptile until it twisted dying from the tree. She crushed its head, slit the body with her pocketknife to see if there was life in the swallowed birds. They were limp and she dropped them in an open field while the bird continued the alarm clatter. “You’d as well feed the one you got left if you can find your way to go back to that serpent-smelling nest.”

Afterwards buzzards wheeled. Ellen knew they were scenting the dried rotted nestlings. One huge bird descended and sat hunchbacked on a rail, glassy eyes fixed on her. “Stinking brat.” Jack stalked it until it made grunting low sounds and flapped away.

Only once since that day in late July when she had come home did a sharp edge touch the smooth progression of Ellen’s hours. She awoke in the night to hear Anton speaking to Maria in the hall below. “What’s amiss with your daughter? There’s no young men coming to the door.” Maria whispered to him and they were gone. Ellen lay awake a long time. But in the morning when it came to her mind, she thrust it from her. “It’s not my fault if they don’t come.”

Anton stepped aside on Sunday to speak with Craig Hedrick and his widowed mother about a boar he wanted to buy. On the way home he looked over his shoulder at Ellen. “That Hedrick boy’s got a motorcar.” He was shouting above the cart’s rumble, “And he’s done proud with that farm since his old man was killed. He says, Ellie’s a comely thing.”

She felt all her being grow still, watching the dusty road glide from under the wagon. Craig had been one of the bigger boys in the grammar school, a few years older than she. His father, Moses Hedrick, had had a cleft palate and though the boy had no actual reason for a speech impediment, he would talk in nearly the same tongue-tied manner that had characterized his father. Craig had been good-natured, his dog followed him to school, he was big enough to force the smaller boys from their torturing of turtles and frogs and insects that fell into their hands. But while Ellen’s pity made her kind, her nature had been revolted by the boy’s way of speech, his dirt-ingrained fingernails and pocked face, the sour odor that arose from his unwashed winter clothing. She did not reply to Anton now. The blood rose hot in her face and her pulse beat heavily when he said, “You’re seventeen, Ellie. Where’s all those young men?”

“You’d best take hold.” Maria wagged her head while the wagon jolted. “Lest you be caught an old maid. Get your man while you’re still blooming, for you’ll be a rag soon enough.”

“Young Hedrick’s a Catholic, as well,” said Anton.

Their words rang with finality. She closed her ears to them. Her hands were folded in her lap on last summer’s dress of blue-dotted Swiss. She clenched them tightly. The steel-rimmed wheels turned in rhythm, hate and hate. Wish I was dead like old man Moses Hedrick with a pitchfork tucked between my shoulder blades.

               *       *       *       *       *

There came, early on a sultry afternoon, the yellow-billed cuckoo’s moan, “Kow, kow, kow.” Ellen lifted her head from her churning, spoke to Frankie going by with a pail of hog slop. “Raincrows. Hear them cry? Reckon it’ll come on a storm?”

“I ain’t scared.” Frankie laughed high. “Teacher Peyton’s coming and I got my lesson ready.”

An hour later the sky began to darkle. Ellen walked down the lane to look toward the pasture. She could see her goats, hoofs upon the gate bars. The cows lay in their usual spot, chewed their cuds, complacent. Almost imperceptibly the air was taking on a greenish cast. A fresh-smelling wind yawed and swept the field of rye grass. Green beyond green under the sky mass, the grass was weaving, bending to it. Over all heaved the blooming sunglow, golden and omnipresent. A rumble was sounding faint, a flash of light flicked in the west. The wind was subsiding, the heat smoldered oppressive and in the gloom of the sky the sun withdrew. Darkness ruled. Sam appeared at the lane head, waving like a tiny distracted spider, his face grimaced. “Afore Gawd, get the cows, Ellie. Could rile up a twister.”

She was running to the field. The dog rounded up the cattle, drove them in at a lope, milk-sacks swinging about their skinny legs so the white fluid spurted. Ellen took Pie in her arms. The others bounded after as she ran to the woodshed. Rhodie snorted and jumped sidewise stiff-legged, her bearded chin tucked in. The girl laughed, “You daft one.” She shut them in the pen. Lightning streaked, a thunderclap crashed upon the ground. “If you were out in a storm, you’d be safe beneath a cedar or a white birch. So Sam says. Beware the ash and the oak for it’s their nature to tempt lightning.” She was wending up the path to the house, searching cloud drifts for a down-sucked tail that could betoken the birth of a tornado. Thunder drummed, light cracked the horizon. The sweeping wind had ridden off the burdening heat.

The topmost branches of the hackberry lurched and swayed and she felt her heart catch. “It’s so fair. So enduring fair a storm be.” Tears drew into her eyes from the gladness. The wind reeled upon her so the flimsy gingham clung flattened along her young hips and the hard nipples of her breasts. She sensed her strength quicken, fathoming for an instant how she, eternal, would through the ages walk the long green soul of man.

Standing there, she heard Frankie’s scream. She turned to the porch steps. “It can’t storm. I got my grammar lesson.” The voice was protesting, “I’m afraid, Pa.”

Anton mocked her, soothing. “Haw, Frankie. Now you ne’er seen a twister.”

“I’m afraid. Afraid.”

The wind shrieked, the loft door slammed. In the kitchen a pot of scented geraniums on the window sill was spun across the floor. The noise crackled. Anton, from the parlor door, was roaring at Ellen and Maria. “Get the windows shut, you oomen. And draw those shades. Open windows are what sucks the bolts.” He was lighting a lamp in the parlor, pulling the shades. He looked at Frankie in the subdued light, drawn up rigid and white in her chair. “Hit’s just an old-timey commotion out there now.”

There came the splintering noise of a falling tree. In the instant Frankie sprang up, shook her fists helplessly, shut her eyes and clenched her teeth. “Everyone’s against me. Hit’s coming to get me.” Under the storm’s tension, her inhibitions mounted to the surface. She was sobbing in her reedy voice, “I’m going to die. Really I hate you, Pa. I hate you. I don’t want to go off to Chicago.” Maria and Ellen had come in. Frankie turned her tear-drenched face to them. “Everything’s Pa’s fault. What’ll I do, Ellie?”

“All I can say,” Ellen told her, “is I’d as lief it would rain and get it o’er. This thunder’s souring all the milk.”

Lightning sizzled, then cracked, a flare skirting the window shades. Behind came the bolt, reverberating through the hollows of the house. The young girl lamented in desperation, her breath spasmodic, “I don’t want to get those lessons. You’re hateful, Pa. You’re fore’er pushing me.” The voice was a pale shriek. “I’m afraid!”

“Here, girl. Hold your sass. Those are baneful words.” Anton’s eyes were slits. “Want I should set you on your knees and whip you? I’ll do it.”

“No.”

He turned to a chair, taking up a journal. “I mind,” he drawled and settled into the low seat, “when there was a storm like this two-three years ago. Twister came flailing through Bethel killing four.”

Ellen stayed by the door. Not for long had she seen him so wrought up. Maria had taken up her sewing, pursed her mouth over it in the lamplit room. Anton was directing his words to his younger child who cried now in abject penitence. The convulsive sound came sadly into the still of the room as the noisy gale tottered and staggered upon the vegetation of the earth.

“Three old Chester brothers were batching with their ninety-year-old ma. Folks say it was because they were terrified of the storm but all three went off their heads and murdered one another. The old lady too.” Anton smoothed his palm over his balding hair. Dry tobacco juice marked the edges of his mouth, his long jaw thrust upward. “The plumber man came to fix the pump next day. Found them lying about in a mess of blood. Old ooman’s throat ripped with a razor. One batch was gored, the other two were filled with shotgun holes.”

Heavy drops slammed on the windowpane and Ellen spoke in timid relief, “There’s the rain, Pa.”

“Still fixing to die, Frankie?” prodded the man.

“Hit was the dread, Pa,” she pleaded and in time was drawn to sit shrived on his knee.

“Now tell, would her pa let harm come to her that’s my pretty poppet?”

The rain was beating strongly, steadily, washing down banks along the road, mingling with dust and traveling through stones and suckling earth until it gained the water pan far below. Over the pond a silver sheet was draping until the water rose over the sides to flood the meadows. The swaggering wind was in full strength. Moisture softened the earth about the roots of a giant basswood that had matured before the father of Jules Gaddy built his lean-to and set up a rail fence for his mules and hogs. A sudden blast slammed into the aged trunk; it fell sluggish, reluctant, upon its side with a wounded noise, gashed roots exposed. Tree branches grappled and fought the gale and were broken, some borne by the wind and slung against the house roof, making staccato sounds.

“When you were just a mite, Frankie, I told you thunder was a potato wagon going across a bridge. Wasn’t any fear in you then.”

“Will Mester Peyton come at all, Pa?”

“Roads are so bad he’ll likely be hindered. Do what I tell you, Frankie, for that’s what’s right.”

The orgasm of the tempest was done. In the clearing sky, white fluffs were drifting in remote wind tides. The man went to survey the destruction left in the wake. His daughters were sent with hatchets and string to gather fallen branches for kindling and to fagot the twigs.

“My sir used to recount,” Anton said, before he walked out, “how in the forests of the old country they were given leave to break off all the boughs to the height a standing man could reach. For firewood. There wasn’t any rotted trash like in this new country. And it was soft as carpeting underfoot.” He took his ax and wedges and went to join Sam, who was bringing the team up the lane, hitched to a whiffletree. Sam was balancing on his shoulder a bucksaw and a two-man crosscut. They headed toward a yellow locust spraddled across the road past the farm entrance.

“Locust does right smart for fence posts, Mester Gaddy.”

“I’m glad that tree came down. I was minded to cut it anyway, Sam.”

By the pond frogs were shrilling, in the field near the orchard a buzzard sat hunched on a stump, the black dampened wings held motionless, outspread to dry, the naked head tucked into the wrinkles of its bare neck. “I ne’er meant what I said,” Frankie was telling Ellen. “For I love my pa and he’s good.”

“You carried on like you were taken with a fit,” admitted Ellen. “Makes me puke to see you that way.”

“Thinking of me always, he is.” Frankie tied a bundle of twigs and threw it to a pile they were making at the field’s edge. “Poor Pa.”

Ellen heaved a rock at the buzzard and watched it soar effortless. “The wind’s flattened that cornfield. There’s a mort of damage been done.”

               *       *       *       *       *

The leaves had been touched by the first frost and nearly overnight strident colors were emerging on the countryside. Ellen and Frankie were cleaning the musty litter from nest boxes, stuffing in fresh oat straw. “Wonder how come we ne’er tried a doorknob in the nests, Frankie? A porcelain one might coax them to lay. I’ve heard of it.” She harked back to little Clate hanging to her dress hem.

The cows were restless, feeling the new season, the sluggish summer shaken off. On dark mornings Ellen would wear her rough brown sweater, torn in the sleeve, against the chill. The cows heaved themselves to their knees, then to all fours. She put her bare feet in the warmed straw where they had lain. A heifer plopped her hoof in the fresh foam and held it there, stubborn head low, flanks whitened with the splash. The lantern light blinked and Sam was shuffling in. He gazed at the white-spattered wall, belched gently. Ellen caught the whisky scent. “Don’t ill at her, Ellie,” he advised, “or she’ll fore’er mistrust you.”

“Who’s illing?” She carried the pail to the pump to clean it.

He was following, garrulous. “My old-old-old man always said, don’t ill at a creature which does your work,” he nodded, sanctimonious, “and fills your belly.”

“There’s the milking to do, Sam. You’re late. Pa’s waiting on you.”

“Old-old-old’s sort of a byword with us Offuts. When Pa was getting on in years, I sassed him once. He’d started in to say I shouldn’t talk back at my old man. He commenced to say old and he couldn’t stop.” Sam cleared his throat, spit phlegm into the cold bushes. “I told it on him after that. Old-old-old, we Offuts always say.”

Ellen sighed. Sam’s milking would wait on his tongue.

                               11

The car was puttering up the lane, a trailer hitched behind. It was a day in early October. Ellen drew back from sight, hearing Craig Hedrick’s high-pitched halloa. Anton was coming from the barnyard where, with Sam, he had been forking manure onto the wagon for broadcasting over the fields. Ellen fled along the fence line, down to the pond and the tranquil woods beyond. “I aim to get a mess of shaggy-manes to stew for supper,” she was promising herself. Most of the afternoon she stayed in the woods, finding few of the big mushrooms she hunted although there were some overripe ones. These she kicked to see the sootlike powder billow as they split. Jack ran a rabbit and barked at squirrels and woodchucks. Ellen was leaning idly on a fence rail, looking over the tawny sedge grass of a neighboring field. A red-shouldered hawk circled in flight, uttered its squeal like escaping steam. She mocked him, “Kee-yoo! Get you a passle of crawdads, you old hen-thief.”

She put her chin in her hands. A mass of midges vibrated in the sunshine, minute wings whirring swifter than eye could follow. You take a flower now. When it goes to raise out of its leaves, it stirs everlasting slow, unfolding. It’s a case of time, it would seem, and man’s caught between. How quick we must appear to the trees, and how draggy to the midges.

Back she walked in the late day up the fallow hill field, new-plowed for autumn wheat. “Wish I was an earthclod, nary a care.” She stubbed her shoes against turned furrows.

In the wagon bed that was rumbling in from the field her father swayed, standing spraddle-legged. His face was shadowed with a beard, his sateen shirt was open, baring his chest. The dun horse shook its mane and the mare nickered to its yearling colt trotting in the pasture beside the lane. “Whaw,” Anton was shouting. The chomping of bits and movement of harness on the sweating animals made tinny bright noises. “You’re a great one for roaming, girl. Where you been?”

“I took a notion to gather shaggy-manes for supper, Pa. I hunted but there weren’t any.”

“Hit’s a sight too dry for mushrooms. I could have told you.” He looked down from his vantage on the wagon. The muscles swelled on his freckled forearms and he was holding the reins careless. “You just missed young Hedrick. He came to visit and trade off our old boar for a thoroughbred one I wanted. It’s more than twice the size of the old one.”

“I’ll take a look at it, Pa,” she told him.

“He asked after you. That young man.” He shrugged with satisfaction. “Whup.” The wagon was rolling by her.

She replaced the pole barriers. “There. That hammer-tongue Craig.”

The next afternoon she was gathering herbs and seed pods for drying. It was warm while she worked, for the garish sun heated the withering earth. Craig Hedrick’s Model T was turning into the yard. He came up, throwing himself forward as though there were many miles to go before the end of the day. His sandy hair curled woolly and his small nose turned up, his upper lip protruded slightly, which gave him a hounded expression. “Hey, Ellen.” He stood ungainly as she nodded. He was hitching the belt to his blue serge slacks, adjusting the knot of his purple rayon tie.

“Good-looking hog you traded to Pa, Craig. What do you call those spotty ones?”

“He’s a Poland China,” he said in his tongue-twisted way. “They’re bred for lard. Not what you call a bacon pig.”

She laid aside her seed harvest and came to sit on the porch steps with him. Anton walked out. “Hey, Hedrick.”

His presence eased the younger man. “Bought me a manure spreader, Mester Gaddy. You own one? Chops straw and dung up and sifts it like my old lady straining wheat flour on her bread board.”

“Hum.”

There was a long pause. All three watched the progress of a flicker hammering up one side of the hackberry trunk. Craig was lifting his arms slowly as though he held a gun. He sighted the woodpecker on the red band across the back of its head. “Pow.”

Anton grunted, appreciative. He lit his pipe with a match he struck on his overall pants, drew the smoke into his lungs and exhaled. “There. I allow you got that high-hole.”

Craig was adjusting his position on the step, uncomfortable. “Well.”

Anton asked, “Heard the comical one about the hen that laid the oversized egg?”

“How’s it go?”

“It wasn’t comical to the hen.”

The young people were still, uncommunicative. “Come on, see my Ford, Ellen.” Craig was going in his springy stride to the black two-passenger automobile. He held his gait down to match Ellen’s. She was conscious of the smell of the man, could scarce speak for her contempt. Yet there were the pleading eyes and the wounded way of a beast about him. “You know where I live, Ellen? Just a piece from Tomkin’s Ditch.” He fought with his flaw of speech. There was a rich section, he was confiding, adjoining his, that he hoped to buy and add to his own. He had many plans.

Ellen knew it was because of the way he looked upon her that he was pushing out his chest and leaning awkward against his polished automobile. He was tall in his shining shoes and Sunday wear. Her dress was torn. All the while though, she felt he was the pitiful one. She stood apart from her own body and watched this Ellen Gaddy, her forbearance, her dignity. She was gentle. “I got chores to do now.”

“Well then.” He started the motor, drove hastily off.

In days to follow Craig would stop to talk with her. Ellen, aloof, would listen as he rambled. Her mind would stray on whether Pa would remember to get the sorghum syrup or whether Sam had mended the split butter paddle as he promised.

The fields were being prepared for winter wheat, the horses and plow working over the land. The disking and harrowing were now in progress and the blended figures of man and team moved over the horizon to disappear and return again. Ellen could see them from the potato patch. She was digging in the rows with a fork, and she stuffed the tubers into towsacks. The dust rose; her nostrils were clogged with it. A bluebird, lingering before it flew south, was beading its sad autumn cry, “Far-away, far-away!”

It was then that the days of a summer came upon her and she thought of the man on whom she had laid a curse. She wondered if she could remember his looks and ways, if meeting him she would know him. It’s past and done. He can’t ever hurt me more. Down the row slowly she worked. It’s past. She was testing it. But then it was as if Christian Ay emerged from the shadows and stood by her in the row. She ceased digging, there in the ragged dress, her hair bound by a bit of twine, her feet dirty, black outlining the toenails. The north wind of late October was blowing and the shadow fell across her. It seemed he was broad and strong, he laughed greatly and she loved him in a way that her being ached. She was trembling, water flowing down her face. She stood a while in her surprise, frightened by the issuance from what she had thought a safe memory. Its pain stirred her.

In that night the wind was changing. She heard it, felt its veering. And the whippoorwills came up, calling in the cool caves of morning.

               *       *       *       *       *

The next day Craig hunted until he found her in the orchard where her goats were grazing on crisp fallen leaves. She was leaning against an apple tree, listless. “Hey, Ellen. Hit’s Indian summer.”

She made no reply. He stood restive before her. A yellow insect hovered whining about his tight-curled hair. “There’s a news-bee, Ellen.” He reached out to catch it and it flew off. “Wonder what it came to tell, Ellen?” The fragrance of the girl’s blown hair as she leaned on the armor of the old tree, brought him yet again to speech, his face on fire. “I’d get two-three nanny goats if you’d a mind for them. You could have honeybees too, and by the doorside I’d set out petunia flowers.”

She turned to him, absent, her face wan, her gray eyes sorrowful. “Think I’d have a poor rake such as you?” After a time she looked up from where she bent her head to see he still was standing there. He wore a bruised look and his underlip sucked in. “I ne’er meant to say that. It’s because I’ve no notion for marrying, Craig. It’s nothing against you.”

“E’er seen my farm, Ellen? Out by Tomkin’s Ditch? You’d only to see hit to change your mind. I was fixing to paint the house, too.”

His dreams left her unmoved. She was watching two winging birds come to settle in a tree. “There’s a pair of doves.”

“I might even build on a porch and put up screening.”

“If one dies, it’s mate’ll mourn till it dies too. E’er find a dove lying dead, no mark on it?”

“I’d set out young shade trees, Ellen, to put a chair under.”

“I came on a dove in the path one time. It ne’er had a sign nor wound on its body and was still warm.”

They returned to the house. Anton was under the hackberry, pulling on his pipe. “Set to dinner along with us, Hedrick.” He was poking the young man with his elbow. “Ellie made a wild-plum pie this morning. She’s one for kitchen chores.”

After their first hunger was spent, Anton was talkative. “A sight of my corn ruined in that summer storm. Might have to buy a load come spring. You lose any crops?”

“I reckon I’ll make out. I’ve got a herd of steers. I’m going to take them to the auctions in Louisville.”

“You fattening steers? Well.” Anton pushed his food with a knife onto the fork he held in his left hand. “I call to mind my sir gave me two matched bull calves when I was a youngen. I set store by them, made them a little yoke and learned them to drag a stone-boat and mind hawp and gee. My sir waited till they were two-year-olds to cut their balls. That was to allow them to get a good crest.”

“What did you name them, Pa?” asked Frankie.

“I mind the off one was Brown. I disremember the near one’s name. I was proud of them for a shirt-tail brat.”

“What happened, Pa?”

“My ma sold them under me. She needed cash for my brother Marc, who was getting his learning. I hunted the barns and meadows, came in squalling someone stole them. What do you mean, your ox-team, Ma says, cash is cash.” Anton pursed his thick lips. “Now, they were so slick you could hunt for a loose hair. I used to file the horns and grease them.”

“Your maw give you a cut on what they sold for, Mester Gaddy?”

“I ne’er seen hit.” He asked Craig, “Have you worked oxen?”

“You couldn’t law them on me. I’m one for mules. Steady, and easy keepers. But to tell you true what I mostly hanker for is a tractor. I aim to get one some day.”

“And where’ll your manure come from then?” Anton gloated.

They were pushing back their chairs. The two men went out on the steps while the women cleared. Frankie was drying plates and laying them upside down, ready for the evening meal. Ellen took the butter and milk jars out to the dry well near the porch. “Go to mass in my auto tomorrow, Ellen?” Craig asked when she passed on the step.

Anton answered, “She’ll go. Be pleasured to.”

Ellen would give them no glance though Craig murmured, “Ellen?” as she was going by up the stairs and into the kitchen. She heard them. “I aim to take a drive later, Mester Gaddy, if it makes no nevermind to you. Ellen’s not seen my farm and my maw’d be proud to meet her.”

“That suits.”

“How’s that seed-boar I traded you?”

“He’s a crapping mean sonofabitch, Hedrick. Set on rutting up his fence all the time.”

“I noticed he liked to do that. Always breaking through. But I wouldn’t say he was mean. That’s hog nature.”

“Maybe so. I call him Luther.”

“That’s a foreign name. Spot would fit him more.”

“After Martin Luther. A crapping bastard Dutchman Brinker worships. Heathen.”

“Say. Bet that’s the first hog e’er to go by that name in this county.”

               *       *       *       *       *

“Ellie, how come Craig’s pa got killed?” Frankie was asking as they lay in their beds in the muddled dark of their room.

“Oh, it was in hay time. Craig and him were working with a watch-eye hand. Craig and that man were in the loft stacking hay back. His pa was down on the wagon. Well, that watch-eye man was fixing to jump down and pitched his fork ahead of him. It stabbed Moses Hedrick in the back between his shoulders. There he was, holding to the hay frame and the handle sticking out of his back. They said the prongs came out in front. Said he died standing there before he fell down.”

“Oh my, I’d think a one-eye man would guard against such a happenstance.”

“I reckon he couldn’t gauge distances so good.” They lay awhile in silence. Then Ellen was speaking in the dark, “Craig took on the farm then. You can say that for him. And he was still going to the grammar school.”

Ellen wore the blue crushed-satin hat that Garland had brought her last Christmas. In Craig’s Model T, she was heading for the Catholic church. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the little ivory crucifix fastened on the dashboard. Under her feet the carpeting was torn; the car smelled of dust. The young man was voiceless, his tension exhibited in his handling of the machine. His collar was starched; the ill-fitted suit constricted him. “Here it is.”

They were walking in stiffly. When his arm touched her, she moved away. At mass when the bell rang, Ellen knelt by him. But while heads around her bowed in the incensed air, she was staring about. Anton was with Maria and Frankie in a back pew. Pa’s trying to trap me with Craig. She held her head rebellious among the bent ones. What’s all the begging and praying about? I don’t care for this way of loving Him. I’ll get my peace out on the fatness of the earth that is His footstool. And the dew and the smell of the fields.

“Stand up, Ellen,” whispered Craig.

Father Tompert was reading out to the people in the clapboard church the beginning of the gospel of John. Ellen listened, brooding. They can’t make me marry him. “Thanks be to God,” said the priest and the people moved to go.

Craig was driving a mile or two along a cart-rutted road on the other side of Millville, unfamiliar to Ellen. “There’s Tomkin’s Ditch,” he nodded to a joint post office and general store by the deserted roadside. “And here’s that section of land I’m fixing to buy. I aim to rent it the first two years to make the payments.” He halted the car, gazed upon an overgrown field. “Hit’s all virgin. A virgin piece. Ne’er a plowshare been put to it. Corn’ll grow ten feet tall with not a handful of fertilizer.” He moved the hand throttle and the car was lurching forward. He steered down a winding approach to a weather-beaten red house set barren of trees before a barn of the same color. “Let me point out the sights. Then you can meet Maw.”

Ellen left her blue hat on the car seat. She came to where Craig leaned on the lot fence. Steers, deep in muddy manure, idled around troughs of corn. A yellow hound wagged up to her, sniffed her dress. She patted its smooth head; it wriggled, threw itself with a grunt on its side in the rutted road, waving its feet, ingratiating.

“That’s Sooner.”

“Hey, Sooner.” She was stroking it.

“Sooner stay as come.” An elm grew by the fence. Craig cut a twig from it and offered it to Ellen. She shook her head. “Hit’s a slippery elm.” He was picking his teeth with the little stick. “Keeps off throat trouble.”

He hung his coat on the fence, rolling his sleeves, uncovering blond hair that grew long on his arms. He walked with caution around the mire of the lot and climbed into the shed loft. The steers licked at the dry stalks he was forking down; they gazed at Ellen with deep-lidded eyes. Craig shouted, “Nothing to do but eat, hey, Ellen?” He was strutting over to her. “Rather watch them eat than feed my own face. You know?”

“Well.”

He spat out the twig. “I took on a man’s ways when I was yet a stripling. I dragged this farm up from a poor bit, starting the day Paw was killed. It’ll make some folks set up.”

“Your ma take to it out here?”

“Don’t you study on her, Ellen. Maw says the day I bring home a wife to do my cooking she’ll go to live with my sister up Indiana way.”

“Craig,” Ellen warned, “I’m not marrying. I told you. If you will talk so, you can take me home.”

“But I figured on it, Ellen.”

“I’m not beholden to your figuring.” A thrill of fright ran through her, seeing he had raised up tall and pulled in his lip. He was looking upon her as though she were changed. He leaned over, gripping her upper arm, swathed in the winter coat. “I told you no, Craig.”

“I heard a girl was taught to say no to lead her sweetie on hotter. You playing games?” His hand was tightening.

“Craig, Pa’d kill you if he saw how you’re acting.”

“Mester Gaddy’s thirsting to foist you off on me.”

“But I got ne’er a liking for you, Craig. You have to give me time.” If she could but stave him off until she was safe at home. Home was distant and dear.

“Don’t you e’er get hot, Ellen?” He was thrusting his hand within her coat, roughly hunting her breast.

She pulled from him. “Maybe I would if you were good and waited.” She tried to soothe him. “Let’s go meet your ma now.”

He was dragging her to his pock-marred face with an arm that was a band of steel. “You virgin, Ellen?” The scent was there, an odd mingling of moth balls and urine and hair oil. His lips were striving upon hers while she struggled. His hand was pressing her back, holding her against his body that was a rock. She felt the hard prod of him and a streak of flame ran through her, overlaid with disgust. I mustn’t go wild, it’s like with a mean boar, like Luther. You have to deal easy with him. She forced her body to slacken and felt him relax. She drew her mouth stiffly aside. “Give me a chance to breathe.” She smiled, forcing it.

“There, Ellen. You do like me. See?”

She twisted like a snake, darting free. Upon her heels she heard him, his breath an angry roar. The five-tined pitchfork was leaning against the fence bars where he had placed it after throwing hay to the cattle. She grasped it, flailing with the prongs turned backward. It smote him across the face, leaving white streaks. He stumbled, gasping amazed. She swung again.

“Bitch,” he hissed, “I’ll prick you yet.” He grappled for the tool.

She tore it loose, driving at him strongly. He was staggering backward, tripping in a road rut, falling. He threw up a protecting arm, blood oozing from a tine-mark on his forehead. Mud covered his Sunday vest and pants and striped shirt. She turned, speeding across the stubble field toward woods beyond. The hound, Sooner, was pattering alongside. She clawed her way through underbrush, aware after a time of a hurt in her throat where the breath was sobbing. She looked about. The hound had disappeared. She took the direction that seemed true, cutting across country, skirting the few houses. She climbed a rail fence and her dress caught, ripping. She shook her head, “I’ll have to mend that.”

The afternoon was wearing on. A chill breeze was born. A faintness enveloped her. She startled when a twig cracked. She stopped to consider, speaking into the stillness. “It’s the fright makes me light-headed. I must have got my bearings turned. I should have come on the pike by now.” She was going at a slower gait; she remembered, “Now my hat’s in his car.”

She was following a stony path bordered by thimbleberry bushes. It led onto the Millville Road which she recognized at once. A mud hen ran stammering before her, “Butbutbutbutbut!” It vanished in a field. The rail-birds were seldom seen; Sam Offut claimed that in winter they changed into frogs and hid in the marshes until spring. Ellen walked swiftly, head down, as automobiles and later a buggy came from behind and passed. Then she was at the house steps and slowing her pace.

Anton was in the kitchen with Frankie who sprang from a chair. “Hey, Ellie. Is your beau with you?”

“I’ve got no beau,” Ellen said stonily. She stood a moment plucking beggar’s-lice from her coat while her fingers shook. She turned to her father. “That was a whoreman you set on me, Pa.” She began to weep freely as anger overcame her.

“You greening me? Speak up.”

“You were bound and determined to sic that Hedrick on me, weren’t you?” Ellen whimpered.

“Speak up,” shouted Anton.

“He wanted to show me his farm. Then he came after me. I said let’s go meet your ma, but he wouldn’t.”

“Tell what he did,” Anton threatened, fear glowing in the gray pupils of his eyes.

“I grabbed a dung-fork and hit him. Then I ran.”

“You seem to be safe enough, girl. The Lord God takes care of you.”

Anger caught her up again. “It’s not that. With you it’s always root hog or die for me, and you know it.” The words fell biting as her tears washed. “It’s not because of God’s help I be home again.” She was running to her room.

Later she appeared, pale and sullen, to do her chores and help with supper. When Anton came to the kitchen, she whispered, cold, “I ne’er meant those words, Pa. I was unsettled, I reckon, by all that walking.”

“Were you out walking then, Ellie?” asked Maria. “I thought you were with that young man.”

“I don’t take trifling from a youngen,” said Anton, contemptuous. “Got worries enough hanging from my neck without you laying more on.”

“I ask you to overlook it.” She strove against the alienation.

“Root hog or die, such talk after all that’s done for you. And taking God’s name. Whoso curses his father, it’s said, his lamp shall be put out.”

“I ne’er cursed,” she breathed.

“I saw you holding your head haughty in church this morning at the canon of the mass when all good souls were waiting on God. Now bend your head proper, girl. And don’t disgrace me. Mind.”

Before they blew the candles in the bedroom that evening, the sisters were sitting in their shifts on the beds. Ellen looked out the window where the curved horn of the waning moon bobbed in scuds, and the wind coursed high upon it. “It’s wild out there tonight. The Indian summer’s on the decline.”

“Ellie, what did Craig do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“I’d ne’er let a man touch me. I’d hide like Ma in the wardrobe closet first.”

“I’ll see that come the time.”

“Well tell, did he kiss you?”

“No.”

“Tell about girls, Ellie. Why are there girls and then men?”

“Go to sleep. Why can’t you let it be? You’re always going on.”

“I want to know if a man’s secrets are more like a ram or a stallion. Wish I knew.”

“You say more and I’m going to tell Pa you’re asking such stuff. He’ll whip those notions from you all at once.”

Frankie lay restless, drawing the quilts up to her chin. She sighed. The candles by the bedside flickered, and upon the slanted roof beams shadows were wavering like wings of pinned moths.

Ellen slept. She was dreaming of Christian Ay. And in the dream he had knowledge of her. It seemed this time she was willing. She came awake wondering at the vividness, sheltering its guilt. Maybe it all befell in another world as Miss Gentry the school teacher had claimed. Once Ellen had related a childish nightmare to her and she had replied, “Some say the soul is freed while you’re asleep, Ellen. And that’s when evil’s got its chance. And there’s some can prophesy from a dream. Now others go against those old ways, holding modern notions such as dreams showing up your real wishes, and you having a hidden mind with its own thoughts. I don’t hold by any of that. I maintain those fancy notions are much the same as prophesying.”

It was another strangeness to dwell on. Then she recalled the child she had borne in the Dougherty orchard. She put the memory away with distaste, separating its being from the love she had held for Christian Ay as if there were no connection. She closed her eyes again, weary from the long day.

               *       *       *       *       *

The spotted boar that Anton had obtained from Craig Hedrick rooted up his fence in the night, wandering into the lot where the cows were penned for the winter months. He weighed over half a ton, had an untrusty temper, an insatiable appetite. Anton and Sam would view him in his pen when he fed. “Haw. Luther. Old bastard stinks, doesn’t he, Sam? Luther.”

“He’s ugly, Mester Gaddy. I want to see the pigs he sires to fatten for market. Say.”

The brute’s jowls below his dish face were touching the ground. His ears flapped over tiny vacant eyes. His back was arched high and powerful, his larded sides shook when he trod on his small cleft hoofs. His screw tail was twitching with excitement. He roamed, investigating the new territory, growling. He nibbled at the corn he rooted from cow droppings, at hay fallen under the racks. But he was seeking a tastier morsel. The heavy milker, Maisie, had been due to drop a calf, the men examining her judiciously every evening for signs because Anton wanted to raise it. Now she was down in straw at the corner of the shed, groaning, pushing forth a heifer calf. As Luther rounded the shed side he smelled it, half born. He fed his hunger, ripping at the moist caul-swathed fetus, his eyes glittering.

In the morning Anton had to shoot his mutilated cow. The men strung it up to skin it and dress out what meat could be salvaged. Anton was scooping the foul-smelling entrails into a washtub. “When we finish trimming this carcass, before God, Sam, we’re going to drive locust posts four feet deep. Build that murdering bastard a barricade that’ll hold him.”

                               12

Near the last of November there was a circle around the moon foretelling the wet weather. The downpour held for ten days, the pregnant sky slate-colored, the deluge continuous. Muck and soggy manure were deep now in stables and yards and paths. When Ellen went out to her chores she would wear Anton’s discarded rubber boots. Maria and Frankie had sickened when the rain first began. They were lying together in the big bed in the downstairs room, Anton sleeping nights in the guest bed. Though the fever of the invalids was abating, their harsh coughs were hanging on. Anton soaked inner bark of black cherry and elm, boiling it down to a thick brown brew for them to sip when the seizures came on. Ellen’s eyes were on him as he was moving about the kitchen, preparing the medicine. His loose lips drooped in concentration. “Feed a cold and starve a fever. Hear, girl?”

“Maybe we ought to get a doctor, Pa?” She whispered it, confiding.

“Nary a satchel doctor has set foot in this house, even when your ma bore you youngens.” His voice surged, “I don’t work with charms and tie papers on the sick. The way heathen folk do. I use herbs and healing trees. Like my folks before me and theirs before that.”

“A doctor might know of something new.” She was persistent.

“Now what do you reckon a doctor be? He uses the same herbs as me. He puts them in fancy bottles and gives them new names. The Word tells, remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. That goes for all old-timey ways.”

“I know, Pa.” The sharp-scented steam was filling the kitchen. Ellen took a bowl of spongy warm dough, overturning it into a bed of soft flour on the bread board.

Anton set the jar of warm liquid on the table by her. “Hum. Now, that’s ready for those two.” He pulled on his heavy jacket and fur cap, departing into the drizzle.

Ellen worked the dough down and covered it with a towel. She would prepare flannel bags of heated earth when the chills came on Maria and Frankie, heaping blankets high. Then their fever would be reborn and take possession again. “Mam,” Maria whispered hoarsely to Ellen once, “tell Pap he better make up another sweater tea if the back of this fever don’t break soon.” Red-faced, Maria threw back the covers. Pity moved in Ellen. When she came from the barn, she would leave her muddy boots on the porch and wash herself. She wore a fresh apron into the bedroom. She would bring the invalids a bowl of pudding and a plate of toasted fresh bread, walking softly.

“There’s a bit for you to try and eat, Frankie. You got to have food, Pa says, now the fever’s waning.”

“Wish I had ice,” complained the girl. “Go get the chamber pot for me, Ellie.”

No action, no word or roughness disturbed the tranquil edge of Ellen’s spirit. She was gentle-spoken. “It’ll be clearing off soon. The red cock crowed on the fence this morning. First time he’s flown off the ground.”

Frankie was sighing. “Christmas is less than a month away. And I’m missing all my lessons. I might ne’er get to go with Uncle Garland to the city.”

“Sure you will, now.” Ellen took them warm water to bathe their faces. She scrubbed bed linen in a tub on the kitchen floor, wrung the clothes out, pinned them on the lines she strung through parlor and kitchen. All the while she bore herself proudly and carefully, feeling her necessity and how they were all leaning on her. Surely her father saw she was keeping his house alone now, cooking for Sam and the sick ones, besides her work out of doors.

At length a fragment of moon reappeared in the daytime sky, and the sun was there too, embryonic, feeble. Maria came out of the bedroom to grind beans for breakfast coffee, a long maroon sweater draped over her flannel nightdress. Anton wrapped Frankie in a quilt and sat her in a chair at the table. He was filling her plate. “Now you got to eat.”

The slender girl laughed, her skin pallid, her red hair seeming to prosper unnaturally under the illness, lying abundant. “Do tell at her,” said Maria, “and my hair’s falling out. When I was a youngen I lost hit all in the epidemic. Pure bald. Had to wear a string-knit cap for nigh on a year. He knows.” Her lips continued to move.

“I was thinking, Pa,” said Ellen, striving to keep her newly won role, “I’ll start cleaning the candlesticks outside after this to get away from that mess in the sink.”

“This little old thing.” Anton touched Frankie’s hair, beaming. “Just look at her, you-all.”

The tears stood in Ellen’s eyes. And days that she had made full became empty once more. She felt her pride and her beauty fall away.

               *       *       *       *       *

She was cutting down a few of the hard cheeses from the rafters in the smokehouse. Grady Love would take them in trade for the staples they needed. There was little to carry in the basket these days. In the unseasonable weather the hens had nearly stopped laying. She used water-glass eggs to cook with, put down in a crock during the summer. There was no cream or butter, the dairy taking all the milk that was produced. It was late in the day before she got started. She put on her heavy coat and boots. “I’ll be back in time to fix supper, Ma. So don’t fret if it gets dark. Days are so short now.”

“Can’t you wait till tomorrow?” Frankie was asking. “Don’t go.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Frankie. I’m strapped for salt and soda. Pa’s out of tobacco. You try to nap.”

When she finished her trading and was on the way home, Ellen took the short cut by Bailey’s Woods to visit Amanda York and to warm herself. She knocked at the door of the double cabin. Amanda was wearing a bright red dress, her hair made into a gleaming braid down her back. She drew Ellen to the fire that hissed and sparked. “You know I got a beau, Ellie?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Jerome Hatfield. Smithy Hatfield’s son. He’ll be coming by soon. Stay to meet him, Ellie. He’s real nice.”

“You going to marry him?”

“He’s asked me.”

A car was heard approaching. Then doors were slamming outside, and male voices shouting. “Mandy?”

“Ask your maw can we come in?”

“We got a present for you-all.”

“That’ll be Jerome,” laughed Amanda. “They’ve been drinking, this being Saturday night.”

“This one’s a heavy basket,” called a twisted voice that Ellen knew. “Rome Beauties are right solid apples.”

Three young men came in. Craig Hedrick was carrying one handle of a basket. He hesitated, seeing Ellen, his face frozen. They set the basket down. She saw a dark scar across his forehead lit by the dancing fire.

“Oh, you boys been tasting bootleg,” cried Mrs. York. “Come have some soft cider to cool you off.”

Amanda was running to fetch glasses. Ellen followed, whispering, “I’ve got to go, Mandy. Ma and Frankie are sick in bed and it’s dark by now.”

“Oh, Ellie, I wish you could stay. Craig,” she was crying, “take Ellie Gaddy home in your auto.”

“No,” Ellen breathed.

Amanda whispered, “I’ll make a match for you, Ellie. He’s a nice fellow. Got an eighty-acre farm all his own. But he’s afraid of girls.”

“Hurry up with the glasses, Mandy,” called Jerome. Ellen saw him pushing Craig’s ribs with an elbow. “Take her home, Craig.”

Amanda brought the tray and Ellen hung behind her. “Ellie, you know Craig here? And Jacob Haas and Jerome Hatfield.” She was pointing them out with a nod. “The last is the meanest.”

“Pleased to meet you.” The silence was awkward. The three men leaned on their legs abashed, their faces heated by the fire and the liquor they had drunk.

“Ah, here we are.” Mrs. York was pouring the cider. Ellen shook her head, turning away.

“Well, Craig,” persisted Amanda. “Cat got your tongue? Thought you told me you knew Ellie and went to school with her?”

“Craig took her for a drive once. I heard about that,” crowed young Haas.

“Did you, Craig?” cried Amanda. “When?”

“Come on, let’s hear. When?”

“I’ll walk,” whispered Ellen. “I’d rather.” The young men were shuffling near the fire; someone spilled cider on the stone hearth and Amanda was bringing a mop. Ellen found her basket and boots by the doorway. Outside in the dog-trot the adjoining cabin was dark, unused in winter. She was buttoning her coat. The night was chill.

As she reached Sweetincreek Road the wind gathered itself and whirled strongly about her, up the sleeves of her coat. There was just light enough to follow the road. She drew her coat to her, fought the wind. The way was endless, the few dried leaves still cringing in the trees rattled and the wind had its way with them. In a darkened corn field an animal was slipping along rows of shocks. She heard a distant car engine. It became louder, lights were shining faintly behind her. She was turning into the ditch at the roadside, stumbling down the incline to crouch there. Headlights beamed close at hand. The car stopped by the ditch, a voice was calling thickly, “Ellen? I’ll drive you home.”

“I want no help from you, Craig. I’ll walk.” She climbed out and started up the road.

The car was following. “Get in, Ellen. I’m not going to hurt you.” He swung the door open. She stepped up and into the seat. There was the tart whisky trace. With a jerk the car started. He drove fast down the road, the thin tires bumping over hardened ruts. “Thought you were a new field of daisies, you whore,” Craig was saying. “You’re nothing but a brush field where a plowshare drove through. I found that out.”

She held a frightened silence.

“E’er a man in the county has slept in that field. So I hear.”

He’s blind drunk. She stared ahead where the road crouched dark before the car lights.

“Why won’t you sleep with me too, Ellen? Why did you hit me with that dung-fork?” He began to sniffle.

“You’re stark crazy.” She put her fingers on the door latch.

“You ran off with a rich fellow, I heard. And got knocked up. Had a brat off some’eres.” He was making gruff crying noises.

“You’re just simple crazy.”

He was swerving the Ford into the lane of her home. He braked so that she threw her hands against the dashboard, bruised her fingers on the tiny crucifix screwed there. Her basket slid across the floor carpet making a rough sound. “I’m just drunk. Worthless drunk. I’m sorry for what I said, Ellen.” He was leaning to her and she remembered his hairy arms.

“Get away from me.” The handle turned. She ran to the house, the basket swinging wildly. His car remained where it was; she glanced back from the porch. She was pushing the door open, the kitchen was warm and smelled of security. She went to the bedroom door, taking off her coat.

“You were gone so long, Ellie,” Frankie whined.

“I had to put the potatoes on,” Maria said.

Ellen tugged at her boots. “I tarried a while at Mandy’s.” She was busying herself with supper, making a clatter with the dishes. She hummed and when she sliced the ham she closed her eyes, blinking tears. He called me a whore.

“I thought I heard a car drive up,” Maria said.

“Someone out on the road, I reckon.” She heard the motor start then. Craig would drive back to the York cabin. He and the others would sit around the fire, eating apples and popping corn in an iron basket. They would laugh about that queer Ellen Gaddy.

Anton came in, his long-jawed face ruddy from the harsh wind. “I brought your twists of tobacco, Pa. I set them on the shelf o’er there.” I hate them all. Men are a pack of tormented hogs.

               *       *       *       *       *

Christmas 1926 was approaching. Preparations were under way for Garland’s annual visit. Frankie told Ellen with enthusiasm, “I’m just going to sit and study grammar. So don’t look for help in the kitchen from me.”

“Oh Frankie, stop worrying about it.”

In the evening the younger girl was arranging dried everlasting in the parlor vase, the thistle-like blooms shaking palely in her hands. She turned to Ellen, blithe. “I’m that eager to see Chicago, you know. Pa says I can get dresses from the catalog. You help me.”

Ellen brought it out and they selected. “You’re like a wild one, Frankie. Setting such store on the times you’ll have. Just do as Uncle says and it’ll come out well.”

Frankie had suppressed her misgivings. By her lively chatter and protestations she covered the small voice of panic beneath.

Anton came in to where they sat. “Order stout, hear? Not cheap. I declare this is the day. Get her new boots too, girl.”

“She’ll more need pretty slippers, Pa.”

“And get chills-and-fever? She can be warm and comely too, I say. Just spend it. I got it,” he said recklessly, and went to paint the black sink in the kitchen in honor of Garland’s coming.

Ellen enjoyed the readying for the holidays. “Where are the straws I pulled from the new broom you got, Ma? I’m bent I’ll find them to judge if my cakes are done right. Frankie,” she cried, “stop studying. Come beat this icing for me.”

“I don’t know, Ellie.” Frankie entered the room, reluctant. “How do I sound when I talk?”

“Why, you sound like a lady. Whip this up, will you?”

“All right.” Frankie poised the spoon, reciting, “The deluge drowned, the earth around.”

“That’s real clear, Frankie.” Ellen took pride in her cakes, liked to start the batter with her hands, feeling the fresh lard blend to the sugar. “I despise to waste making a cake with fat-drippings. They should be delicate and light.” She was washing her hands, beating the eggs to a froth with her mother’s wire whisk. Her health and good will surged strong from some inner store.

After mass on Sunday, Anton left his women-folk to speak with Joe Burwell who pressed him, “Borrow my new fence stretcher, Gaddy. Hit beats a crowbar and pliers to a fare-thee-well.”

“I’ll try it one time. All my fences are rotting on me. Hell, I’d rather set up rails any day than stretch wire.”

Joe Burwell’s son Dyke was approaching the sisters and Maria on the church porch. “Hey.”

“Hey, Dyke,” Frankie cried.

The boy was nineteen or twenty, fleshy and large. He was smiling weakly at the girls, in anguish. Frankie blushed, Ellen looked down, scowling. Anton was calling them to the waiting wagon.

“He’s cute,” Frankie whispered and looked back.

“You can have him. I heard he does dishes and washes and scrubs for his ma.”

“I wouldn’t mind. He’s tall. But how come he does her housework?”

“She’s a one-leg. She hitched a horse up without the blinders and it scared off and ran the spring-wagon o’er her. They had to cut her leg clean off above the knee.”

“Say.”

“She wore out three wood legs till she took to pushing a chair before her. Had a baby too,” Ellen concluded luridly, “couple of years after.”

“Well, all the same he’s tall. I’m not so particular.”

In the cold clear weather the cows would seek sunny spots in the barnyard, at night crowding into steaming groups. The goats found a plank leaning against the chicken house. Ellen came on the younger ones bounding madly on the corrugated tin roof, their hoofs rattling. The daring skewbald Pie snorted and leaped skittishly from the high slanted roof to the ground. She was galloping back to the plank, short tail erect, up on the roof again, sure-footed. They seemed like wild animals Ellen had come on in the woods, unable to contain their spirits. Penny, who was heavier and not inclined to frolic, stood on the ground, ears flattened in worry. Ellen patted her and she tossed her beard, fretful.

The girls were gathering walnuts and butternuts. They shucked them and threw the hulls in the kitchen stove. Dyke Burwell drove up in a buggy with his father. Ellen saw them through the window. Dyke sat helpless, holding the reins, while the men met and walked to the barns. Joe Burwell turned his head, bellowing, “Hitch Blacky to the post, you dang fool, and get in where it’s warm. You got a corncob for a head?”

At the kitchen door Dyke was rapping, timid. Ellen opened it, her hands stained with walnut juice. She was blocking the entrance. “Well?” He cast his eyes to his hobnail shoes. She saw the two men disappear in the distance. “We’re busy baking.” Cruelly, she closed the door on him.

“Ellie Gaddy!” Frankie was running quick-footed after the stout ungainly boy. She led him to the parlor where she gave him black and white beans to string clumsily for decoration. Ellen heard her vivacious voice and later the piano tinkling and Frankie’s falsetto.

When I was a lady, a lady, a lady When I was a lady, a lady was I And this way and that way and this way And that way And when I was a lady, a lady was I

“That makes two geese in there,” Ellen told Maria briefly.

               *       *       *       *       *

On the evening Garland was to arrive, the Gaddys were waiting in vain. Anton took out the letter that had come from Chicago, studied it again, squinting through his reading glass. “Hit’s today for sure. That’s what it says here. Lay down that red carpet on the twenty-second. That’s his way of saying it.”

“You know, Mester Gaddy,” Maria said, “today the sun entered Capricornus. First day of winter.”

Anton reflected and went for the almanac. “Hit says unsettled here. I’ve noticed these folks will often hit it right. Could be he’s run up against a storm.”

The roast was kept on the back of the stove, reheated until the juices dried. The chores were finished. The family had dressed for company. Late dusk set in and Anton grumbled, “Put it out and we’ll eat. I’ll say grace.” They picked at the food by lamplight. The man spoke suddenly, “This meat’s not fit for hogs.” He pushed his plate and got up, began to pack his pipe.

Frankie made sniffing sounds. “He’s not coming, that’s what. I can’t bear waiting and not knowing.” She ran up the stairs, her footsteps fading; the loft door slammed mildly from afar.

The next forenoon Garland was wheeling a yellow Reo into the lane; he pressed the horn, “Ah-roooooo-ga!” Frankie flew out to greet him. Ellen was hesitating at the door, her hand shielding her eyes from the winter sun. She saw the familiar derby and Garland’s arm about Frankie as Anton came from the barnyard. “Broke down at Minetta, An. Had to stay overnight. Why the hell don’t you have a telephone installed like everyone else?” Garland was waving at his car. “How do you like it? Brand-new touring style. The latest.” He clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Had her up to forty miles on route sixty-six.”

Anton preceded them into the kitchen. Garland was looking at Ellen as he came to the steps. “Well, puss?” He pinched her thigh, his small blue eyes gay. “How’s the wandering little wench?” He wagged his finger.

“Reckon I was a poor niece to you last winter after your kindness.” She gazed at him, candid. “I ne’er meant it so.”

“Put on weight, haven’t you, hon? You look good. Pretty.” The color rose in her face, relieved that he would let the past rest. “Got a boy friend yet?”

“No,” she was smiling. He met her eyes. At the sight of the clipped mustache in the squared smooth face, a part of her loneliness had drawn away. They walked into the house, his arm on her shoulder.

Maria was in the bedroom doorway, twisting a towsack towel in her hands. “Who be you?”

“Ooman,” roared Anton, “it’s my brother then.”

“Not peddler.”

“Ooman. You’re plaguing me.”

“Shut up, An. She hasn’t seen me for a year. Hello, Maria, I brought you a present, too. It’s in my car. A pressure cooker to save you work.”

“Now I forgot it was you coming today.” Maria was suddenly complacent. “Tinie Bilberry’s got a bread-mixing outfit. Hit’s made to save work too. The handle turns like a churn and the dough comes out ready for the pans.”

“Does hit shape the loaves too?” asked Anton grimly. “I allow men are turning from the Lord God’s ways with these contraptions.”

“Next year I’m going to bring you a sewing machine, Maria. I saw a treadle one you could use, seeing as your husband won’t put in electricity till doomsday. You got to look to the future, Anton. Rural electrification. Let machines do it.”

“Next you’ll say get a newfangled automobile,” Anton predicted.

Ellen and Maria laid out the noon dinner. Ellen was warmed in her uncle’s love. In the evening she sat by him on the sofa. Or if he was standing, she linked her arm in his. When he laughed and said Frankie’s way of speech wasn’t a whit altered from last year and that Anton had got a reaming on the grammar teacher, her jealousy was assuaged.

But Anton angered, “That fellow’s been coming for a year. And there was one we had before him that quit on me.”

“Hold on,” Garland was crying easily. “Chrissake, Frankie’ll be all right. You did what you could.” He nodded kindly to the girl’s stricken face. “Let’s hear you play something, sweet.”

The next morning Ellen was in late from her barn work. She stopped in the hall at the parlor door, hearing Garland’s emphatic voice within, “She’s not well, I tell you, An. You’re so used to her you don’t notice. But she acts downright queer.”

“Shaw.”

“She needs psychiatric care. Mental aid. Look, I’m worried about her. Your attitude doesn’t help, God knows. You’re as enlightened as a bushman.”

Anton laughed, “You modern city folk. Such know-alls.”

“I’m not sure if I should have brought that pressure cooker, either.”

“Well, that’s a fact. I wouldn’t have any truck with it. What’s it got o’er a good fire for cooking? You tell me.”

Ellen wandered into the kitchen to look at Maria with new eyes. She saw the two men going to the barn, her uncle clad in one of the country costumes he affected, jodhpurs and boots, a dark red turtle-neck sweater. And Anton wearing stiff new overalls and a fresh-made black shirt.

When the time had arrived for midnight mass, Ellen was taking her place at the communion rail with the others. She waited while the priest stopped at Garland and then Anton and Maria. Then Father Tompert spoke in Latin above her and in the cold church all became quiet. The fleeting fear washed over Ellen. Am I lost? Pa thinks I’m a pure maid. But his God knows I’m not. When she was going back to the bench, she fortified herself. They that stumbled are girded with strength. She had read it when she searched in her father’s worn Bible. I’ve done no wrong. I have my God. And she rebuilt her peace.

They were driving back to the farm in the Reo. The girls tucked their feet in the narrow floor space, sniffed the new interior. They savored the luxury of the shallow seat. Frankie was giggling, “We’re like soft city ladies.” Ellen laughed into the dark.

Anton was pulling at his pipe, the fragrant smoke mingling with the fresh biting wind that whipped from the open windows into the back seat. Garland inquired, “Where’s your fancy blue hat, hon? With the rose on it, that I brought you last year? I see you’re still wearing that old cap.”

“It’s cold tonight,” Ellen was evasive, “so I wore this warm wool one.”

At home, they ate from the laden table. Then the women came into the parlor, leaving the kitchen in disarray. They sat by the fire that was cracking as the dry wood caught. “I’m going to help you girls do those dishes in the morning,” Garland cried. “You’ve got to keep me company. I used to be in demand as a dishwasher in the old days at some of the best hotels. Now I insist.”

“Such foolishness,” Anton mocked, lighting one of the fresh cigars and settling in a chair.

Ellen brought a bowl of wrinkled sweet winter apples. “Have a russet, Uncle?”

“Ellie, I’ll play if you’ll sing.” Frankie was at the upright piano.

“Go ahead, pusses.” Garland had produced a bottle of bootleg rum; he poured two glasses. He waved his hand until they finished the tune.

I don’t want no more of your weevily wheat I don’t want none of your barley But I want some more of your pretty white flour To bake a cake for Charlie

“I vote for Christmas!” Garland’s face heated. Ellen was remembering the party in Chicago where he had seemed a stranger. Here he was his old self once again. When he came yearly to the farm, the tenor of the home would be transformed, and Ellen esteemed by him above her sister. She wondered if Anton ever noticed. I’m strong like their mother, that Nell they talk of. And Frankie’s not.

Anton finished his glass, set it down. “If you-all want to hear about it, we saw a crowd of doves once so thick they blacked the sky.”

“Turtledoves?” Frankie asked.

“Passenger pigeons,” said Garland. “I remember them, too. Extinct now. That was when we were boys.”

“They sounded like a twister when a flock came o’er,” said Anton. “Our sir took us three youngens to see them. That was in eighteen-eighty.”

“Not that far back.” Garland was yawning.

“Yes it was. For Ma named it time and again. Eighteen-eighty.” Anton was animated by the memory.

“Well, if you say.”

“You and me were still wearing shirt-tails, Gar. Marc was in pants. He’d have been about ten. It was down where Maria’s folks lived.” He nodded. “At Seven Mile Run. They shot them down and left the squabs to die. They shipped them in barrels till the market was so glutted they had to feed them out to the hogs.”

“How many you reckon were in that skyful of doves, Pa?” Ellen was asking.

“Well, when they settled, the flock stretched forty miles long and ten deep. Then one day they all flew off at once. We went to look at the giant trees stripped and ruined.”

“I’d fain have seen them,” Ellen said, “darkening the sky.”

“I notice they caught some rumrunners,” Garland said, “sneaking it in from Canada in a carload of hog carcasses.” He mourned, “No more booze.”

“Prohibition’s nothing to me,” said Anton, “I make what wine I need. I’ll give you some to take back if you want. Dandelion’s the best, I’d say.”

“I’ll take you up on that. So they don’t catch me, I’ll label it perfume for the ladies.”

Frankie was tittering, Garland stretching, and the family found their beds.

Ellen remained awake. Life, it seemed, was a long quest for love. The wind was whistling low around a corner of the house. Her mind went on what Garland had said about Maria being ill. The wind sound was bringing to memory a fall evening when Ellen was a child and a whippoorwill began to call near the porch steps, first in low-pitched chucks, then shredding the night with its cry. Maria had shrieked, “Get him off the porch, girl.” Ellen ran to open the door, the song ceased as the bird winged away. But Maria had wept, “When the whippoorwill sings on your doorstep, it brings bad luck. Hit sung on the night I lost my betimes baby. It was a little boy.” Ellen had vowed then, it’ll not be so with me. Life won’t break me whatever comes. The wind was growling, hunting. She remembered that in Illinois there was a small child of hers. She had a vague wish to see what he was like. And then, nostalgia like a memory of the dead drove through her, constricting her throat, for what dwelled between Luke Dougherty and his wife.

               *       *       *       *       *

On Christmas, Anton was baffled to find his brother had given him a battery radio. “Hit’s a contraption, all right.” He was tuning the stations. Static clattered in, a rasping voice and a sudden blare of music. Anton was hunching himself over the instrument on the table. “Don’t help me, Gar. Leave me run hit myself.”

The girls opened black velvet boxes. Ellen was turning a gold chain over in her hand; she laid it cold about her throat. There were matched pearls for Frankie who wore her new yellow dress and flitted between Anton and Garland. “Now, gather ye rosebuds,” Garland was quoting, “while ye may. Old Time’s still a-flying. The same flower that blooms today tomorrow’ll be dying.” He thumped the round table with his palm.

“Tell more about Chicago, Uncle. What’ll it be like for me?”

“Oh, Anton thinks you’ve got such a talent,” he was chucking Frankie’s chin, “he can’t cheat the world of it. You’ll like it, sweet. I’ll let you take it slow. Afraid I gave your sister too big a dose.” He looked at Ellen, who gravely returned his gaze. “Remember how busy I was, hon? Now that’s what I like about Christmas down here. Takes my mind off my problems.”

“Give me that old-timey religion,” the radio pealed.

“Listen at that,” Anton shouted. “No telling where those barbarians are singing from.”

The holiday week wore on. Frankie in high excitement, was easily given to laughter, as easily wept. On the second of January, it was planned, she would drive in the Reo to Chicago. The sisters were washing milk buckets in the kitchen when Ellen said, “Be good for you to part from Pa for a spell.”

“Oh, you just want him for yourself,” Frankie wailed. “He’ll ne’er romp with you like me.”

Ellen tightened her lips, threw back her head, marched to her goats in the woodshed. “Scroungy brat,” she sniffed. “That’s not so.”

They were all seated before the fire in the parlor at night. A knock came at the kitchen door and Ellen went to answer it. “Why, Lily Garrett. I don’t know when we saw you last. Want to come in?”

The fat girl was encased in a bulky coat, the figure of a youth rearing behind her. “We want you to come with us, Ellie. Frankie too. We got a wagon of hay and there’s a moon to see by. Come on, Ellie, ask if you can.”

“No. Pa wouldn’t let us. Who-all is there?” She leaned forward from the security of the house.

“A whole wagonload of us. Papa let me go. Said I’d be whipped anyway so I’d as well. It’s a deal of fun.” Lily was bouncing with energy. “This is Jacob Haas.”

“Hello,” he said.

“Reckon we can’t go, but I sure thank you for asking. And Mester Haas, too.” She nodded to the dark figure.

She came back into the parlor and Garland said, “That was your fellow, wasn’t it, sweet?” His blue eyes were admiring her.

She stepped lightly across the oak floor, containing her gestures. “Oh, it was only Lily, Uncle.”

“She’s my best friend,” Frankie said. “She told me when Sophie had those twins.”

“Yes, and those brats came five months after the girl married Buck Lemmon,” Anton said. “A loose crowd.”

“They’re young, Anton,” cried Garland.

“Rakes and loose girls. Defiling the unwedded has no excuse. I’ll keep these two chaste.”

On New Year’s Eve, Ellen was putting peas to soak in the iron kettle. Garland came looking for her. “What are you doing, puss?”

“Don’t you know it’s good luck to eat black-eye peas and sowbelly the first day of the year?”

“What really happened last spring in St. Louis, hon? It was a man, wasn’t it? I knew something was going on with you.”

She looked to her work, her fingers trembling. She felt mature, controlled. “Nothing. I ne’er reached St. Louis.”

“What I can’t figure out is how you managed to get away so quietly. I searched the stations in the morning for you. Kept it from Anton as long as I could.”

“Wish I was like you, Uncle. You got all you want.” She said it unexpectedly. “Purely I’d admire to be you.”

“Seems you could have told me your problems. You’re growing up so fast. Maybe I could have helped. Why did you run away like that?”

“I wouldn’t be Pa. But I’d be you, if I were a man.” She said it passionately, won to him by his approval of her, by his broad opinions, awed with his worldliness.

“There’s no one like you, Ellen,” he was smiling, shaking his head.

Anton called from the parlor door, “Go out and take a look at that Gladys heifer, girl.”

“I’ll go with her,” Garland shouted back. He took Ellen’s coat from the hook and held it for her. He was lighting the lantern awkwardly. He wore a fur-trimmed jacket and was pulling on kid gloves. His esteem seeped over Ellen, making her movements supple, her youth a fine thing.

The path to the barn was a river of canescent moonlight drowning the lantern glow. They walked silent until Garland said, “You know how much like my mother you are?” He reflected. “There was a way she had though, that came out sometimes. Like she really hated me.” He was speaking softer. “I’d try to make her notice the way I could work quicker and do things better than Marc. He was older. She always doted so on him.” Ellen’s quiescence encouraged him in the cover of the night. “I remember her sitting with her head up stiff in the seat of her little rig, driving her pony. Beg her to let me harness it for her, or curry it.” He murmured, “You know, you’re just the spit of her sometimes, puss. Except for your hair. Hers was more the color of Frankie’s.” He took her arm.

Ellen felt him shivering. It’s me, causing him to do that. “Venus and Mars and Jupiter are the evening stars now,” she told him. “Jupiter’s still up, he doesn’t set till about eight these days.”

In the barn, by fragile lantern light, the pregnant young cow seemed quiet. They were turning to go. Ellen noticed Sam had stuffed a burlap sack in the broken window to keep the wind out. Garland spoke again, “You know I’ve always had a thought about Marc that I never told anyone.” Ellen was listening in the near dark, amid the pungent animal odors. “He had brown straight hair and his face was different somehow. Handsome. He wasn’t like any of us.” He lit a cigarette, leisurely. “You in any hurry, sweet?” He put his arm about her and she waited to hear the secret about her dead uncle, Marc. “I don’t think he was Pa’s son at all. I think my mother married Jules Gaddy because she got caught and needed a father for her child.”

“Reckon your sir knew of it?” whispered Ellen.

“No telling. He thought the world of my mother, that I’m sure of. She got her way on everything.” He was blowing the smoke, stamping the cigarette into the musty bedding. He breathed broken, “Oh darling.” And his dry mouth was on hers, his old mouth, in desire. He was pulling at her skirt, fumbling on her thigh with his soft fingers. She tore her mouth swiftly away, turning her head.

“And Lot went up out of Zoar,” he whispered, holding her to him. “He dwelt in the mountains and his daughters with him. Didn’t know I could quote from the Bible, did you, hon? The first-born went in and lay with her father. Book of Genesis.” Hotly he held her but gently withal.

She was pushing him from her with violent hands. “Come to the house, Uncle. Now.”

Wordless he followed her up the path where moonlight bloomed cold. In the kitchen she hung her coat on its hook. She went upstairs to lie in the chill air, while the dying candle made a puddle of tallow on the table top. Ellen’s loneliness was an ache, for his kindness had garbed her. He was aged and knowledgeable. Despair had laid her bare. It’s not for love of me. He’s got no enduring need of me. His imperfection, his weakness, had come to stand between them.

               *       *       *       *       *

In the morning Garland was jovial in a bright yellow shirt piped in red and a belt with a European clasp fashioned like a horse and rider. Ellen dawdled over her barn chores, came tardily to the breakfast table. She didn’t wear a fresh apron, she ate stolid, uncommunicative. Anton was rapt in the radio, the nasal twang.

She’s pure as the rose, like the lamb she is meek And she’s never been known to use paint on her cheek

Ellen went from the room unnoticed. She decided to clean in the parlor first. She lifted a heavy chair, viciously dropped it thudding into its accustomed place. “Can’t those old fools leave things in order? It’s clean and redd up, mop and scrub. And then they mess it all up. Hogs.” She was piling rag rugs in her arms and striding to the porch. The door slammed after her. She stood on the steps and shook the rugs, snapping them with loud whacks. The dirt whirled in the cold air. “Dust and more,” she was muttering.

Garland opened the door. He was holding a cigarette, and traced his mustache with the small finger of his hand. Behind him she could hear Frankie’s high inquiring whines and the radio.

“Well, puss?” She continued her work, her soft mouth set in a line. He came over to her. “You know what you mean to me? Joie de la vie. Now that’s right. I’m past fifty, hon. If I’d have met someone like you earlier things might have been different in my life.”

She let a rug drop and in a deliberate movement took up another with a sigh. “I got a tormented lot of work to get through today, Uncle.”

“Just wanted you to know that.” He was tossing his cigarette away; he lit another and went inside. She heard him in a few minutes.

It’s beefsteak when I’m hungry Rye whisky when I’m dry Greenbacks when I’m hard up And heaven when I die

The Reo was packed, and it waited to carry Garland and Frankie away the next day. Ellen was instructed to wake the travelers early in the morning before going to the barn. The household sought their beds not long after supper. Frankie was protesting in their room, “The particular thing I’m afraid of is meeting folks, Ellie. Wish you were going to be there.”

“I’m out of patience with you. You’ve not done a lick all day, flitting about like a twitting chick.”

“All the same, talk to me.”

“Hush and leave me be. I’m asleep.”

Before dawn Ellen went into Garland’s partitioned chamber to rouse him. The light of the candle wavered across his face. For the instant she was confused, thinking it wasn’t her uncle with mouth pulled in withered upon the gums. She drew her breath sharply, and he was opening his eyes. “Ell’n?” he quavered, reaching for his false teeth in a watercup on the stone-topped bed table.

“Are you awake? I have to run.”

When she returned from the barn, Frankie had dressed, her new pearls were at her neck, her lips pale, her eyes blue-shadowed. “Must I really go, Pa?”

“It’s what we planned. And it’s for you to do. You know it be my nearest wish.” He warned her, “Don’t start up.”

“I won’t, Pa.”

He took the girl on his lap. “Look here, Poppet.” The battery set was clanging to the beat of a banjo, “Off with your coat and wet your throat with that real old mountain dew.”

“Shut it off for Chrissake,” Garland demanded, and the women started. “We’re going in a few minutes and then you can listen to your heart’s content. By God, An.”

The man switched off the radio and they sat to breakfast.

“Gladys isn’t letting her milk down so good, Pa.” Ellen leaned toward him.

“Tell Sam to let her calf bump it some. It can stay with the old one awhile. I aim to veal hit anyway.”

“Did you e’er tell Uncle about old Full-pail, Pa?” Frankie was preparing to prolong the mealtime. “That Dyke told of?”

“Listen at this, Garland. Joe Burwell went to look at a milk cow. The farmer hadn’t but led it out when his old ooman came squalling, don’t sell old Full-pail. Pray, don’t sell Full-pail, Mester. Joe’s ears pricked up. The old lady kept hollering so first thing Joe knows, he’s shelling out thirty dollars cold cash and hauling the cow home. That evening he couldn’t milk a teacup. Joe was fit to be tied. Went back and the farmer said to him, ne’er said how big the pail was.”

“That’s good,” Garland approved.

Before the sun rose much higher the bags had been put in the car. Garland returned to the porch for the pasteboard suitcases of Frankie’s things. “Away we go,” he cried.

Frankie was clinging to Ellen. “Reckon I won’t see you-all till next Christmas.”

“You’ll be too grand for us then, Frankie,” Ellen said.

Garland was getting behind the wheel. “These Reos are demons. Did I tell you I had her right at fifty on route sixty-six?”

“You take care of that girl, Gar. Don’t drive so reckless.”

“Statistics prove a car’s lots safer than a buggy. You know that?” He was looking at Ellen, “Goodbye, hon.”

“Goodbye, Uncle.” She waited for them to be gone, for routines to be reestablished and the ways of peace to come over the farm. She yearned toward spring, sick of winter’s hanging on.

“So long, Maria,” Garland was calling. Maria waved, walking back to the house.

“Bye now, Ma.” And the small figure promised, “I’ll write once a week, Pa.”

The yellow car was going down the lane and turning onto the road. Stillness descended until it rang like wounded thunder. Anton went toward the porch where Maria, in her dark red sweater and a discarded broad-brimmed hat of his, waited to follow Anton into the house. Ellen walked over to the well, putting her coat collar up. She sat on the damp covering board and shivered. From her pocket she was taking the gold-linked necklace Garland had given her. She dangled it where the sun collected to glint and catch the luster. She held it over the well before letting it drop.

                               13

Song sparrows were murmuring. Deep in burrows, woodchucks blinked and closed their eyes again. Brave white-carved flowers unfolded wearily and narrow spires of pokeweed started from the debris of winter. A green-striped butterfly emerged misshapen from a chrysalis and pumped wet wings. Cows bawled, feeling the season, and rutting male hogs screamed. Jack carried traces of skunk musk. On Ash Wednesday Father Tompert marked the foreheads of Ellen and her parents with a cross of ashes, saying, “Remember man, thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”

From cover of the woods Ellen was watching a dog fox in a fallow field. It was hunting white-footed mice, repeatedly leaped stiff-legged above the weeds, brush high. She rested her hands on the thick winter coats of the three goats at her side. She put her mind on Frankie, who wrote abrupt letters from Chicago. They brought lines to her father’s face until Ellen would feel the compassion heating her. She climbed a stile in the rail fence and her does were clambering after, the spotted kid leaping, shaking its long ears. Her thoughts had turned to Garland, and the secret about Marc. Wish I was wise. There were him and Pa both, grieving as youngens after the love of that mother of theirs, that Nell Gaddy. And her honing all the while for Marc’s true daddy that had left her. None of them satisfied. And Pa’d never study out that secret the way Uncle did. Pa would never think Nell could get caught with a brat the same as me. Her mind touched on the money she had sent last week again to the Doughertys. I put the child to a good mother. I never wanted him. Poor thing. The goats followed as she went up through the budding, winter-bare woods.

               *       *       *       *       *

And three years would pass, years of time merged and woven in a pattern on an endless loom of chores. The color in Ellen’s life would break in snatches on the cloth of the drab days. By summer the radio Garland had brought was growing dim. Anton laid his ear to it in the evenings to catch the feeble sound. “It’s that far off,” he whispered, intent. Then the batteries were exhausted and the instrument was stored away in the wagon shed to gather cobwebs and mold. Maria’s pressure cooker would blow up, rending a gash on the rafter beams. Maria hid in the clothes press, staying there until Ellen had picked up the torn metal parts and thrown them out. She wore the same clothes day on day, her light-colored dresses hanging unused on the ridgepole in her room. Mud daubers constructed a nest over them, soaring in summer with damp balls dangling from their legs, in and out the two small windows.

At first Ellen missed her sister, her shrill voice and dependent ways. She told Lily Garrett, “Frankie would always be after me to stir up a cake or mend for her. She’d lean on me in her way.”

“Hey, my fudge party was the most fun,” Lily was giggling. “Looks like you being nineteen now, Ellie, your papa’d let you come. And we shelled corn too. Craig Hedrick found a red car. There. He kissed me.”

“Is that all he did?” Ellen was picking through a pile of cornhusks, looking for flat strips to splice and braid into mats. “He talk about petunia flowers?”

Lily’s carefully arranged curls shook. “I ne’er been kissed so. Reckon I could catch him, Ellie? Think of me with a baby and a man calling me wife.”

               *       *       *       *       *

Changes would take place within Ellen over these three years. Going to church, following her parents in, she came to feel that those whom she had seen as pure in the time of her transgression were not so. They hid their sins, she dared to think, and dressed themselves a poppet God. When Anton stepped into the confession cubicle and she heard him mumbling ever too loud as he pled the venial sins, she allowed herself to think he made his shrift complacently. When he dipped the holy water she pitied his narrow habits and more than before devoted herself to his will that he might see she knew her duty.

The God that was hers was not enclosed where the crowd gathered. She set her mind on it. Hers stood above when she was on the land and alone. His feet were the hills, his hand the wind that quivered, his eyes those of the meekest birds. “This one’s my Lord,” she said, solaced.

She was stirred to confide in Anton once. They were standing on the porch on a summer’s night while a storm was breeding in the south. Lightning flicked and the hot earth panted for the coming water. “You can feel the hands of God now. All the unknowing. You feel it, Pa? How we’re just naught?” She was leaning toward him.

“If you’d take the time, girl,” he said heavily, “to read His word, you’d know that He formed man of the dust of the ground and you’d know of the Day of Judgment and the opening of the graves. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood.” He left her sitting on the stair. Large drops began to fall and the wind swept in a deep sweetness.

Sometimes a young man would look on Ellen as she was standing with Maria in the churchyard, or when bartering at Love’s. Or one would offer her a lift in his wagon and would look at the gold-flecked pupils and the ripe figure. Then she cast her eyes down, surly, or stared at him, bold, until he turned aside. She was guarding herself against a hurt. Dyke Burwell came to call, waited on the divan in the parlor while she slipped away to watch the winging bees, honey-dripped and golden, working the hives. Anton ferreted after her and bade her keep the young man company.

“But I’ve no mind for him, Pa,” she protested.

He roared, “What’s awry with you and you won’t be courted? I’ll not put up with your foldilay ways.” He was thrusting his chin, “You do as bid, girl.”

So she sat sullen with Dyke. But she baited him slyly and he went away and came no more.

At Love’s grocery one time, while she was debating on thread and needles and picking out salt and coffee, a thing happened. Carl Brinker’s hired man was bartering with Grady. Ellen had seen the new green pickup outside. He was a dark fellow with a heavy face and fists. “You see, Ay was my boss’s hired hand before me, Mester Love,” the man droned. “Now, haven’t you got a bigger clevis pin?”

“What size you want? So his baby died?”

Stacey’s birdlike eyes were on Ellen. “You feeling ill?”

Ellen sensed a danger as she felt the flush rise. She laughed sharply, “No. I allow I’ve got all Ma needed. Excepting yeast. You got some fresh sponge?”

“I’ll see if mine’s still working good.” Stacey disappeared.

Ellen’s heart thudded, hearing the laborious speech of Brinker’s man. “That Ay’s had a tedious run of bad luck. First his daddy passed on, then his sister ran off. Rose Ay.”

“So?” said Grady. “Tell your boss I got new bridle rosettes in. White and blue.”

“That Ay’s sister was comely. Biggity but comely.”

“Ay wasn’t much.”

“No. I ne’er knew him well. We used his store some. I’ll tell Mester Brinker about those gaudies. He’ll buy some for that stallion. You e’er seen that horse?” The man was slowly scratching his head. “Now what about the Lord taking that little child?”

“He gives and He takes away,” sighed Grady.

“That’s so.”

Ellen put the warm jar of yeast in her basket, hurried past the two men. Grady was nodding, “Here’s someone seen an old beau of yours in Louisville.”

“I ne’er had a beau.”

“Took you to the circus in New Hope, a bird told me.” Grady’s eyes flickered while he grinned.

“Morning, miss.” Brinker’s man touched his cap, doleful. “You know Mester Ay?”

“I’ll be getting along now.”

That had happened in the first of the three years. Ellen would ponder on it. Christian was gone out of her days for ever and all of eternity. She faced it. He had taken some woman to wife, his sweetheart, his may, for the rest of their enduring lives. She twisted it and the sharp hurt was dead.

               *       *       *       *       *

In that first year too, Garland and Frankie had driven down for the Christmas holiday in a factory-fresh five-passenger Oakland. Ellen saw at once that the year in Chicago had altered Frankie. Her old gaiety was shed. She wore a modish yellow cloche pulled over her brow, her jacket was long, belted at the hips. Her bright hair was bobbed. Anton was beside himself, fascinated at Frankie’s apparel and her new manner. “I declare she’s a little swell, gar.” He scratched his head. “How do you like city life, Poppet?”

“Very well, Pa.”

“How’s your learning coming on? Are folks setting up? I vow. Hum.”

“Very well. I’ll unpack now, if you don’t mind.” She was going coolly up the stairs and he watched, silent.

“What happened to that radio I gave you?” Garland asked. “Hell, I’ve got six in my house now.”

Ellen had dressed the house with holly and bought red candles for the table. She was making her sister’s favorite desserts. “I threw together a blackberry cake, Frankie. We haven’t had one since you’ve been gone.”

“I never noticed Ma was so simple, Ellie.”

“Should I top it with boiled white icing or jam?”

“Was Mrs. Quimby at Uncle’s when you were there?”

“How come you ask?”

“I hate that know-all.”

“Does Uncle treat you good, Frankie?”

“He’s different there.”

“I mean, does he make o’er you a lot?”

“No, he’s not much for romping like Pa was, Ellie. He thinks me a little child.”

And Ellen was satisfied about Garland. “Reckon I’ll use icing and jam both, Frankie.” Ellen was constrained if Garland came upon her alone, but in the family group he would seem her familiar uncle. When she thought of his incestuous overture of the last winter, she would shove the episode into a cupboard of her mind.

Around the fire in the evening, Anton had poured his tales, overweening, on the younger girl. “Used to be the only tools a man needed were made of wood, Poppet. A plow and a harrow and a wagon. Your grandsir used a peg-tooth harrow with a hickory-wood frame. When a tooth broke off, he fitted a new one from the woods. Haw. No running to the Bethel Hardware for a broken piece of this or that. Just like the old country.”

“Speaking of the old country,” said Garland, “you girls know about truffle hunters?”

“What’s a truffle, Uncle?”

“Grows on roots of oaks. There was an old woman hunted them in this village in France where your ancestors lived. She’d take a basket and spade and a pig on a leash.”

“Slut?”

“No, puss, this wasn’t a trained pig. Truffles have a strong odor that any pig can scent. He roots under a tree and then she drives him off and digs them up.”

“Such uses for hogs,” Maria was saying, “as you’ve heard of.”

“Sometimes they use dogs, but this woman used a pig. She chained him at night or he’d slip out and get the truffles.”

“Christmas makes you remember, doesn’t it, Uncle?” said Frankie suddenly. “Why don’t you tell stories at home?”

“This here’s your home,” grumbled Anton.

Garland was filling glasses with the “imported” Scotch he had brought. “Now, Frankie,” he cautioned.

“Want to hear more about hogs?” asked Anton.

“All right.”

“When our grandsir came homesteading all he had was a few razorbacks. He fattened them on oak and buckmast, said it beat corn any day.”

“I don’t see how a pig could be fatter than that spotted boar you’ve got,” said Garland.

“Luther. He’s ornery, spoiled my best milker and her heifer calf.”

“Say, Frankie’s practiced a Christmas song for you, An,” Garland said.

“Play it, Poppet.”

“I don’t feel like singing now.”

“I ask you to,” Anton glowered.

“She’s got a new singing teacher,” Garland was saying as the girl went reluctant to the piano. “Makes the third one now.”

“She had two grammar mesters before she went with you,” said Anton. “One walked out on me and Peyton tried to quit when I fired him. How come they do that?”

The girl played accurately, accompanying herself in a reedy tone.

I heard the bells on Christmas day Their old familiar carols play And wild and sweet the words repeat Of peace on earth good will to men

Ellen was bringing in a split-oak basket of persimmons. “I ran onto them yesterday, Pa. I don’t know why the possums let them be.”

Anton took one of the soft orange fruit. “Used to be they made ’simmon beer in this county. It wasn’t sharp like city beer, Gar. We used to roast ’simmon seeds too, when coffee was scarce.”

Garland bit into the mellow sweet fruit. “They’re good. The pucker’s gone out.”

“The frost seasons them,” Ellen said.

“I know. Used to hunt them when I was a kid.”

“A ’simmon tree’s got a black heartwood in its center,” Anton said, “with layers of yellow sapwood outside it. It’s the only tree I know like that.”

“Those rings, now,” said Ellen. “You can count the rings to tell the age of a tree.”

“Is that black heartwood in the young tree?” asked Frankie.

“And if there’s a drought,” Ellen went on, “the ring’s scarce to be read, it’s so narrow.”

“I want to know about that heartwood, Pa.”

“Well, you don’t find hit in a sapling, Poppet. It comes of itself as the tree takes on age.”

“I think it’s there in the young tree,” Frankie said.

“How come you to worry on that, Poppet? It’s no consequence.”

“But I want to know.”

“Now there,” said Garland. “It’s getting on bedtime. I can tell Frankie’s sleepy.”

“Ellie never sang a song yet,” said Frankie.

“I’ll sing in the morning. We’re wasting coal oil. Come on.”

The girls climbed from the fire-warmed parlor to the loft where winter rain reeled on the roof. Under dank blankets they were waiting for the warmth of their bodies to overtake them. Anton’s disputing voice came up the stairs, “Why’s she act so? Like a highborn one? What are you doing to her there in that city?” Garland’s voice was heard in murmur. And again Anton’s rude shout, “Be she e’er seeing men?” And in a moment, “Well, that don’t mean a thing. N. J. says all his sister e’er did was set on a fellow’s lap one winter. Said his pa watched them courting by the range and thought no harm. They hardly spoke but only set there hugging. Now before God, she came by a child and his pa had to get them married.”

In the melancholy dark from her bed, over the sound of the sleet whipping the shingles, Ellen whispered, “You like a fellow?”

“No, I’m a poor country girl there. I hear them laugh. I came on my singing teacher snickering with Uncle. It was about me.”

“When do you think you’ll start playing in public like Pa wants?”

“I’m the most alone person. It’s because I’m queer, I think. Maybe Pa made me so. Or else I get it from Ma. The way I talk and act.”

Anton’s voice was audible through the doorway as they came into the hall downstairs, “And then I heard Ma saying, I’d fain have been a lady but I married you, little feist. We dragged her down, Gar. We gommed her desires.”

“Hell, An, you’re drunk. Forget Ma. Like I did long ago. Let’s get back to the subject. As I see it, Frankie’s doing the best she can. She’s not got much gumption and she’s plenty like you when she gets stubborn, but I think she’s beginning to adjust. This is the first vacation she’s had, what with lessons. I hope I can keep her present teacher. Says he’s got his hands full. Costs a mint, you know.”

“Hum. If there’s anything I can do for you.”

“You’re my brother.” Garland’s familiar slap on Anton’s back was carried up the staircase. “Covers a multitude of sins. We’ve got to stick together.”

Ellen thought Frankie was asleep until she heard the voice threading the dark. “Seems I got a black heartwood core same as that ’simmon tree.” The girl’s voice was sated with self-pity. “People can tell it’s there.”

               *       *       *       *       *

The next day Garland came to the barn where Ellen was cleaning the goats’ stable, heaping the soiled litter outside the shed with a heavy fork. An acrid stench hung in the air and the flock of five moved about her. “Keep you company awhile, hon?”

“If you like.”

“You have quite a bunch of your own here.”

“I set store by them.” She was forking fresh bedding in the pen and the animals crowded in to lie down, nosing and chewing the straw. She fastened the gate and leaned to watch them.

“Long time ago,” Garland was saying, “old man Alden used to keep a pair of nannies in his shack with him. Wonder if he’s still alive.”

“Ne’er heard of him.”

“Lived a few miles up the road. Us boys would sneak over to peek in his windows. Watch him suck the milk from the udders.”

“Is that a fact?”

Garland watched her intently. “You’re wonderful, puss.”

“That’s a silly thing to say.”

“Well, you make me feel like a boy again. I always said it.”

Ellen laughed at him. “Reckon I best get to the kitchen. I’ll race you to see if you’re still a boy.”

“Now there’s a cruel wench.” He trailed after her.

At the steps she waited. As they started up they became aware suddenly of a commotion within the house, of cries and Anton’s growls. Ellen was running up the stairs. “I’m afraid it’s Ma.”

But the shrill cry of Frankie pierced, “I won’t go back. I won’t. I hate you. You can’t make me.”

And a sound was heard so that Ellen turned to Garland. “He’s beating her. He’ll not be gainsaid. What’ll we do?”

“I’ll show you what. He’s always got to lord it over someone.” Garland sharpened his wrath, ran into the hall, flinging open the parlor door.

Anton was red-faced, and Frankie, in a despair of tears, was shaking in a corner of the sofa, her knitted skirt pulled above her knees, her bobbed hair tangled. She hid her face. “I don’t care about nothing. I don’t care.”

Garland caught Anton’s arm and while they shouted, Ellen bade her sister come into the kitchen. Frankie laid her head on the table and wept. Ellen walked about the room at her work, finally coaxing, “Now these fruits have to be cut up for the cake. You always were good at it, Frankie. Here’s the knife and bowl.”

Frankie pushed them from her. “Ellie, I do hate Pa.” She fled up the stairs.

The angered voices in the parlor rose and fell until the milking hour came. Then Anton, black-faced, strode to the barn. Garland watched him from the porch stoop and then followed. “There,” said Ellen to Maria who came in from the bedroom, “things are in a state. Pa ought to let Frankie stay here where she belongs.”

“Don’t beard Mester Gaddy,” Maria advised. “Let him be.”

That night by the fireside it was as if a ghostly thing stood amid them. Ellen sighed. Maria, feeling the trouble, gestured to herself. Garland smoked one cigarette after another. And Frankie was white, holding her head erect. “Reckon I’ll go to bed,” she said at length. “Good night all.”

Anton bent his scorn-washed face over a farm journal. “Well, I see here it tells about them foreigners in the old country using artificial insemination. Now I reckon that’s a sin against a beast. It’s sodomy.” He pulled furiously on his dead pipe.

“Chrissake, An.”

But in the morning Ellen caught sight at the stairhead of Frankie and Anton. The thin words came, “Forgive my willfulness, Pa.” Frankie’s face was hard. She had purchased her peace, before leaving her father again, kneeling in the short skirt she now wore.

               *       *       *       *       *

On the second Christmas of these three years, Frankie brought her contradictory ways again into focus, so that Anton stalked about in dudgeon, lying in wait for her open rebellion. She would turn him though, in a new cunning way she had learned, “Beg your pardon, Pa.”

The holiday evenings were drawn short and quiet by the hickory and oak-fed fires. After midnight mass, all but Garland ate sparely at the table, disheartened. The sliced meats and cheese, the sweet cakes and peppered blood pudding, were spread forth. “Have some Barrier Cherries, Uncle,” Ellen pressed him. “Frankie and Lily Garrett made them once.” Ellen, who knew her father and sister so well, felt the sadness of it. She knew the man was like a willful child and here was his only beloved set against him.

Frankie went back to Chicago then. Before they drove away in Garland’s Oakland sedan with the high-squared top and the yellow leather seats, Garland announced, “Frankie’s been engaged for her first recital. March the sixteenth, nineteen twenty-nine. Frankie Gaddy enters the lists of the immortals.”

“Shut up, Uncle,” Frankie sighed.

“You greening me, Garland?” Anton was suspicious. “You going to play before those folks?”

“Yes, I am, Pa.”

“Hell, An, she’s booked,” Garland shouted. “In one of my theatres.”

“I vow.”

“My,” Ellen said, “I ne’er thought Frankie’d be so bold.”

               *       *       *       *       *

And time moved, weaving a tapestry. On radiant summer nights moonlight laved the meadows and frogs dripped shrill tones. Ellen would slip down the stairs to wander where flowering honeysuckle presaged the passing of time. Longings waxed in her. She lay in the honeyed grass and wept easily. The moon shone and she bared her white body, wondered at the restlessness clutching her. She dwelled on the summer she had met Christian Ay, for at that one time the even cord of her life had risen to such a gleaming line that she doubted on it ever after. I’m bound and thralled. The pleasure and the sadness are too close together. She went back to her attic room to wait for dawn.

Now and then she thought of the child, Simon, developed a curiosity, now that she counted the passion buried, to see if this relic bore any resemblances. “I have a notion to visit Penny Dougherty,” she was saying to Anton. “She’s invited me. Says she’s got guineas and we can have a clutch of eggs if we want. I could raise us a flock. Set the yellow hen on them.”

“Guineas. And that worthless ooman,” he scoffed.

“Guineas are no work. You turn them loose and they pair off and care for the eggs by themselves. When you want a meal you catch them where they’re roosting.”

“It’s a far piece to Weems Crossroads but for guinea eggs. And I declared you’d not set foot off this place save to be married. So I said.”

“I’m twenty. And I’ll be gone o’ernight. I promise, Pa.”

“I don’t like it. You’re a froward one. It costs a mort of money going on the train. All to see some poor trash.”

“I’ll make it up to you, Pa.”

“You be back in a day, girl. You got beans to plant, and the cabbages to set out now the killing frosts are gone.”

“I’ll do it, Pa. Day after tomorrow. Soon as I get back, I’ll set them out.”

So she found herself walking up the lane to the familiar small house. Penny greeted her, and her fine features seemed a little thinner. She was laughing, “You came for Simon.”

“Oh Penny, let me see that baby girl you wrote about, Blossom.”

“She’s in here, Ellie.”

While they looked at the sleeping child, Ellen whispered, “I can’t take Simon. Pa doesn’t know.”

“That’s all right. We love him, Ellie.”

“I brought more money.”

Three little boys were trooping through the doorway, shouting. The baby awoke, began to wail. Ellen saw Simon, nearly three now. He was dressed in a blue-checked pinafore, and his small bottoms were bare. He was smallish and fair with round blue eyes. He looked at her soberly and never smiled. Clate had forgot Ellen, and Anse, thin and dark, clung to Penny. Simon was leaning on the wall, his fat thumb in his mouth. Luke arrived amid the bedlam and the children shouted to see him, “Da’s home.” Ellen saw Simon squealed and leaped with the rest.

They took her out to the field to see the goats and the old donkey. Clate was prompted to recite, lisping.

When the elm leaf Be big ath a mouthe’s ear Then to thow barley Ne’er you fear

All the while nearby was Ellen’s son, gazing dumb. His foster mother called him to her. “This is your own ma, Simon. Like I told you.”

In the morning Ellen was returning on the train. She had a setting of spotted guinea eggs in a box. Her mind was on the beans to be planted; she wondered whether Love’s would have flats of young cabbage plants in yet.

               *       *       *       *       *

The country seemed prosperous. But among the farmers were muffled noises of protest. Anton Gaddy growled when he got ninety-eight cents for wheat that had brought two dollars and thirty-four a bushel after the Great War. Corn dropped to seventy-nine cents, though it used to be good for a dollar to a dollar-fifty. He spoke to Sam, “Reckon you could get by with a little less a week? I’m pure strapped for cash. You could take a hen maybe.” He shrugged nervously.

“All right.” Sam scratched his back.

“Pick one of the old ones with a yellow beak and ears.”

“Now Mester Gaddy. I wouldn’t take a good layer.” Sam was squinting up, his eyes sharp in his leathery face.

“I hate it, being strapped, Sam.”

While they were talking, restless, the stock market was plunging. The depression was on. When Anton heard next week from N. J. Bilberry of the crisis, he said, “Now there’s somewhat for those rich folk to fret about. It’s no worry to us.”

Anton felt vindicated in his way of life, wondered idly if Garland had been affected. And he wished Frankie would write again. Her piano recital of last March had been a failure, the few letters she had written since ignored the subject. The flame in Anton’s life that burned through this daughter dimmed, bewildering him, causing his dream to lag. “Hum. Frankie’s going to make that music yet before the crowd. I’ve got to send her some money again, come the evening mail.”

Then a letter arrived from Chicago.

Dear Father,

It is not necessary to direct any more checks to me. You need money worse. I moved from Uncle’s house a while ago to an apartment. I’m going to get a job. Uncle is sick so we won’t drive down. I will spend Yule in Chicago. Uncle lost his Oakland. The government men took it away. He had a considerable loss in the market. He has real worries. One of his friends jumped out of a window.

I will come to visit next summer for sure, and maybe bring a friend with me to see the dear farm and meet the old folks at home. Then like the song goes, I’ll tuck me to sleep in my old ’Tucky home!

                                                  daughter Frankie