part three

part three

Let it be what it is she said Let it wait as it must It will choose soon or late Let it wait Love has life not of us But of love she said Let it lie where it must

                               14

Ellen was cutting across the field to the York cabin in the late May morning. Amanda York had married the smithy’s son, Jerome Hatfield. The couple lived in one side of the cabin. Jerome and Mr. York cared for the apple orchard surrounding it and worked in the Bethel Stone Foundry. During the winter and spring Ellen had watched Amanda grow heavy with child, taking vicarious pleasure in the young wife’s joy. “If it’s a boy,” Amanda had claimed, “we’re going to call it Junior. Wonder if it could be baptized Junior, Ellie? I doubt it’s a Christian name.”

At the cabin door Ellen called, “Hey, Mandy. Anybody home?” She heard the hoarse pained cry from within.

Mrs. York was shuffling out of the bedroom. “Ah, hit’s you, Ellen.” Her face was yellowed with fear, eyes staring with wakefulness.

“Mandy’s been taken?” Ellen asked.

“Doc Trumbo’s here. It’s not coming right. Ellen, you think somewhat could happen to her?”

“Bearing’s not so bad,” said Ellen, uncertain.

“I put the ax under the bed. She ought to have had it by now. She’s been at it since noon yesterday. She’s giving out. She’s quit trying.”

Then there was a scream from the room beyond, animal-like in travail. Ellen was recalling a spotted heifer that couldn’t bear its calf; Anton had hitched the team, and taken it from the womb. The scream circled the room and after it, like a splintering of glass, a thin cry echoed. “Ah, Doc’s got hit now.” The woman was scurrying away. Ellen followed slowly into the blood-odored room. Amanda lay oddly flat on rumpled stained sheets, her eyes shut in a white face. On the pillow her dark hair flowed. Ellen took her hand.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch the bed,” the face whispered strangely.

“It’s o’er now,” Ellen said.

Amanda’s eyes came open with an effort of the heavy lids. “Have we got our baby?”

“Yes, Mandy.” Ellen was frightened. “You rest.”

“I want to see it.” The words were barely discernible.

“All right.” Ellen went to the table where the doctor was binding a cloth about the infant’s navel. It feebly squirmed its thin-skinned damp red body and wrinkled its face. “She wants it, Doc.”

He glanced up at Ellen. “Let’s see, you must be one of those Gaddys. Your father hasn’t much use for satchel doctors, either, has he? You know these women never called me till an hour ago?”

“Mandy wants to see her baby.”

“They call me in at the last minute. Think they can do it all themselves. Like Indian squaws.” He wrapped the child in the warmed flannel that he took from Mrs. York and laid it by its mother’s face. “Lie still there, girl. I’m going to look at you now.” He spoke softly, disappeared into the kitchen to wash his hands.

“She’s fair, Mandy,” Ellen whispered, “your baby.”

“Ah, she is,” said Mrs. York, “with it all.”

Amanda’s breath rattled. She was drawing strangled gasps as if she had run a long stretch. Her eyes became fixed on the hewn-log walls, the cracked calking. She shuddered, the labored breath struggle faded and ceased.

Mrs. York sucked in her words, “My girl.” She put a hand out to touch the tired face, screamed, “Ah, Doc.”

Dr. Trumbo stumbled on the threshold in his haste. He was lifting Amanda’s wrist, laying it down, speaking sharply to Ellen, “Good Christ, where’s this girl’s husband?” He picked the sleeping infant up.

“I’ve got to cover the mirror,” Mrs. York mumbled, hurrying indecisively about the room. “So the baby doesn’t die as well. And stop the clock hands. Now what else must I do?”

“Jerome works at the stone foundry, Doc. Same as Mr. York. I can call them from Love’s store.”

“First take the child here. This old one’ll be no more use.” He turned to Amanda’s body again. Ellen laid the baby in the cradle. It was sleeping, its face like an inflamed pansy, lost amid ribbons and ruffles.

“Ah. You did it, Doc,” Mrs. York keened. “You were busy with yourself and your washing and you let it happen. I didn’t want you here. It was only because Mandy made me. She’d have come through but for you.”

“Now, Mrs. York,” he began.

The woman appealed to Ellen, “Don’t ne’er have a child, Ellen Gaddy. Don’t ne’er get caught with a child.” She grasped her arm, the tears squeezing from her old eyes, watering the wrinkles of her face.

“I’ve got to go, Mrs. York.”

Dr. Trumbo continued, “She’d been hemorrhaging. These things will happen. I packed her, did everything humanly possible. I came too late.”

The woman was taboring on the discolored sheet. “Ah, now what have I got?”

“You’ve got the child.”

“I don’t want hit.”

Ellen stood a moment in the cabin passageway before starting up the road toward Millville. “There’s a thing I keep trying to remember.” She spoke aloud, dazed. At the store she cranked the iron handle to the wood box that hung on the wall. “Central?”

“You’ll have to speak up, Madam.”

“Give me the Bethel Foundry.” When she had told Jerome, and heard the click at the other end, she walked out slowly.

Stacey called after, “Tell Maria Gaddy that eggs are down three cents again. They’re hardly worth trading.”

Ellen didn’t hear. A light mist of rain had begun and a sweet smell like the breath of cows was coming from the red plowed fields. The thing that had slipped her mind was back. It was the struggle to bear her own child, the way the throes had struck her in an open field and how she’d dragged herself to the shelter of the pear tree. The sweet heavy scent of crushed grass and blood and the fluttering of goldfinches were mingled into the memory.

After a week Jerome Hatfield came to speak to Anton. “Our baby’s ailing. Doc says she might hold down goat milk.” His face was haggard, his form stooped in exhaustion.

“My daughter’s got the goats.”

“I want to buy one from her.”

Ellen went to the woodshed and tied a rope to Rhodie’s collar. The doe had a little female kid at its side. “You keep Rhodie for as long as your baby needs the milk, Jerome. And raise the kid for the baby’s own.”

“I’m beholden.” He was lifting the goats into the wagon, fastening them there. He drove away, Rhodie baaing plaintively. Ellen watched them go. Here’s the land flowing over with milk and honey. The spring grass is pushing through the red land until it’s all pink and green. And Mandy’s dead. All about was death. The early dark of morning sometimes would be interrupted, awakening her, by Jack’s bark, followed by shotgun blasts and her father’s gruff tones. Ellen would know he had gone down in his mackinaw to kill some varmint in the barnyard. There was no escape from death, no way you could forget it was waiting. Ellen was resentful, disbelieving that some day her own strength would wither. I’m glad it wasn’t me when I bore that child back there. I recall I saw the evening star. And when Luke and Penny came, I got up from the orchard floor and walked to the house myself while Penny carried him. But then I pushed him from me, turned my back on my first-born.

               *       *       *       *       *

She spoke up that night after the Gaddy supper had been eaten. The May rain was falling weighted, somnambulant, the air was close. “I hid it from you, Pa. Before I came home that summer when I’d run off from Uncle Garland.”

“You played the harlot.”

“I went to the Doughertys and had him there.”

“You were in St. Louis.”

“No. I went to Weems Crossroads in Illinois. I was afraid of you. The boy’s there now. I saw him when I went to get that clutch of guinea eggs that turned bad. Now I want to bring him here, Pa.”

Anton was stumping into the hall; he returned with the wide belt that he held by its buckle. “Before God your lying tongue is an abomination. Name the times I’ve said it.”

Ellen looked at him stony-faced. “Reckon I’m too old to whip, Pa. I’m twenty-one and the mother of your grandchild.”

He paused. “The father of a fool has no joy.” His heavy mouth was shaking. He drew the strap repeatedly through the palm of his hand, the harsh sliding noise rippling into the corners of the room like stones tossed in a pond. “My brother Marc, lusted. You be bound to do the same. He ran off from the college where my ma sent him. To a whorehouse. At St. Louis. And there’s where she went to get him. Dead. Now I’ve always claimed you had his blood, girl.”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed and shone. “You know what Marc was to your ma?” Her nerves shivered to their ends as her temper swung on her. “I know what that Nell did.”

Anton halted at bay. “Don’t say her name. She was a saint, girl. She sits at Mary’s right hand even now.”

Ellen was helpless, found she couldn’t strike. She kept silence.

Anton slapped the belt limply against his overall pants. He turned to a thin-legged doweled chair that was by the wall. “A harlot,” he said softly. “Upon e’er a high hill and under e’er a green tree, thou wanderest, playing the harlot. So says Jeremiah.” He let the strap drop, lifted the chair by its rungs, crashed it violently, splintering, to the floor. “Defiled.” He went from the room.

Ellen was looking at Maria. “You heard, Ma?”

“You got a child, Ellie?”

“A little boy, Ma. Named Simon.”

“I had a boy baby once. But he was a betimes child and had no life. I named him after Mester Gaddy for he wanted it. But they took him. He’s moldering out some’eres. I ne’er liked rain some way. Seems a boy would be unhappy and turn about in a wet place.”

Anton fumed as days passed. “Who’s its pa?”

“I don’t want to say. He’s as good as dead.”

“What’ll they speak of me when it’s told up and down the county?”

“Tell that I married a Yankee, Pa. And he left me.”

“No, the damn fool foreigner was killed. His folks have raised the child till now. And you’re fixing to bring it here.” He paused to eye Ellen with scorn. “Does it favor the Gaddys?”

“Reckon so, Pa.”

“What’s hit called?”

“Simon Gaddy.”

Then he said, “You’ll tell it to the priest, girl.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’ll tell it Sunday. Before you can go for the brat.”

“I’ll tell it in the priest’s house, but not in the confessional.” She said bravely, “I’ve got a mind to leave the church.”

Impotent in frustration and wrath, Anton turned away. He was heard bawling commands to the team as he plowed up and down, making ready for the corn-planting.

They were standing before Father Tompert in the parlor of the rectory. Ellen, emboldened by her first successful stand against her father, spoke candidly to the Jesuit priest. “It’s like the church wants to boundary God, Father. And He is thus and so. And if you say at such a time such a prayer you’ll get off so much sooner to paradise. This is false to me, Father.”

“Hold, girl, you blaspheme,” roared Anton.

Father Tompert said, “I’ll speak with your daughter alone, sir. Wait outside this room. If you please.”

Then Ellen told the priest what was in her. And she added, “In the gospel of Matthew the Lord himself says, don’t pray where you’re seen of men. But enter into thy closet. And when you’ve shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. And use not vain repetitions.”

The priest saw she loved God. He saw her mind was bright and she had thought this thing out. The wise Jesuit was not uncommon among those consecrated to the cross of his faith. He spoke to Ellen. “It’s not your kind that need the mother church, Ellen. We’ll wait till you’re ready to come again to us. Till then, the Lord be with thy spirit.”

He was walking to the door. She laid her hand on the sleeve of his cassock. “Father, is it wrong to lie to the neighbors and say I had a husband?”

He looked at her while a bell tolled somewhere outside over a stitch of time. She saw his eyes were an indigo blue and the pupil in the center was a dormant coal. “For the sake of the child, perhaps not. In the eyes of God it may have been a marriage. I don’t know.” He folded his arms, went to the door. His face was smooth, his body moved ageless below the black frock. “Don’t worry about your daughter, sir. She’s in no danger of damnation. God is with her.”

Ellen put on the faded dotted Swiss dress in the morning. She combed her hair, plaiting it tightly in a new way she had. Anton counted money into her hand. Maria was concerned about the census taker whom Tinie Bilberry had reported was coming and no telling at what hour. “Now, whate’er will I say to him? He be the government. I’m that fretted. Do you have to go now, girl?”

The train coughed and clanged into the Weems Crossroads station. The road to the Doughertys seemed longer than Ellen remembered. She was passing the burial ground. A group of black-clad people were ringed at a fresh grave, cars and buggies were parked by the roadside. She hurried by. Amanda had been laid in the ground like that, for rain to rot and worms to suck until she would be as earth herself, her rosy face and gleaming braid living on in Jerome Hatfield. And a day might come when his daughter would ask, “Now tell, Pa, what was Mammy like?” And Jerome would say, “Seems I can’t remember. Appears to have fallen from me some way.”

Ellen reached the mailbox, went up the lane and heard a guinea cry. It came to her on a sudden that she was terrified, as if she had been sent to the dark cellar for supplies again. Something lurked there in the shadows. She lifted her skirts and fled toward light and Penny and the gray-streaked house with door open and unscreened.

Ellen studied her son that evening. They took the meal out under the crab apple tree. Its leaves, not yet green, were coated with soft white hairs. Its pink flowers were like the wild rose, their spicy odor hovered where the five children gathered to be fed. Penny’s smallest child, Melinda, climbed on a stool, reaching her hands to the food. Blossom stood by Anse, who was four now and tall for his age, his dark head looking down on Simon’s blond one. And Clate was the leader and spoke what they all should do. “If it wasn’t for Clate,” Penny said, “I’d ne’er get this troop together. And we’ll have another Dougherty come Christmas. Seems I be e’er in this strait.”

Standing about the table, the children were eating corn pone and bacon and beans. There was milk and a honeycomb. Melinda sucked her sticky tiny fingers and crumbled the pone. Penny was cleaning the child’s hands with a damp rag, laughing, “I got plenty of pullets now, Ellie. Luke built a hen house. I trade eggs just like you Gaddys now. But say, the store’s paying low this spring.”

Ellen saw that Simon’s cheekbones and hair were like those of Christian Ay. He had Anton’s long chin. But there was the look of Christian about his eyes and high cheeks and broad mouth. “I wonder at him, Penny.”

“You’re thinking of his pa, aren’t you?”

“I allowed I’d forgot what he looked like. Time goes so fast. But Simon calls him back to mind.”

“Soon you won’t see it. It’ll just be little Simon.”

“I reckon.”

“I see Luke coming. We’ve been lucky. Webster laid off most of the hands when times got bad, but he kept Luke on. He’d let them all go before Luke.” Penny’s look wound itself about the man moving up the path, her love like a warm wind.

“He’ll be short and stout. Strong like a bull.” Ellen was watching Simon, who leaned against the table, his cheek on one fat hand while the other spooned beans unsteadily into his mouth.

Luke slept in the mow of the shed that night so there would be a place for Ellen. The women lay in the narrow bed. The baby girls were in cribs, the three boys in the attic room. “If you should have a trouble sometime, Penny,” Ellen said, before dozing off, “or there’s a sickness or a way I can help.”

“We’ll miss Simon. He’s quiet. He can milk Tiny even. He coaxes me to let him. He does real good for four years.”

“Those little hands.”

“And he’s one with the donkey. Why, I missed him once and hunted till I found him sleeping under it and it standing like a rock.”

Ellen awoke after midnight; she lay still until it came to her where she was. An owl called, deep-toned, “Whoo-whoo-tooo-oo-oo.” She went into the yard, walking down the lane in the warm dark. The owl shrieked suddenly from the catalpa by the road, in a voice like a woman. On noiseless widespread wings it was flapping toward her and passing. “There he’ll be, following me about the farm.” She stayed in the night until she reached the end of her fears. “Whate’er comes, it’s right to bring him home and tell he’s mine.”

In the morning Simon had on bleached canvas pants, well patched. The sleeves to his nubby sweater were too short. They were waiting for Luke to come in a truck to take them to the station. Simon’s eyes were wide. He shrank from Ellen. Penny was washing his face again. “Take your ma’s hand, now.” But Simon shook his head, threw himself upon his foster mother. “You can have this. It’s Anse’s.” Penny was handing him a yarn ball she had made by winding bright colors around a piece of cloth. “If you’ll go now with your ma.” So then Simon took Ellen’s hand. She led him while he dragged his feet, gazing back to Penny and her brood.

“Where’s Simon going,” asked Clate, “with Anse’s ball?”

“It’s his ball now.”

On the train the boy clutched his toy and looked away. At last Ellen took a piece of string and showed him how to play cat’s cradle. He was lifting the twine from her hands and biting his lip. He cast his blue eyes on her. “I like that.”

“I do too, Simon.” The sun fought through the streaked sooted windows. The train rushed through the greening land, coming into the valleys and hills of Kentucky.

Anton was there with the buckboard. He ordered them into the high seat. He had laid his faded kerchief under his black round hat to catch the sweat from his balding head. The corners of the red cloth were draping about his florid face. “Whole county can get a look at Gaddy’s youngen toting her bastard home.”

The horses trotted down the macadam main street, past store-fronts, out onto country roads. Ellen spoke timidly, “This is your granddaddy.”

“Quit jawing.”

As they neared Millville, Ellen spoke again. “Penny said to tell you howdy. Her husband told me about a dog that grinds axes and things.” She spoke too rapidly, lines drawing on her forehead. “This man’s got a treadwheel. He runs a belt from it to his grindstone. The dog runs there in the big wheel, grinding sickles and knives too. Luke said the dog waits for the man to whistle.” She appealed to Anton.

“Haw.” They had passed Love’s store, turned down Sweetincreek Road for a mile.

She broke the silence once more. “Luke heard of a cat too.” And holding Simon in her arm, she felt him press close. He laid a chubby arm across her lap. “It turned a churn, treading a wheel for the lady of the house. Now think, Simon.”

Jack met them barking. The dog’s eyes were nearly on a level with Simon’s; the child laid his face in the fur. When Anton drove the team to the barn, the boy watched him covertly. Maria was coming on the porch in her shapeless Mother Hubbard dress. “Now here’s your granny,” called Ellen.

Maria glanced at the boy, felt her bun. “The census taker came, Ellie. I had a day. I told him all he asked. I wish he’d come again.”

“I’m glad it’s o’er, Ma. You know if Sam did my chores?”

“I gave him a cup of tea and some of that butter-cake you made. I told him all he asked.”

                               15

June dawdled by. Lilacs faded and roses unfolded. Simon went behind Ellen, dropping pumpkin seeds in the young corn rows. He wore new overalls that she ordered from the catalog, and shirts she made for him. He ran barefoot at her heels. In his pocket he kept the colored ball that had been Anse’s. He spoke seldom, but Ellen would hear his piping voice when he was with the geese or with Jack and he had no fear of the heavy work horses.

Frankie had written, “We’ll be down Independence Day. My friend is coming with me for two weeks’ vacation. Oh, the dear farm and dear Ellie. Why didn’t you tell me I had a nephew, Ellie? I can’t wait to see him. You cunning sister.”

When Joe Burwell told his son that Frankie was coming, Dyke drove up the Gaddy lane in his Oldsmobile to offer the use of his car to meet the train. “It’ll be a pleasure to see Frankie again, Mester Gaddy.”

“Stay for supper with us, Dyke,” Ellen invited him, cordial.

The two men went to the station. Ellen had hung the calico curtain across her parents’ bedroom to make the guest chamber. Simon had taken over Frankie’s old bed upstairs. She was placing a vase of catalpa blooms by the bedside on the marble-topped table. A heady fragrance seeped from the spikes of creamy scalloped blossoms specked with purple and yellow.

The car was returning. Ellen and Simon were going into the yard. Frankie threw her arms about Ellen. There was perfume in her hair, her face was accented with eye-shadow and penciled brows, her lips vivid. She was kneeling by Simon. “I’m Auntie! See what we brought you.” She took his hand and they went to Dyke’s car.

Frankie’s companion was talking with the two men. Her black hair was shingled. She was heavy-hipped, her face appearing almost delicate above her squat body. She wore no make-up and held her head back to eye the men squarely. Anton waved his hand while talking, and she nodded again at him. They came toward Ellen. “This here’s Genevieve Wheeler,” Anton said. “Did I get that name right? Haw. And from the way Frankie wrote at first I thought it was a fellow.”

“Pleased,” Ellen said shortly. The woman’s hand was warm and dry.

“Certainly do admire your father, Ellen. The farmer’s the backbone of America.”

“Haw.” Anton was shrugging. “Go on in and get settled, you-all. We’ll be back when we finish the chores. Coming, Dyke?”

Frankie opened the screen door for Simon. She called, “Ellie, he’s cute.”

Ellen followed the men to the barns. Dyke, in his black suit, was feeding the cows. Later Simon came out. He stroked the big shoulder of the brown cow that Ellen was milking. “I like Auntie, Mama,” he lisped. “She brung me this.” He wore a stiff yellow visor cap. He straightened it.

“Let’s go tend the goats, Simon.”

The boy strutted beside her, looking up. “I’ll milk Leona for you, Mama.”

“See if you can get it all this time.”

Leona had a high round udder and gave her milk down easily. “How come Leona’s white, Mama?”

“Because her daddy was a white one.”

Simon sat on a stool, leaning into the goat’s side and squeezing the teats so the milk came in little squirts. The animal turned to sniff the new cap and lick Simon’s neck where the tow hair curled. Then it wheezed as it brought up its cud.

Ellen meanwhile milked Penny and Pie, set out their hay and grain. She stood over Simon. “Want me to finish her?”

He sighed, turning the three-legged stool over to her. “I most got her clean, didn’t I, Mama?”

“Just about.”

“That Auntie’s comely, Mama.” He was leaning against her while the white liquid purred in her bucket, foaming, hot.

“Ne’er know her for my sister, would you, Simon? Like a peacock sister to a hen.” Her gray eyes were level with his blue ones. She was stirred. He’s a fair boy.

“You’s a little hen, Mama.”

“You’re my chick, then.”

“Peep. Peep.” He took her hand as she picked up the pail. Nearing the house, they heard the piano and voices raised. Genevieve was carrying the alto.

O Robin, Robin Redbreast O Robin, Robin dear O Robin sings so sweetly In the falling of the year

“Mercy.” Ellen set the pail in the kitchen, began to help Maria with the meal. Simon stationed himself beside the parlor door to listen to the singing. He was discovered and with cries and kisses they drew him to them.

After supper Frankie remained in the kitchen with Ellen. Simon went up to bed. From the parlor came Anton’s deep voice and an occasional question from Genevieve. Maria was knitting and Dyke listened while he smoked a cigar. Frankie polished the plate she was holding. “Don’t you like Gen, Ellie? Don’t you like her? We’ve got a flat, you know.”

“You wrote you left Uncle.”

“I left last February. The market crash changed him, Ellie. He wouldn’t eat and stayed up nights going over papers. He got real crabby. Stingy, too. You’d never have recognized him. I stopped all my lessons. I was glad.”

“I see.”

“He turned Mrs. Quimby out on the street.” Frankie was smiling, prim.

“Oh?”

“When I left, he closed the house up. He went to a flat he has in East Chicago. You know he’s bad, Ellie?”

“How?”

“He keeps a woman,” she whispered. “He’s had that flat for years.”

“For lack of wood the fire goes out, Frankie.” Ellen was stiff.

“That’s a cute saying, Ellie. Where’d you hear it?”

“You’re so scatterbrained, Frankie. And I ne’er had any use for whisperers.”

“You like my hair, Ellie? Gen says I look like Janet Gaynor.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ellie. A movie star.”

“When did you first meet this Gen?”

“She’s my best friend.”

Dyke stepped into the kitchen. “Hey.”

“Hello, Dyke. Wouldn’t Gen let you talk?”

“No.”

“She’s like that. She has no use for men. Except for one like Pa there. A good farmer.”

“You sure are different, Frankie. You’re plumb pretty.” Dyke stood his ground, blushing.

“I always liked you, Dyke,” Frankie was bold. “Remember how we used to argue about him, Ellie? I said he was tall and he’d do because I wasn’t particular?”

“Frankie,” Ellen cried.

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

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

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

“She went out with Dyke a spell ago.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

“All right, Gen.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Genevieve, “Let’s be calm.”

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

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

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

“Nonsense,” said Genevieve.

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

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

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

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

“Quit jawing,” Ellen said savagely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Should I make you another?”

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

“What do you want?”

“I’d like a horse to name my own.”

“Maybe someday.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dyke called from the darkened window, “Hey!”

“Come in, boy.”

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

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

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

“Hum.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I help her, Miss Wheeler.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simon was staring, open-mouthed.

“Who’s Da, boy?”

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

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

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

“Just to mass,” said Ellen.

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

“My,” said Ellen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A mite.”

“Can’t say he takes after your side.”

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

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

“You think a lot of him, Lily?”

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

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

“You’ll make him a good wife.”

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

“There’s lots of tales told, Lily.”

“Says you weren’t even married.”

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

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

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

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

“Oh Lily.”

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

“Oh, Gen, you always take two.”

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

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

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

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

“Shut your jaw. Unnatural ooman.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know,” sighed Ellen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                               16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is such a bargain.”

“If I had the money.”

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

She began to shake her head, eying him.

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

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

“Fifty dollars, Madam. To you, ten.”

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

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

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

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

“Amid the straw then, under the bed.”

“How’d you think to look, ooman?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria stared coldly. “Leave me be.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s no apples here, Mama.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I will, Granddaddy.”

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

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

               *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know it, Mama.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                               17

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

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

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

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

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

“The Doughertys named him, Pa.”

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

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

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

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

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

“What for, Granddaddy?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t I have an aunt there, too?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s the blinders, Granddaddy.”

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

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

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

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

“Yes, Granddaddy.”

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

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

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

“He’s dead, Simon.”

“Tell, what was he like?”

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

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

“I will.”

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

“Well.”

               *       *       *       *       *

Ellen saw her old friend Lily again one day. She had not visited with her since Lily had become Mrs. Craig Hedrick five years earlier. If they met, Lily would walk away, turning her head aside. It was late August. Ellen and Maria were making apple butter, the spicy fragrance filled the kitchen. There was a gentle knock and Ellen put down her wood ladle, wiping her hands on the brown-stained apron. “Yes?”

“Don’t you know me, Ellie?”

“Lily.” Ellen opened the door wide. “Come on in.”

“I was just hankering to see you. It’s fierce lonesome at home. I ran off.”

“What do you mean?” Ellen was taking the old tone with her at once. “Hush your crying.”

“Craig sent me to hoe the truck beans. Hit seemed I couldn’t bear it any more. I up and walked away.” Lily’s blond curls that she had always taken such care with, were pulled into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck. She was stouter. “I’m afraid to go back. Craig was running the tractor in the corn and his man was working the mules. He told me I must clean the bean patch.” Her small mouth was puckered, unhappy.

“Why are you afraid? He’s your husband.”

The woman heaved a breath. “He’s taken to whipping me like Papa did. So I told him I was carrying a child to make him stop.”

“Well, then?”

“I’ve got no child. I can’t seem to get caught. Craig wants one as bad as me.”

“Let’s have some coffee.” Ellen was going to the kitchen. “Ma, you know Lily. She’s Mrs. Hedrick, remember?”

“Hey, Mrs. Gaddy.” Lily was eager.

“Hey there, Lily. How’s Mester Garrett’s bees?”

“Oh, my husband says Papa’s making a sight of honey this year. He’s got o’er twenty hives now. I’ve not been to see him myself these many months.” Ellen laid cups on the table while the water came to a boil. She put out a dish of hot apple butter, slices of fresh bread. “It’s like coming home here, Ellie. We used to have fun, you and me and Frankie. I always loved fun.”

“You know,” Maria spoke up from her thoughts, “I had another girl, named Frankie. I dassn’t say her name. Mester Gaddy won’t brook it. She’s dead.” Maria was wagging her head, knowing.

“Here’s your coffee, Ma,” Ellen said.

“Is Frankie dead?” Lily whispered.

“No, and Ma knows it. It’s a way she has, like a child, sometimes. She can’t seem to keep it straight.”

“She can’t?”

“You e’er think of seeing Doc Trumbo, Lily? Maybe he could help you and Craig to have a child.”

Lily’s eyes were trailing Maria, breaking bread and spooning the brown preserves. “Reckon we could try that, Ellie.”

“I always thought a heap of Craig,” Ellen said, “for taking o’er like he did when old Mester Hedrick was killed so sudden.”

“He doesn’t have to beat me.”

“You e’er think about how it was for him, Lily, back then?”

“No.”

Maria broke in, “But there’s a little boy lives here now. Named Simon. I’m his granny.”

Lily spoke slowly, “I can’t even go to see my papa and mama any more. I’m not allowed to go home.” Grave, she was watching Maria.

“Craig’s a good man.”

“I know, Ellie.”

“You have to stop being a girl some day. And think on the ways of a woman.”

The three drank their coffee. Presently Lily was pushing back her chair; she spoke deliberately, “Reckon I’ll get back to my house. I have work to do. It’s a long walk. Bye, Mrs. Gaddy. Ellie.” Her retreating steps were heard on the stones in the yard.

Suddenly Ellen was caught in a burst of tears. She put her hands to her face, sobbing hoarsely. She ran up the steep stairway, her bare feet noiseless. “I vow at that girl.” Maria took the ladle to stir the mixture, thick and hot in the iron kettle.

Upstairs, Ellen was standing in the middle of the room, shaken, uncontrolled. She turned abruptly to the trunk along the wall and dragged open the heavy lid. She rummaged through the contents until she came on the two undelivered letters she had written Christian Ay. She ripped them into shreds in a heap on the floor. “I hate Lily and Craig and all the ugly ways of folks.”

When she came down, her face appeared smoothed and untouched. But she was holding her head in such a way that when Anton saw her going to the woodshed, he crossed himself and muttered, “There, I thought it was you, Ma.”

               *       *       *       *       *

Simon was in the fourth grade. Every morning found him trudging three miles to the school on the Millville Pike. Until the weather turned cold he would go barefoot, for catalog shoes cost a dollar thirty-nine. He went down the lane in the flat morning sunlight, talking to the dog. He carried his lunch in a lard bucket. Holes were punched in its tin lid and it contained a bunch of concord grapes and biscuits spread with jelly. “Stay, Jack.” The dog’s movements were stiff. He settled on the bank amid blue-flowered chicory, head on forepaws, brown eyes fixed on the retreating figure. A tufted titmouse whistled in a cottonwood along the road. “Peet-O. Peet-O!” It joined the chickadees and nuthatches that trooped in the upper branches.

In the afternoon Simon returned late, scarcely recognizable, upper lip swollen, dry blood caked on his face. The skin was puffing out around one eye, the sleeve of his shirt was torn. Anton caught sight of him coming up the lane and ran shouting, “What is it, Poppet?”

Simon halted, scuffling his feet; he began to whine.

“Speak up, son.”

“That fellow mocked me.” Simon was sniffling and as he was led to the house, his voice rose to a wail.

Ellen called from the window, “What ails him, Pa?” She came out the door, shading her face, hurrying down the steps in the sweet-scented fall air.

“He’s not going back to that school.” Anton’s face was hot, his breath thick as he passed her, leading the child. “Crapping bastards are about to kill him.”

Ellen followed into the kitchen. Anton was lifting Simon to the table. “Get a pan of water,” he told Maria. He removed the boy’s shirt, examined his lip.

“Pa. You can see he’s been fighting. Let’s find what happened.”

“We’ll send you to the parochial school. Like decent Catholics. Your ma’s let you run amuck.”

“Please, Pa.”

“The heathen can kill him before you give a care.”

“Simon.” But the boy had fastened his frightened eyes on his grandfather, clinging to the harried look on the man’s face. Ellen turned away, inarticulate. Later, she was in the shed, milking her goats. Simon shuffled in, stood at the pen gate. The goats nibbled his shirt buttons and rubbed against him as he was stroking them.

“I slopped the pigs and watered the team, Ma.” She waited. He was speaking again, “Reckon Leona’s least kid will have horns or not?”

“Simon, what happened today at school?”

“Looks to me like she’s a muley one.” He bent over the kid, moving the skin on the top of its head with his finger. “If horns were sprouting, it wouldn’t move free like that.”

Ellen got up from the stool to strain the milk into a can. She began to draw the white streams from another doe.

The boy said suddenly, “Granddaddy takes care of me.”

She looked at him to see his eyes cold upon her. He was fingering his enlarged lip. She was startled. He’s turning from me. Pa’s getting hold of him. She put her head against the soft warm side of the spotted doe.

“Granddaddy frets about me.”

“Tell how you got in the fight, or I’ll whip you for a fact.”

His eyes were down. “There’s a game at recess. We use a ball belonging to that Penn Hamm. He stores it in the drawer of his desk. Time and again I asked him could I take it home for one night. But he wouldn’t say yes.” Simon looked up. One eye was nearly shut, the bruised skin blue.

“So?”

“I studied on it and hankered after it. Yesterday I slipped it from his desk and put it in my pocket. After school was out.”

“You could have had a ball if you’d told me.”

“I wanted that ball.”

“What then?”

“Penn said I snitched it, and I said I didn’t. He sat under the tree and called me bastard Gaddy brat.”

“You stole his ball, Simon. He was angered. And folks used to call me a Gaddy brat. Some still do, and I don’t care.”

“He called me that. He laid for me coming home. I wrestled him for it but he got his ball back.”

“Why, Simon?”

“I wanted it.” His eyes were like small empty caves. “And I lost my lard pail too.”

The night meal was pregnant with unspoken words. Then as Anton was leaving the kitchen he told Ellen, “I’ll take him to the sisters tomorrow.” She looked at him from where she was sitting. His short body leaned against the door casing. “Why I even got to jump on him to say the Lord’s Prayer right.” He cut a slice of apple tobacco with his slender knife. “Trespasses, he says, like heathen. The school taught him that. The Lord said debtors. Forgive us our debtors.” He walked softly into the other room.

Simon was sent to bed. Ellen came into the parlor. “Pa, this isn’t right. Simon stole that Hamm youngen’s ball. He’s got to learn. He should go back and own up. He’s nine and he knows right from wrong. You’re always preaching the Bible and this is the time to stand by what it says.”

“Haw. I’ll say a thing here, girl.” He was speaking fast, harsh. “He has no daddy, since you begot him in whoredom. Now I let him come here like a son. I look on him so. Don’t stand against me.”

“It was the same with Frankie. You pulled her out of school too. You know it.”

“You’re mourning because I didn’t take you out.” Anton rolled the quid in his mouth, continuing gently, “You know, this boy’s a good bit like my brother, Marc. Minds me of him.” He settled into a chair. “Some way Ma favored Marc o’er Garland and me.”

“I know why.”

“What do you know?” he drawled.

“He was handsome. Not ugly like you.”

“How come you say that?”

“I know somewhat else.”

“Speak hit.”

“He wasn’t your full brother. Nell Gaddy ne’er wanted you or Uncle. That’s a fact.”

“What?” he roared.

“She married your sir because she got caught. Like me with Simon.” Ellen moved to stand over him, by his chair. “She ne’er wanted you, I say. She loved Marc for his daddy’s sake.”

The man rose like an unleashed bull. He struck her so she reeled against the sofa. “I’ll kill you for that lying tongue.”

She slipped from his hands, ran outside, down the path through the hill field to the orchard. She stopped running there. Night fog was drifting in low spots, the sky was clouded. She leaned against a twisted apple tree until she seemed composed. Her face became like the glass of the pond where there was no wind and mist was caught above. Later she wended up to the house to sit on the damp garden wall, waiting until the kitchen and the bedroom candles flicked out.

In the morning, as she was pumping water into the blue pail, Anton went by to the house. He looked past her as if she were not there. She had told Simon earlier that he must go back to the Millville school, knowing Anton would refute her word. But she went through the motions, she hunted for a lard pail in the pantry, made up the lunch. She saw her fingers were shaking. The boy pushed his chair back and took the lunch pail. Anton said, “You and me are going to the Catholic school, boy. Did you forget? Let’s go harness Moll and Red.”

Simon looked at him. Ellen knew the child was pleased and yet would hide this from her. He said like a question, “Bye now, Ma? I’m going now, Ma?”

Sam was already in the field when Anton came back late in the morning. He was cutting cornstalks, making tall shocks that would cure until the long white ears were garnered. Anton joined him, swinging the heavy blade. “Put my boy in a proper school, Sam.”

And Ellen was planning. She scrawled a letter quickly.

Dear Uncle Garland,

This is a thing I should have done long ago. I have to leave home. Could you find a farmer who would hire me? My boy is 9 now. Wages as deemed fair. Please answer by return post. And obliged.

                                                             Ellen

The next few days she moved pallid-faced, watching for the mail car. She gathered honey, lulling the bees with smoke. She cut the combs into a galvanized washtub. The soft stuff oozed and mingled, yellow, black, and amber, in a heavy pool. Some of the comb she let drip free, and laid it in a tree fork for the bees to use again. She fastened the lids back on the hives. While she was doing these things, it was as if her bones might break were her movements too sudden. Then the RFD car was leaving a letter.

Dear Puss,

This is delightful. You know I have opened my Redding Street house again on the north side. I’m a married man now, you see. Are you surprised? Violet and I would be glad to have you and Simon visit with us until you can get a job. You might learn my wife a few things about housework! I am sending ten dollars herewith. Come soon.

                                                     Uncle Garland

She put the paper in her pocket. O my strength, deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth.

Courageous, she went to Anton. “Simon and me are taking the train to Chicago to visit Uncle Garland for a spell. He’s got married and he wants us to come.”

“You will not.” He ravened. “No.”

“By the law, Simon’s mine.”

The child was coughing; he clutched his chest. But the two who fought over him didn’t see. Their eyes narrowed, and the pale gray irises of father and daughter were glinting in the same way. Ellen said they would leave in the morning. She ordered Simon to his room after the night meal. He went, meek.

Anton strode out to the corn field, tearing off his shirt. He dragged aside the standing shocks just built. Furious sweat drops were forming on the hairs of his chest. He snapped off the soft unseasoned ears, hurling them in great piles until dark engulfed the field. Reaching for the next stalk, he stumbled, falling. He lay panting a moment before getting to his feet, and came to the house to lie emptied and exhausted beside his sleeping wife.

Sam and Ellen milked without him in the morning. They breakfasted and then Ellen went to the door of the bedroom. She was looking across at the unkempt bent figure on the bed under the crucifix, elbows on knees. At length she turned away, taking Simon’s hand. He held his other over the buttons of his shirt. “You’re not afraid?” he queried, timid.

But Ellen was speaking to Maria. “I’ve got to go, Ma. You see that?”

“Where you off to? Is Mester Gaddy going?”

“No. Just us two.” Ellen kissed her. “It’s all I know to do, Ma.”

Maria went to gaze at her husband. “Why’s he setting there?”

Ellen fled with Simon. They were overtaken down the road by Dr. Trumbo, who gave them a lift in his rattletrap Nash to the station at New Hope. A north wind blew up, keening in the corners of the unheated station. It struck down dry autumn leaves and herded them into desolate piles. They boarded the train at noon. Simon mounted the iron stair before her. He turned and peered from the windows at the retreating town.

“Don’t put your feet on the clean seats, Simon.” Ellen did not look back.

               *       *       *       *       *

Anton had shaken his head at the noon meal his wife proffered him. He stared at the floor. In late evening he arose at last from his position on the bed. Maria was in the parlor poring over her gilded Bible. Anton took a long thin butcher knife from a kitchen drawer. He went onto the half-dark porch, taking down the lantern that hung on a bent nail and lighting it. He was making his way then with measured gait to the woodshed. Wind coming out of the north chattered in the branches of the hackberry. The yellow light was shedding over the pen of goats lying in oat straw. They blinked up at him. Rhodie, who was skittish, arose and snorted. As the man was fumbling with the gate latch the other beasts got to their feet, one at a time, sensing an outsider, Leona’s pair of three-week kids turned to her warm side when she stood, seeking her udder. Feverish, Anton was seeking a peg, feeling with his fingers. He hung the lantern, his breathing quickening.

The first doe he grasped was Penny. When he bent her old neck back by the beard and the red ran down into the fur, she died almost gently. The clever ones saw his game. Rhodie was rearing upon the furthest stone wall; her hoofs made a subdued pattering. Leona’s white throat came next, for she was foolish and made no play at running away. Her two kids were dispatched too, uttering feeble birdlike sounds. And then Jenny and Babs, baaing low, were snared by their shaggy beards. Their taut silken throats were bending to the knife. The hot blood spouted on the straw and the man’s boots. He was lunging for the spotted Pie, powerful and large, catching her by a hind leg. She pulled loose, and bleating, kicked out, striking him on the neck, making a dark bruise. “Haw. Come here now.” He threw his body at her, encouraged the struggle. He took a pleasure in the battle, prolonged its ending, letting her heave, crying in alarm beneath his weight. Then he was dragging her along the straw to the knife he had dropped. Rhodie was the last. In a silent crazed way she was still leaping against the far wall. This doe had always been apt to startle since she had been left untended over a winter and spring as a yearling when his daughter Ellen had been away in Illinois. Rhodie’s small hoofs were beating again and again upon the wall. Anton trapped her by the collar. She made no sound, dropping slowly to the bedding.

He breathed loud, threw his hand as if he had spoken and were justifying himself to someone. He walked out of the shed leaving the gate ajar, the lantern flaming. He strode to the bedroom and knew his wife. In the frost of the following morning Sam would come upon the stiffened bodies of the animals and bury them in a near field.

                               18

While the wind of late September hurled in dreary gusts about them, the two stood in the chill of the next morning before the brownstone front of the house on Redding Street. They were walking up wet granite stairs strewn with blown leaves. Ellen rang the bell. The woman who opened the door was tall and narrow-shouldered. Her eyes were dark, and like a dog’s seemed to beg. Her hair was a brown mane, piled sleek. She put her hands on her hips. “Hi. You must be Chicken’s niece. I’m Violet. Come out of the wet.” She was preceding them into the living room. The old green carpet was shoddy. The trivia of ornaments that had burdened the mantle and end tables had been taken away. The oval dining room table had been moved into this room and the drapes replaced with white ruffled curtains that drooped as the starch wore out.

“This room’s bright now,” Ellen said.

“I like ruffles and trimmings. Is this Simon? Chicken told me about you. I’m Aunt Vi. Sit down. I’ll get some lunch.” She bustled out.

“I’m tired, Ma.”

“So am I, Simon.”

“Are we e’er going back to Granddaddy’s?”

“Maybe some day.” She was pushing aside the curtains, looking down into the street where traffic moved.

“Will we live in this rich house?”

“For a spell, I reckon.”

“How do I call that lady?”

“Aunt Violet, you say. And be mannerly.”

“I’m not hungry, Ma.”

“Take off your shoes. I’ll give you dry socks from the bag.” They waited until Garland’s wife returned with a tray of hot milk and coffee, slices of poundcake and a plate of bananas.

“You like bananas?” she asked. “I do. I feel like one of the quality when I have bananas around.”

“Where’s Uncle Garland?”

“He’s at one of the restaurants. He’s got two, you know. He gets home about four-thirty and goes back till late at night. Have a banana, Simon. They’ll rot before you can snap your fingers.”

“I don’t want any. Go away.”

“Simon.”

The boy began to weep softly, laying his head on the arm of the chair. “I’m hot.”

“He doesn’t look good, Ellen. Let’s put him to bed.”

“Pay no mind to his talk, Aunt Violet.”

“I don’t,” she said cheerfully. “Nerts, I forgot to make up your beds. Wonder where I stored the sheets this time?”

Upstairs in a little room, Simon was undressed and put to sleep. He drowsed uneasily. The bedstead was of black-enameled iron. There was a battered wood bureau and a cane-bottom chair. Simon awoke, whimpering, “Ma? Did Anse take back his ball?”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Ma. What did I say?”

She felt the dry heat of his forehead. Violet came in the doorway. “Hi, Simon. Brought you some ice cream.” She offered him the little dish.

He sat up, his blue eyes darkening. “I ne’er meant what I said, lady.”

“I don’t mind, Simon. Eat before it melts.”

“Do you have any tonic in the house?” Ellen whispered.

“I think Chicken would say call the doctor.”

“My pa ne’er had one. Only satchel doctor I knew let a friend of mine die.”

“Didn’t you have one when he came?” Violet was nodding at Simon.

“No.”

The boy finished the ice cream, laid the dish on the faded bedspread. He stroked the sheet, closing his eyes. “Sing about that William, Ma.”

She waited until Violet had gone.

It was in the merry merry month of May When the meadows were fresh and gay Sweet William hung his bugles round about his neck And he went riding away

He slept. Ellen went downstairs to help with the housework. Violet knew little about it, made simple chores tedious, and in her careless way laughed it off. “Chicken says, I’ve got a niece at least that’s a model housekeeper.”

“I like things to be in the place they live.”

“You take last night. The soup was ready but I forgot and put the potatoes in late. They weren’t done. Nerts. Good thing Chicken brings things home from the restaurant.”

While she was talking, Ellen busied herself. She boiled starch for the wilted curtains. “How long have you and Uncle been married?”

“I’m what they call a common-law wife. I guess I can tell you, being Chicken’s family so to speak. We’ve lived on the east side ever since thirty-two. Or was it thirty-three? Last year Chicken gave me a box of stationery with Mrs. Garland Gaddy on it. He says, we’ve got a checking account, you and me, the National Trust.”

“That sounds like Uncle.” Ellen stopped scouring the bronze-trimmed icebox, wiped her hands.

“All the time he’d had it in his head. I’ve never written a check, I don’t know how. Let him do that. But there’s my name with that bank.”

“My.”

“He told me your husband died, Ellen.”

“I’ve got to look at Simon.” She was going upstairs. The covers were thrown back, the boy’s face reddened. When he opened his eyes, they stared at her bloodshot.

“Penn didn’t want that ball,” he breathed.

She was rushing down the long echoing staircase. “Call Uncle’s doctor, Vi. Simon’s really sick.”

She went back. The voice met her, wheedling, “I didn’t wet the quilt, Da.”

“Don’t talk, Simon.”

“I saw that burying-beetle. He made a grave for the speckled thrush. He dug all about the body till it settled in the earth.”

She laid a wet cloth on his forehead. Her hand was pushed away strongly. Now God, shall I give up my first-born for my transgression? The doctor arrived. The watch began. For nearly three days the fever would possess Simon’s body. Garland came and went but Ellen didn’t notice him, that he was changed, his hair whitened, his figure grown portly, his mustache shaved so his face had lost its sharpness. His blue eyes looked out shrived. Ellen saw only Simon. She sat in the cane-bottom chair and watched. Simon was laying his hand on his breast, “Now there’s that pain. I won’t tell Mama.” His voice rose, “Granddaddy clobbered old Jess.”

Ellen asked the doctor, “How come he grabs at his chest? I’ve seen him do that before but he said it didn’t hurt.”

“He might be afraid of something, Mrs. Gaddy, that he’s not aware of. Some anxiety. It’s possible.”

Late in the night, Ellen was sitting alone in the glare of the small overhanging bulb. The doctor had said that only time would reveal the extent of the child’s malady and his strength to combat it. Gusts were rattling the house eaves, rain drummed insistent on the glass behind the stained brown shade. Her eyes sought patterns in the striped wallpaper. “Gaddy brat. Bastard Gaddy.” Simon was crying in the way of the young, without effort, his tears wetting the pillow.

Violet came in, her brown hair hanging to the waist of her dressing-gown and bound with a clasp. “I had a brother,” she said, “was sick like that as a child. He came through. The doctor thinks Simon’s getting better. He told me when he went out.”

“Don’t cry. Why does he cry, Aunt Violet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s thinking thoughts we can’t know of.”

“Reckon you’re right,” Ellen sighed.

“I know one way to stop it, but you might think it improper.”

“What, Aunt Violet?”

“I doubt the quality ever heard of it. It’s a way people did where I was brought up. Even with babies. We lived in the slums, all in one room. Mom would stroke my brother’s privates. She was forced to hush him so Dad could get his sleep. And it quieted him right off.”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ll just use the wet cloth.”

“How is he?” Garland’s rasp sounded from the door. “Just closed up the restaurant. Busy tonight. It’s after midnight.”

Ellen didn’t turn. “He’s better, it seems.”

“He is, Chicken. The first time he’s resting good. I’ll go make your tea. You want some too, Ellen?”

“Sure she does, Vi.”

She pattered away down the hall. “Won’t be long.”

Garland was coming in by the bed. “Poor fellow. He’s a fine kid, puss.”

“I know it.” Tears began to flow down her tired face. “You-all been so good. Taking us in, Uncle.”

“Chrissake, hon. It’s Anton, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Was he mistreating the kid?”

“No.”

“Hell, then he was lording it over you?”

“Not that, I don’t mind that.” She was whispering, weeping. “Seemed he didn’t care for Simon’s good.”

“Hell, that’s An. Wish there was some way to make him see the light.”

“Only to have him do his bidding.”

“What makes that bastard that way? I’m fed up with him. I’m done.”

“To make Simon a part of him like his own son would be.” Ellen was looking up. She saw that Garland was old. He had always seemed young, vigorous. “When I got your letter, Uncle. Saying we could come here. It was like a way opened up.”

“Your letter to me was pretty plain. I thought I knew what the trouble was. I suspected Anton then.” His small angry eyes cooled. “You know how tickled Vi is with you both?”

“I like her.”

“We’ve been married a long time. Since about thirty-two, I think.”

“Like I wrote,” she looked at Simon who breathed evenly in sleep, “I want to get a job right away, though.”

“How old is he anyway?”

“Nine, now.”

“Frankie told me she thought your husband had died.”

“Yes.” The wind rushed, pushing rain sharply against the pane.

“Frankie said what a nice kid Simon was. She’ll be glad to see him, too. We’ll have her over.”

“I’m so tired, Uncle.” She looked at him, vacant. “I can’t think so good. Does Frankie live near here?”

“Just you take it easy.” He put his hand at Simon’s forehead. “Feels cool to me.” The humming of Violet who was mounting the stairs came, and then dishes were rattling in an adjoining room. “Let’s go have some hot tea and ginger-bread. Do you good, sweet.”

“I’d better stay here.”

“You can come back. In a little while.” He jerked the chain dangling from the overhead light. He drew her from the darkened room.

Ellen slept late into the morning like one drugged. Simon dozed. The fever had disappeared, with it went the constriction in his chest. When he roused, Violet tiptoed up to amuse him, making shadow-pictures on the wall with her thin hands. “I used to do this for my brother.”

Garland came home, stood in the doorway. “There’s nobody like my Vi, Simon.”

“Do the little goat now,” the boy whispered.

Ellen went down to the kitchen in the evening. Violet was in a rocker by the tin-topped table. The radio was blaring.

The music goes round and round O-o-o-o-o-o And it comes out here

The woman snapped it off. “Hi. How is he, Ellen?”

“Fine. I promised him a kitten. Reckon we could find one?”

“I’ll tell Chicken. He’ll get you one somewhere. Have a cup?” They sat in the kitchen room that was littered as in the days of Mrs. Quimby’s reign. Years of neglect and Violet’s efforts had done little to improve it. The chipped sink was touched up, the cupboards were painted cream color, and a square of red-and-white linoleum was on the wood floor. The fireplace was still unused, the opening blocked. “If times get better, we’ll fix the house up, Ellen. Get an electric icebox and a new stove and sink.”

Ellen drank the tea. “Violet, did Uncle look for a job for me yet?”

“He’s watching the want ads. We’d like you to stay here as long as you can. Have you ever worked out?”

“No.”

“I have. Since I was eleven. One place they had a special French toilet in their bathroom. When they finished their business on the regular one, they switched to it. It washed them off with a spray. Now it was outlandish.”

“Those French are tormented clean folks. My great grandsir was one.”

“You don’t say.”

The front door slammed. “Where are you, Vi?”

She bayed, “Here, Chicken.”

Garland was pushing the swinging door. “Home is the sailor, home from the sea. And the hunter from the hill.” He kissed Violet’s cheek. “I’ll have some of that tea.”

“Ellen wants you to find Simon a kitten. He likes pets.”

“I’ll ask Charlie. He’s got cats. Charlie’s my dishwasher. Say, we’re going to have company in a couple of hours. Frankie’s coming.”

“I just remembered supper,” Violet cried. “Nerts, I’ll never get it together.”

“Yes, we will,” Ellen gathered the teacups. “How’s Frankie’s piano-playing now, Uncle?”

“Oh, hon,” Garland was laughing, “when did you see her last?”

At six-thirty, Frankie arrived, Genevieve Wheeler, stout and amiable, just behind her. “How’s the farm, Ellen?”

“It’s fine, Miss Wheeler.”

“Take my coat, Gen, will you?” Frankie’s red hair was long and she wore a pearl comb in it. Her fine features had filled out and she had lost her frailness, was somewhat plump.

“All righty. I’ll go put these chocolate eclairs in the frig.” Genevieve was striding vigorously into the hall.

“Oh sure, Ellie. We’ve been visiting Uncle and Vi ever since Pa tossed me out. We live on the east side.” Frankie’s eyes appraised Ellen. “You’re different. Older, I guess.” She had her hand on Ellen’s arm, was kissing her cheek.

Ellen drew away. “And I am older, so what’s that if I look it?” She spoke sharply from the wound.

“Did Pa make you go? We didn’t believe Uncle when he said you were in the city. And Simon, too.”

“I told Pa I was leaving.”

“Are you raising Simon Catholic?”

“Well, Pa took him to church, but I don’t go. I got weary of the prayers and such.”

“Pa know that?”

“I talked to Father Tompert once and he said I was right. So Pa gave in.”

“I always got a kick out of the way you defied him, Ellie. I never dared. How is he?”

“The same.” It tasted bitter. “It’s us that have got to change.”

“I’m glad you left. But how are you going to get along? Are you staying here?”

“No, I want to find a place on a farm, Frankie. So I can work and Simon can help with the stock.”

Genevieve was in the doorway, hearty-voiced, “I know a farmer might be able to take you, Ellen.”

“Where, Gen?” Frankie was asking.

“Down in the state somewhere. Wasilewski’s the name. One of their cousins works in my office. He was reading a letter yesterday about his aunt getting old and wanting to hire a girl. Sounded nice.”

“Let’s write them,” Frankie cried.

“Wonder if they have cows.” The desire caught in Ellen’s throat to lay her hands on the silken hair and smell the pungent kine breath.

“Sure,” Genevieve said. “I guess. Cows and pigs and chickens. The works. We’ll write them, Ellen.”

“And we’ll call you,” Frankie promised, “as soon as we find out.”

“I don’t get it,” Genevieve said. “Wouldn’t you rather find something here in Chicago? My kind of work’s so much more interesting than the drudgery of a farm. It’s stimulating.”

“No, Miss Wheeler.”

“You could live with us,” Frankie offered. “You could do steno work like me.”

“I’ll bet Garland would be tickled silly if you’d stay with them,” Genevieve said.

“Vi’s such a slob,” Frankie giggled.

“She’s not,” said Ellen. “She’s good.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t good,” Frankie was shrugging. “But she’s a slob. She’s perfect for her Chicken.”

“Garland thinks he’s taking care of the downtrodden,” said Genevieve.

“She’s good,” Ellen repeated.

“Why don’t you stay, then?” Genevieve asked.

“They need a housekeeper,” said Frankie.

“I’d rather be on a farm, if I could. Besides, Simon can’t bear to be cooped up.” But Ellen knew she wanted to be away from Garland and his wife, and Frankie and Genevieve Wheeler. She wanted to leave all ties, to start on new ground.

The next day, Frankie called to say they had mailed the letter and when the reply came would let Ellen know without delay. Ellen walked through the park, Simon beside her. Leaves were dropping, scudding into damp niches, mingling with soot particles and bits of paper and debris that gathered in gutters. Sleet sheeted from a dull sky. They returned to the house. Violet was bringing a bowl of popcorn into the living room. Garland urged Ellen, “Top Hat’s at the Acme tonight. With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Why don’t you come with us, puss?”

“I don’t care to.”

“Make me some fudge, Ma.”

“All right.” When Garland and Violet had left, they went into the kitchen. Simon sat in the rocker while Ellen was hunting through cupboards for ingredients.

“When you reckon Uncle will get my kitten, Ma?”

“Soon, he said.”

“Wonder if Leona’s kid sprouted horns?”

“Uncle says the man that washes dishes at the restaurant has a cat that littered. But they aren’t weaned yet.” She was stirring the hot mixture in the iron pan, the strong odor of chocolate filled the air.

Simon stared at the red-and-white checked linoleum, held the arms of the chair to keep it from movement. “Reckon Sam milks the goats out good?”

She poured the thick fudge on a buttered cold plate. Her body was tense and unyielding. Her braids lay like marble coils about her head. “Uncle says those kits are spotted. Black and white and orange.”

Simon got up and followed her into the living room. He was nibbling at a sweet brown square, his eyes looking past the ruffed curtains to the steady noise of the street. “I say, Ma, I get to honing for them.”

               *       *       *       *       *

It was two weeks before Frankie came for an evening again. “Why in the world did you and Uncle move from the old flat, Vi?” She was laughing. “It takes us an hour to get over to this side.”

“Did you e’er hear from those people, Frankie?” Ellen asked.

“Who?”

“About that farm.”

“Oh yes. We meant to call you. Gen’s got a letter from them.”

“It’s here somewhere in my bag.” Genevieve searched.

Ellen took it quickly to slit it open.

Mrs. Gaddy.

I hear you want to hire out. Winter work is light here. Can you come say latter part of Jan.? If satisfactory would pay 4 & half dollars per week and board. Child to work according to size. My wife raises chickens. Needs help with them and house. Also garden-stuff. That is all I have to say.

                                           Matthew Paul Wasilewski
                                                Hidden Creek, Ill.
                                                             Rt. 1

“Well?” asked Gen. “Good or bad?”

“They’ll take us. But not till after winter.” She colored. “I know where Hidden Creek is. Penny Dougherty lives near there.”

“Well,” said Violet when she heard the news, “I’m glad it’s not till January at least.”

“It’s that I hate putting you and Uncle out.”

“Nerts, you don’t. We wish you’d stay.”

“Can I have my own horse there, Ma?”

“We’ll see if you can leastwise have a chicken.”

“Let me have it as soon as it hatches. I’ll give it all its feed and raise it for a pet.”

“Never heard of a pet chicken,” Violet said.

“When’s Uncle going to bring me the kitten, Aunt Vi?”

“I’ll get after him again, Simon. He’s always busy.”

“I’d love a spotty kitten.”

Ellen cleaned the house as the weeks flowed. With strong yellow soap she scrubbed into corners, taking a pleasure in the dark lather that would form in the ancient dust. She pulled down drapes, hauled dingy frayed rugs out on the line strung in the yard and set Simon to beating them in the cold autumn sunlight. “You got to polish brass with wood ashes mixed in oil. Hit’s the only way,” she told Violet. “It mars our hands but the brass comes shiny like new.”

Violet, thin arms akimbo, followed, protesting. “Look at you, Ellen. Let it be. We don’t mind. Come on and sit.”

“I’d rather finish this off first, Aunt Vi.” She felt a compulsion to drive her body as if that would make the days shorter.

                               19

There was a heavy fall of snow in the early afternoon. All city noises were dulled. Violet had spread newspapers before her and she was sipping hot tea. “Says here they found a frozen man on the el steps, people walking around him. You think they figured he was sleeping?” The telephone rang and Violet picked it up. “Hello. Yes, we’ll accept it. Hold the line, ma’am, she’s right here. It’s Millville, Ellen.”

Ellen grasped the phone. She could scarcely hear the voice of Sam Offut. “Ellie? Your Ma’s acting queer. Mester Gaddy’s got to pull her out of the wardrobe to get the meals. You best come and do somewhat with her.”

“Oh, Sam.”

“She’s not been the same since you left. I allow I don’t know how we’ll make out at butchering.”

“Is Pa all right?”

“For Gawd, Ellie. He thinks she’s being ornery. But I don’t know. Seems like she’s off her head to me.”

“Where are you, Sam?”

“At Love’s. I traded a basket of eggs. The hens are doing good for this weather. I says to the central, there’s a Garland Gaddy lives at Chicago. He’s got my boss’s niece there. Ellie Gaddy. Can you get her to this phone? She says, collect? I says, look, I got no money. Can you fix it so I don’t have to pay? Lo and behold, I was about to walk out when Stacey hollers, it’s for you, Sam. How about this age of miracles?”

“I’m hanging up, Sam. I’ll come some way.” She cut off his voice. “What do you reckon that call cost, Aunt Vi?”

“What’s the matter, Ellie?”

“I want to know. I’ll pay it back.”

When Ellen told Frankie, the young woman laughed as if embarrassed, the light catching in her blue eyes. “I’m done with all that, Ellie. You can go.”

“Haven’t you got any pity for Ma? Uncle says she has to be taken to a place the state runs.”

“When she’s there, we’ll go visit her. And Gen and me will give what money we can spare.” Frankie’s full face was set, her mouth pouting.

               *       *       *       *       *

Ellen and Garland were going by train to New Hope, leaving Simon in Violet’s care. Garland hired a man to drive them to the Gaddy farm. The corduroy country roads were uneven because of the freezing and thawing of winter, and they were jostled in the back seat of the worn-out Model T. Garland was relaxed as he stared out at the countryside. His jaw had dropped, the flesh was folding on his face about the age lines. Shaving his mustache had given him a guileless expression, and with Violet not present, he had laid aside his forced lusty manner. They were passing Bailey’s Woods. Ellen recalled the glowbugs that had lit the path sides with fitful orange lights when she played there as a child on summer evenings. Now dead twigs of tree branches tangled and meshed like spiders’ webs. A winter wren on a lean bough was whistling, “Teakettle, teakettle, teakettle!” and with a whirr fading down the road toward the sky where gray clouds lived uncared for.

“It’s not your father’s fault about Maria, puss.” Garland was speaking suddenly. “Don’t go blaming it on him.”

“Who’s laying it to him?” flashed Ellen.

“You know, Maria had a hard childhood. Her people were queer, you might say. Her mother was over forty when Maria was born and her father going on sixty. Christ. Must have near starved some winters back in the hills. He’d go off and leave the two of them to fend for themselves. Probably half crazy.”

“I don’t think so.” Ellen’s mouth was stubborn.

“Anton said he was a hunchback. Had Maria’s dowry stuffed in a gunnysack fastened with binder twine. Fifteen hundred dollars in coin and bills.”

“That’s the way he was. I don’t call it so queer.”

The house appeared uninhabited as they approached. Jack came out from the hole he had made for warmth in the earth behind the leaf-bare bushes. He watched them dull-eyed, uncertain. Garland called at the bottom of the porch; there was no answer. He set out for the barns while Ellen went up into the house. The porch was littered with mud and manure, in the kitchen the floor was tracked and the usual order on Maria’s shelves and table was broken. Ellen guessed that Sam had been making an effort to clean up and wash the dishes. Her pulse was pounding as she glanced at the bedroom. She draped her coat on a hook and drew off her winter boots. She went slowly into the room and over to the dark standing closet. The heavy crucifix was looming on the wall over the bed by the light from the little windows. It was a dream. From another time. She was in the cellar of her childhood, her feet fixed and immovable. There was someone behind her with a stick, waiting to perform a vague frightful act. Her heart was beating like a living stone as she dragged open the double doors to the closet.

Maria’s birdlike eyes looked up from where she sat, clad in a long maroon sweater and a worn housedress. “I got my little boy here, Mam. He’s a bit cold. But he’s not dead by a long sight. That whippoorwill was wrong.” She had cradled a pillow in the crook of her arm. Her hair was loosely braided, gray wisps straggled over her face.

“Ma,” Ellen whispered.

Maria was frowning. “Shut the doors. I allowed he was out there in the ground moldering and turning. But he’s right here. Shut them now.”

“It’s Ellie, Ma.” But the woman bowed her head into her shielding hands, waiting until the doors would close.

Ellen went into the kitchen. “She’s stark mad.” She stirred up the fire, adding lighter-wood and a log from the bin.

The three men scraped noisily coming up the porch and into the room. They stood in their muddied boots, their breath steaming up. Anton stamped his boots and coughed, rubbing his fingers together above the stove.

“Evening, Ellie,” Sam said.

She nodded, holding herself from them, over at the side by the windows where a chill seeped in.

Anton had on his black bear-fur cap, the collar of his tattered mackinaw was turned up. He shrugged and said directly to Garland, “So hell, I’d get her out mealtimes. She wouldn’t go to mass and the last few days she wouldn’t get in bed. Hum.” He inquired softly, “Has she gone loony?”

“Would she cook for you?” Garland asked.

“Fair to middling,” said Sam.

“But always she’d set out for the bedroom,” Anton was saying, “and I’d pull her back. Like she aimed to anger me.”

“She needs a doctor, An. And care.”

“What are you fixing to do?”

“I’ll have to make some calls first. Where’s the nearest phone? I think the state will take her. We have to see a doctor and you’ll have to sign papers. You come with me, An.”

“Go hitch Red,” Anton said. The hired man went as bid.

“Where is she now, hon?” Garland asked Ellen.

“In the closet,” Ellen whispered. “She ne’er knew me.”

“And why should she?” Anton was glaring at her, hurt and reproachful. Like old Jess led to the sourwood scaffold in the yard. “Isn’t that right, Gar? There’s a great daughter. That one.” The door slammed after him in a gust of cold air, and Ellen shrank.

“Your ma’s probably best off right where she is, puss. She isn’t violent or anything?”

“No. Just sitting there harmless. She used to do that sometimes when Pa had his back up. I thought it was a place for her to get away. Far as I can remember she’d do that. But now she’s talking daft and she didn’t know me.”

They stood, hands hanging useless. Nothing moved. The silence was complete. Then the buckwagon clattered outside. Garland roused, picked up his homburg hat. “Be back late. Not much of a Christmas this year, hon.” From the window she watched them climb onto the seat. The chestnut horse was restive, its winter coat woolly and ungroomed, dry manure casing its flanks and legs. It carried its broomlike tail high and pawed the ground. It moved off, the two figures hunched against the cold, heads drawn down into scarves and collars.

Ellen left the house, going toward the woodshed. She called to the dog but he had disappeared. She went seeking her goats. She met Sam, and learned of their destruction from him, “You know your pa e’er was a strong-willed man, Ellie. And you be cut off the same last. I saw that when you were yet a set-along child. You’d ne’er squall when he took a stick to you. It wasn’t natural.” Sam was wagging a gnarled hand.

Ellen’s mind had only partly encompassed what he told her. She was conscious of the faint liquor scent. “What’ll I do, Sam?”

“You hadn’t ought to torment him so.” Sam was stooped over, holding one hand on a hip as if an ache lay underneath. “Being as you’re a ooman grown now, you ought to stand behind him. Mrs. Gaddy’s no use any more.”

Ellen wasn’t listening. “Where’d you put them, Sam?”

He went before her to the orchard edge. “I threw them in the wagon and toted them down here. For Gawd, took a big hole. Wore me plumb out.”

When he had gone, Ellen looked about at the familiar landscape. Penny and Leona and spotted Pie. Rhodie and the shaggy yearlings. Pa gave me an eye for an eye, it appears. Burning for burning, stripe for stripe. Because I took Simon. It’s my goats for Simon. Life for life. That’s an enduring fine trade. At last she was wending back up the hill field. Darkness dropped almost instantly as it does in the short days of the year. The bark of a dog fox was rising shakily from the woods, the eerie sound lingered. Ellen’s hands in her pockets were stiff and cold. She blew on them and rubbed them. “I’ll ne’er have truck with my pa again.”

From the house, squares of lamplight were wavering. Ellen entered, heard Dr. Trumbo’s murmur. The Gaddy brothers were sitting with him, and papers were spread before them. They all wore their overcoats, and their headgear was cast near their hands as though, in the half-warmth of the kitchen, they were passers-by with a bit of business to perform here. Ellen removed her coat. She shook the grate in the stove and laid a fresh fire. That’s all we be. Passers-by. Strangers sitting in His home, dragging the past on our shoes. If we could but lose that burden, start afresh. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. There’s Pa whom I ever loved, thinking of ways to make him see me since I was a least youngen, following him with my eyes, running to do for him. But I never saw Pa for himself, only for the way I wished him, like the songs that seem to happen in another land. From this valley they say you are going, we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. I loved Pa in the land of myself, in a valley of my mind. While Ellen was mixing the corn meal, her hand was turning the egg and buttermilk into it quickly. Tears started and fell unheeded.

She laid plates before the men and they ate silent by the mellow light. Forks and knives chinked. The smell of burning oil pervaded the room. Ellen went to where the woman hid herself. “Come get your supper, Ma.” Maria laid her head on her knees. Ellen brought her a dish and she accepted it. The doctor and Garland were lighting cigarettes, Anton puffed his pipe. Ellen finished the dishes and swept the floor. Dr. Trumbo arose then, it was time to go. He drew Maria struggling and whimpering from her place, and Ellen persuaded her to change from her ragged clothes. “Here, Ma. Take off that sweater and those rags. Put this on.” She was offering the old crepe de Chine dress. “It’s silk.”

“Well,” Maria felt of the black material. She was putting her pillow down. When she had dressed they came into the kitchen where the others waited.

“All set?” asked Dr. Trumbo.

Anton was watching his wife from where he still sat at the table. He was pushing tobacco angrily with his thumb into the pipe bowl. “There goes the last of my oomen-folk. Now who’s to do the cooking, Gar? Sam, you think?”

“I’ll get her bag.” Garland went into the shadowed bedroom.

“I’ve been a righteous man. And pious,” Anton carped harshly.

“Here we go, Mrs. Gaddy.” The doctor was taking Maria’s arm; he led the way with Ellen to the car, into the black night.

Garland was bringing Maria’s valise. He paused at the open door to the porch. Light from the kitchen made a hesitant path reaching to the top step. “Goodbye, An.” Car lights had beamed suddenly in the yard, revealing the shrouded figures of the women climbing into the back seat. Garland cleared his throat. “I’ll remember when I first met Maria.”

Anton did not move. Pipe smoke wreathed and dimmed his lined face, his strong shoulders, his powerful arms stretched on the table before him. “Man born of ooman is of few days, Gar.”

Garland was running his soft hand nervously through his white hair, fingering the place where his mustache had used to be. He hurried down the steps. “Let’s go, Doc.”

Ellen sat in back with Maria, dust from the car floor mingled with a vague clinical smell. She drew an old alpaca robe about their knees; it was damp to her hands, musty.

“I remember winters, Doc,” Garland was saying. “We cut shoes from hides my father tanned. They had only one last so both shoes were cut the same. Pa’d say, your feet will wear them into shape to fit. Times I thought it was the shoes shaping my feet.”

“You think everyone nowadays buys shoes, Mester Gaddy? They come down out of the back country or I hunt them out. Ridden with hookworm, wearing shoes made like yours were, no right or left.”

“Chrissake, bet you see some things, Doc?”

“Sure. Blacksnake root for the stomach. Butterfly root for female trouble.” Dr. Trumbo grunted. “Lady came in yesterday. Said she was near starvation. She was down to her last chicken and couldn’t wring its neck. Said it was her pet.”

“That’s the lot of a farmer.”

“That’s right, Mester Gaddy. Always dealing with death. The youngens play with the calves and lambs and maybe teach them tricks. Then they have to watch them slaughtered. Always losing whate’er they get attached to.” The feeble lights of the car parted the night. Ellen watched the slack shoulders of the men before her. Maria breathed deeply, the pillow slipping from her angular fingers.

“Fellow was a grave digger, see?” Garland was telling an old joke. “He dug one too deep, this time. So he was shouting up from it, help. Get me out of here. I’m freezing. A drunk came staggering along and he looked in. Says, Hell, fellow, no wonder. They forgot to cover you up. And he began to throw in what was shoveled out.”

“Now, that’s a good one,” Dr. Trumbo was whispering. “I’ll remember it. Sure wish I had you to go the rounds with me.”

               *       *       *       *       *

A day later Ellen and Garland were back in Chicago. Simon met them at the front door. “Look here, what Aunt Vi gave me for my Christmas.” A sleeping calico kitten was within his shirt, a soft lump.

Ellen laughed at him, “My.”

When Simon touched it with a finger, the kitten stretched a paw and yawned. Simon was delighted. “See that?”

“You made him right at home, boy,” Garland cried.

Violet was stepping down the wide staircase, trailing her housecoat, her hair undone, her eyes wistful. Garland put his arm about her tall form. “Miss me, wife?”

“Sure did, Chicken. I didn’t hear the doorbell, I was sleeping so hard. You know Simon was in the school play? He was the shepherd and he brought a gift.”

“No, I ne’er,” said the boy. “I just knelt by the sheep, singing ‘Round John Virgin.’”

Garland was carving the holiday ham that night. “Next year we’re going to have a turkey, Vi. I hear they might vote FDR in for another term. We’ll see prosperity again.”

Ellen watched Simon eating, struck by it. He held the fork in his left hand, pushing the food with the knife as his grandfather did. She said abruptly, “How come you hold your fork so? I ne’er noticed that. It’s not proper. Your fork goes in the right hand.”

“Let him eat Christmas dinner like he wants, puss.”

Reckon I’ll always see those ways Pa stamped on him. Simon was reaching for the ketchup and pouring it heavily on the potatoes, his head bent over his plate. She remembered how he said, “Mind now,” to the kit. She was wondering if that too came from Anton.

“Now these quality,” Violet was saying, “had an exercise machine. You could hear it clear down in the kitchen. It was bolted to the floor and there was a wide belt they put around them. It juggled their stomach or wherever there was a fat spot and it just rubbed it away.”

“Say now, that’s what I need.” Garland was patting his stomach.

                               20

Anton and Dyke were loading the Burwell truck for the trip to Louisville. It was late January. They had become familiar with the town since their first excursion six years ago at the beginning of the depression. They had come to know the wholesale section and the waterfront district where the Ohio flowed and where auctions were conducted in the shadow of tobacco warehouses and mills and the newly-operated distilleries, reeking and guarded. Now too, they would manage more than one yearly trip. They found it necessary, in fact, to go many times.

Sam Offut had moved in with Anton the week after Maria went, bringing along his wife Eadie. She was plagued with lumbago and vestiges of various diseases contracted when much younger, and she seemed satisfied to settle with Sam in Mr. Gaddy’s house for as long as she was required. She learned to carry out her duties to his partial satisfaction. She cooked three meals and cleaned occasionally. She was cowed, however, by the Catholic icons, refusing to dust the crucifix or the statuettes or the framed Sacred Heart. “Be careful what you say near the things, Samuel,” she warned, “they be Romish. You know Mr. Gaddy’s not a true Christian like us.” The Offuts would go to the new Holiness Church that had set up a tent on the outskirts of Millville. There folks spoke in strange tongues and preachers would handle rattlesnakes and fire and encourage public confession. Besides being entertained, the Offuts had found an ideal place to express themselves without censure.

This morning Eadie was bringing sandwiches of bread and bacon to the truck. Dyke was gunning the motor and a white smoke streamed from the exhaust. Six fattened shoats, stowed behind the load of corn, grunted and squealed until the machine was set in motion. Then they were lulled, grew sleepy-eyed swaying warm-bodied against each other. “I’m going to get me a piece of cock tonight, Mester Gaddy,” Dyke sang out.

“Do that, boy,” Anton glowered.

“Hey. I like a ooman built like a brick shithouse.” Dyke’s ruddy face shone. Beside the taciturn older man he was feeling debonair and knowing. “Big and soft all o’er. And I know where they’ve got them.” He blew the horn, “Beep. Beep!” A flock of chickens fled squawking into ditches from the carcass of a dog that lay in the frosted road. “Want me to show you where, Mester Gaddy?”

“No. Christ.”

“Setting about the room in wrappers. Nothing underneath. For a fact, now.”

“You’ll get the claps and come home dragging your tail. Hum. Won’t be so horny then, I vow. Best stay away from harlots, boy.”

“Now, there’s one old girl does a trick with a cigarette. You’d ne’er think she could do it.”

“Get your pecker down, boy.” Anton looked out on the frozen fields that waited fallow for spring. “Give not thy strength unto oomen. Mind.”

“Reckon the corn’ll sell high, Mester Gaddy?”

“Prices always come up in late winter. Seems most folks are so strapped for cash in fall, they’ll sell when hit’s cheap.”

The stoutish younger man and the other near sixty were drawn together in the close cab, knitted by the future, unforeseen. The return trip would be different, then the tie would fall away as tomorrow became a routine of familiar chores. Dyke was laughing. “Hey, Mester Gaddy. Saw Butcher Faust last night. He’d just got in a cow carcass. Still had the udder on it. So he sliced off a front teat and let it hang out his fly. Old lady Brenner came in. He took her order, started in to cut her meat for her. Well, she jerked up of a sudden. Says, timid-like, look there, Butcher Faust. And he looked down, says, Oh that damn thing. And lays it on the block, whacks it off with his knife.”

“Haw,” snorted Anton.

“Old lady Brenner near passed out. That Butcher Faust slays me.”

Hog prices had nearly doubled over the fall rate. The men found a buyer for the corn and stopped in at a dingy corner bar for a glass of draught beer before parting company. Then Anton was making his way down Market Street, a bleak wind thrusting at his back, up the sleeves to his mackinaw and ill-fitting black suit. He took a left turn for two blocks, then a right. He swung in at the second house, his stride unaltered. The building was of red brick, one of a series of identical houses. The long hall was unheated and dark, a radio lilted faintly from under a doorway.

I don’t want your sugar sprinkled in my tea Because the gal I’ve got is sweet enough for me

Anton was climbing a staircase, knocking at the door at the head. A shapely woman opened it, her jet-black hair heavy about her sallow-skinned broad face. Anton spoke thickly, “You alone, Rose?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Daddy.” She was turning in a studied careless way. He put a heavy-muscled hand toward the slim curve of her back, withdrew it hastily as if caught between guilt and greed. He closed the door and followed her to the window where she was looking out as if waiting. His hand came upon her insistent, he was pulling her to the bed.

She asked him after a while, “Why don’t you ever kiss me? And you with those big lips.” She was slipping into her wrapper. He followed her with his eyes, made no answer. She took his coat from the chair, explored the inner pocket and brought out a flat box. “Why not, Daddy?” She was deriding, but gentle, for the kind elderly farmer suited her. She had met him a few months ago, knew he was Catholic with a wife committed recently to an institution. She opened the gift box holding a red and blue silk handkerchief. Louisville, Kentucky. The Biggest Wholesale Distributor Of The South. She knotted it softly at her neck, wise that the vivid colors set off her hair. She planned that she would marry Anton. She was preparing supper on a two-burner hot plate, boiling spaghetti, searing ground meat in a frying pan. “Vo-do-do-dee-o-do-o-o! Guess I’ll teach you to dance, Daddy. Okay?”

From the bed he was taking in the figure in the bright kimono that contrasted so completely with the shadow of Maria. He would leave Louisville tomorrow, returning to the farm. But he would be restless and irritable, lonely, his sin again unconfessed. “Come o’er here, Poppet.”

She was going to the bed. He took her to his lap. His sateen shirt was open and she stroked the red hair of his chest. “You’re a comfortable man. You’re strong.”

“Rose, you wait here for me.” He was heated. “Don’t see e’er a man. You hear?”

“I don’t know.” But Rose said it as if she would obey.

“This little grandson of mine had hair would turn pale in summer, like oat straw. Hum.” Rose went back to where the savory odors were steaming. She laid dishes and brought glasses of beer to a low table. Anton drew on his pants, fastening his belt; he pulled his heavy frame erect, began to pace back and forth. His yellowed winter underwear was exposed above the waist. He stopped in his stride as if angry, “Will you do like I say, Rose?”

“Okay, Daddy.” But this time she was amused and said it as though she would not.

The next morning Rose was frying ham and eggs for breakfast. The stale air in the flat was surfeited with the high fat odor. She made her ways soft so the pain of parting would lie in Anton like a hot ball. She was teasing him so he would never be quite sure away from her and would remember her standing by him in the bright-flowered kimono, her hips soft and her city face white. She was forking the food onto his plate. Anton observed the lift of her arm along her breast; he laid his gnarled hand against the pointed shape of it, his mind turning to a morning long years ago.

The girl Penny, who married that fool Dougherty, had worn a flowered dress patterned like Rose’s kimono. She had come to the hay field to bring Anton a drink of water in a stone jar. He was turning the damp clover alone. The girl watched him drink, smiling. “It’s a power hot out here, Mester.” She was lifting her hands to brush back her hair, seeking the breeze. She looked cool from her head to her brown toes that were small as a youngen’s. Something stirred in Anton when her breasts stood out as she raised her arms. He put his hand forward hardly knowing what he did, and cupped one in his palm. “Are you coming in the heat?” he was whispering, hoarse. Penny’s eyes had widened. She was bending for the jug and slipping away. In days to follow he named her “that roaring ooman,” angered with his own calflike ways, despising his moment of weakness. And when his older daughter had picked up the foldilay songs, ever after they would stir his ire.

He spoke dourly to Rose, removing his hand, “The lips of a strange ooman drop honey, says the Book. And her mouth be smoother than oil.”

“Banana oil, Daddy,” said Rose.

               *       *       *       *       *

Anton met Dyke at the truck parked on Market Street. Hoarfrost had glazed the windows, Dyke was scraping at it with his knife while the engine warmed. The truck backfired and trundled with an effort through early traffic, past the slow gray river, and into the country where smoke was seeping from dunghills and fowl scratched the frozen earth. Anton was restless in his seat, crabbed. Dyke was driving stolidly. The radiator was beginning to boil as they chugged up the Gaddy farm lane. Dyke peered through the cloud above the hood. “Just made the well in time, Mester Gaddy.” He was shouting over the noise of the engine, and cut it. “Hey there, Sam.” He still shouted although the motor had stopped. He lowered his voice in the quiet wintry air, “Did your wife help you milk, Sam?”

“No, I shift for myself at the barn when Mester Gaddy’s off.” There was the hint of home-brew about Sam’s breath. He sighed, “But this here lumbago’s getting me down.”

Anton had descended his side of the truck. Shading his eyes, he was looking at buzzards that wheeled over one of the fields. “What be dead out there, Sam?”

“I don’t know. Could be the dog’s killed him a woodchuck.”

Anton walked to the top of the land, the other two following. “Reckon it’s old Jack himself?”

“Now I recollect, Mester Gaddy, Eadie said she ne’er seen him about yesterday to get his dinner scraps.”

Anton picked up a shovel, walked down the lane alone. A few sluggish bluebottles buzzed up in the sunless air from the dog’s decaying worn-out body, matted with burrs and beggar’s-lice, damp from melted frost. While the man was digging, clay caught in the cuffs of his shiny black pants. From the woods nearby the two notes of the carping bluejays echoed like pieces of crockery being knocked together. The birds were heralding the spring winds. Anton tipped the carcass into the grave with his shovel. A warm stench floated from where maggots quivered. Anton neither smelled nor saw. His disciplined arms were performing efficiently. His mind dwelled apart, jealous, on the woman in Louisville.