Chapter 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I will, Ma.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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