Chapter 10

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

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

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

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

“Well, you should go, Ellie.”

“What color’s the first prize?”

“Blue.”

“You going to, Ellie?” asked Frankie.

“There’s no harm talking.”

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

“I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Show us.” Frankie was eager.

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

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

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

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

“Go on,” Frankie pressed.

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s right,” Lily assented.

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

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

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

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

“That’s her for you,” Frankie said.

“I reckon she doesn’t like me.”

“Oh she does, Lily.”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid. Afraid.”

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will Mester Peyton come at all, Pa?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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