Chapter 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ay wasn’t much.”

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

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

“That’s so.”

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

“I ne’er had a beau.”

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

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

“I’ll be getting along now.”

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

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

“Very well, Pa.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How come you ask?”

“I hate that know-all.”

“Does Uncle treat you good, Frankie?”

“He’s different there.”

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s a truffle, Uncle?”

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

“Slut?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All right.”

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

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

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

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

“Play it, Poppet.”

“I don’t feel like singing now.”

“I ask you to,” Anton glowered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The frost seasons them,” Ellen said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I want to know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If you like.”

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

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

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

“Ne’er heard of him.”

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

“Is that a fact?”

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

“That’s a silly thing to say.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Chrissake, An.”

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

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

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

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

“Shut up, Uncle,” Frankie sighed.

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

“Yes, I am, Pa.”

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

“I vow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll make it up to you, Pa.”

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

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

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

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

“She’s in here, Ellie.”

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

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

“I brought more money.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All right.” Sam scratched his back.

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

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

“I hate it, being strapped, Sam.”

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

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

Then a letter arrived from Chicago.

Dear Father,

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

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

daughter Frankie

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