Chapter 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.