Chapter 21

Ellen had spotted the wagon before Simon, drawn by a strapping team of grays. The little farmer had a white beard and mustache. He was touching his hat and yelling across the tarred road to where they sat on the station house steps, “Hi. You Mrs. Gaddy?”

They took up their bags and ran. Simon was scrambling into the wagon bed. “Hey, Mester.”

“I’m Matthew Wasilewski,” the old man said. Ellen climbed to the seat beside him. He was clicking to the team and the shod hoofs resounded on the patched streets of Hidden Creek. They came upon dirt country roads and Ellen observed how there were no stones and they stretched flat and straight, not curving and hilly like those about Millville. The horses set a fast pace.

Simon shouted, “That’s a spanky team. Can I hold the reins sometime?”

“Hush, Simon. He’s fond of horses.”

“Let him talk. I say, let boys speak out.” The man’s complexion was translucent, as happens with the aged. His beard was yellow about the mouth from tobacco stains and food. His frail body was engulfed by baggy overalls and a fresh-starched blue shirt. He bobbed his head, “Now, Mom raises Leghorn hens. She’ll want you to help with them.”

“What’s a Leghorn? How’s it differ?”

“They’ll beat any breed at laying, Mrs. Gaddy. Mom follows the Department of Agriculture. She reads the bulletins. And she sees the county agent too. He told her to put those runners on her chicken sheds and tow them out to pasture.”

“Say, feeding them on grass like a cow.”

“Keeps down disease, the agent claims, and saves feed. You think this land’s rich? You should go to the old country some day. Poland. Where I came from. Plums as big as my fist. Apples the size of my head. Never a drought.”

“We had one where I lived two years ago.”

“Where you from?”

“Kentucky.”

“I heard that drought was widespread. We had it bad; most all the crops died right in the field. Our boys took a loan on the mortgage. They shouldn’t have done it. Debts are bad. In the end it was the Triple A that pulled us through. Roosevelt paid for what we didn’t have to plant. Did he pay you folks too?”

“No, but I knew a man got a government check for letting hogs root up his tobacco. I ne’er did understand how that worked.”

“Now in Poland, Mrs. Gaddy, they never heard of a drought or a Triple A either.”

“Say, Mester,” Simon spoke up, “what are those horses’ names?”

“Off one’s Pearl. The other’s Major, son.”

“That Pearl’s a sight the prettiest.”

“Yes, and that Major’s the smartest. Who do you think’s pulling this load?”

Simon fell back abandoned in the straw of the wagon, shouting in glee. He lay gazing up at the sky and the bare treetops that came into view.

“That’s it.” The old man pointed. “Ninety acres.”

Two women and a man were coming from the white house into the yard to welcome Ellen. Mom was fleshy and large-framed, her eyes shy. She was shaking Ellen’s hand. “Guess Pop told you all about the fruit in the old country.”

“Why, he did.”

Sudduth was their younger son, thirty-two, scrawny, anxious-eyed. “We sure can use your help. We’ve been after Mom a long time to get someone. Here’s my wife, Adele.”

“Pleased,” said Ellen.

“Howdy.” The woman held her head on one side like a bird, waiting.

“You-all could call me Ellen.”

“I’ll show you to your room, Ellen.” Adele was going ahead up the stairs. Her face was harrowed from the years, but retained the child’s shape, round and eager-eyed, looking for encouragement. Two little girls with eyes like hers looked from behind a door. “This is Mrs. Gaddy, Hannah. Grace. My boy Dennie is in school.” The girls squealed and ran to hide. Adele was stopping at the room that would be Ellen’s. Simon was to have another for himself.

They came together later for the evening meal, Pop at the head of the table, Mom at the foot. They were all shouting noisily. “Let’s see those brown-eye peas down here.”

“Save a corner for the blueberry dowdy.”

“Let a child talk up, I say.” Pop maneuvered the food through his mustache, his head on a level with the children.

“I got a hundred in Penmanship,” cried Adele’s son, Dennie.

“My, at that child,” said Adele.

“The girls printed for me. I sure could follow it good.” Mom felt the sisters were being slighted at times. At her left stood an empty chair.

“That’th Uncle Dan’s plathe,” Hannah was saying shyly to Ellen.

“Dan’s my older brother,” Sudduth explained. “He’s off at the cattle sale in Weems Crossroads, trying to buy a Crestmore bull. We already have a purebred bull, but he’s the sire to so many of our heifers we don’t get the good of him any more.”

“Say, I’ve been to Weems Crossroads,” Ellen said. “I visited some folks there.”

“Dan’s going to see if he can bid a bull low,” Sudduth said.

“Nothing but the best for Dan,” said Pop.

“By the name of Dougherty?” Ellen was hopeful.

“Nothing but the best.” Sudduth was sopping the juice from his plate with dark home-baked bread.

“Never heard of a Dougherty,” Pop said. “You know, Sudduth, if a purebred cow jumps the fence and gets to a grade bull, you can just as well sell her? She’ll be no good from then on.”

“That’s ridiculous, Pop.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Ellen said.

“There was a mare bred to a zebra stallion,” Pop told him. “Every foal she threw thereafter was striped. Now that’s proof, Sudduth.” He pounded his knife.

“There,” Ellen whispered, for she had heard this same thing.

“Pop, that old tale’s been shown up long ago. I’ll get out the article for you to read, in the Breeder’s Journal. Old superstitions.”

While they were talking the cats were underfoot, three or four of them, tiger-striped and black. They wound under the table legs and sometimes one of the children slipped them a bite of food. A little later Ellen and Simon went up to bed. The talking and shouts from below were seeping through the flooring as Ellen dozed off to sleep.

She heard the cock crowing in her dream, insistent, shrill. She threw her arm in a fending gesture, engrossed in the nightmare. She was running up the stairway from the cellar, her father racing after. “I’ll kill you because you took the boy.” She shouted to stay his hand, “You dassn’t kill on the cock’s crow, Pa.” She awoke, her voice straining in her throat. She lay listening, oppressed by the dream, letting it recede. I won’t hold to any of it. I’ll button it into a far part of me. I want to weave a new way here in this land where all the folks are foreign. I’ll make a place for Simon and me. I’ll put the past away. I vow I will.

It was not yet dawn. Darkness kept the room corners. She threw back the covers. The air was chill but there was an earth odor, fresh, redolent of spring. She was throwing open the window, looking out at the muddled unfamiliar landscape. The eastern sky was gray and hushed. She sat on the low sill in the sleeveless garment she wore at night, hugging her cold bare arms. Her hair hung clinging and disheveled. It was late January but it was warm, the first false spring. There would be cold days yet, and the last frost might come as late as mid-April. But already in protected southern exposures a few flowers were opening, a jonquil or narcissus, releasing suppressed and forgotten perfumes. The earth seemed to turn itself like an animal stirring in its lair.

A bull bellowed in the half-light, pawing the floor of its paddock, shaking its brawny shoulders. It began to butt the bars with its heavy smooth head like a toy set in motion. Tiny pigs wandered to and fro in a yard beyond the bull. The gray of clouds that lay in the east transformed gradually into mauve. Shifting and changing, lights and colors were fanning upward. A man’s figure strode around a corner of the house. There was a black-and-white feist at his heels. The man was tall, seemed young, his hair thick and black, unruly. The cuffs of his pants were tucked into leather boots. He stopped to shake tobacco into his left hand, and rolled a cigarette swiftly. The dog jumped repeatedly at his arm, yapping sharply in the pink-tinged air. As he was walking off, his bass voice came clear.

The minstrel boy to the war is gone In the ranks of death you’ll find him His father’s sword he hath girded on And his wild harp slung behind him

A warm breeze stirred from the east. Ellen shivered. On the brim of the color-draped sky, the first round edge of the red sun was emerging as if pulled by a string. The fields were stretching forth under the rosy light, spreading wide and tended, damp with dew. The pungent sweetness of the earth was arising from its bowels. Time moved quickly. The sun came whole over the line of horizon, lay alive in the brilliant stained sky. The man’s song had faded.

Voices began to call back and forth in the reaches of the house. Ellen turned from the window. The room was furnished with a white wood bedstead, a dresser with a tiny mirror, a table and an upright chair. There was a striped rag rug on the floor, made by Mom; the curtains and bedspread were yellow and threadbare, streaked unevenly by sun rays over the years.

She dressed and hurried down the dusky stairs. Simon and Dennie sat whispering on the bottom step. “You seen my room, Ma?” They followed her. Adele was turning the handle of the coffee grinder, the friendly crusty noise filling the kitchen. “Dennie’s got a room too.”

“I always had a room.” Dennie hiked his suspenders.

When breakfast was nearly ready, Sudduth came in with the man Ellen had seen earlier. They washed at the sink, then leaned against the wall to wait for food to be set out. Ellen had difficulty finding things. “Where does the sugar live, Mom?”

“This is my brother Dan,” Sudduth said as she was passing with the bowl of sugar. “Mrs. Gaddy. Ellen.”

“How do you do. Mom keeping you busy? You’ve got to watch her.” He was a head taller than Sudduth, older than he had looked from the windows, with an air of authority. His straight hair hung over his forehead, his eyes were greenish-yellow, his ears pointed at the top. His lips were thin and flat, his nose angular. His skin was olive and creased. There was a birthmark on his left cheek, and when he flushed it darkened. “That damn bull’s a beaut, Sudduth. Supposed to be delivered this morning. We’ll charge a service fee on him that’ll pay his price a few times over.”

“Let’s eat.” Mom was carrying a bowl of fried potatoes in one hand, a platter of smoking ham in the other.

When they had finished, Simon got his coat from upstairs, for he would set out with Dennie to school. There was over a mile to walk. He stood in the doorway and his blue eyes settled on Ellen. “Bye now, Ma.” He picked up the yellow cat mewling at his feet.

“You tell the teacher who you are proper, Simon.”

“I will, Ma.”

“Say you’re living at the Wasilewski farm.”

“I know.”

Dan rolled a cigarette, leaning back. “You like horses, boy?”

“Oh yes, Mester.” Simon spilled the cat to the floor. “What can I do?”

“You groom them every night. Will you do that?”

“Mornings too, Mester? You won’t find a loose hair.”

“Call me Dan,” the man was laughing. “We’ll see what else we can find for you.”

The boys ran off and Ellen said, “He’s proud to just lay his hands on a horse.”

The day had begun. When the beds were made and the kitchen floor scrubbed, Ellen scoured the white refrigerator and the electric stove. She washed the white-painted wood cabinets that lined the walls. “Pop made those,” Adele said, “three years ago. They got the notion one night when Mom was reading the Farm Woman’s Magazine. Dan and Sudduth put the old pantry cupboards in the shed for machine parts.”

The brothers drifted in at noon, hobnail boots clacking on the floors, preoccupied in talk of the new bull that had arrived by truck. They ate hastily, hurrying out. Mom said the hens were to be deloused. The county agent advised it. The women caught each bird by the leg, shook the can of powder over it and turned it loose so it escaped to the yard, shaking its feathers, clucking indignant. Dust from the litter mingled with the powder and hung in the air. The women sneezed. Mom’s face was hot. “The roosts have to be scrubbed down next.”

At supper Ellen was tired. When she finished her plate, a cat jumped on her lap. She let it remain for she saw it was the custom. It was purring, kneading its paws. Simon joined in the clamor and Ellen was bending her thoughts to how different these ways were from the house where she had been raised.

“Come play for us, Uncle Dan,” Dennie was coaxing.

The girls joined, “Thing ‘Thay, Darling, Thay,’ Uncle Dan.”

“Tomorrow, you pesky kids,” he shouted over the din. “We have to check on the bull right now. Coming, Sudduth?” He was charging through the door.

The next morning the tractor roared out of the barnyard, Dan perched in the driver’s seat. “Land,” Mom was laughing, “he does love that machine.”

“It’s a good day to start the spring plowing,” said Ellen. “The land’s thawed good.”

“They’re not plowing yet,” Mom said. “They’ll wait till February.”

“I’ve heard folks say it ruins land for seven years to plow in January. Pa ne’er held to that notion. He plowed when he had a mind to.”

“Sakes, Ellen.” Mom was amused. “That’s not it. It’s the house. We’ve got a busy year laid out here. Adele’s going to have her own home. Her and Sudduth.” She was turning to Adele. “He went by already with the team and the scoop. Did you see him?”

“Sudduth’s just raring,” said Adele.

“We’ve got to be ready to paint and all in late summer, Ellen. So Adele and him and the kids can get moved in the fall.”

“I want everything to be perfect when we leave, Mom.” Adele was earnest.

They told Ellen that lumber was stored at the warehouse in Hidden Creek; part had been bought in fall when cash crops had been sold and part was still on credit against the early wheat crop. “There’s kegs of nails and rolls of tar paper and shingles in the shed. They drew the plans out on paper.” Mom was proud. “There’s going to be another big event here in the fall.” Mom’s eyes gleamed secret. “Wait and see.”

At mid-morning Ellen was busy. “I declare at this iron, it’s so light.” She skimmed over the clothes swiftly, laid them folded and smooth on the newspaper-covered table.

“It sure is a help having you here, Ellen.” Mom was mending, a wicker basket beside her. “Makes me feel old though, not doing my own work.”

“Only I forget about the cord and keep walking off with the iron.”

The kitchen door slammed. “It’s me,” Dan’s voice shouted. The sound of running water came.

“You’ll see, he’s had trouble with the tractor,” Mom said.

“The tractor turned over on me.” His voice was muffled. “Cut myself.”

“That suits you fine, Dan,” Mom called. “He can play now. Nothing suits him like when some piece of equipment won’t work and he can get his head under it. Rather do that than work.”

“You don’t have to shout. I hear you.” Dan appeared in the doorway, rubbing his face with a white turkish towel, a gash on his browned forehead. He was shaking his head, cocky. “Ellen, you think my family’s crazy?”

When she was washing the supper dishes she heard the tinny sound of the piano in the sitting room. Simon was behind her at the kitchen table leafing through his new schoolbooks, waiting for her. “Wonder who that is playing?” she asked him.

“That’s Dan. I’ve ne’er heard that song, Ma.” Simon smiled, his blue eyes curious.

She put the plates away. “It’s right melancholy.”

A spanish cavalier stood in his retreat And on his guitar played a tune, dear The music so sweet would ofttimes repeat The blessings of my country and you, dear

O say, darling say, when I’m far away Sometimes you may think of me, dear Bright sunny days will soon fade away Remember what I say and be true, dear

Ellen was hanging up the dishcloth. “Let’s go hear the music.”

“Can we?”

“This is our home,” she said with dignity, “while we’re here.”

From his easy chair, Sudduth was bemoaning, “We’ve got to clean out the barns again. Get it on the fields before plowing. Jesus, we’re going to be strapped with work this year.”

Dan looked up at Ellen as she came in, his eyes golden in his lined dark face. “Wish it would rain liquid manure for a whole week. Save us some trouble.” His lean fingers ran over the keys tenderly.

She sat down in the rocker by the windows. On the table beside her was a tall glass bell, exhibiting underneath a stuffed red bird with black wings and tail, its eyes bright glass. Ellen was looking down at her hands in her lap. She had an inflexible manner about her, seldom laughing easily even with her son. It was as if she had been bruised once and armed herself against a recurrence. And when she would make her hair into braids in the morning, winding, and fastening with tortoise shell pins, she would pull tightly. There was an unconscious satisfaction to the act as though it were easing a guilt. Ellen held herself at times almost like one righteous. She was glancing at the scarlet tanager under the bell, wondering who had shot it. Vaguely she was listening to the words the man sang. They differed from those Penny had taught Ellen.

When your heart was mine, true love And your head lay on my breast You could make me believe By the falling of your arm That the sun rose up in the west