Chapter 28

Christian Ay had called for her in his year-old V-Eight Ford. The Standard Shop was an echoing large building, half dark. They were passing aisles of goods spread out on counters and under glass, their footfalls drumming. At the base of a dowel-railed staircase, barely illuminated by a tiny skylight, he took her arm. She looked at his face cast into the new lines. His brown hair was smooth, his broad mouth disciplined. Only his eyes are the same, blue like that flower. He was waving in back of them at the laden counters. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s nice.”

“You’re polite. It’s not. It’s a decent living.” He was smiling, formal. “Now it’s quite a thing, Ellen, meeting you again.”

She looked away, moved from under his hand up the stair. “Oh, yes.”

“Are you angry about Rose and your father?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re sure you don’t hold it against me?”

“No.”

“Well, shall we go up?” They went through a cluttered office space at the stairhead and into a linoleum-floored room.

Mrs. Ay was hustling from the square table she had been setting, a white-haired short woman with a quick smile. She spoke in a clipped way to Ellen, “Had tea with my daughter, Miss Gaddy? Sorry about your father. Too bad. It’s hard. I know. I lost my husband many years ago. Suddenly. Heart attack.”

“I had heard of it,” Ellen murmured.

“Rosie said she knew your father too. Said she’d had dinner with him. Heard Rosie’s coming home? She tell you? Nearly twelve years she’s lived in that flat near Market Street. Determined to show she was independent. It’s a bad section. Time she came back to the Shop, don’t you think?” She was gathering her apron in her small hands. “Oh dear, that’s the pie shell burning.” She ran out.

“She gets that way when we have company.” Christian grinned. Then he was meeting her eyes, intent. “She hasn’t kept track of Rose any more than me. They go shopping together or Rose eats here with us two or three times a year. I might as well tell you she doesn’t know Rose had it in mind to marry anyone.”

Ellen looked away. “She’s nice.” A speckled bird with a long iridescent tail was mounted beside a clock on the sideboard. “That’s a fine cock pheasant there.”

“I shot it at Brinker’s farm that summer.” His voice for an instant was surging with the old eager sound.

Mrs. Ay was back. “Soup’s on.” She carved the roast swiftly with a long blade, heaping the plates. “You like mashed potatoes? We aren’t fancy here.” There was a bouquet of artificial daisies in the center of the red-checked tablecloth. They ate hungrily. “Chris says he knew you, Miss Gaddy, that time he worked near Bethel.”

“Ellen lived only three miles from me.”

“I’ve been away from Millville more than a year now,” Ellen said.

“Why’d you leave, Ellen?”

She gazed down at her napkin. “I wanted to work out.” Why did I say that? I had to look after your youngen. I ought to tell him that. Her mind worked it over. She sat absent while Mrs. Ay began to talk.

“After Kate left us, Chris nearly convinced me we ought to sell this here store and buy a small farm.”

“Kate was my wife,” Christian said. “I got married the spring after I came back from Brinker’s.”

“He wanted to grow truck crops. Store’s much safer. Better investment. Rain or shine you’re not dependent. It’s just getting nice too, we’ve got three girls at the counters. I can sit down in the afternoon.”

“I knew you’d been married,” Ellen said.

“Divorced. Three years ago.”

“Too young when they did it in the first place.” Mrs. Ay was shaking her head, reproving. “Chris is headstrong. Like his father before him. I told him it wouldn’t work.”

“Come, Mama, let’s keep some secrets from Ellen.” He was coloring, pushing his chair back.

“Well, I’ll get that pie.” Mrs. Ay got up. “Shame the crust had to burn.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

“I meant to write you, Ellen. You know? Back there when we were kids?” He laughed, still flushed, the skin wrinkling around his blue eyes.

“Well.”

“How come you aren’t married?” The silence came down, overlaid thinly with the whisper of the clock on the sideboard.

Mrs. Ay slammed the kitchen door as she returned. She was cutting the cocoanut cream pie into large pieces. “You rather have something else, Miss Gaddy? There’s jello in the icebox.”

“No, this is fine. It’s very good.”

“So after Kate ran away like that,” Mrs. Ay was saying, “why Chris kept wanting to sell. Not me. He’s putting his share into something now that suits him. Over in Troy.”

“You only live once,” Christian said dryly, “isn’t that right, Mama?”

“I’ll be running the shop here with Rosie. The luck of my daughter coming home. And in my old age.”

“Don’t let her fool you,” Christian said, “she’s not so old.”

Ellen was helping them collect the plates then, Mrs. Ay insisting on leaving them stacked beside her sink. The evening was moving on. The older woman had brought out a pot of coffee and she stood in the bedroom doorway, her figure slack and weary. “Good night, Miss Gaddy. You come visit again.”

“Good night.”

Christian and Ellen were silent now on the chintz-covered davenport where the winter twilight faltered. Cars were whirring in the street outside, horns blew faint, lights shuddered and vanished on the ceiling. “Reckon it’s time for me to go.”

“No. Wait.” He put his arm along the sofa behind her. “I can’t get over you, Ellen. You’re just the same. I had thought you’d be different.”

The lingering noise of the clock was beating heavily upon time. She waited.

“I did intend to write when I had to quit that job with Brinkers.”

“I wrote to you. That autumn.”

“You did? My father’s attack had come out of the blue. He left the accounts in bad shape. We almost lost the business. You know what that meant those days.”

“I wrote you. Twice.”

“Funny. I didn’t get them.”

“I know. They came back.”

“I’d have answered.”

“I didn’t have the right address.”

“Did you try Mr. Brinker?”

“He didn’t know either.” She sighed.

“Say.” He dropped his arm onto her shoulder. “I feel badly about that.” She had stiffened, but he was bending his head gently, hunting a thing lost, a fragment of his youth when time had been ground easily beneath the heel of his fired blood, his just-discovered manhood.

But the anger was grating in Ellen. She cried to him compelled, as if she had memorized it, “Once I laid a curse on you. Curse him, I said! I swore it on the Virgin.”

“Come, what kind of talk is that?” He reddened, withdrawing himself. He was taking a pipe from a nearby ash tray, filling it from his pocket pouch. He scratched a match, fragrant smoke sifted into the half-dusk. “A curse?”

“You don’t believe in such things?”

“Why would you do that?” He was looking at her, discomfited, inquiring.

She made a movement to rise, impatient. “I don’t know. It’s getting late. I don’t want to talk.”

“I’m curious, Ellen. Why did you?” he pressed.

“It’s no use.” She twisted her fingers, at bay. Like I said that time. I’ll go all my days in bitterness.

“Come on,” he was grinning. “We were such babies. Were you in love with that young squirt?” He drew on the pipe, then he was laying one hand over hers, the palm cool and hard.

“There is a child.” Now it was said.

“You have a baby? You were married then?”

“Simon. He’ll be eleven the first of July.”

The stillness stayed. Then he removed his hand, swift. His pipe knocked as he was putting it in the ash tray. He stood and was walking across the room to the dead pheasant. He looked up at it on the sideboard. He struck his fist into his palm, his back was to her. “By damn.”

She cringed, waiting.

“I never once thought of that. I didn’t.”

She listened to the chatter of the clock at the side of the stuffed bird. His voice was intruding suddenly.

“Brinker’s farm. That horse. What was his name? That stallion. Next morning I got the wire about my father.” His words were fast. He slapped his fist again.

And she shrank, wishing herself on the street, away from him. She recoiled from his ferocity, his vitality. Hate, hate, the clock was spelling it out. I hate him. I do.

“A boy, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know about me?”

“I told him his father’d died.”

“All these years.” He whispered it. “By damn.”

“Well.” Her voice sounded frail. “It’s past and done. It’s o’er.” It was as if the room were empty and the clock, as it unwound, harped on dead walls.

“No.” He moved quickly over the floor to stand above her, stocky and angry. The pulse of traffic was heard, ghost lights were shifting disturbed, on the walls about them. “I’d have married you. You know that. Don’t you?”

“I thought you would.”

“You know I would. Why didn’t you find me?”

She was shaking her head. “I tried.”

“I was there. In Louisville,” he cried.

“No.”

“Why didn’t you go to Carl Brinker? For the child’s sake.” He shouted, towering.

“I wrote. I didn’t know what to do. Where to turn.” She felt tears gathering. “I couldn’t even confess it. I’ve left the church since and I don’t care. But I dreaded it then. The sin.”

“El?” Christian was leaning down, he put a hand along her cheek. He was pulling her beside him. They were about the same height and his eyes, dark and gentle, were gazing into hers. His teeth flashed in the dusk. “Remember that silly rabbit?”

“I turned it loose,” she flared and tore away from him, to the table across the room, where the paper daisies were in a white bowl. She felt the tightness catch her and the quiver as she began to weep.

“And the primrose from Mrs. Brinker’s kitchen? In the red pot?”

“I wished you dead.” Her voice was quavering. “O’er the years. I hated you.”

He pursued her. “Look here, El.” His hands were touching her shoulders and wheeling her to the vast warm bulwark of him. “I didn’t know.” He was putting his fingers to the wetness on her thin face. “And I see how it was.” He came out heavy and seeking, forged in deliberate tenderness. “If I had known. All the time lost.”

She let his mouth find hers. And it was there, what she had wished to sense all along, the old love restored and made real. In their common need, they were clinging together, deaf to the brisk hammer of the clock and the keening wind that whined in sterile streets without; they were engrossed in their sudden solace.

Within a week they had married. Christian had driven over to Troy and severed his partnership with the feed store. Ellen was helping Mrs. Ay pack his belongings. “Has he told you about Simon?”

Mrs. Ay nodded, vigorous. “His father didn’t get along good with Chris. Think that could have made him wild?”

“We’d like you to come see us sometime.”

“Will do that.” She opened a closet door. “Want to go through some of this stuff? Might be a thing or two you could use. Here’s a lamp shade. Good shape, too.”

“We’ll take it,” Ellen laughed.

Then they were driving to Millville in Christian’s car. On the way they ate the fried chicken and cookies Mrs. Ay had prepared, and by noon they were turning into the yard. They halloed but there was no sign of human life at the barn. A group of doleful-eyed cows, a woolly spindly foal, a pair of dull-coated horses gazed, questioning. Pigs were squealing in their pen, speckled roosters and hens wandered free under the hackberry or perched, roosting, on the porch rail. The wood bottom to the tin tub was broken out and a gray towel was flapping on the clothesline under the February wind.

Ellen called to the dog, but there was no response from the bushes. “Wonder who’s caring for Jack?”

They went into the house. Dust lay heavy, the beds were unmade, the windows closed. The air was musty, unlived in, as if the occupants had suddenly been spirited away. “It’s high time we got here, El.”

In the late afternoon, while Christian was feeding the cows and she was scrubbing the porch, Sam Offut arrived. “Hey there, Ellie.”

“Hey Sam. Where you been?”

“I come o’er twice a day to milk and feed. I live at my place down the road. My ooman and me moved out of here. Folks call this farm haunted. What are you doing back?”

“I’m here for good, Sam.” She came down into the yard, putting her wet cold hands in the sleeves of her coat for warmth. “I’m married now. Will you stay on with us?”

“You mean work for you-all?”

“We sure could use you.”

“Reckon not.” Hunched over, he was rubbing his hip. “See, I spent my best years working for your pa. I liked him real well. He was a just man. And he was a right lone man, some ways. I don’t know. I study about him and that happenstance. Hope Jesus isn’t weeping for you, Ellie. Have you e’er taken hold of the horns of salvation?”

“Well, Sam.”

Christian was coming from the barn, heavy-set in his stiff new-purchased blue jeans and a storm jacket. His face was pale, winter-bleached. He called, “Hello, Mr. Offut.”

“Heard you married up to Ellie.”

“That’s so. You going to help us out?”

“I’m too old. I got some garden and a roadside stand of sorts.” Sam shrugged. “My ooman does a little. Reckon not.”

“Wish you could see your way.” Christian put his arm about Ellen’s shoulder; she was wearing an old ragged coat of Maria’s she had found in the attic room.

Sam rubbed his stubble beard. His breath had a taint of whiskey. He was shifting his feet as if they ached. “You’ll make out. The cows aren’t milking much. This place is right run-down. I got the lumbago the same as my wife now. I’ve been doing the least I can get by with.”

“What do we owe you anyway, Mr. Offut?”

“You figure it out. You can get it to me sometime. I’ll say farewell to you both.” The old man was shuffling away. “Go with Christ.”

Ellen stood next to Christian, against his warm bulk. “I always favored Sam.” The small bent figure was going out of sight onto Sweetincreek Road.

The rooms were being scoured and the floors rubbed with wax. Ellen rooted into dark places with a harsh brush and yellow soap. When seasonal winds blew up she threw the windows open and put on her torn brown sweater. She washed sheets and quilts, freshened curtains, and changed bed ticking. She lifted the crucifix from its nail over the bed to pack it in a trunk along with the painting of the Sacred Heart and the dusty images of Mary and Joseph. Reckon they had a meaning for Pa. And for me as well. I made that doll into a god when I had a trouble once.

She had fixed up the loft-room to be Simon’s, dusting out a chest and setting it by the bed for his own. The big downstairs bedroom would be for Christian and herself. She was surveying it. “Could you cut some big windows in here, Chris?”

He leaned in the doorway, his high boots caked. “I’ll do it. Let in some light.”

“And I’ll hang yellow print curtains.”

They were looking out the window at the bare bushes. A sparrow lit on a twig, lisping, “See, peabody, peabody, peabody!”

“That’s the harbinger of spring,” Ellen said.

“And today Simon will be here. That’s my son.” The boy was due on the afternoon train.

“The redwing blackbirds are back at the pond.”

“That’s plowing weather for sure, El. Say, the horses are shedding bad. Would Simon groom them?”

“You might say he’s partial to horses.” She told him how the boy had found the red colt when he was very small.

“How about the foal in the stable? We’ll call it Simon’s.”

“There. He’d have been here long since if he’d known that.”

They were at the station at New Hope then, waiting for the overdue train. Ellen was standing beside Christian. A black-haired man, his back to her, was rolling a cigarette. It was Dan, hawknosed, demanding, hot and vital. She had to still herself while she turned to Christian. She had to remember, while the pain was beating, that Dan had dropped out for always. She took Christian’s hand. He thought it was because of their son. “Don’t worry, El. I’ll make him like me.” When she had been cleaning the house she had found it was one of Dan’s songs she had been singing.

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

Dan was a part of her, even a part of the way she would cherish her husband.

They were watching at the coach car for Simon to step down. But he jumped onto the cement runway from a baggage car. He had brought his brown kid with him. He was running down the platform and it skipped after. “Ma. Look at me. Look at April and me.”

“He’s a wild one,” Ellen said.

“He’s big.” Christian straightened himself, nervous, turning his soft cap with his fingers.

“This is Christian Ay. Like we wrote you, Simon. Now, he’s your father.”

“I know it.” The boy was leaning over his kid, adjusting its leather collar.

Christian took his hand. “Well now. Hello, Simon.”

“Hi.” They walked to the V-Eight, Simon leading the docile animal. It stepped in and the boy followed, sitting on the back seat, holding the leash, watchful.

Christian faced him. “I hear you’re keen after horses, Simon.”

“What does he mean, Ma?”

“There’s a colt in the barn,” Christian was saying, “belongs to you.”

“How old, now?”

“Ten weeks or so. Don’t you think, El?”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Pearl had her colt, Ma,” Simon was hunting for her eyes. “And Sudduth’s getting him a hired man next week.” He leaned toward Ellen. “Strong like an ox, Sudduth says. Pop claims he’s got brains like one too.” The boy smiled, strained.

“You want our colt?” Christian asked. “For your own?”

“Yes. Reckon I do, Mester.”

Christian and Ellen got in the front seat, and they were driving out on the road. Near Bailey’s Woods, a flock of bluejays darted before the car, pursuing a blinded flapping owl. Their barking was strident and shrill as they winged after it into the winter-stripped trees, now spattered with white blooms of shadblow. At the farmyard the three were getting out of the car, standing in the yard. Simon had his kid tightly by the collar.

“Well, Simon?” Ellen said.

His face became red. He stood before Christian, steady. “If it doesn’t matter to you, I’d as lief call you Pa, like Dennie does with Sudduth.”

“That’s the general idea, son,” Christian sighed, glancing at Ellen.

They were lingering at the long oak table in the kitchen. Ellen moved about, putting dishes and pots away. Christian was smoking his pipe. The boy cried, “Simon Ay’s a good name, isn’t it?”

“You look a little alike, too,” Ellen nodded.

“Say it again, how it was, Pa,” Simon urged, “that you happened to leave the county before you could marry Ma.”

It was later when Simon told them about Luke bringing Penny and the new baby over to the Wasilewskis to visit Ellen. “Penny felt bad when you weren’t there, Ma.”

“Was it a boy or girl, Simon?”

“I don’t know. She said a boy, I think. Now I disremember.”

“Simon. You knew I’d ask.” Ellen was disappointed.

Christian was speaking to her. “Luke Dougherty works for a farmer, doesn’t he?”

“A stock farmer. Webster. He raises Jerseys and Short-horns. Blooded beasts. Mester Webster thinks a mort of Luke too. There. I hate it, not seeing Penny and the baby.”

Christian put down his pipe. “I’ve got an idea. You know I have to have help here if we want to make this farm pay. It’s in bad shape.”

“I’m here. I’m a good worker,” Simon said.

“How about asking Mr. Dougherty to come in with us? You think he would? What do you say? We could buy more land if it’s too small for two families. We could convert one of the old sheds for them till we found time to build a house.”

“Simon’s due in school on Monday.”

“Now, Ma.”

“I need a man. I’d have to find one. And the Doughertys did raise you, Simon.”

“Luke would be on his own.” Ellen considered it. “Reckon he’d like that. He’s got a way with cattle.”

“I’m rusty. I’ll make mistakes alone. I haven’t enough experience. And I’d lose all my money.”

“There’d be Penny. She’s like my family, Chris. I’d be done saying goodbye to Penny.”

“Clate and Anse,” crowed Simon. “They’d have to go to school with me. We’d sleep in the barn.”

“Hold on now. We don’t know if Mr. Dougherty’ll take us up on it yet. He might figure he’d be a fool to leave Mr. Webster.” Christian wrote the letter and Simon took it to the mailbox. He put the red metal flag up so the RFD car would stop.

While they were waiting to hear from Weems Crossroads, Simon followed his father about. They pitched and shoveled and scraped from the stables, scattered manure on the hilly fields, rubbed the newborn calves with straw to clean them and put them to their dams’ inflamed fresh udders. Simon curried and brushed the horses and his long-legged undernourished foal. Masses of dead hair would accumulate in the litter under the animals in their stalls. “I’ll be glad to take orders from you for a change,” the child was telling Christian gravely. “Ma means well, but half the time she’s wrong.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Christian grinned down at him, “might be you.”

Ellen was sitting at the table in the kitchen, writing Mom Wasilewski. She told Mom how she missed all of them, Pop and Adele and the little girls. She asked advice on starting a flock of Leghorns. “And we’re fixing to send off to the mail catalog for some Italian bees. Does Pop calculate them to be a good honey variety? I’ve heard they’re mean.” A sadness descended on Ellen. Now that’s become my past. It never turns out the way I figure it will. I thought to spend my days in Illinois with Dan. Now he’s gone and that’s all lost. There came to her mind the white buckling that had perished so long ago, strangling in a fence. She heard Christian and Simon approaching. And their footfalls on the porch boards washed away her grieving. The sun threw itself in a blanket on the floor in front of them as the door opened.

“What are you doing, El?”

“Writing a letter. Thinking.”

Christian was placing his firm fingers on her shoulder. In the heat of her love, born of gratitude, her blood mingled with his. She turned in her chair to lean against him. “I was reading a while ago in that gilt-edged fancy Bible in there, El. Where it says, for lo, the winter’s past. The rain’s over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing of birds is come.”

Ellen was collecting Anton and Maria’s moth-eaten garments from the clothespress. She had made a bonfire and was carrying them out, throwing them upon it. She told Christian about her mother. “Frankie and Uncle and Vi went to see her on the way down for Pa’s funeral. They said she didn’t know them. She had a doll the nurses had given her and seemed content, rocking it.” Ellen poked the fire with a stick so it blazed up afresh.

“We’ll go to visit her.”

“I used to fear the past, Chris. I wanted to shake it off. And here we are on Pa’s farm, where he ruled. I ne’er thought I’d see it again.”

“It has to be our way, though, El. That we’re building. Our own.”

“I know. I want to change all of it. So it’s new.” She stood marking the ashes that trembled and faded.

In a few days the Doughertys were arriving, herded by the tall round-faced Luke. Clate and Anse were bearing boxes and suitcases in either hand. Ellen was taking the wailing new baby from Penny’s arms. The young girl, Blossom, held the blanketed sickly Jess. And little Ernie hung behind her. Penny’s face was relieved. “It’s a wonder we e’er got here, Ellie. With this crowd.”

Ellen looked down at the baby. “What’s his name?”

“Melinda. Didn’t Simon tell you it’s a girl?”

“Now all we got is one V-Eight,” Christian was grinning. “Women and babies first trip. Boys and baggage the next. Come, Luke.”

The Doughertys had crated and shipped their shedfull of goats when they learned that Ellen wanted them. The animals came two days after the family. There were fifteen all told, kids and goats. They arrived blatting and white-eyed at the New Hope station. In a week they were accustomed to the woodshed and the new pens there. Their mild oval pupils would follow Ellen’s unhurried movements. She set up a block of salt and shelled corn in their long trough while they crowded to eat. They crunched and shoved, and the hurt of her own lost herd began to heal.

The men were enlarging one of the bigger outbuildings for the Doughertys to live in temporarily. They papered the rooms, tarred the roof, slapped on a coat of white paint. “I can’t smell pigs in here any more, Chris,” Luke was saying, “can you?”

By fall the houses and barns were wired and electric fixtures had been put in. There was an overhead light in Ellen’s kitchen. “You sure are reckless,” she told Christian, “with your money.”

“I’m so glad to be shed of The Standard Shop,” his face was browned and young, “I like spending it.”

He sent for a separator for the dairy house. It spilled cream in a thin yellow stream from one fountain while skim milk gushed from another into tall cans. There was an electric churn, too. Christian promised Simon, “Give us a few years and we’ll have milking machines in the barn. Wait and see.”

In early spring, a young purebred Guernsey bull was strolling about in a sturdy barred pen. It arched its crest and snorted toward the barnyard where the cows were. It baaed in a high voice like a calf, for it was yet immature. The men laughed at it. Luke said, “His seed’s got the lines to build up our herd.”

“But has he got the strength in him?”

“He has. What we ought to do, though, is buy a few top brood cows from good farms. Raise their calves by that bull. It’s the fastest way to get a producing herd.”

“Let’s go ahead. You ride over to the next sale that’s advertised. Can you pick them?”

“I’ll spot them easy.”

Cold fresh winds moved. Christian was drawing on his pipe. “By damn, how’d you like to paint a Guernsey bull clear across the barn, Luke? I’ve been thinking. And trim the windows with white? The boys could help on that part. I’d like to see some fancying up around here.”

“Well, that’s an idea. Does no harm. It’ll bring people in to use the bull, too. Give the farm a name hereabouts.”

And the women came to watch the painting. Penny was holding her baby girl on her arm, Ernie at her heels. “Look at that giant Guernsey there. Well.”

Beside Ellen tottered Jess, the undergrown brown-haired child, her favorite among Penny’s brood. He was gripping her skirt, open-mouthed at the men on the high ladders. Their blue jackets were paint-spattered, their buckets dangled by baling wire from the rungs. Simon and the Dougherty boys came running up from Sweetincreek Road, swinging their schoolbooks and lunch pails. They dropped them by the yard fence and went for paint brushes to join the men in the sun-dipped warm barnyard.

“Say,” Ellen called, “you might set an iron bull on the roof for a weather vane, too. If you had a mind.”

“We’ll do it, El,” Christian was shouting down, laughing.

“I’m going to make my pies up,” Ellen told Penny. “I’ll take Jess with me. He fancies my kitchen.”

She was walking slowly to the house. A tan puppy followed. She patted it as she helped Jess up the porch steps. A turtledove was calling, “Croo-ah, croo-croo.”

“There’s the saddest voice,” she sighed, “of all the birds.” She let the small dog in the doorway. It heaved itself on the floor with a contented snort. She gave the little boy a cracker and sat him on a rug. He munched damply, eyes wide, watching Ellen roll out the dough. She was fluting the edges of the crusts, deft. Her cats were stretched in the warm sun on the window sills. She stepped over the sleeping puppy to put the pies in the new white porcelain stove.

In the orchard below the house, blossoms were unfolding in a pink and white mist upon the shapes of old twisted trees and new-set nurslings. Shooting-stars and woodsorrels wasted their fragrance and birds began to trill, as if afraid of disturbing the air, from where they swung on branches. Gray squirrels carped at a cub-fox gliding down the path in the woods. Ellen, at the opened kitchen window, watched hawks sweeping in the blue and sensed the rustle of the new season. There was the green odor of growing. She felt the ancient promise, the wheel of earth once more.

She led the pinafored Jess, his short legs stumbling, to the bedroom. He held onto the white spread, thumb in mouth, sleepy eyes fixed on her as she laid out a diaper. She changed him, then straightened her laden body as a birth pain came. Within her the child quickened in the darkness and she was aware of its joy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helga Sandburg was born in Maywood, Illinois, spent most of her early years in Harbert, Michigan, around the lake bend, ninety miles from Chicago. As a youngster, she was curious about the ways of the semi-wild country surrounding her isolated home. She mounted butterfly and leaf collections, kept a bird-watcher’s notebook, taught her five dogs to pull a sled over the snow-covered sand dunes of Lake Michigan’s shore, and trained her own horses. In her father’s house, she saw pass the great literary figures of the midwest. She served as secretary to the poet for many years and became steeped in the tradition of American folkway and song. The Wheel of Earth casts a glance back to the vanishing lore of the prairie farmlands.

In 1946 Miss Sandburg’s family moved to the Great Smokies of western Carolina. There she renewed her childhood interest in animals, raising calves, colts, dogs, goats, cats, varieties of rabbits, Peruvian cavies, parakeets, and hooded rats. Her animal collection was reduced to two Siamese cats and one Doberman Pinscher when she took up residence six years ago in Falls Church, Virginia. For two years she was employed nearby at the Library of Congress. Currently she is at work on her second novel. She has a son of sixteen and a daughter of fourteen. She is the wife of Arthur D. Golby, Assistant Professor of English at The American University in Washington, D. C.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

[p. 24]: ... love-lies-bleeding, marigolds and sunflowers, cranebills ... ... love-lies-bleeding, marigolds and sunflowers, cranesbills ...

[p. 135]: ... dead like old man Moses Hedrick with a pitchfolk tucked between ... ... dead like old man Moses Hedrick with a pitchfork tucked between ...

[p. 329]: ... “I will.” In a swift flood Ellen was homestick for the old ... ... “I will.” In a swift flood Ellen was homesick for the old ...

[p. 344]: ... To wish her lover goodspeed ... ... To wish her lover godspeed ...