Chapter 3

A few days passed. Lily Garrett, who lived on the other side of Millville, stopped by to make lavender sticks with Ellen and Frankie. Lily brought a pale fresh honeycomb, for the Garrett family robbed their hives all summer long, not waiting for a fall harvest like the Gaddys. “Mama says she’ll send a plate of basswood honey in July, Mrs. Gaddy, when the bee trees are busy.”

Lily was fat, and soft as custard; she would rearrange her blond curls constantly, her thick white arms uplifted. She was nimble-minded, giggling often, her chins trembling under her small red mouth. She was as abandoned as a puppy untied from a cord and it may have been because of this that Lily’s father bade her lie across her bed each Saturday night while with a locust limb he whipped her well, saying, “The one who loves his daughter chastens her.”

Lily arrived in a clear forenoon before the high heat of the day. The lavender was in full blow as the girls walked beside the bed, plucking them long-stemmed. “Say, Frankie.” Lily was stripping the leaves away and drawing the blooms into a tight bunch. “I remember Ellie and me were in the second grade when I first braided lavendery wands with you-all. Your papa had just put you to the nuns.”

“I know.” Frankie was tying the flowers into a ball with soft cotton yarn, winding and braiding it among the wilted stems. When the flowers were cured they would fasten on ribbons, keep back a few for scenting their clothes chests, and trade the rest at Love’s store. “What’ll become of us all,” Frankie cried, “in the time to come?”

“You’ll be a famous pianist, Frankie,” said Lily, “you’ll see. And Ellie and me’ll visit you up north.”

“Ellie will marry a rich farmer,” Frankie said, “and have a flock of youngens.”

“Not me,” said Ellen. “I won’t be called Mama. And I’d ne’er do a man’s bidding.” But she was thinking of Christian, dwelling on him like a lovely secret.

“Well,” Lily giggled, bold, “if a man liked me, I’d have him. I wouldn’t be biggity.”

“Lily.”

“Say, I sent off for a thing,” Lily whispered, “to catch a man.”

“What?” Frankie pressed.

“A bust developer. That’s how the farm journal named it.”

“Why do you want that? You’re big, Lily.”

“It said men like you that way. I’m going to try it.”

“Your pa’ll find out.”

“I don’t give a care. It comes in a plain brown wrapper, they claim. He might not see.”

“You’re brazen,” Ellen said.

“If I do catch a man I’ll ne’er have a log cabin chinked with clay like ours. Nor cheesecloth curtains neither. And I’ll have no squalling babies to whip.” Lily sweated in the sun, raising her pillars of arms to her hair. The shy scent of lavender enveloped the three of them.

“Reckon we’ll e’er disremember making these lavendery wands?” asked Ellen.

On Saturday she went to appraise the strawberry bed bordering the fence line of Sweetincreek Road. Through the mulch of old straw the creeping plants were flourishing. “The berries are swelling good. Give them a week,” Ellen said to the dog beside her. “I’m going to brave Pa to let me trade a basket when they’re ripe.”

“Hey, Ellie Gaddy, how’s your nanny goat?” Christian Ay, in blue shirt and overalls, was leaning on the other side of the rail fence amid scraggling hollyhocks and high ditch grass and mullein on the road bank. “I brought you something.” He was leaping the rails, his teeth flashing in his broad tanned face. There was a bundle under his arm. Jack growled, running toward him. He patted the dog and it trotted after.

“Hey.” She waited, the red gathering in her cheeks.

“Brinker gave me the evening off. So I walked down the road. Is this your dog? Here, it’s for you.” He was setting the feed sack he carried on the ground and opening it. A rabbit wriggled its nose and slowly blinked dark eyes upward, grain dustings sifted in its blue-gray fur.

“My.”

“I guessed you’d like it.”

She took it from the sack, holding it in the crook of her arm. She brushed the dust from it and stroked the wiry ears. “It’s trembling.”

“It’s tame. It’s not afraid. Rabbits always do that.”

She sat in the grass, bearing it carefully. “I ne’er had one.”

“Don’t pick it up by the tail. Its eyes’ll drop out.” He grinned, looking down on her and putting his hands in his pockets. “You always lived here, Ellie?”

She nodded, bending over the pet beast, disturbed by the looming stranger, charmed.

“I figured you weren’t tenants.”

“Pa owns this farm outright,” she whispered.

He kicked at the grass turf, idly flexed his arm muscles, feeling them with his broad hands, one and then the other. “You know what Mr. Brinker does, Ellie? He pens his pigs under the horse barn where it’s raised off the ground. And he puts chickens in batteries up in the loft by the hay. Beats me. I never saw the like.” Christian was plucking a grass stalk to chew. “Made his boys a windmill. A little one. Grinds real corn for their banties and rabbits.” The young man was excited by the girl. There had been her coarse words thrust at him in spite when he jostled her as they first met. And now her ease, snuggled in the grass by the strawberry bed, her face slightly flushed. “It beats me, that way Mr. Brinker does.”

In the silence that drew down, the hum of bees working the young weed blooms vibrated. The dog scented an animal trace and darted away in pursuit. The careless voice of a male thrush was dropping like liquid pebbles in the sweetened air, then it ceased. Ellen was holding clover leaves for the rabbit to chew; she was content.

“I thought you’d like a rabbit, Ellie. It wasn’t much bother getting it for you,” he bragged. Christian had inquired of Brinkers about her family, heard they were unfriendly, cut themselves off from most of their neighbors. Mr. Gaddy kept a close hand on his two daughters. That was what Mr. Brinker had claimed. I’ll bet she’s never been kissed.

Ellen was lifting her eyes, gray, gold-flecked. “I’m beholden for it.”

He spoke as though he had practiced what he said, deliberate. “I’m kind of sweet on you, honey.” He tossed aside the grass blade quickly, leaning down, his tan face darkened. He was laying a hand on her soft cheek, putting his mouth taut and firm against hers.

Surprised, wide of eye, she looked at his closed lids. The strangeness was repellent but for a moment curiosity snared her. Then she remembered Maria’s veiled hints and Anton’s heavy predictions. She spilled the rabbit from her and shoved the young man so he stumbled back. “Now get away.”

“Come on, Ellie,” he was crying, “bet you’ve never been kissed.”

“Yes, I have,” she lied.

“You got a boy friend?”

“No.” She was getting up. “And rabbit’s lost. Jack’ll get him.”

“Let him go. I heard your daddy won’t let you out. Is that so?”

“I’m going to find rabbit.” She hunted in the brush, coming on the tame creature nibbling timothy by the grapevine posts. She lifted and caressed it, stony-featured.

“Goodbye now,” he was calling.

She breathed, motionless, “My pa would so let me out.” She turned to see him walking to the fence, watched while he laid his hand on it. She called suddenly. “Here he is. I found him.”

Christian leaped the fence and laughed, shouting, “Should I come next Saturday?”

“I don’t care.” He waved as he was disappearing, and she shrugged. “Who cares?”

The week moved forward. She asked Anton, “Could I trade some of the strawberries to Grady Love for a dress-goods piece? I’d like a new one. Of dotted Swiss.”

He frowned. “What foolishness, girl.”

“I’d make Frankie one, too. With ruffles. For mass.”

Anton was caught and reconsidered. “I suppose you could. Crops are doing well without hit don’t get dry. When you pick, hold back five-six baskets.”

The next Saturday a thunderstorm held sway. Ellen was pacing restive about the house, at last ran through the storm to curl up drenched by her three goats. “I don’t care if he doesn’t come. What’s he to me? And we need this gully-washer for the fields.” Rain thrashed afresh on the woodshed roof. “Reckon he might walk down next week, Penny? If he’s not forgot by then.”

The storm cleared in the early evening. As she was hurrying through the delayed feeding a rainbow emerged, spanning the hills. She stopped in her chores, forgetting all but the opalescent arch in the setting of summer green. “There. That’s a sight. I set my bow in the cloud for a token between Me and the earth. Everlasting, He said.”

In the moist heat that followed the downpour, the strawberries began to ripen quickly. Ellen bartered with Grady Love and showed Frankie the ribbons the storekeeper had thrown in to match the two lengths of cloth. “That’s a dollar forty cents worth if you had the cash.” Ellen cut and stitched, Frankie set up the ironing board to press.

That night Anton nodded as the younger girl was standing before him in a yellow-dotted dress, a deep ruffle flaring around the boot tops, a yellow ribbon plaited into the round neckline. Anton pulled her to his lap. “This redheaded poppet’s so fair. Makes me wish I was her beau come courting.”

And Ellen, holding the image of Christian, felt a lesser pain as she watched them frolic. The next day though, she was wearing her drab gingham. “He won’t come. It’s been two weeks. He’ll ne’er think to come.” She walked out to the berry patch. “I’ll just see if they’re still plentiful.”

Christian was astride the rail fence. He waved, “Got rained out last week.”

“I came but to look at the berries.” She was approaching the fence.

He had a red-painted can that held a plant, the heart-shaped leaves mottled white along the veins, the flowers purple. “Here.” He was offering it. “Old lady Brinker grows them. She called it a primrose. Her kitchen’s full of flowers and vines. Too many for me. She even had her old man and me to nail up boxes outside the windows and fill them with rotted manure. And us with hay to cut. And corn to work.”

Ellen was undone by the gift. “It can live in my loft window.”

“I never saw such folks for decorations.”

“It calls to mind the shooting-stars that grow in swamp spots. You know them?” The flush lay upon her.

He jumped down from the fence, began to tell stories he’d gleaned over the past days. While he was speaking he looked away and took her hand in his. She kept her hold on the red can. They leaned back against the wood rails. He was telling about the studhorse Brinker had just purchased. “It’s a red roan Belgian. Stands near eighteen hands. I never saw a stallion to beat him for class. And light on his feet like a little filly.”

“There. I’d love to see him,” Ellen whispered. She let her hand lie soft in his.

As if it were a usual thing he put his arm on her tanned neck, under the yellow hair. She stirred restless, the plant in one arm. “Tell me about your folks, Ellie. Where they come from?”

“My great grandsir was from o’er the waters. My Uncle Garland tells how he traveled across the east Kentucky mountains. He killed elk that lived in the forests there in olden days. He saw giant eagles too, and poison scorpions.”

“What’s your old man like?” He withdrew his arm, threw himself on the grass, his head against the lowest rail. He was frowning.

“Oh I don’t know. Say, I near forgot. I made my sister and me each a new dress this past week.” She looked down at him. “They turned out proud.”

“Why didn’t you wear yours?”

“I didn’t want to. Pa might see. I’ll wear it to mass though, tomorrow.”

“What’s your old man like, Ellie? Does he still spank you?” He slid down in the grass, staring skyward. “I’d just like to meet him. Sometimes those crabby old fellows make me sick.”

She saw his eyes that were gazing at the clouds angrily, his fair hair and new-shaved face. She sighed.

“I could have killed my father,” he was saying, “trying to chain me to his store. Before I’d run that place for him, I tell you I’d go to jail.”

There was his stubborn wide mouth.

“There’s a circus coming to New Hope next week, Ellie. I heard it’s got an elephant. Want to go? Mr. Brinker’ll give me the pickup to use.” He stood up from the grass. “Let’s go ask your daddy now. I’m set on going,” he warned.

“We’ll ask Ma,” she said quickly. “Pa’ll likely be in the field at this hour.”

“Wait a minute.” He was reaching for her hand again. “Look, what’s the matter with one kiss?”

“Well.”

“You’re afraid. It’s true. You never have been kissed.”

“Yes, I have too.” So she let his rigid wide lips bear upon hers. His nose was in the way, and her arm that hugged the primrose. He pressed against her. She was staring at his eyelids, cold. I don’t see as that’s such a great thing. To write songs about and to whisper on.

“Now you like me, Ellie. Don’t you?” He was triumphant.

“Oh my, yes.” But she felt cheated. He thinks it’s a great thing.

They were crossing the field to the farm lane, walking up to the house. Maria was inside the screen door, peering at them. “I thought it was peddler. He’s past due,” she muttered and turned to go.

“Wait, Ma. This is Christian Ay. He asked me to go along with him and the Brinkers to a circus at New Hope next Saturday. Can I go, Ma?”

“As far as I care you can.” Maria was disappearing into the house recesses.

Christian looked at Ellen, demanding in a low tone, “Why’d you say Brinkers were going, Ellie? I’m taking you.”

“I’ve got to own I was afraid she’d say no.” Her eyes glowed.

When Frankie learned Ellen was going on an outing, she waited until they were undressing for bed. She spoke in the fluttering candlelight, her voice a child’s, “You got a beau?”

“No.”

“Yes you have, Ellie.”

“I’m just going along with the Brinkers.”

“Pa ne’er liked Brinker.”

“I know.” It was a spear of pain.

“What’s that boy like?”

“What do you mean?”

“What does he do?”

“He talks to me.”

“I hate there being boys and girls and e’er a thing jumbled. Why can’t it be smooth and all the same?”

“I don’t know. It’s the way of it. Like the priest says, God made it so.” They sat on their beds rebellious, disturbed. “I don’t like it either.” But Ellen was looking over at the new plant in her window.

In her heart a small edge of terror would reign throughout the week. But Anton paid her no heed; he ignored her proposed trip in his concern with the successful cutting and hauling in of the first hay, with the sows that each farrowed a basket of tiny piglets. When Christian drove the pickup into the yard, her father was at the barn. Ellen sped down the porch steps, Jack barking wildly. Christian wore a red shirt, store-creased, and black pants held up with worn green suspenders. His hair was slicked damp, the strong artificial odor of violet pomade pervading the cab. His face was haughty and alien. He seemed somehow shorter and broader. She sat back with a satisfied sigh, smoothing the fullness of the new blue-speckled dress. Her shoes were buffed and had new laces. She had on her best white stockings. Her hair hung down loose and in her handkerchief, scented with sweet fern and balsam needles, was a small comb. They spoke little. Christian kept his arm on the window ledge. He said, “That your new dress?”

“Yes.”

“You sew good there.” He wheeled the truck into a great dusty lot. They drove under a pasteboard sign, CURCIS PARKING HERE. Christian paid an old man a nickel. They hurried toward the huge colorful entrance arch. “Let’s go, Ellie.” He strode to the ticket booth, she followed, and they went in.

Through the noisy carnival air, hand in hand, they were wandering. Christian was devouring peanuts, sack after sack. Ellen licked a mound of pink spun sugar in a paper cone. “It’s like eating a cloud. It melts to nothing.”

He was laughing at her, glad he was with Ellen after all. They went to see the tent show, sitting on hard benches in the close-packed crowd, the dust soft under their feet. He held her hand in his lap. In the ring horses thundered by, rifles cracked, the King of the Cowboys on a graceful white horse, waved his flapping hat. A baby elephant followed by a tall one with a torn ear and an odorous camel, ambled around the ring and out again, their progress accompanied by spasmodic hand-clapping. A cage with a sleeping lion was trundled by a pair of brown oxen. The ringmaster bawled through a megaphone. In smoldering heat aerialists soared and swung as band music softened and swayed the crowd’s amazement. Ellen leaned forward.

They roamed the grounds later, eating grilled hot dogs, drinking mugs of high-foamed root beer drawn from an orange barrel. They stood before the limp-maned lion’s cage. “Sure looks mangy, doesn’t he, Ellie? He’s twenty years if a day.”

A group of boys came up to throw stones and poke through the metal bars with striped circus canes, after a while meandering noisily away. “Poor soul,” said Ellen, “those youngens shouldn’t ill at him that way.”

“Now there’s the midway, Ellie. Come on.” He was pulling her with him to the wide grassy passage bordered with peep shows and circus sights. A sinuous middle-aged woman was wriggling on a platform beneath a glaring sign, EVENING IN PARIS. A barker coaxed, “Ten cents. One dime! See the girlies. Imported from Pah-ree. Ten cents to see them revealed in their natural beauty. Hurry. Hurry! One dime. They take it off. The Parisian beauties.”

“Let’s see the strip tease. I dare you.”

But Ellen was shaking her head. “Double dare you to see the two-headed baby instead.”

“Double dares go first. All right.”

They viewed an albino raccoon, a six-legged sheep, the tallest dwarf, a mass of twining poisonous snakes. They stopped before the India-rubber man and the fat lady. “Oh Christian, my teacher, Talithie Gentry, was bigger than her. Easy.”

Christian paid the armless man a penny to write their names on a card in elaborate script, holding the pen in supple toes. Christian was pocketing the card. “This’ll remind me, Ellie, after you’ve gone.” He hitched his suspenders cockily.

Then they were in the high-seated cab of the truck again, the narrow tires jouncing in the hot dust. Christian was whistling above the racket of the motor. He was warbling, partly off pitch:

When the m-m-m-moon shines On the c-c-c-cow shed I’ll be waiting for you by the k-k-k-kitchen door

His spirits were high.

I’ve got a cute little husband Who’s just twenty-three He’s just three years older than me He goes out every night And gets on a tight And leaves the dear baby with me

He was pulling her to his side, driving with his arm about her. He was caressing her hair and moving a hard palm from her throat to her breasts, yielding and white under the stiff cloth. She was leaning into the comfort of his body in the heat as they droned over neglected clay roads. Clumps of black-eyed susans lined the ditches, and butterfly weeds bearing ragged clusters of orange flowers. No birds sang in the hot afternoon sun. Her thoughts began to drift. Without fear she considered, Pa’ll beat me, it’s away past time for chores. “Is it late, Christian? Penny must be watching for me.”

“Is that your sister?” He spoke, absent, his hand pressing upon her breast.

Ellen shook her head. “It’s hot.” She drew away from his hold, moving to lean out the window.

After a pause he said, “You tired, Ellie? Want me to stop in the shade along the roadside?” It came thickly. He reached for her hand, slowing the truck. In back of them a horn sounded and a red automobile with an open top swerved around them to disappear in swirls of dust.

“You better take me home. My chores are waiting.” Her face was a soft oval, her hand lay snared in his, feeling the rough calluses.

“All right, then. I only asked on account of Brinker milks late. Said he wouldn’t look for me back till after six.” There was silence. Then he said, “Naturally you do what you please.” He laughed, dropping her hand. “Sure do like Mr. Brinker. Not a whit like my daddy. The other day I hollered down from the top of the silo, how much feed do I give them and he says, fork her down till you get tired twice.” He spoke animated, striking the window ledge.

“Why don’t you like your pa?” Ellen asked.

“He’s a skinflint. You bet we had a fight when I said I was going to work for Brinker. Had to promise him half my pay.” He snorted. “Me, a man grown. Over twenty and turning a part of my pay to him. That sonofabitch.” He lapsed into thought. “Say, I didn’t mean to swear before a girl.”

“That’s all right.”

The truck was stopping before the yellow farmhouse. Ellen opened the door. “I’m obliged, Christian. I won’t forget the strange beasts and the people on the high swings. And everything.” She sensed the finality of the afternoon.

He had her hand all at once. “Look, I’ll walk down to see you Saturday, Ellie.” He was tender again suddenly, as if the magic of the day moving already toward nostalgia smote him.

She went to the house, that final gesture lingering. The spotted thrush winged to the grapevines where it hid its nest. Jack came bounding up, tail wagging, neck arched in pride over the wild rabbit in his mouth. “I see you caught your supper,” she whispered.

The town teacher’s buggy was in the lane, his mare hitched to the post by the well. Every Saturday he came to give Frankie a piano lesson. Anton had gone to his rooming house two years ago, waited in the hall, a round black hat atop his balding head. “I be Anton Gaddy,” he had mumbled. “I’ve heard there are ladies that make a name for themselves playing before crowds that come to her. I’ve heard tell those kind are honored and not deemed lightly in the eyes of rich folk. My daughter is to play a piano I bought her in such a wise. Can you give lessons? I got the money.” The town teacher had found his task difficult. The girl was contrary in a sly way and had but small talent. She simply obeyed her father’s will.

Ellen was listening to the piano as she mounted the steps. From the kitchen wafted the acrid odor of pot greens Maria was canning. Ellen stepped within the screen. Anton’s figure towered from out of the fawning shadows. “To your room, girl. Hum.”

“Am I late, Pa?”

She was ascending the stairs, flagging, slow. The man’s footsteps coming after were soft as the sweep of an owl’s wing, gentle in pursuit. “You’re late.”

She stalled halfway. “Pa?” The pain was there, starting, in her throat.

“Thou shalt beat them with a rod. I’ve said it. Mind, girl.”

“You knew I was going.”

She went up. He was closing the door. He gripped a belt, the wide leather strip dangling by a brass home-fashioned buckle. He would wear this belt on Sundays with his black suit. “There. Town teacher met the Brinkers trading in Bethel.”

She waited then, mute, and the hurt was high in her throat. She had trained herself to silence since she was a small child, pitting herself against his spirit, persuading herself he did it for love. He wants me to be good.

“So they weren’t at that gauded circus. It’s e’er so. You be a liar.” He was striking her, whispering harsh, gray eyes narrow, “Be you whoring so soon, girl? Here’s a generation not washed of their filthiness. I’ll set the priest at you. Hear?”

The door shut sharply. He had gone. Ellen was standing anchored as her throat ached. His violence directed against her, aside from the cut of the strap, would make her sicken and she was ruling it down until she would be at peace with herself. She waited, finally moving to hang her crumpled dress on the ridgepole and put aside her dust-grimed shoes. Her stockings like white moss, were in a heap on the floor and she caught sight of the pale pillar of her body moving in the mirror that was fastened to the door.

She was hurrying to the barn then to linger over the pair of suckling kids and tend the round of her chores. Clouds were lowering in the moist ether that rumbled before an advancing evening storm. She remembered lines from a song Christian Ay had said people sang in Louisville.

When I go toot-toot-tooting Down the street In my little Ford automobile

All that night rain fell on the receiving earth. The morning was humid and portentous. In the earth’s vitals, seeds were bursting in slow presage and primeval animal movement was rife. Above ground, bees were snoring, working their hoards, minute midges piped thinly, bottle-flies glutted at dung heaps or in company with spotted orange butterflies savored rotten things. In the pond the duck had struck and killed a fragile peeper frog, while from the woods edge a red dog fox looked on at her, his button eyes bright with greed.

In the kitchen while dawn faded, Ellen was slicing bacon with a long knife whetted to a narrow blade. She had brought the molded slab in from the smokehouse. Peeled potatoes were boiling in a pot, a pan of biscuits rose and browned in the oven. She started bacon frying in a spider and measured coffee out of a jar unscrewed from the grinder on the wall. She spooned it into water bubbling in a chipped tall pot. Frankie laid out plates, plum preserves, buttermilk, ketchup, a stone jar of butter. Both girls wore sleeveless petticoats, white stockings and church shoes. Later they would get into the new dresses. “Ellie, did you notice if that camel swallowed like a horse or chewed a cud?”

“There, I forgot to look.” Ellen went to the well for water. She met Anton coming from the barn with Maria’s pail of milk. She held her hand over the dark welt on her upper arm though his eyes weren’t on her. She followed him to the kitchen, lifting out the bacon, breaking eggs into the iron spider. She crumpled an eggshell in the coffee to settle the grounds and dumped the hot potatoes into a brown bowl. The Gaddys and Sam Offut grouped themselves at the stout table. They poured ketchup on the potatoes and eggs, drank steaming cups of coffee, ate heavily, for the workdays were arduous. They would arise by candlelight, seldom were done by nightfall with the wheel of chores.

Then Sam brought the buckwagon around, Blueberry and Moll hitched to it. “Hurry up, ooman,” Anton was saying to Maria, “we’ll be late to mass.”

His wife climbed up to the narrow seat edged with an iron rail, and sat beside him. The girls were hiking themselves on the end of the wagon bed, sitting on a rug, backs to their parents, feet dangling. As they swung out onto Sweetincreek Road Anton spoke over his shoulder, “Your nannies can go to the meadow and graze with the cows, girl. Those yeanlings are old enough now.”

“I’ll take them down tomorrow, Pa.” Joy surged within her at his words, and the hotness of the season swung in to ripen grain in the favored fields and bring flowers to bud and bloom as the fragrant undulating grace of the farm lands moved toward harvest.