Harvest Home

by Thomas Tryon

  “Ah,” I said, tasting again. “That’s it, is it?”

  “Of course it’s not. Think I’d tell a fellow—even a good-lookin’ one—everything I put in my soup?”

  “Or in your mead?”

  “Here, go wash your hands—you got smudges all over ’em.”

  I cleaned up in the sink, while she sat down heavily in a chair. She looked tired tonight, and I knew her care for us was taking its toll of her strength. She smiled, a small smile of gratitude, which seemed to say, Well, haven’t we come through it all nicely?

  Suddenly I was on my knees beside her, my arms around her waist, my head in her lap.

  “Here, now—here, now,” she said. “Come, don’t do that.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured into the folds of her long apron. She patted the top of my head, then down my cheek, then pushed at my shoulder, half pleased, half embarrassed by my display.

  “Nothin’ wrong with sentiment, if it’s what you truly feel. That’s the trouble with folks, they’re afraid to show what’s inside ’em.” As I rose, she gave my hand a solid squeeze, then looked toward the door behind me. “Evenin’, Worthy. Late, en’t you?”

  Worthy Pettinger stood in the doorway, looking disconcerted at having come upon us at such an intimate moment. The Widow rose and went to him, brushed his hair from his eyes. He submitted to her careful scrutiny, squirming as she took his chin in her hand. “Thinner you are, and peaked. No, don’t move.” She opened the black valise. “Spoon,” she said to me. I fished one from the drawer and handed it to her. She took a bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured. Worthy’s eyes rolled as she put the spoonful of liquid to his lips and made him swallow. “Another.” She dosed him again, pushing the spoon at him while he bent back against the sinkboard. Then she capped the bottle, returned it to her valise, and rinsed the spoon.

  “Don’t take on so, boy,” she told him shortly. “Go and bring the buggy for me—the mare’s hitched to the garage doors.”

  When he had gone to do her bidding, she set the valise beside the splint basket and went up to tell Kate goodbye. In a moment I heard the station wagon pull up, and I opened the front door for Beth. Our greeting was constrained as she laid her things down on the hall table and took off her coat.

  “How’s Kate?” It was always her first question.

  “O.K. Want a martini?”

  “Afterward.” She hurried up the stairs. Kate’s bedroom door opened, then closed. I could hear the exchange of greetings and the drone of the women’s voices. The kitchen door slammed and in a minute I saw Worthy hunching in the shadows at the opposite end of the hallway.

  “You all right?” I asked before stepping past him into the kitchen.

  Silently he followed me in, watched while I got ice from the automatic dispenser, the glass martini pitcher, the gin, and the vermouth. Soon I heard the Widow’s footstep on the stair. I mixed the drink, poured it into a stem glass the way Beth liked it, and put it on the refrigerator shelf.

  The Widow came in tying up the strings of her bonnet. As she smoothed her skirts, I noted her shears were not in their accustomed place at her side. She turned to Worthy, who stood behind the table yanking his finger joints, which cracked loudly. “Why such a long face, boy? You look like you was off to Armageddon for the final battle.” She picked up the black valise.

  Again I felt compelled to express myself. “Thank you for your prayers.”

  “Try some of your own. Sunday’s Corn Tithing Day. Worthy, don’t shirk your duty to your Lord. You want things, come to church and ask for ’em.” He looked down, still cracking his knuckles. “Leave off them anatomical detonations and hand me my basket, I’m late.”

  He came around the table and gave her the splint basket. She folded the linen napkin over its contents and went to the doorway, then turned.

  “Sunday. Church. Tithing Day. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t forget!”

  I whirled, shocked at Worthy’s tone. He stood with his shoulders hunched, the lock of hair falling down over his brow. He made no move to push it aside; his hands hung limp at his sides, and I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he glared angrily at the Widow.

  “Very well,” she replied evenly, and went out. The buggy springs creaked as she mounted; she clucked up the mare and the wheels ground along the drive. Worthy went to the sink tap, filled a glass, and drank.

  “Bad taste,” I remarked, meaning the two herbal doses he had swallowed. He nodded, wiped his mouth.

  “Are you still planning to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t go till—” He broke off. “Soon. I’ll go soon.” His eyes narrowed as he stared into the sink. “I’ve got something to do. One last thing, then I’ll get out and never come back.”

  He went upstairs, and when Beth came down a few moments later I carried her martini and my Scotch into the bacchante room. The sofa had been taken away to be recovered, and we sat on either side of the fireplace, she in the Salem rocker, I in a Windsor ladder-back.

  “The Widow says Kate can come down for a little while tomorrow,” she said, rubbing her finger around the edge of the glass.

  “That’s good.”

  “But only for an hour or so.”

  “Fine.”

  The Tiffany clock ticked, filling the silence between us.

  “Beth.”

  “Mm?”

  “Why are you acting this way?”

  “I’m not acting any way. I just—”

  “Just what?”

  “I just didn’t think it was possible.”

  “Possible for what?”

  “Possible for you—” She took a sip of her drink. “Please, Ned, I don’t want to fight—”

  “I don’t want to either. There’s nothing to fight about.”

  “Then can’t we leave it at that? Kate’s going to be all right and—”

  “Yes. Kate’s going to be all right. But are we?”

  “Yes. I guess so. I don’t know.”

  “Look at me.” She raised her head and returned my gaze. “I went to Tamar Penrose’s, yes. But nothing happened. I promise you that nothing happened.”

  “Then it must have been a wasted visit.” She drank again and asked, “Why did you go?”

  “I didn’t go with her, I went with the kid—Missy. I—” I broke off. How could I explain to her why I had gone with Missy that afternoon? Or what it was I was trying to find out from her. Or my fears, which I considered foolish ones but which, nonetheless, I had failed to rid myself of. “It’s true,” I maintained stolidly. I felt hot and confused, hating the distance between us, wishing we could put down our glasses and hold each other. “It’s true,” I said again.

  “You went home with a little girl at six o’clock in the evening? For what possible reason?”

  “To find out something.”

  “From a thirteen-year-old child?” Her smile was the one she used when she wanted me to feel like a fool. And I did. How could I tell her about the red pointing finger, the mad child prophesying in her mother’s kitchen, the bloody chicken, guts spilled all over the floor?

  “She fell out of a tree—I went to see if she was all right—I followed her—we were sitting on the porch, in the swing. We were playing cat’s cradle—”

  “Ned.”

  “It’s true. She tied my hands. Tamar came home.”

  “Tamar…”

  “What should I call her—Miss Penrose?”

  “That’s what you used to call her. Until things got on a different—footing.”

  I rose angrily. “Look, I’m trying to tell you the truth. I’m trying to tell you what happened.”

  “You said nothing did.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “I didn’t bother saving your shirt. I threw it out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t feel required to sew back the buttons some other woman had ripped off my husband’s clothing in her eag
erness to avail herself of his body.”

  “I kissed her.”

  “Once.”

  “No—”

  “More than once.”

  “Yes—”

  “And you had a few drinks and got a little stinko, and she was there and she was so inviting you couldn’t stop yourself—isn’t that the way it went?”

  “I—”

  “You couldn’t help yourself. The male instinct. Loin lust. What did you do about the child?”

  “She wasn’t there. She went out.”

  “Nice. The mother sends the child out to play while she—”

  I crashed my glass into the fireplace to silence her.

  “You can believe me or not, however you choose, but I’ll say it once more. Nothing happened beyond a couple of drinks and a kiss.”

  “I’d better get a broom,” she said.

  I watched her go into the kitchen, and above the ticking of the clock I heard Kate coughing upstairs. I took my car keys from the hook and left the house.

  When I got home, it was after three o’clock in the morning. I tiptoed into the kitchen and put two quart cartons into the refrigerator, turned off the light Beth had left for me, and moved up the stairway. Outside Kate’s door, I stopped and listened. I could hear the sound of her easy breathing. I went across the hall and opened the door to our bedroom. Beth was asleep in the four-poster bed. The light on the bureau was still burning. I undressed and laid my things on the chair. For some reason I was thinking of Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy. Having spurned the love of Apollo, it had been given to her to speak with his tongue, but, speaking, it had been her fate that no one should believe her. But the hollow horse came, and the walls of Ilium were tumbled.

  And the walls of Cornwall Coombe? It was Missy Penrose’s fate that everyone should believe her, every last villager. I switched off the light. Outside, there was no moon. All was still and dark. A quiet night. I wondered what and who could make it “all-prevailing.”

  19

  EVEN AFTER I HAD had only four hours’ sleep, the yellow bird managed to wake me the following morning at my accustomed hour. I could hear Beth in the shower, and when she emerged from the bathroom, pink and flushed, I wanted to pull her back into bed. She put on her robe, removed the towel she had wrapped around her, and sat at the dressing table brushing her hair.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Good morning.” From her tone, I felt it was not. I yawned widely.

  “You’d better roll over and have another six hours.”

  “Why?”

  “You didn’t get very much last night.”

  “No.”

  She brushed crisply for ten or so strokes. “I suppose the urge was irresistible.”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “I went for a drive.”

  “Oh?” She gave me a look in the mirror. “Till three in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long drive, over to Main Street. They say the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime.”

  “I drove to New York.”

  She swiveled on the bench, brush poised at the down-stroke. “You what?”

  “I said I drove to New York.”

  “What on earth for?”

  I threw the covers off and headed for the bathroom. “To buy Kate some proper chili.”

  When I got downstairs, my breakfast was cooked and in the warmer. There was a note saying Beth had gone to Mrs. Brucie’s to pick up some quilts. When I opened the refrigerator door to get the cream for my coffee, I found another note pinned to one of the paper cartons from Pepe’s Chili Palor. It read:

  Not for breakfast!!!

  (and watch for the man with the sofa)

  The recovered sofa was returned about midmorning, and was ready for Kate when I carried her downstairs at noon. I laid her on it, with pillows and a blanket, then pulled the rocker up and sat beside her.

  “Want the T.V. on?” I asked.

  “In a bit. Not just now. Doesn’t that bird know winter’s coming?”

  “He waited till you got better.”

  She nodded an absent affirmative to my remark, scrunching up her nose like a rabbit. Then she sniffed, and turned to me wide-eyed. “That smells like chili!”

  I went into the kitchen, dished up a bowl, and brought it back on a tray with a glass of milk. “Pepe sends love.”

  “Oh, Daddy—” I settled the tray on the table and held the bowl and spoon.

  “I can do it.”

  “You just lie there and let me spoon-feed you. You’ve been a sick girl.”

  “How many’d you get?”

  “Two. We can freeze what you don’t eat and you can have it another time. But not for—”

  “Breakfast. I know.” She swallowed the spoonful I held for her and waited for the next. “Did you and Mom make up?” she asked, blowing.

  “You heard us, huh?”

  “Mm. It sounded as if you were doing toasts, like in War and Peace.”

  “I think it was more war than peace.”

  She let the subject drop then, and ate in silence, blowing on each spoonful as I held it for her. “Want some milk?”

  “Mm.”

  I handed her the glass, she took a few sips, then lay back against the pillows while I used the napkin on her mouth.

  “Anything else?”

  “Could you open the window? It’s sort of stuffy.”

  I raised the window behind the sofa. From the other side of the hedge came the Invisible Voice. We listened together, trying to determine what it was today. Neither of us recognized the work. I lowered the window slightly and turned on the television, handing Kate the remote control so she could choose her channel; then I carried the tray to the kitchen. When I came back, Kate was watching June Allyson struggle valiantly with a bull fiddle on the television screen.

  I made sure she had what she needed, then went back to the studio to continue preparing a gesso board for my new painting. While it dried, I straightened up my paint taboret, sharpened my pencils, threw out a bunch of old sketches, and packed my drawing kit. From Robert’s open window, the Invisible Voice continued reading, though I still had not yet caught enough of it to identify the work. When I came out the studio door, I found the buggy in the drive, the tethered mare contentedly chewing the grass along the hedge. The kitchen door popped open and the Widow appeared on the back stoop, fists on her hips, glowering.

  “Chili!” The way she spat the word I decided it had a bad taste for her.

  “Chili?” I replied mildly.

  “Don’t you go giving that child none o’ that foreign muck. You want to upset her stomach? You feed her, you feed her what I leave to feed her, hear?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She gave me another look, then retired. Passing the hedge, I heard the Invisible Voice:

  “‘I am Charles Hexam’s friend,’ said Bradley; ‘I am Charles Hexam’s schoolmaster.’

  “‘My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,’ replied Eugene.”

  I called over to Robert. “You’ve got me, Robert. What’s the book?”

  “Try Our Mutual Friend.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Dickens.”

  By spring, I decided, Robert would have read his way through the entire works. I climbed on my bicycle, and pedaled out into the lane.

  I stopped at the post office to mail the letter I had written to the gallery in New York. As I dropped it into the box outside, I could see the postmistress behind the counter, weighing a package. Her head was down, her face obscured by her hair. Suddenly she looked up, as if she knew I was watching. She stared back at me, her face a mask, then she picked up a rubber stamp and stamped the top of the package. I walked back to the bicycle.

  Coming along the roadway in front of the church on the far side of the Common was the pink Oldsmobile. I got back on my bike and rode south along Main Street; I could hear the car behind
gaining on me. When I got to the intersection of Main and the River Road, I made a sharp left, and the pink car went roaring past. Glancing back, I saw Old Man Soakes behind the wheel, while two other faces peered at me through the back window. I heard their hoots and jeers as the car disappeared beyond the end of a cornfield, and a plume of blue exhaust dissolved in the air.

  Ten minutes later, I was seated on a box at the corner of the small plot where Jack Stump’s bait shack stood. I spent an hour sketching the structure, then, dissatisfied with the results, concentrated on some of the details. There was a particular window I liked, with a piece of tattered shade, and a mud-dauber’s nest in the corner by a broken pane of glass. I contented myself with this small particular for the better part of the afternoon, until the sun caught the broken pane, reflecting in my eye so that it became difficult to work. I made one or two brief erasures on my page, then reversed the sketch against the light to check for errors. Turning it again, I held it up and compared it with the original. Suddenly something odd about the sketch caught my eye. Or, rather, something odd about the window itself. In the drawing, as I had completed it, the window shade hung down only four or five inches, but now, in the shack, the shade was drawn to the sill.

  Sliding the pad into the case, I zipped it up and approached the door and listened. From the other side I could hear a faint scraping sound. I knocked.

  “Jack? You in there?”

  There was no reply. I backed away, studying the house-front. Inside I heard a slight cough, and another shuffling noise. I tried the door. It was locked.

  “Hey—Jack, it’s me, Ned Constantine.” I waited for a few moments, then walked around to the back where a small door was cut into the crude siding of the shack. I turned the broken porcelain handle and stepped in.

  It was a small, dark room, with little more than a dripping faucet over a sink and a disreputable two-burner stove marking it as a kitchen. A kerosene lantern sat on a rickety table; beside it was a sack of groceries. On the window sill was a shaving mug and an ivory-handled razor which I thought I had seen before. I went around the table and pushed open a door, beyond which was a small hallway. I crossed the hall and opened the other door.

  With the shade drawn I could discern only vague shapes—a table, some chairs, a bed with rumpled covers against the wall. Making my way to the window, I raised the shade; it flew up on the roller with a clatter. I heard a sort of whimpering sound behind me and turned to see the bedcovers moving. A hand emerged from under the blanket to pull it up. I stepped past a pile of magazines and looked down.