The corn came through the soil in little green tubes, closely curled. Ellen had been carrying water past the hills when she saw the green pointing out of the clods, and she stopped in her act, surprised. In a few days the corn had slim grass-like leaves that bent in the sun and waved lightly, and she thought that she could see how much the plants grew from one day to the next. She ran to the garden eagerly each day to watch for the changes, and her pleasure in the growth of the corn was very real. The beans in their rows seemed to be a creature, one, brooding in stillness in all hours of the day and growing rank and full and lush in a few weeks. They said: ‘I’ll be you; you wait and see…’ The tomato vines with their strong sour odours coming from leaves and stem cut into her skin. She felt them before she came near them for they were strong and piercing. They laughed, big bold rank things, ugly and jeering and strong. She strutted and jeered when she came into the tomato patch, her head jerking to one side: ‘You sting my skin. You think I’m trash. You lied, you lied, you lied!’
She liked to sit in the corn after it grew waist-high or more. In the soft clods of the bright days or in the soft loam of the days after showers she would sit, looking about, feeling herself moving with the corn. A voice would come to her mind:
‘Or even suppose it was the poorest sort of shanty made outen boards set on end and only one room, or two; and suppose the people that lived there last used to be a dirty set and left their filth behind them when they went; and even suppose there’d be fleas under the house where the hogs had been a-sleepen… I’d set about maken it fitten to live in, you’d see. I’d scrub that-there floor…’ Or then:
‘They’d be a fair sight to see when the roses came in bloom next summer and when the grapes got up over that-there arbour – big bunches of grapes a-hangen down all summer and a-turnen purple in the fall and the bees a-comen to get sweet outen some. That would be a sight to see now.’
She remembered Tessie pushing her book under the quilts to hide it out of the wet. A deep-set fact that was as one with her breath lay back of all her thought, a fact gathered into an unspoken phrase, ‘I couldn’t stay here, I’d have to go where she is.’ Tessie had four books now. She used to have five but the story book was gone. ‘Jock a-haulen around Tessie’s trash. I’d dump them books in the first ditch…’ A noise like a snarl out of another wagon.
Ellen carried water to the house from the spring that gathered in a scooped-out pool above the creek on the south side of the ravine. She would hold her left hand far out from her body to balance the load, her head bent toward the right. When she could slip away she explored the ravine to its head in the tree-grown hills lying beyond Bodine land. One day in July she saw three women walking on the dirt road that ran past the house, one of them leading a small child. She had caught glimpses of a woman on the yellow road before. These people, seen clearly, wore faded limp clothes, long and drab and weary from many washings. One wore a black sunbonnet but the other two had small hats. They carried no bundles and for this Ellen thought they must live near.
‘They’re our kind of people; they look like us. We might, maybe, get to know them. They live in a little house or a cabin or a shack, or maybe even a wagon.’
When she saw them returning in the late afternoon she went down near the fence and waited, looking at them. They passed without speaking but they did not cease to watch her, sending back diffused good humour and well-wishing. The next day one of the women passed again, and Ellen ran down to the fence when she saw her coming out of the curve of the road. The woman had been seen now a half-dozen times and had become a mass of characteristic motions and friendly staring eyes. Ellen longed to fix her into a thought, to know what she would say now that she knew how she would look saying it. She longed to find her out, to like her or to hate her. This day when she passed Ellen she spoke.
‘Howdy do!’
‘Good evening!’ Ellen said.
‘I allow you-all are the new people that moved in here.’
‘We moved in.’
‘Do you like?’
‘We like well enough.’
‘Hit’s a good place, Hep Bodine’s.’
‘You might stop to see us sometime when you happen to be a-goen down the road.’
‘I’d like to get acquainted right well. My name is Mrs Pinkston, Artie Pinkston.’
‘My name’s Ellen Chesser. Mammy’s in the house.’
‘How many you-all got in family?’
‘Just Mammy and Pappy and me.’
‘Well I do know. I got myself and Hez – I married Hez Pinkston – and three youngones.’
‘But we got six dead before I came, when we used to be a-liven in Taylor County and in Green. One was right puny and died three years old, and two taken fever and died. Then Mammy had Harp and Corie and they died. I don’t recollect what they died with, and Davie died when he was three months old.’
A wave of pity for Davie swept through her body, a froth of motion flowing from her sides and spreading through her chest, pulling back at her throat, a wave running out upon the air.
‘If Davie was here he’d be sixteen now.’
‘Well I do know!’
The woman was gone now and the talk was over, and Ellen watched her receding, a large woman, her long skirt kicking out in little points at the hem as she walked. Ellen lay on the ground near the laneside under a thorn tree but there was no coolness in the grass, which was hot like her own tingling skin, and the heat rolled down in waves from the sun. She heard something crying far off, some undetermined crying, sharp and full of pain, but too far away to touch pity, the mere outline of a cry duplicated without feeling on the hot air. Then her closed eyes began to see people walking quickly up stone steps, some of them turning out of a paved way with little skipping motions, and the scene tilted, wavered and grew dim and then came back larger and clearer in colour before it went into nothingness. Then out of nothing she came into a quick and complete knowledge of the end. You breathe and breathe, on and on, and then you do not breathe any more. For you forever. Forever. It goes out, everything goes, and you are nothing. The world is all there, on and on, but you are not there, you, Ellen. The world goes on, goes on without you. Ellen Chesser. Ellen. Not somebody heard about and said with your mouth but you yourself, dead. It will be. You cannot help it.
She rose to a sitting position with a cry and sat looking out upon the thorn tree and the hot wilted weeds of the lane where crickets clicked as they passed about. This was the world and she was in it, glad with a great rush of passion. Her hand reached out and touched a plantain leaf and her eyes recognised the dog-fennel and the wire fence beyond the dust of the road. She was still there and everything was secure, her body rising tall above the narrow dock and the dandelions. The sky came down behind the locust trees, in place, and everything was real, reaching up and outward, blue where it should be blue, grey haze, heat rising out of the dust, limp dock leaves falling away toward the dusty grass. She walked back to the cabin, moving slowly to feel the security of the path, touching a tree with her fingers, trailing her hand along the stone of the doorstep.
The farm was beautiful and secure, running up over a hill and lapping into a ravine, spreading flat over the lower pasture. It was there, in place, reaching about into hollows and over uplands, theirs to live in and to know and to work. The locust tree beside the woodpile and the tall bushes along the creek, as they always were. She was there, there yet, her body walking up through the pasture with a tin bucket swinging and making a high thin brushing noise as it touched her moving skirt. The farm was secure and the land was placed, all beautiful and near. She began to gather the hot blackberries from the briars of the wasted hill pasture. A few berries made a low tinkling as they fell into her pail, and then the brown colt came from the other side of the enclosure, nibbling offhandishly at the wilted grass and edging always a little nearer. She left her berrying and they played a short while together, she pitting her arms against his neck and pushing hard. He let her throw one le
g over his back and ride a little way, or she would pull his long forelock and twist his mane, or feed him choice bits of grass which she gathered from under the briars. While she held out a tuft of clover to the colt’s quivering out-reaching muzzle, the hillside was clear to see and to have, hers, and who cares if there was an end. Let it look out for itself. The colt’s lips came down upon the white clover blossoms which went into the long cavern of his mouth, turning as they went. The large straw hat which her father had bought for her would catch in the light breeze and flash off over the briars to hang on a cluster of twigs or glide off over the waste stone grass. Just as she recovered the hat from under a rose briar and gathered a last mouthful for the colt a sharp voice cut through the heat, coming from the path that lay through the high bushes. It was the voice of the farmer’s wife.
‘What you want in here?’
Ellen was too much frightened to run away. She stood staring at Mrs Bodine, holding her hat in her hand, and her hands being engaged, the one with the hat and the other with the pail, a feeling of utter defencelessness overcame her. The question was repeated several times before she spoke.
‘Mr Bodine told Pappy,’ she trembled.
‘Nobody said you could have them berries. I need every one for myself.’
‘Mr Bodine told Pappy we could…’
Ellen felt herself to be hanging in the air, cut off from the ground, while she waited in the long stillness that followed. The farmer’s wife wore a crisp dress, the waist and skirt alike, both blue, both starched, both washed at the same time. Ellen’s skirt was blue and her waist was greenish-drab, faded and limp and old. Washings no longer made them new. A fear of dogs and men came into her terror, and she felt as if her shoulders were tied to a post or a tree, lifted high. The farmer’s wife was a sharp crisp shape, standing tall out of the blackberry brushes. It pushed against her body and filled her mouth with a bitter taste. Little prickling needles stuck in and out of the skin of her face.
‘Mr Bodine told Pappy…’
‘Well, maybe he did, but he’s got no call to be a-tellen any such. I need every berry I got to make my own jam. I need every last one for my own self. Don’t come up this way a-picken any more. You keep down along the branch nohow. I got no berries or anything else to spare.’
Ellen went down the field feeling her dress pushed against her skin, shoving her along, the look of the woman and the voice of the woman shoving at her clothing, her clothing shoving at her skin and making her bones articulate stiffly. Her mind stood blank and motionless while nerves and limbs came stiffly down the hill. ‘Oh, Brother Andrew, have you got a G string,’ stood in her throat, contending to be said, but against this arose and fought other sayings. Her bare feet walked on stunted wild clover and struggling crab grass, and the little stones were hot like cinders on her skin. She passed the last blackberry bush saying, ‘Weep, weep, weep no more. Only ten cents more and I’ll read the other palm for you, Lady, only ten cents, one dime, ten cents.’ A nausea spread up from the pit of her stomach and died in her mouth, diffused. ‘And you’ll live a long and happy life. Only ten cents more, one dime. A long life, a happy life, a long life. Happy happy long long. Long and happy life.’ She was walking on cooler grass near the foot of the hill, and the grasshoppers splattered away from her feet. The woman stood crisp on the top of the pasture, gathering her berries, still pushing with her look and with her shape, up in the sun. At the clump of thorn bushes beyond the last rise Ellen dropped quickly to her knees and crawled quickly out of the sight of the woman on the hilltop. Sitting under the leaves of the thornbush she felt little prickers tingling along her skin. Lice, she thought it must be, her lice crawling, stirred up and going about. She drew her legs under her skirt and sat, the thorns of the bush worrying her neck and her moving hands. She was pushed up from the thorny grass, but she peered out at the hill from which she had been driven and saw with a quick sob that she was well concealed. Then she crawled down to the branch and went secretly over the water gap, intent on being unseen. The ground was rough and hot, scraping meanly at her as she clung to it.
‘She thought I lied to her,’ she said, sitting by the water of the creek. ‘She thought I was a-stealen her berries. I could steal all she’s got and she’d never know, if I was of a mind to. I could get all she’s got some night if I’d set my mind that way. I’m not afeared of her old shepherd dog. He’d come up and rub his neck on my leg and I’d scratch his head for him a little. I know about everything she does, in and out of her big ugly house, a-planten her late cabbage one day and a-putten up jam the next, with Pappy to cut her stovewood. I got no lice on me. A-goen off in her buggy and a-comen back with big bundles. I could take all the blackberries she’s got and she’d never know when.’
Her skirt was the one Tessie had given her, now plucked from briars and worn limp from many washings. Her waist had come out of a bundle of rags some people in Marion county had given her mother, the colour now gone, but traces of it lingered in the seams. The farmer’s wife had made her feel lice crawling, and she turned to the inner seams of her garments, searching for a moment. She counted the berries in the bottom of the pail, twenty-one, and then turned back to the inner surfaces of her clothes again, laying her fingers on the seams to pry them out.
‘I got no lice. She lied, that-there woman. I got no more lice ’n she’s got. Pappy can have twenty-one berries in his blackberry pie.’ Then she ate the berries.
Except when she helped her father sucker and worm the tobacco, Ellen never again went up the rise toward the farmhouse and she saw no more of the colt in the pasture. Her ways closed in around her and the hills drew nearer. She dragged home the brush which her father cut in the ravine, making her way slowly to the cabin with it or cutting it into fagots where it lay, and she carried this into the house when her mother called out, ‘I ain’t no firewood.’ She would run down the lane to the turnpike and watch up and down. When a passer went along the road in a buggy or wagon or on horseback, she experienced intense tremors of excitement at seeing a figure, a face or a conveyance, at seeing wheels or the stepping feet of horses. There would be fat ladies with pink plump daughters, or there would be thin ladies with little children in straw hats or starched bonnets. Little girls with curls filled her with happiness, as did gay coloured ribbons flying off from hat-brims or white flying veils blowing out from ladies’ hair. The people usually looked straight forward because there was a turn in the road ahead, but if they looked at her she suffered great shame. Then she would try to shrink under her skimp dress and she would feel her skin trying to shrink into her sinews, drawing inward toward her very marrow. But when the gazers were passed, as the carriage receded along the road and the noise of the wheels funnelled down into fainter clatters of sound, she would be her former self again, and she would keep afterward a renewed sense of people pointing with their fingers, of people carrying things in their hands, of voices rising and sinking away.
She would often chatter a little with Artie Pinkston in the lane. This woman was carrying a child and Ellen appraised her coldly, listening to her speech with the knowledge in her mind. The woman breathed shortly, suffocatedly, her lips parted.
‘It’s a hot spell of weather.’
‘July is a hot time.’
The great ugly figure stood up in the lane, the lips open to take breath, the face red and coarse. Why did she let herself be like that? Ellen would ask herself with an inner contempt, for she knew all the externals of child-getting. She had pitied her father and mother for their futile efforts toward secrecy; ‘Ellen is asleep,’ or ‘Is Ellen asleep?’ Life turned back upon itself and looked upon itself coldly. Night, dark, filth, sweat, great bodies, what for? She pitied them with a great pity, the pity of a child for adults.
‘I might sit down on this-here bank for a spell and rest myself,’ Artie said.
‘You might maybe like a cup of water to drink if I’d bring it out to you.’
‘I’d be right obliged.’
Ellen
hated the woman for the pain she was going to have. The hills gathered closer in and Artie Pinkston helped to wind them tight and twist them close. ‘I had enough Mrs Pinkstons in my time. I’ll wait a spell,’ Nellie said, and she kept indoors when Artie stopped in the lane. After a while the hills would open up and send out great cries. Ellen knew. She would go a little way up the lane, past the first rise and around the curve and up again between two fields, until the top of a boarded cabin came in sight, but she dared no further, listening, ready to run back. The hills stood shoulder to shoulder. She would go to the garden in the early morning to gather the beans for dinner, thinking of soft sweet beans cooked in grease, or she would carry water down from the spring to drink, or water from the creek to wet the newly planted cabbage. She would sit under the tree by the woodpile and gaze at the chips, at the black earth, at her own brown legs and white thighs. A sudden voice would call out in her ear, Haldeen Stikes saying a lewd word. Haldeen had pursued her with his words, shaping words with his lips when he could not say them aloud, Haldeen with downy hair on his lip. Haldeen’s word would cry out at her and something in her laughed at it while something else stood back, meek and futile, and she laughed down upon her hard sun-darkened legs and her slim white loins.
Running up and down her ways she made beaten paths, down to the bank above the lane, down the laneside to the highroad, back to the bank, back to the house through low summer weeds, to the woodpile, through the garden along the side of the bean row, and out of the garden toward the creek, up the creek to the mouth of the ravine. Her paths grew hard and smooth. Ten times, twenty times a day she ran through her confines, pounding the ground with bare feet.
The Time of Man Page 3
