The Time of Man

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  ‘Jingle at the window, tidy-o,’ she sang. ‘Somebody a-jinglen on a thump-thump guitar, that is. If I had a guitar I’d be a-jinglen on it to a fare-you-well.’ She was coming in from the furthest part of the yard in the dusk, walking about in the warm languorous air. The stars were out, very low and very near, pushing down, falling of humid weight. The air scarcely moved at all, but now and then a warmer motion spread down from the higher places, pushing through skin and lying along the inner threads of nerves, fiddling on delicate quick with familiar searching hands. She walked into a tree before she was aware of it. Its great trunk spread against her breast like a broad chest upon her. A quick memory of Screw, of the time he caught her behind a wagon and hugged her close, came with the touch of the tree. She had been afraid of him for he was drunk. Whisky smells came out of him, and man smells, sweat and dirt, different from woman dirt. She had felt the buttons on his coat dig into her thin old dress and his great broad chest spread out before her slim body and his drunk arms trying to catch her closer. She had hated him and despised him, despised his whisky and dirt smells, but a slim thread like a thin silver serpent had rushed through her flesh, straight through her trunk, when Screw held her.

  She knew the walls of the house in all their swaying lines and all their mossy softness. The roof pole bowed slightly, drooping into a curve. The roof was the colour of weather, white with the sun, grey with the rain, deep grey with the moon, rosed with the sunset. The wall leaned back from the rock doorsteps, and the shingles on the sunny slope of the roof were curled like autumn leaves fallen in wavering lines. In the ground around the house were embedded bits of trash, relics of former tenants, such as wisps of paper, cut hairs, iron nails, pipestems, coffee grounds, threads, and pulps of rags. Dull mouldy smells that were faintly sickening came out of the earth here when she scratched it with her finger. She knew the ground around the house intimately. Once she scratched up a bit of a broken mirror, once a human tooth, once a rotted glove with a bright metal fastener. The soil was black and stiff like felt.

  Sitting on the bank above the lane she watched for Artie Pinkston’s coming for the reward of a few words exchanged. She drew her legs under her skirt and tucked the edges of the garment under her knees and her feet. She drew herself together, her slim body scarcely needing a foot of ground, shrinking from the ground, while Artie Pinkston stopped for her brief say – the heat, the price of eggs, the scarcity of wild berries. Ellen watched the woman until she passed out of sight and then she drew herself together even closer, shrinking and gathering in upon herself. Memory played up a monstrous picture in her mind although she shook back her head and tried to efface it. Eva Stikes in labour with Esther. Irene scared, running out of the shanty. The two of them, she and Irene, scared, standing about the door. Her mother calling to Tessie:

  ‘Eva Stikes is a-bawlen. Get the water hot whilst I see what’s to do.’

  ‘Oh, people are ugly and everything is ugly,’ Ellen muttered, remembering. ‘Brown ground ugly and yesterday ugly and all the things people do – eaten and a-walken and a-haven things to keep. Terrible, it is. Ugly. Hard to do. Everything ugly. Eva Stikes a-screamen and a-pullen on the bedpost and Mammy a-sayen do this and do that. Irene a-screamen and a-holden onto me and a-getten sick enough to throw up, Eva a-sayen, “Kill me, somebody, knock me in the head with the axe, oh, for the love of God somebody kill me!” and it goes on all day in the shanty. Yesterday ugly and everything ugly, all the way back to the first, as far as you can recollect, ground, sun, things to eat, cooken, things to keep, wanten things, backward as far as you can recollect. And then a little cryen, a thin cryen, and Tessie is a-washen a baby by the cookstove, and everybody is a-smilen, glad it’s all over and glad about the little new baby that’s so pink and clean, little hands and little feet.

  The creek was almost dry in the August drouth. A green scum stood on the stagnant pools of water in the small basins among the fluted rocks. Ellen traced images in the smooth green surface with her vaulting pole and watched them twist away into grotesques or take other meanings. With the pole, a long broomstick she had found among the rubbish in the shed, she could easily swing herself over the pools. The lower pasture was burned brown except where the shade of the trees had saved a little moisture, but the tobacco was spreading wide fronds that crowded for room, and these were a brilliant green with waves of heat vibrating over them. The green scum made a curtain over the water holes, but when she tore the curtain away she saw the reflections in the water, the sky, blue and dry, the hills and trees. In a little while the scum gathered back and there was left only black water. To push the film aside with great zigzag strokes and make the world come into the pool quickly, the world big and clear and deep with a sky under it, this was her intent.

  ‘People a-dyen in ships at midnight and people a-goen to a foreign country with pots made outen gold and skillets made outen silver on the pack-horse, and gold cups. People a-goen to London-town – is this the way to London-town? – and an old, old queen. And a story about a horse could talk.’

  She was sitting on a great flat fluted stone of the creek bottom, beside a water hole, sitting in the middle of the dry creek bed. ‘And a story about a horse could talk and one about Fair Elender. “O Mother, O Mother, come riddle my sport, come riddle it all as one. Must I go marry Fair Elender?” Elender, that’s me. And people a-dyen for grief and people a-dyen for sorrow.’

  ‘And there was the book with the poetry pieces to say. A brown book, it was. I can see as plain as day and I can see the words inside, pieces to say in school of a Friday. “O Sailor Boy woe to thy dream of delight” – a piece about a shipwreck. And then, “Come back, come back, he cried in grief across the stormy water.” I could say all that-there if I was of a mind that way. I know a right smart of pieces now, for a fact. And the Sands o’ Dee.

  O Mary go and call the cattle home,

  And call the cattle home,

  And call the cattle home,

  Across the sands o’ Dee.

  Water a-rushen up the almost dry creek all of a sudden, a flood a-comen in on Mary!’

  She jumped from her seat and ran up the bank of the ravine, terrified, clutching at the brush, dry stones rattling back in her path. At the top she turned to look at the wall of water that might be coming up the valley through Bodine’s lower pasture. She sat on the brow among the bushes and snags, laughing at her fear, and after a little her pulses calmed.

  ‘I’m a-thinken about the geography book, Tessie’s other book, an old one all torn at the corners and spotted where somebody left it out in the rain some time long ago. London Bridge across the Thames. The Cathedral and Plaza, Mexico City. You could see yourself a-liven in the brown house, a-walken up big stairs and a-looken out that-there tower window, a-sitten down in a tower to look out all day, a-sitten back cool. Or you could flip the page over and there – elephant a-drawen a load of coconuts in Ceylon. High palm trees, black men with white hippens on, wagon made outen sticks… Town Hall, Leeds. Wide stairs, flat-topped roof and a tower with a clock to tell the time of day. A fountain a-drippen out in front. You could see yourself live in that-there house, a-looken out the window at sunup to see if the fountain is a-goen yet… City Hall, Brussels. Slant roof with a tall steeple up high. Yourself a-walken down long halls inside. Yourself a-walken up stairs with a gold pitcher in your hand, a-goen down a long room with a chequered floor like the one in the Ewington post office.

  ‘It was a good book, a learned book. I read it a heap here and yon and I looked a heap at the pictures… I remember Tessie… And I didn’t forget one time we saw who could sing the most songs, first one and then the other a-singen one… I recall the Carolina dove. Little-headed, he is, and a-walken on the ground, and once a boy down by Cherry Creek in Tennessee told me every dove has got one drop of human blood in his body somewheres. For sure, he said, one drop.

  ‘One of the books mine. Tessie gave me one to keep, but it’s safer with the balance, I said, along under the quilts… It
would be the dearest thing in life if I could find my book some day and have it in my hands or in my room hid under the bed to get out when we’d have a rainy spell of weather.’

  Before autumn Ellen was fifteen. During the summer there had always been food and she had grown less thin. Her bones had withdrawn under the flesh and her eyes were no longer hollow. Signs of woman begun to appear on her meagre body; woman took possession of her although she was hard like spines and sharp like flint. She looked at herself in the mirror of the creek, for she dared not unrobe herself in the house before the eyes of her mother. She thought that with the change of one or two externals everything might change – a room to sleep in where there would be pink and blue, herself reading a book by the window. Things to put in drawers and drawers to put things in, she would like, and people to say things to. Her mother would sit in a gay chair on a gallery sewing a seam, the little stitches falling up and down, her mother saying gentle things. Or even suppose they were poor, then she would be sitting with her hair clean and combed, and she would call out, ‘Ellen come see the sparks, they’re in the chimney a-flyen like geese here and yon,’ or ‘Come look at the cherry tree; it’s like a little girl dressed up for summer.’

  She wanted to sit beside Tessie and talk about a house. She wanted to talk about a desert where camels walk in long lines, or about glaciers where men explore for poles, or about men walking into mines with little lights on their hats – about the wonders of the world.

  ‘If only I had things to put in drawers and drawers to put things in. That’s all I’d ask for a time to come.’ She could feel herself stooping to pull out a drawer, taking out a garment, at first vague and soft and fine, lace and ribbon and sweet smells, but she let it turn to coarse cotton in her hands, for when it took shape and grew definite there was no other way. She remembered a place where she and Irene had begged. ‘Could you give us some old clothes, Lady?’ And then a tall dark lady before a chest, bending to open a drawer with a faint stooping gesture, bending a little forward, a woman like slow water, a slim fine lady with dark hair and flowing hands.

  More wood was needed for the supper fire now, for the nights were chilly and Henry liked to sit a little while by the blaze before going to bed. Ellen was pecking at the sticks by the wood pile with the sharp new axe her father had bought for her, making burning pieces. Nellie was sitting beside the cabin door. The pipe had hung in her listless hand until it had fallen to the ground, spilling its dead ash, but now and then quick hands turned up a garment or opened a vent and searched along the inner seams, eyes bent close. The blackbirds were assembled in great flocks now. They were gathering in the high trees on the hill above the ravine and their cries made a continuous chattering broken into chimes and waved to the flutterings of winged bodies. The twilights were falling earlier day by day, and strange shadows, different from the summer-cast shadows, slanted under the locust trees. The cry of the axe struck out against the cabin wall and against the bare tree branches, spreading wide, and the light came into the yard in unaccustomed ways. The cabin showed itself more, out in the hard light. Winter would come soon now. Nellie stooped quickly and rummaged at her garments, annoyed by the fleas, searching with her nearsighted eyes. They, Nellie and herself, were out before the cabin and out before the hard light, the leaves almost all fallen from the locust, an early falling. She stacked the cut wood in her arms and felt the rough surfaces and the rounded limbs and smelt the odours of green sap. Stooping to gather the wood, with her face close to the vapour of the sap, a great motion of tenderness for her mother swept through her nerves. ‘Get Ellen the shoes. I can wait a spell. My old ones will do me,’ she heard the words again. Minnie and Edd and Lue and Harp and Corie and Davie, before she came. ‘Mammy, what made your teeth go snaggly and all come outen your head?’ she had asked once. ‘Do you reckon you could have seven brats inside twelve year and have e’er a tooth left to your name?’ Now her face was close to the vapours of the wood and her lips brushed against the bark.

  ‘She’s my mammy, mine,’ she whispered. How could she ever live without her mother? Suppose. The yard without Nellie, the cabin without, supper without. A great terror went over her, followed by renewed tenderness. She could hardly walk past the cabin door, so great was her emotion. She went past her mother very gently and walked up the steps on light bare feet. The wood fell softly from her arms to the hearthstone making scarcely a whisper and settled down upon itself mutely under her hushing hands.

  Ellen lay in her bed up in the loft in the cool of a late September evening, two old quilts pulled over her. Brown shocks of corn were dotted about in her mind pictures, and between the dun splotches of the corn there were large yellow pumpkins lying, naked, the vines withered down by the frost. From the cabin door she could see the hill where the tents stood up against the sky, the tents of the corn, and her thought sat down in the doorway to hear the blackbirds chattering and to see the ploughed field of the summer, the tobacco field now ploughed again for rye. Great hawks made wide shadows soar among the clods. Little turnips came into her mind, little pink things growing where the beans had been, crowding together. The corn blades were brown and hard. They would crumble and break if she bent them in her fingers. Jock would be going down the road toward Tennessee, taking his drove of horses down, going the old road. He might come through Rushfield next court day on his way down from the Bluegrass. He would be sure to come that way.

  She sat up in bed, jerked from her back by the force of the thought. She stared out the open window into the hillside which was lit by a full moon.

  ‘He might be there, now, might, a-campen down some road.’

  She would go there, walking in the night. By morning she would be in the town; eight miles would not be far to go in a long night. She would see Tessie once more. If only for a day or a half day, she would see Tessie. She would walk into town and ask over and over on the street, ‘Do you-all know whe’r there’s any gypsies a-campen down the roads or not? Any horse-swappers? Any movers?’ She would come straight out with the question. ‘Any travellers?’ Somebody would be sure to know. ‘I see a parcel of wagons out that-there road this very day.’ Then she would walk out to the place and there would be the wagons, the tongues pulled up against a fence. Tessie would be behind the best wagon cooking something on a little fire, or maybe she would be just at that moment starting to town with a little something to peddle under her arm.

  Her father would whip her when she came walking back the next night. She could feel the switch on her back and the blows cut in with little sharp stabs of joy. Nellie’s voice:

  ‘Say you won’t do that-there no more!’

  ‘Triflen brat, to traipse the road and to run away! I’ll skin the hide offen you…’

  Her face drew together with pain too keenly remembered, but she laughed. The switch would cut into her legs like fire and she would roll on Nellie’s bed and scream. But she would go. She would see Tessie again and after that she would be glad enough to come back.

  She would slip out Sunday night soon after bedtime.

  The thought that she really would see Tessie again thrilled her senses and caught at her breath all day Saturday, whenever she dwelt upon it. On Sunday evening soon after the early bedtime of the cabin she took her shoes in her hand and her cloak upon her arm and slipped quietly down the ladder, past her mother’s side of the bed, and out the door. The moon was shining hazily, hanging a little west of the top of the sky. She found it necessary to put on the old cloak, a garment left from the winter before, used in summer for bedding. It smelt of musty straw as she drew it on her arms. Having put on the shoes at the top of the bank above the lane, she walked down to the highroad and turned south, crossing the creek where it came out of the Bodine farm. The large yellow house was very still, on fire with moonlight. She had not been to Rushfield along this way, but she knew that the road would take her there without any turnings. The roadbed was rough and stony with deep uneven ruts, but since she could hear her footfalls echoing
against the hill on the right she decided to take off her shoes and carry them so that her footsteps would fall noiselessly. Soon the Bodine land lay behind her and she passed into a strange country, the road winding unevenly among the hills. When she heard a buggy approaching she ran to the hedgerow and lay in the shadow of the roadside growth. A feel of last year was in the road and in the moonlight. All the wagons of last year’s travel might be just around some curve, her father’s wagon in a fence corner or in some roadside waste place. She might be out searching for firewood for the supper fire or out looking for a stray colt. She noted pieces of wood, good burning pieces, as she passed, and she felt a sharp impulse to gather them. An owl sang in a tree by a farm gate, his notes coming in a slow trill. After she left the owl she heard some boys approaching, playing along the road and throwing walnuts about. She grew weary waiting for them to pass, for they move forward very slowly. They sang out in unharmonious chords and one mimicked the owl in derision.

  ‘Shut up there, Edd. You’ll wake up Old Man Brother Hep Bodine. He needs his rest,’ another said.

  Finally they were gone and she crawled out of her hiding place and went slowly on. She could hear the boys screaming higher up around the curve and she knew that they were screaming at the echoes. She remembered running sounds like singing, like tinkling water rippling over creek stones, like pretty bells ringing brightly in little towns on Sunday morning, and she walked faster, for she remembered Tessie. Up in the Bluegrass of the state all summer, she had been, but now she would be going back down again. Where had Tessie been? She pushed her mind hard into the shadows, into the dark of what she did not know. Where had Tessie been? Tessie! Where had she been the day the cabin floor caught fire? Now she sat on a stone to think of that. A carriage full of voices was approaching, men and women singing, the parts sweetly blended. When she heard them coming near she climbed a wire fence and hid among low weeds in a pasture.