The Time of Man

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  ‘It makes a fair sound,’ she said.

  There was a smell of pigs about in the weeds where she lay. A little pig-house stood out sharply in the moonlight on the upper slope of the enclosure and from somewhere off in the weeds came the sound of a sow’s deep breath. Sweet voices, men and women, sang in the night, with the irregular bent of the horses’ hoofs walking through the rhythms:

  Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming…

  The sound went on up the hill, four voices blended, or five perhaps, the horses taking their time at the road. ‘Sycamores’ kept in her thought, tone at first, spreading out two ways and gathering back into unison. ‘Men and women have pretty singing,’ she thought. ‘I wish I could sing like that.’ She tried to sing a chord but only her own voice came, a weak voice after the chorus lately there. Far up the hill she heard the carriage stop and she knew that the voices were singing to the echo. The night brought sublimated tones across the interlying space, thin planes of sound spreading through trees and rocks. She stood beside a white stone, a large white stone lying blank in the moonlight, and tried again to make a chord with her throat, but only a dull small tone came. Why could she not sing a full wide singing, she thought as she tried the word ‘sycamores’ over and over.

  After that the road swept upward and outward to the west, running unmarked and white between bald fields and then dipping down suddenly to a small runlet, now dry. The dip and the culvert at the bottom, and the upward curve beyond, lost their moonlight and lay dim in a white noon sun, hot beetles ticking in the weeds and the wilted July grass, down below the Knobs in the cave country. A buggy came by in the noon sunlight, a man and a woman in it, the woman’s white summer dress almost like a mirror in the sun. The woman was weeping when they passed. ‘Not once but ten times,’ the man said. ‘Not once but ten times,’ a man’s voice was saying, roughly, accusingly. ‘Not once but ten times’ – her feet marched to the uneven rhythm of the saying as she climbed the rough road in shadow.

  ‘It’s a long way down to that-there place, and the Knobs are a jolty way to go,’ she said. ‘Not once but ten times! I wish I had a blue hat with a big white ostrich plume a-flyen for myself. Me a-sitten up in a buggy with a big white plume on my hat and white slippers on my feet.’ She was marching steadily ahead now on a long level stretch. ‘A dog barks curious,’ she said again, ‘curious now. He can go two ways at once, a yelp out and a growl down under. A growl goes on down, under the bark. A dog knows as soon as a body sets a foot on the road. But I can tell whe’r it’s a big dog or a little by the sort of bark he lets out. A house back in a bunch of trees is a pretty sight now, for certain.’

  A little church was set back among beech trees, the red bricks holding their colour in the spaces where the moonlight spread through the open boughs. Behind the church a gay little graveyard twinkled in the light, its gay white stones and blossoming flowers as happy as a flower bed out in the sun. The windows of the church were dark and there was no house near, and Ellen decided to rest awhile in the recess of the doorway. She lay on the floor of the vestibule where a smell of dusty boots arose from the boards. She put on her shoes and stockings to warm her feet, and presently she knew that she had been sleeping long, for the moon had set and the land seemed very dark. The road was grey-brown in the shadows and dull grey in the open; beyond lay blackness in the fields. A short distance from the church she hid close to a gate while two horsemen passed. They stopped to drink from a bottle and one of the horses knew of her hiding for it nickered uneasily.

  ‘Glory to God, I feel like hell!’ one of the men declaimed slowly, gesturing in a deep passion of joy and sorrow undefined.

  They whipped their horses and rode away quickly. Ellen walked fast after that, giving her attention to her journey and fearing that she had wasted time. But when the hills unfolded, curve on curve, up and down, past black nothingness, past white-fenced yards, past white barns, past black nothingness again, her steps lagged and she grew tired. Two miles or more beyond the church she came to an iron bridge over a little river. The road lay along a high curving embankment, and so she saw the bridge before she reached it. The iron frame hung between the banks of trees, a black spider web crisscrossing in the air. It was somehow beautiful, the dark bridge hanging between the dark trees, and she walked around the curve of the road and entered the bridge with awe in her mind, her mind so heavy with wonder that her feet dragged and little prickers of pain pushed in upon her face and chest. The water lay below, a dull silver black, and there were stars in it. ‘Oh, I didn’t know this-here would be!’ she said.

  She stood on the bridge high above the water and watched the stars above and below. There were frogs and crickets singing, and katydids crying their flat notes. The black shadows of the black trees pushed into the water, overlapping. She stood very still at the rail of the bridge, scarcely breathing, leaning lightly on the wooden structure. Her own want was undefined, lying out among the dark trees and their dark images, and she reached for it with a great wish that shook her small body. After a while she whispered a little, brokenly, almost without breath, but the words were Tessie’s words, borrowed now because her own words were stricken.

  ‘Such a leetle house is all I want, no matter how leetle… I’d make it fair some way or how with things set about proper, or with vines and trees and flowerpots.’

  She sat on the floor of the bridge, looking north down the stream, wondering why the town did not begin to appear against the sky and fearing, presently, that she had missed her way. It seemed a very long while since she had lain on the floor of the church, which now seemed far back on the road; it seemed far to the moonlight and far to the place where the dog had barked. The drinking men were far back in time. She lay on the floor of the bridge, close to the edge, and it seemed that she lay in an endless night between two sets of stars. Then she cried a little for her limbs were very cold, and after a while she forgot even the cold. There were streaks of dawn in the sky when she awakened and a twilight had come to take the place of the black nothingness and the dimly outlined shadows. A large white house stood on the tree-shaded hill before the bridge. A man walking beside the house peered down at her and she jumped up quickly and started off along the road, skipping with light steps, for the way curved up under dense trees. The people of the morning began to appear; a man came out of a farm gate riding a harnessed horse and leading another. When she was exhausted from skipping, she sat by the side of the road to catch her breath, and while she sat a negro woman in an old buggy came up from the way of the bridge and a ride was offered. The woman was going to town to wash clothes all day, she said. When Ellen left the buggy at a gate, she came to a little whitewashed cabin that sat on the roadside and here she had a drink of water at a pump in the yard.

  ‘Help yourself. Take all you want!’ the man said. He was milking a cow by the house door.

  Down in the town she sat a long while on a curb by a church, resting and trying to feel out the ways of the place. Negro women came there with bundles of clothes tied up in sheets. They would say to each other in a way of greeting: ‘Powerful big county court today!’

  Ellen felt estranged to all the people about and even to herself. An unutterable awe of all places swept through her, a fear of trees and stones, and she shrank even from the roadway of the street which lay out dusty before her. Familiar itself became unfamiliar, and a glance down at her own hands where she saw accustomed lines and folds of skin brought bewilderment. She sat for an hour. She tried to seem unconscious of the glances which the negro women cast upon her. She tried to think of some place in which she would prefer to be, but all places were alike abhorred. She stared down at a tuft of sourgrass growing in the gutter at her feet. Suddenly out of the chaos in her being there came a hunger, a quick craving for food to eat. Food. Her mouth wanted it. Bread. Bacon fried and laid on bread. Bread sweetened in grease. If she had a pone she would not even be looking at her hands, would not even be seeing the stones of the road or the gutt
er, not in such a place as this. Suddenly it came to her that she was going to walk away from the curb before the church, that she had risen and was walking off past a yellow negress and past three white bundles of clothes. She went up the street down which she had come, and after a little she knew that she was going to ask for food at some door. She went far up the street looking at house after house before she decided upon a place to ask, a white house with vines on the porch set back among elm trees. A tinkle of piano playing came out of the house, curves of music running through the air. When she walked up onto the porch a fear of doorways, of wide sills and glass panes and doorbell fixtures, came upon her. A rug on the porch filled her with terror under which lay a joy. She scarcely dared knock on the smooth doorframe and her knock fell faint and meek. She asked her wish in a voice that was low and full of anguish. The woman was kind and she asked again.

  ‘Do you-all know any gypsies a-campen out any the roads?’

  ‘No. Are you lost from your folks?’

  Ellen thought a moment, putting ideas together and separating them in her mind.

  ‘I’m a-looken for somebody I know,’ she said. ‘Just a-looken.’

  The woman gave her buttered bread and meat and these she hid under her coat until she was sitting again on the curb before the church when she ate them with all the reserve she could control. After that she walked down the street toward the centre of the town and there she found many people who looked like the people of her world. No one minded her or noticed her old dress or the coat now hanging on her arm. Many of the people must be richer than herself, she thought, for they had things to sell in baskets and things in buckets – eggs, butter, sorghum molasses. A few of them, she supposed, must be very rich, those riding high-stepping horses or driving in high traps. These went along the roadway with puckered brows, holding tight bits, and they seemed to be worried for fear they might drive over some of the other kind, but those with this worry were a very few. A man began to sell cattle in the square, crying in a loud jargon. The people walked about in the street, ignoring the pavements and the crossings; the order of the town fell down before the way of the country. Ellen stood by the fence that surrounded the courthouse, laying her finger along the wrought-iron spikes and looking at the mouldy walls where the red bricks sank away into shadows. The white stone wall of the jail showed at one side, and in this wall there were little long windows with one iron bar dividing them up and down. A man was standing under one of the windows talking to a voice that came through the iron bar. The courthouse bell rang almost merrily, and lawyers with papers came out of stairways. A man carrying a banner was ringing a bell, and the sheep were crying. ‘Vote for John Moran for Sheriff’ were the words on the banner, but later there came another banner saying, ‘Burley Growers Join the Pool’. Act fitted into act and turned upon a word; the whole was a drama already well rehearsed; a man leaned out from an upper window just as a cow bawled sharply, and a little boy ran across the square just as an old negro man led a mule away from the watering tub. A man stood in the door of the courthouse and chanted in a loud voice a chant which came to Ellen thus:

  O yes! O yes!

  The Honourable Judge

  …

  Is now sitting

  …

  Come all ye…

  And you shall be heard!

  By mid-morning vehicles could scarcely pass through the throng in the street. Ellen asked her question often. An old man dropped a bag of apples and one rolled down at her feet. She took it up and handed it to him gravely, eager to take part in the play.

  ‘It rolled outen the poke,’ she said.

  ‘You can keep it, sis.’

  ‘Do you know of any campers out any the roads?’

  ‘Not out my way.’

  Once through an opening in the crowd she saw Mr Hep Bodine in his Sunday clothes, and she turned around quickly and went another way. Up by a feed store she met a woman dressed much as she was dressed. She carried bunches of coarse lace under her arm.

  ‘Do you-all know any folks about a-swappen critters?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘He is a-traden some. Go down that a way.’

  Ellen found the place where the men were selling horses, in an alley behind an old hotel. She looked into the crowd eagerly for Jock, but he was not there. Men were riding the horses up and down, tired hacks, bony underfed nags, the kind Ellen knew best. Farmers and traders were bargaining, betting, cursing, laughing.

  ‘Even swap and I’ll give you a drink to boot.’

  ‘I’ll give you nine dollars and seventy-five cents for that-there old mare and that’s all I’ll give, every dum cent.’

  Ellen touched a man’s arm and asked, holding his coat sleeve: ‘Do you know a man by the name of Jock West? Do you know Jock West?’

  The man shook his head and walked away. The woman with the lace came to the alley and held a short conference with the man. When they had finished speaking and she had turned aside, Ellen stood in her way.

  ‘Are you lost from your folks?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes ma’am. Tessie is my folks.’ A pain pushed at her breath and made it quick in her mouth mingling with her words. The woman was smiling with the flesh beside her nose and that across her checks, and her nose sniffed at the air. Her lip drew up from her teeth and took a feeble part in the smile.

  ‘Well I do know, lost now!’

  ‘Do you know a woman named Tessie that goes the roads with a man named Jock West? Tessie West, married to Jock West? As you go along the road you might maybe see a sight of Tessie sometime. Jock, he’s a great one to swap the critters. Spick span wagon as good as new. Would you tell Tessie for me where I am? Maybe she could write me a letter. Tessie can write. He would be a-goen south by now.’

  ‘We are a-maken hit towards Parksville where we aim to stay a spell. But we might…’

  ‘If you did happen to run across…’

  ‘Well I do know! Lost!’ The woman was faintly excited under her dreariness and faintly pleased.

  ‘If you did happen to run across Tessie would you tell her?’

  ‘I’d be right glad to favour you,’ she said. ‘We might run onto your folks now. For a fact we might.’

  ‘Tell her Ellen is at a farm out a piece from Rushfield, on Mr Hep Bodine’s place, if you see Tessie.’

  ‘I couldn’t gorrentee to remember hit unlessen you write it down. Dave, there, he can read hit.’

  They borrowed a pencil from a man and Ellen wrote on a piece of paper they picked up from the ground:

  Ellen Chesser

  Rushfield, Ky.

  Mr Hep Bodine’s mail box

  Ellen stood staring after the woman when she walked away from the alley, seeing her shoulders rise and fall unevenly, stiff, green-drab shoulders that sank into the crowd of the men. The paper was in the pocket of the waist; Ellen had seen fingers push it in beside a little dull pocketbook and a piece of orange peel and a bit of a bright rag. It was gone now, down the long alley past the men and the horses. One sob shook her throat and then peace came after the hours of strain. She had sent a message to Tessie. She had sent word. Turning partly about she saw her father waiting for her, beckoning with a stiff, quick finger, ‘You come here!’

  They rode home on the rear seat of Mr Bodine’s buggy.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was another year. Late May sounds and smells spread over the ploughed field, the tobacco field of the season before, ready again for plants. A cool rain had fallen and dense clouds obscured the blue of the sky. Ellen stopped in the row and wound her braid more securely around her head, the blunt end of it just reaching to the nape of her neck. When she had pinned the encircling crown flat with a wire hairpin she drew on the wide straw hat, which fitted snugly over the braid and kept its place. She must wear the hat and keep her skin bleached; her mother said so and Artie Pinkston confirmed the suggestion. ‘A gal is a long sight prettier if she bleaches.’ Now an uneasiness troubled her, dragging at her elbows as she adjusted the hair and
the hat. Henry was in a quarrel with Mr Bodine. Her father’s voice of yesterday called out sharply in her mind. Usually meek and afraid he had been driven by his anger. ‘If you don’t like the way and how of my farmen you can get somebody else.’ She walked slowly over the field, dropping the little plants along the rows, with Henry and a man named Goodin following. She felt impatient at the slow progress and kept ahead of the men, her tall slim body moving evenly down row and row, flashing ahead and waiting. Her bare feet were gleaming white in the mud and her skirt hung near her ankles. Her mother’s voice came back to her from the fireside talk of the night before, a wailing voice, troubled and angry. ‘Twenty-four dollars is no sight of money when it’s all you got and when there’s three in family…’ They no longer had the wagon and they could not ride away. Her uneasiness beset her while she waited at the row-ends. Mr Bodine was bringing the plants to the field in baskets, riding his large fine horse to the distant plant bed. He spoke little to Henry and not at all to her, but set each basket down with a brisk attention to the matter. She knew the thought that lay back in his mind. If Henry Chesser left him he could hire Goodin.

  In the mid-morning a tall young man came along the fencerow, passing up from the creek. He stood under the locust tree and watched the labour or he talked with Mr Bodine. ‘Finished yesterday,’ he said. ‘Only a patch this time.’ Ellen knew the young man’s name.

  ‘Joe Trent, he is,’ Artie Pinkston had said, standing in the lane, ‘Old Man Sam Trent’s boy. He goes off somewheres to study now and then, but his pap brought him home here a while back to help put in the crops. They say he does a sight of work when he sets to. They say he’s a fine young man, friendly and easy to know, easy to get acquainted with a body. Just like his pappy before him. They say his pap come to this country withouten a cent, a cropper. And now look, he owns a right good farm. Some can make whilst some they don’t seem to get on so well. Old Man Trent has got a heap to be proud on. They say Joe’s got not one lazy bone in his body. He’s a worker, they say.’