He had come to the creek one April day when Ellen had gone there to get brush. He had seemed very delicate in his suit of clothes and his brown shoes that were that were narrow and thin, sometimes even gay and pleading. The first day he had talked to her about spring, about the wood, about anything, and his eyes had been bright. She had felt a new kind of smile come to her mouth and a new look come to her eyes. He had come there another day, asking absent-minded questions. She had felt very sad that day. Now when a shower came she stood with her father and Goodin under a thorn tree on the side of the field opposite the locust. The fine mist fell with a whispered sound and the robins set up their songs afresh. Joe Trent went at the first lapse in the rain, going toward the Bodine house, walking carefully to keep his brown shoes out of the wet grass. Ellen watched him go, feeling strange before her altered self. She rubbed the mud from her bare feet, dragging her ankles against the wet herbs. She bent her hat low against her cheeks to hide her strange eyes, and she heard fearfully her father’s words spoken to Goodin.
‘Hep Bodine thinks he knows all there is about farmen. Well, it’s his farm…’
That night she went to bed soon after supper, afraid of the talk below and dreading morning.
‘You’ll have us set out on the pike, that’s what you will with your eternal faulten.’
‘Hep Bodine thinks he owns a man that works on his place. I won’t stand none of his jaw…’
‘You keep your mouth shut or he’ll hear you. You’re not so bold as you talk. I’m a-tellen you…’
‘If Hep Bodine thinks…’
‘Where’d you go if you got set out on the road?’
The voices fell away and Ellen sank lower into sleep, her thought running back into the day, into the tobacco field, up the fencerow and under the locust tree, across the field in quickly stolen looks. ‘He likes me even if I wear an o’nary kind of old dress and my old hat that’s all I’ve got,’ thought spread itself wide with words. ‘He might maybe be somebody I’d know all my life. The next time he might talk about cities with doors set in close by doors and people walken quick in streets. Or he might tell about some of the wonders of the world.’
She would remember his shining eyes all day, and the accompaniment of the memory spread a gentleness over the ugly doorway, over the ladder, over the rough floors. She often felt the smile come to her mouth, always when she remembered any of his phrases. She felt it while she carried the water or while she hoed in the garden, and it came back to her from under the clods. The tobacco field was planted now and the rainy season was over. She had planted beans in the garden and she hoed the patch of corn again and again when her father told her she must. It was toward evening when she went to the ravine for the firewood. One day in June Joe Trent came there again, passing up from the farmhouse with a sharpened scythe in his hand. He stood before her, looking at her, looking at her dark dress and at her stockings and shoes.
‘And so you say this is your axe,’ he said.
‘Yes sir, it’s mine. Pappy made it for me.’
‘And so your pappy made the axe.’ He rubbed his hand over the smooth steel. ‘He’s a wonder, your pap. What out of?’
‘He never made the blade. He made the handle outen hickory and wedged it in.’
‘Oh, I see. He didn’t make the axe. He made the handle and wedged it in.’ He held the axe in his hand turning it over and over. Suddenly she wanted to play. She had not played except with herself or with the colt in the pasture for more than a year. She dared not snatch the young man’s cap from his head; it was very new and clean, and sweet smells came out of it, new-cap smells. His soft collar was open at the throat, lying easily back, the blue faded a little, the shoulders of the shirt faded even more in the sun. She could have put her finger on the faintly blue threads, but she snatched the axe and ran across the creek, laughing.
‘I won’t run after you. What I want with you, Louse Patch!’ A strange voice ran over the creek stones, coming from the young man’s mouth.
‘Did you ever see in your time a fountain a-goen? They say that’s a pretty sight now.’ She felt diverted from her play but could not relinquish the curious hour at the point where it touched upon the world. ‘Have you ever been to London Town? Or to Mexico City or to the Tropic of Cancer? Do men really get sponges outen the sea, do you know? Did you ever go a-washen in the ocean?’
‘I saw you in the field with your white stockings on.’
‘How far would a body have to go now to get to the place in the world where it’s dark all winter?’
‘What would you say to taking a walk with me up to the thicket in the head of the valley?’
‘What’s “take a walk”?’
‘Any day you say, we’ll go.’
Sometimes his clothes were made of thin brown stuff with little flecks of amber hidden in the mesh, soft and cool. Another time the threads of blue lapped over each other in the fresh blue necktie, neatly and firmly set, little blue dots set over and over on the white surface of his shirt, unfaded and fair, small as blue dust sprinkled evenly over braided snow. Today the intimacy of the opened throat and of the grey clothes that were frayed at the trouser hem, of the fading blue, came to her as something she shared. He made his voice very low, ‘Any day you say.’
She dragged her bit of brush back to the woodpile and chopped it into fagots. She saw Mr Bodine stalking through the lower pasture, going up from the way of the cabin, and she carried the wood to the hearth in apprehension, looking fearfully at her mother’s face.
‘Mr Hep is a-looken for a heifer that’s astray. Did you see e’er one?’ Nellie asked.
‘Ne’er one did I see.’
Mr Bodine spying about in the dusk and losing a yearling, suspicious of them, it was an evil token. But Joe Trent’s eyes were bright, gathering brightness as she set out the plates for supper, as she wondered what would become of herself and her mother if Mr Bodine told them to go. She did not know how to dispossess them of their goods. She could carry the bedding but what would she do with the bed and how would they move the table and the kitchen safe, acquired after much labour and much waiting? The little bed in the loft became very dear to her, partaking of her self-love and anxiety and standing in need of defence. Joe Trent’s eyes were full of gentle looks, but they could draw down into little tubes of looks that went into her dress, under her skin, into her blood. They looked at her blood running under her skin. His bright gentle looks spread through the cabin, lying over all things she saw as she laid the bare table and drew the chairs in place. She could not separate three diffused images, the probing look that went into her flesh, that came flowing from narrowed eyes, the uneasy feel of the house when her mother dished up the food with quick, apprehensive gestures or thumped down a cup with hostile and awkward elbow movements, and the warmth of a smile bent upon her face and running with kindness in her blood. Her mind gave equal and diffused values to the voices within and without.
‘He must like me, even if my dress is old-styled and o’nary. He might be somebody I’d know all my whole enduren life.’
A quick flare of words. ‘What I want with you, Louse Patch?’ but she could not define the saying or set it apart from its tones and it fell back unheeded into nothingness.
She thought of a room where there would be fair colours and she felt herself to be stepping down hard white stairs, walking on wide stairs, a low wind fluttering her sleeve. An angry burst of tone came from near the fireplace.
‘Your pappy ought to come on now and eat his victuals while they’re hot.’
‘He might be a friend I’d know all my days. “We’ll take a walk,” he says. “Any day you say.”’ She saw little flecks of amber on brown threads of cloth, minutely seen.
‘Your pappy ought to come. What’s he a-loiteren for? In trouble I reckon…’
‘And so this is your axe.’ The sinking fire made a pink glow on the cups, three cups standing together on the table.
‘I don’t want you, Lousy Brat. I w
ouldn’t tech your lousy rags.’
Nellie lit the lamp with a small splint of wood which she held out to the dying fire. ‘We might as well get ready to move out. I’d lay my last quarter on it. A-stirren up Hep Bodine. Your pappy ought to come on.’
The outside became deeply blue after the lamp was lit, blue air seen through the glass of the window. ‘Somebody I’d know all my enduren life.’
‘And now he’s lost a yearlen calf…’ Nellie returned the supper to the hearth with angry comments. ‘We might as well move out now.’
The trees spread upward into the blue air and were lost, and far away some geese, disturbed, were crying, the tones coming as high thin music flaring upward into the dark. She would have something pink to wear, or fair blue, a bow or a ribbon somewhere on her body. Blue cloth could go trailing over wide stairs, down white steps… herself spreading and trailing through blue cloth, gentle and sweet-scented… all her enduring life…
Henry came, sullen and tired, bent from his week in the fields. They ate the food in silence, the only noise that of clicking knives and sweeping spoons.
The grass was high and full with seeds and the white clover was in bloom – late June. Ellen sat by the mouth of the lane watching in the dusk. In a little while she would go to bed, pulling her body lightly up the ladder with her arms. She liked to sit in the white clover by the road, away from the after-supper noises of the cabin, a white clover of thought playing over her mind and spreading a sweetness through her flesh, while another, less than thought, lapped folds of being around her. Gentle, inclusive folds of being lay across her shoulders, included her, covered her with vaporous arms, completed her and gathered her into an undefined sheath. She plucked a few clover blossoms and laid them on her skirt, placing them with care. Feeling could not take words, so melted in and merged it was with the flowers of the grass, but if words could have become grass in Ellen’s hand: ‘It’s pretty stuff, clover a-growen. And in myself I know I’m lovely. It’s unknowen how beautiful I am. I’m Ellen Chesser and I’m lovely.’
She heard wheels coming and she sprang to her feet, caught in a sudden whorl of nervousness. Joe Trent was coming in a buggy with Emphira Bodine, the farmer’s daughter, the horse ambling along under loosened reins. Ellen stood ready to speak, her head lifted, but Joe Trent looked back without a sign. He touched the horse lightly with the whip and said something further to Emphira:
‘Now I’ll tell you how it is. You take those business colleges…’
The buggy went on along the road, jolting easily over the stones, the sounds of the wheels growing each instant more flat and remote. Ellen could no longer hear the loose spoke rattle, and then the noises became one running sound that thinned away into the twilight as the vehicle rounded the curve of the road and was lost. She walked back to the cabin, her arms folded under her breast. She passed up the ladder lightly, as her custom, and retired to her bed in the last faint glow of the dusk. Little shivers of cold passed over her as she took off her clothing in the summer evening, and her hands were stiff and awkward as she pushed off her shoes. She heard a mockingbird singing in the bushes out toward the lane, singing a futile song which reiterated its uselessness and changed its hollow phrases from moment to moment. The sound fell flat upon a flat air. ‘That old mock-bird. I wish he’d shut up,’ she whispered.
If the song had sorrow or wistfulness in it, or any lightness or joy or form, these took place in some other medium than the world of that dusk. The shallow jargon beat upon her pained ears and made no tone. Behind the hard vibrations of this singing the evening seemed very still and very long. She heard the cattle come down to the creek to drink, heard them slopping in the water and pulling at the locust sprouts beyond the fence. The warmth of the bed shut around her and after a while the sounds of the night became remote in their setting of stillness. The well-being of sleep stole over her limbs and she could see white clovers in a pattern, designed against dark threads of cloth. ‘I’m lovely now,’ this well-being said. ‘It’s unknowen how lovely I am. It runs up through my sides and into my shoulders, warm, and ne’er thing else is any matter. I saw some mountains standen up in a dream, a dream that went down Tennessee. I will tell somebody what I saw, everything I saw. It’s unknowen how lovely I am, unknowen.’
She was in the ravine, far up past the third pool, to gather brush. Some men were working on a high slope, dragging out walnut stumps, their axes leaving the sound behind at each stroke. Their voices came down to her strange and thin. Mr Bodine was slowly clearing out the hillside, a little now and a little then, and after a while it would be a steep tobacco field. She saw someone moving among the brush on the slope opposite that on which the men were working, she saw clothing gleaming an instant in the sun and a form slipping back into the brush. It was Joe Trent keeping behind the redbud glade, and when he saw that she looked up he beckoned to her. He signalled many times but he was careful to keep behind the redbud clumps.
He would have on his Saturday clothes, she reflected, the blue shirt washed smooth and fine, spreading out in fair ways over his shoulders and wrinkling down to sweet smooth wrinkles by the sleeves. His straw hat would smell sweet, like varnish and like sweet chalk. His hands had little marks like tiny wells set close together behind the thumbs. His eyes would be bright and they would look at her and grow brighter. A voice said quickly, coming up as one motion from her deeper mind: ‘I saw your white all-overs the day you went washing in the creek.’
She could see the blue necktie as clearly as if it lay on the ground under her hand when she gathered the sticks. The threads of the silk lapped over and over like a woven basket, only infinitely fine, growing finer as she gazed. Perhaps he would not have his stockings on, and then there would be the skin of his ankles, or perhaps he would have on the blue overalls. The skin of his ankles was under her hands and under her eyes as she reached for the twigs, and his brown hair with its whorl at the crown, so lovely and uneven that she had wanted once to touch it her fingers and smooth it down. She shrank back from the lovely thought of his cheek and a quick voice spread across her confusion, ‘Lousy Brat! I’d be afraid to touch your lousy rags.’
Then she gave back the whole thought to her mind to play over. She shrank from nothing. Why not go? Soft white skin. Hands that were stronger than her own and softer to touch. Why not? Why was she always there? Nobody to see but Artie Pinkston and her youngones. Her blood leaped before her up the canyon.
But her feet kept among the littered grass and weeds and her hand outstretched for the cut fagots. The sticks were very clear and plain to see in the afternoon light. She gathered the last of the armful and went downstream slowly, the axe in her right hand, the wood piled on her left arm and shoulder.
When the walnut stumps were gone, hauled away to town in a wagon, the men no longer worked on the hillside. Ellen avoided going to the creek ravine although her mother demanded wood. She searched for burning pieces about the yard and the lower pasture, or, if none could be found here, she hid in the tall weeds beyond the garden patch and gave no heed to her mother’s calls.
‘That lazy triflen brat! I got no firewood!’
She would sit among the high growth, covered with shame, shame drawing downward in her face and weighing down her head. Joe Trent beckoning to her, hiding in the brush, waiting up in the ravine, passing up from Bodine’s with a tool; she never saw him closer. Nor did she ever speak of him to either of her parents. Her mind tossed up its sayings even while it denied her the solace of thought. ‘Where’d you go if you got set out on the pike?… Somebody to know all my enduren life…’ She pictured them out on the pike, herself and Henry and Nellie. They would walk away down the road, far, on and on, or they would sit by a creek to rest. They would sleep in the quilts and there would be something, perhaps, to eat. In two days they could be gone far, and she would be glad. But she was sitting in the tall weeds and they were there as before; Goodin was gone from the country and Hep Bodine, his stiff legs walking unevenly up and down his
hills, could not farm without Henry… ‘Somebody to know all my enduren life… There’s no knowen how lovely I am… How lovely… Lousy rags… I’d be afraid to touch… Take a walk… Any day you say…’
She discovered a way to bring down the wood and avoid the angers of her parents. She would go to the mouth of the lane and watch the road in the direction of the Bodine house, her body well hidden in the summer growth beside the fence. When she saw Trent go out in the buggy with Emphira she would run to the ravine and drag down wood all afternoon, and she contrived to keep the pile under the locust tree replenished in this way. The plan succeeded very well, and she followed it all summer, but she lost the shaded ravine and the upper creek as a pleasant place to go, and she bathed no more in the water. The white stones and the moss stones of the furthest creek became beautiful in memory. The name, Joe Trent, went out of her being slowly. For weeks the mention of it brought a first flush of warmth to her mind and a gentle flow of momentary joy to all her members. ‘Friend’ lay in thought with the word, ‘Somebody I might know all my life. A body to tell things to.’ But finally the chord was cut. By the time the tobacco was ripe the name no longer caught at her nerves when Artie Pinkston called it in her gossip.
‘Well, Joe Trent he’s gone back to his college. I see Emphira a-driven him to the train today.’
The first of January came with mild thawing weather after a season of freezing and snow. A sense of expectancy and tension lay over the cabin, a tension met by apathy. Henry was going to a new place, to the Al Wakefield farm in another end of the county. Ellen pushed into the new life that was coming to try to make pictures of it, but it was but vaguely seen as drawing back from her tense nerves. A man from Wakefield’s would come for them and their furniture, but the necessity of stirring, of going to a new place by physical efforts, stifled her. She glanced from time to time at her mother’s drawn face as they sat by the log fire during the winter morning. No one made any preparation for the departure; instead they sat close to the fireplace answering each other nervously.
The Time of Man Page 6
