‘Let me make you acquainted with Jonas Prather,’ she said.
‘Howdy do. I’m right glad to know you.’
‘Let me make you acquainted with Eli Prather.’
They shook her hand. After she had been introduced to everyone Jonas asked her to dance and then she stood in the long line with the others singing
Susie says she loves him
A long summer day…
When their turn came with Jonas she went down the lines, she turning all the men while he turned the girls. After a while names became permanently attached to figures and faces. The boy with the little beady eyes was Eli Prather, cousin to Jonas, and the fat girl was Rosie O’Shay.
‘Eli talks to Rosie,’ Jonas said to her in a low tone. Talks to Rosie, talks – she knew what he meant.
The lovers would slap each other on the back, going out onto the porch in a romp every little while. ‘Say, you can stay in here and kiss. You don’t have to be a-goen out in the cold. Might as well,’ some voice called out.
The girl with the white stockings was Sallie Lou Brown and her fellow was Tim McNeal. Sallie Lou was very quick with her white stockings that twinkled in and out of her dress as she danced, and her green flowered dress made her look very slim up and down. Rosie’s dress was dark and her shoes were old and scabbed, but she had a good time, and Ellen minded her own broken shoes much less. The Turpin girls had on dim cotton dresses of no colour at all, and some of the young men had no neckties. A feeling of intimacy with the place had come to Ellen and this helped her to move lightly in the dance-games. She knew the fireplace with the broken dog iron and she knew the knot-holes in the floor by the door and the window where the water bucket stood. Mr Wheatley, Dorine’s father, took off his shoes and walked about the house in his stockings. They were of grey wool and they wrinkled about the ankles just as Ellen knew. Voices grew familiar as recognised from the other room, and gestures and looks came back again and again to this one and that. All were weary of dancing, and they gathered about the fire in the larger room, jostling one another on the wide stone hearth, their voices flowing fast, running out from the high warmth of their blood
‘Durned if here ain’t a louse,’ one said.
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Keep hit to yourself, hit’s your’n.’
‘Well it is one, now.’
‘Well kill hit then.’
‘Hit’s a tater bug.’
‘Hit’s a gnat or a flea, maybe.’
‘Flea your hind leg! Hit’s a body louse.’
‘Step on it with your foot.’
‘What was it, Dorine?’
‘It was a spider, Mammy.’
‘Call hit a spider for manners!’
They were sitting on chairs and benches and on the floor, drinking a hot drink made of eggs and milk, a custard, from cups and mugs. There were small round cakes. ‘There’s plenty of spoons for everybody to have one,’ Mrs Wheatley said. She was eager for everyone to like the custard. They romped over the food, pulling at arms and legs, pinching flesh. They did like the custard and each one tried to say how much he liked it until Eli outspoke all the rest.
‘Gee durn! I wish I had a stream of this-here stuff a-runnen through me all the time.’
Eli closed his eyes to feel the stream he had pictured and everybody laughed, feeling it likewise. Elmer slapped Ellen on the back in his happiness and she was glad again that she was there. Mr Wheatley sang a bit of a verse:
The Mammoth Cave, oh, what a spot!
In summer cold, in winter hot!
‘Eli and Rosie, now that’s a match,’ Erastus said. ‘I seen the minute they commenced to spark each other.’
‘Eli and Rosie, they already promised to name their first after me,’ Tim said.
‘You go on!’ Rosie said. She was taking her cup for more custard.
‘Already promised. Sure. Tim T. Prather. I can see him now.’
‘A lousy brat, hit’ll be. No help to hit. Tim T. Prather! God knows!’
‘A-squallen and a-puken. I can see hit myself. Timothy T. Prather. Look at Rosie blush.’
‘You go on!’ Rosie said.
Mr Wheatley sang again, his refrain ‘Black cat kicked out the yellow cat’s eye…’
‘That-there yeller cat was a tom cat. I see two cats once out behind the barn,’ Ras said.
‘Shut up, Ras,’ Elmer said. ‘Where you been brought up?’
‘Well, I know cats, now. That-there black cat, she was a puss cat and that-there yeller he was a tom. Black, he lost an eye.’
Tim McNeal held a mug of custard over Eli Prather’s head, spilling a little.
‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’
‘Quit, I already been bapsoused, soused, I say.’
‘I saw you when you was pulled up outen the water. You looked like a drowned rat.’
‘Washed your sins away, didn’t you, Eli? The creek was muddied all that next day. I went by and I seen what was left back in Dover Creek.’
‘Preacher said baptisen wouldn’t do me e’er bit of good. Said they’d have to take a scrub brush.’
‘Saw old Sallie Lou a-cryen the night she joined.’
Whoop law, Lizie poor gal,
Whoop law, Lizie Jane,
Whoop law, Lizie poor li’l gal,
She died carryen that ball and chain.
‘Saw old Sallie Lou a-cryen.’
‘Old Sallie Lou was a-mournen for her sins. I see her on the mourners’ bench that night.’
‘Home! Who said home? Home’s a fool beside this-here place. Strike her up again with a tune, Mr Jim, and let’s dance another round.’
They were going home, everyone leaving at one time, with loud goodbyes for Dorine and her mother and father flung back from the road. There were many goodbyes and parting messages.
‘Go through Wakefield’s, Jim, you and Maggie and Ras, and take Ellen home,’ Mrs Wheatley called from the house door.
Tim McNeal and Sallie Lou rode away together, driving a wild little half-broken horse that went jumping off in the crisp air. Mr Jim had a lantern to peer out the ruts of the road, and near him walked Erastus and Maggie and Jonas. Effie Turpin walked behind him to borrow of his light, and Ellen moved along among them but she thought nothing of herself. They were five shapes lying beyond herself, herself forgotten, five shapes, one of them carrying a light, a deep voice, a high voice, and muffled words, now reached up and now bent down in sweet arcs, in high bridges suddenly flung across chasms of thought, in little down-drooping sayings, low and final. All of them were beautiful to her in their closeness, their offered friendship. She walked home in silence, forgetting to speak. They were tired after the long merry evening, and their weariness made them speak gently.
‘Hit’s a mild winter for sure,’ a voice said.
‘It sure is.’
‘I look for a heap of sickness along February.’
‘And the old a-dyen off.’
‘Oh, that’s what I’m a-thinken.’
‘I tell you what I’ve seen in my time. I’ve seen a winter so mild the grass was a-growen and the birds a-singen right along from sunup to sundown.’
‘It’s a dove though really tells when spring’s come.’
They walked quietly on, their feet making uneven rhythms on the road. ‘It’s a dove though really tells when spring’s come’ lingered on as tone refalling on Ellen’s ears, ‘It’s a dove though really tells,’ a phrase from some playing instrument. They passed under low trees for a space and then came out onto an open stretch of road.
‘I vow there’s a heap of stars out tonight.’
‘And them that’s out is a long way off.’
‘How far is it to a star? How far now do you reckon it is to that yon one in the row off north there?’
‘Hit’s a far piece, a right far piece.’
‘It’s a million times as far as from here to the north pole and back, they say.’
‘Now, no!’
‘You can’t think hit. You can’t get your mind on hit, someways you can’t.’
‘You can’t get your mind to think on it.’
‘Ah, gee! ain’t there a heap of ’em!’
‘There’s more every way you look. There might maybe be a million and I’d never know hit.’
‘And they’re up there night in and night out, year in and year out, and how many times do we ever take notice to it?’
‘I heared tell about a man once that followed studyen the stars all his life.’
‘That’s something to do now, if a man had time.’
‘That’s hit, if a man had time.’
Five shapes were thumping the dry road with their feet, stumbling a little, five abreast now and now drifting into forms like those the stars made in the sky. It was here that she felt them become six, herself making part of the forms, herself merged richly with the design.
‘I studied a heap about the stars, since you named it, in my own mind I have. Now I wonder what they’re made outen.’
‘And what they’re for, nohow.’
‘Ah, God Almighty, ain’t we little things a-goen around.’
‘Ah, God Almighty, we are now and that’s a fact.’
‘But of a morning, when you go out to feed and water, how often do you ever remember the stars you saw last night?’
‘I heared about a man once that followed nothing else but to study the stars his whole enduren life.’
They stopped at a small white gate beyond a leafless cherry thicket.
‘Goodnight, Ellen.’
‘Goodnight, Jonas.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Jim.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The bright-faced little cow bore her calf in March, at the end of a damp snowy week. The heifer was pale brown with darker shadings about the feet and muzzle. The two beasts stood by the gate one morning when Ellen looked out from the upper window onto the dull brown hills that were spotted over with clumps of soft snow. The muddy road and the sop near the pond seemed very black beside the dots of white and splotches of creamy foam on the landscape, and the colour of the cow and the calf stood out brightly. The cow cried now and then with a low rumble or a questioning bleat, very soft and very patient. Ellen put on her clothes quickly, watching the calf and the cow from the window and smiling because the calf was little and tender and appealing. The cow was asking for food and Ellen knew that it was herself that was being petitioned, and the thought, meeting her at the stair, filled her with a slow misery, that a being depended on her, begging for life with slow patience and a low rumbled cry that ran along the ground. She felt very tall and useless, thin and tall and helpless, as she walked across the lower room.
‘I might be the cow’s mother, or more, for the way she asks,’ she said. She poured meal and bran into a large pail and made water ready for the mash. ‘I might be like what the farmers keep a-wanten in long dry spells when they say, “If it would only rain!…” Or like what we mean in a cold time when we say, “Oh, if it would only get a little warmer, or nohow if the wind would only lay!”’
After she had fed the mash she took the cow and calf to the barn and asked Ben for a stall to stable them for the day. Five other calves were born to the herd that month. The wheat fields were green and they caught yellow lights out of the March sun when it shone. Winds blew cold from the west. New lambs ran about in MacMurtrie’s pasture, little shapes of fleece on dark legs, Miss Cassie MacMurtrie’s flock. In the Wakefield pens eleven pigs were littered, and then five more, all fresh and clean, lying against the great brown wrinkled mothers. Ellen helped Ben make a hot slop for the sows, carrying pails of it up the pasture hill to the pens behind the mule barn. Her head was tied in an old black head shawl and her feet were in large high overshoes. A faded brown coat, marked by sun and rain and wind, flapped loosely about her. Blown by the wind, the colour of the earth, standing on the rails of the pigpen high above the great sows – the dispensing spirit of the swine had risen out of the brown wallow.
‘A hog is one thing, just one, like I said a Sunday to Elmer,’ she said when she turned back from the pen, ‘and that one thing it points out at his nose. His back points. His nose points at the air, a-waiten to hear something and to smell and to see.’
Nellie had told her that she might have a new light coloured dress, ‘You must have a light coloured dress for summer.’ Ellen came down from the pens smiling, for Jonas had laughed when he had heard her tell Elmer about a hog. Sundays were bright days. Then the whole troop of them, Dorine, Rosie, Elmer, Jonas, Sebe, Eli, all would come stamping into the little porch, all talking at once and laughing. ‘We came to get Ellen. We aim to go a-walken to the top of MacMurtrie’s old hill.’ She could have a pink dress or blue, whichever she pleased.
She piled more stones on the plant bed hill and dragged brush to the new clearing. The wild plum thickets burst into white flowers and the cherry boughs shook on the cherry tree, twisted in the late March gales. The peach orchard on Gowan’s hill came into blossom. Horse colts and mule colts stood stiffly about the barns, long-legged and innocent, conceited and suspicious. Three more calves came to the herd. Ellen found one of the fine Jersey cows strayed into the hill field, a little premature calf lying under her side. The calf was too weak to stand on its feet and Ellen held it up so that it could nurse milk from the mother. Then she carried it to the barn in her arms and made it a bed of fresh straw to lie in. Several times during the day she went to the barn and held the calf to the mother until it was able to stand on its feet. The story of the little calf went over the farm, for the cow mother had come to the herd with blue ribbons on her horns.
She could have a pink dress, or a blue one, or white, and perhaps she would have a hat with flowers, and these pleasures, anticipated, gave grace to all her thought. The egg money would buy for her. She turned away from the milk can where she had poured her pail, turning back to another set of udders. Mr Al was coming down the cowpen smiling at her.
‘You could have that-there heifer down at your house for your own cow when she grows up. I give her to you.’
‘You give her to me for good, to keep?’ She was in a tremble.
‘Sure. She’s your cow. Your’n. You saved me my little thoroughbred. That-there heifer down in your yard, she’s your’n. Your cow.’
Ellen was out much in the changing weather – sun, rain, wind, sleet, sun, wind. The gales whipped her garments and bent her skirts in changing curves and lines. Clean, quick weathers, friendly and hearty and bold, swept over the farm hills, following her down into hollows and up onto slopes, along the fencerows and up into wooded crests. The weather, with its winds, snatched at her hair and tore at her garments; it wet her face with its rain and laid wet fingers on her arms and shoulders, or warm amorous hands on her back and loins. Dorine brought flowers into the house and set them in jars of water before the windows, brought dogwood blossoms or lilacs or violets gathered from the rise above the marsh. Flowers on the hillside and then flowers in the house; Ellen was glad that she knew of this; she had never seen flowers in the house before. A redbud tree came into deep red blossoms back of the old abandoned stable, fading slowly day by day to pink, and MacMurtrie’s bees were humming over it. The wind was new albeit it was the same that had blown before the time of man came to the hillside. From MacMurtrie’s pasture would come the baaing of lambs, and all about from farm to farm were the soft young litters of pigs, the stiff colts, the calves brown or white, the whimsical adult mules, aloof and apart, despising the young, and the animal mothers of beasts, meek and unconscious out in the weather, offering suck. Ellen brought a branch of thorn blossom into the house and put it in a glass jar on the shelf above the fireplace, smiling a little for she was remembering Dorine’s words, Dorine’s laugh, Rosie’s words, Rosie’s quick smiles and little skipping steps, Jonas’s words, and Elmer’s, and Mr Townley’s quick music. Rosie was
always giving things, bringing presents. ‘Here’s a little mess of teacakes for your mammy,’ or ‘I brought a little example of the sugar bread I made,’ and she would hand forward a little package as she said it. Sometimes when Jonas or Elmer passed along the farm road they would shout to her as she worked in the garden or mended the fence or cut the stovewood for the dinner fire, ‘Hi there, Elleen!’ or ‘Think hit’ll snow, Elleen!’ They had made her name like Dorine’s, gathering her in with Dorine in the sounding of the name. Sebe Townley often came, leaning on the fence in the dusk while she milked the cow.
‘Ploughed all day, a-pushen that-there durned mule of old man Beam’s along. I vum, I’d soon put harness on myself as worry along with that lazy mule, always a-looken for a place to stop and rest in. I bet I cussed that-there blamed mule five hundred times if I cussed once today.’ He would lean against the gate post to retell his grudge.
Ellen milked, training the stream into her cup with a proud free hand, her head high and free. She withdrew from Sebe even while she smiled at his story of the indolent mule, hating his way and his look. She felt homely and degraded when she was with him for he enkindled nothing within her and thus gave her no beauty. From moment to moment she rejected him. ‘His ears are a sight too big,’ she was thinking, she always thought. ‘If I had ears like his’n I’d tie a rag around my head at night, just to train my ears in.’ Then her pity would begin, ‘But he’s right nice though, all tired out and nobody to talk to all day. Fellows like to tell about their troubles. He’s right nice.’ Her thought would float away from him to herself and sink under her pleasure in her own being, in her hand running free with the stream of milk.
‘I allow to take a farm next year, to rent a place,’ he said. ‘I can get some of the Gowan land or maybe I’d rather have a patch of the Dorsey bottom. If prices hold up I think I might maybe be ready to pay on a place year after next. I allow to have a place of my own.’
The Time of Man Page 11
