The bright cold of November was crisp over the winter herbs and the fallen leaves, making shaggy the hides of the beasts when the hairs snarled and pied to exclude the frost of the night. A great wind had blown all the night of the dance, the out-reachings of a cyclone which had passed over the farms to the south. Rumours had come of trees uprooted, and a small elm on MacMurtrie’s high ridge had been twisted out of the earth by the storm. Ellen had passed her hands over the roots of the tree and knew how they had once sprangled through the solid earth, wondering at the deep hole ploughed out by the tree as it twisted itself free in the gale. Now the knotted roots stood up in the air and she could pass her hand along the disordered snags. She could perceive that there had been a great force in the storm but she could never know it or feel it with her fingers or taste it or see it now that it was gone. She had run to MacMurtrie’s hill in the early morning after the dance, summoned by Henry’s words, ‘A tree tore up plumb by the roots.’ Jonas was ploughing now for the autumn wheat on Dorsey’s land, going up and down the furrows in the bright hazy air. Ellen knew the day he began the field and she knew the dark even spread of colour and light as the ploughed rectangles grew day by day and consumed the areas of withered stubble, although Dorsey’s farm was several miles away, for she knew what field he overturned and the nature of the ploughing.
All day her mind clung about his furrows or she hovered over his team and his plough in her thought, her hand on the plough handle or on the plough line, not merged with his but accompanying. At the dance he had sat among the men, and in the days that followed he had stayed apart. ‘Jonas has got religion,’ Elmer had said, ‘Jonas has settled down.’ Dorine said that he must be sick. ‘He looks dauncy,’ she said, but Ellen knew this was not true for she knew how steadily his plough went through the stubble, having reports from this one and that. Or once, riding to the store at the crossing of the roads she met Jonas as he brought his team through a gate. Then he looked at her, biting at his lips, but after a moment he was glad that he saw her again. He would have something to tell her, he said. He would come when he had time; he would come the first chance he had. He closed the gate and climbed onto one of the horses to ride over the field to his furrow, but once, before she went beyond the road’s turning, he waved his hand in the old salute. He would come. He would tell her whatever it was that troubled him. She went forward through the week placidly, slowly, watching for Saturday when she thought that he might be expected. It was Monday when he had spoken to her at the gate. She would wait. It would be some small thing that he had to tell. Then they would walk to Rosie’s and get black walnuts for the winter, or they would plan a surprise party for Dorine. She thought that he had changed in his nature and perhaps he would not want to go to parties hereafter. He had become matured and settled, then. She would do as he liked to do, sit quietly apart with him if he so desired.
But he came one afternoon in the midst of the week, Thursday, and sat with her on the cabin porch while his plough was being mended at the shop. One of the plough horses was tied to the gate post for more than an hour while he sat in the falling cold.
‘That-there feisty bay mare jumped straight upwards and broke the tongue outen the plough. But Sandy says he can fix it against work time tomorrow. That-there bay fixed it so I wouldn’t have to work after two o’clock today. She fixed me a holiday when she jumped. I’ve been a no-account cuss, nohow. You don’t know, Elleen, how triflen I been,’ he said, ‘in my time. Throwen my wages here and yon. I could ’a’ owned a small-sized farm if I had ’a’ saved up. I’m satisfied I could. Not had the sense of a pecker-wood.’
‘Yes, I reckon you been right o’nary,’ she mocked at him.
‘I want to tell you all about me.’ She saw him glance at her sidewise, uneasily. ‘I ain’t never told you about Jule Nestor.’
‘You don’t need to tell me if it’s a trouble to you.’
‘I ain’t never told you about Jule Nestor. Down on the river away on past the reach. Wife of a man named Bill Nestor. Lived with some people named Jones, dirty trash, stinken house. I ain’t never told you about Jule.’
‘It likely ain’t anything harmful.’
‘I used to go there last winter,’ he said.
‘Was it so wrong to go there, Jonas?’
‘I been a sinful man, Elleen, low-down. My own mammy would cry if she knowed.’
His elbows were on his knees, his face in his hands now. Irregular tremors passed over his limbs and shook unevenly at his fingers that beat upon his temples. She turned away from him and looked off toward the barns and the west hills, unprepared for grief, looking over the barns toward the sky and the spreading haze, wondering why he was so distraught that he could scarcely speak. His trouble followed her, however, coming out of his shaking voice, the words low-spoken and tight as if they were set into his throat with a hard will.
‘I used to go there last winter and winter afore last, away in the night, knocken on the door. The Jones old woman, she’d say, “Jule’s up the steps. You can go up for yourself.”’
She was still looking toward the barns and the cattle pens, but pain had gathered within her, gathered from his pain. The fact that he valued what he told highly as an evil and shuddered from the telling, and that he felt that it concerned her and that she must know, this troubled and pleased her in one confused pang. He was quiet for a while, but when he spoke his voice crumbled away, insufficient, falling to a hard whisper.
‘I reckon you don’t know what Jule was, what kind she was.’
Her pain had spread over her now, knocking at her breast and drawing at her throat. Her eyes left the sky and turned to the ground, to the withered grass of the yard and the hard earth of the path.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Every time I went I taken a dollar.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Sometimes old Jones, he’d say, “Jule’s got company. I reckon you can’t go up tonight.”’
The sun slanted long rays through the air, rays which cut through the hard bare trees and printed dim shadows of boughs on the ground, the light lying widely dispersed over the spent bushes and debased grass, over the burnt chicory, frost-eaten and done. She had thought that Jonas was for her and that he was something to her, and Dorine had so thought, and Elmer and Rosie. She had been too bold within herself, she reflected. She was remembering slowly, the memory lying in a cumbersome, shapeless mass under her pain and under her abashed need. She was remembering Dorine’s first party. He had told her the names of all the people there and had told her that she would like them when she knew them. Her wish for Jonas was crowded back into a minute point and under this plodded or spread the matter of a vast shapeless memory which turned about in a movement to a summary but came to nothing, confused and blurred anew by the fact that he now wanted her to know, that he felt that his story concerned her.
‘Not but twice have I been there since I knowed you, Elleen, and them times I came out and sat alongside the creek all night and I says to myself, “Jonas Prather, you’re a stinken, o’nary fool, a low-down damned-to-the-devil white-trash.” I wouldn’t name all I called myself as I sit out alongside the creek all night.’
‘Was that a long spell ago, Jonas?’
‘’Twas last summer, the last time I see Jule. After ploughen time in the corn, I recollect now, after wheat harvest.’
Ellen pulled her coat around her and drew her thinly dressed knees under its folds. The chill was spreading up from the hollow with the approach of evening. The cows were waiting at the barn and after a little she would have to go to shell the corn for the fattening turkeys. He was speaking again, asking her if she would hear the rest, for there was more to tell. After they had walked up Dorsey’s hill, she reflected, and after he had kissed her in the wheat harvest. She stared at the ground beyond the steps, but his side, blue work clothes and crooked plough shoes, reached into the edge of her vision, one long broad hand laid out restlessly on his knee, a twitching hand that moved in
and out of her sight. He wanted to tell her and the rest was harder to tell, harder to bear, and suddenly she wanted him to find relief and ease. She herself or what she felt about the wheat harvest did not matter if he found ease.
She turned toward him a little and glanced at his face, and he began to speak again, quietly, approaching cautiously to some point he held in his mind, circling widely about his story as if to remove himself from it for a little space. Jule Nestor’s husband was Bill Nestor, a low-down tramp, gone awhile and then back, a sort of low gambler who worked with loaded dice and hung around the negroes on their pay days. You might see him any court day in town. He did not care what Jule did if she made a little money and gave him his share, even helped her. They were gone away now, over toward the knobs, had cleared out when the law was after Bill for some meanness. They were a dirty set, white-trash if ever there was any such on the earth. Jule was dirty, inside and out, worse inside, he thought. A dirty talker. But they were gone now, over toward the knobs, cleared out overnight one time during the summer. It was said Bill robbed a man on the road, held up a man travelling along the pike, an old man, feeble and sick. Bill handled him rough and hurt the old man and left him almost dead on the side of the road. Then the law got on Bill’s track and he cleared out overnight.
Jonas told his story sparingly, deferring its point. Eli had been over into the knobs beyond the river looking for work for next year, not that there would be any farm work in the knobs, but his errand to see a man took him there. He had run on the Nesters, had found them in a shanty by the side of a sawmill. Bill and Jule were hanging around the sawmill hands, Bill with his dice. Eli had seen them, Bill and Jule both, had even stopped to get a piece of string to mend his bridle.
‘His mare shied at the sawmill and broke her bridle, split her throat latch.’
His voice was dry and husky as he told of the broken throat latch, drawing near his story which now could no longer wait. Eli had thought he would stop in the shanty and borrow a piece of twine from the people that lived there, and there were Bill and Jule inside eating a sup of something. Jule was as dirty as ever and dirtier, offering dirty talk. There was a baby, just born a few days back, a girl baby. Eli said it was his child, Jonas’s; it looked like him; it had the same eyes and the same kind of face and the same dark hair.
‘Eli said it looked like Mammy, my mammy.’
They looked at the thought, sitting together in quiet, or they turned the thought about with a few brief words or a question. Jonas was still now, his hands holding his bowed head or folded together in a strong calm grasp. He had told no one but her, he said, and Eli would not tell.
Over and over Ellen’s mind reverted to the little baby in Jule Nestor’s house, a child that looked like Jonas, nursing Jule Nestor’s dirty milk and lying in Jule Nestor’s foul bed. The baby, a month old now, would be lying, little and weak, crying for food, being fed, crying for Jule, pushing its head into Jule’s breast, closing its eyes to sleep.
‘I been in torment ever since I knowed,’ he said. ‘I can’t think it out. Seems like it oughtn’t to be. My little gal that looks like my own mammy. And Eli, he’s my cousin, our own kin.’
The child that lay in Jule Nestor’s bed could not be denied a place in her thought now. A great emptiness spread over the farm and over her past, as if life itself had emptied its inner portion and had given birth to some remote matter. Jonas was troubled and his thought went far from her and had another centre, gathering around his hurt. He wanted to be beside her but he wanted her there to share his pain, and she hated his pain for a moment. A part of him was gone and in the loss she was confused in a crossing of demands, denials, and finalities. Something was lost to her. She thought continually of the child in Jule’s bed, its mouth pushed into Jule’s breast.
‘I been in torment,’ Jonas said.
‘You knowed two weeks back?’
‘Yes. Eli, he told me two weeks ago. I thought I’d tell you, Elleen. I was in torment a week and then I says I’d tell Elleen. I reckon you think I’m right o’nary.’
‘I think it’s a… pity,’ she said.
‘I thought you might want me to go away far off, outen your sight.’
‘No.’
‘I thought you might so want.’
‘Do you want to go off, outen my sight?’
‘God knows I do not. I want to stay close by if it ain’t a trouble to you.’
‘You don’t need to go.’
‘I’d like to see you every day. I’d like to be beside you a little every day. For a while. I’d like to now, if it ain’t a trouble to you.’
‘You could come if you’re of a mind to.’
‘It was in my mind corn-cutten time and after, all along through the hay, to want to ask you to marry.’
The sun slanted its last long rays through the farm, falling away weakly to its early setting, and the air grew more chilly. Her loss lay as a pain along her empty arms, but beside her Jonas still sat, speaking half haltingly from time to time, recalling her to the trend of his troubled thought.
‘I been in torment,’ he said. ‘Maybe you could tell me what to do.’
‘I’d have to study it out. I can’t now see there’s e’er thing to do.’
‘Whatever you say I’ll do, no matter what ’tis.’
‘I can’t see e’er thing to do now. Maybe when I study it over a spell.’
‘But nohow if you don’t tell me to go outen your sight.’
‘I wouldn’t tell you to go outen my sight.’
‘But we wouldn’t be the same together as we used to be.’
‘Not everybit the same, Jonas, dances and parties and so much to laugh at.’
‘Seems as if I couldn’t dance any more. Seems like I’d turn to something hard like iron if I tried.’
‘Maybe we wouldn’t dance. Not for a spell nohow.’
‘I been in torment, downright hell. At night afore I could sleep. Then I says, “I’ll tell Eileen nohow. Maybe she’ll tell me to go off, but nohow I’ll tell her.”’
‘No matter how much I study it over I can’t see e’er thing to do.’
‘But if I could be beside you a little spell tomorrow and day after.
‘At sundown you could come.’
She arose from the step and went down to the path where she stood until he came to stand beside her. She asked him if he would like to go with her to feed the great white turkeys, for they were a sight to see, like great birds, all their feathers in a flutter. At the pens he kept beside her, even following her closely when she went into the barn on some errand. There was a moment when he leaned over the drinking pans to pour the water out, when she hated his pain and his shame, and her hate spread to his limbs and his back, his bent head and reaching hands. She talked about the white turkeys and about the price they would bring Miss Tod, or she had him lift one to guess its weight. Or standing at the bars beside the milking lot, when he came forward down the calf pen, when the turkeys were housed in the barn and the hush of their feathers was settling over the dusk, she gathered Jonas with her eyes and pitied him, and pitied herself and all men and women, and took his hand and walked back across the pasture.
There was nothing they could do, they decided, and they would wait. The winter would come. In the next day her thought of him was hushed and tender, muffled under her emotion, her ways were gentle and her voice low. Another day she was strong and cool; she would ask Jonas to give her a lasting promise, but when she spoke of it he was so full of lowly grief, saying that he would pledge her anything she asked with his right hand as forfeit, that she did not name any demands. He came every day until the cold fell. They would sit a little apart and they would talk of common things.
CHAPTER FIVE
The cold settled down over the farms in November, freezing the turf, so that the cows lingered about the feeding racks all day and were seldom seen off on the barren pasture. Ellen helped strip the tobacco, working in the dim stripping room where Henry kept a fitful f
ire in the little stove. The December cold was bitter with snow and sleet lying over the ground. Chill air gathered in the shady places and was never dispelled, and no green thing was left growing in the bare spots from which the snow had blown in its drifting. Cold came into the upper room where Ellen slept, a room which was now a mere place where her cot bed stood. The box where her clothing lay seemed very far from the bed; the distances in the little room were magnified by the crystal of the cold. The summer dress with its blue flowers was withered and blighted, crumbled flat, lying shrivelled and folded in the box under the petticoats. When she told Nellie how the dress had withered, she was assured that she might have another when warm weather came, ‘And anyhow it’ll freshen up a right smart against spring comes and you wash and iron it.’ The flowered dress with its sweet odours, then, would blossom again with the spring. Jonas stripped tobacco at Squire Dorsey’s place, four miles away, but he sometimes came on Sunday afternoon, or Ellen would meet him at Dorine’s home and they would walk back through the cold of the twilight, hurrying to be out of the frost, their thin coats buttoned close and their fingers numb. Ellen cut a strip from her shawl to make a muffler for him, winding it about his throat that had been bare to the wind and making him say that he would wear it whenever he went out.
The Time of Man Page 14
