The Time of Man

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  But often the storm raged, sleet or wind or heavy snow, and Jonas did not come for several weeks at a time. The coldest winter in years, men said, the coldest in the time of man. An epidemic spread through the valley and over the hill farms, and the Turpins, ill of it, were scarcely seen all through the winter. Dorine coughed and grew wistful and thin and all the O’Shays, the Townleys, and the Prathers were afflicted, one after another, and Henry sat by the fire in misery for many days. Life waited for spring and Ellen waited. If Jonas came on Sunday afternoon he would take his horse to the barn and ask Ben for a stall or a bit of room, but often he walked the three miles from Dorsey’s and left his little mare in the barn all day to save her from the heavy roads. Ellen slept long, drugged by the cold, and in the moonlight the frost glittered on the window and the frost of her breath gathered on the outer quilt. The world was hard and impenetrable; the frost stood between herself and Jonas, the cold a barrier, and between herself and Dorine was the frost and the ice; between them also was Elmer. Between herself and Elmer was Dorine and also the frost, the latter barrier magnifying the first to a great and permanent size. She housed her yearling in one of the barns and saw that its food was ample. The tobacco, now neatly rolled into hands, was piled onto a wagon in a smooth high four-cornered mass and covered with an old carpet. Henry and John Bradshaw left at four in the morning on the day the crop was marketed, the wheels of the laden wagon crying out in a thin high tinkle on the frozen road. There were no gatherings in the cabins for fuel was scarce. When Erastus O’Shay went to see Maggie Turpin he carried a sack of wood to keep the fire all evening in the front room of the cabin.

  The hens moped all day in their coops if the day were stormy and the yard wind-driven, or some of them, frightened by the unknown cold, crept under the house where their feet were frozen. The work on the farm was halted after the tobacco was sold. Ellen did not go to the milking pens now for Mr Wakefield had told her she need not come until the cold weather passed. She helped Nellie to thaw the frozen foods and to prepare the cabin against the inroads of the frost. They found heavy sacks to lay against the crevices under the doors and at night they hung thick comforters over the ill-fitted windows. They clung close to the hearth when each task was done, returning again and again to warm their numb fingers. A visitor was doubly welcome because there was little news by the fireside. Life waited. If Jonas came he sat close to the fire, drowsed by the warmth after the long walk in the cold. He would sometimes whisper a little with Ellen when she sat beside him. He had left Dorsey’s in January and was staying at his father’s house. He whispered news of his mother and his little sisters; his little sister, the least one, was better of the misery she had had in her ear; his mother was making him a thick warm quilt for his bed. He would sit beside Ellen for a while and then leave to be well set upon the cold way before night fell.

  In February the bitterness went out of the cold, the sweet acrid sting, and a hard steady frost was left which still held the ground in a firm crust. The milder weather was even yet the cold of any other winter, bitter to endure. People passed along the pike now with their teams, but none ever went along the pasture road but those of the farm, for near the end of February Scott MacMurtrie closed the road which ran across his land, building a high strong fence across the way at the top of the lane that gave into the glen. Nellie was lonely for the sight of the passing horses and wagons and fretted often at the stillness of the farm.

  One Sunday in February Ellen went to the O’Shay cabin with Jonas, walking by the footpath that avoided MacMurtrie’s land, a path that had been broken through the snow after the old road was forbidden. Eli was working now beyond the river, making fence; he would marry Rosie soon and take her beyond the river to live. In the large cabin room a half dozen men of the river glen were sitting or standing, among them old Dan O’Shay and Nannie, his wife. Jonas joined this group but Ellen went to the inner room where Rosie was helping her mother put the dishes away. Rosie talked of going beyond the river to live. Her mother had given her some feathers and had bought her a carpet from Mrs Turpin’s loom. ‘Try on my new hat,’ Rosie said, and Ellen went to the larger room and put on the hat before the glass that hung above the chest of drawers. The hat was bright and new, a token of spring in its warmth and brightness. The men about the fire talked with low muttering, complaining at the closing of the road. The hat was fresh and fragrant, a promise of Rosie’s wedding, but the low muttering of the men came into her pleasure in the hat, a faint menace that lay under the air, so that her joy in the hat was magnified as it stood out brightly before their threatenings.

  From the kitchen came the sounds of heavy china disposed hastily, dull clacks of plates and cups. In the mirror she saw her face under the new hat and she wondered at the fresh new shape it brought to her chin and to her mouth. MacMurtrie must open the road, the men said; he would have to let them out, and there was an argument as to the law. ‘Go up to him and say, by God, open up that road,’ a voice broke in a low snarl. ‘Say open up, by God, or we’ll open for you. Go as a mob and say…’ Nannie’s voice spoke then, deeply admonishing, asking for peace, for time, bidding them wait, and then an impatient cry from some younger O’Shay, deep and demanding. Ellen took off the hat and looked at it closely, at its little bits of red velvet twilled into a strange flower, pleasant odours coming out of the velvet and out of the new clean felt. A flower stood on the turned-up brim close to her hair. When she put the hat on again Jonas smiled across toward her from his seat by the chimney but the mutterings went on, now low and complaining, now breaking into angry snarls and threats and after a little growing low and cunning. Jonas had seen her in the hat and he had smiled to see her bright skin under the red bits of the winter flower. She remembered such a flower from some summer, but not in Miss Tod’s garden. Such a flower grew beside a path somewhere, among blue flowers and yellow ones, a low flower, not a pansy and not a marigold. She thought that the flower she remembered was not red perhaps, but alike to this in shape while this had the red of some deep red pansy in Miss Tod’s border.

  Jonas smiled across at her in the way of the summer that was past and her need for him grew with the deep glow of the flower and with the soft rich mesh of the velvet petals. ‘Let Cassie MacMurtrie do hit,’ a voice was muttering. ‘Let Cassie.’ It came to her then, looking into the heart of the blossom as she held the hat in her hand, that it could only be a short while now until Miss Cassie would know the thing she herself knew, for everybody now seemed to know of Scott and Amanda Cain. ‘Let Cassie.’ They had only to wait, a voice said. ‘Bide your time and don’t say e’er word more about that-there road. I give Scott a week now and that’s all.’ Another voice, high-pitched and angered, foretelling, ‘I know Cassie Beal. I went to school along with her down on the creek.’ Another, low and more final, ‘I’d like to see Scott when Cassie gets done. There won’t be enough of Scott MacMurtrie left to wad a gun with… Like throwen a lame rabbit in amongst a pack of fifty starved hound dogs.’ ‘Bide your time. Old Scott, if there’s e’er rag of him left, will clear out from here in less time than a week now.’ ‘Let Cass MacMurtrie do hit for us. I know Cassie Beal. She’s made outen fire and hell. Bide your time.’

  Presently Rosie came and tried on the hat to show Ellen how it became herself, her generous round face beaming with its yielding, ‘It’s prettier on Ellen, now, for a fact it is.’ By and by Jonas came away from the men to talk with them, the glow of the flower lingering in Ellen’s breast, and Rosie took them to the kitchen and gave them each a dish of sweetened cherries she had preserved the spring before and gave them cake.

  Later, going home, they climbed the steps onto the little porch and longed audibly for spring. ‘It looks like winter just can’t break,’ Jonas said, and hand in hand they went in to the hearth fire. Then Nellie asked Jonas to stay and eat his supper and this pleased Ellen very much. When she went up to the cowpens to help milk the cows he went too, carrying her pail and milking one of her cows while she milked the oth
er. He chatted a little with John Bradshaw and Ben, who accepted his presence without comment, and all was sweetly familiar and casual. The lowing of the cows came to Ellen as something familiar and beseeching, and it met a willingness and tender pity in her being. In willingness and tender pity she poured the last of the milk into the great can and passed with Jonas through the gate and across the pasture, his free hand reaching for her hand and she, consenting, walked beside him but neither spoke on the way. The cows were quiet, but their remembered lowing continued, beseeching. The thumping of their feet on the hard turf merged with her rising tenderness, and the latching of the gate was a renewed token of it and their steps on the porch, their long caress in the dark – small fulfilment of her infinite affirmation.

  They sat by the fire during the evening eating the sugar bread that Nellie had baked and talking of all the incidents of the farms, of the closed fence. They sat, Ellen at the corner in the little chair, then Nellie in her accustomed place and then Henry, looking at the flame, dazed by the flame. Jonas sat at the other end of the hearth, his feet on the stones, or he pounded hickory nuts on the dog iron with a loose stone, breaking away the shell with careless hands and tossing the largest kernels across to Ellen or giving an entire cracked nut to Henry or Nellie. There was no lamp but the light of the freshly built fire was yellow and bright, or when the fire fell away the pink glow survived and coloured their faces and their persons but left the back of the room darkened. When they had sat their fill in the warm glow and when they fell into reminiscent sadness or speculation, Ellen or Henry would toss on more wood from the pile and after the fire had died away more dully as it searched the new wood, it leaped into blaze again, and once with the leaping Henry sang a song, shuffling his feet on the boards of the floor.

  At one sinking of the fire Nellie withdrew and moved about in the back of the room or in the kitchen. Then she took off a little of her clothing and lay down in the bed, falling asleep as the pink light faded from her forehead. Ellen moved into Nellie’s chair and thus they sat, Henry reminiscent and outward-flowing, warming to his own past as he searched his mind for it.

  ‘And so you been plumb to Tennessee and back,’ Jonas said. ‘Well I vum!’

  ‘But my pap he never went out of sight or hearen of Luckett’s Branch, never in his whole lifetime.’

  ‘You was a rover, for a fact now.’

  ‘My pap, he said his pap was named Edd Chesser and said the name was by rights Cheshire away back, afore his time. My grandpap was a master hand for honey bees. I’ll tell you what he could do. He could walk right into a swarm and never get a sign of a sting. Twenty stands he had if he had one. I recollect once when I was a tad how I got stung. I recollect as well as if it was today. We used to take bread and honey to school to eat at big recess for our school dinner. I recollect once when I opened up my dinner bucket the whole place was lined with these-here little brown ants, all gaumed into the dinner.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Ellen asked. ‘How’d you get shed of them?’

  ‘I reckon I didn’t eat my dinner that-there day. I never could abide to have ants in my victuals. A man over by Coulter’s sawmill said once, “Law, ants is such clean little things, I never take notice to an ant.” A woman over at grandpap’s said once she never ate blackberry jam because it was made in flytime. Said if you ever took notice to it blackberry jam was about half flies cooked up and most people never knowed the difference. The taste was about the same, she said. She said she never ate jam on that account.’

  ‘What did she say peach jam was half? Wasps, I reckon, yellow jackets,’ Jonas said.

  ‘I recollect when I was a youngone,’ Henry resumed his memory. ‘We used to live in a house over against a knob and once the chimney smoked all one winter so bad we looked black as buzzards and Mammy was drove half outen her mind a-tryen to tidy things. That spring when Pap was ploughen he turned up a skull bone. Sure thing, he did, a small-like skull as if it was a woman or a child. Out in the middle of a field. He brought it to the house but Mammy she wouldn’t let it rest till she got it outen the house, but my brother Newt, he stood it agin the door to make a door prop. Then Pap threw it out to please Mammy, and it laid out behind the henhouse all summer upside down, and once when it rained I see the chickens drink water outen it. Then Mammy she told Pap he better bury it and Newt buried it when he went to dig a post hole one time. It was a small-like skull and might be a woman or a youngone half growed up, and then after a spell we heared that a man killed his boy in the house away back, man drunk and killed his own boy about twelve year old and they buried him out in the field. War time, it was. Said there was blood on the floor up in the loft room where the boy died, and sure enough there was, when you looked sharp, a brown spot on the floor but you couldn’t say on oath it was blood.’

  ‘Why don’t you go on to bed,’ Nellie said, waking out of her first sleep. ‘Nobody wants to listen to your long-winded blab all night. Can’t you-all get shed of him, Ellen?’

  ‘I recollect I was ten year old and next year they all put at Preacher Wilder to teach a school and he gave in. I recollect the first day. Preacher Wilder’s shoes hurt and he taught all day in his sock feet and I recollect the holes in the heels of his socks. No new sight to anybody but it made the big gals laugh to see Preacher Wilder’s naked hide shine outen his sock holes. Next year Preacher Wilder’s wife died and he married Farney O’Bryan and went off, but he was in nobody’s debt though. Then we didn’t have a school for a right smart while and when we did I never went. Stayed at home to help Pap. It was when I was sixteen that Tom Begley stabbed Shine Mather, stabbed him clean through the guts and laid him out as bloody as a hog. Then the mob came and hung Tom to a white oak down by the creek along past our house and me and Puppy and Joe Deats, we took Tom down and laid him out for the funeral. Quarrel over a shotgun, I recollect.’

  ‘Did Shine Mather think it was his shotgun?’ Ellen asked. Henry’s words burst loud on her ears, reverberating against her sense, but she attended to nothing he said and leaned dejectedly in her small stiff chair, her shoulders back. ‘Did Shine claim the shotgun?’

  ‘It was a trade between a shotgun and a filly, but I disremember how it was. Tom, he owned the shotgun, I reckon, and he traded for the filly. Seems like it was the filly that was lied about, but I disremember. Seems like the filly had a lame shoulder and seems like Shine knowed it but traded when the filly was all rested up and the lame didn’t show. That’s how it seems. Nohow Shine greened Tom outen a good shotgun.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to bed,’ Nellie said, waking again, ‘and quit your eternal blab? Nobody wants to listen to blabber all night.’

  ‘Next year or year after old Uncle Billy Rudd went insane and used to carry all the dinner pots outen the house when his old woman was cooken dinner and set everything over against the hencoops. Once he carried the cookstove out and set it out behind the ash hopper, fire in it, they said, the whole enduren time. Poor old Aunt Plez had a sight of trouble outen her husband. They had, a long while afore that, a couple of brats that died just about the time they was up any size and could ’a’ been any help. One died with lockjaw and the least one died with fits. They never seemed bright, their children never did. Billy and Plez took a right smart risk when they married, folks always said. Said the day they was wedded the floor to the house where they stood up fell in and let the whole party down amongst the timbers, floor fell plumb in. Folks said it was a bad token and advised against it but the preacher was already there and the couple wouldn’t hear to any let-up in the ceremony. Said the preacher was halfway through when the floor fell, splintered, and everybody tilted into the rubbish under the house. Well, they hauled out the bride and groom and advised against any further hitch-up, but Aunt Plez and Uncle Billy had set their heads to it and the folks went out in the yard and finished up under a tree, some of the women so shook up they cried like a funeral and hardly knowed what was up. It was a token I reckon. Everybody always said it was a token. People take a
heap of risks, from first to last, in a lifetime. I knowed Uncle Billy in his old age an’ he was queer in his ways, even before he went plumb outen his head and commenced to torment Aunt Plez about the dinnerpots and skillets. But that wasn’t what I set out to tell. Once Uncle Billy…’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Nellie said, waking a little.

  ‘Once Uncle Billy took it into his mind to roof the house, but the house had a good tight roof all the time, but Uncle Billy took it into his mind he’d put on a new roof. Took it in head to take the roof offen the henhouse and put it on the house and swap back the roof offen the house onto the henhouse. Well, he set to early one Tuesday afore day to rip the shingles offen the house. I recollect Pap sent me over there to borrow a whet rock offen Aunt Plez and there was Uncle Billy on top the house and the shingles a-fallen like rain and Uncle Billy gay as a songbird. I recollect his red face to this day. Aunt Plez was worried half outen her mind and said what they do if it come on to rain afore night, which it did, and worried about Uncle Billy up on the roof, his legs wobbly ever since he got insane in his mind. Aunt Plez said to me she was beside herself with worry and asked would I go get somebody to try to get Uncle Billy down offen the roof afore he fell down and in a manner killed himself. I studied out that it would take five men at least and so I went and got Pappy and some more and we got four plough lines to hoist Uncle Bill down. He took half the roof offen the house afore we got everything ready, and a heap of trouble it was in the end because Uncle Billy didn’t come gentle at first and Wilks Sanders had to ease him down on the roof and tie his hands and feet. Did you ever hear tell of how strong Wilks Sanders was in his time?’

  ‘I never heared of him,’ Jonas said. ‘He was a strong man, I reckon.’