There was something crooked about Jasper’s skin as it was set to the contour of his face, but he was in no way like Regina. When he came up out of the pasture and out of the curve of the road she would see his face and its heavy skin, unevenly traced and deeply seamed, darkly stained with years of sun and wind, heavy with work. As he came bending toward her she would see his face, but after he came she would no longer see; his serious talk of ploughing and seasons, of cures and signs and selling prices, and his suspicions and hates would surround him. She herself was a woman now, that she knew. She had seen her mouth that morning in the kitchen glass and again in the pool that lay at the foot of the quarry. Under his heavy skin with its uneven sewing and rugged marks of sun and wind, under his bent shoulders, he had been quietly bold, taking the field away from her with a few words and a smile, his hands strong on the hoe, the sinews working flat and strong, drawing directly, fast to their purpose. Some day Tarbell would look at Susie Whelen and he would see that her eyes were blue and bold and that she took the world easily, and that is what a man wants. Then he would give her the printed verses with the choicest sweets. Space between one and Susie Whelen melted down and away and she reached out all ways, her dark hair rolled up from her forehead. Jasper would be bound to look at Susie some time and then he would want her in his arms with her easy-going laugh and her careless curses. She herself, then, would hate Susie and she would watch her, and she would not trust the days or the accidents of the summer. She hated the house Susie lived in, back a little from the road with a few flowers struggling to bloom when the drouth had eased. A ragged shagbark tree grew across the road, in Susie’s sight day after day, and the pigs in the pen beside the barn walked in and out of the sun, the gate tied up with a string, a rosebush over against the garden; she would hate all of it.
Jasper was visible as a distant spot on the even green of the field. His hoe would be tearing away the weeds to make the soil fresh and light, and his lips would hang loose as he worked, relaxed to the toil, his back bent deeply to the straight of the hoe, the sweat running into the furrows of his uneven face. He was twenty-six years old. He gave her his money to hide away for him because she was near at hand and because he could trust her to be careful, but he would like Susie Whelen’s carelessness and her easy mouth. He knew the wonder of the light moon and how it drew the herbs and grains, and how the dark moon settled things back into the earth, and he knew the name of the morning star. She gathered the shelled peas into her apron and carried the hulls to the pen for the pigs, her mouth shut upon its determination and anxiety. She would take more care. She would watch for the huckster when he came and buy the best he had, a fan on a long chain, perhaps. The land was hard and rough and she must take what she could out of the bitter soil, and she bent to lift the heavy pig trough, a hollowed log, to turn it over and set it to rights, ready for the mash she would bring after a little. The pigs ate the pods hurriedly and when the last one was gone there was not one green thing left in the brown trampled dirt of the pen. When they had eaten the pods the swine went back to lie in the shade of the barn, lying long and narrow side by side on the dried wallow.
On Sunday she put on the blue dress and brushed the soil from her shoes, making them neatly black. In the dusk when Susie Whelen and the Donahues were gone she continued to sit in the porch before the house, Tarbell sitting near with his mouth harp. He had given her all the sweets with fringed papers and printed avowals inside and some of the candy she had eaten but some she had tossed carelessly to Susie or Regina. He played tune after tune on the mouth harp, shaking his spittle from it from time to time. His chair was tilted against the railing and he named each piece as he played it, gravely intent upon his rendering. ‘This-here piece is the “Arkansas Traveler”. Did you ever hear that on a French harp?’ His feet were set high on the rung of the chair and his small black moustache kept clear of the musical instrument with difficulty. ‘Did you like that-there piece?’ he asked when he had finished. ‘I recollect once I was on my way to Charlottetown and I met a man said he’d come from Tennessee. I recollect that man as well as if I see him today. I’m a master hand to recollect. He said down in Tennessee he knew a man had been all the way to Floridy and down there you sit under a orange palm same as you might sit under a peach tree here, and you’d reach up your hand and pluck a orange right without you’d bat your eye, he said. Would you like that-there, Honey? Think about that-there and tell me would you like it or not. This piece I recollect I learned from a blind negro down towards Campbellsville. It’s called Sourwood Mountain. Do you like it?’ He set upon the piece with vigour, closing his eyes to turn his vision inward upon the tune. Now and then a buggy would pass, clattering out of the hill road and falling softly away toward the south. ‘Wherever I happen on to be they always like my way with a harp,’ he said. He played a slow dirge that finally frayed out into stiff arpeggios. ‘Wherever I happen on to be they say, “Well, J. B., how’s the music?” But if Miss Ellen Chesser don’t like my music I’d throw this-here harp right over into the middle of Leo Whelen’s weed patch and forget I ever owned it. I’m a plumb fool about you. Before I forget it I better tell you, I’m a plumb fool about you. Tell me now, how do you like this-here song?’
Ellen’s chair was tilted back against the wall, her head against the white boards of the house, her dress, grown bluer in the dusk, turned to grey. The flavour of his travel and his carefree way emanated from his person and mingled with his music as he played tune after tune, “Black Joe”, “Rosie O’Grady”, “Nellie Was a Lady”, naming each one and asking for praise; or he fell away from his singing to tell some tale of wonder. ‘Just where the road curved up past a sawmill I met a man on his way to Adair County to bury his aunt and heir her money, on a high bay mare. Says I, “Do you know a man over in Adair owns a peach orchard half as big as the state of Kentucky?” I says. “Well,” I says, “I used to work right on that-there place, Gadley’s place, near Willett’s.” Well, he had to shake hands on it and said ain’t the world little after all, that place not three miles from his aunt’s property. Said old man Gadley was dead now and the peach orchard was all gone to rack and that was sad news to old J.B. because I’m partial to peaches. Did you get that point? As I came up from Greasy Creek once I met a parcel of travellers that owned a bear could read or tell fortunes – one, I forget which. Big brown bears and two little bears. They used to make good money on the bears before times got so hard. I recollect that bear had teeth long as my hand, and I recollect I wouldn’t sleep out that night although it was away after dark before I found a place to stay. I recollected them bears’ teeth. Say, while I don’t forget it I’m plumb a fool over you. Here’s a song gushes straight out of my heart.
Her cheek is like some bloomen red rose
All in the month of June;
Her voice is like some sweet instrument
That’s just been put in tune.
Straight out of my heart. Say, when I go I lay off to kiss you good night tonight and no harm done and ne’er a thing bound by it. That’s my aim when I go away. Her cheek is like some bloomen red rose. I aim to get a camera right off and then I’ll take your picture first thing. I owned a first-rate camera before now. I used to take tintypes and cabinets, both. I’ll tell you how I lost my camera; that’s a story to please you. I was away down towards the Big Fork and I took up with a machine agent, but he never would let on he knowed me when he came to a house. “You go here whilst I go there,” he’d whisper to me. He was afraid his trade would get ruined if he let on he went with a picture-taker, and I was afraid vicy versy, but we’d meet around the turn of the road and say, “Any good?” He’d let old J.B. ride along for miles in his sewen machine wagon. He had a fancy to me, I see that. Well, one time we came to a ford, as we supposed, and we drove out and by the time we knew what was what the water was up in the wagon bed and the old horse off his feet. Them machines was so heavy they made the wagon want to stay down and that’s how I lost my camera. I never laid eyes on t
hat machine agent again after I see him climb up on the opposite bank, but I heard it said that when the water subsided, flood water, it was, he got his machines off a sand bar. That’s how I lost my camera. Her cheek is like some bloomen red rose. And the horse, I’d hate to name what came to the horse, a big old roan. It was them heavy machines caused it and the old roan couldn’t seem to kick clear of the harness. Her cheek is like some bloomen red rose. I couldn’t name what happened to him. It’s not decent to name. Anyway that-there horse drowned as dead as a door nail, neck stretched out and swelled up as big as a wagon wheel around the middle. Flood water, it was. Her cheek is like some bloomen red rose. I’ll sing one more piece called “Just as the Sun Went Down”. You ought to hear the tenor on that. I got to sing the treble because I got nobody to chord in, but sometime I’ll show you how the tenor goes.’ He hitched his chair nearer and a little spasm passed over his shoulders. Some great star hung in the high point of the sky and the moon shone. Far away a lonely dog barked. Lonely crickets were crying in the grass beside the stones of the spring and the desolate voices of frogs cried. It seemed that a long while had passed as the moments moved from desolation to desolation.
She said that she would go in, that it was dark now, and she arose from her chair quickly. ‘I aim to do like I promised myself,’ he said, ‘and no harm done and ne’er a thing betokened,’ and standing in the moonlight she let him place his arm about her and kiss her many times. Then she went within the door although he called her to come back, and later she heard his step going the south way, beating unevenly on the road, passing on, pausing, returning and then going. She sat on the side of her cot, her mind pursuing some word that was unnamed and could not gather itself into form, the hands of her mind reaching and straining to shape the nebula. The steady flow of his talk still beat about her and warmed her body out of its loneliness. He was gone far on the road, past Wingate’s, past Stigall’s, on toward the place where he slept, and the uneven beat of his footfalls, stopping and going forward, melted into her own breathing when she lay to sleep, and into the picture of brightly sunlit field where the plough had lately rasped through the hard soil. Then a cry came from her lips and she was suddenly awake in the moonlight of the whitewashed room, raised to her elbow, hearing the word ring through the walls, hearing still the cry that had lifted her, even jerked her back into the moonlit night. The word of her outcry receded from her, going in waves of remembered sound, throbbing on her ears as she searched from wall to wall to find some real and present token of it. The word, ‘Jasper’, still throbbed in her own voice, still fitted itself into her throat, and beat at the stiff white walls.
Henry went to the field now, limping unevenly, but little able to work. Ellen stayed near him to help and often brought him water to drink when he was weary. He was bitter for the time he had lost and jealous for every plan that had passed from his hands, speaking shortly to Nellie or to Ellen, but to Kent he gave only courtesy because his indebtedbness to him was great. The tobacco was laid by now for the cutting, a scant crop. ‘A fool he is, to try to grow a crop there,’ one or two said. Ellen still took the burden of the farm.
The bell at St Lucy rang each summer morning shortly after dawn, sounding across the cool dew of the fields, itself cool and clear with repose, and then, as Regina said, the Brothers put on their white robes and walked into the church to pray, all chanting together. The morning star was great and bright, shining down in the east near the place where the sun would rise, sometimes seen as if it were a little moon, plainly crescented. Ellen arose one morning before the first red of the dawn to see to a turmoil among the hens. Hurrying out into the yard she found a skunk among the chicken coops trying to force a way to the chickens, a great clatter arising. Off in the east a brilliant star burned, delicately crescent-formed, the morning star. She thought that it would be necessary to nail the chicken boxes securely before another night and she waited about in the cool dawn to see that the beast did not return. The morning star, whatever its name might be called, hung with softening brilliance as the dawn grew, and she thought of the dark of the moon and of the autumnal equinox, that strange saying. It was hard to bring the autumnal equinox into the same thought with the morning star, the last seen clearly in the sky while the other was something to remember, the days and the nights of equal length and the summer passing. A deep voice held the saying, Kent’s voice as he sat beside the house door, ‘Autumnal equinox comes a Friday after next.’ A cool breeze sprang up from the low-lying space toward the corn field and a shiver passed over her body. A deep voice held the saying or spoke again out of the hill, rolling out a great blast of oaths, admonishing the mules, bearing down the ploughing team, getting the lazy mule along beside the tired old mother. The morning star stood high above the sunrise, pale now. The Brothers would put on their white robes and walk into the church in the morning quietness of the bell, in the fresh stillness of the new dawn, indifferent to the autumnal equinox and the days and nights grown even, and there would be no knowledge among them of the stubborn beasts upon which one cried with storms of words and oaths, and no knowledge of the crying hens, afraid of the skunk, of herself standing guard in the cool dawn. No knowledge of herself holding in mind a voice, ‘autumnal equinox’, ‘morning star’, and the great words rolled out upon the lagging beasts. The corn in the garden stood high and about it clung the beans, all inclined toward the wonder of the sun but belonging to their own hunger and to their labour in the furrows, all grown out of the soil and the rain and the seeds, but turned toward the wonder of the equinoxes, toward the light moon and toward the morning star.
Where the limestone came to an end the dolomite stones were hard like flint, the pebbles round and smooth. Sometimes these great stones were laid upon each other in even seams, and they stood, tall and brown, as cliffs topping the hills, the walls hanging straight downward, the stones great beyond all power of man to lift. Often as Ellen came and went among the hills the dignity of the great stones would pass into her being as she walked by them, and it added itself to her pride in being able to surmount them, to walk beyond them. Or, digging into the dust of the garden, bent over the herbs, she would remember the encroaching pebbles and flat rocks or the geese plucking at the thin grass. She would remember Regina’s step on the stony road and Bell’s two eggs in the tin cup. Two days after the skunk visited the chicken pens she worked in the garden toward the late afternoon, remembering the cedar shrubs that grew scantily over the slanting wastelands and pastures. The next year she would grow a large onion patch, she decided, and she rose from her hoe to look about on the garden, to scan its length, deciding then how great the onion bed should be. The huckster had told her that there was a good market for early onions, that he would buy all she could furnish. Into her decision about the onions came her dreaming half-knowledge, surging up from beneath, allied to the hoe in the clods, running with the slipping of the blade. Pius Donahue looked at her avidly with his watery eyes and Leona Hendrahan lay with Joe Lucas in a fence corner, it was said in whisper. The corn was scanty and thin and the tobacco stunted. If Jasper should look at Susie Whelen he would see that she had a kind of prettiness and he would want her in his house and in his arms. She would therefore hate Susie Whelen and she would hate the look of her eyes and the curves of her mouth, and hate the trees about her farm and the flowers in her yard. She would distrust her flowered dress and her bright pin on her bosom. The eggs in the basket were few and the nests, searched daily, were barren. Dreamily it came to her that she would take what there was out of the hard soil and out of the stones and she would have, in the end, something from the clattering rocks.
She dropped the hoe in the patch and went away across the two fields, set upon her path by her thought in the garden. She moved across the ground, more quick than any growing thing her feet passed or trampled, and when she had left the two fields behind she climbed the stony way beside the quarry cliff and went over the rim of the high pasture where her cow grazed. Jasper was at work in
Wingate’s field beyond the distant fence, and as she stood on the crest beside the cow, her hand along the animal’s shoulder, the land seemed to reach endlessly away, pasture and thin woodland and stone-crowned hills, until the length and width of it cried back at her. The land surrounded her, lying away in all points, never to be measured in all its strength to surround and enclose and obliterate. Jasper knew that she had come to the crest of the hill for he had left his work and was coming out of his field, over the rail fence and up to the top of the pasture. St Lucy’s tower stood out of the land, the eight crosses evenly set on the eight-crowned turret, risen out of the earth, taken out of the rock of the ground, out of the hard lime, and after a little the bell would sing a tranquil psalm that would run unmoved above the beasts and above the clods, floating off quietly of itself to the sunset. Jasper’s step was quick on the herbs and his shadow came quickly, the dark line of his form on the grass coming timed to the beating of her own life within her breast. As he drew near a smile brightened his face and a look passed between them, growing from tenderness to intimacy until she was merged with him in the deep moments of his last approaching steps. Then she was standing beside him, within his arms, and he began to kiss her and to lead her along the field’s rise toward some thorn trees and off again beside the downward path or back to the summit of the brow. He would come that night and tell her the story of his life and then, if she was of a mind to have him, they would get married. He would come as soon as the night work was done.
She sat beside him on the porch while his story came to her, a story which leaped jerkily from between the quiet intervals when his speech praised her own beauty and goodness or fell away entirely before his fondling and caressing. Henry had stumbled away early to his bed, broken by his day in the field, and Nellie had moved aimlessly about inside the house, her bare steps falling stiffly on the boards before she settled to her sleep. Or Jasper lit his pipe afresh and saw to its drawing, his finger pressing down the tobacco, the light of the match burning for a moment against his face and lighting his eyes. Then she searched the massive planes of his skin for its beauty and searched his eyes, looking quickly away and back. The story was of labour, of wandering from farm to farm, of good seasons and bad, of good luck or evil.
The Time of Man Page 23
