The Fields of Home

by Ralph Moody

  “I just like it better that way,” I told her. “It always looks like ripply black silk.”

  Annie flipped the braid across her shoulder and untied the white ribbon. Her fingers moved quickly as they began taking out the lower strands of the braid. My own fingers felt itchy, and I said, “Could I unbraid it for you while you fix the ribbon?”

  “Don’t tangle it,” was all Annie said, and then she began shaping one end of the ribbon like a bow.

  I was careful not to pull or to make any tangles, and as I untwisted each strand, I let it slip, clear to the end, through my fingers. And I wished that Uncle Levi hadn’t said anything about kisses and red hair ribbon going together. Each time my hand went up to loosen another strand, it brushed against Annie’s neck, and I wanted to put my cheek against it, the way she’d done with the ribbon.

  “I really should have a brush and a glass,” Annie said when I’d separated the last strands of the braid. “With one long end, it will be a little hard to tie a good bow behind me.” Then she threw her head way back, put both hands under her hair, and tossed it till every trace of a braid strand was gone. She gathered the wavy mass at the nape of her neck; running both thumbs close above her ears, and drawing the sides and top in with her fingers. “Can you hold it right there,” she asked, “while I tie the bow?”

  I could and I did. There was just enough breeze that the silky ends moved against my forearm. And once, when I was a little too close, a wisp brushed across my cheek and mouth. “Isn’t it lovely?” Annie whispered as her fingers shaped the bow.

  And as the glistening flood of her hair brushed my arm, I whispered back, “Mmmhmm, lovely.”

  From the far side of the meadow, a cow lowed for her evening milking. “Goodness!” Annie said, “I’d forgotten all about the cows. I must run; Father’ll be waiting to milk.” Then she told me to thank Grandfather and Uncle Levi for the ribbon, folded the long red streamer that ran across her shoulder and chest, and sprang to her feet.

  I looked back quite a few times as I climbed the hill through the maple grove. Once Annie looked back and waved. The late sunlight glistened on her hair and the bright red bow. Then she was gone behind the clump of white birches by the pasture gate, and I hurried on after our cows.

  Supper was over, Grandfather had gone to bed, and I was just finishing the milking when Uncle Levi came into the tie-up. He turned the old pail over, and sat behind Clara Belle, just as he had the night before. I expected him to ask me how Annie liked the ribbon, but he didn’t. When I looked over at him, he just said, “Found Millie.”

  I caught a quick breath, and said, “Why didn’t you bring her home? Wouldn’t she come?”

  “Wants to come just as bad as Thomas wants her to,” he said. “Too cussed stubborn to come by herself.”

  “Then why didn’t you bring her?” I asked.

  “Calc’late Thomas might like to do his own fetching,” he said. “Don’t aim to let him know I found her.”

  “Then how will he know where to look for her?”

  “Don’t have to tell a hound where to look for a rabbit, do you? Calc’late if I put Thomas on the trail, he’ll do his own finding.”

  “Well, how did you ever find the trail yourself?” I asked.

  “Wa’n’t nothing to it. All I done was to make out like I was Millie. If I was to go off to some place a-looking for a job of work, I wouldn’t go to no mill. I’d go casting about for a place there was bricks to lay. Was I Millie, I’d go looking for a place where there was victuals to cook and butter to make. Calc’lated if I was her, I’d go to a job agency. And, by hub, that’s just what she done. Come across her trail in the second agency I went into. She’s a-working on a farm, t’other side of Auburn. Told her Thomas would be along to fetch her home ’bout noontime tomorrow. She ain’t going to let on she seen me. Here, let me fetch one of them pails of milk to the house for you. By hub, I’m going off to bed early. Got to cast about for a way of putting Thomas on the trail without him smelling a mouse.”

  Then, on the way to the house, he put his free arm around my shoulder, and asked, “Did you kiss Annie when you give her the ribbon?”

  “No, sir,” I said. Then, after a few steps, I added, “But I wanted to.”

  Uncle Levi’s fingers tightened just a trifle on my shoulder, and when we were near the kitchen door, he sort of mumbled, “Don’t hurry, boy. Wanted kisses is sometimes sweeter than had ones.”

  At breakfast Uncle Levi was all full of talk. He never mentioned Millie at all, but told us about a book he had read where a detective found a criminal by going to every employment office in Boston. He was still telling the story when Grandfather snapped, “Eat your victuals! Eat your victuals, Ralphie! Time flies, and there ain’t no time now for dawdling. Rattle the harness onto Old Nell whilst I get my clo’se changed. Time and tarnation! Slipped my mind to have Levi take the eggs off to market yesterday.” While Grandfather bounced out of his chair and started for his room, Uncle Levi kept right on with the story, but his eyelid on my side dipped just a trifle.

  I had a nice day with Uncle Levi. As we worked on the old spreader, he told me stories about the time he was homesteading, and he listened when I told him about the ranches where I had worked in Colorado. It was the middle of the afternoon when we heard the pound of a horse’s feet on the road coming down from the ridge. We both knew who it would be, and peeked out of the little windows at the side of the forge. Grandfather was sitting as straight as a coachman, and holding the reins as if he were driving Dan Patch. Millie was beside him. She had on a sailor hat and a new dress, and was sitting as straight as Grandfather.

  When we lost sight of them, past the front of the house, Uncle Levi laid one finger across his lips. Then we listened as Nell’s hoofs pounded on the gravel of the driveway. Grandfather kept her trotting till they were right up to the doorstone, then shouted, “Levi! Ralphie! Come a-running! See what I fetched home! By fire, I cal’late I ought to a-been a detective! Run her down over t’other side of Auburn!”

  Anyone would have thought Millie was an only daughter who had been away for years. Grandfather wouldn’t let her get her hat off till he’d taken her to the cellar to see all the milk and cream we had, to the barn to see the new bull, and to the carriage house to see the spreader. “There! There you be, Millie girl!” he crowed. “Look what I fetched home for Ralphie! I and him has tarnal nigh took all the rocks off’n the high field. Cal’late on growing strawb’ries and tomatoes up there, come spring. Going to give it a thundering heavy top-dressing afore the frost sets in. Can’t hand-spread dressing for them kind of crops. Got to have tools that’ll do the job right.

  “Gorry sakes, Millie, can’t you see the womenfolks a-picking berries up there; you a-canning ’em for winter, and me a-fetching ’em off to early market. Didn’t I tell you things was a-popping ’round the old place? By thunder, ’twon’t be long afore the wildernes field is under the plow again, and an all-fired big new piece built onto the barn. Didn’t think to tell you ’bout us a-going into the butter business, did I? Partners! I and you and Ralphie . . . and Levi, if he’ll stay to home. By gorry, we’ll be a-fetching butter off to market by the firkin. Cal’late it’ll be up to thirty cents afore spring.”

  I wanted to run and throw my arms around him and hug him, but I didn’t. I just stood there with a lump in my throat and a hot feeling behind my eyes. I think Uncle Levi felt the same way. As Grandfather led Millie off toward the house, he watched them out of sight, and said almost reverently, “It’s a God’s wonder! Could be the war’s all over for Thomas; could be it’s only an armistice. Calc’late we done about all we can, and the rest is in the hands of the Almighty.”

  It was late on Thursday afternoon when Uncle Levi tightened the last new bolt on the manure spreader, stood back, and said, “There you be, Thomas! Wisht there’d been time enough to give it a good coat of paint, but there wa’n’t. Still-and-all, ’twouldn’t help the spreading none, and I’ll be a-coming back down afore lon
g. Ralph, how ’bout hitching the hosses on? Calc’late we got time to try one load afore I have to go?”

  With three of us pitching, the load went on in a hurry. When he threw the last forkful up, Uncle Levi said, “You and Thomas climb up on the seat, Ralph, so’s you can show him how the levers works. It’s time I was getting washed up and my clothes changed.”

  I looked at my new watch. It was quarter of six, the man with the automobile wasn’t coming for Uncle Levi till seven, and there was something in his voice that made me know he’d like to show Grandfather himself. “You know a lot more about it than I do,” I said, “and besides, it’s nearly six o’clock and I’ll have to get the cows in.”

  “Well, we’ll have to hurry,” Uncle Levi sort of grumbled.

  Grandfather climbed to the high seat like a squirrel. He snatched up the reins, and before Uncle Levi was hardly beside him, started shouting, “Gitap! Gitap! Gitap!”

  I watched them as I went up the lane for the cows. The yella colt was dancing and jumping, the way he always did when Grandfather drove. The shadows stretched long across the stubble of the hayfield, and Uncle Levi and Grandfather sat so close together that they made just one shadow.

  31

  Dynamite

  UNTIL we had the talk on the granite outcropping, Grandfather hadn’t put in a full day’s work in the fields. After Millie came home, we had trouble in keeping him from working himself to death. All through the rest of the stone hauling from the high field and the manure spreading, I had to hunt ways to keep him from trying to do too much. He was so proud of the new spreader that he’d rush the loading, then ride to the fields with me and work the levers. The wilderness field was always on his mind, and when I’d try to slow him down, he’d tell me, “Can’t dig stumps after the ground’s froze, Ralphie, and there’s a tarnal heap of ’em to dig.”

  The evenings changed as much as the days. Where Grandfather had usually gone off to his room as soon as supper was over, he began sitting in the kitchen till nine or ten o’clock. He brought out a stack, nearly a foot high, of catalogs, seed books, government pamphlets, and magazines about strawberries and tomatoes that he’d read until the corners were dog-eared. As soon as I’d come in with the last pail of milk, Grandfather would call, “Let be! Let be, Ralphie! What in time and tarnation took you so long? Millie’ll look after the milk! By gorry, there’s an awful good piece in the Country Gentleman ’bout mulching strawb’ries with marsh hay. Come read it to me; these spectacles of mine is getting wore out so bad I can’t see next to nothing with ’em.” Then, as I read, he’d keep breaking in to have me go back and read something over, or snap, “Set that down! Set it down on paper, Ralphie, afore we forget it! By thunder, I cal’late on us a-knowing how to do the job afore we tackle it. Man shouldn’t ought to tackle a job less’n he knows what he’s about and the best way of doing it.”

  As soon as we’d finished hauling dressing, we began the clearing of the wilderness field. It was a little more than eight acres. None of it was heavily wooded. On the northern part, nearest the orchard, there were thirty or forty pines, none of them more than fifteen or sixteen inches at the butt. On the east side, south of the granite outcropping, as many hemlocks were scattered and, here and there, a spruce, a hackmatack, or a fir. The rest of the field was covered with rocks, junipers, hazel bushes, and birch, beech, or maple saplings. Before we started the clearing, Grandfather blazed a cut on three pines that marked off the north quarter of the field. “There, Ralphie!” he told me. “That marks our stint for the year ahead. I cal’late we’ll do tarnal well if we lay the north end under the plow come planting time. Let’s heave an axe into this one; we’ll lay her yonder, ’twixt that white birch and the hazel bush.” By noon, we had six pines felled and trimmed out.

  In the afternoon, we brought shovels, picks, and crowbars; and Grandfather started me on taking out the first stump. It wasn’t the kind of a job I liked. The roots snaked in and out between hidden rocks. Around and ’round the stump, each root had to be dug free and chopped away, at least a foot below the ground. And every time I cut one out, there was another one under it. Long before the afternoon was over, my axe was so nicked and dull that it would bounce off the tough roots as though it were made of rubber.

  All afternoon, I kept hearing Grandfather’s axe ring, and half a dozen times there was a crash as another pine went down. By sunset, my first stump would wiggle, but there were still some uncut roots under it, and I’d dug a hole big enough to bury a bull in. I was sure Grandfather would scold me for dawdling, and for dulling the axe, but he didn’t. When he came over, he said, “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie! Been digging like a woodchuck, ain’t you? Leave be! We’ll hitch the hosses on and twist it roundabouts till it gives up. By thunder, the way we’re a-starting off, I cal’late we’ll be ready to go to hewing stone inside a fortnight.”

  It rained all our third day in the wilderness field, and Grandfather caught a cold. Then the malaria flared up, and he had to stay in bed with chills and fever. He was irritable, and kept fretting about the freeze-up coming before we’d get the stumps all dug.

  Road work started the Monday after Grandfather was taken sick. Most farmers worked out part of their taxes on the roads, and Grandfather sent me to work out part of his. A new piece of road was being built through the field where Sam Starboard had planted the white oaks that Grandfather told me about. The old stumps had to be taken out, and they were doing it with dynamite.

  Bill Hubbard was the blast man, and I made friends with him the first day I worked on the road. Most of the time, I was hauling rocks and gravel, but whenever I had a spare minute, I spent it with Bill. He wasn’t more than thirty, and was big and slow-talking, but he was always joking, and he knew a lot about dynamite. The thing that surprised me most was that he wasn’t afraid of it. He’d let me watch him while he made his primer cartridges, put in the firing caps, and crimped on the fuses. I watched him often when he looked over a stump, dug a hole under the heaviest root, set the charge, tamped it, and packed the hole, but he’d never let me get close enough to watch him fire it. He’d blow a whistle when he was going to shoot, and we all had to get out of the way.

  They had a steam engine for moving heavy rocks and stumps. One day when Bill and I were eating our dinner together, the engine got stuck in a sandy spot. The big drive wheels dug themselves nearly three feet deep, and the boiler was right down to the ground. I’d seen a steam engine stuck that way in Colorado, and had seen it pulled out with a team of horses. The men had pushed fence posts down in front of the drive wheels, then pulled the horses just hard enough to hold the wheel lugs against the posts, and the engine had come out of the hole on its own power.

  Ever since I’d been on the road job, I’d been wishing we had some dynamite for blowing out stumps in the wilderness field, so I said to Bill, “If four sticks of dynamite would lift that engine out without hurting it, would you use them?”

  “Or six, if need be,” he answered.

  “Then would you give five sticks to get it done?” I asked.

  Bill nodded, and said, “Or six.”

  The engine came out of the hole just the way the one in Colorado did, but I had a hard time getting Bill Hubbard to give me the dynamite. I didn’t tell him that Grandfather had used lots of it before, or that he was the one who was going to blow a stump, but when he thought that was what I meant, I didn’t correct him.

  Bill cut the fuse for me, and crimped on the firing cap before I took the dynamite home Saturday night. I didn’t want to leave it around the buildings, so, when I went for the cows, I put it in a box and hid it in the pasture. Sunday morning, I took a crowbar and a fork handle with me when I drove the cows to pasture. I planned that I’d get everything ready, and set the charge before I went to Sunday school. Some day when Grandfather was well and had gone to Lewiston, I’d fire it. Then, when he saw what the dynamite would do, I might be able to get him to buy some.

  I picked out the meanest stump I could find. I
t stood right in the middle of a nest of rocks the size of washtubs. Some of the roots were as thick as my legs, and they writhed around and between the rocks like the arms of an octopus. I looked the stump over carefully, and tried to guess just where Bill would have set the charge. When I’d picked what looked to be the right spot, I punched the crowbar hard under the root, but it hit solid rock. I had to try a dozen different places before I found one where I could work the bar between the rocks and under the stump. Then, as I loosened the dirt, I had to lie on my stomach and dig it out with my fingers. There was just room for my hand between the roots and the top of a boulder.

  I’d been sure I wasn’t going to be any more afraid of the dynamite than Bill was. But by the time I’d made the primer, tamped the charge in under the stump, and packed the hole, I was shaking, and soaking wet with sweat. Then, as I started to the house, I began to worry. I had two more days’ work on the road, and Grandfather was up and around the house. He might come to the field while I was away, do something to set off the dynamite, and be killed. I ran back, struck a match, and held it against the end of the fuse. At the first splutter, I dropped the fuse and ran for the nearest good-sized tree.

  Nothing happened. It seemed as if I’d been behind that tree for ten minutes, but there wasn’t a sound. I was sure I’d set the charge wrong, or had put the fuse out when I dropped it. I let my breath out and was sort of glad it had been a failure. Then, just as I stepped from behind the tree, the whole wilderness field seemed to be flying in the air. Before the crash of sound came, I went heels over head. Sticks and stones were falling all around me, and I was sure I was killed. When I picked myself up, I wasn’t hurt at all. I was only dizzy, had a nosebleed, and my ears felt as if someone were beating on tin pans inside them. Where the stump had been, there was nothing but a big hole, with broken rock edging it, so that it looked like pictures I’d seen of a volcano crater.