Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  One day in late February, Solomon had been so restless all day that Dorie decided he needed a bit of an airing. Angus was working a good piece away from the house, and so rather than bother him, Dorie took it upon herself to drive Solomon down the lane and into a small pasture reserved for him. She was doing fine, as she had explained from her bed a few hours later, when Solomon decided to go in the other direction and had turned on her. She had struck at him with the pitch fork, and somehow he had knocked it from her hands. Dorie could remember little of what happened next; for once in her life she had been thoroughly frightened; there was no time to climb the fence, so that all there remained to do was run, and she didn't think she could outrun Solomon.

  She might have been dead, had not Angus heard Solomon and guessed what Dorie was about. He had come on a run, and with Black Peter and Brown Bertha helping him had just managed to save Dorie, though Brown Bertha had suffered a gash in her side from one of Solomon's horns, and Angus had had his arms near jerked off from trying to hold on to a horn.

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  Roan had heard and telephoned Poke Easy that if he loved his mother he'd better come down and force her to part with Solomon. Much to everybody's surprise, Dorie had scarcely objectedso long as he was kept in the neighborhood for breeding. Though Dorie had offered him a ridiculously low figure, no man had wanted the job; a Jersey bull was an uncommon bad thing to have around, and unless a man were strong as Sober Creekmorewho had no use for bulls and no fit fencehe'd better leave such alone. Still, Marsh Gregory seemed an unusually good hand with stock; he had plenty of pasture, no children big enough to go climbing into a bull pen, and he certainly wouldn't let Delph be out and trying to mess around where she had no business the way Dorie did.

  After some discussion with Delph, who didn't seem to care one way or the other, Marsh drove Solomon in one day, and though Solomon growled and muttered and swore, he tried no wild pawing and bellowing for he seemed to know that he had met his match. Caesar, however, had little use for him, and barked and growled each time he passed his stall or saw him in the pasture.

  Marsh told Delph that night of the bull's behavior, and Delph nodded and smiled, and when he came away he knew she had scarcely heard. His eagerness to have her home had grown from a calm contentment when she began to get well to a wild racking hunger that tore him on the windy nights when he could smell the bursting plum tree buds by the windows and the rich sweet smell of growing grass.

  It seemed to him that she was prettier now than she had ever been; gay with lights and shadows racing through her eyes, her hair curly from the damp spring air, the skin of her face and hands fair and soft and fine, and her breasts and body plumper, more like a woman's than the slender girl he had married. He wished she were out of the brick house; he, in spite of Mrs. Elliot's friendliness, felt ill at case and out of place there in his faded overalls and heavy shoes, which, though he wiped them carefully on the iron scraper at the back porch steps, were a danger to the thick soft rugs. He never stayed long in the house; there seemed painfully little for him and Delph to talk about. Usually he found her listening to the radio, playing the piano, or reading; and there were times when he felt that his coming was an interruption. It was almost pleasanter to be at

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  home and think of Delph, imagine her there with him and plan how it would be next fall when Burr-Head was weaned and they could all be together.

  And Delph also watched the spring and thought of Burr-Head. Some nights she lay and listened to the winds beat through the orchard trees and dreamed long bright dreams. Many times when the night was too filled with wind and moonlight for sleep and the smell of the lilacs in the yard made her restless, she would crouch on her knees by a window. There, she could see the ribbon of Hawthorne Road, black in the moonlight, unrolling over the hills. Sometimes cars passed, and she would watch their lights until they disappeared. Other times she would take the bank book and the timber land deed, kept hidden in a dressing table, and study them for long moments, hardly seeing statements of dollars and cents or acres of land and timber, but Burr-Headthe future she would make for him. There was slightly less than twelve hundred dollars in the bank book, and she had no idea of how much the timber would bring; at least enough to maybe tide her and Burr-Head over in some city until Marsh came to his sensesor until she learned to make her living in the world. The money was a blessing sent from God; a promise that Burr-Head would be something better than a hill farmer's child, measuring his years by county fairs.

  But there were other nights when the south wind brought the smell of the pear blossoms heavy and sweetMarsh loved a pear blossom better than any other flower, she thoughtand it was hard to see Burr-Head's future through her hunger for Marsh.

  She would see him as the man she had married, a man with a young man's blood in his veins and a hunger in his eyes that seemed to match her ownand want to go to him with no waiting for Dr. Andy to say that she was strong enough to do her own work. She wished sometimes her mind would stop there, stay with him as he had seemed to be; but always it went on to the ugliness and the work and the pain of that year she had spent with him in the valley; and no matter how many times she remembered there was always a sudden sharp pain in remembering that the man waiting for her down in the valley was one thing, and the man the smell of the pear flowers brought to mind, another. She never knew on that night before she returned to him on a Sunday in late April whether all her tears were for him or for her.

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  Marsh came up to Elliots, intending to walk with her over the hill, for he wanted to see her surprise and pleasure when she saw the many improvements he had made about the place, but while he stopped in the orchard to cut a sheaf of pear and apple blossoms, Delph came down alone. He hurried back again, but when he was half down he must stop a moment to admire the house, freshly painted, white with a trim of green, and there was the bit of stone terrace he had laid before the door; a good place that would be to sit in the evenings when the trumpet vine and honeysuckle that he and Katy had planted grew higher, and some day when he had the time and money he would roof it and have a front porch.

  He called as he had used to call when entering the house, "Oh, Delph," and when she did not answer, the house seemed less fine than when he had looked at it from the hill. He laid the flowers on the walnut mantel, shaped and carved by a Burdine carpenter. He walked away, but turned again, and looked at the mantel and the flowers. Caesar wanted to be off and hunting Delph, and leaped at him in impatience with his slow ways, but seeing that his master was stubborn, he, too, looked at the flowers and smiled when Marsh said, "Not bad, eh, Caesar," and followed his glance to the cedar chest and cedar chairs. They were strong heavy things, bound with copper, fashioned of bright red cedar from Marsh's pasture hill, and made by the Fitzgerald man in Burdine who worked by hand and made things solidly, for a life time of use. Most of the furniture he had collected was like that; strong stuff of solid wood, not so pretty as some maybe, but sensible and suited to a farmer.

  He called Delph again, and when she did not answer went outside hunting her. Solomon bellowed from the barn with a mighty roar. He raced down to see what the trouble was and found Delph laughing as she peeped at him through his stable door. "At least he's one thing on th' place that's lively," she said when he went up to her.

  "You'd better be careful of him," he warned. "Katy ruined him with teasin', an' now he hates a woman worse than anything."

  "I wouldn't be afraid of him," Delph said, and laughed again, and then went flying away, running as if she had never known what it was to be sick, when Caesar barked that guests were coming.

  Perce and Lizzie with their children had come to congratulate Delph on her recovery. They were the first of many, including Sadie

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  Huffacre and Tobe, who dropped down for a Sunday afternoon's visit. Delph was kept busy talking with first one and then the other, thanking them for their help and kindness, and praising Katy who was
there with Dorie and Brother Eli, for her skill in interior decoration. Katy had scoured the country for maps, and pasted them here and there about the house; Katy loved maps almost as much as Delph, and kept a large one of the world handy in her room.

  It was near supper getting and barn work time before the Fairchilds were gone, and Marsh and Delph were left alone down by the river where they had walked with their departing guests. Late as it was, Marsh must stop as they walked back to the house, to show Delph this and that; point out the land he intended to set to tobacco, and show her a strip of alfalfa that, planted in the fall, had survived the flood. And when they came to the house he had to call her attention to the screened in back porch he had made with a stone and cement floor so that mud or a bit of barnyard muck wouldn't hurt it.

  "It's fine," Delph said, and went on with some glib talk of how pretty the place was, and how nice he was to do so much. He glanced at the vines he had planted by the porch and windows and the holly hocks he had set by the paling fence. Of course they were not yet up, but she could see that something was planted there, but she never mentioned it, no more than the lilac and snow ball bushes he had planted in the front yard. He started to call her attention to what he had done for the yard, but began and ended with a hesitant, "Our yard's" which Delph never heard.

  She was talking again of Burr-Head, saying that she was certain Burr-Head knew she was his mother, even if another woman nursed and cared for him. Marsh went on the back porch, feeling dull and empty with no heart to demonstrate the marvels of the cream separator he had bought to put an end to all her hours of churning. Delph wasn't like herself. Last fall when he sold his first batch of hogs he'd brought her nothing more than a bolt of good strong blue cloth for work dresses for herself and shirts for him. Even cross and moody as she had been sometimes before the child was born, she had been pleased, had kissed him shyly on the nose in gratitude for the first thing he had bought her since their marriage. Now, when he had spent money on the house that ought to have gone on the land and farm machinery, Delph never seemed to care.

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  He took milk buckets and started toward the barn, then turned abruptly back. Delph was busily moving about the kitchen, straight-ening this and that, hanging a pot or a pan on a different nail and arranging the window curtains. He walked up behind her, hoping to catch her unawares, but his heavy shoes were never any good for tip-toeing. The kiss intended for the back of her neck below her beau-catcher curls fell as a mere brush on her cheek.

  She whirled about and stood blushing and confused as a school girl. He caught her hand. ''Don't run away, Delph.You'veyou've not said yet that you're glad to be home."

  She didn't run, but her hand touching his, held nothing more nor less in its touch than there might have been for a stranger. "Of course I'm glad to be home," she said after a moment, and with a bright empty smile. Then she was gone, dashing up the stairs, and in a second was calling, "Marsh, where'd you put my things when you brought 'em down yesterday?"

  He opened his mouth but only stood staring overhead and listening until she called again, "Marsh, where'd you put my things?"

  "Downstairs inin our bedroom of course," he called in a stiff dry voice, and waited, watching by the door.

  She came running down, and would have brushed past him had he not caught her shoulder. "Listen, Delph," he began, and waited, afraid of her answer but hoping against his fear that she would reassure him with her eyes. But when his eyes remained empty as her hands had been, he went on, struggling against a rising anger at this need for saying anything. "Delphwill things be between uslike they were last summer?"

  She flushed and pulled her arm away with careful gentleness as if he were little better than an acquaintance she did not wish to offend. "If you meanwill I keep onsleepin' to myself upstairsyes," she answered in a low voice and with one slow nod of her head.

  His eyes searched her face while he hoped with a kind of blind desperation that maybe her tongue said one thing and Delph another. When he understood that she meant what she said, he tried again to speak for himself, say all the things he had dreamed of saying through the summer and fall. But after a stumbling word or so he knew it was no good.

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  She was suddenly gentle, patting him on the shoulder. ''Marshdon't take it that way. II'll be here an' I'll help you all I can.You know what Dr. Andy said that with Burr-Head comin' a little too soon like he did I ought toto wait a good while before havin' another one."

  "But, Delph, I talked to him, too.My God, not all men an' women have babies like accidents."

  Anger leaped through the wall of her calm reserve. "Burr-Head I know's nothin' but an' accident to you, an' a."

  He swore a black heathen oath that made her eyes blaze like blue flames. Then he was ashamed and sorry that the oil man part of him must always be stepping over the farmer. He shook his head with a heavy weariness. "Delph, can't you understandever? It wasn't because a him. I've done what I've done, an' God knows I've tried to tell you I'm sorry. Can't you forgetever, Delph, that one time?" but his throat hurt and he was tired, more tired than he had ever been last summer after sixteen hours of plowing.

  Delph stood a moment and looked at him, then whirled about and ran sobbing up the stairs. She flung herself on the bed, and never noticed that her tears stained a bright red patch of silk in the crazy quilt. After a time she heard Marsh's feet across the kitchen floor, go with a heavy dragging sound as if he were tired or old. She got up then and drew the bank book and the deed from under a corner of the feather bed. She sat for a long time with drawn up knees and puckered brow, just staring at the papers.

  After a time she was able to think of Burr-Head as she knew he ought to befirst in her mind. She ran to the back window and stood on tiptoe and tried to see the Creekmore Place.

  She saw Marsh instead. He drove the cows down the barn lane for milking, walking slowly behind them with his eyes on the ground. The cows came on, but he stopped to stand by the fence and look at the strip of land by the barnyard where he would set his tobacco in May.

  She walked restlessly away from the window, put the papers away, and after hesitating a time at the top of the stairs, went back to the window. Marsh had not moved. He stood like a stone man with his eyes riveted on the field, and never seemed to know that his cows begged for milking. She gripped the window sill and wished he

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  would not look sosohe gave her a guilty feeling, and she knew she did what was right. It would be weak and sinful to go hungering after him when maybe all Burr-Head's future could be lost through such foolishness. Still, it would do no harm to go to the barnyard and talk to him about the tobacco. His eyes would brighten as they had used to do last spring when she had grown such fine tomato and cabbage plants.

  Weeks later it seemed to her that her conversation with Marsh that Sunday evening in the barnyard about the tobacco and Burr-Head had been the beginning of a half-sad, half-pleasant way of life in which they came and went as polite tenants of the same housemost of the time. There were days when the excitement of having a child like Burr-Head and raising a tobacco crop all in the same summer made life seem full and good, even for Marsh, who sickened at times of always thinking of Delph as she would be because he could not accept her as she was. And the hurt of it was that she was a kinder, more completely satisfying Delph than she had ever been.

  Now, when she came morning and afternoon to bring him a snack, she hurried on to Creekmore's and visited a time with Burr-Head. Never as long as she wished. Emma was a busy woman, but too polite to go on working while Delph was there. There was another reason why Delph hurried back across the fields. Marsh was always eager to hear a bit of talk about Burr-Head. Even though he asked the same sober questions he might have asked about a pig or a calf he asked them in a different way. She had to laugh at the way he took every least thing about Burr-Head so solemnly. He knew nothing of babies. If Burr-Head only bubbled over as little well-fed babies were apt to do, he
looked alarmed. And if Burr-Head noticed any small thing, or pulled Caesar's ears or waved his hands at a butterfly, Marsh marveled mightily and was certain that no other child had done just that thing.

  "We'll have him with us at least by October in time for th' tobacco strippin'," Marsh would say, and Delph would go quickly away when he talked so, and be glad that there was some work to which she could put her hands. She couldn't sit still in the house and feel her thoughts like two people fighting in her head and tangling in her heart.