Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  While Marsh was answering, Delph crawled on her knees to the end of the wagon, and when Marsh looked again it was too late. She had brushed the hay away and made a small hole in a burlap covering, and the next instant she was setting on her heels, just staring with her mouth open and her eyes wide. She turned to him and her voice was weak with surprise. "Marshwhy, Marsh, it's a radio."

  "Aw, hell, Delph, I meant it as a surprise an' now you've gone an' found out," Marsh groaned, and was wrenchingly aware of the loss of Ebony and the scattering of all his plans. He had meant to have Delph's surprised delight in the radio to think upon all through the drive home and until tomorrowa Saturday when she would be gone in the afternoon training the children at school for the pie supper program they were having in a week or so.

  Delph had no eyes for his disappointment. "Marshyou, you sold Ebony an' bought me a radio," she said in a choked smothered voice, and he had the terror that she might be going to cry there on her heels in the wagon with Reuben Kidd looking on. He would maybe write a piece about it in the paper.

  She made the hole a trifle larger and peeped again while Marsh begged, "Please Delph, don't look at it anymore."

  She felt the disappointment in his voice, and after one last lingering peep turned away. Marsh was such a silly fool; he liked to think on a thing so, turn it over and taste it in his mind. He'd maybe meant to keep it hidden in the barn a week or so, and then surprise her with it one day; and he was no good for thinking up little white lies. He'd started the wagon without waiting for her to get on the seat, disgusted with her poking, prying ways. She crawled under the high seat, and surprised him again by almost falling in his lap when she sat down.

  "I always wanted a radio," she said, and sat well away from him and spread her skirts a bit on the seat, "somethin' like that, only not

  Page 309

  half so fine. Who you takin' it down to, Sadie Huffacre or th' Sextons?"

  "Aye, I think Tobe bought it for Sadie," he said, and smiled at her from the corners of his eyes, "to kind a make her feel better for not takin' th' prize in pickles this year."

  They both laughed, and Burr-Head awakened and rubbed the hay out of his eyes. Many waved and called to them as they drove through the town, but mostly their eyes were for each other, so much so that Dorie waiting for them on the steps of the Hotel Hatcher had to call twice before they heard. "I want to drive home with you all," she said, as Marsh stopped the wagon.

  He leaned over the side to help her up the wheel, but Dorie continued to stand and clutch one of the pillars that supported the hotel porch. She glanced apprehensively up and down the street, then called in a loud shrill whisper, "I'm afraid one a you'll have to get out an' help me."

  They both sprang down and rushed up to her, and then exchanged troubled glances between themselves. Dorie's eyes were awful bright like a person with the fever, but her nose and her long upper lip were covered with beads of sweat. "You're sick, Dorie," Delph said, and took her arm. "You're in no fit shape to drive home in a wagon."

  "Come on, help me in th' wagon 'fore Joe or that wife a his comes along. There's not a thing ails me.II just can't walk so well, an' this terrible heat has got me down."

  Marsh looked at her uneasily. "You're sick, Dorie," he said.

  Dorie wiped sweat from her nose with a hard angry gesture. "I tell you, I'm not sick. If you don't help me into th' wagon I'll fall tryin' to walk."

  There was nothing to do but put her on the wagon seat, and then it took all Delph's strength to hold her, for Dorie sat swaying and nodding like a saw dust woman. However, when they had gone a mile or so she appeared to recover somewhat, and sat fanning herself with her hat and smiling at the road. "Marsh," she burst out suddenly, "from a few little things I've heard of you, you know how it feels to feel like you need a drinkbad."

  And when he nodded she went on with a shame-faced smile, strange for Dorie, "Well, I took a spell like that this afternoon. At

  Page 310

  home I have my wine ever' day an' a little toddy now an' thenwhen I need itbut here in Town I couldn't go walkin' into a saloon. Sadie Huffacre would ha talked about it th' rest of her days.'' She hesitated, then went on after another sleepy, easy sort of smile, "There's been a good while I've been wantin' to see th' inside a this Hotel Hatcher, th' finest south of Lexington so I've heard. An' toowell, you know how a body is. Lot's a times I've heard Emma an' Joe an' th' others talk a cocktails an' I've read of 'em, too.So-o-owhen I felt I was needin' a drink I went to th' Hotel Hatcherin th' bar. Nobody from Salem would ever see me there. I had onea Manhattan they called itan' it tasted like no strength at allthen I had a Pink Ladyan' then a somethin' they called a Martinibut none of them tasted like much of anything.But when I got up an' tried to walk I learned different."

  Delph laughed, but Marsh looked at Dorie and asked in a low troubled voice, "It's none a my business, Dorie, butwellwhen I need a drink so muchmost generally there's somethin' wrongor about to be wrong. If there's anything th' matter an' me or Delph can help why."

  Dorie waved her hand in a loose easy gesture, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "I won't be needin' help so muchanymore. Or a man comin' around in th' winter to see to this or that like you did last when Angus went to visit his sister.You seesee, he never told meI heard him givin' Joe a piece of his mindafter he'd made it upPoke Easy, I mean, not Angus. He's goin' to stay an' practice law in this countylike some of his grandfathers before him didan' he'll manage th' farm." And Dorie cried with her head on Delph's shoulder. Marsh looked straight ahead and said after a time, "Dorie, you're worse than Delph. What in th' hell is there to cry about?"

  "When you've waited thirty yearsfor onejust one," she said, and might have continued with her tears had not Burr-Head, unable to walk in the swaying wagon come crawling on his hands and knees under the wagon seat and up between Dorie's feet. And she was thrown into a fit of bewailing that she had missed his judging at the Fair. She thought she'd go to the State Fair at Louisville in the fall. She'd always wanted to go; and this would be the first fall since her marriage thirty-four years ago that she could get away from home.

  Page 311

  They said little after that. Delph was silent, thinking of Marsh and Burr-Head and the radio. Her mind was a welter of plans. She wished she didn't like Lizzie so well; she'd try to beat her next year on red devil's food cake, but she thought she'd at least try angel food, practice up on Marsh this winter if eggs continued cheap, but he would most likely grunt and say as he said of her lemon chiffon pie, "Delph, there's nothin' to this damned stuff but wind; if you want a worry with fancy sweetenin', fix somethin' that'll stick to a man's ribs." He liked good solid things like sweet potato pie; tomorrow she'd bake him a fine onethat is if he weakened and let her see all of the radio before she went to bed.

  Burr-Head stood between his father's knees and waved to passersby or twisted about sometimes and studied his father's face or Delph's face. Once he waved toward a truck load of stock and said, "Pretty cow." He said nothing more until they had driven across the upper pasture and were turning over the hill toward home and then he said, "Pretty house, pretty, corn, pretty, Caesar," in his slow careful way, nodding his head with satisfaction when a word was finished to his liking.

  Marsh nodded, too. Better than any other thing he liked going home like this, especially on an evening in late summer like this when he could look down and see his house and fields and gardens waiting there in the valley when early dusk lay thin and blue on the bottom lands, and the last red rays of the setting sun tipped the brick house chimneys. A few fireflies, earlier than their brothers, glimmered through the dark forest of the high ripening corn, and from the willows by the river the croaking of frogs came faintly, while overhead a bull bat made a buzzlike twanging.

  Page 312

  22

  Sometimes At Lewis's store or on the courthouse steps or in the little saloon at the end of Maple Street just around the corner from the Baptist Church, men would pay Marsh Greg
ory the highest compliment they ever paid to a stranger; one they never gave to Mr. Elliot or the strange preachers and teachers and doctors they now and then had. In addition to agreeing that he was tough as a hickory switch in the spring, they also said sometimes that somewhere behind him there was good blood, and that some of his generations must have been a fine breed of people.

  As proof they would speak not only of himself, his farm, the remarkable child that was Burr-Head, but of the good wife he had picked for himself, since it was a well known fact that a man could not be judged by himself alone, but through his wife as well. There were others, the older, more skeptical ones, who said that Delph had made him what he was. Most any man with red blood in his body and sense in his head would go the limit for a woman like Delphine Costello Gregory.

  Pretty she was, not young girl pretty as she had used to be, but a fine full figure of a woman with a straight strong back and a proud high head, and hands and shoulders that could turn off a sight of work if need be. She could run the cultivator through the corn or sit quiet and lady-like mending his overalls; it was all one to her. And everybody remembered how she had peddled and helped him through that first hard summer.

  And her mind was strong as her body. It was from her most likely that the child got its bright quick ways. Look what she had done

  Page 313

  and was doing for the little Creekmores. She had decided one day that they ought to learn to read and write and figure. So through the winter months the five oldest came to her for a few hours almost every day, and Emma said they learned a lot, especially geography and singing. The maps on Delph's walls and her gift for song made her school ideal for such subjects. And if anyone asked her why she took so much time over five little negroes, she was apt to laugh and say that she liked to be busy at something, especially through the winter when there was nothing much to do.

  Even Doric wondered how Delph did all the things she did. If the school or Salem church planned a program or ice cream or pie supper, Delph could always be counted on to do her share, not only in baking a cake or pie but in helping the children learn their pieces and their songs. "I feel better bein' full-handed all th' time," she always said if someone marveled at the help she gave.

  She sang at many churches as well as Salem Sunday School, and people never tired to hear her sing. There was a wonder in her voice. To look at her strong straight body she seemed more made for earth and rocks and growing corn than song. Still, her eyes never burned so blue in her weather browned face as when she sang, and the strength of her body grew dwarfed in the strength of her song. During the great revival meetings, hardened sinners, whom words of preachers had failed to frighten or beseech into grace and the life everlasting, would listen to her sing and go begging forgiveness for their sins. Her voice was filled with a something that none could name or explain. One of Quarrelsome Sexton's boys who had joined the church and quit his drinking, gun-carrying ways, described it one night to the early crowd gathered about the stove in Salem Church as they waited for the services to begin. "I heared her sing an' I felt th' eternal damnation of doin' without th' grace of God. I could feel th' wantin' an' th' wishin' an' th' beggin' after in her singin'."

  Brother Eli had listened and smiled secretly in his beard, then said with his eyes on the ceiling, "There is no greater strength nor beauty than that of the soul that can dream on of seeing Godafter he had learned and knows that he never shall see God."

  The Sexton boy frowned in a troubled way. "Brother, you'renot meanin' Delph can't ever get th' spirit. She's a good woman if there ever was. Knocked a gun out a my hand once with a black snake whip, mebbe kept me from killin' a man an' bein' sent up."

  Page 314

  Brother Eli studied the ceiling and smiled. "I speak figuratively," he said, "that is in regard to the word, God." He turned and went up to the pulpit, and that night preached his sermon on the parable of the fig tree, the olive, and the bramble.

  Delph would only smile when after church many stopped her in the aisles and by the door to praise her song. Mostly she sang in church because it was a pleasant thing to do. She didn't especially care for the admiration of the congregation. They knew nothing of music, and had never heard great songthe kind she heard once in a while over the radio. Mrs. Elliot helped her pick the music from the air, would tell her or maybe come down when there was to be a good program. And they would listen in silence together while the music poured into the room. Sometimes Delph heard voices wonderfully clear and wonderfully strong, and with the hearing there would sometimes come the wonder of what her voice might have done could it have been trained so.

  There were programs on Sunday afternoons that both women loved, and it was a grief of their lives that they so seldom could listen to music on Sunday afternoons. Up in the brick house Mr. Elliot either wished to go driving, take a nap, or listen to baseball scores. Mrs. Elliot bought a second radio which she had thought would solve the problem. But after one try at hearing her own radio and Mr. Elliot's below shrieking out baseball scores, she had clapped her hands over her ears and hurried down to Delph.

  There, Sadie Huffacre was describing a fight she had seen on the court house lawn in Town, and Delph, rather than desecrate the music by teaming it with a voice like Sadie's, had turned off the radio. When neighbors did not come, Marsh wanted Delph for Sunday afternoons. He liked the Sundays in winter when they went to church and spent the remainder of the day with Doric, who felt that Sunday was a failure if she had not fed from fifteen to twenty people. But he liked best the Sundays in spring and summer, when he and Delph with Burr-Head could do the things he liked to do, take a long leisurely boat ride on the river, or sit and fish in the shade of the sycamores, or swim and play with Burr-Head, walk up to hill pastures and look at his cattle, wander through the orchard, and in late summer come walking back through the corn fields.

  Page 315

  He liked to look at tobacco and clover or see an orchard filled with fruit or bloom, but he thought that none of them could compare with a cornfield in July, when the air was bright with the golden dust of the pollen, and the great plants, twice as tall as he, whispered and rustled and said the things for which he knew no words. The air would be thick with the strong sweet smell of the corn, and on his shoulders and his hands he would see the yellow grains of pollen and the little husks from which they came.

  He never liked to take such walks alone; half the pleasure was in having Delph to marvel with him over the corn. Usually she walked with a bundle of red strings in her apron pocket; when they came to a plant that seemed even finer than the others, she or he would tie the bright red string high up as they could reach. Then again in mid September if the stalks they had tied with red had ripened two good ears, long and heavy with their ends pointing toward the earth instead of at the sky, Delph tied on still another string as a reminder to Marsh when he was cutting the corn that such stalks with their ears were to be saved for seed.

  Tired from their walks, they would rest a time in the yard or by the river, sometimes all three sprawled side by side with Caesar's nose at Burr-Head's feet, but usually at such times Delph would sit cross legged on the ground, and take the book she had brought and begin to read. Now and then she read to Marsh, when it seemed to her that she had found a bit too good to keep for just herself alone. Marsh would lie with his head in her lap and listen until he would interrupt with questions, eager to know what had happened before and how it would endor else he fell asleep. And Delph would sigh a bit, not because he fell asleep, but because the exciting stories were the ones on which he fell asleep. She once read him the beginning of a book called Silas Marner, one Sunday night during Burr-Head's second winter, and for the next few evenings her mending was neglected and so were his government bulletins while she read aloud to him; and he never seemed to tire of the lanes of Raveloe or the slow talk of the English farmers concerning weather and cows. On Sundays when the weather was unusually bad or the Cumberland high and they could not go to church,
Delph did what Fronie and John had done at home, and what many farming families in Westover did on churchless Sundaysread a chapter or so from the

  Page 316

  Bible. She liked Revelations or Psalms or the Song of Solomon, but she seldom read those. Marsh liked best to hear of the lives of such men as Jacob, Moses, and Elijah, but his favorite was Job, especially the brief account of his old age"for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.... And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job.... and saw ... his sons' sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days."