Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  The meal would be scarcely finished before he would be nodding, fighting the one great enemy of his dayssleep, like a monster always lying in wait for him, sneaking up to grab him at the most unhandy times and places. He liked to sleep in church, but while driving home in the wagon from Hawthorne Town or when visiting Mrs. Elliot, and especially after supper, at such times sleep was a thief stealing great chunks out of his life.

  It was fun to run barefooted in the dewy grass, chase hop toads and fireflies and answer the whip-poor-wills calling from the river hill. He wanted to hear the katy-dids sing, and sit with Marsh and Delph on the front porch stops in the cool of the evening and listen to their talk. He would sit sometimes in the early summer darkness, and see them close together, the white blur of their faces and the darker blur of their hands. Delph sitting with her arms about her drawn up knees, and Marsh near her on the step below. And it seemed to Burr-Head that on nights like that when they sat together their voices were softer then, and they seemed different from the busy daytime Marsh and Delph.

  But he seldom heard their talk and Delph's low laughter. Most always in summer he fell asleep, usually on the grass under the box elder tree, though one hot sultry night he was awakened by his

  Page 340

  father's half-glad, half-angry curses, and his mother's hugs and tears to learn that he was in the spring house. They might have gone hunting him all night had not Caesar gone sniffing at the door. Marsh had given him something of a lecture for scaring Delph so, and though Burr-Head knew enough not to sass his father, he felt that sleep was the guilty one, not he. He had slipped into the cool dark place to hear the little bull frogs talk among themselves, but he was scarcely settled before sleep snatched him away.

  There were so many things to learn and do and see that naps in the day time grew to be an ever more irksome business. He always awakened cross and hungry with a suspiciously angry feeling that somebody had done something or something had happened while he was away. Once he missed a thunder storm, slept right through the thunder and lightning and only awakened when the rain had slacked. He had been fretful the rest of the afternoon with disappointment, for better than anything else in the world he liked thunder storms especially when they were loud and wild and the lightning seemed to race right through his hair. He liked the smell of the sudden wind that would come whistling through the corn, and the sight of the black thunder heads foaming and tossing over the valley, the prickly feel of the first big warm drops and the smell of the sun-heated limestone rocks in the rain. Delph would go dashing about, maybe jerking clothes off the line or bringing apples and beans in from their drying, and there was always a rush to the barnyard to see that the youngest chickens were safely huddled under their hens. Caesar would go running in circles and Marsh would rush in from his plowing; and when all that was done there was the fun of listening to the rain and knowing that everything was safe and dry.

  Sometimes when she was in a mighty press of work like just before a rain, Burr-Head would help Delph in the garden. He knew all the things in his mother's garden, and though Mrs. Elliot's flowers had their pictures taken and put in a Louisville paper, and strange cars were always stopping to admire them, he liked his mother's flowers better. Sometimes when he and Marsh were in the farther fields they would see growing down among the corn a clump of bright blue corn flowers or a red old maid strayed from her sisters. Marsh would plow carefully past the flower and say, "I see we've run smack into Delph's garden." Nights sometimes he would wink at

  Page 341

  Burr-Head as he said to Delph, "You have th' travelinest flowers, Delph. We found some poppies clear on th' other side a Solomon's pasture."

  Delph would wrinkle her brows and ponder, then smile suddenly with remembering, "Oh, did it bloom? I never went back to seebut once when I was passin' I saw th' spot, there's a big gray limestone rock to one side. I thought some poppies would look pretty growin' therean' it would be sort of fun to come up on 'em unexpected like. So I stuck some out there th' first rainy daybut I never went back to see."

  And Marsh would maybe suggest as he had suggested many times, "Delph, wouldn't you like a real flower garden? I'd fence it off an' plow an' manure it better than th' garden even. You could have all your flowers together so a body could see em. An' not go trampin' all over creation when people ask to see your flowers."

  But Delph would laugh as she always did, and answer, "Law, I hate flowers all together in one piece, so pious like an' stiff in rows."

  And so the flowers and the herbs grew scattering here and there with wild blue iris planted in spots by the river and the big purple iris on the river hill, and wandering Dorothy Perkins roses blooming on a back field fence. The tansy, dill, peppermint, catnip, sage, horseradish, and fever weed were always being found in scattered corners and unexpected places.

  Burr-Head learned the flowers as he learned the vegetablesknew their smell and which the bees loved best, the ones that loved the sun, and those that loved the shade like pansies, and the four-o-clocks that would bloom only in the afternoon shadow. For a long time the wonder of a poppy's opening lingered in his mind. It must have been late June when for some reason he never remembered he was out early while the fog lay thick on the river and all the leaves were heavy with dew. He had walked out among a band of poppies scattered through the cabbage rows, and while he stood marveling at the newness and the strangeness of the world when it was neither night nor day but only blue, something had struck him on the chin. He looked and hunted and saw a yellow poppy flower opening slowly like an unclosing hand, and its petals were not smooth but wrinkled like cloth that has been packed away for ironing.

  Page 342

  He had hunted again to find what hit him on the chin, and while he looked he saw the gray-green prickly case of a fat poppy bud burst and go flying away while a red wrinkled poppy leaped into wideness then continued more slowly to widen still more. He stood silent a moment, filled with the wonder of the life in the poppy flowers, and then he had gone flying to Delph, busy with breakfast getting in the kitchen. So great was his excitement it had taken some moments to tell her, and even then she learned more from his shining eyes than from his tongue which in moments of stress behaved like Marsh's tongue. Delph had shown proper excitement but his father had taken the matter so calmly that Burr-Head had a moment's uneasy suspicion that maybe others in the world had already learned the poppy flowers were given to flying open, more swiftly than chickens coming from eggs. Though he tried many times, he was never again able to waken early enough to catch the flowers in their opening, but must content himself with hunting the freshly opened ones, those with wrinkles on their petals.

  Then suddenly summer was gone and the poppy stalks were dead. Fat fodder shocks stood in place of the high growing corn, and red and yellow beech and maple leaves floated down the river. The days shortened and sleep troubled him less and less. He never felt guilty at going to sleep after dark. Many mornings he would awaken and catch the dawn red handed in the sky. He would lie for a moment, waking to hear the whisper and rustle of the box elder leaves stirred in the dying night wind, see through the window the red flushed sky and the bottom lands blue in the dawn, and he would be strangely quiet about getting out of bed and maybe tiptoe to the kitchen and talk a time in whispers, awed still by the awakening world.

  But the glory of red leaves flying in the wind, of bonfires in the evening, of hunting grapes and chinkapins, of stowing all manner of things away for winter, all were dwarfed and small before the crowning glory of his life, the first trip alone with his father to Hawthorne Town. He had never begged to go, knowing always that begging Marsh for anything was wasted breath.

  There had come a morning when he was awakened by lamplight on his face, and there was Delph with the lamp in her hand, and saying, "But he's so little, Marsh, an' me not along. Let's not wake him."

  Page 343

  After that the day had blossomed like the poppy flowers. He could hardly be bothered with eating
breakfast but jiggled excitedly on his chair and asked so many questions that Marsh was forced to speak with more than his usual sternness, when he reminded him to give proper attention to Delph as she told him to be good and not stray from his father in the Saturday crowd.

  Only one little trouble marred the goodness of Burr-Head's world and that was in the morning as they drove away. Delph and Caesar came to stand in the barn hall and watch them off, and they looked sad, he thought, as if they would be lonesome while the men were gone. Delph kept patting and smoothing his overall knees and fiddling with his shirt collar and whispering things about being good as if he were a baby still.

  Then they were driving up the hill, beating the sun across the high pasture, going down the Hawthorne Road and there was no time for wearisome thoughts of his mother at home. The sun stood high and hot for October when they drove into Hawthorne Town, past the cannon bristling public square where the fountain played and on to the strip of lawn behind the court house where other teams and cars were gathered. There, they left the mules and went walking briskly over the town. Marsh Gregory was a busy man with much to attend to on a Saturday market day. Now and again Burr-Head would find himself hanging back, maybe alone while his father talked to this one or that.

  There was so much to see and hear. He wanted to linger on the court house lawn and hear blind John Duncan's fiddle play and watch a little darkie dance. He wanted to stop and count the strokes when the clock on the court house tower boomed out the time, and he wanted to stop and hear the hill men play and sing in the saloon on Maple Street. It seemed he could never have his fill of staring at the railroad men in peaked caps and funny overalls like rompers, who like others in the streets had come to do their Saturday's trading. He wished he could talk to the soot blackened miners with carbide lights screwed in their caps, up from the eastern end of the county, and there were tall lean hill men with hound dogs at their heels strolling through the town, or whittling by the fountain or on the courthouse steps.

  Page 344

  He could have done such things. There was no danger of his getting lost. Many in the town knew him and would call, ''Hey, Burr-Head," until he turned and waved. While Marsh was busy in the stores or bank or at the school superintendent's office, he, Burr-Head, could have gone looking over the town. But Burr-Head stayed with his father; more than anything else he wanted the people to know that the wide-shouldered gray-eyed man with his red-gold hair and red-brown beard, and his overalls whitening at their knees was his father.

  Men looked at Burr-Head in friendly fashion and patted his head and asked him if he thought he wouldn't be president some day, and Burr-Head would smile at their silly talk. He knew the president well; his name was much in the mouths of all people in Kentucky that fall, and he had a pretty voice that Burr-Head heard sometimes over the radio. He knew he was a great, important man but nothing to compare with his father. He could not manage a mean strong bull like Solomon that no other man in the county save Poke Easy could handle, and he could not grow the corn his father grew; three ears of it from last fall hung now in the bank where Marsh took his business, and today more than one man said they'd never heard of such luck as Marsh had with his calves. Marsh when they talked so would only push back his hat and scratch his head or grunt out something about land good for clover, but Burr-Head would stand and look up at him, and both his chest and his eyes would get bigger and bigger.

  Still, he was glad when the afternoon was almost gone and it was time to go back to Delph. Now and again through the afternoon he found himself thinking of her, and when he saw a hill woman in a bright blue bonnet like one Delph wore in the garden he walked up to her and peeped under the brim of the bonnet, hoping a bit that the woman was something like Delph, but she wasn't. Nobody was. He always remembered that day in Town, for as they were driving home some hurt inside him came like a tearing but he never knew exactly what it was. The sun went down when they were only a few miles out of town, and the twilight came on blue and cold. The sundown was blood red in the west, but overhead the sky was deep blue and green with one wide pale star. A cold little wind came out of the north, and Burr-Head turned up his jumper collar and snuggled against his father. There was a smell of winter in the air, and when

  Page 345

  they passed the old Burgess place where nobody lived, the chimney sweeps were cutting great circles in the sky, and crying above the big rock chimney.

  Marsh drove down the road by Higginbottom's place where Little Lizzie lived, and there she was by the front yard gate. She stood on tip-toe and reached for the cosmos flowers above her head, and broke them off and laid them in her tucked up dress. ''Hello, Little Lizzie," Marsh said, and stopped the wagon.

  "Howdy," Little Lizzie said, and her voice sounded small as if she talked from a good piece away.

  "What'a th' matter, Little Lizzie?" Marsh said.

  "Nothin'," she said, and broke another flower and laid it in her tucked up dress.

  "There'll be no frost tonight, so you needn't cut your flowers," Marsh said, then he turned and said in a louder voice when he saw Perce come walking across the road from his barn, "Howdy, Perce, did you give Little Lizzie a spankin'? She won't talk to me or Burr-Head."

  Perce said, "Howdy, Marsh," and walked slow across the road, and came and stood with his foot on a wagon wheel near Burr-Head.

  "I was tellin' Little Lizzie she'd no need to cut her flowers, for there'll be no." Marsh stopped and when he had sat a time fiddling with the reins he asked in a different voice, "What ails you an' yours, Perce?"

  Perce cleared his throat and Little Lizzie came to lean on the gate, but she never smiled at Burr-Head. She didn't seem to know he was in the wagon. She looked at her father with her eyes big and watery bright when he said, "Recollect, Marsh, I was tellin' you th' other day that Joesoon's corn cuttin' time's overhad gone to Detroit."

  Marsh nodded. Perce cleared his throat again and his words came slow. "Well he wrote todayjoined th' navy an' headed for San Francisco an' th' ocean. Three years," Perce said, "an' him hardly eighteen."

  Marsh pushed back his hat and studied the sky. There were more stars now. "There's Ray doin' well in college an' plannin' to farm in this country.You've got three more comin' on. It'sit's not like Joe was your only oneor your oldest."

  Page 346

  "He was so lively in his ways," Perce said, and his voice was old and full of something like Little Lizzie's voice.

  Burr-Head pulled his sleeve and looked at Little Lizzie as he said, "Th' ocean it's mighty fineth' waves an' th' storms, an' th' biggest boats." He heard Marsh turn abruptly on the wagon seat, and he felt Perce's eyes falling down on him.

  "An' how might a little shaver like you know about th' sea an' its ships?" Perce said.

  Burr-Head was still for a moment. He didn't know why, but for some reason it seemed like telling tales to say what he finally said, "Delph told me."

  "Oh," Perce said and took his foot from the wagon wheel and Marsh drove rapidly away. Once Burr-Head looked back and waved to Little Lizzie, but she never saw him. She stood and leaned on the gate, with the flowers spilling from her tucked up dress. He forgot Little Lizzie then when Marsh was driving down across the pasture hill. Marsh had never hugged or kissed him as if he were a baby or a girl, but tonight when they turned over the hill and saw the lights from their windows, yellow in the dark valley, Marsh caught him suddenly and drew him tight against him, so hard it hurt. He felt the thudding of his father's heart, and his deep slow breathing.

  Page 347

  24

  Marsh leaned on a briar hook and struggled with his foolish mind. He liked clean fence rows, but a wild rose in June was a pretty thing and smelled almost as good as fresh red clover hay. Still, he frowned at the wild rose, flaunting its pale pink petals against the gray limestone of the wide rock fence.

  He remembered last spring. He had cleared his fence rows on a showery day in June, and then as now the troublesome wild rose had taken a good ten minutes
of his time. He had decided to wait until the thing stopped blooming, but the rose as if in defiance had bloomed until July, and when at last the petals were shed he had hardly noticed it. He hung the briar hook over the fence and turned away. He guessed that by next summer he would most likely be wasting time over this same rose.