Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  He stood a while and watched his cows graze in the lush thick clover. He knew he wasted time, but the watching of his herd was a luxury he would allow himself in odds and ends of time like this. It was Memorial Day for Salem Church with dinner on the ground, and services and singing beginning at ten o'clock and lasting through the day. Down at the house Delph was packing the baskets of food she had prepared. Marsh, with an hour or so to spare before starting time, had come to the upper fields on pretext of looking for weeds in the clover, cleaning his fence rows, and relieving Delph of Burr-Head.

  But Burr-Head wandered with Caesar, and Marsh had done little but walk about and look at this and that. He started leisurely across the field when he heard Solomon bellow and Caesar bark

  Page 348

  from the screen of vines and young locust trees by the Solomon pasture below the high knoll. The fence was high and strong; the child nor the dog nor the bull could come to harm. Burr-Head knew better than to tease Solomon, but so strong was the feeling of pleasantness that seemed settled on Marsh like a dew, that he did not lift his voice in calling or even frown.

  He climbed the high knoll and stood by the pasture bars and looked a time at the ivy chained chimneys of the brick house, showing a little above the pear and apple trees. He looked down at the bottom lands where his house was little more than a roof in a sea of green shrub and green vine. He thought of Delph, the way she would sit sometimes by the fire last winter and smile and plan how it would be when he paid for the land and they moved into the brick house. She would do thus and so to one room and that to another. She would maybe use the money she had for furniture. There seemed little chance that Burr-Head would need it in college. Next summer he would start to Cedar Stump and Ezrie; last winter Marsh in addition to ordering government bulletins and seed catalogs had collected a few catalogs from colleges. He had just wanted to see what they were like, he had said, though he knew it was useless to try to hide from Delph that he was beginning to plan for Burr-Head.

  Last winter Mr. Elliot had planned to move nearer a large lumber mill he owned in Georgia, for the timber around Burdine was mostly gone, but through the spring he had changed his mind. His heart had been bothering him off and on; his blood pressure was higher than it ought to be. Not that he was scared or ever thought of dying, so he had explained to Marsh, but since he had lived in the brick house longer than in any other house he had ever known, he thought he might as well keep on living there. Marsh had offered no objection. He'd be glad to rent it for at least a few more years, but not too long. Delph had always liked the place, and he would rather fancy it himselfwhen he could afford it. Then Mrs. Elliot had come one day while he worked alone in the upper fields, and she had talked and smiled the way she did sometimes, said she hoped she could always live in this country and that, though she knew nothing of farming, she thought Marsh was a very good farmer, but some day Burr-Head would be a better one than he; already he knew which buds to pinch from the dahlias so that the remaining flowers might

  Page 349

  be twice as large. Marsh had listened with his chest expanding mightily. He could hardly remember when the conversation changed, or how it happened that when Mrs. Elliot suggested that she and Mr. Elliot buy the brick house, he had even listened. But listen he did, and with it there had come the thought of the stone house he would like to build.

  Later in the week Mr. Elliot had come hunting him in the cornfield. He gave no foolish reason and excuses like Mrs. Elliot, simply said that since the building of the river bridge and the finishing of a through road that went all the way north to Detroit and south to Florida, the house with the many improvements that Marsh had made from time to time, had grown in his eyes. The price he offered for the house and garden, a strip of land to the road and a rough bit of river hill with none of the pasture and no tree of the orchard taken, would finish the mortgage and buy a strip of woodland just across the creek from his own that Marsh had long wanted. The thing was finished except for the signing of the deedsand still Delph didn't know. For days he had refused to mar his sense of triumph in having a debt-free farm with thought of how he would tell Delph.

  Solomon bellowed with a great roar of rage, and Marsh, glad to put thoughts of explanation from his head, hurried to the sound. He found Burr-Head and Caesar pressed against the high barbed wire crowned fence, lost in the drama of Solomon, who stood a few feet away and pawed and bellowed and tossed his head, especially for their pleasure it seemed, for when Marsh came he looked guilty, like a bully come suddenly against a man stronger than he. He turned and stalked away, and not until then did the guilty ones take notice of Marsh.

  Caesar had the grace to look embarrassed and drop his tail and circle away a bit. Not so with Burr-Head. While Marsh stood pondering, aware that some good words concerning obedience were needed, Burr-Head reached into one overall cuff and pulled out a wilted sprig of wild delphinium. "Look at th' bouquet I picked for Delph, deldelpheenium," he said, and smiled and showed his teeth and wrinkled his freckle bespattered nose, as he returned the flower to the cuff of his overalls and patted it gently.

  "You know a thing or two," Marsh answered, all in a maze of prideful wonder at the smartness of his child. Burr-Head not only

  Page 350

  knew the names of all the plants about, but knew also that his father would forget to scold when he showed him a flower he had picked for Delph. Marsh took his hand and they walked to the back of the field above the creek and across from the stretch of rough land he intended to buy.

  Burr-Head teased to go down to the creek and hunt for minnows and mint and periwinkles, but Marsh sat on a flat limestone under a cedar tree. He took the broken arrow he always carried in his pockets, and drew lines and squares on the flat limestone. Burr-Head watched and forgot to tease. Caesar, feeling that he had shown contrition enough, came and sat by Marsh's shoulder, and wrinkled the brown spots above his eyes as he watched the building. "We'll need good big cellars," Marsh said.

  "Plenty a room for my popcorn," Burr-Head reminded. The building of the stone house on the hill was a game he had played with his father many times.

  "Never put popcorn in a cellar, son. Th' apples from that little Ben Davis you set this spring, they can go in th' cellar."

  "Don't forget th' fireplace. I'll want a place to put New York an' Fairyland.Marsh what kind a fertilizer do you guess they put on that bean stalk anyhow?"

  "It was good strong bottom land on a crop a soy beans turned under," Marsh answered, and smiled a little in thinking of Delph's story. Jack's bean stalk always grew on Marsh's corn lands, but led, through some miracle which Burr-Head never questioned, straight to New York City where the giant lived and there were many wondrous things. Delph's mixing of the maps irked Marsh less than formerly. It seemed foolish to be afraid; to mind her whimsy, childlike imaginings.

  "Don't forget a place for my little sister," Burr-Head reminded him.

  "You've got no little sister."

  "Dorie said I ought to have. She said I'd get so mean my hide wouldn't hold me if you an' Delph didn't get me a sister. I want one."

  "We'll see about it," Marsh answered, and plans for the stone househis way of telling Delphfaded while he sat and stared at the fallen red brown cedar needles, and thought of the night he had struck her, and she had cried out that she would never have another

  Page 351

  child. He wondered if she thought on all that sometimes and held it against him still. He needed childrennow that the land was free of debt.

  "Look, this is th' big back room where we'll test our seed corn," Burr-Head said, and pointed to a pebble outlined square.

  "That's fine," Marsh answered and got up. "It's time for us to be home gettin' ready to go to Salem."

  "I'm goin' to wear my overalls.Marsh, why are some clouds big an' some little?"

  "They're made like people, I guess. All kinds and sizes."

  "But how do they grow so fast or get so little?"

  "Th' windif
it likes th' clouds it feeds 'em, but if th' clouds are bad th' wind blows their feed away an' makes 'em skinny."

  "I'd hate to be a cloud.Marsh, why does Maude when she gets up start with her front legs first, but Ivy, now she pushes up her behind?"

  "That's part a th' difference 'tween a mare an' a cow."

  "Marsh, why do bees like clover so?"

  "For th' same reason that you like honey. Sing a little now so you won't ask so many questions. Recollect that song Delph taught you th' other night?"

  "I'd rather be King George?" Burr-Head tilted his head and studied his father, and when he had decided that his father's words were suggestion instead of command, he pulled his overall leg and begged, "Marsh, you tell me that story about th' surprise."

  Marsh grunted. "Aw, Burr-Head I'm no good at tellin' storiesnot like Delph."

  "Please, Marsh, just this once," he begged with another tug on the overall leg.

  Marsh hunkered on his heels in a bed of white clover, while Burr-Head and Caesar dropped belly downward beside and lay and smiled at him while he talked. Prissy, grazing a few rods away, tossed her pretty horns and then drew gradually nearer until Burr-Head could have touched her on the nose; but while Marsh talked Burr-Head never noticed Prissy. "It's like this," Marsh began and pulled a clover flower and studied it, "there is a place in Kentucky called th' Bluegrass, an' Lord it is th' finest land, finer than this where th' bluegrass grows. Th' tobacco leaves are wider than a man's two hands spread wide an' thinner than tissue paper.

  Page 352

  "But finer than anything are th' horses. Th' horses in th' bluegrass country have their names all set in books, an' their grandfathers an' grandmothers all th' way back through England to Arabia, I guess. They're not like our Maude. She's a good mare, but, pshaw, we don't know all th' blood behind her. But in th' bluegrass country they know th' blood behind their horses an' their mares. An' there when a fine one dies he can know his blood goes on an' they'll recollect him always.

  "On one a th' big fine farms there is a mare's statue all in gold, an' it's on th' grave of th' finest mare that ever was. Her colts could run like th' wind an win races, an' her fillies could, too, but mostly they raised more colts an' fillies.

  "Well, one a these days, Burr-Head, when you're a good bit bigger than you are now, I'll go away for a day, maybe two or three. An' in th' night while you're sleepin' I'll come sneakin' in back home, an' I'll unload th' truck in th' barn. We'll have a new fine barn then, fixed like a barn ought to be. I'll call you out to th' barn' early, an' I'll go openin' a stable door an' what do you reckin' you'll see?"

  "A blue blooded filly from th' bluegrass country," Burr-Head cried. "An' when she's growed into a mare she'll have a colt for me."

  There was more to the story but Marsh never finished. They heard Delph blowing the old fox horn she always used to bring them to the house, and both remembered guiltily that they ought to be home getting ready to go to Salem. They hurried across the field and down the hill, but paused a moment at the front yard gate to hear Delph's song of, "over th' hills of glory, over the jasper sea," rising high and clear and strong. Burr-Head listened and said, "I reckin that ole angel food turned out all right."

  "You be good now," Marsh warned. Burr-Head was never bad when out with his father, but there were times while with Delph that a stern voice was needed. This morning had been such a time. Delph had just slid her eleven-egg angel cake into the oven, when Burr-Head decided he was Maude's second colt, Jule, and that the kitchen floor was a rough pasture with many rocks to be jumped over. Marsh had taken him away, and now was glad to learn from Delph's flushed happy face that the colt had not kicked the wind out of her cake.

  Page 353

  She must start immediately with the dressing of Burr-Head. She was eager to see him dressed in his new white linen blouse, short dark blue linen trousers with large buttons like those of the children in Mrs. Elliot's fashion magazines. There were new slippers and new socks with dark blue bordered tops. He would, she knew, be the prettiest and the best dressed child at Salem Church, including Dorie's visiting grandchildren.

  Burr-Head looked at the new clothing spread on a kitchen chair, and hastily swallowed the half of a deviled egg he had filched from one of the dinner baskets. He nodded to make the egg go down and said, "I don't aim to wear no drawers, Delph,just overalls."

  Marsh turned hastily away with a remark about shaving. He felt trouble in the air, and when it came to Delph and Burr-Head he could never make up his mind which side to take. Though, while he dressed upstairs his tolerance abruptly changed to anger when he heard the banging of the back screen door, and there was Burr-Head flying across the yard in nothing but his undershirt and it a short bit of nothing at that. Nobody had the right to treat Delph so. He dashed downstairs, forgetting that he wore no shoes. "He needs a good spankin'," he thundered to Delph as he strode through the door.

  "He'll come back. Don't go chasin' him," she said, ruffled by the talk of spanking. "An' anyhow he'll never wear 'em. I'll maybe do well to get him to wear his new shoes," she added sadly, and turned and looked at the new clothes.

  Marsh looked at them and then at Delph. He saw tears sliding down the corners of her eyes. He wished that Dorie or some woman would come and scold her for her foolishness. He had no heart for the business. He remembered the buying of the cloth in Hawthorne and the ordering of the paper pattern; the nights when she sat sewing and he had merely grunted over his figuring or government bulletins when she would say, "I just can't wait to see how he'll look. They're th' first halfway nice clothes he's ever had. An' please, Marsh, don't give him a convict haircut like you did before he sang that song at Easter."

  In spite of his shoeless feet, he followed her now when she turned abruptly and started upstairs with a resigned, "I'll get him a clean pair of overalls, an' he can wear his new clothes Sunday."

  Page 354

  ''You need a girl, Delph, to fix up pretty th' way Lizzie dykes out Little Lizzie," Marsh said when they were on the stairs.

  She stopped on the top stair and turned about and looked at him. "Wouldwould you mind?"

  "Hell no, make it twins if you like."

  She smiled, gay again, filling him with that old wonder at her nimble way of leaping from one mood to another. "I've always been afraid of a girl," she said. "What if she had your chin an' my nose? Wouldn't she be a sight?"

  "My chin's all right. Th'trouble is your nose," he answered, and started to pull her nose in teasing, but caught her shoulders instead and pulled her down the stair; she smiled and did not draw away. Past the smooth braids of her hair just below his eyes, he could look to a window and see through that the rows of knee high corn marching away to the curve of the river. He felt her body against his own and saw his corn and knew that life was good. Delph was as he had always known she would some day be.

  While he held her there on the stair, she seemed again the girl who had promised to marry him, with all of her his own, no part of her leaping away, flying over his head while her body remained in his arms. There had been times when he had felt that her body and her heartthe weaker part of itwere his maybe, but that the rest of her was like an unseen, unfelt wind that moved clouds a man could scarcely see. On summer nights it was a bitterness sometimes to lie with her and Burr-Head on the grass and watch the stars, hear her talk softly of the stars, tell the child that somewhere there were lights bigger and brighter and more beautiful than the stars. And though in all her words there was never a hint of complaining or of regret, he had thought sometimes that there was sorrow, the sorrow of one for another who is dead or forever gone away. He looked down into her eyes now, and asked, quickly to reassure himself, "You're not sorry, Delph?"

  "You mean that Burr-Head likes overalls?" she asked, and buttoned the top button of his shirt. "Land, no. Maybe one of his seventeen little brothers and sisters will wear out that little suit."

  "They will not," Burr-Head said.

  They drew apart, and there was Bu
rr-Head, looking guilty and jealous and sorrowful in the frilly white shirt and short blue linen