by Jessie Haas
We are having a conversation! I thought. “We—he doesn’t really have a name.” We could never decide on one. We were always reading a new novel with a new hero and trying that name. He was Laurie once, from Little Women. “I call him Kid,” I said, just to keep things going.
“I see.”
The gray rooster jerked a shrewd glance upward as we approached. I offered him oats on the palm of my hand.
Ohhh, looklooklook. He came close, and I saw how beautiful his eye was, the green center surrounded by hot orange. He snatched an oat. I felt his wattle touch my fingers, and high above, Aunt Sarah cleared her throat.
“I hope you know better than to make a pet of a farm animal.”
I ignored her, shaking the oats farther down my fingers. Above my head I heard a massive indrawn breath, and then she swept on ahead of me, toward the house.
She gave me some wizened russet apples, and I spent the afternoon by the brook. In the lacy shade of the birches I waited until the horses came to rest and drink. Then I ate an apple loudly.
The colt couldn’t bear it long. He came and begged with an eloquent nose. I made him wait for the core, and I didn’t even try to touch his halter. Instead I walked away, eating another apple. He followed and nudged, and at last I gave it to him.
I put my hand on the halter then, and scratched his ears, but made no attempt to hold him. The next day, when I went down with apples in my pockets, he came right to me.
I didn’t know what to do with him once I had him. Once I’d had a plan. I had a book by Dennis Magner, the great horse tamer, and I was going to follow his directions, and the colt was going to be perfectly trained. People were going to marvel at how well a young girl had done. Now I led the colt around in a few circles, let him loose, and went for a walk.
The lane meandered past the barn to the crest of the hill. An old road ran along there, so rarely used that it was mostly grassed over. I followed it, passing another abandoned cellar hole, and after a while came upon a small brick building with a hole in the roof and a padlock on the door.
I peeked in one cobwebbed window. Rows of empty desks faced a blackboard. This must be the school Mother taught in. Here she first met my father.
I sat on the front step. They must have sat here together, after the children had gone home. There were only three children then, on all this broad hillside. It was an easy school to teach, Mother used to say, and in the afternoons Father came.
I looked off at the blue hills. She would like to know I was here. Maybe she did know. I could almost feel her shoulder nudging mine, and I stayed as long as the feeling lasted. The hills were dusky purple when I walked back along the ridge.
“Where in heaven’s name have you been?” Aunt Sarah shattered my peace the minute I walked in. I could smell supper, but nothing was on the table.
“I went for a walk.”
“And how was I to know that?”
Of course there was no answer. I should have told her. I faced down her angry eyes.
I would have told Mother because Mother loved me. Mother would worry. Aunt Sarah only wanted to be the boss.
nine
The nights were worse than the days. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Clayton went to bed at nine, and I was meant to go, too. When they’d closed their bedroom door, the house was silent. It was too quiet to turn in bed, too quiet to cry. Night after night I lay still and narrow, like a wrinkle in the blanket. I could hear how big that house was. I could sense its rooms crowded with ghostly furniture. Sometimes I was cold, sometimes I broke into a sweat, because it was real. It was true. Mother was dead.
Every time I got in bed I prayed that she’d come back in another dream, and dreams did come, but they were never like that first one. That one was her, and the dreams I had now were only me, trying to rearrange things in my mind.
Thank goodness for Aunt Sarah, I sometimes thought. All day long I braced against her. That was eighteen hours out of every twenty-four when I felt strong and wary and a little mean, and that was better than feeling crushed. How would I hold out, I wondered, when I was with someone who loved me? Uneasily I watched the road for my first visitor.
No one came.
Luke was at school, I reminded myself, and Althea Brand had no way to come, and Dr. Vesper was busy.
But on Saturday there was no school. Luke would be missing me. All morning, as I collected eggs, and led the colt in the pasture, and helped Aunt Sarah get dinner, and ate dinner, I was really down in Barrett watching Luke. She woke up—and as the day wore on, I woke her later and later in my mind—and negotiated to use Tulip, their phlegmatic horse. Maybe Mrs. Mitchell needed Tulip first. Maybe Vicky had come home, and there were family doings. But surely by lunchtime, or right after lunch, Luke was saddling and riding up the road. With her I turned my face away at the place where the grass was crushed, and with her tears sprang to my eyes as I went by our little gray house. Then up the silent hill, arriving just about two o’clock.
Tulip was a slow horse. Say three o’clock, or half past.
At four o’clock I was waiting hunched on the chopping block, my arms pressed tight against the hot, crawling sensation in my stomach. By five o’clock I knew: out of sight, out of mind. My friends might care while I was there in front of them, but they didn’t care enough to come this far. Here I was, and here I’d rot, as far as anyone in Barrett was concerned.
In the barn milk hissed into Uncle Clayton’s pails. My rooster pecked near my feet, the only creature in the world that willingly sought my company.
Two by two Uncle Clayton carried the milk pails to the house. When he came to let the cows out, Aunt Sarah came, too. “We need a bird for Sunday dinner,” she said, and reached down and grabbed the gray rooster by the legs. He gave a squawk and hung blinking from her hand.
I stood up. “That’s my rooster!”
Aunt Sarah barely glanced at me. “You can’t get attached to farm animals. They aren’t pets.” She handed the upside-down rooster to Uncle Clayton and started to turn away. I felt the lump in my chest swell and crack.
“You have a dozen roosters! Kill one of the others!”
Aunt Sarah paused, stiffening. “Harriet,” she said, “these are my chickens. I’ll manage them as I see fit.”
Something seemed to burst inside me. I stamped my foot. “You don’t want me to have anything! You want me to die!”
She turned very slowly. Her face was blotched white and red, and she seemed gigantic, like an oceangoing ship. If I’d had any sense, I would have been frightened, but I stood my ground, thrusting my jaw at her. She said, in a voice so soft I could hardly hear it, “Clayton, kill that bird!”
“No!” I said. “Give him to me!”
Uncle Clayton’s jaw sagged. He looked from me to Aunt Sarah. The rooster’s wings opened in a faint, dazed way.
“Harriet Gibson!” Aunt Sarah said. “You may not have been raised to respect adults, but you’re about to learn!”
“I was raised fine!” I screamed the last word, so loud it slapped up a little echo off the side of the barn. “I was raised to respect good people! But you don’t want me to have anything!”
“You’ve got that colt out there eating his head off! You’ve got a room of your own! Some children might be grateful, but your mother—”
“You leave my mother out of this!”
“Oh, yes, leave her out! She took my brother away from this farm; she disgraced herself and spoiled his life—”
“That is not true! You’re lying!”
“Oh, look in your Bible, child! Read the dates!” She turned away from me contemptuously. “Clayton!”
I pushed past her and snatched the rooster out of his unresisting hand. The bird’s legs were warm. I tipped him gently upright and settled him under my arm. “I’ll be back for my things when I’ve found a place to live.” My voice shook, but it sounded clear and brave. I turned and started down the lane.
I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear. My body shook, and in
my mind I yelled at Aunt Sarah. I did the whole fight again, only better. “If my mother had been a bank robber, she’d still be a better person than you are!” I screamed inside.
It felt glorious.
I stumbled. Uhh-ohhhh, the rooster murmured. I felt him shudder in my arms. His head bobbed with every step I took, jerking side to side as he tried to focus. I looked into his green and orange eye. She would have chopped his head off.
“I will never go back,” I said. “This time nothing’s going to stop me.”
The long, low afternoon sun slanted through the trees. I turned down the main road, skirting the lower edge of the big pasture. I would find a place to live, I would send for Mother’s sewing machine, and I’d earn a living for myself. She’d taught me to sew a seam; with thought, with practice, I could learn to design as she had, to make the little adjustments that turned an ordinary dress into something far more flattering.
Or I’d go out as a hired girl.
Oh, yes, I can see that! some part of me said, in a voice like Aunt Sarah’s. A runaway orphan, as near illegitimate as makes no difference—
“That’s a lie!”
Ohh, murmured the rooster. His chest vibrated on my arm. Ohh, look! He cocked his head, listening, and now I, too, heard hoofbeats, coming from downhill.
A buggy emerged from the shade of the birches, pulled by a horse I didn’t know. We drew nearer each other. In the shadow of the hooded buggy a face began to take shape: an unbleached shirtfront—no, a long yellow-white beard.
The one-armed man.
The horse reached me and stopped of its own accord, puffing. It had deep hollows over its eyes and looked too fuzzy for this time of year, as if it hadn’t shed out properly. It turned its head toward the rooster but didn’t seem to have enough strength or curiosity to sniff.
I kept walking. As I passed the front wheel, a voice issued out of the dark buggy. “Well, hello there! You’ll be Harry Gibson.”
I stopped in my tracks. No one had called me Harry in a long time. I stared into the old man’s clear, pale eyes and felt a sudden shock, the kind you feel when you miss the bottom stair. I knew him. Didn’t I? But who was he?
“Where you goin’ with Sarah’s rooster?”
The top of my head prickled. “How do you know whose rooster it is?”
Movement beneath the beard seemed to indicate a smile. “Ain’t many roosters on this ridge. Where you takin’ him?”
Mother taught me not to talk with strange men. I glanced behind me. I could get over the stone wall quickly, if I needed to.
“Don’t remember me, do you? It’s Truman Hall, your uncle Clayton’s brother.”
Truman! I remembered the name. I remembered that Uncle Truman had been good to Mother and Father, and suddenly I remembered him, sitting at our kitchen table once or twice when I was very small.
“You came to the funeral.”
He nodded. “I’da done better to come while she was alive, but it ain’t easy with a horse this old. Jerry’s done well to get me down to the birches today.” Beneath and behind the seat, I noticed now, were bundles of dry twigs, tied together with strips of rag. “Kindling,” Truman said. “I don’t split it as easy as some folks.” He shrugged his left shoulder, and the shortened arm moved within the sleeve.
“Where do you live?”
“Live in your house,” he said. “House where you were born.”
“Really? Where is it?”
He pointed uphill with his chin. I saw only the road and the empty green slope. “I was born there, too,” he said. “So was your Uncle Clayton. I sold the place to your dad when they got married, bought it back from your mother when he died. You prob’ly don’t remember it.”
“No. I only remember West Barrett.”
“Headin’ back there?” Truman asked. “I see you’re takin’ along your supper!”
I glanced down at the rooster, lying warm and docile on my arm. “No, he—he’s friendly. He likes me. She was going to kill him for Sunday dinner!” To my horror tears overflowed my eyes. “She has a dozen roosters, but just because I like this one—” I stopped myself.
Truman shook his head. “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he said, in a warm, musing voice. “Always did make bad worse. Little bit that way yourself, ain’t you, Harry?”
“No! I never fight with people! It’s her!”
A huge grin cracked Truman’s face. He cocked his head and looked at me with an expression of pure delight. “Y’know, when I see Sarah pickin’ you up at the funeral, I says to myself, Trume, I says, Sarah don’t know it, but she’s got a bobcat by the tail. Ohh, my!”
Ohh, my, the rooster echoed, shifting. I felt his wings try to flap, and I wrapped my arm closer around him.
“Mr. Hall, I need to be going,” I said as politely as I could.
He leaned forward. One elbow rested on his knee. The other arm didn’t include an elbow. “Now, youngster, listen. Are you dead set on runnin’ away?”
“I’m not running away. I’m just leaving.”
“Because if you ain’t,” he said, “it’d give me a lot of pleasure to have you in the neighborhood. Now, tell you what, c’mon up home with me. Bring your bird, and I’ll shelter him for you. Then you and me and him can visit back and forth, and we’ll study up how to civilize Sarah.”
I hesitated. The sun was nearing the ridgetop, and the road below was deeply shadowed. It was a long way down to West Barrett, and the bird was shifting in my arms.
But would I really get into a buggy with a strange man? Would I really go back to Aunt Sarah a second time, after running away?
“Course, if you come with me, you’ve got to walk,” Truman said. “Jerry’d catch his never-get-over if he had to haul us both.”
He chirruped, and stiffly the old horse put himself in motion. I turned with the turning wheel and watched the buggy leaving. The hillside seemed wide and still and empty.
I took three long steps and caught up.
ten
My arm was cramping. I shifted the rooster. He opened his beak, and a screech came out that sounded like help, help, help!
Truman dropped the reins on the dash, set his foot on them, and took off his straw hat. He handed it to me. “Put that over his head. He’ll feel better if he can’t see too much.”
The hat was worn and greasy, but the rooster stilled beneath it. I walked beside the wheel, and Truman leaned forward on his one elbow, gazing at the green hillside. He didn’t speak. We neared the farm lane and very slowly passed it. I listened for the sound of other hoofbeats. Would Aunt Sarah really let me run away? Wouldn’t she come after me?
“If Jerry was younger,” Truman said suddenly, “I’d drive up and tell Sarah not to worry. But when a horse hits thirty, he’s only got so many steps left in him.”
“I want her to worry,” I said. “It serves her right!”
He grinned again, as if something about me delighted him beyond measure.
We continued up the road about half a mile farther. A grassy lane branched off to the left. Jerry turned in there and stopped with a sigh, dropping his head to graze. Truman climbed down awkwardly and stood patting the old horse, looking across the blue folds of the hills.
I looked, too. We’re so high, I thought. It made me feel calm and at home, as if I were looking out my own bedroom window.
“All right, Jerry.” Truman pulled up the old horse’s head, and we walked on either side of him. The lane seemed untracked and abandoned, but ahead I saw the sagging wall of a shed.
In a moment the whole house came into view: a low gray Cape, crumbling back into the hillside. The shed was swaybacked, and lichen grew on the roof slates, making them look thick and soft. Lilacs crowded tight to the house, and they were blossoming, though the lilacs at home had already faded. A shiver traveled up my spine. I don’t remember this, I thought. I’m sure I don’t remember.
Truman led Jerry into the shed, which was open on both sides. I watched with an unsettled feeling in my stoma
ch as he unhitched and unharnessed. The lone hand seemed independently alive, like an animal.
He slung the harness onto the wall pegs and slipped the bridle off Jerry’s head. Jerry shuddered his skin and ambled out the other side of the shed, down the green slope. I looked out after him. There was no fence in sight, only hens bobbing in the grass, looking like fat old ladies with their hands clasped behind their backs.
“Won’t he run away?”
“Jerry ain’t ambitious,” Truman said. He looked around blankly, scratching in his beard. Then he fetched down a dusty bushel basket from a rafter peg. “Here, stick your bird under this. I’ll put him with the hens after dark.”
I put the rooster on the ground, and Truman lowered the basket as I took my hands away. A soft, weary ohhh and then silence.
I stepped back. Truman said, “Now, Harry. Thirsty?”
I nodded.
“Set down on the step, and I’ll fetch you a cup of water.” He disappeared through a door in the shed, and I went outside.
The front step was a brown piece of sandstone, weathered and soft looking. I sat, curling my legs under me. A low purple-flowered plant with scalloped leaves grew all around the stone. Bees buzzed and stirred the blossoms.
That’s gill-go-by-the-ground, I said to myself.
How did I know that? My gaze dropped to the edge of the stone, where a large chip was missing—
The back of my neck prickled. In my mind’s eye I saw a baby’s finger, pink and pointed, tracing the chip. My finger.
The door opened behind me. Cold, dog-smelling air flowed out. A dog came, too, a cow-dog, who flattened her ears at me in a friendly way. Behind her came Truman, with two tin cups in his hand. I took one, and he lowered himself onto the rock beside me. The dog squeezed in between.
“Well now, this is neighborly!”
I drank half my water in two big gulps. It was cold and sweet. “I remember this rock,” I said after a minute. “I remember sitting out here.”
“I remember you here,” Truman said.
The rock was warm, and warmth spread into me. The place seemed to put its arm around me. I cradled the tin cup and looked over the rim, at the crooked, spindling bean poles, green grass and green trees, hills turning from blue to purple.
