Fields of Home

by Ralph Moody

  “Molasses, hmff!” Millie snapped right back at him. “How many hogsheads of molasses you cal’late it would take to catch all the devilish flies in Lisbon township? Ain’t nothing to stop ’em coming in here, is there? It’s your own cussed fault if you don’t like flies. Where’s them screens you been promising me ever since I come to this infernal flytrap?”

  “Flytrap! Flytrap!” Grandfather exploded. “Who says it’s a flytrap? This house ain’t never had a screen on it, and for more’n a hundred years it’s been good enough for all the other womenfolks that’s lived in it. Screens, hmff! Tarnal nuisances! Won’t have ’em! Won’t have ’em, I tell you! If this house ain’t good enough for you just like it is, go somewheres else! Screens, hmff!”

  Grandfather’s rowing must have made the old red rooster curious. He flew up onto the window sill behind Uncle Levi, and twisted his head from side to side as he looked around the kitchen. I didn’t want the wrangle about screens to go any further, so I said, “We’ve got a visitor.”

  “Great day of judgment!” Uncle Levi sang out, as he turned toward the rooster. “By hub, there’s one smart critter on the place! First day I been here, and a’ready he knows there’s something more than salt pork on the table.”

  “Ain’t nothing the matter with salt pork!” Grandfather snapped, but I noticed that he’d taken a good big slice of corned beef.

  “Ain’t nothing the matter with bread and water,” Uncle Levi said, as he cut a little piece of corned beef and spread hot mustard on it, “but it’s devilish poor belly stuffing for a man in a hayfield. There you be, Beelzebub! That’ll put a curl in your tail feathers.”

  The old rooster leaned forward and grabbed the piece of corned beef off the end of Uncle Levi’s fork. It was a small mouthful for a man, but a big one for a rooster. He had to make two tries before he could swallow it and, each time, he ran his neck out like a goose reaching through a fence. Then he cocked his head to one side, clicked his bill—so that it sounded almost exactly the way Uncle Levi’s lips had when he looked at the breakfast—and shook his head like a dog with water in its ears. For a minute, he stood blinking his eyes, as if he were trying to make up his mind whether the corned beef was worth the mustard. Then he turned toward the hens in the dooryard, and called, “Tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck.” Before Millie brought the pie, Uncle Levi had fed the rooster a dozen pieces or more of corned beef, and he put a good dollup of hot mustard on every one of them, but nobody mentioned screens again.

  We had a pretty good afternoon, working in the orchard. Grandfather scolded me two or three times for being awkward or slow, but most of the time Uncle Levi kept me working with him. We took both scythes and the three handsweeps with us, but Grandfather didn’t use the sweeps very much. When we climbed over the stonewall from the pasture lane, he was as excited as a race horse at the starting post. “By gorry, Ralphie,” he called out, “I and you’ll show ’em what kind of logs makes wide shingles! Come on, Levi! We’ll get her all in the windrow afore supper time.” He dropped his scythe in the long grass by the wall, grabbed one of the sweeps I had over my shoulder, and began flinging hay like a hen scratching for corn.

  Uncle Levi didn’t say anything, but picked up Grandfather’s scythe and kept walking slowly toward the nearest tree. I didn’t know just what I ought to do, but I wanted to be with Uncle Levi, so I started to follow him. I’d only gone a few yards when Grandfather called, “Ralphie! Ralphie! Time flies! Pitch in here alongside of me!”

  I should have watched to see how Grandfather was handling the sweep, but I didn’t. They looked to me like little horserakes, and I had supposed that you’d drag them the same way, so I set mine down at the edge of the field and began pulling it along. “What in time and tarnation you trying to do now,” Grandfather yelled after me; “play hoss? Get your backsides behind you and go at it man fashion!”

  It made me madder to have him scold me when Uncle Levi was there than when we were alone. My whole head felt as if it were catching afire, and I had just snapped out, “I’m not . . . ” when Uncle Levi called, “Thomas, the grass under these trees is still greener’n a gourd. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and if it ain’t got out where the sun can get at it, it’ll sour on the ground afore Monday.”

  “’Tain’t no wonder! Tain’t no wonder!” Grandfather called back, as he dropped his sweep and almost ran toward the trees. “Ralphie mowed under that one, and he wabbed the grass all up into hog wallows. Never seen a boy so helpless with a snath and scythe.”

  Unless I dragged it, I was about as helpless with a handsweep as with a scythe but, while Grandfather and Uncle Levi stood talking under the apple tree, I did the best I could. After a few minutes, they walked on to another tree or two. Then Grandfather took his scythe and hurried off to some trees that we hadn’t mowed under at the far side of the orchard. He hadn’t been gone two minutes before Uncle Levi called, “Ralphie.” His voice was just loud enough to reach me.

  I put my sweep on my shoulder and went over where he was. He wasn’t hurrying at all. He sort of rolled from side to side as he stepped forward, and his arms and the big rake moved back and forth in perfect rhythm. After a little while, he noticed me watching him, and said, “Slow and steady goes far in a day, Ralphie. Thomas, he’s a fast starter, but he peters out tolerable quick. With one of these cussed things, it’s a waste of time to hurry. Take care Thomas don’t set you too fast a pace, Ralphie. You ain’t had all your growth yet.”

  I was three or four inches taller than Uncle Levi, and I didn’t like being called Ralphie. I couldn’t come right out and say so, but I thought that gave me a pretty good chance to drop a little hint, so I said, “I’m fourteen and a half now, but I guess Grandfather thinks I’m still a little boy. He always calls me Ralphie.” Then I picked up my handsweep and swung it, just as near as I could, the way Uncle Levi was doing.

  He stopped raking as soon as I had started, and stood, leaning on the handle of his sweep and watching me. “Hmmm, hmmm, you’re lucky,” he grumbled. “Storekeeper told Father he’d give me a suit of clothes when I growed up if they’d name me Levi. I been wearing the cussed name for sixty-four years, but I never did get the suit of clothes.” A couple of minutes later, he said, “Getting the hang of that sweep pretty good, ain’t you, Ralph? It’s slow and easy does it.”

  “Well, it’s still kind of awkward,” I said, “but I guess I can get it; it’s the scythe that I can’t learn to use.”

  “Don’t know ’bout that,” Uncle Levi told me. “’Pears to me you could learn most anything you had a mind to. That is, if you didn’t rare into it too hard. S’posing you let me see you try it.”

  On my first swing, the blade tangled in the grass and jerked to a stop. “I could do it better with the left-handed scythe,” I said. “I’ve always been left-handed.”

  “Got to learn, either way,” Uncle Levi told me. “Might just as well learn right-handed in the first place. There’s a devilish lot more right-handed scythes in the world than there is left-handed ones. Devilish lot more right-handed people, too. Ain’t never a bad idea to learn to do things the way most other folks does ’em. Leave me have hold of that cussed thing a minute.”

  I stood back and watched while Uncle Levi mowed a strip ten or twelve feet long. “Take note that you don’t hold the snath so’s the scythe is straight out from you like the row of teeth on a handsweep. Keep the point of the blade close in to you all the while. Leave your wrists go a trifle loose and it won’t histe up so much on the ends of the swing. I ain’t good at this myself, but sometime you watch Thomas—when he ain’t out to set you a pace. Father bent him a little snath and learned him to mow afore he was belly-high to a bull. Ain’t many men can best Thomas at anything Father learnt him to do. Now you try your hand at it a spell.”

  Uncle Levi never told me I was awkward, and he never scolded. He just followed along beside me for ten or fifteen minutes, and showed me where I was making mistakes. “Don’t reach too far neither way. Get your tail end ar
ound towards the sun, so’s you can keep an eye on that shadow and watch that your head don’t swing. Don’t try to hold your behind still; let it travel as much as it’s a mind to. Turn that right hand down, so’s you can only see the knuckles as it goes apast in front of you. That holds the point down and keeps the stubble even. Roll your right thumb up when you want to histe the blade over a rock. You’re trying too hard. Ease up a dite, and fetch it across with a limber wrist. There! That’s more like it! Take note how the scythe point is hugging along the ground. By hub, you got the trick of it now, Ralph.”

  I still couldn’t mow anything like the way Grandfather and Uncle Levi could, but the scythe didn’t get stuck any more, and I wasn’t hitting the stones. “Cut them hogs in the barn cellar an armful of clover every night, and ’twon’t be long afore you can swing a scythe as good as any man,” Uncle Levi told me. “We better get back to raking now. First thing we know, we’ll have Thomas over here raising ructions. Like as not, the way he started off, he’s mowed under half a dozen trees by now.”

  Grandfather had finished mowing under his fourth tree when we went back to our rakes, but he was nowhere in sight. His handsweep was still in the corner of the orchard, where he’d dropped it, and his scythe was laid up on the stonewall by the gateway. “Never seen a man just like Thomas,” Uncle Levi said, as he picked up his sweep. “Works in fits and starts. Rares into it like a gale of wind for half, maybe three quarters of an hour. Then he’s off to tend the bees or look what’s come in the mailbox. He’ll be here and gone half a dozen times afore the day’s over.”

  Uncle Levi was just right about Grandfather. We never saw him leave but, two or three times, we saw him coming back across the field from the barn. He’d pick up his scythe, mow under three or four more trees, and then disappear. Twice, he stopped by a tree where we were working and, both times, he told me we’d never get finished till snow flew if I didn’t stop my dawdling.

  Each time, as soon as Grandfather had left us, Uncle Levi told me that slow and steady went far in a day. And by the time the sun dipped down behind the pine woods on the ridge, we’d finished raking under the last tree in the orchard.

  At supper time, it was easy to see that Grandfather was pretty well tired out. We had red flannel hash: potatoes, beets, carrots, and cabbage chopped up with the corned beef that was left from dinner and fried till it was dark reddish-brown on both sides. Grandfather took just a little dab on his plate, and he only ate a mouthful or two until Uncle Levi brought his bottle and Millie made a hot toddy. He grumbled about not needing it, the same as he had the night before, but he took it, and he ate a pretty good supper afterwards.

  When I came in from milking, Grandfather had his feet in the oven, and Uncle Levi was reading the Lewiston Sunday paper. He had his glasses balanced on the end of his nose, and was leaning back in his rocker, with both feet up on the hot-water tank of the stove. Grandfather was nodding, half asleep, when I took the sports page of the paper and sat down at the kitchen table to read it. Uncle Levi kept interrupting every few minutes. At first, it was something about somebody’s funeral, or a baby being born, or about a horse running away. Then, as he turned the pages over, it was ads for things people wanted to sell: a live goose featherbed, a chest of drawers, or a two-row cultivator. After each of the first few items, Grandfather would say, “Too bad, ain’t it?” or “Who be they; never heard tell of ’em.” But, after a while, his head didn’t even bob and, every now and then, he’d snore a few notes.

  I’d stopped hearing the stuff myself until, suddenly, Uncle Levi asked in a good loud voice, “What kind of bees is blackbelts, Thomas?”

  Grandfather’s head came up with a snap. “Blackbelts? Blackbelts?” he said. “Best tarnal bee there is! What about ’em?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Uncle Levi told him, as he turned the page, “just seen an ad here where somebody wants to trade off a couple of colonies of ’em for a heifer calf. Don’t calc’late they could amount to much if he’d trade ’em for a heifer calf.”

  “Where does he live at? Leave me see that paper!” Grandfather snapped, and pulled his feet out of the oven.

  “Way off t’other side of Lewiston,” Uncle Levi told him, and went right on looking at the paper. “’Tain’t worth looking at, Thomas. Take a man three–four hours to drive over there and like as not, he’d find the bees was traded off afore he got there.”

  “Pass me that paper! Pass me that paper, Levi! Where in time and tarnation did I leave my spectacles?”

  I got Grandfather’s glasses from the mantel. As I gave them to him Uncle Levi passed over the paper. One of his eyelids flickered just a trifle as he looked past my face.

  Grandfather buried his head in the outstretched paper for a minute or two, then glanced up at the clock, and said, “Gorry sakes alive! Time flies! Come on, Levi, it’s time all honest folks was abed.”

  10

  Slow and Easy Goes Far in a Day

  I’D EXPECTED that we might sleep a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but Millie came in and woke me before it was hardly light enough to see across my room. She was in her stockinged feet, and didn’t call me, but shook me a little by the shoulder. “Get up! Get up, Ralphie,” she whispered when I opened my eyes. “Thomas wants you, but he don’t want Levi woke up. Victuals is almost on the table.” Then she tiptoed out through Uncle Levi’s room without even making a floor board squeak.

  I pulled my overalls, socks, and shirt on, took my shoes in my hand, and sneaked quietly out through Uncle Levi’s room. Grandfather was already at the table. He had a pretty good-looking felt hat and a gray suit on, and was eating a bowl of oatmeal as fast as he could swing the spoon.

  “Get your victuals into you just as fast as you can, Ralphie,” he told me when I came into the kitchen. “I got to go right off to Lewiston this morning, and there ain’t no time for dawdling over the victuals. I give Old Nell her provender a’ready, and I’ll have her harnessed by the time you get to the barn.” He pushed his chair back, got up, and, as he went out through the back pantry, called, “Fetch a stout piece of rope out of the carriage house whenst you go past.”

  Grandfather was in a dither when I got to the barn. He had the harness nearly on Old Nell and, the minute I came into the doorway, snapped, “Stir your stivvers! Stir your stivvers, Ralphie! Fetch Marthy’s heifer calf out and load it on the spring wagon. Who in time and tarnation has been meddling with this tarnal harness? It’s all tangled up.”

  Martha’s calf was pretty good sized. It weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds, and it didn’t want to leave Martha. But I’d had quite a little experience with calves in Colorado. I tossed a loop of the rope around the base of the calf’s tail, put an arm around her neck, and started to lead her out to the wagon. Everything would have been all right if Grandfather hadn’t come to help me. He slammed the tie-up door back into my face just as I was putting a hand up to open it. I was leaning over a little to keep my arm around the calf’s neck, and my head was sticking out in front—sort of like a turtle’s. When the door hit me, I lost my balance, but I held onto the calf tight, and we both went down together. “What in time and tarnation you trying to do with that calf?” Grandfather shouted at me from the doorway. “Get up! Get up and leave her alone, I tell you! What you think this is; a wild West show? Turn her loose, I tell you!”

  I didn’t have to turn the calf loose. She jerked her head out from under me, scrambled to her feet, and raced off down the tie-up, bawling. Grandfather didn’t bother with me any more, but went running after the calf. “Catch her! Catch her! Head her off!” he was shouting before I was hardly back on my feet. The more he hollered, the more he frightened the calf. She ducked in and out among the stanchioned cows like a cat having a fit. Every cow in the barn had started bellowing, the calf was bawling, and, above the hubbub, I could hear Grandfather yelling, “Tarnal fool boy! Don’t stand there gawking! Help me catch her! We ain’t got all day, I tell you!”

  After two steeplechase
s around the tie-up, the calf stuck her head between old Martha’s hind legs, slipped, and fell into the scupper. Before she could get up, I was on top of her. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her, Ralphie,” Grandfather was saying as he came running over. “Handle her gentle. You got her half scairt to death a’ready. Leave us histe her up careful and fetch her out to the wagon.”

  We might as well have tried to carry a full-grown cow as that frightened calf. And besides, she was sort of slippery from falling into the scupper. Grandfather wouldn’t let me hog-tie her, and he wouldn’t even twist her tail a little, so she wouldn’t hang back when I tried to lead her. It was nearly half an hour before we had her boosted into the wagon. We were both pretty well messed up, and Grandfather had called me a tarnal fool boy at least a dozen times. I was so mad when he drove out of the yard that I wanted to throw something after him. I was still mad when I went into the house for the milk bucket. I didn’t say a word to Millie; just grabbed the bucket in one hand, the swill pail in the other, and went out to do the morning chores.

  Uncle Levi was downstairs when I carried the milk to the house, and he was as happy as a meadow lark. He had on one of Millie’s aprons over his overalls and, as he cut oranges and bananas into a bowl at the pantry table, was singing, “Around and ’round the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel.” Every time he’d come to, “POP! goes the weasel,” he’d throw a banana or an orange peel at the empty swill pail. Millie seemed just about as happy as Uncle Levi. She was at the stove, frying eggs and watching a pan of biscuits in the oven. Every time Uncle Levi sang out, “POP,” she’d rap the edge of the frying pan with the turner.

  I was still so mad and messed up that their playing sounded silly to me. I stopped in the summer kitchen, took my shoes off, and set the pail of milk inside the pantry doorway. Then I went to the sink to wash. “By hub, Ralph, we’ll get an early start on that hossrake chore,” Uncle Levi called out to me between the pops. “Wa’n’t it lucky running onto that bee-trade ad? I spied it out while you was gone for the cows last night. It’s a God’s wonder you ever got Thomas started off from here. What was you doing so long with that cussed calf?” And then he started with, “Around and ’round,” again.