“You know, if the man wants her to do something unnatural,” Lily said.
“Depends on the people,” Florrie said.
“Florrie!” I said.
“Ain’t nothing men have thought of that women hadn’t thought of too,” Florrie said. “That’s what I think.”
“I suppose some people will do anything,” Lily said.
“But everybody does pretty much the same things,” Florrie said. “People are about the same, except some are skinny and some are fat, and some try to act superior.”
“I wouldn’t want to live like an animal,” Lily said. She was blushing under her face powder. “Mama always wore gloves when she worked outside,” Lily said then. “No matter how much work she done, she protected her hands.”
I remembered hearing Pa say Lily’s mama had to plow with the oxen after her husband died while the children was little. But I didn’t mention that.
“A woman’s skin is her greatest wealth,” Lily said. “That’s what Mama used to say. Take care of your skin and a man will always love you. And you will take pride in yourself.”
“I’m thirsty,” Florrie said. “I’ve near sweated myself dry.” She stood and wiped her hands on the towel. But instead of going to the bucket on the porch she went to the corner where Pa kept herbs and tinctures. On the top shelf was the whiskey jug and she pulled it down. Florrie was the only woman I ever saw who drunk from the jug like a man. She pulled the stopper and raised the jug on her elbow for a swallow, then coughed and cleared her throat. When she turned around her dark skin was red a little.
“One drink deserves another,” Florrie said, and strode out to the porch for a dipper of spring water. As she come back in she patted her chest. “That feels better,” she said, “much better.”
The smell of whiskey on her breath mingled with the fragrance of the peaches and the steam from the boiler.
“Ain’t you thirsty?” Florrie said.
“Not much,” I said. Florrie was always teasing me about drinking. I took a swallow from time to time, when I had a cold or couldn’t get to sleep, when I was feeling the vapors. I never did drink the way she did, in the quantities she did. Sometimes David hid the bottle from her, but mostly he just ignored it.
“I ain’t never been a hypocrite,” Florrie said.
“Nobody said you was a hypocrite,” I said.
“I take a drink from time to time and I don’t care who knows it,” Florrie said.
“It’s disgusting to see a woman drunk,” Lily said. “It’s bad enough for a man, but worse for a woman.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman drunk,” Florrie said.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” Lily said. “I used to watch Alma Bright walk the road coming back from town and she was so drunk she staggered. Mama made me come inside so I couldn’t see her.”
“It’s a good thing your mama saved you,” Florrie said.
“I’ve heard Alma done worse than drink,” I said.
“She had to pay for her liquor some way,” Lily said.
“There’s not many ways a woman can earn money,” Florrie said.
The smell of peaches and the smell of the whiskey and all the sweating was making me thirsty too. I wished Florrie and Lily wasn’t there so I could get a drink from the jug and nobody would be bothered. It ruins the fun of drinking if people are disapproving of you. I got up and went to the porch for a dipper of water. “Would you like a drink of water?” I said to Lily.
“That would be lovely,” she said. I brought her a dipper from the bucket and she wiped her hand on the apron before taking it.
“We need a new towel,” I said. “I’ll get one from the closet.”
My linen was stored in the closet at the end of the hall, and my bottle was under the sheets. I felt for it among the cool folded cloth. The bottle was cooler than the linen. I unscrewed the cap and took a drink. The whiskey sunk to my stomach with force and strength. I got a towel and hurried to the kitchen.
“Whiskey is good to fight off sickness,” Florrie said. “That’s why it’s called medicine.”
“I’m sure it’s helpful, as medicine,” Lily said. “Though not this awful moonshine around here.”
“We should order some fine brandy,” Florrie said.
“I’ve heard whiskey will fight off typhoid,” Lily said.
“I’ve never heard that,” I said.
“Whiskey won’t cure somebody that has typhoid,” Florrie said. “But it will help fight off catching the fever.”
“How do you know?” I said. Florrie always did have the habit of creating history as she went along. She would make up a story and tell it with such conviction you’d believe it was gospel.
“Have you ever knowed anybody that drunk a lot that got typhoid?” she said.
I tried to think. Many that had died of typhoid was children and women. I couldn’t recall any that was known to drink.
The drink had made me feel better. I could hear the hens clucking out in the henhouse as they will midmorning after laying their eggs. They fussed in a regular chorus.
“We sound like a bunch of hens,” I said.
“What a thing to say,” Florrie said and laughed.
“I don’t feel like no hen,” Lily said. I started laughing, but just then I heard Jewel crying and wiped my hands on the towel before running to the bedroom.
By the time I got Jewel to sleep and they had the second bushel peeled, Lily was getting warmed up in her talking. She was the talkingest woman I ever met, and when she worked her tongue was busier than her hands. “I like a man that has something to say,” she said as we started on the last bushel, after loading the second boiler and lifting the first one off to cool. “I like a man that has refinement and reads books and talks about them.”
“Ain’t just talk that makes a man interesting,” Florrie said.
“It’s hard to like a man with nothing to say,” Lily said.
“Every man is different,” I said.
“Every woman is different too,” Florrie said.
“Give me a man with some culture,” Lily said.
I was embarrassed, because I knowed Lily was talking about Tom. I didn’t think Tom needed any defending, but my blood was beginning to spin a little. Yet we had to get through the peach canning without fussing. I told myself it wouldn’t do to quarrel with Lily, silly as she was. “I like a man that knows what he’s doing, and what he wants to do,” I said.
“Nothing means as much as worship, and being married to a man who will worship with you,” Lily said.
“There’s all kinds of worship,” Florrie said.
“Why, what do you mean?” Lily said. “I’m talking about the worship and fellowship with the Lord and you know what I mean.”
“Worship for some people might be just staying home and watching the sunset,” Florrie said.
“That’s not the same as going to service,” Lily said.
“Why not?” Florrie said. “What’s the difference between a briar thicket and a brush arbor?” She went to the shelf for Pa’s jug again. This time she held it to her lips longer, and didn’t bother to go to the porch for a dipper of water.
“How you do talk, Sister Florrie,” Lily said. “If I didn’t know you better I’d think you was a heathen.”
“I am a heathen,” Florrie said, and laughed.
Lily screamed. She was looking at her hands. “They’re all wrinkled and watersobbed,” she said. “Look at that. They’re ruined. I’ll have to put lotion on them as soon as I get home.”
“Peach juice won’t hurt your hands,” Florrie said.
“I’m shocked at you,” Lily said to Florrie, “comparing the beauty of nature to the worship of the Lord.”
“Praise was the purpose people was put here for,” I said.
“How do you know that, Ginny?” Florrie said.
“Because it says so in the Bible,” I said. But I couldn’t think of any special place where it was quoted.
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sp; “It says a lot of things in the Bible,” Florrie said.
“I’m surprised to hear you talk so,” Lily said. “You sound like you don’t believe nothing. You sound indeed like a heathen.”
“It might be more interesting to be a heathen,” Florrie said. “I don’t see any use in getting together like it was a party and having a good old time and then calling it something else.”
“I am horrified,” Lily said. She had stopped peeling and held the peach in her left hand and the knife in the right. I wished I had never agreed for her to help with the canning.
“Why can’t people just be good on their own, without all this rigamarole?” Florrie said.
“We need each other’s support,” I said. “We learn from each other, and remind each other of things we forget on our own.”
“I don’t see what anybody learns from rolling on the ground speaking gibberish,” Florrie said. “Now rolling in the hay with a man . . .” Florrie peeled faster than me and Lily together. She dropped a peach in the pan and picked up another without a pause.
“I’ve heard that in the old days young couples went out to the plowed fields in spring and took their clothes off,” Florrie said. “They rolled through the fresh dirt to make it fertile. When they had crossed the field and got all dirty the field was blessed and would grow a big crop.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Lily said.
“If they rolled together enough I guess they was blessed with another crop,” Florrie said.
“I can’t believe people was ever that common,” Lily said.
“People won’t stop being common,” Florrie said. “At least I hope not.”
“Oh no!” Lily screamed. She held out her left hand and I saw blood on her finger. “I have cut myself,” she said. “I have ruined my hand.”
“Let me see,” I said. A drop of blood fell into the peaches.
“Can’t breathe,” Lily said. “The sight of blood makes me faint.”
“Hold it out,” I said.
She shook her hand like there was a spider on it. “It stings,” she said. “The peach juice has got into it.”
I wiped my hands and run to get a towel. I stepped on the peach Lily had dropped, crushing the peach to juice.
“It’s bleeding,” Lily said. “It takes my breath away.”
I grabbed her hand to hold it still. A drop of blood fell on her dress. “Look at that,” she said. “This dress is ruined.”
When I finally got a look I saw it was just a little cut, maybe half an inch long and not very deep. I wiped the blood off.
“Better put something on it,” Florrie said. “You wouldn’t want to get lockjaw.”
“I could put some whiskey on it,” I said.
Lily stomped her foot into the tub of peelings, but whether from anger or pain I couldn’t tell.
“Here,” Florrie said, and poured a drop of whiskey on the cut. Lily screamed, and stomped her foot like a little girl.
“Does it hurt bad?” I said. “I don’t think the cut is deep.”
“This dress is completely ruined,” she said. “And I don’t have another in this shade or this pattern.”
“The blood stains will come out,” Florrie said. “Just sponge them with cold water.” Florrie took another drink from the jug.
I tied the tip of Lily’s finger in a strip of linen. The bleeding had stopped and the little bandage looked like a scarf on someone’s head. “It’s almost time to fix dinner,” I said. “Tom and Pa and Joe will be back from the field in an hour.”
When that day was over I was wore out from trying to keep Florrie and Lily apart. I promised myself I never would let Lily help us can peaches again, and I didn’t.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the summer of 1904 we made our biggest garden ever. I could tell Tom felt bad for not showing more sympathy to me. The truth is that only concern for other people eases our own grief, and Tom had not showed much concern until he set down on the bed after the funeral. Soon as he took my hand and cared that my heart was broke I think he started to feel a little better. I could tell he saw in me then the girl he had married. At that moment the emptiness we both felt started to go away.
By July I was pretty much well again, and figured the best way to show my friendship with Tom was to help in the fields. I went out with him every day and left Jewel and Moody at the house with Pa. I had always done my share of work outside, but that hot summer I pitched in like a field hand. It was what needed to be done, and it was what I needed to do. If you sweat enough it will cleanse you. If you have a cold or feel you’re taking sick sometimes a good sweat will heal you. As I worked in the dirt by Tom I felt I was being cleansed from inside.
And nothing makes a woman feel better than to pitch in and work alongside her husband. I didn’t wear shoes, and it felt like the dirt itself healed me. The hot ground drawed the poisons and ill will through the soles of my feet.
The dirt by the river was moist, even in the hot dry weeks. Working in the loam you could feel the cool of the river way down under the topsoil, and at times you could even feel the movement of the river like a pulse, and hear the whisper and swallow of the stream going over rocks and riffles.
Tom had planted more corn and beans and peas and taters and watermelons than ever before. He had planted the new ground at the upper end of the bottom and he planted the terraces in the orchard above the barn. It seemed like he had put every foot of available land in crops of one sort or another. There was butter beans and crowder peas, squash and pumpkins, tomatoes and onions. He planted twice as much cane as he had the year before.
Every morning after breakfast we went out to pull weeds and hoe dirt around the stalks and vines. There is a thrill to cleaning a row, getting rid of ragweeds and bull nettles. The hardest thing is to take morning glories out of corn, for they wind up the stalks and wrap theirselves tight on the leaves. You have to find the bottom of the vine and cut it, or pull it out. When you weed a row it feels like things has been sorted out and clarified. You have made sense of something.
A small lake and cottonmill had been built down the river on the other side of the Turnpike, and they was putting up more houses there. They built a powerhouse below the lake to run the mill, and the new houses would have electricity and running water, it was said. But folks working in the mill didn’t have time or land for gardens. And they couldn’t keep cows and chickens. Tom had found a market there for cider and firewood. He guessed the hands from the flatlands would need vegetables too.
One day in July Tom loaded the Studebaker wagon with sweet peas, fresh corn and beans, tomatoes and squash. He had taters and lima beans we had picked after daylight. He had done a half day’s work before milking time. By the middle of the morning he was ready to peddle door to door among the new two-room houses.
All day I did the washing and hung it out in the hot wind. That evening it come up a thunderstorm, as it will in July, and I just barely had time to run and get my clothes in. Tom come back later, completely soaked. He had tried to stop Old Dan under a tree, but the wind swept the rain right on him. He come dripping to the house and set by the hearth. He looked wet as a dog. But he reached into his pocket and pulled out dimes and quarters give him by the mill people. I thought he was mad at first, he looked so bedraggled by rain. I had started a fire in the fireplace to dry some of the towels. Tom bent before the fire and counted coins on the hearth. He put quarters in one pile and dimes in another. He had a few half-dollars and nickels, and one silver dollar. He counted it up in the firelight. There was almost ten dollars. I never saw such a happy look on his face. Tom was not one to show much pleasure. But he couldn’t cover the smile as he added up the earnings for the day.
“Take off them wet clothes before you get sick,” I said.
“A good soaking makes you feel clean,” he said. He put the money in the cigar box he used for a bank.
I had always been a worker by fits and spells. But that summer I found I could work steady. We g
ot up at four or five, and Pa was already up and reading his Bible at the table. By the time Tom had milked I had breakfast ready. We drunk several cups of Pa’s coffee before going to the fields in early light. Every bit of work was precious. I found myself thinking like Tom that summer. A woman naturally comes to think like her husband sometimes. I thought of every squash as so many pennies, and every row as so many quarters. I saw green leaves turning into dimes, and gold roots and veins in leaves turning into silver dollars. Every bit of soil come to promise its secret of money.
In the early morning cucumbers was cool as jars of ice water. I reached into wet leaves and plucked the firm beans. The crust on the soil was breaking as new taters swelled under it. Every tater we got out was that much more wealth. Tom had always sold eggs down at the store. But the vegetables was something extra. It was his idea, beyond anything Pa had ever made on the place.
My face and arms turned dark as an Indian’s that summer. I always did tan easy, but that summer I didn’t even wear a straw hat. Florrie teased me for getting so dark. “You will look like a field hand,” she said. “Lily may not speak to you.”
My arms and shoulders got strong again, and I helped Tom pull fodder and stack it in the barnloft. In September I helped strip the cane, while Jewel and Moody played at the end of the rows.
Fodder pulling is supposed to be the worst job there is. The fields are hot and dusty by late August, and you strip the leaves off corn below the ears, after the tops have been cut and stacked in shocks to dry. The heat and the dust, rough rasping leaves, will give you a rash. And you can easy put a hand on a packsaddle worm that will sting you in ten places. If a packsaddle nails you nothing will put out the fire on your hand for days. It is worse than ten hornet stings.
After both hands tear off leaves and are full, you put the bunches together and tie them, wrapping one leaf around and through the middle. You stick that hand on a stalk until you have enough to tie into a bundle. When the bundles are carried to the barnloft to cure, they fill the barn with a scent sweeter than tobacco or tea. Fodder is too rich and tender to give to cows. The sugary lower leaves of the corn are saved for the horse.
The Truest Pleasure Page 15
