The Fields

by Conrad Richter

  “What does he have to run up ’ar all the time for?” she questioned.

  “Law takes time,” Sayward explained to her. “They talk over all the points. Then Portius has to write out his law papers.”

  “Seems like a lot of business to be up ’ar over night every week,” Genny sniffed.

  Now Portius’s boys and girls reckoned it wonderful. The first time he stayed two days, they had to hear all about it, how he stopped the night in Vrain’s tavern and what the tavern was like with him sitting in the bar-room writing out documents, a fire going in the monster fireplace, singing and fiddling by the bar and jigging on the bar-room floor.

  “And did you have to stay in the tavern all night, Pappy?” little Sooth pitied him. “Didn’t you have a cabin to go to up there?”

  Sayward smiled to herself a secret smile, for if Portius wouldn’t take to sitting in a bar-room with the company of men and spirits, she did not know what he would like. And yet he’d put on a long face tonight and let his children feel sorry for him and cross at their mam who made him have to tramp that far ways every week and have his office in a tavern, all because she wouldn’t sell the plantation and move to town to live.

  Tonight they wouldn’t go to bed. They plagued him to know what a town was like in the winter time. How did it look as you came to it through the woods, with a score of roofs turning back the sun and as many chimneys sending up blue smoke all at the same time? They could only imagine, for never had they seen four brick houses and seventeen log ones, not counting stables and outhouses, six or eight of the houses rising to a second storey and more going up next summer as a speculation. They wished they could lay eyes on that public square with a kiln for burning street brush, or the mail that left every Monday on horseback, or the pump that fetched out water faster than ten men and an ox could drink it.

  Oh, those young ones couldn’t hear enough about town tonight. They made him tell again about Major Tate’s cannon ball from Fort MacHenry that weighed as much as a barrel of flour and was marked, “a present from the King of England.” And about that piece of dress taken from the body of a woman blown to pieces by a bombshell in the environs of Baltimore. And about the manufactory of Tateville, a still-house for whiskey. When they got their pappy telling it, they could see in their minds that spirits factory standing on the street, belching wood smoke from its chimney over the roofs of the town, and men going in with empty kegs under their arms, and coming out with those kegs heavy on their shoulders.

  Sayward at her big wheel said no word for a while. She wouldn’t have opened her mouth at all if it hadn’t been for her children. You could see they thought themselves plumb lost down here in the woods. They were at the lonesome ends of the earth. They couldn’t make out what their mam saw around the Moonshine Church, for it had only a meeting house, a school and a house. It didn’t even have a store, for George Roebuck’s was a good piece up where Crazy Creek flowed into the river.

  But when Portius made fun of the Indian trace and deer paths they had to stumble on down here, while in town they had streets to walk their ease on, that was too much for Sayward. She’d stick up for the Moonshine Church if it was the last thing she did.

  Her eyes had a baleful glint at her husband.

  “Have you a meetin’ house up ’ar?” she challenged him.

  “No, the citizens are well disposed toward each other,” he said tolerantly.

  “Have you a buryin’ ground?” Sayward went on.

  “That also is unnecessary. The situation is wonderfully healthy.”

  “Well, do you have a school house or academy?” she persisted.

  “They are forming one now,” Portius coughed.

  “And a grist mill. Have you one close by like we got here?”

  “Not yet. However, the town soon will have.”

  “But you don’t have a school or meetin’ house or grist mill now?” Sayward concluded triumphantly.

  She flashed a look to Resolve at his loom, but he kept his eyes away. Even her oldest and steadiest was siding with his pappy. He was the one she had counted on most. If he failed her, mighty near all was lost. She’d have no heart to stay here for just her own self. She watched him as she went on with her spinning, a walking back and forward, holding the threads high with one hand as she sent the wheel faster and faster with the other. But Resolve just kept on with the loom where he had left off to listen, tossing the shuttle back and forward, giving his steady thwacks and thumps with the beater. That and the wheu-wheu-wheu of her wheel were the only sounds now left about the cabin, for the young ones had climbed to the loft.

  It was late until she and Resolve quit. He went to put on his cap to go out before going to bed. Then at the door he called her so sharp, she came a running to see what was wrong. With the cold air on her face, she stopped.

  It was snowing, but that wasn’t what held her. The first thing she thought was, now what made me reckon it was late? It can’t be. There’s the sky still red from the sun going down. Then she recollected what time it was. Why, Portius had come home after dark! That was a long while ago. They had sat and talked a good ways into the night, and after that she and Resolve had worked a piece. It must be after eleven o’clock, and this was a long winter’s night.

  Then what in God’s name was that red a flooding the sky? It stretched all the way from north to south and east to west, but was worst up toward the English Lakes. Now it would fade, and now as they looked it got brighter and redder till every snowfall coming out of that sky looked on fire and every fleece a falling firebrand. She and Resolve stood there together with a million snowflakes dropping like sparks around them. Any minute, it looked like, the woods would be set on fire.

  “What is it, Mam?” Resolve asked her in a low voice.

  “I don’t know yet,” she answered cautiously, not saying what had flashed across her mind. “I’ve lived a long time in the woods, but I never seen or heard tell of anything like this.”

  “It says in the Bible…” Resolve whispered.

  “Hush up,” she told him. “Portius!”

  He came to the door.

  “Shades of Plegethon!” he declared, whatever that meant.

  It was the weirdest sight to see and the three stood watching it till somebody hurried down the trace and came partways over through the snow. It was Mathias Cottle who had been at the Covenhovens.

  “It’s the end of the world, Portius!” he called. “You still want to buy those shoats you looked at, Saird?”

  “I changed my mind when I seen them,” Sayward said. “They’re too small.”

  “How do you mean to sell them, Mathias, live weight or roasted?” Portius put in for a joke.

  Mathias drew himself up.

  “I just tried to do right by ye. I’m goin’ home now and put my house in order. I’d git myselves indoors if I was you and set on my stools like in church. The Lord ain’t far off. He’s a comin’, and a burnin’ all the books but the Bible.”

  This last was a dig at Portius. As Mathias went off, a strange black figure in the fiery snow, Sayward felt Resolve tremble like a shaking-ash leaf. Her voice came out strong and matter of fact.

  “Portius. Don’t you and Resolve want to take your old coats and see if anybody’s in trouble up the trace? You might be able to lend a hand.”

  They left right away and it was mighty late when they got back. All the red was out of the sky by now. Sayward had waited up, puttering at this and that till they came.

  “What was it?” she cried before they were through the door.

  “George Roebuck’s,” Portius said gravely. The strong smell of smoke was on them both, not the sweet scent of chimney smoke but a rank and terrible stink with no good in it.

  “His warehouse, too?”

  “He lost everything,” Portius said.

  “Couldn’t he get nothin’ out at all?”

  “He saved some of his stock but the buildings burned to the ground.”

  “Well, I feel real
sorry for him,” Sayward said. “I hope you told him he and Will was welcome to sleep down here?”

  “They had to stay and keep watch over their things.”

  “You ask if there’s anything we can do?”

  Portius was getting ready for bed.

  “Nothing,” he said wearily. “He must build everything new.”

  She happened to catch Resolve’s eye. He hadn’t started for the loft as yet but stood looking at her. She couldn’t fathom the strange look he had watching her.

  “They’s something you didn’t say,” she told him.

  Resolve looked at his father who said nothing, so the boy spoke.

  “George Roebuck isn’t building up there again, Mam.”

  “How’s that?” Sayward asked before she thought.

  “He says the land’s too low. He gets flooded out every spring.”

  Sayward wondered why her legs suddenly felt heavy. So George Roebuck, the shrewdest head in these woods, was forsaking her, too? She turned to get her bedgown from its pegs on the log.

  “He’s goin’ to Tateville,” she said dully.

  “No, he told Pap he’d like to build down here at the Moonshine settlement if you’d sell him a piece of land. He wants it between the church and the river.”

  Sayward stood there taken unawares, trying to spell this out, her old red flannel bedgown in her hand.

  “Well, I don’t know as I’d want all his loafers so close to our place!” she declared.

  But down in her heart she knew she’d sell him an acre if he wanted it and that they could get together on price. So that, she reckoned, was why Resolve had looked at her so strange. He felt a mite better satisfied to stay down here now. It was getting to be more of a settlement with a house, a school, a meeting-house and burying ground, a store, and a grist mill not too far off. You might almost call it two houses for George Roebuck would be living in the back of his store.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE REAP HOOK

  IT was the year that woman came down from Tateville to take over Portius’s school.

  He had to give up his teaching or his law work, either one, for Tateville was a growing and so was the settlement around the Moonshine Church. Portius had more deed and court work now than he could do along with his school work. Up at Tateville they had a York state man keeping school in his own house, but it seemed all Portius could get hold of for down here was a school mistress.

  Sayward thought she would like a look at this woman when she came. Her name was Miss Bartram, and she hailed from Philadelphia. Her folks were all dead save her uncle, and he had headed out for Indiana territory. Portius told the children it wouldn’t be Mister Wheeler’s Academy any more. It would be Mistress Bartram’s School, and she would let girls come as well as boys. They could learn reading, sampling and fancy stitches, and needn’t be much good at Latin or the Rule of Three.

  Now wasn’t it gritty of a woman, Sayward thought, to take over a man’s job of mauling letters in young heads! When folks asked her, how did Portius come to pick a woman for the school, she didn’t mind. She just said, likely he couldn’t find a man with learning enough to fill the bill. No, she didn’t know if this woman was young or old. Portius didn’t say, and it hadn’t come to mind to ask. But to herself she reckoned she would like to get a good look at this woman when she came down in April for the last school day.

  —

  Resolve was on tenterhooks over that last school day. His mam had promised him a suit of clothes to stand up in and give his oration. She and he had picked out the goods at George Roebuck’s. The trader had only a flap or two of cloth left on the bolt, but more of the same was on the way, he claimed. Every day Resolve watched across the fields to see if a boat had come up the river. George Roebuck had a fine establishment here at the Moonshine Church now, brick in front and log behind. It was a mighty handy place for the Wheelers, standing just yonder between the church and the river. Most times the store carried anything you wanted. This Saturday when a keel boat for Tateville stopped, Resolve let the team stand in the woods and ran over. But the trader gave him only a sharp face. He reckoned the suiting must have got lost on the way. Anyhow it was not with this shipment.

  “What can I do?” Resolve asked him.

  “If you wanted new clothes, you should have been a girl,” George Roebuck told him. “I could sell you all the bombazine, salinet or merino you wanted.”

  That was a bitter cup for Resolve. The last school day only a week off. What would his mammy say to this, he wondered, as he dragged rails and strung them out for her worm fence. All winter in his spare time she and he had mauled them together, mostly of hackberry and black walnut, for those split the easiest and straightest. First they cut the butts eight feet long and drove in the iron wedges. Afterwards they could use dogwood gluts. His mam was good as a man halving, quartering, sometimes double-quartering, splitting the heart off of each for an extra rail. What was left made two more. Her mauls were so heavy he minded the time he could hardly lift one. She made them out of thick, twisted hickory roots and drove an iron ring in each end to keep them from splitting. They were tougher than hog snout.

  Oh, his mam could do most anything around the plantation. She had raised this team of oxen from bull calves and gelded them her own self with nothing more than a butcher knife. He and Guerdon had helped to tie them down while the rest of the young ones looked on. Those young steers carried on for a while, but now they went along mild as milk, dragging all the rails you could lift on the dry sled. His mam could lay a worm fence good as John Covenhoven, locking each rail with the next, and six to eight rails high to keep the stock from jumping. She could still outmow him, never hitting a stump or missing a stalk. When he was a little fellow binding after her reap sickle, she would stop, come back and help when he got behind. His thumb was too little to push the twist under the band, so she made him a grooved stick to work it under. When wheat was short and the band wouldn’t go around, she showed him how to make a double band, divide it into two and twist it around his fist so it reached. She and he always worked together. He still drove her geese in the shed for her and closed the door. She’d hold one up against her and pick it till only down was left on its breast. “It don’t hurt it none,” she would say. “It’ll soon grow out.” Then he would open the door and let that one go. The old geese knew what was coming and let her do it, but she had to pull an old red stocking over the heads of the younger ones to keep them from pinching her.

  Oh, his mam could do nigh about anything. Lose her in the woods, and she’d come out. Shake the meal bag dry, still she’d find something for supper. But this time she’d be stumped. How could she sew him up a fine new suit when George Roebuck didn’t have the goods? He felt mighty discouraged as he threw off the last rails and hawed Buck and Bright around. Only thing left now was send up with his pap to Tateville for suit cloth, and if he knew his mam, she would never do that. Just say Tateville to her and rocks came in her cheeks. She believed in trading at home, she’d say. What was the matter with the Moonshine Church settlement? she’d come back at him. He was a gone Josie, that’s what he was. “The black ox had tramped him.” He’d have to stand up and give his oration in old mossy black pants and jumper that everybody knew were cut down from his pappy’s.

  It was getting dark when he quit and went in. He dragged a log for the woodpile far as the house so as not to come in empty-handed. The yoked oxen followed him to the barn, the nigh one, Buck, keeping just behind. They followed so faithful, you had to tell them when to stop. If you didn’t and went in the kitchen door, they’d try to come in after you, reckoning you expected them to or you would have said so.

  His mam was milking in the barn yard when he told her about the suiting. The milk kept going chirrp, chirrp in her cedar pail. She didn’t even look around. Through supper her face never changed toward him, and all evening she said no word about it. Oh, she’d heard him all right. He knew that. It was just his mam’s way. She wasn’t the kin
d to fly up like a pheasant over this and that. It took time before she committed herself. You couldn’t tell from her face whether or not anything was working in her. For all he knew that night and Sunday, she didn’t give a whoop about him but sided with the trader.

  Monday morning after breakfast she said, “Now I had enough waiting on George Roebuck till he’s good and ready. Before you go to school, you can help me start shearin’.”

  What could she mean by that? Resolve asked himself. It must have something in the wind the way she talked. He drove the sheep ba’aing in the shed. She was there already, laying slabs on the wooden horses. She helped him lift Tibbie, the oldest ewe, on the makeshift table. Then he held it quiet while she set to work on it. Those old black cutters in her hand went sure as death through all that heavy, ragged, dirty coat, finding the shape of the lean hidden body underneath. Hardly never she fetched a pinch of blood to the blue skin. Tibbie lay quiet enough. Like the old geese, she had been through this many times before. She would let the others do the hollering, and holler they did till you’d swear they were a bunch of humans a bawling.

  When Sayward said she had enough, she and Resolve were wool all over, and the pile nigh about touched the roof of the shed. His mam looked at it.

  “You reckon that’s enough for your last school day?” she asked him and started to sort it over.

  Something went over Resolve so that he trembled. He just looked at her. His mam! He could always count on his mam. She never went back on him and never would she. Didn’t he tell himself she had something up her sleeve?

  “You have to lend a hand cardin’ and weavin’,” she said. “Time’s short. Have to do it from the sheep’s back to your’n. I heerd of a woman once did it in twenty-four hours. Her two girls helped her. Her boy had to have a suit to go off to the Revolution. If they could do it in one night and day, I reckon I ought to could in a week.”