The Fields

by Conrad Richter

  “What do you all want in here?” their mother put to them as the six trooped in, Indian file, the biggest first and the littlest on behind.

  “Nothin’ much,” Guerdon said to put her off.

  “I do,” Huldah put in, for she thought quicker. “I want to see A’nt Gin.”

  “Me, too!” Libby and Sooth called out before their mam should say they hadn’t room for all and on such a nice day they could play outside.

  Aunt Genny looked pleased. She was only a wisp of a woman, thin as a girl and fonder than a grandma of her nieces and nephews. You could see her watch admiringly at little Dezia going up to each visitor big as a grownup. “Howdee do,” she’d say sober and matter of fact as she could be. Then she’d go to the next. Oh, she was the oldest little body you ever saw.

  For a good while the younger ones sat around watching the older ones to see what was up. All they could tell was that Guerdon, Kinzie and Huldah kept their eyes on their pappy. Guerdon looked half bamboozled, and felt that way, too. He couldn’t believe this about his pappy. His father looked noble as always in his fine black broadcloth coat with black velvet lapels, sitting in one of the best chairs with his legs straight out in front of him and his great chin down on his breast. He wasn’t sleeping or tired. That was just the grand way he sat. He had filled out of late and got powerful-looking. Guerdon wouldn’t want to stand a hitch with him if he could help it.

  The cabin air and grownup talk made Guerdon gappy. He didn’t even know he was nodding till Kinzie nudged him. Their pappy had stood up.

  “Well, I regret I must leave this pleasant gathering,” he said in a deep voice. “But I promised to see Squire Chew and one or two others.”

  Guerdon, Kinzie and Huldah exchanged special looks. When their pappy put on his high hat, Guerdon and Kinzie edged forwards on their bench, and when he had gone, they stood up.

  “Now where do you reckon you have to go to?” Aunt Genny asked for something pleasant to say.

  “Oh, we ain’t goin’ no place much,” Guerdon lied to her.

  “Then you kin stay and visit with me a little now that your pap’s gone.”

  “I’ll come over and talk to you some other time, A’nt Gin,” Guerdon said.

  “You kin wait five minutes.”

  “No, I just minded somethin’ I got to do.”

  “Sit down and talk to your A’nt Ginny,” his mother ordered him.

  Guerdon looked desperate.

  “I kain’t. I got to go out!” he cried, and went for the door, Kinzie after him.

  “You must go out, too, Kinzie?” his mother called sarcastically.

  Kinzie bobbed his head as he bolted. The last thing Guerdon heard was his Aunt Genny’s voice saying, “Now what devilment are they up to?” When they got outside, they could see their father over near the church. They watched his figure move straight and firm up the trace.

  “He’s a goin’ to Squire Chew’s like he said,” Kinzie muttered righteously.

  “Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t,” Guerdon said.

  “I never heerd him tell a lie.”

  “Not right out. But a lawyer kin tell the truth and still not mean what you reckon he says. Like I said I had to go out. I didn’t lie, because I didn’t say what I had to go out for.”

  The two boys stood by the house unmoving, eyes on their father. When his dark figure was swallowed up in the forest, they stole over to the trace. They just saw his high hat and long, black, stately coat moving around the bend.

  And that’s the way they followed him, not like hounds a rushing and baying so the game knew they were after him, but like two “painters” trailing a deer and never letting on they were behind. One time Noah Andrews gave them a funny look after passing their pap just on ahead. Guerdon made as though he was in no hurry then, breaking off sassafras to chew although anybody knew it was tough in the fall.

  “He’s headin’ straight for Squire Chew’s like I said.”

  “You said?” Kinzie came back. “I said! You said he only said he was goin’ ’ar.”

  “I said no such thing. I only said he might a said he was goin’ ’ar.”

  Oh, they both claimed now they knew he was going to Squire Chew’s. They fought about it all the way to the next bend where they jumped back in a hurry. They had seen their father standing about a hundred poles up on the trace. He was throwing a slow, majestic look around him. Now they peeked through the brush and saw him turn east in the woods.

  “I tole you he wa’n’t goin’ to the squire’s,” Guerdon said.

  Nobody lived up that path, they both were aware. It was just an old Indian path that ran off to the hills. They waited a while, then went cautiously after, turning in where their father had turned and following carefully until they came to a fork. Now they didn’t know which way to take, but Guerdon thought he smelled tobacco smoke on the left fork and none on the right. The left was the way they went. One time you could smell tobacco and one time you couldn’t. After while it grew stronger. It smelled like their pappy’s pipe.

  “Oh, I know whar this goes,” Kinzie said.

  “Hush up,” Guerdon told him. “He mought be hangin’ around here anywheres.”

  Guerdon knew where that path went, too. When they stopped to listen, they could hear falling water somewhere ahead. It came from the hollow some called the Dell. Those who had seen it, reckoned it a mighty pleasing place with the water coming down over the red rock ledges. But few ever came in here save in the summer time. It had but one path in and out, and Guerdon reckoned they better get off that path. They might meet their pappy coming out, and then they’d be grilled over the fire.

  Oh, if they were careful before, they were double careful now. They hadn’t dare make any noise going through the brush. The leaves were the worst, for the early ones like the gum and quaking ash were down. Once they got up near the edge of the Dell, they went on their hands and knees, and the last couple yards on their bellies. Guerdon was on ahead. He wriggled his head through a huckleberry bush where he could look down in the hollow. It was a seemly sight from up here with the leafy banks on either side and the water running down the red ledges in the sun. At one place the hollow widened in a ring with high brush all around. There he could see his pappy walking in a patch of sunlight, smoking his pipe.

  “You stay back!” he warned Kinzie. “He mought see you.”

  “What’s he doin’?” Kinzie wanted to know.

  “He ain’t doin’ nothin’. Just trampin’ up and down.”

  “That all?” Kinzie said disappointed. “Then what did he come in here for?”

  Oh, his pappy hadn’t come in here for nothing, Guerdon knew. If they lay long enough, they’d find out, if it didn’t get dark on them first. He heard a stick crack under Kinzie wriggling up to see for himself. Guerdon kicked at him.

  “Stay on back! Somebody’s a comin’.”

  Away down yonder in the woods he could make out two women’s figures. Just for a shake, then the leaves shut them out again. They were on the path to the Dell. It had a place after a while when he could see them again, and now one kept standing there while the other came on alone. Oh, he knew that one who stayed down there. He could tell by her red plaid dress. That was Mary MacWhirter, where the teacher boarded. She and the teacher were thick as thieves, but what was she staying down there by herself for?

  “Who is it?” Kinzie kept a whispering from in back.

  “It’s the school mistress,” Guerdon said. “She’s comin’ up the holler.”

  “What’s she after?” Kinzie wanted to know.

  Guerdon’s eyes never left off watching the path for places where the school mistress would come out. All the time she was getting closer. Now her buck-brown coat was hurrying into the Dell.

  “She knows our pappy’s ’ar,” he said.

  That’s about all he would say right off, though Kinzie kept a poking at him with a long stick. He wanted to know what was going on now. Could Guerdon see good? What was their pappy
doing? What was the school mistress doing? Oh, Guerdon never missed a lick of what went on. His eyes a peering out of that huckleberry bush were black and beady as a coon’s watching two frogs in the old beaver gats. He couldn’t see all he’d like to, for the brush hid some of it, but he could see enough. So that’s why she had Mary MacWhirter come along with her. It looked like they were only out for a walk this fine Sabbath afternoon. Oh, she was smart enough. She kept Mary MacWhirter so far off she couldn’t see who the school mistress was a meeting. Now after a good long time the school mistress went down the path first. After she and Mary were safe off, Guerdon saw his pappy go down. He waited till all was still as the grave save for the water running down over the red rock ledges. Then he and Kinzie came out and slid down the long steep bank. Guerdon went over the hollow with a stick, graphically pointing out to his brother the epic places, like his pappy used to point out with a ruler what had gone on in various parts of the world drawn in white clay on the logs and daubing of the school-house wall.

  It was sundown when they got back to the house. Their pappy wasn’t home as yet. Likely he had gone to Squire Chew’s and those other places he said, for their pappy never told what wasn’t so. But Huldah was home a watching for them. She ran outside when she heard them coming. Just the way they swaggered over the run showed how much they could tell if they wanted to. But they wouldn’t tell her anything. It wasn’t for a girl to hear, they said. They would tell only Resolve. He was the one ought to know.

  “What ails you up ’ar a whisperin’ all night like thieves?” their mother called long after they went to the loft to bed.

  “Kain’t we talk a little if we want to?” Guerdon complained.

  “It’s late. Go on to sleep,” Sayward told them.

  Kinzie crawled reluctantly over to his bed with Huldah but he still would tell her nothing.

  “Oh, you don’t need to think you’re the only ones that know!” she flared. “I knew it all the time.”

  In the other bed Guerdon was giving a last word to Resolve.

  “You’re the one to tell Mam. You’re her favor-rite. It ain’t right for Libby and Sooth and Dezia to go to that woman to school. Idy Tull said so.”

  Resolve lay quiet, hardly saying a word. Long after the others had lost the day in sleep, he lay awake remembering. He might be closest to his mam, but he looked up to his father more than any person in this world. His eyes kept staring at the rain stains on the under side of the clapboards. They made strange shapes, every one different, and he knew them all. That over Huldah was the China-man. Over himself was the big thumb of Florida with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. All around the roof you could make out rain stains that looked like something, one a doe’s head, one a camel and one a volcano with smoke coming out. Over the window it looked like a map of the English Lakes, although Libby claimed it was the leaves of a wake robin. The fire from downstairs shone up through the loft hole and played on everything softly.

  Try as he might tonight, Resolve couldn’t find the Land of Nod. He turned on one side, then on the other. The corn husks felt mighty thin and hard. Seemed like he could feel every knot in the loft boards through them. He still couldn’t get this through his head. If Guerdon hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t believe it. Some words of a poem he heard kept going through his mind. He had been along when his father was lawyer for Alec Blew and defended him in front of the squire. Mrs. Coldwell had Alec arrested. “He came when my man was off and tried to fool around me,” she claimed. “Well, what did he do?” Squire Chew had asked. “He got hold of me and wanted me to fool with him and make free with him,” Mrs. Coldwell kept saying. “I had to screech for help before he made off.” Resolve had felt shame that his pappy had taken Alec’s side in that case. Resolve said as much on the trace on the way home. His pappy had spoken long in Alec Blew’s defense, but he said no word in his own now. He just recited a strange poem, saying it by heart as they tramped together through the woods.

  Resolve wished he could recollect that poem tonight. Maybe he would feel better and go to sleep if he knew it. He got out of bed and down the ladder in his bedgown. When he reached the door that led to his father’s room, his mam spoke from her bed.

  “Whar you goin’?”

  He might have known she wouldn’t go to sleep till his pappy came in. Not that he would come in on this side tonight, but she could hear him on the other side.

  “I have to look something up in a book,” he said.

  “At this time of night!” she came back. But she didn’t deny him or ask him what. To be a lawyer like his pappy he’d have to pack a world of knowledge in his young head.

  It was chilly crossing the dog trot, or what some called the wind sweep, in a bedgown and bare feet. But his pappy’s room was snug and warm with a good fire going, though no one was there. His mam must have seen to the fire after they went to bed. Resolve warmed his feet a while on the gray moose rug, looking at his father’s and mother’s fine, off-the-floor cherry bed. It was strange his mam never slept in it like other wives did with their men, though she let on to nobody outside that she didn’t. He knew just where in the cupboard that poem was. He had come on it before. It was in a fine leather book with the name of its author in worn gold letters. No book of his father’s was harder used. He held it by the fire and paged through till he came to the poem he wanted.

  It had no name, he saw now. So that was why he couldn’t remember it. All it had was a number, one hundred and twenty-nine. He read it slowly so he could get every word, the red light flickering on the page.

  The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  Is lust in action; and till action, lust

  Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.

  Oh, this wasn’t himself reading it, but his father. From the first line he could hear his pappy’s voice gravely ringing through the woods as it had that day they tramped together along the trace after Alec Blew’s hearing.

  Enjoyed no sooner than despised straight;

  Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

  Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,

  On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

  Even his father’s feelings came out in his ear. How he had chewed the phrase, “despised straight,” and with what contempt he had spat out the lines, “past reason hunted; and no sooner had, past reason hated as a swallowed bait.”

  Mad in pursuit and in possession so,

  Had, having and in quest to have, extreme;

  A bliss in proof, and proved a very woe;

  Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

  All this the world well knows, yet none knows well

  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

  Twice he read the sonnet through. Never before had he understood the poet’s language like tonight after Guerdon had talked to him. So that’s why they called Shakespeare the master? Away back in England when America had hardly been more than settled, he wrote this. And yet it was as true here today as then. Didn’t Resolve know! Quickly, when he heard a boot on the ground outside, his finger turned the leaves of the book to some other place.

  The door opened and his father came in.

  “You’re up late,” he said sternly, putting his hat away, hanging up his best coat and putting on an older one in case he sat too close to the fire. He pulled up his chair to the hearth, glancing with dignity to see what the boy in his bedgown was reading, as Resolve knew he would. Then he opened a book of his own by the fire.

  After a minute Resolve looked up. It was a book with slanted Greek letters on the cover that his father had in his hand. How could his father sit there, he asked himself, so noble and fine like always, his dignified legs firmly crossed, his face calm with a kind of majesty and justice? After a little, the boy closed his own book and put it away. Then he went across the dog trot and up to his bed. No, he would say nothing to his m
am. Nor would he let anybody else, either.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RED BIRD

  IT definitely had more trees down now. Sayward noticed it every time she stepped out of the house. She could stand on the cabin steps and look clear past the church, past the store and ferry house and see the sun shining on the river. This was the farthest you could see from the cabin since it was raised. Your eye could go back to the spring, too, over to the school and down close to the old beaver gats. Oh, you needn’t climb the top of a tree to see B’ars Hill or Panther Hill any more. Here at the Moonshine Church they were coming out of the woods. It was slow but sure as Christian heaven.

  Strange how the land lay after it was cleared to the sun. So long as the forest stood, you didn’t take much notice save for the hills and hollows. Take that four-acre field she would put in flax this year. It looked plumb level when it was in woods. Not till it was cleared and plowed did the dips and twists, the low and high places come out, and a slope so strong that the rain washed it. She was telling Portius only last night. It was like Worth’s face when she was a girl. Not till he wanted to go to the settlement would he get her to put razor to his long black stubble. Then all were surprised to see what their pappy’s face really looked like.

  She and Portius, and later she and Resolve, had cleared their ground. George Roebuck had cut down the trees around his new post, and Sam Sloper for his ferry house and the lane that ran betwixt his place and Roebuck’s. She could hear Sloper’s ferry bell ringing now on the quiet Sabbath air. He had set it up on a post outside the ferry house and stretched a line of hemp across the river. If the ferry was on this side and you were on the other, you could give that bell a yank and he’d come over. It gave out a mighty long, sweet sound through the woods. Most everybody stopped their work to listen when they heard it. But the Shawanees liked it best. They went plumb crazy over that bell. They made themselves such a nuisance standing around the ferry house ringing it all day, Sam chased them off from this side. Then they got to pulling the rope from the other side. When Sam came out to take his boat across, thinking he had a passenger waiting, they would dive in the bushes. When he went back in the house, they’d go at it again. They just liked to hear that bell ring.