by John Gould
“That so?” he says. “Nobody you knew?”
“No, just a person.” And ponder the words the wife might have used to avoid “person.” Gentleman? Fellow? Stranger? Perhaps character. Even “party.” Mainers like party. Maybe joshing at the legal parties of the first and second part. “A party come up to me on the street . . .” Person suggests nothing in particular, but party connotes a pleasantness, a smile, maybe a laugh. A real pleasant person is sometimes called a joker. “Who’s the old joker going around selling whetstones?” But I never heard joker used in Maine for a female; person, yes. And more often, party.
Well, the other day this large party in a red dress stepped up and said, “You Mr. Gould?”
I thought briefly, and somehow Ms. seemed wrong. And Miss and Mrs. didn’t suit. I hardly knew what to say, but I came out with ‘Yes.” Then I explained to her that at our house we have become fully liberated, and we make no distinctions. Co-personed. Two peoples. But he can tell, and so can she.
A Silver Sixpence
When Sarah was very young we became good friends and I made her one of my silver chests, in which she will keep her tableware if she gets any in her nuptial season. This is previous, as Sarah is still working at grade school. And presumptuous, too, the way the price of silver bounds. But if wedding guests do bring her some silverware, she has a pretty pine chest lined with green velvet to keep it in. Right now, her only piece of silver is an English six-penny coin I provided for her bridal shoe:
Something old and something new,
Something borrowed and something blue,
And a silver sixpence in her shoe.
After 429 years, the British stopped coining the silver sixpence in 1980, and as I plan to make silver chests for young ladies for some time to come, I prudently laid in a supply of them while I could. For Sarah, the chest and the coin were special.
Sarah isn’t like all the other good little boys and girls who wake up in the morning where they are. Sarah wakes up on an island out in Muscongus Bay, because her father is in the fisheries and has to live there. She and her younger brother begin every school day by coming to town in a boat. Then they get on a bus and ride a dozen miles. Reverse in the afternoon, except that there is a half-hour wait in the gymnasium because the bus schedule isn’t worked out for islanders. Sarah’s mother says this “makes for a long day.”
Her mother, who would also have one of my silver chests had I known her back when she was a bride, keeps house out there on the island without many things. Electricity, for one. They do have bottled gas for cooking and refrigeration, but other kitchen conveniences won’t run on bottled gas. They do have sea fogs, arctic smoke, becoming southerlies, and ships that pass. So they make out, but occasional family visits to “the main” are momentous events. My wife saw them in the stow-wer, and suggested they take the time to run over here to Back River and pick up something I had for Sarah.
Sarah’s mother must have wondered what on earth I might have that belonged to Sarah, but her acceptance of the suggestion didn’t hinge on that. “Goo-ood!” she said. “We’ll be right ov-ver, and we’ll bring the hoss-reddish!”
Knowing nothing about that meeting, I was in my woodworking shop making kindling wood, or possibly riveting a trivet, and I looked up to see Sarah standing close to watch. Lovely child. “Hello,” I said, “just the one I’m looking for—I’ve got something belongs to you.”
I brought her silver chest from under a bench, where it had been since the hot-stove season, and I dusted it off, revealing the initial “S” carved into the cover.
“Oh-h-h!” said Sarah, putting her hands to her cheeks, and then she said, “And we brought the hoss-reddish.”
I would admire to leave it right there. I ought to send the reader away untold. Some things should never be explained. I recall that Charles Addams said he thought his best comic cartoons were the ones that needed no captions—but that whenever one was reprinted in Germany it always said, “This cartoon needs no caption.” And one time I was driving at night in a wild rainstorm, and my automobile headlamps picked up a forlorn, and drenched, man standing at roadside. “What in the world are you doing out here on a night like this?” I asked him.
“Well,” he said, “you see—I’m a piano tuner.”
I wouldn’t let him add a word. Anything he might say after that would spoil everything. And I’d be justified, I think, to leave sweet Sarah right there with her hoss-reddish. A raven-haired preteen beauty, the cry of gulls over tide-washed ledges, the ancient outboard being cranked to get the youngsters to school, Life on a Maine Island, serene and nonsequitur. And I said, “So you brought the hoss-reddish?”
“Eyah—Mom’s got everything all ready to plug in—Oh, my! Isn’t that some beautiful!” She lifted the cover and the green velvet against the honey-colored white pine made her gasp. I got the hug that is my adequate reward.
All right—I’ll tell you. Mom had dug her horseradish roots out on the island, and with the customary tears had peeled and cut them. She had them in a big glass jar with the proper quantity of sharp vinegar, and she had brought the jar to the main—intending to find some way to invite herself into a home where she could plug in her electric blender and finish the job. It’s not a nonsequitur at all. While Sarah and I were taking care of the silver chest, and I was getting my hug, Mom zipped the hoss-reddish.
She left some of it. It will cut a throat at thirty paces.
Always Knock First
A television commercial showed a pigtailed child running in bucolic abandon across a farm dooryard, putting a peaceful flock of biddies to flight, and I don’t remember what this was supposed to sell. But I sat up at horror at this wanton dalliance and lost all attention to the product, because all farm children have always been taught never-never to frighten the hens. Makes ’em fall off, and a good hen that gets a real scare may cease to function in the nest until the stewpot takes over. I realize the commercial was thought up and produced by people who know nothing about hens, and even that the biddies may be theatrical properties kept solely for photographic purposes. But anybody who grew up with hens as I did will react my way, and I’d like to speak to that foolish kid and to the advertising agency.
The dormitoried poultry in today’s agronomy don’t get a chance to run at large, but on the old-time family farm the hens had the run of the place. Even out onto the road, because people who rode in buggies were careful about hens. You just didn’t give a hen any kind of a startle. All hens frighten about the same, but size decides how high they fly. The feather-legged Brahmas were too beefy to soar much, but the Wyandottes and the Leghorns would squawk and cutt-cutt-cutt and fly against the barn if somebody in the next township slammed a screen door. We young ones were instructed—ordered—to move amongst the hens slowly and quietly, careful not to make sudden gestures. We were even told to speak to the birds when approaching, so they’d know we were coming.
That’s right, and we always knocked on the door of the hen pen before opening it. With the door closed against the Great World, a flock busies itself in the litter, scratching and pecking while the boss men directs the work. He’s the rooster. He struts and lectures, maintains dignity and order, and commands attention to the business at hand. His hens talk among themselves, and when one finds a titbit of nourishment she cutt-cutts a small announcement about it. The other biddies congratulate her, and the rooster suggests they all go and do likewise. At this moment, if a thoughtless farmer opens the door unannounced, the congenial program is interrupted and the rooster and his ladies will go right up into the air in vast surprise. So always knock on the door first. This causes the poultry to look up and nobody is alarmed when the door opens and the farmer steps in with, “Coming through, ladies!” When properly notified, the same hens that would explode into a tizzy will come to peck at the eyelets of the farmer’s boots and show great friendliness. And, to the point, they will continue production and finish their clutches. A hen that doesn’t lay eggs is hardly an asse
t.
It wasn’t just hens. We didn’t startle any of the stock. Nothing else would go off quite like a hen, but a horse that takes a fright may climb into his manger and be difficult to retrieve. I’ve seen a scared pig scale a fence. But the animals lack the pomp and hustle, the beating of wings, and the wild cutt-cutt-cutt-darking of the layers.
While meditating on that rambunctious child who scared the TV hens, I realized what ails television. It’s not the poor quality and lack of taste in programming, the consuming desire for the advertising dollar, the lack of reportorial talent—it’s none of those things. It’s that we poor victims out front have nobody to talk to. There’s nobody to listen to our complaints, to act on our advice. Who would I write to, or call, to explain about scaring hens? Were there somebody, I would freely offer, and in recompense the TV boys would have the pleasure of my friendly acquaintance. And, in this instance, I could help them a great deal. I’d tell them to get that crazy kid a flock of guinea hens.
The guinea fowls fly like a kite, going straight up, and they squeal and squawk like a lost soul with its tail caught in a door. They lay eggs, all right, but only for hatching out more guinea fowl. The egg looks like a ping-pong ball, and has never been successfully marketed as food. So it doesn’t matter how much you scare a guinea hen, and she’ll put on a far better show than regular hens. So put a flock of them in the petunias and trot that pigtailed child past. There’s a TV commercial! And once you roust them and they’re up on the roof-peak of the barn, the things will sit there all afternoon making instant replays.
On Hand Mowing
Our high school history book had a drawing of the rabble arriving in Paris for the Revolution, and the artist had equipped his army with some makeshift weapons. Prominent was a ferocious zealot brandishing a scythe, and we farm boys who were intent on cultural improvement were detoured for a moment by this absurdity. Our teacher, a country girl, agreed with us that one good man with a ball bat could probably subdue an entire regiment of handscythes. I have watched since then, and I have never seen a drawing of a handscythe that had the life. Father Time, depicted annually at year’s end, always carries a strange tool with the handles askew and the snath bent the wrong way. Usually, in the cartoons, Father Time holds the handles, which are known to us experts as the tug and the lug, in such a way that should he swing the foolish thing he would mow himself off at the knees. I assume no artist has ever mowed.
My grandfather, who taught me to swing a scythe, assured me early that he had personal knowledge that the blade makes a harmless weapon. He had been privileged to watch two men fight with handscythes. When he first came upon the battle he was horrified to contemplate the consequences, but he told me he soon saw that he had nothing to dread, so he relaxed to watch the fun.
The fight was between two of his hired men. It was common talk in town that only a fool would ever work for my grandfather, and he responded by saying he had no jobs that required academic proficiency. On this occasion, he had negotiated with Dunky Ross and Ho-ho Blaisdell, two worthies who completely satisfied the common talk in town, and he had set them to mowing swalegrass. Our hillside farm had “runs” in the fields, gullies that drained the land. They stayed wet in dry weather so could not be mowed by machine. Vegetation in these runs went to reeds and rushes and sweetflag and cattails and wasn’t good for hay to feed out. It could be used for bedding or for mulch. It had to be cut each summer or in time the runs, or swales, would invade the fields. So there was no profit in swalegrass and Gramps spent as little as possible on it. Dunky and Ho-ho came cheap because of their arrested intelligence, and when Gramps got them swinging in the swales he went over the knoll to pick tomatoes.
As soon as he was out of sight, Dunky and Ho-ho, who were not so foolish as some people thought, repaired to the farmhouse and went “down sulla” to refresh themselves at my grandfather’s barrel of cider. When they returned to the swale, they were feeling nicely, and some philosophical remark of Dunky prompted Ho-ho to a scholarly disagreement. One thing led to another, tempers flared, and shortly the two were dueling each other courageously with their handscythes. When my grandfather came by with a wagonload of tomatoes, Dunky and Ho-ho were jumping about and yelling a good deal, slapping with their scythes, and Gramps hustled from the wagon seat to intercede before the slaughter got too far out of hand. But he told me he saw at once that while a handscythe would seem to make a formidable snickersnee, it is nonetheless so hung and so shaped that it is neither lethal on a thrust nor difficult to parry. So, deciding that Dunky and Ho-ho were in no mortal danger, he went back to the wagon seat to watch the conflict as if it were a game of horseshoes. After the two heroes simmered down, they slept off the cider under a tree, Gramps fired them and mowed the swales himself to save three dollars.
As hand mowing has waned in deserved desuetude, I have continued to practice the art—partly because Gramps taught me the right way and scything is not the hard work it appears to be if you know the right way. I devote a few minutes each morning in August to mowing our window-view of Back River. I don’t make hay, as our shore runs to bayberry, sweetfern, hardhack, wild roses, and goose greens—about as valuable as swalegrass. My wife thanks me when I have covered the area, and the scythe is put away until next year. And when I hang it over the beam in the shop I notice again the curious hang and the improbable shape, and I think about the French Revolution and about Dunky and Ho-ho. I wonder how far that Revolutionist got into the City of Paris before some Loyalist lammed him with a sledstake.
About Seeing Snakes
When the McCauleys come from out-of-state to tent on their Maine coast property here at Back River, I always hoist the John Paul Jones jack on my flagpole by way of welcome. That’s the flag with the rattlesnake and the motto Don’t Tread On Me, used during the American Revolution. Dr. McCauley is a herpetologist, and with this flag prominent we consider him properly greeted in his own language. After their tent is up Rob and Lois spend much of their vacation viewing the fauna along Back River, and as Rob is a wildlife specialist he never has to look in a book to tell a widgin from a whistler. A couple of mornings after they were set up I asked Rob about my snakes. “How come I am seeing so many more snakes this summer than in previous years?” I asked.
It would be imprudent to ask that of anybody except a herpetologist. My rude and comical local cronies would just tell me to lay off the sauce, or ask if I’d seen any butter-colored whip-snakes with green stripes and hard hats, and so on and so forth. In popular lore, snakes go with tippling. But, a professional snake authority, such as Dr. McCauley, will give serious thought and a scholarly answer. Rob now laid down his binoculars, assumed an academic posture, touched his fingers, pursed his lips, and although he was on vacation he cocked his head in thought. Not everybody who sees snakes can apply to an expert, so I was eager to hear his reply. “Well,” he said, “have you considered the possibility that you simply have more snakes this summer?”
That had not occurred to me, as I supposed the snake count is constant, and it goes to show that an education is a fine thing. Rob told me these Maine, and nonvenomous, snakes are garter snakes, something I can’t figure unless it derives from garden, since I see my snakes while they are haunting my garden and protecting my sass from the ravage and depredations of my hoppy-toads. I don’t mind having the snakes on duty, as I am aware they devour some unfriendly bugs and beetles, but they are hard on hoppy-toads, which also devour unfriendly bugs and beetles. As my snakes increase, my hoppy-toads decline. It is Mother Nature’s way. Herpetology as a study includes both, so Dr. McCauley is indifferent and views reptiles and amphibians broadly.
I take notice that I have had a lonely garden life since knowledge of my snake increase has reached the neighborhood. The ladies, in particular, are reluctant to socialize as they used to do amongst the peas and cukes. Time was I would say, “Come, see my garden!” and the ladies would walk up and down the rows admiring. Then I would reward them with a head of lettuce or a snatch o
f carrots, and it made for pleasant discourse and amiability. Then it happened.
“Would you like a cauliflower?” I called, and the lady said, “Oh, I would love a cauliflower,” and she strode down the row past the peppers and pole beans to where I was opening my jackknife. Then:
GEE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EEK!
Even the most confirmed misogynist must admire the grace, charm, celerity, and agility, as well as the basic intent, of a sedate lady who, with cream cauliflower in context, suddenly Eeks! and clears the pumpkin patch at one bound to climb up on the woodpile. “Gracious!” I said. “Whatever is the matter?”
“A snake!”
I cultivated this potential. “Would you like a cauliflower?” I called, and it worked quite a few times. Then came Mrs. Potter, who caught me up short.
“Would you like a cauliflower?” I called.
Mrs. Potter said, “Oh, I would love a cauliflower!” So I started to take out my knife, and I heard her say, “My, those are certainly some handsome peppers!” Then when she didn’t say anything more, I looked up, and there was Mrs. Potter holding my best snake by the scruff of the neck and looking into his beady eyes. “Garter snake,” she said. “Three years old I’d say.”
“Dr. McCauley says four.”
“He’s probably right, but I’d say three. Handsome male.”
I did ask Dr. McCauley when he was here as to why my snakes favored the cucumbers in the morning and the onions in the afternoon. He said about anything a snake does is to enhance the metabolism, which sounds about right if you trouble to think it over. Lacking herpetological expertise, I had erroneously concluded it wasn’t metabolism so much as it was the hoppy-toads. For some reason the hoppy-toads like afternoon onions, and snakes are never so keen on onions as they are on hoppy-toads.
