When we came back that day we saw Mother had all of the old potatoes spread on the cistern-top and was cutting them up for seed. She looked thin and lumpy and her hair was wound in a braided ball behind. She was round-cheeked and young-looking, though, and glad to see us—which used to puzzle me sometimes, even then, thinking that fourteen years of us should have made her more chary and doubtful of our company.
“We had a good time,” Merle said, “and the lunch was good.” She stuck out some oozy dandelion stems curled together with spit, and plastered them on behind at the bottom of Mother’s knot.
“They look beautiful,” Kerrin said. “They look like worms.” She started to cut up potatoes, very fast and neatly, but Merle paid no attention and nobody else did either. I thought that it served her right, and Mother only laughed. Mother never talked much herself, but listened to everything that was said, and it made us feel there was reason in talking because she was there to hear. Nobody else we had ever met cared as much for all of the things that there were to know and be talked about—the wheeling of planets and the meaning of bonds, or the kind of salts that the chickens needed and the names of the great Victorian poets.
We hacked the potatoes for a long time, and quiet. The sun was still warm, and slow in moving. I thought about Kerrin and the money, and wondered when she had earned it for the knife, and thought most likely she simply had taken it (which was so), but forgot this in watching a grey hawk skimming along the oaks, and forgot it in wondering what supper was going to be. It was as if sun had slowed up everything and pressed us out calmer and more smooth. For a little while, at least.
3
THAT year we had planned for his birthday three weeks ahead. But it was all strange around us—the land and the people were—and we could not ask anyone but ourselves to come. There were the Rathmans Father knew,—Old Man Rathman and his wife and their three sons like three big bulls, and one daughter with a round fat face; Dad used to go and eat with them sometimes on Saturdays. Almost any time that he went, he said, they were at the table, starting or finishing one of their five meals, and smell of coffee seemed a part of the house itself, soaked in the walls and mingled with the kraut. Old Mrs. Rathman spent all her life between table and stove, and when she went outside it was only to bring things in to put on the stove awhile and then on the table and from there into the three boys and Joseph Rathman and sometimes into herself. Dad liked Old Rathman and named the first calf after his girl Hilda, instead of for one of us (not that we minded much, it being ugly and one-horned and a nasty purple); but we were afraid of the old man because his eyes seemed to mock us, to have some hidden secret or scandal about us and to feel contempt. I know now that it was only his way and that he liked us because we were healthy-looking and children. But we were afraid to ask him then. Merle said that she might forget her poem and Kerrin said they might not like our food, and I said nothing but was glad they had decided this way. I had a horror of unfamiliar people, but did not want blame should it turn out in the end that it might have been better if we’d asked them (which was always the way I did, so that they thought me good-natured when I really was nothing but a coward).
The Rathmans were the only ones near us on the north, but down to the south the Ramseys lived on a thin and brush-filled farm. The Ramseys were Negroes and the place had a starved and rocky look. All of the animals were gaunt and bony, and even the pigs looked empty like a balloon gone slack;—even the little shoats were black and small with huge, fox-pointed ears. Christian Ramsey was tall and thin with a soiled color, and his wife was named Lucia. They owned a pack of spotted and ghostly hounds, and they had five children—three of their own, and two adopted—one that was almost white but with great lips, and they had not wanted it but nobody else did either, so they kept the child and, Father said, treated it better than the rest, either from fear or pity, he never could quite decide. But we could not ask the Ramseys, nor would they have wanted to come if we had. And the farmers beyond were only names.
We planned the party ourselves, how it was to be and what was to be made, and I taught Merle a long poem to say, and kept her in the chicken house for an hour a day sitting on the bran bin to recite it off by heart. We called it a ballad and it was an awful thing, but the words sounded rhyming at the end and there was a story in it, so it may have been one after all. Kerrin and I made it up and it ended with a death, but since Father wanted to put away all thought of death and never would let us speak of it, I left out the end in teaching it to her. Kerrin did not know this, though, because Merle would not learn it from her or be alone with her since the time she was locked in the potato cellar and left in the dark for hours. But she trusted me so much that sometimes it felt like a heavy weight on the shoulders, although wonderful and something like being God. She did not mind having to learn it, and sat there with her black-ribbed legs dangling over the barrel brim, her fat cheeks red with cold, and a piece of damp hair stuck out from under the cap with the big knob on its peak. She’d say it over nine times or ten with gusto, and then the rest of the times with patience and precision. It was about a farmer, and we hoped that Father would laugh because it was supposed to be funny in some places, but we knew that Mother would anyway. Merle was excited about it and kept counting off the days, and would look at me in a full and secret way.
Kerrin wouldn’t tell us what it was she was going to do, but went off each day by herself in the woods. “It’s going to be good,” was all she’d say. “You-all will be shamed.” Between milking and the supper she would be gone off alone and come back sometimes singing. She had a good voice, but it was too loud and shouting and made her reluctant of people hearing it, and she would stop when she came up past the barn. . . . As for me, I thought to make Dad a clay basket like the Indians did and stained with something—I didn’t quite know what, beet-juice or ink perhaps—and give it to him in place of the rusty tin he used for carrying up the eggs. I spent days making it. First half-bushel size, and clay on a wire to make the handle that went shattering into bits as soon as lifted. But I made it over again three times and each time smaller, till finally it was firm and held together but was scarcely big enough to carry even a sparrow egg inside. Still, it looked like a basket anyway, and I wished it was for Mother, knowing that she would like anything we made,—even a pillow that Merle had stuffed with chicken feathers not so clean and musty-smelling. It was nice, though, to think of Dad’s getting it, because it was a good pot and stained with a design of red things that were something like herons, only the juice had spread and blurred their edges around,—and because he was harder to please and so seemed more kindly when he was.
I liked the hour I spent there each day by the bank with the faint clay-cold smell of the water; there were small holes all along the edge, which might have been borings of a woodcock’s bill, but spiders hid in them and caught the cabbage-butterflies that came in thin and yellow clouds to suck the clay. Sometimes I’d come down in the middle of the mornings, and hear the frost dripping off the sycamores and woodpecker’s tap along the bark, because it was so quiet; and twice a red fox sneaked across the road.
But one time I heard Kerrin go by singing to herself. She couldn’t see me underneath the bank, and when the singing had gotten farther off—it was about Rizpah and her son hung up in chains—I took off my cap so that the knob wouldn’t come up first, and stuck my head over the bank and saw her running and singing. Her red hair was wild and not covered up as it should have been because spring is the dangerous weather, Father said. (He never went without a hat on top of his head, although what good a man’s hat did I couldn’t see,—leaving his ears to blow about exposed.) I almost called out and told her she should have put something on her head, but the words stayed in my mouth, and she went off around the hill. I felt queer, seeing her alone that way. Something about the way she ran and sang, as though not a person like us any more. Kerrin had never been like us much, even before, in other ways. She did things sudden and wildly, or not at all, and ate s
ometimes like a dog starved out and savage, chewing and mumbling, and at other times would only pick at her food and stare out the window while Merle and I ate patiently all that was put in front of us. She’d sleep at odd times and hours, stretched out like a lynx in sun, and creep out of the house at night to wander around in the marshes. I knew because I had seen her come sneaking back at dawn, with her feet and legs half-frozen and covered with frosty mud. And this time she seemed more strange than ever, as though not belonging even to herself. I felt queer. I didn’t know what it was then, but it was the beginning of fear. Fear that life wasn’t safe and comfortable, or even just tight and hard, but that there was an edge of darkness which was neither, and was something which no one could ever explain or understand. And that day I left the pot unfinished, and went back to the house where things, if not always good, were plain enough, at least, and not hard to understand.
Dad’s birthday was in April on the ninth, but we were ready a long time before, and the days, though full and overfull, seemed to move no faster than a stone. Merle did not ask Is this the day? each morning, but Mother could see how she was fearful of not recognizing it, and so taught her how to mark the days on the calendar each night. We planned what we should give him for supper, and wished that they could be things we had raised ourselves, but the sweet potatoes and Irish were still unborn and no vegetable more than barely underground as yet. But there were to be corn-pudding piles and a three-layered cake oozed out with icing and as many candles as it would hold, but not fifty-seven as there should have been or the cake would have slumped and fallen flat; though Merle said we ought to stick them around the sides to make it look like a porcupine on fire. Kerrin told her it couldn’t be done and to leave baking to those who knew about it;—by which she didn’t mean me, I guess, since the apple bullets-of-dough I made one night, nor herself either, because though liking to spade and heave earth around, she had no interest in what came out of it, and broke the carrots off instead of pulling them with persuasion or troweling. —But she probably meant that Mother would do the best, which was true enough in more ways than cooking.
4
THE ninth of April came on a day of corn ploughing. We had battered about all night scarcely asleep, and so heard Dad get up as he always did at four, and supposed that his heart was pounding like ours. It was a queer day outside, I remember—thunder-storms and a hot sun coming between them and a wind shifting to the north with coldness, and there were long streaks of light across the wild plums that were about to flower. . . . The cake was beautiful and high, and the icing dripped out from the layers. Kerrin ate the part run out around the plate but did not break at the crust, and it looked like the tower of Babel with its layers dwindling into a muffin on the top.
At six that evening Dad came in and shouted out, “Where’s the food, you women?” and sounded so young and cheerful that we climbed on him as we had not done in weeks. Mother looked suddenly younger, too and Cale barked loud as he would at some stranger. She brought in the ham stuck about with cloves, and the brown-sugar smell filled the room and moved out the dark spring coldness that had crawled in through the window cracks. “I’m going to put soybeans up in the north field,” Father said. “They’re cheap and nourishing.”
“You ought to hire a boy to help in the planting,” Mother said, “—someone with more sense than these around.” Father looked at her as though she were one of us talking. “Max Rathman’s good enough,” he said. “What’s wrong with Max? A man doesn’t need to plant by textbook, Willa.” I saw him looking at Merle, and saw she was feeding Cale with a piece of ham, shoving it down his mouth with her fat rough hands; and there were words in Dad’s throat ready to come charging up, but they stayed in his mouth and did not come this time. “Max is good enough for a while, I guess,” Mother said very fast. She shook her head at Merle, but not till he’d looked away. “Let’s bring the cake in now,” I whispered. I wanted to light the candles and help her to carry it in, because I had made a part—not much, but sprinkling raisins on here and there. Merle kept watching me to know if it was time to say the poem, and her eyes kept following me about with the question. Then I saw Kerrin take a big piece of uneaten bread and sneak it down to Cale, and I looked at Father and saw the words that he hadn’t said all ready to rush out on her. He got red, but only a heavy sigh came out. “What’s the matter?” Mother asked. She was out in the closet where the cake was hidden, but heard the sound and silence that came after. “It’s a crumb got stuck,” I said. I was trembling inside and afraid, but nothing happened. Then we let Merle bring the cake in on its platter, and her face looked like a big candle itself, looming above the little flames, and Dad grinned but didn’t shout as we thought he should.
He cut us big slices, firm and wedge-shaped like the tall pieces of a pie, and a bigger one for Mother, and then we thought it was time for the presents to be given. Merle jumped up and looked at me eager, with her mouth all shaped and ready to begin, but I shook my head because I thought maybe Kerrin would like to be the first, and besides I was tormented with curiosity to know what it was that she’d been doing. And afterward I wished that God had sewed up my mouth, because of the look on Merle’s face, trusting and disappointed. “You be the first one, Kerrin,” I said. Father looked pleased but puzzled and wondering what was to come. Kerrin got up, fierce and excited in her eyes, and pulled a small heavy thing out of her sweater pocket. She held it out toward him but kept her fingers still on it, and we could see that it was a folded knife tipped with silver on the end. “This is supposed to be your present, Dad.” She sounded excited and full of pride. “Watch what I’ve learned to do—taught myself how to do it!” She opened the knife and aimed at a brown spot on the wall, a little spot hardly big enough to see and high up across the room. “Look out!” Dad shouted. “Stop!” He shoved back his chair and tried to snatch the knife, but jerked at her arm instead. Merle and I screamed out, and the knife went wild, straight at old Cale’s blind head, and slashed across his nose. “God damn you!” Father shouted. He grabbed at Kerrin and knocked her back against the wall. Merle started to cry and Kerrin screamed out some horrible things. Only Mother had sense enough to run to Cale and slop at his nose with water. But he growled and snapped at her with his mouth full of red foam, so that she couldn’t get near enough to help him. Then Father grabbed him from behind and held his mouth so he couldn’t bite her. The cut was deep and slashed back in his head, and it bled as if every vein were opened. I stood holding on hard to Merle and trying to stop her howls, and Kerrin was on her knees by Mother, trying to sop up the blood, but Dad knocked her away and roared at her to get out and leave the room. It was terrible—the way she went out in a black rage, crying, with her hands clenched and her eyes—I was scared and Merle screamed when we saw her eyes and the awful hate in them. She slammed the door and rushed out in the dark, though it was beginning to rain and a cold wind had come up. I stood there dumb, not knowing what to do or say, and Merle kept on crying. Then Dad said, “It’s no use.” He picked Cale up and started out toward the door. “The girl’s killed him,” he said. They went outside, Mother still holding the cloth around Cale’s mouth, and we heard her tell Dad that it was he who had shaken Kerrin’s arm. But the door slammed after and we could not hear his answer except as a loud and angry sound.
Merle and I stayed, looking at the broken-up cake and the blood, and after a few minutes she stopped crying and was quiet. Then we went to the door and listened, and over the wind heard two thumps of a gun and then only the sound of rain running down the gutters. . . . “Let’s go shut the chickens up,” I said. I took the lantern down, and Merle put Mother’s sweater on. She looked so sad and patient with the sweater hanging down around her ankles and her fat cheeks streaked with tears and icing that I thought my heart would crack.
It was cold and quiet out in the chicken house, and the new straw had a clean smell to it. We could hear the chickens moving and churring in their sleep. There was a pile of weed hay in one corner, a
nd we sat there with the lantern down on the floor in front. Rain made a slow and washing sound on the window glass, and we heard a small rustle of mice. We felt tired and sick, but out here in the dark with only mice sounds and the slide of rain things seemed less terrible and vile.
“Where do you think that Kerrin went?” Merle whispered to me after a while.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But she’ll come back sometime soon, I guess.” I was empty of tears and could not cry even when I thought about old Cale. I hoped that they would not bury him out in the pasture or in some bare and ugly place. And I thought about poor Kerrin, too, stumbling and hiding somewhere in the rain, angry and sick and raging like the devil.
“I guess there won’t be any more party,” Merle said. She sat pushed up tight against me, her round hands clasped together looking like mittens in each other.
“No more tonight,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow or some other day we’ll finish.” But I knew it would never be the same. And after what seemed a long time to us because the dark was so still, we picked up the lantern and crept back to the house.
Now in November Page 2
