Now in November

by Josephine W. Johnson

  It was getting dark by then and Grant saddled the horse for me. “Ramsey’ll loan the mule,” he said. “Don’t let Lucia give you their whole farm too.”

  2

  I RODE the three miles thinking a good deal of Grant, and did not notice whether or not they seemed long. There was a kind of painful pleasure in thinking about his face—the gaunt nose and his plain eyes that saw a lot more than Father or even than Merle did. I saw him standing stooped over the boiling cherries, tasting to please her—and himself as much, his big hands holding the spoon like a spade; and Merle with her face a furious red from the steam, making her eyes a sudden unnatural blue, glaring at him with a dare to criticize, and great bursts of laughter at seeing his puckered, grimacing mouth. It seemed strange to me that she did not realize what was written all through and over him,—and strange that she did not love him anyway. I did not want to see Merle humble with love for any man, but I wished she could give him something more than this casual caring, and feel more than a need for someone to tilt against. He might just as well have been one of us and lived here years for all that he seemed to make her feel. I wished she could see and give back something, and hated to think that Grant might suffer sometime the way I had—and still did at times. . . . I have one thing at least to be thankful for out of all the petty and swarming thoughts: I have never been jealous of Merle, never prayed that Grant would not care about her; have even tried to make her understand him better sometimes. This is not much, but it is a little anyway.

  I rode in the strange mixed smell of hay and darkness, weeds and the cattle lots, and farther on the heavy malt smell of the oat fields down near Ramsey’s. I thought to myself—if anything could fortify me against whatever was to come (and there were times when, in spite of an everlasting hope, I felt we were moving toward some awful and final thing), it would have to be the small and eternal things—the whip-poor-wills’ long liquid howling near the cave . . . the shape of young mules against the ridge, moving lighter than bucks across the pasture . . . things like the chorus of cicadas, and the ponds stained red in evenings. . . . As long as I can see, I thought, I shall never go utterly starved or thirsty, or want to die . . . and I thought this because I did not know, because I still had hope that Grant was not beyond me, and because I could still see him and hear him at least. I was afraid, though, and prayed.—Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind! . . .

  There was a light at Ramsey’s, and I heard Ned hollering: “G’wan!—g’wan—let me up! Get yoh butts outa ma face, Chahley,” and I heard their wild savage singing and Lucia’s laugh. No sound from Christian, though. “A deep-taking man,” Lucia says. And a rare one, a Negro quiet almost to dumbness, loving land more than company.

  Lucia hoisted herself up and lighted a candle, and the children came up cautiously, shy and giggling to each other. They made faces and ran away shrieking, except Henry who stood and stared, half-hidden behind Lucia’s enormous arm. “Henry’s like Chrishun,” Lucia said. “Follows him everywhere quiet.”

  “I hoed,” Henry announced in a loud burst, and disappeared in an agony of shame behind her skirt. Christian sat hunched and tight in his chair, the candle making his face like a black carved skull, and a reflection of fire in the stained balls of his eyes. He brooded and seemed absorbed in something beyond us both, and Lucia did all the talking, her voice a deep and comforting boom.

  There were two rooms in the house (one a sort of shed for the dogs and chickens), and around us the beds and sacking bulged dimly in the corners. There were a stove and table and the close, rich smell of air used and over-used and mixed with stale coffee and soup. The walls were covered with pictures: torn Bible illustrations—The Good Shepherd and The Widow’s Mite—and advertisements for liver medicine. The corners were deep with old newspapers stacked up for the stove, and bundles of kindling salvaged on Christian’s trips to town were chucked underneath. It was thick inside, and mosquitoes whined in and out of the torn screens, but Lucia rocked calmly and seemed unconscious of all their stings. Round silver balls of perspiration stood out on her face and dripped down her polished cheeks like placid tears.

  For ten years Ramsey had rented land and expected to buy, but all that he ever did was make his rent-money and put up half the crop to go over the winter. In five years they saved fifty dollars and then had to spend it to get a new team. But every spring Lucia boomed out that this was the year they were going to make it. Ramsey’d mutter the same thing, too, and all that they ever did was pay the rent. . . . I told them I’d come for help and they looked surprised, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that we seemed to them as the Rathmans did to us. Safe. Comfortable. Giving appearance of richness, with our dairy and corn and chickens, our steers and team and orchard—although each thing was barely paying to keep itself. . . . I told them about the gall, and Lucia looked back at Christian, waiting for him to say. She’d have given us both the mules, herself, and everything else she could lay her hands on if I had asked her alone.

  Christian stared down at his hands and answered slow, as if it were effort to talk. “You kin have them both,” he said. “They don’ pull good sepurate.—It don’ matter about you helpin’ in the fall.”

  “Chrishun don’ think we’ll be here to cut that corn,” Lucia said. “We can’t make any rent-payments ovah to Turner’s. We got to pay him in cash and half the crop, and we ain’t got any cash this yeah.—He ain’t goin’ to root us out, though! Ah’m goin’ stick heah tight! Turner have to yank pretty hard to get this big black tick out of his ol’ houn’s ear!”

  “Koven ain’t goin’ to lend us again,” Christian mumbled. “They ain’t got anything either now.”

  “Gran’ Koven work for you folks now—that right?” Lucia asked me.

  “Board and shares,” I told her. “Father can’t pay him much. Old Koven lives off their steers and savings. Enough for himself but nothing over.”

  “Gran’ went to school,” Lucia said, “and Mistah Koven’s a minister. Gran’s a good man.”

  I liked to sit there and talk to them about Grant, speak of the things I liked about him to someone who wouldn’t suspect or find me out. “Grant works hard,” I told her. “Harder than anyone that I ever knew, except my father. Seems to have a good time some, too. Reads at night. Never gets mad with heat like Dad does.”

  “Your Pop’s a good man!” Christian burst out suddenly. He looked at me hard with his stained round eyes, and then sank back again into brooding.

  “Chrishun don’ like folks to talk about your Dad,” Lucia said. “Most people he wouldn’t let have his mules!”

  She came to the door with me, her great body blotting the light behind, and snuffed the air. Then she looked at the stars, always too clear now, never changing or covered. “Might rain tomorrow,” she said.

  “—Don’ feel like a frost anyway.” The children giggled and Christian gave an exasperated laugh.—“Bettah get out your ark, Lucia,” he said.

  Lucia grinned. “Chrishun’s got a bile-stomach,” she said. “It makes all his words come out sour. You tell your Pop that he’s welcome, only not to let ’m catch cold.”

  . . . It seemed a long way back. I was glad to get the mules, but uneasy with the obligation and afraid already that it would never be paid—having debt enough now, without adding the weight of kindness to it. I couldn’t think of much else, though, but the relief of getting home and lying in bed asleep. Unsaddling the horse was effort to even think about, and I tried to smother the tiredness with pretending that Grant might wait up and do it for me. Then even this was set aside and there was only the horse’s lurch and stumble, and the ache of tiredness like a stone on top of my lungs. The stars were foolish pin-points of pain, and I wondered whether I ought to use peas or spinach first, and how soon both would dry up anyway, and if Kerrin would remember—or do it if she did—to scrape out the chicken house, and how Dad would take it when he found that matches were gon
e up a cent and a half.

  There was a light by the barn when I came back, and for a minute I thought that perhaps Grant had really waited, and my hands shook on the reins with a stupid hope. Then Merle came out of the oak-shadow and helped me to strip off the saddle, and took Cairn down to drink.

  “Everybody’s asleep,” she told me, “—especially Grant. Didn’t notice how grey the dishes were he wiped, or stop even to wash his face. Tired out as an old mule.”

  I asked if Kerrin had gone in yet, and Merle said she was sleeping, too. “Maybe we’ll get some work out of her for a change,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound like her words.

  “What’ll we do with her?” I burst out at Merle. “She never is well any more—looks like the ghost of a person. It’s awful to see her ruin herself this way! It’s awful to see her so unhappy!”

  “You can’t do anything,” Merle said. “She’s always been that way. She doesn’t belong here, and there’s no place else for her to go.—She asked Grant to sing again tonight, but he fell asleep instead.—Slumped down like a dead person in his chair.”

  We went inside then and saw a light still burning in Kerrin’s room, faint and uncertain like a candle, and looked at each other. The house was still and hot, and the mosquitoes came through the torn screen places, even where Merle had glued on paper. We went in and lay down, and Merle slept without moving, soundly as though she were still seven and consciousness only a shoe or pin, worn when needed and as easily put aside. But I lay awake a long time, wondering what would happen if no rain came pretty soon, and how Dad was going to meet his taxes. I remembered that this was June, and started to figure the value of all we owned; and if the new shed for the horses had been such a good thought after all, though Grant had built it for nothing, and the old one was rotting like oaks in swamp. I thought that maybe we should have waited until July and not added even ten cents to what the tax was already going to be. I remembered I had the cooking tomorrow, and wasted a long time figuring how to make up a cake without sugar that might taste like one that had;—and then Kerrin’s light went out and I heard her move in bed, and the old haunting fear came back—a kind of dark stain over all other thoughts. We seemed to lie here locked and coffined inside ourselves, and only Merle still free of the love or hate or fear that was shut inside. And it seemed to me, lying there in the dark, that the more I thought or read or saw, the more oppressive and tangled with choice life came to be. Not tangled in daily living, perhaps, but in the whole plan and pattern of it. The living itself was easy enough to do when the days were too full for thought, and clothes wearing down fast to bone, soaking up dirt like sponges. There was no question of what to do when it took two hours to get food ready for fifteen minutes of eating, and no particular choice to make except between radishes and beans. But it was the meaning of all these evident things that still stayed hidden. Every new thought seemed to open a door, but when the mind rushed forward to enter, the door was slammed shut, leaving it dazed outside. I seemed often on the threshold of some important and clarifying light, some answer to more than the obvious things; and then it was shut away. There must be some reason, I thought, why we should go on year after year, with this lump of debt, scrailing earth down to stone, giving so much and with no return. There must be some reason why I was made quiet and homely and slow, and then given this stone of love to mumble. Love was a stone!

  And suddenly I wished to God that Grant had never come here at all.

  3

  JUNE dragged on with a heavy heat. By seven the birds were still as at noon, and the sun was a weight of fire on the leaves. No rain came at all. Aphis killed most of the radishes, covered them over so thick that the leaves were hidden, and black ones stuck like lice on the lettuce-heads. So much died that I wondered where all the work came from still left to do.

  There was talk of strikes, rumors of meetings in Carton and down near the river. And then the unrest crept nearer, spreading out like a slow tide over the farms around us, until even Father began to notice. Grant went to meetings at night up in the school, and came back excited but not certain. He tried to get Father to come and listen, but Dad always said he had no time. “You go,” he’d say. “You can tell me about it. I ain’t the time.”

  Then Grant told him one night he’d have to hold back the milk tomorrow, and Father was angry and confused. “Who says so?” he shouted. “Who’s going to make me lose the little I got? What’re we going to live on now?”

  “On hope, I guess,” Grant said. “A sacrifice for the future, they call it.”

  “A damn big sacrifice for the future,” Father said. “I can’t afford to gamble on just a chance.”

  “I know it,” Grant answered. He spoke quietly and with patience. “But you’ll have to anyway. If you don’t, they’ll dump it for you. You should have come and said what you had to say last night. It’s too late now.”

  “What if it does shove the prices up?” Mother put in. “We get more and somebody else pays more. Where’s the sense in that?”

  “There isn’t any,” Merle said. “But we have to think of ourselves now. Somebody has to pay.”

  “What’ll I do with a hundred gallons?” Father wanted to know. “Can we eat milk? read milk? wear milk? Not even the hogs can take that much!”

  There was no way out of it, though, and we had to hold it all back. Even if we had tried not to join the rest, it would have been of no use. They lined up the roads and ditched over a hundred gallons. “One shout isn’t enough,” Grant said. “We’ve all got to roar together. The whole thing’s no good if anyone backs out now.”

  “Give it away then,” Mother said. “Give it out on the street. They oughtn’t to stop you doing that!”

  It was awful to see the milk lying around in tubs and barrels, overflowing the hog-troughs and souring in an afternoon. It made me sick almost to see Father driving the cows up every night, going through the hours of milking only to throw it out to the hogs. Grant couldn’t stand it either, and the second day he piled the cans on a truck and said he was going to give it away. “Take it any old place,” Father told him, half out of his mind with the waste and worry.

  Grant left, and when he came back the cans were empty, and some had deep dents along the side. Father helped him to lift them out, and shook his head in a dazed way over the battered marks. “What happened?” he asked. “Who done this to my cans?” He ran his fingers over their sides as though they were alive.

  “I gave it away in town,” Grant told him.—“All but the nine gallons Rathman ditched before I could pound in his head what it was I wanted to do. ‘You’ll bust up the strike!’ he kept shouting, and made so much noise he couldn’t hear anything that I said.”

  “Max has a head like a cannon-ball,” Merle said. “What did you do to get words inside it?”

  “Shoved him into the truck and took him along,” Grant said. He laughed, but looked tired and worried.

  “How’s all this going to end?” Father wanted to know. “What hope’ve we got to win?”

  “I don’t know,” Grant answered. “Hedden’s in at the dairy now. Going to tell them that we can hold out forever. He’s mud-poor himself, and if he don’t sell he don’t eat. We’ll have to loan till it’s over.”

  “Who’s we?” Father shouted. “What’ve we got to give?”

  Grant knew there was no use arguing, and knew that Father would give with the rest when the time came, so he started to move away. “If we lose,” he said, “we’ll have made a noise anyway. It’ll be a good help later on to somebody else.”

  “Always the future!” Father went muttering to himself. “Always some other time! Always somebody else!—Ain’t there no now for us?”

  Grant piled up the cans and shut the gate. “First ploughing’s hardest,” he said. “Busts up the share sometimes. Maybe we’ll get an ear of the crop, and maybe we won’t.” He knew there wasn’t much hope.

  4

  WHETHER the strike was won or lost nobody ever was sure. P
rices went up a cent and we started selling again, but there was another tax to pay and a change in the graded value which canceled the feeble rise. The quiet and masked way it was done drove Grant into a rage of helpless fury, but Father couldn’t quite realize what had happened until he balanced his books at the month’s end, and there was this three-day strike leaving an empty hole on the page. Even then he stayed up till twelve, going over and over the figures until the oil got so low the wick wouldn’t burn, and he couldn’t see anyway for being so tired.

  It was from this time on that he seemed to trust Grant less; and things began going wrong between them.

  The days went much alike, with a greenness still left along the low places and the ironweed still strong. The sun came through a grey haze in the mornings, and then rose up red and triumphant to boil the earth again. I came to see its enormous and glaring eye with a stupid and helpless hate, and dreaded the mornings, but there were small intervals of peace and sometimes a few hours of coolness. On Sundays Father would leave his work—that is, did not plough or hay unless he had to. He did only the milking and cleaned his dairy rooms, which took all the morning, and then he had to get up the cows again at four. “Quite a day of rest!” Merle said. She did as much work herself, but managed to save out the afternoon, and we used to go back up through the pastures to where the old Borden church was, with its graveyard used for sheep-grazing now. They didn’t have services there any more. Couldn’t even afford one Sunday in the month. Nobody came except when they had to have funerals and dig a new grave. I used to go up and sit on the steps outside while Merle played on the ancient organ, the way Kerrin had done when we were little. I wondered sometimes if I should ever find answer to all the things I had asked myself that one time when we had gone ten years ago. . . .

  The minister used to come once a month to preach, and for a whole year after we’d moved on the land Mother had wanted to go and hear him, but there always seemed something else that had to be done—always a calf or a meal or a jarring that could not wait—the farm like a querulous, sick old man whining for attention every hour. But we finally went one Sunday in June, a year and three months from the time we had come. Mother’s church dress was faded and grown too big, but we thought it beautiful and important on account of the sleeves with some wilted pleats in front. Father refused to come, and sat on the porch staring after us with the Sunday paper in his hand. He looked saggy and tired, and acted as though he thought us a little coarse in going to church by ourselves without a man. “You children be good” was all he said, and stared off over our heads at a hawk. But Mother’s face had a shined, expectant look, as though she were already kneeling in the church.