Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  Lonzo walked to the rough rails of the cow-pen, and leaned upon them. Betsey, hearing his footsteps, came to the fence and answered his low-spoken “Coa” with a plaintive moo. He fingered her ear, roughing the short, coarse hair with his finger nail. He moved his hand down across the bony sockets of her eyes. Always the feel of a cow’s forehead reminded him of the sightless stare of bleached skulls that he sometimes saw far from any clearing, where critters had wandered off to die. Dumb things don’t like to die with others looking on. They’ll drag off by a branch somewhere, and lie down, and nobody will ever know until you see the buzzards circling lower and lower above some thin cypress, or sitting in solemn black rows along dead limbs, glossing their greasy-black feathers, one by one. There beneath, if you have a mind to, you can find a hide ripped open, and lank bones picked clean.

  Lonzo could hear the little calf nuzzling his mother’s bag. He wasn’t hungry; but he’d better suck while he could.

  Tomorrow he’d be shut up while his mother went to crop grass on the slope toward the swamp.

  Lonzo turned and faced his fields, leaning his weight upon his elbows on the fence. His eyes went through the thin darkness and saw his land ready for planting—through the thin dark, and saw the crops leaning heavy above the soil. The corn would go in there, and the cotton across yonder, and a pea-patch close beyond the cow-pen. Peas would bring partridges in the fall. He’d have to fix a garden-patch for Cean’s seeds, and a washing-shed by the spring. He’d have to clear out some of the brush; a moccasin will slip up on you if you give him a chance. He must fix Cean a cypress wash-block like his mother’s, and a dug-out wash-trough with a soap-rack. He had the tree picked out; all there was to do was to strip it and dig it out and set it up on four legs. He had enough to do to keep him busy till frost, what with Cean’s little jobs. And there was the land to fence, once and for all, with no tellin’ how many rails to be split.

  The little moon hung lonesome in the early night, unwearied in fulling and shrinking over woods and waters. Lonzo found it over his left shoulder through space clear of tree or cloud; it meant good luck—rain and good luck. He walked back to the house with slow eagerness. He would put the old brood sow’s pen on the other side of the spring; she’d rake straw in another month. He walked heavily across the back yard, and pushed in the back door with unwanted roughness. He’d get a hound-puppy or two to chase rabbits and to keep the house from seeming so still.

  Cean heard his coming, and her lashes quivered on her cheeks. Hidden under the thin white coverlids with their soft fringe of lashes, her eyes were warm and bright.

  Chapter 2

  By the time the moon was new once more, eight pigs were squealing in the pen by the little stream that ran away from the spring’s head. Their mother, heavy with milk and content, nosed sleepily through the rails; the pigs plunged about the boggy pen after her, pulling greedily on her dugs. There were five boars and three gilts. In his mind, Lonzo could see the smokehouse already built, could see the sides and hams swinging by their palmetto thongs, and the soft, white lard in kegs newly carved from soft white juniper wood. The first tree toward the smokehouse was not felled, but the pigs fell about over their mother’s body bogged in the mud.

  Cean’s sunflowers were a foot high; the pinks were sprawling out, and here and there was a small striped bloom for Cean to stoop and see; the greens would soon be ready to crap. Her father had brought her a new churn with fancy-carved handles; he had made it himself and dressed it down to smooth, pale yellow. Cean liked to churn on the block by the back door, because from there she could seek out Lonzo’s figure across the furrows—Lonzo and the ox. Now the corn was high as your hand. The rows of cotton came almost to the back door, dark-green plants that would grow and blossom into fleece for warm clothes and quilts and bartering at the Coast.

  The day was clear and hot. Cean set her churn on the ground by the back step and poured in a crockful of clabber covered in thick cream. She sat in the door, and her arm moved swiftly and easily up and down, plunging the dasher against the churn’s bottom. She had fitted a white rag about the neck of the churn to hold in the flecks of white that the dasher might scatter. Her eyes sought across the field for Lonzo where he worked.

  She had dropped every last yellow grain of corn into the earth—like that! Walking in Lonzo’s tracks, she had counted four grains to a hill—one for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow. Four times she had soaked his and her clothes in the wash-trough, had battled them free of dirt on the block, had boiled them white and rinsed them through the spring water, had hung them out on the elder bushes to dry. Together in the water, she had washed their clothes—his long, sweaty shirts and britches, her short shimmies and full-skirted homespun dresses of pale natural color, and of the soft blue of indigo, and of mingled colors patterned on the loom. One dress that she had brought with her from her mother’s was brown mingled-y, and that dress had not been washed. It lay folded in the chest beside her soft shoes of tanned calfskin. She liked the brown dress best, for she was married in it. A dark color is likelier for a grown woman. She would not wash the brown dress; goods is never so pretty after it is washed, though it be rubbed ever so gently, and ironed ever so carefully with the hot smoothing-irons while it is damp.

  Her mother had brought her three settings of eggs—one of geese, long and white; one of guineas, small, speckled, curious-looking, like bird eggs; and one of chickens. Already Cean‘s red hen was huddled over the twenty guinea eggs in a nest of pine straw under the house by the chimney. Cean would set the goose eggs under the hen that was laying under the dead log by the wash-trough. The chicken eggs could go into the nest under the back step. Soon her yard would be full of little things running about. She would stir up meal and water for them, and Lonzo must set up a tall pole and bring gourds from his Ma’s so that the martins could nest in the little swinging houses and keep off the hawks. And Lonzo must find some hound-puppies to keep off the ‘possums.

  Cean’s hand did not loose the dasher, nor her arm slow its motion. She watched the flakes of clabber at the top of the churn; the butter would come presently.

  She lifted the top of the churn and stirred the milk about; gold globes swam all through the white. She churned on, and the butter gathered in a soft, loose lump. She lifted the churn across the room to the eating-table, took out the butter, kneaded the water from it, salted it, and molded it in a wooden mold from the shelf where she kept her milk things. It would be ready for dinner, for Lonzo’s cornbread. She took down a jug from the shelf, filled it with buttermilk, closed the doors and shutters of the house against the flies and chickens, and went with the buttermilk down the furrows to find Lonzo.

  The sun was hot this morning. There had been days of rain when Lonzo had stayed by the fireplace, whittling on a set of wooden crocks—a large-sized one for salt, and smaller ones for spices. Cean had no spices now, but Lonzo would go to the Coast in the fall, and he would barter and trade and bring back many things in the bottom of his cart in place of the things he would carry away. Maybe Cean would have something to send by Lonzo to barter for pretties—maybe some of the frying-sized chickens to be hatched, or goose feathers, or flower seeds tied in little white rags.

  Cean had never been to the Coast. It was no place for womenfolks, Pa said, with men full of rum going about, and fist and skull fights at every turn. No womenfolks ever went. Cean’s mother had never gone. But she had come through Dublin when they came from Carolina to settle in the pinywoods. She had got down from inside the covered wagon to walk about a little bit; Cean had often heard her tell of the wide road with the houses on each side, and dwelling-houses every which way. There were people all up and down the road, going about the houses busily. Cean’s mother had seen an Israelite standing in the door of his storehouse, the only Israelite ever she saw. He was shorter than our kind of men, and darker complected. Cean’s father had traded with him for a packet of fine sewing-needles with gold eyes, and a gold thimble for Cean
’s mother’s finger. She had the thimble and some of the needles now; they should be Cean’s when her mother died. Cean’s father grumbled at his wife’s wanting fine trinkets. “You can trade off a herd of cows and bring home a pearl hair-comb and some little shears,” he said. He had always begrudged his wife’s love for trinkets; maybe it was because she would always rather sew than chop cotton. She was a home body, loving slow women’s work by the fireplace, hating hard labor in the field. She would mull a week over something that had angered her, over as small a matter as the calling of her name. She hated the way her husband called her name. “Seen” he called it, when any fool knew that it spelled “Cean.” When this girl-child of hers was born, she chided Vince Carver: “Now take yore time in sayin’ hit. Her name is ‘Cean’.” Cean had heard tell that her father did not like her to be called by that outlandish name of her mother’s. He wanted her named for his mother, Tillitha. And her mother had named her Tillitha Cean, but ever she was called Cean.

  Cean’s toes spread into the warm, moist earth of the cornfield. She walked with sturdy, vibrant strength moving her legs. She carried the jug of buttermilk on her hip. The corn was trying itself growing. She had dropped every last grain out of her hand, like that, and there it was growing in long rows far as you could see. That was her part, to drop the seeds and help with the hoeing, if Lonzo needed her. Ma had never liked to work in the field, but Cean wouldn’t mind. Like Pa said, crops had to be made, if folks wore rags and tatters, and Pa was right; let first things come first; Ma was a good woman, but she wasn’t in the right to sull over her loom as she did. Ma was happy at her loom, or when she was spinning, the long hum of the wheel filling the house, or when she was dyeing, mixing her likkers of indigo with maple bark or poplar, or this or that or the other root she had dug to see what color it would make. She would souse the hanks of cotton or worsted yarn into the pot, pushing them gently under the bubbling, swirling surface. She would take them out, and dry them on a leaning bush, and the colors would be softly blent through the threads, set with the lye of the green-oak ashes. She used the juice of the poke-berries for short lengths of red for bright bibs and tuckers. But that color would run in the washing, and it was a pity.

  Cean would try new dyes herself when she made cloth. Lonzo would set her up a loom when the cotton was in. He was working at her spinning-wheel now by the firelight of nights. The wood squeaked softly under the blade of his knife where he rounded off a corner or settled a spoke into place. Cean would make all her frocks straight blue or yaller, or block her colors together as she wove them. She would have a frock of blue with flounces of yaller across the bottom.

  Her eyes swam away to the horizon with soft blue sky set behind it, and soft yellow sunlight falling across it. Blue and yaller, that would be a purty way to make a frock, and a bonnet to match.

  She went down the furrow to where Lonzo had whoaed the ox, waiting for her at the end of the row. She might have waited for him at the upper end next to the cotton, but she hadn’t thought about it.

  She handed the jug to Lonzo.

  “I thought you mought like some fresh-churned buttermilk.”

  He took the jug and pushed back the brim of his old hat and wiped his face on his sleeve:

  “Yeah. This sun’s hot.”

  Cean waited in silence while he drank. The ox stood stolidly under the wooden yoke; his bleary eyes were closed; his lower jaw worked sideways as he chewed on his cud; his head swayed a little in contented weariness; his forelegs were planted stiffly in the earth.

  Lonzo was tilting the jug to his mouth again, swigging down the buttermilk. His shirt was open and the bright-brown skin of his upturned neck ran with sweat. His Adam’s apple worked in gulps as the milk went down—down to where black curly hairs crawled on his chest, down farther to his stomach and liver and lights under the sweaty white skin she could see through the front of his shirt. She watched his skin working with his breathing; it made her think of maggots in a mislaid piece of beef. The little fat, round worms heaved themselves up and down like that little round fat roll of white flesh on Lonzo’s belly. Before she knew what she was doing, her stomach was heaving and the breakfast she had eaten lay there in the furrow and Lonzo was holding her by the shoulders. It was sudden and unforeseen. She was all right now; with a shamed face she said:

  “Well, I don’t know as I ever done that in broad-open daylight—pukin’ like a dog in the grass.”

  Lonzo backed away from her. His eyes were troubled and his shaggy brows met in dumb anxiety.

  Cean’s shamed eyes watched her big toe furrow the soft earth that lay between their feet.

  He stared at her face that was flushed red by her sweet shame, and said:

  “Ye’d better go on back to the house out o’ the hot sun.”

  When she had gone, he took the lines and chucked to the ox; but soon he whoaed the ox again and watched Cean making her way back down the long furrow where her bare-foot tracks had made a faint path in coming. The jug was on her left hip again. She was halfway to the cotton before he started the ox again.

  He stormed at the patient, plodding beast, “Giddap in there!”

  Cean’s eyes followed the rows of young corn, all of a size, all of a green. She was thinking how she had dropped the grains of seed corn; and they had lain in the dark through cool nights and hot days; they had burst the soil, new and different, unrecognizable in poison green, disowning the seed that sought sustenance downward with white roots in black earth, sustenance for bright-green blades growing toward the sun, toward far-off tassels high in the air, and heavy ears of corn that would be other new seed grains.

  Chapter 3

  Brier berries covered their thickets, dried, and dropped back into the earth which made them. Now the huckleberries ripened in small purple globes on the sandy slopes. Gooseberries swung, larger but not so sweet, on taller bushes. Cean gathered the bushes of the gall berries for brush brooms and laid them on the top of her wash-shed to dry. The brittle stems, beaten free of leaves, would keep the dooryard clean of trash. Each morning as she swept the yard the twigs of the brush broom left their little wavy marks on the thin sand about her doorstep. The chickens set three-marked tracks across the broom’s clean sweep. Lonzo’s big feet spread their sign toward the fields. Cean’s tracks criss-crossed all the other tracks as she threw scraps to the chickens that flew to a fluttering, greedy cluster over the food, as she carried water to the calf, now nearly grown, and his mother, now regarding him with contented indifference. Lonzo did not need another ox to feed, so the calf would be butchered.

  Since she was in the family way, Cean had thought up the foolishest things! She didn’t want Lonzo to butcher the little yearling, when she knew good and well that he was goin’ to do it. One night as he got into bed she had a mind to ask him to swap off the calf and some corn for a heifer. But they didn’t have the corn to swap; they wouldn’t be their own man until next year, with plenty of corn in the crib and rations of their own. And she didn’t need another milker. If she told the truth about it, she just didn’t want the little feller killed. She didn’t have to see Lonzo knock him in the forehead with the ax-head, but she would hear him bawl and know when it happened, unless she went to Ma’s for the day, and there wasn’t no mortal excuse for that. And besides she’d have to help Lonzo with the skinning and the rest, for the blow-flies swarmed in this hot weather.

  She never had felt this certain way about any yearling she ever heard tell of. Maybe it was because he was hers, kind of; they had started out on this place. In the mornings Lonzo would go far into the field, and Betsey would wander off by the swamp to graze all day, and Cean and the little feller would keep house, as she called it. She would go to the pen and scratch his back with a stick, and look for ticks in his hair; and he would stick up his tail and lope around the pen, butting at the fence-rails, butting at Cean through the cracks. He was a smart little feller, she always thought; he knowed as good as she did when he was showin’ off.

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sp; And now Lonzo would butcher him and they’d eat him. Cean would beat the tender pieces and fry them on the fireplace; she would try out the yellow tallow for candles, and boil the tough pieces, and she and Lonzo would carry Ma a half of beef. Lonzo would stretch the hide to the back side of the house, and the sun would dry it. Then Lonzo would tan it, and rub it down till it was soft and giving, and then he’d make shoes for them on the shoelast that lay under the bed. He had joked about making shoes for the little un, but it would be many a day afore the little un could wear them. It wouldn’t even be borned till around killin’ frost, or after, but it would please Cean right much for Lonzo to make the little shoes. She would set them away in the chest by the side of her own shoes. Now the calf bawled and kicked up and butted at every thing in sight; soon Lonzo would stretch its hide, bloody on the inside, to the back side of the house, and after that there would be brogans for the little un, to keep the hot sand from burning its feet in summer. It was all like wood beads on a cotton string, coming one after another, as even and close together as beads on a string.

  Ma had told her that being like this always made a woman mull over things. Ma said the best thing to do was to keep busy. But Cean couldn’t keep from mulling. Her hands worked, but her head was idle inside. It looked like, after all, she might turn out to be like her Ma, sulling over a loom. Strange feelings came and went inside her, shivers, sharp and cold, and waves of heavy warmth hot after them. The little unknown thing was growing within her as suddenly and softly as the first touch of spring on the maples. It was putting out its hidden, watery roots as simply and surely as little cypresses take root in a stretch of swamp water away off yonder. It was coming upon her as quietly as the dark came up from the woods at night and hushed in the little clearing, closing every chink of every shutter tight with nothing. Impulses swelled within her, swelled her body fit to burst; yet they did not come out in words, nor song, nor in any sign. Lonzo said her ankles were swelling. Only her ankles gave a sign as yet.