part one (continued 2)

“This isn’t the half of it.”

In the shed just off the chicken house he was showing her round-bellied puppies. She fondled them while the gentle bitch watched alert-eyed from a straw bed. “Nothing smells as soft as a little whelp, Christian.”

He was pointing to a miniature windmill, and to bantam chickens and white and gray rabbits in screened hutches. Out in the pasture were shining Belgian mares. Ellen was stroking their sleek faces. Christian caught a cobby black filly by the halter and led her to the girl. “This one’s Doll. She’s pedigreed. She’s to be bred to Baker as soon as she comes in heat. Mr. Brinker’s ordered it. We’ve been watching out for her.”

“Look at those dark eyes, Christian. Here, Doll.” Ellen was offering a handful of oats. But the mare threw up her head, nickering toward the farm buildings. There was a responding whinny from the distance. The mare swished her tail, holding it high.

Christian’s eyes kindled. “You know, Ellie, I think she’s in season. Let’s try her. See if she’ll take him.”

“You’d best wait for Mester Brinker.”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not. Only I’d wait. If she’s a thoroughbred, he’d lay the blame to you should it go amiss.”

The mare was shaking her head so the halter rings jangled; she cried again, shrilly. Christian was opening the gate. “Come on, Ellie. Look, you want to ride her down the lane? I’ll lift you to her back.”

“You dassn’t ride her. Sam told me,” she said, dallying, “that a mare in the heat mustn’t be ridden till she’s been bred.”

“All right. But come on,” he urged. He led the prancing Doll through the gate and down the lane toward the stallion’s paddock. Ellen was following, reluctant. “You hold her while I lock up Baker,” he called.

She came to take the mare’s headstall from him. “Well.”

At the yard the huge seed-horse was observing them, restive, aware of their business. He squealed, striking at the fence bars with his huge hoofs. Christian laughed, catching Ellen’s eye. “What you scared of, honey? I can handle him easy.”

“So what?” she whispered to the mare, who was tossing her mane, jerking.

Christian had skillfully snared the halter of the red roan beast and secured him in his stall. “Turn her in the lot now, Ellie,” he was shouting.

But she tarried and cried, “I’ll wait for you in the truck.”

“Come on, turn her in. It’s only Baker.” He was flushed and he laughed at her from the half door of the stable.

Ellen loosed the black mare in the paddock where she curved her neck and cantered like a gust of wind. The stallion could be heard clamoring angrily, rearing and knocking the walls. Christian turned the handle of the stall door to release him, and then vaulted the fence. He came to stand with Ellen. “Why did you want to go to the truck?”

The magnificent horse was trotting out, neighing. He minced past the filly who was dwarfed by his size. He lifted his shaggy fetlocks high without effort and his tawny mane streaked. He wheeled, snuffed noisily at her neck, bit it softly and pawed it in a dynamic graceful gesture. Then he leaped the mare, falling on his side with powerful elegance. He recovered, mounted her again. His beauty was like a thunderous battle, his piercing voice rose and fell on the stilled air, waking the valleys of the farm, rushing through tree boughs.

Christian was turning, urgent, “Ellie?”

“Let’s go to the truck, Christian. I’m going to wait there.” She turned.

He grasped her arm. “Come on, Ellie.”

“No, Christian.”

He was shoving her under the lean-to by the stable where summer wheat straw was stacked for the stallion’s bedding. He was struggling with his clothing, bruising her. The coolness dwelled in the shadows there, it was quiet and made itself separate from the noise in the dust of the lot outside. His youth was adamant and awkward, his knee entreated silent between her virgin thighs.

Surprised, she was fighting. “Liar,” she gritted.

He held her in the straw. “You’ve led me on, Ellie. I won’t wait.” His arms were muscled from a hard summer, his blood thrusting purposed.

She had read of Absalom, how none was so much praised as he for his perfection. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. So the Bible said, and so she had dreamed of Christian moving in a lawful pattern she laid. She was unprepared for the painful shattering of it, betrayed. “No,” she was weeping. “Liar.” It whistled in the coolness against the pant of him.

“I have to, honey. Take it easy. I’ll be careful. I can’t wait.” His voice was blurred and hot, stabbing, overridden by the tramping hoofs and shrill neighs like a storm without.

Ellen closed her eyes. They ran tears because of the hurt there was, the receding terror.

He spoke softly then, “Don’t cry.”

“Go away.”

He stood up and went into the sun. He led Doll back to the pasture, threw a forkful of hay to Baker who was docile now, obedient. After a while he came back and looked at Ellen. “Don’t be mad.”

She wouldn’t hear him.

“Come on, Ellie. We’ve got to get back.”

She was rising, brushing back her hair. He leaned toward her, tender, and pulled a straw caught in the yellow strands. She struck, savage, at his fingers. In the truck seat she remained unspeaking until he reached for her hand. Then she unleashed at him, injured, “You think I’m that Sabatha Withers. I ne’er want to see you again. Hear?”

Christian was resting his elbow on the window; he looked down the road. He gunned the truck so dust eddies rose like a whirlwind in the wake. He slammed the brakes on the road just above the Gaddy entrance. “Come on, Ellie. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. Please.”

But she hurled the cab door shut. Her head was high. For her world that had had a sort of ingenuous beauty had disappeared. And it was never the same again.

5

October came to pass in fog and tones of droning rain. Muffled trees stood in wet leaves along farm paths. Ellen, a gray shape in the mist, was moving from clinking house lights to the obscurity of the woodshed and barns. Christian had not come for three weeks. At first she had waited in profound anger, eager to renounce him. But in the autumn sun of following days, while the two ringing notes of the partridge called back and forth, loneliness tempered her wrath and she loved him indulgently as the source of her pain and its witness.

Today she was going again to the rail fence along the road where joe-pye-weeds drooped coarse-toothed leaves. She was wearing a red stocking cap, her long coat had pendulous lapels and a wide belt that fastened on her hips with two heavy buttons. As she passed the grapevines where leaves hung chilled, a flock of crows arose, making nasal resentful barks. She waited an hour. Unending rain was falling and small gusts wove about. Finally she went to the work Anton had set, sorting and shucking corn. Later she absently stroked the alert ears and silken hair of the kid Rhodie, nearly as large as its dam now. “Reckon he’s with Sabatha Withers. Pleasuring as he did with me.” She clothed her wrath, embellished it. “Happen she’ll drag him to a priest. All his days he’ll dwell on me and what he forfeited.”

Her mind turned to when she was nine or ten and, living in fantasy and wishes, would try new ways to walk through the sun-washed fields where grass stood high. It would seem that crowds of people lined both sides of the way she took. They came to see how grand she held her head and to talk among themselves of the noble way of Lady Ellen. “I aim to hold me high and wed a rich man.” She spoke aloud in the stable. But she didn’t believe it and the anger burned. She went to the house where lamps flickered in the gloom, and Anton stacked a fire in the parlor, filled the woodbin and split lighter-wood with a deft hand.

Ten days passed. On a splendid windy morning in November, Ellen was clearing garden debris and gathering cabbages and root crops in heaps for winter storage. She faced her dilemma, rebellious. “If it be so, I’ll drown myself or it in the pond when it’s born. And if he’s run off, I’ll seek him out. I’ll knife him, I will.” She piled cabbage heads in a bushel basket and dumped them in the cellar storage bin. Her secret dwelled within her like a hidden wound. “I say, Jack, what will I do?”

That afternoon Amanda York came up the porch steps and knocked. “Hickory mast is laying thick in Bailey’s Woods, Mrs. Gaddy. Can Ellie and Frankie come nutting?”

The three girls walked a mile down the road to the woods, carrying empty baskets. Amanda had black eyes and black shining hair. She was rosy and lively. “Ask your pa if you can go once to the husking bee. This Saturday.”

“He ne’er would brook it, Mandy.” Frankie was shaking her head.

“There’ll be a sight of folks. From Bethel way and down from Seven Mile Run.”

“Because Pa don’t favor us socializing,” Frankie added.

Amanda tossed her braid. “And a fiddler and a spread of eats.”

“You know Sabatha Withers?” Ellen flushed in the asking.

“I’ll say I do. She’s wild. Boys flock after her like dogs on a rabbit.”

“What?” cried Frankie.

“She sleeps around. Things like that.”

“My.”

“What’s she look like?” asked Ellen.

“Oh, light-set, and got yellow hair like yours, Ellie.”

“Why doesn’t she have a baby,” Frankie asked, “if she sleeps around?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“It’s a mystery,” Frankie sighed.

“Did that Lily Garrett tell you what she did?” Amanda asked.

“You mean sending for that stuff to make her breasts grow?”

“Yes. And what happened.”

“What?”

“Well, she wanted it,” Amanda whispered, “for she’s boy-crazy, Lily is. She’s terrible.”

“I know. She told us.” Frankie giggled. “Men like you big, she said.”

“Well, she waited all summer to hear. We couldn’t figure why it ne’er came. I studied that her pa had got hold of the package some way.”

“Say. Did he?”

“No, last week it came. Just an old envelope. And there was a picture on a card of a man’s hand. It said underneath, Try This. Lily got scared.”

“She should ne’er have sent off, Mandy,” Frankie cried.

“Say, has that Withers girl got a boy friend?” Ellen was asking.

“She’s got plenty, Ellie. There’s always one to take her to doings.”

“Now what if Lily’s papa’d seen it,” Frankie said. “That picture and those words.”

“Wish I could go to that husking bee,” said Ellen. “I’ve got a deal of a desire to go. I might cross my pa and slip out this once.”

“Oh Ellie.” Frankie’s voice was the cheep of a frightened bird. “Don’t say that.”

“Obey thy father and mother.” Amanda spoke cheerfully as they were entering the woods. “Now maybe he’ll say yes this time, Ellie.” They began to gather hickory mast that carpeted the ground. When the baskets were full they walked to Amanda’s home, a saddlebag log house set in an apple orchard. They left two baskets in the passageway between the cabins and climbed to an upstairs room. They shucked Amanda’s nuts, spreading them with brown-stained hands on a carpet of straw. From the rafters hung strings of small ear corn with white pointed kernels that would pop over a fire. And there was a drop cord overhead with a carbon bulb, for the Yorks had electricity.

* * *

The sisters took their leave and walked home with the laden baskets. The evening whippoorwills were starting their spasmodic carping. Ellen said, “I’ll make a way to go to that husking bee.”

But at the end of the week Anton brought news so she forgot all about it. He had hauled grain and surplus root crops, Hubbard squashes and pumpkins to Bethel, returning in late afternoon with ground flour, meal, and kitchen and farm supplies. “Saw the new smithy, Troy Hatfield, and got the welding done. That share will hold now. And he gave me outright a great piece of hide for leather stripping, just for that heap of pumpkins Frankie planted. Shaw.” The man was growing genial, his journey a success. He pushed back his chair and strode to the door, spit his quid into the bushes. He wiped his face with a powerful arm, came back to sup coffee noisily and consume chunks of Ellen’s brown dripping-cake. He was turning to her. “Troy gave me news for your ears, girl. You mind that froward young fellow hired to Dutchman Brinker? The one that sassed me? Well, he took off in a sudden. Dutchman had a time finding a new hand. This one’s brought a wife with him, so he’ll not be traipsing about with young maids. Hum.”

“Did smithy have an idea where he went, Pa?”

“You pining after that poor trash Brinker hires?”

“I’ve got a right to ask.”

“You trifling with me?”

“No, Pa.”

“You have to put in your two cents. The fellow’s pa died. Troy says Dutchman was right plagued at having to pay wages out on a Sabbath. That’ll put a good Lutheran in hell, I allow. Haw.”

“He ne’er liked his pa nor that kind of city work.” Ellen was by the door, lingering.

“You got any more on your mind? Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”

* * *

Ellen went to take from its pen the gray rabbit Christian had brought her. She carried it to the edge of the field and put it down. “Go fend for yourself like I’ve got to. Look out for the hungry foxes and weasels.” She watched it hop away, then went to her upstairs room. She hunted in the wood trunk for paper and an envelope.

Dear Christian,

Smithy told Pa you left these parts. The sky is heavy and gray. Maybe it will come on a snow. I call to mind the hours we spent by the strawberry bed. Now I think winter is come. I would that you wrote me how you are getting on.

Ellen Gaddy

She sealed the envelope, addressing it to Mr. Christian Ay, Carl Brinker Homestead, Route 4, Bethel, Ky., send to new address.

Down in the woods the air was still and weighted. Pinched clouds were banking above the swollen land. The red dog fox crept to his post overlooking the shadowed water. His eyes tensed as he spied the old Muscovy duck napping, head under wing, amid brown rush stalks. He struck noiseless. Thrashing wings lashed in a frenzied struggle but the needle teeth found the jugular and blood was spattered on the rushes. Later Ellen called again and again and there was no answering rush of wings. “You’d ne’er come to the safe yard. Reckon some varmint caught you.” She tossed the ear of corn to the tame fowl in the chicken yard.

Her letter was returned by the mail carrier. She hid it under her apron. On its face was scrawled: return to sender, no address known. C. Brinker. She took it up to the attic and laid it unopened in the small trunk. She stood looking out the gable window as drifting snow made the world grow small and old familiar shapes became strange and new.

* * *

Down Sweetincreek Road in mid-December Anton was driving the wagon to mass in Millville. The lightweight buckboard was unsuited for these winter days and the women rode in the wagon bed shrouded with rugs. A crowd of frightened birds moved and swooped across the sky like a giant amoeba. The pale sun was melting the snowfall into slush. The horses snorted, exhaling a vapor, tramped in the ruts of the road, hurling red mud in clods from their iron shoes. Anton was complaining, “Wish hit could have waited till Monday to thaw. This is a rough piece of road.” He clucked to the team. “Reckon we’ll be late again to mass, Frankie? Here it is Advent time once more.”

“Christmas is but two weeks off, Pa.”

Ellen was praying silently, “Holy Queen, keep him from remembering to send us to confession this week. I’ll not tell it to a priest. I’ll go to hell and burn first. I’m in a sorry strait, now.”

Anton was fastening the team and preceding his family into the square clapboard building half filled with people and heated by a huge black stove at one side. He took one of the rear pews. The heavy clothing rustled, the plank floor creaked. Anton tugged his bulky fur cap off, thrust it behind him on the seat. The women were kneeling at the low bench in their long coats, their caps and boots. They crossed themselves. The priest was murmuring at the altar, his server on his knees. Intimidated by habit and example, Ellen inclined her head. She heard the sonorous chant, “O Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, alleluia. Stir up, O Lord, Thy might and come to save us. Who art Thou? I am the voice of one crying in the desert.” She made the sign with her hand, desolate. The priest began to tell off the canon of the mass. He washed his fingers, incense drifted, the signal bell tinkled. Folk shifted and whispered; singly and in groups they left their winter covering on the benches, came with bowed heads to the altar, hands in ancient attitude of prayer, to receive from paten and cup the Body and Blood. Say to the faint-hearted, fear not. It chafed within Ellen, uncomforted. She arose with the rest when it was over. And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness grasped it not. The holy man was striding away, the people began to depart in a disturbance of noise and bodies. Ellen touched the water in the granite basin as she walked after her mother and sister.

Anton dipped his head, curt, to those he knew, stopped without the door to speak with N. J. Bilberry. The women waited, Maria whispering to Mrs. Bilberry, fleshy-faced and cheerful. At Anton’s nod they climbed back into the wagon and he took the reins. They jolted down the road. The earth lay dank-sweated, old furrows exposed. Black cottonwood trees were guarding the ditches. “N. J.’s wheat froze out,” the man commented briefly.

“Tinie says there’s chills and fever going about,” Maria told him. “And Ioway Ashby has married a man from the south. He’s thirty-one years old. Ioway was but twelve last June.”

“I heard,” Frankie cried, “he sent off for a poppet doll for her, dressed in a bride veil.”

“Ioway Ashby’s not inclined to give up her dolls yet,” Maria said.

“Now dogwood roots are near as good as quinine for chills and fever,” Anton was saying.

“Ioway’s ma told Tinie they’d begged at her since summer to let them marry. So she figured they just as well. I say, that’s a sight young for robbing the cradle.”

Under cover of the wagon’s rumbling, Ellen whispered, reciting, “Mother of Mercy, our life our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.”

Frankie pulled the rug about her boots. “It’s powerful cold. What you doing, Ellie?”

“I’m thinking. Sam says if you have a blade of five-finger grass to carry about no one can deny you what you ask. I don’t believe him. Wonder if there’s some in the fields now?” Ellen turned her eyes uncertainly to the future, where somehow she must form a plan.

* * *

Anton received a letter the next day. “Hit’s from your Uncle Garland. Says he’s coming in a week’s time for Christmas this year. Hum. We’ll see what he thinks of your piano-playing now, Frankie. And how you’ve grown so fair.”

“Oh Pa.”

The man straightened his back, looked out the window. “Bear in mind, one more Christmas and you’ll be going up to that city with him. That’s Anton Gaddy’s youngen, folks’ll say.”

“Chicago sounds so far off, Pa. Will Uncle be glad for me to come?” Frankie smoothed the brightened hair that hung about her narrow shoulders.

“We’ll butcher tomorrow. Hear, ooman?” Anton said to Maria.

“Yes,” she assented, “and it’s just come on the dark of the moon. It’s right to butcher.”

“You know I don’t hold by that. But my brother dotes on your blood pudding and peppered headcheese. Sam and I’ll fix to prepare right away.” He marched out.

“If you butcher in the light of the moon,” Maria told her daughters, “it’ll all drindle away while it’s frying. Just cracklings’ll be left. The grease’ll go rancid till you’ve got to make it up in soap.”

“I know,” tittered Frankie, “and that soap will turn the clothes yellow.”

“That’s a fact,” said Maria. “Don’t you laugh. My pap and mam e’er went by the moon. It’s natural.”

“Will Uncle Garland say I’m fair, Ellie?” Frankie appealed to her.

“I reckon.”

“Are you cross, Ellie?”

“No.”

“Well you sure act sick then. Doesn’t she, Ma?”

Ellen, who found tears started easily now, who was wary of her sudden sieges of self-pity, was running from the room. Again she dipped the pen.

Mr. Christian Ay,

There is a need for me to speak with you. I wish you were still hired to Brinker. I fear you have forgot me and this is but a striving after wind. Could you make a way to write or send word?

Ellen Gaddy Millville, Ktcky.

This she addressed, Mr. Christian Ay, Care of Ay’s Store, Louisville, Ktcky.

She mused, near suffocating in the loneliness. Had she led him on as Christian had declared? Had she sinned? Her brows contracted and she searched again the halls of memory for meanings. Surely she had known to fear that which befell. Here in the countryside tales were constantly bruited and old songs sung of fallen virgins and light young men. The Bible related dire warnings and horrid punishments meted out to defiled maids. She had led him to their sin then. But that wasn’t so. I didn’t knowing lead him on. I wasn’t a wanton. There came to her mind the woodchucks Anton trapped. A shotgun often didn’t penetrate the small thick skulls so steel traps were set in their underground paths. If a creature blundered and felt the sudden grip, it would strive with its greatest strength. And if it could not tear free, it backed into its den, pulling the trap after. There it gnawed its own leg above the metal jaws. It destroyed a part of its flesh, knowing it was a way.

When the next morning was just made, two scalded hog carcasses were hanging from the sourwood scaffold. The blood had been caught in a bowl and taken to the kitchen for boiling and seasoning. The great white wrinkled heads were on the porch in a red-daubed washtub. “If there was a ooman with child about,” Sam grunted as they were hoisting the scraped bodies by gambrel sticks thrust through the hamstrings, “we’d have to take care to cover this mess. Butchering blood on the earth marks a child.”

“I don’t have those worries any more.” Anton tossed the liver and kidneys and sweetbreads in the pan Ellen brought out to them.

The fire was dying under the iron cauldron. Soon hams were piled in a heap along with the sagging shoulders and sides on a lye-scrubbed plank. The sausage-making began. Sam was scraping the inverted intestines preliminary to stuffing them. He stopped to hone his knife on a whetstone he carried in his pocket, spat on it for lubrication. “My old ooman came back last night. First thing Eadie did was boil up hot mustard water and set her feet in it. She chewed up a sourwood twig to make her a snuff brush. Give me a dipping, Samuel, she says, I’m tuckered.” He sat back thoughtful. “For Gawd, my house was a lonely place against that old hen’s return.”

Anton sliced chunks of meat savagely, the razor-sharp knife whipping close to his finger tips. He held his silence, fed the pork into the grinder.

In the kitchen the women were preparing in their fashion for the celebration ahead. Anton had given Ellen coins with which to buy sugar when she did her trading, and for spices and raisins to put in the holiday cakes. In this season when his brother came for the annual visit, Anton would have no stinting. “Girl,” he said to her, “my ma used to make a pale holytide cake. There were whites of eggs beat in bowls and it was thick with nuts and sugared fruits. Not black like those strong sorghum ones you-all make. Hum.” He nodded, complacent.

Ellen was assenting, eager. “I’ll ask Mrs. Love. Could be she’s learned the rule of such a cake, Pa.”

“And when you’re trading, go down of an evening when priest is holding hours for confession. Your uncle be due on Saturday, and I’ll have you all at the communion rail when he’s here, proper pious.”

Before walking the muddy road to Millville in the cloudy darkened late afternoon, Ellen went to her room. She was binding her waist tight with a length of cloth. “I can’t see nothing yet, but Stacey Love might.”

In the confessional box, she whispered to the young priest. “Bless me, Father Tompert. I confess to God and you that I’ve sinned. My last confession was Easter.” She despaired. It’s all made up of falseness. I’ve no right to be here.

“Confess your sins since then, child.”

“I took God’s name in vain. One time I did truly hate my pa.”

“Have you had any impure thoughts, my child?”

“No.”

“If you have any of these kind of thoughts you must do your best to banish them. Are you truly sorry for your sins?”

“I am, Father.”

She went to kneel in a pew, forbearing to recite the penance prayers the priest had assigned to her. Instead she asked the Virgin to have pity, to understand why she was mute to Father Tompert for the sake of Anton’s pride. She was thus driven, with a measure of courage, to rejecting the rituals bestowed on her since a cross was hung about her throat as a baby, since she first held the beads and lisped the Credo. And praying to Mary, Ellen emerged with her as a personal god. She grasped the blue-gowned symbol in her need as if it were flesh and blood and could wield an influence on her fate. She denied the immense father figure of God without debating it.

* * *

In coming days she would meet the mail carrier in his Model T, take back her second letter and place it with the other in the trunk. She at last put aside the hope of finding Christian Ay.

By Friday, cakes and tarts, breads, cheeses and dried fruit pies were overflowing from the pantry shelves. Hams and sidemeat were curing in the smokehouse, sausages strung lavish from the shed eaves. There were crocks of fried meat packed in white fat, as well as headcheese, liverwurst, and tins of fresh lard. In the hot kitchen, Maria was baking breads and biscuits in the newly-blacked range, vaguely wakened in the prospect of a visitor. She spoke to Ellen, “Get wax candles when you go by Love’s next time, girl. The tallow ones ain’t suited for Mester Garland Gaddy.”

Frankie was at the long table, a basket of butternuts and walnuts on the floor by her. She was cracking them on a sadiron with a blow of an old hammer head. She looked up, “You’re right peaked, Ellie. Are you ailing?”

“I’ll hunt out some of that bloodroot tonic,” Maria said, “if you got the complaint. It’ll make new blood.”

“I’d as lief you’d sing again,” Frankie was saying. “And you used to cut up so. Seems you’ve given it up.”

Ellen, startled, burned her hand on the iron pan she was taking from the oven. She shook her wrist to ease the seep of pain.

“Go smear yellow soap on it,” her mother said, “it’ll draw out the heat.”

Ellen rubbed on the soap, blinking her eyes. She sang to hide the tears and to hold her tongue from blurting her trouble.

“That’s too lamenting, Ellie. Sing that one Penny used to. About that Minnie.”

They were making ready for the guest coming. Calico was hung across one end of the downstairs bedroom to form a separate chamber in which Garland would sleep. A chair was placed by the bed and a stone-topped table. In its base was a chamber pot, and on top a crockery pitcher with pink roses glazed on its surface set in a matching basin. A cake of store soap lay in a dish, a towel folded beside it. They ripped the bed tick open, removed the old stuffing, and filled it with soft wheat straw. The one feather pallet was aired and placed on the mattress, and over all they spread muslin sheets and their best quilts.

That night Ellen was in a chair in the warm parlor, her back aching from the long hours, a piece of mending in her hand. Dark had come on, the lamp was throwing feeble quivering shadows. Anton was holding the Bible and his lips moved. He raised his eyes, studied the image of Joseph alone on the table. He spoke, abrupt, “Where’s the Virgin Mary that stood there with Joseph? She be broke, I vow.”

Ellen looked up in alarm. “I took her to the loft-room, Pa. What with holytide, I thought it would please you if I prayed to her, pious-like.”

“Well, I allow you can keep her for a spell. But she’ll not be broke, girl.”

“No, Pa. I’ll take care.” She arose. “Reckon I’ll go to bed. Coming, Frankie?”

He stopped them. “I’ll say the prayer to Michael once for this family. Get down, you-all.”

On their knees the women were waiting, their shadows cast like gentle giants on the wall. The man knelt by the lamp and his specter engulfed theirs. “Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the snares of the devil. Thou, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all evil spirits that wander through the world seeking the ruination of souls.”

The temperature dropped in the night. As they were beginning the morning chores, whitefrost covered the land. The remote stars were cold and challenging. Ellen shivered, feeling her frailty. “What does it matter? One soul like me. I’m but a grain in a field of wheat. Who’s to heed if I be lone or have a sin to burn me?”

She was closing the woodshed door. Her two goats got up in the half-light by the stone wall. Their beards twitched as they chewed in unison, their hair stood out woolly. “Why did I e’er take up with the careless love of Christian Ay?”

She was putting bread crusts and salt and soybeans from her pocket in the wood trough. She laid her hands on the animals’ soft necks. “Here’s some linseed meal for richness. You feel the storm coming?”

She went to get a bucket of tepid water that had stood by the kitchen range all night, carried it to the barnyard fowl. They were huddling together, feathers ruffled, on the pole roosts. She threw cracked corn on the dirt floor of their shed, and the birds hopped down one by one to eat, singing and crooning over the food. “Tonight I’ll mix a sprinkle of red pepper in your wet mash to warm your craws while you sleep.” Tending the creatures of the farm, Ellen took comfort and so forgot herself.

6

Garland Gaddy, in a new green Ford, was returning to the home of his youth. As he drove up the lane, Anton was in the barn on his knees while the old cow Bramble, delivered him twin heifers. But Garland’s nieces bade him welcome. They showed him the feather bed and he was well pleased. He took Ellen in his arms. “You’re a handsome wench, hon. Last Christmas you were a child and here you’re nearly a woman. What does Anton say when the young men come sparking?” He pinched her thigh, smiling warm.

“You’re plaguing me, Uncle. But he’s a sight for sore eyes, isn’t he, Frankie?”

“Oh he is.”

At night when the festive meal was over they sat in the parlor. The wind growled, and above the alders at the pond the moon bobbed like a ball on a chain while water-shadows trembled. Anton kept a fire roaring, carrying armfuls of oak logs from the kitchen and piling them on the hearth. Garland brought out a fifth of contraband whisky, setting the bottle on the round table. The two men tasted from the heavy kitchen glasses. “This be good moon, Gar.”

“Well, it beats needle beer. Place I get it has all their hooch analyzed and tested by a registered chemist. Ought to be good. Cost fifteen dollars a bottle.”

“Christ.” Anton was impressed. “Smithy sold me some Jackass Peach Brandy from Virginia. Fifty cents a pint jar.”

“Better watch out for that junk. Break you down inside. Internal bleeding. I wouldn’t drink a thing made down here in the Bible belt.”

Ellen was sent to the cellar for a bottle of pale sweet wine that Anton made yearly from his scuppernong grapes, the vine of which had been planted five decades ago by Jules Gaddy, the father of the brothers. Ellen had put a scarf at her neck and it became her. She poured the wine, and came behind her uncle in his chair. When she put her head against his while he was talking, her hair fell on his shoulders. And she loved him.

Garland Gaddy was the middle one of three brothers, a bachelor. He was a head taller than Anton, overweight, not yet fat. His small eyes were light blue, his once-blond hair had turned gray, he trimmed a neat mustache. His jaw was square, his lips full. He wore hand-cut dark suits, vivid ties. As a child he had shared with Anton their mother’s neglect, had run away from home at nineteen to prowl the states from coast to coast, brawling and scattering his seed. Then when he was twenty-nine, Anton offered him the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash, Maria’s dowry, for his half the farm. Garland had accepted, hitchhiking to Chicago with the bills sewn into his belt. He soon was co-owner of a thriving burlesque house. Now, over twenty years later, from his office on State Street he handled a set of neighborhood theatres where vaudeville and the silver screen vied for public approval.

Anton was affected by the abundance of festive food, the polished house, and the women’s raiment. Maria even, had laid aside the sack apron she usually pinned on and was wearing her churchgoing black dress and an ecru crocheted collar. Anton nearly begrudged the honor they paid Garland, although his pride assured him that the tribute was to himself. “Say, Gar, I call to mind when we were youngens, and Ma was honing for that black driving rig. You recollect? Our sir had but two gold dollars. So he went to Trader Bocock. Said, Bocock, you can have this gold and all the rocks you can haul out of that rye field if you’ll trade that rig to me.”

“She get the buggy, Pa?” asked Frankie.

“Bet she did, hon,” Garland said.

“What did the trader want of rocks?”

“I don’t know. But Bocock had the field cleaned before spring plowing,” said Anton.

“Ma managed to get what she wanted pretty near every time,” Garland said.

“Hum.” Anton packed his pipe, pushing with his thick thumb. “Had her hands full. Say, Frankie, play for us, and sing the prayer you learned.”

Frankie obeyed.

“That’s a special prayer, you know, Garland. Priest says it’s worth a hundred days’ indulgence. Sing it once more, Poppet.”

“I better learn that one.” Garland kept time with his hand. He got up to stand by the upright piano, tapping his foot. “You know the old one—Captain Jinks?”

“I don’t think so, Uncle.”

“Goes like this.” Garland made several false tries before he sang in off-key:

“That’s a new one, Uncle,” Ellen said.

Garland was pulling her hand, drawing her beside him. “You sing with me.”

When they had finished, Ellen offered, “Want to hear one of Penny’s tales?”

“That roaring ooman,” growled Anton. “Tell you, Gar, she couldn’t cut an onion or hold a scrub brush without she was screeching some foldilay.”

“Let’s hear it, puss.” Garland sat back in his chair. Ellen stood behind him to sing while Frankie played. Anton bit his pipe in his yellowed teeth and the smoke wreathed. Maria knitted, her lips moving occasionally with an inner thought.

The song told of how Pol went riding off with the man and then,

And Willie stabbed the girl and put her in the grave.

“Now, if that ain’t a dumb fool story,” Anton snorted.

Ellen looked down at Garland and he patted her hands, placing them on his shoulders. “I liked it.”

“You e’er hear,” she asked quickly because of the tears that were trapped by her father’s scorn, “it will strengthen a man’s eyes to have a mustache?”

“Well,” he laughed, “I’ll keep it then.”

Uncle’s so kind. It came on her as he was stroking her wrists.

Anton lifted his head. “My sir said his grandsir in France owned a sporting hog one time. You mind that story, Gar?”

“He called her Slut,” Garland said. “He was a gamekeeper in one of the king’s forests. Bred his own dogs, taught them to stand and back game. They say he was watching the men and saw the pups weren’t responding. Little black shoat went by, not a wild hog, she was the kind that ran loose in the forest those days. Made a wager with the men, he could train and break the shoat faster than they could the dogs. He penned her, taught her to come to her name. She pointed small game and partridge. After awhile she’d retrieve rabbit and pheasant, careful, too, she didn’t harm them—all sorts of game. Did better than his dogs. And backed them when she saw them point. That hog’s nose was so true she’d point a bird fifty yards away. In a straight line. That’s the story anyway.”

“He win the bet?” Frankie asked.

“Oh sure, hon.”

“Came when he hollered,” said Ellen. “Wish I could have seen that.”

“Did she run good or was she too fat?” asked Frankie.

“She was trim. She’d come at full gallop. Excited like the dogs when she saw a gun.”

Maria said, “They must have set store by that beast.”

“You bet,” Garland turned to her, “and you know, Maria, when Slut was ten years old she weighed half a ton and they still hunted with her.”

“Ain’t that a tale, Frankie?” Anton demanded. “Those were the olden days. Then there came the time of Napoleon the Bonyparty. Pa’s grandsir had to soldier under him. He’d watch o’er the old country and if some land like Germany was trying to conquer a scroungy sort of a country, why Napoleon the Bonyparty, he’d say no. He’d get in front of his army and go lick Germany or whate’er land it happened to be. He stayed in France between wars and our great grandsir belonged to his company.” Anton shrugged with pride. “That fellow wasn’t the king, he worked for himself. He made his living that way, watching o’er the old country.”

“Say, my great great grandsir,” claimed Frankie, “knew Napoleon the Bonyparty.”

“Well,” Garland was laughing, “tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Let’s hit the hay.”

Ellen stayed awake far into the night. The wind was tugging at her window and the lonely dark pressed down. Her lips were dry and her mouth became as cotton. I’ll tell Uncle tomorrow for sure. At length she lapsed into a fitful sleep while in the parlor below the fire died to coals and field mice came from the walls to nibble crumbs and nut meats fallen on the rugs.

* * *

At breakfast Maria was stirring a pancake batter while the girls fried sausages and potatoes, set out slices of blood pudding, crocks of jam and sorghum. “I favor lacing griddle-cakes with hot sausage fat,” Anton said. “Sweetening takes the taste out.”

Garland, clad in a red shirt, new hunting pants and shining engineers boots, beamed. “Good old country sorghum for me. Well, pusses, what’s new? Anyone dream about a pointing pig? Or poor Pol? Or Napoleon?”

“I ne’er,” giggled Frankie, “but tell another story.”

“Well, you know that same great-great-grandfather of yours that trained Slut, went to Russia with Napoleon’s army. There was a bad winter and Napoleon beat it back to France. He let most of the troops die in the snow without food.”

“I don’t take much stock in that,” said Anton. “I doubt Bonyparty did that.”

“Now, Anton, you know Pa used to talk about it. How they conscripted all the men of the village, twenty-three of them. And only his grandfather came back.”

“He must have been strong. They say he was a good-looker, too,” said Anton. “Finest in the village, a proud one.”

“Doesn’t look like you or me inherited much from him,” laughed Garland.

“Reckon Marc took after him,” Anton said, “for he was the dandy of us three boys.”

“Well,” Garland asked, “what you pusses got to report this morning?”

“One of the barn cats brought in a little mole yesterday,” said Frankie.

“You didn’t know I lost my white kid last summer, Uncle,” Ellen said. “He was but two months old.” Lines still edged her eyes when she spoke of it. “You ne’er got to see him.”

“I was telling about the mole, Ellie.”

Garland listened to them, then said suddenly, “Now An, here’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up. Been thinking a lot about Frankie here. About her coming up to the city next year. You see, I want everything to go right. She needs to make a good impression from the start. Now you folks don’t realize it, but you practically talk like first settlers with that old-fashioned country dialect. Think Frankie could take lessons in grammar or speech this coming year to correct some of that?”

Anton had been spearing sausages and pancakes with a fork. He paused. The blood was leaping to his cheekbones, his freckles stood out in vivid specks. He made a guttural sound and scraped his chair back. He spat the food from his pendulous lips on to the table before him, hurled the sausage and fork to the floor. “Hit do be my sir’s tongue and my ma’s and before God, hit’ll be that girl’s. She’ll go forth with hit and no more farting teaching mesters will I suck upon.” He flung himself from the house.

Ellen began to weep. Maria was taking up a cloth to clean the table and the floor. Frankie looked at her uncle and her eyes were wary, her voice small, “You’re not afraid?”

“Jesus Wept, no, puss. Have another flapjack and I’ll talk to him when he cools off. That squirt always had a hot temper.”

* * *

Ellen snared the largest of the geese by a stout pink leg. She bore it to the stump, placed its head between the spikes and cleaved the neck just below the jaw. She threw the beheaded bird from her to flail its wings and flop about. She handed the head to Jack, eager and knowing. “I see you licking your chops.” She tore the down from the breast, stuffing it into a sack. She brought a pail of boiling water, scalded the carcass and finished the plucking. She gave the entrails to the chickens to pick, washed the heavy bird under the pump, hung it near the sausages dangling from the eaves in the shed.

In the kitchen, Anton was tipping his chair back. He took from his pocket a twist of tobacco leaves and sliced the end with his jackknife. He thrust his short legs in front of him, balancing. “Hell, Gar, might be it’s as you say and Frankie’s speech is queer to city folk. But what matters her way of speech if she’s to make music? If you say so, why I’ll get her a grammar mester. But hark at me, Gar,” and his eyes were glinting, “don’t ne’er speak again such as you did there before them oomen-folk. Like what I say ain’t gospel.”

“Chrissake, get off your high horse. They know you’re boss.” Garland ground his cigarette butt in a plate and laughed. He ran his little finger across his mustache, touching his sensuous lips. “I was always big enough to lick you if it came to that, now wasn’t I?”

“You’ve tried hit.”

“I always give you good advice. Now here’s another bone I want to pick. Indoor plumbing.” He hit his fist on the table. “You think you’ve progressed because you dug a new privy ten years ago. Maria and those young girls haul water from the well like pioneers. This is December nineteen twenty-five. The century of progress.” Again the fist.

“They got a sink and a clear drain that our ma ne’er had,” Anton drawled, tobacco juice staining the corners of his mouth, “and she ne’er had a deep hole like our shithouse but just a board and a shed. Nor that sweet-water well that Witch Lufty found. I see you’ve gone soft in the city.” The farmer was pleased, for now the ground was familiar. He backed down only when there was jeopardy to his younger daughter’s future.

“Yes, guess I was going soft, Anton, when I got you that loan back in the war when times were bad. So you could buy good milkers and get shed of that worthless herd you were supporting. Guess it’s soft to buy a good breed of chickens or thoroughbred hogs.”

“Hell, those are beasts where we make our living. Hit’s not the same.” Anton stumped to the stove and lifting the round iron lid with the poker, spat on the coals. They sizzled. “And I paid that loan back, Gar. Hard cash from crops and milk.” He replaced the lid with a violent noise.

“I give up. Chrissake, you’re stubborn.” Garland arose. “I suppose you’d declare you’ll never run in a line and wire the farm for electricity?”

“I was born by lamplight and I’ll see that I die by it.”

“Well, I’ve got two or three Christmas packages in the Ford.” Garland was going to the door. “Good a time as any to bring them in. Frankie,” he shouted, “call off that practicing and come with me. Jesus Wept, this is a holiday.”

Anton was sawing his fist in the air, exhorting, “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set, says the Word. Mind, Gar.”

That evening an austere meal of bread and cabbage soup was consumed. By custom the family semi-fasted before communion. They would wait to eat of the festive food when they returned from midnight mass. After supper the girls popped corn and cracked nuts to put on the table. Ellen boiled up a pan of taffy at Garland’s suggestion. She buttered her hands and pulled it with him until it cooled into long pale sticks. But all his jokes and laughter did not rouse her from her lassitude.

At mass she moistened her tongue to swallow the dry communion disk. It seemed to her that now truly the door was closed on her childhood. As she returned to the pew she grieved, weighing what she had read in her Bible. If thou hast done foolishly in lifting thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth. For as the churning of milk bringeth forth butter and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood, so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife. I’ll have to find a way to leave my home, a place to go and drop this wayside colt.

Garland drove the green car back down the road to the farm. He was talkative and his mood had passed to his brother. “Tell you,” Anton was yawning, “I’ll ne’er forget that Christmas I passed shivering and repenting while sleeping up against the cows, and thinking of you and Marc warm in the quilts. I’d been whipped on my knees for leaving the cow gate open. You remember it? That was one.”

The car lights beamed down the corduroy road. The night was parted like great doors swinging open on hinges. I haven’t told Uncle yet. A light fall of snow was starting and the wind hushed.

The store-wrapped gifts that Garland had laid on the table in the parlor were opened Christmas morning. Anton was puffing at a hand-rolled cigar. “If you be setting and your hands be idle, hit’s a good enough pleasure,” he said, stinting. “I even heard they’re rolling cigars now with a machine.”

Ellen opened her package, took out a hat of crushed blue satin, a silk rose on its soft brim. “My, that’s fair.” Her voice was tremulous because of his care for her.

“Put it on, hon,” he was saying. “Ordered it special from the milliner. You know, satin’s the thing this year. Say, when she wears that to mass, Anton, you’ll have to keep the beaus back with a shotgun.”

Maria smoothed her fingers over a black crepe de Chine dress. Frankie ran to try on one of pink wool, to fling herself upon Garland while her father smoked in his chair, tracing her movements with a jealous eye. “E’er see the glass bowl-garden Frankie made me last summer, Gar?” he asked. “Hit’s setting in the bedroom window.”

* * *

Ellen was drying the breakfast dishes when Garland came into the room. He had on a bright striped jacket and brown corded jodhpurs. His gray hair was neat, his square jaw shaven. “Don’t you ever get tired of all this work, puss? You never get a change, hidden out on the farm here by yourself.”

“It’s my home, Uncle. And I love the earth and its doings. Sometimes in the summer it comes on such an hour like when the Lord God walked in the garden of Eden. Sometimes a wind passes o’er the earth that’s fair and all its bounty is spread before.” The wetness stood in her eyes as she was blurting it.

“I know, but you’ve got your future to think about. You should meet people. Get around. Your father dotes on Frankie too much, never gives a thought to you. It’s not right, you know.”

“It’s his way.”

“You got a boy friend?”

“No.” Water filled her eyes again.

Garland tapped the table. “It’s your father. Keeps you kids cloistered like a pair of nuns.”

Ellen was stacking the dried silver in the milkglass jar. She turned to him, desperation fringing her tones. “I would as lief go from the farm awhile, to see the world outside.”

“Course you would, sweet.” He was hearty. “That’s only normal. Now what chore comes next?”

“Tending my goats.” She was taking her coat from its hook. “Want to come?”

With the dog trailing after, they took the path over which Ellen had sped light in the summer past. She fed her does and was standing at the gate while they ate, her eyes absorbed. Garland smoked his cigarette, observing her a while. “How would you like to visit me in Chicago, sweet? Work’ll be light here till spring. They can get along without you.”

She breathed soft, “Pa’d not have it.”

“He doesn’t need you. Got your sister to keep him company.”

“He does so need me.”

“Well then, he can let you have a vacation.” He smiled. “Does he ever strap you now you’re a grown girl?”

“No, but I call to mind when I was a child and once Ma said I picked at a rhubarb pie from the pantry shelf. I ne’er knew of it being there. Pa cut a hickory, length of his arm, and beat me. Made me kneel. Said I lied. I won’t squall and that gets his back up.” She rubbed with her finger the area between the black stub horns of Rhodie, veiling her eyes. “Reckon I’d love to visit at your house.”

“Well, it’s high time. I’ll throw a party when you come. I’ll talk to Anton this afternoon. Tell him it’s only logical for you to be first since you’re the oldest. He’ll let you. You’ll see.” He was putting his arm around Ellen. She leaned against him with a sigh. “You’re a sweet girl, hon.” He kissed her, lingering on the young mouth.

Ellen decided not to say more to him now. I’ll wait till I’m at his house to tell him he must help me.

Anton wasn’t averse to Ellen’s journey. Garland had emphasized how he was making ready for Frankie’s arrival the next year, and he spoke of the money he planned to spend on her.

Maria said suddenly, “Who’ll do the trading if Ellie goes off?”

“Enough jawing on this,” cried Anton. “I’ll send Sam, ooman. Ellie’ll not be gone two-three weeks.”

Garland laughed, “Her turn comes first. You don’t mind, do you, Frankie?”

“Oh no, I want her to go. Maybe I could do the trading, Pa? Just while Ellie’s gone?”

“No, Poppet. Say, is she riding back with you in the auto?” Anton inquired.

“I guess not. No, I’ll be going by way of St. Louis. I’ve got some business to look after. Then I’ll drive on up and get the house in order. I’ve never gotten ready for one of these young ladies before.”

“She’s taking a train then?” Anton was persistent.

“This is my treat. I’m giving Ellen the ticket money. It’s an extra Christmas present.”

“Well. If you want,” Anton said, relieved.

Ellen stood by them pale, her eyes fastened to her uncle. He nodded, “Come the middle of January, puss. Leave here on the fifteenth. I know the train. There’s only one out of New Hope that goes to Chicago.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“It’s foolishness.” Anton walked out.

Before Garland left, he came on Ellen alone, slipping her an envelope of money. “No need to mention this to your father. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Just tell him I gave you enough for your ticket.”

“All right, Uncle.” She held the extra money tightly in her apron pocket.

On the morning after New Year’s Day, Garland was jaunty in his yellow driving cap and raccoon coat. The girls were helping him carry his bags out to the Ford. Then he unfolded the hood, examined the interior. “That’ll do.” He fastened the hood down, removed the figured radiator cap and dipped a finger. “Water.”

Frankie brought a pail from the pump. “Can I do it?”

“No, this is fine.” He poured until it flowed over, replaced the cap, and opened the car door. “Here goes one more year.”

“Wish you’d stay on a while,” said Frankie.

“There,” Maria said, “I love that dress. I ne’er had a silk one before.”

“That’s crepe de Chine, Maria,” Garland laughed, “it’s the style.”

“It’s not silk, ooman,” Anton said, “that stuff’s too dear.”

“Yes, is it,” Garland said. “It’s one kind of silk. Well, here I go.” His gloved hand was waving from the window. The exhaust rose in a fog, dogging the car in the chill air.

The days sped. It was time for Ellen to leave. She had bought a length of dark heavy cloth with some of the money Garland had given her. She made it into a dress, cutting so it hung in loose folds on her hips. “I can feel where it lays hard in me. Soon the cleverest stitching won’t hide it.”

She had given Frankie the primrose bulb from Brinkers’ kitchen. “Hope it fares well. Keep in mind to feed it cold tea. And do tend my goats, Frankie.”

“You’re only going for a week or so, Ellie.”

“Uncle said I might stay a little longer.”

Ellen was bringing salt to her two does. They licked her hands, leaning affectionate against her. She knew the places they liked best to be rubbed, along the withers and between the horns, on the silken spots behind their small pricked ears, on their throats below the beards. “Frankie’s promised to care for you.”

Maria said, “Bye now. When you reckon Mester Gaddy’ll be back from taking you to Millville? I’m out of coffee.”

Frankie was kissing Ellen fondly. “It’ll be right lonely with you off there. I’ll miss your singing, too.” Frankie’s qualms for her own leavetaking a year hence were exposed when she viewed Ellen’s breakaway. “There. I’m that eager to go to Uncle’s myself.” But she whispered, plaintive, “Wish I was little again. What if it’s not fun like you think it’ll be, Ellie?”

“I ain’t afraid,” Ellen spoke stoutly as she stepped down to where the team waited; her tan coat was covering her new dress, she wore the blue satin hat. Jack was flattening his ears and going to sit amid the weeds on the bank to await her return.

Anton drove the buckwagon, Ellen on the railed seat beside him. At Love’s she would wait to catch a ride on the milk truck to New Hope. “You be a credit to me, girl. I don’t favor your idling about in that Zion. And you’ll not lust after young men, mind.” He was nodding. “So I told my brother.” He reined in the team outside the store. Ellen went in for Maria’s coffee. She handed it up to him. “I’ll see you in two weeks’ time. You can write and I’ll make a way to get you home.”

“Yes, Pa. Goodbye.” Ellen watched the buckboard until she could barely make out her father’s round hat.

In Love’s store, she was peering through the wide window. Stacey Love rocked, vigorous, by the stove. “Hit’s a far piece where you’re going.” Grady was chopping wood and the report of his ax was heard. “I always thought a heap of Mester Gaddy’s brother.” She placed a pinch of snuff between her lower lip and teeth. “Though I ne’er had no truck with another Yankee.”

Ellen kept silence, sickened with excitement and fear.

“You’re sure looking seedy, Ellen. I was telling Grady you seemed kind of pinched this winter.” Stacey swayed back and forth.

There was a noise at the door and Lily Garrett was pushing in, her curls springing about her soft face. “Well, hey you-all.”

“Wish I had a rich uncle,” Stacey went on quietly.

“Why, Ellie Gaddy,” the fat girl cried, “where you going all smartened up? And you got a new hat. Look at that rose.”

Ellen kept her back to them. She continued looking up the road, the pulse in her throat throbbing.

“Ellen’s leaving us poor folks, Lily. Going to the big city.”

“Oh, Mrs. Love,” whispered Ellen.

“My goodness,” cried Lily, “you ne’er told me.”

“Wish I could go visiting,” Stacey said, “lie around in bed of a morning.”

“You-all heard,” Lily called to Ellen, “Buck Lemmon and Sophie Goode wedded? Kept it a secret. It was at the husking bee they met up. How come you didn’t go to the bee, Ellie? Mandy declared you were going.”

Ellen looked around. “My pa wouldn’t suffer neither me or Frankie to go, Lily. That’s all.”

“I calculate Buck Lemmon seen Sophie a sight before that husking bee,” Stacey said flatly.

“Whate’er you mean?” Lily was giggling.

“I ain’t saying,” Stacey smiled. “But you e’er see such a funny-looking girl as Sophie? I marvel at her catching a fine fellow like Buck. I can see she’s wearing stays and binding herself so it won’t show. Guess she allows she’ll fool somebody that way. Buck told me himself she’s been to see Doc Trumbo. Lazy old sow.”

“There’s the milk truck.” Ellen turned to flee. Lily was kissing her extravagantly at the door while Stacey waved a hand and renewed her wad of snuff. Ellen hailed the truck. “Can I hitch a ride to New Hope, Mester Durley?”

“Sure thing, Miss Gaddy.” Those were his last words until they reached the New Hope station.

“I’m beholden, Mester Durley,” she said as she was taking her bag.

“Sure thing.”

In her valise was the plaster of Paris image of the Virgin Mary, and Ellen was somewhat fortified by its presence.

7

The whistle was shrieking as the train coursed into the suburbs late in the night. The cars slunk past small sharp-angled houses, massive factories belching fire, streets of lighted stores and cafes, slow-moving people and streetcars, trucks, wagons and horses or mules, buggies, automobiles. The coach cars were strung with yellow window links that curved on the track ahead into a tunnel. Ellen saw muffled groups of people under bright station lamps. Her journey was done. She reached the cold cement of a pillared runway, stood impotent, bewildered, jostled by passengers on their separate ways. She was clutching her bag in one hand, the other in her coat pocket held her handkerchief in which the money was knotted. A familiar voice spoke in her ear, “Well, here’s the little country wench.”

It was Garland, suave in a tight-fitting suit and spotted tie, a derby on his head. He carried a fur coat, his face seemed old and yellowed in the glare of the platform. He kissed her mouth and she felt the mustache, clung to him. “I thought I got lost, Uncle.”

“Porter.” Yellow taxicabs were waiting in a line. They got in one and drove a long time. She was asleep, her head limp against the hard leather. Garland was waking her. “This is it, sweet.”

She stumbled after him up granite stairs. He stooped over to unlock a door, pushed it open and they went into an unlighted hall where a staircase reared. “How about something to eat? Some hot milk?” He flashed on a light overhead.

“I reckon I’d better just sleep, Uncle. I’m beat.”

“Your room’s up here.” He was climbing ahead on the broad uncarpeted steps, carrying her valise. A musty odor lingered about them.

“My, you’ve got a big house, Uncle.” Her voice was loud in the echoing vestibule.

“It’s big all right.” He preceded her down the hall and opened a door, stepped in and snapped the button of a wall lamp. An orange bulb glowed faintly. “If you want more light, there’s one by the bed.” It was a high-ceilinged room with a dark red rug. The wide ornate bed was covered with a heavy magenta spread and on the wall was a round mirror in a gold-scrolled frame. Through the mesh curtains hanging in front of the windows Ellen saw lamps in the street underneath and tree branches twining still and soundless. The doorbell grated below. “Goodnight, hon. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He was gone.

Ellen attempted to draw the heavy drapes that hung at the sides of the windows, but discovered they were fastened there. She was fumbling at window shades, drawing them down. She heard voices raised below, stiffened to listen. Through the floor boards came a woman’s faint thin laughter. Then all was still. She pulled the chain of the bulb over the bed; in the sudden whiteness dust balls in the corners were exposed, and stained paper on the walls. She put the light out. Below all remained quiet. She folded her dress on an armchair. Cautious, she left the room, found the bathroom around an angle in the hallway. When she turned the spigot, water spurted and roared. Shy of disturbing the household, she washed meagerly, then hurried back and turned off the orange wall light. She crept into the cold foreign sheets. And when she slept it was as if her fears backed off. In dreaming Christian Ay was taking her hand in his. In his way he was laughing as if there was an old joke between the two of them.

When she came downstairs in the morning, her footsteps resounded in the vestibule, at the end of which was a door. It opened into a large green-carpeted room. Somber-colored chairs and sofas were flanked by trivial tables bearing bric-a-brac and crystal and cloisonné ash trays. On a corner table, in a ponderous silver frame, was a daguerreotype of Nell Gaddy, garbed in a ruffled shirtwaist and a wide straw hat tipped with an egret’s wing. Beyond she could see the dining room and her uncle at an oval table, his breakfast and a newspaper spread before him. He waved his hand, called out. He was shaking a little silver bell. She crossed the expanse of the green carpet to sit at the table by him. She sensed the odd odor of his house. It was the strangeness of another lair.

“Mrs. Quimby.” Garland was speaking to an aproned bulky woman at the swinging door. “This is my niece, Ellen. She’ll be visiting here.”

“Pleased, be sure,” said Ellen.

The woman turned away, grim, reappeared with a plate of bacon and eggs and a cup. Gray-black hair wisped about her face, a formless dress was belted on her full hips and buttoned down the front under the apron. Her eyes were colorless. She set the food before Ellen and withdrew.

“Don’t let her ways bother you, puss. You’ll get used to her. She’s a gem. Been with me years.” He was pouring her coffee. While Ellen ate he spoke rapidly, “Sleep well? You do what pleases you. The house is yours. I’ll tell Mrs. Quimby you’re mistress. Like that?” He was tapping the chair arm with his finger. “Want to go for a walk? That’s Redding Street out front. Pretty district here. Old. Want me to invite some friends for a party?” He drank the last of his coffee in haste, jingled the bell again. The housekeeper instantly opened the door, her mouth a penciled line. “Make my niece at home, Mrs. Quimby. Fix her a good lunch. Don’t know what time I’ll be back.” He hurried to the vestibule, returning in a raccoon coat and black spats. He was holding a cane and a black felt derby together in one hand. He looked down at her. “Not much to say, puss. You like my house?”

“I do, Uncle.” Ellen couched her words with care, “Be my speech queer like you told Pa my sister’s was?”

“Well, of course you talk the same as her, hon. But I don’t want you to change. Frankie’ll be living here in Chicago. So that’s different, see?”

“I’d fain live in Millville all my days.”

He kissed her and she smelled the perfumed lotion. He eyed her quizzically. “Such a little innocent. Don’t ever change, sweet.” The outer door was slamming after him.

The hours passed, the first ever spent away from home, away from the ritual of farm work. Ellen saw how mealtimes were varied to suit the whim of Mrs. Quimby, how Garland was blind to the management of his house. He was gone for many hours in a day, often returning after she was in bed. He had little time for her. She would wander through the house to sit in the sun-bright bay window in the dining room, to tune in the cumbersome radio set on the marble table in the other large shaded room. Her plight and its urgent solution lay untamed, twisting in the back of her mind. She went upstairs, past the closed doors of the hallway to the blue-and-white statuette she had placed on the highboy beside the bed. “Deliver me,” she prayed.

On her third day in the house she came to the kitchen, seeking companionship, and pushed the door. Sarah Quimby stared from where she sat reading a paper booklet. In her hands was a steaming mug that she set on the galvanized table top with a sharp click. Behind the dour-faced woman was a double-doored wood icebox trimmed in bronze, and above it swung three or four canary cages. The pale yellow birds were silent, heads cocked, alert. On the sink was a disarray of food and newspapers and opened cans. The hard-wood floor was littered with crumbs and dust. “There’s many a fine secret Sarah Quimby knows, miss.” The housekeeper’s voice was high-pitched and her finger wagged. Ellen let the door swing shut. “I know goings-on,” the woman was shrilling behind it.

Confused, Ellen went to sit in the bay window. “Old witch,” she murmured, laying her hand on her cheek. Frown lines were drawing across her forehead.

In the round mirror in her room, Ellen was deliberately examining her figure clad in a flannel chemise. It was evening, the wall lamp burned. She placed the strip of cloth about her waist, making it firm. Then she put on the dark dress she had made for this visit. To the figure in the glass she breathed, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mester Ay.” The hurt eyes looked back from the white oval face. The breasts even now were swelling so in five months’ time they would grow hard and full, the pink nipples brown. She touched her girdled waist, bitter. “I’ll bind it tighter and maybe it’ll strangle.”

There was a knock and Garland appeared in the doorway, remote in a severe black suit and bow tie. “You put me in mind of my mother there.” He looked at her heavily and turned, drawing the door shut with a dull sound. She stood a moment, then moved to the windows, pulling up a shade exposing the windy lean night. Yellow street lamps bloomed stark and shorn tree boughs swayed. She was weeping after a while, darkly.

Later she glided down the long staircase where the echoes lived, and into the big room. A score of people were milling in the blue mist of tobacco smoke and the vague sensuous odors of perfume. In their hands were stemmed glasses and morsels of food. The air stayed hot and unreal, the voices an undulating drone above the clicking and chinking of dishes. Garland came across the room, ruddy-faced, waving a glass at her, his breath strong. “This is my niece. The one I told you about. The little goat-girl from the Kentucky hills of home.” He took her arm. He was like somebody else; fine wrinkles were etched about his soft-skinned jaw and across his brow. He spoke loudly to a white-haired tall man. “This is Ellen.”

“Mester,” she whispered, and she said, “Lady,” when it was a woman as he took her around the room. Her head throbbed, she wished the night done. Garland left her and she stood apart, waiting. Then he found her again, urging her to sing. “This niece of mine can do the old-time songs up so prettily. Go ahead, puss. Any tune.”

Her voice was high and steady while the women’s gems glistened and the men turned murmuring to each other, puffing long black cigars.

“Say, that’s good. You know any faster ones like ‘Bam, Bam, Bamy Shore,’ Miss Gaddy?” cried a modish blond young woman. “We could dance to that.”

“No.” Ellen’s voice was small. “Reckon not, lady.”

“Well, how about ‘Alabamy Bound’?” called another female voice. “That’s from the South.”

“I don’t know it,” Ellen said.

“It’s got rhythm.” The blond girl tapped her feet. “Come on, Nadine, let’s dance.”

“Vo-do-dee-o! Whoopee!” They raised their hands as though to pat-a-cake, swayed and juggled their feet, short skirts exposing slim legs.

Garland was setting his glass down. He began to wail too. He shuffled, linked arm in arm with one of the bejeweled women.

There was dancing, noise, laughter, squeals. Ellen, afraid of the strange faces, the clever women, conscious of her unfashionable attire, had retreated to a chair in a dim-lit corner. Mrs. Quimby opened the dining room door. The woman was austere in a white starched apron, a ruffled cap askew on her hair. “The dinner is served, sir.”

When the last guest had gone, Ellen turned to the broad staircase and put her hand on the balustrade. Her skin was transparent, a blue vein beat in the temple. She was holding herself tense. Garland looked at her a moment, his little eyes flickering. “I should have made you rest, hon.”

“No.” She shook her head.

“You sang so pretty.”

“No, Uncle. It’s no song for city folk.” She flushed, near tears. “It sounded queer, for a fact.”

He glanced, curious, at her. “Where did you pick up those songs?”

“Well, Talithie Gentry of the grammar school used to sing to us. But I learned the most from Penny Dougherty. Pa hired her two summers back when Ma took sick.” She sighed, aware of her plainness.

Garland was laughing, “Did you like the party?”

“Pa still calls Penny that roaring woman. He couldn’t abide her. Thought I’d die when she first went. It was so lonely.” And she added, “I remember ary tale Penny sung.”

“Not homesick are you?”

She went up a stair, avoiding his sharp look. “No. It’s the late hour makes me gossipy. Home we’re ne’er up this late.”

“Oh yes, want to ask you about church tomorrow. Guess you’d say I’m a pretty bad Catholic. Manage to make Christmas mass and send a big check to the cathedral and that’s about it.” He wagged his head, looking up at her. “But I know Anton brought you girls up strict. Bet he used a switch like our folks taught us.”

“He did.”

“Want to go to mass?”

“I’d liefer not.” She rubbed her forehead, reflecting. “If you think it’s not wrong to cross his will?”

“You mean Anton’s will? Chrissake, I’m all for it. I wouldn’t tell him. Now, sleep in the morning. Get a good rest. I’ve got some business so I’ll likely be gone.”

“I ne’er knew you to be such a rich man, Uncle. When you came to the farm.”

“Good night.”

As she entered her room, she heard the rasp of the doorbell and a woman’s voice that cut off when the door shut between the vestibule and the living room.

The next day large flakes were floating soundless beyond the cold bay window. Ellen heard a crash in the kitchen, knew another dish had slipped. Over the trill of the canaries came a loud grumbling. The swinging door was opening. “I can tell you a secret, miss.”

“I’ve ne’er a wish to hear it.” Ellen stood up from her chair.

“Don’t put on airs, miss. Your family’s not much account.”

“I reckon I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mr. Gaddy’s the one amounted to something in your family. You’re a poor relation.” Mrs. Quimby smiled slyly. “You know Mr. Gaddy keeps a woman? A bad woman. On the east side. You know what they are, miss? He keeps her for his pleasure.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Ain’t you the fool. Where you think he goes nights, looking like Douglas Fairbanks? Think that’s on business?”

“Hit’s proper to have a lady friend.”

“And not make her his missus? Keep rooms for her. Pay her to wait for him. Give her gold. All these years he’s kept one. Different ones. I tell you he’s lucky to find a respectable woman like me to run his house.”

“I won’t listen. I won’t listen,” Ellen was repeating to herself, running through the house, over the green carpet, away from the voice. She turned the key in her door, threw herself on the magenta coverlet, her hands over her ears. “He doesn’t want me or need me any more than Pa. I’m like some contrary varmint that no one’ll have any truck with.” Her self-pity was like wind to a fire. She got up, sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs, trembling in wrath.

“I put a curse on Christian Ay who did this to me. Forever, take away his joy, Mary Virgin. For what’s been wreaked on me. Make him suffer.”

Suddenly she was rising. She had seen it in an instant. “It just came o’er me. I’ll go there.” She was lifting down the traveling bag, opening it on the bed. She packed her few possessions. “I lay a curse on him. Virgin my witness.” She counted her money, folded it in the handkerchief. The feverish tenor of the past days was sliding away and she was cooled again. She rested, and in the night as she was going out, she stood a letter on the highboy.

Uncle, I’m beholden for all your kindness. I am going to St. Louis to see someone. If Pa asks after me will you tell him I will try to be home in summer. Please don’t try to find me.

niece Ellen

At the station she purchased a ticket, sat for a few tired hours on a bench, her shoes and satin hat wet from the falling snow. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Her hand rested on the valise. She boarded the train and found a seat. Through the window she watched the red coal of sun lift itself. The landscape was evolving into farm lands, far-stretched, and sleeping villages. The snow began to melt as they rumbled southward into Illinois.

She was dozing. Out of memory sprang an incident involving Anton. It stirred no warring of anger in her, only the same wonderment she had experienced at the time. The way of women had come on Frankie, catching her unaware one night when she was eleven, frightening her, so she whimpered to Ellen, “I’m dying. Ellie, don’t let me die.” Maria had kept a pristine silence on all matters pertaining to the body, as her own mam had done with her. It was a secret, never articulated. Ellen had whispered to Frankie and they planned. All the while in their whispers lay a thrill of dread, for it was a field of unknowns. The morning was Sunday and the girls were dressing for mass. Anton opened the loft door upon them. “What’s going on here? We’ll be late again. Now move, you two.” Frankie was nude and gazed, naive, at him. Ellen plucked a garment from the bed and laid it before her sister. The man ripped it from Frankie’s hands, threw it at her feet. He turned on Ellen, “Not so froward, girl,” and stalked out while the two stared. They had dressed swiftly, mute. But nightly, for many years, Frankie would have an urgent compulsion to look under her bed before she went to sleep. And Ellen developed a fear of something skulking and concealed when she was sent to the cellar on an errand.

She was unburying this, mulling it, half asleep. By noon she became wakeful and light-headed, bought a sandwich from a vendor who came shouting through the stuffy car. The train was halting before a gray clapboard station house bearing the flecked inscription WEEMS CROSSROADS. Bag in hand she walked the deserted streets. The air was less chill, the sky a high blue. She was questioning a storekeeper, then turning down a muddy road leading into the country. She passed farms and came to woods where black trees dripped. Brash crows were cawing somewhere out of sight and neglected clouds floated in fresh winds. By a fenced-in burial ground, melting snow outlined gravestones. A Mason jar full of sticks tipped on its side and a withered wreath lay on a plot enclosed with a black iron paling. Gray granite markers were graven with dead names and dates. A cow leaned over the cemetery fence in the distance to crop grass inside; it was bearing heavily with its soft neck on the sagging wire.

Ellen came to a dilapidated mailbox set on a stake under a bare-branched catalpa. She read, Luke Dougherty. She went up the mire of the lane. A flock of speckled guineas were trotting in the wet meadow. She knocked at the door to a narrow weather-washed house set beside a shed where bearded goats were lolling. A hen began to cry in the way they have when they have just laid an egg, and somewhere back of Ellen the guineas screamed. A small pretty-featured woman with clear eyes was there in the doorway.

“I came to you, Penny. Will you have me in?”

8

In a few minutes Ellen was seated in a wood armchair, a blanket about her, a heated soapstone under her feet. A pot of beans on the range was giving off a warm strong odor. There were two rooms in the tiny house. Into this one were crowded the cookstove, a table, a woodbox, two scratched chairs, a stool, a cupboard, a low cabinet. Washing of dishes, clothes, and baby was done in a dark-blue enameled basin, the water thrown out the door. From under the table a child was peering; in his teeth he gripped a piece of bacon rind, in his hand was a metal mixing-spoon which he beat on the floor.

“This is Clate,” said Penny. “He’s a real noisy one.” As Penny bent to take the rind from him and lift him, Ellen saw she was great with another child. The little boy squealed, laughing as he was swung high, and his mother held him for Ellen to see how well formed he was and how red his cheeks were.

“He’s fair, Penny,” Ellen said quietly, “but I’m afraid I’m too young for bearing one. I had to help my goat with hers.”

“Ellie, you hush. It’s a long ways off. I’ll be here. Birthing’s nothing. It’s too short to remember. And look what you’ve got.”

“I hate it. I hate what’s in me. I ne’er want to see it.”

“I’ll make coffee. Luke’ll be home. He’ll be glad you came, Ellie. He knows how I’m one for company. There, I’ll have a new baby in March.”

“You know, Penny, I studied all this time. On a sudden I said, why there’s one.” Ellen was made helpless by her gratitude. “You’re so good.”

“We got ten acres here,” Penny laughed. “Luke’s pa signed this place o’er to us last fall. The soil’s right clayey but it’s rich enough. We’re getting by. I look for spring to come. I’m going to eat boiled greens every day.” She planned, “There’s an attic where you can sleep. I aim to put Clate up there when he grows a bit. It’s hot in summer.”

“I missed you at home, Penny. When you went.”

“We had times, didn’t we? How about when we gathered those sponge mushrooms in the woods and spread them to dry on your pa’s hog barn roof?”

“You were singing ‘Charlie’s Sweet’ and we ne’er saw Pa there.”

“We had the times though, Ellie.”

“All on a sudden it came to me there in the city.” Ellen was earnest.

Penny was holding Clate while he drank milk from a mug. She wiped what he spilled and sat him in the training chair, handing him a piece of corn pone. “He’s waiting till I lift him out. Then he’ll go pee on the rug. Such a small man.”

They drank coffee adulterated with chicory. Penny got up to mix cornbread, stirring in a handful of crumbly cracklings. Ellen felt how the woman listened and waited while she talked, gathering herself. At last dusk assembled and a bird began to call. A step was heard outside and he came. “Look here, Luke. Ellie Gaddy. She’s come to bide a while with us.”

And love lay in the corners of the house. Penny, her apron high over her unborn child, moved more gracefully than before. Her face softened and all the while she hummed and sang. “Now Luke, you visit with Ellie and I’ll catch the milking.” She threw on a shawl, ran out light-footed, a lard pail in her hand.

“Be glad to see this thaw come,” the man said. “I’m that eager to lay out our garden.” Luke was mindful of Penny’s signal with her finger on her lips and so he made as though Ellen had been somewhat expected. He put logs in the stove, and lit candles, telling of the farm where he was employed. “They name it Webster’s Stock Farm. He’s got a dozen of us hands to help all winter. He’s a rich man, got a big white house. He owns these shorthorn cattle. And he’s got little old Jersey cows that he shows at all the state fairs. He brings home ribbons and silver cups and sets them in a fancied-up room. Sometime I aim to go along to one of those fairs.” Tall, black-haired, round-faced, his virility charged the room. He sat in his mild way on the stool, holding his son, who played with the shiny suspender clasps on the overalls and then made water on his father’s leg.

Then they were eating cornbread and beans and thick chunks of fatback and soft onion. Penny would feed Clate from her plate. The smell of tallow candles burning was sweetly pungent and they made a ruddy glow over the faces. Afterwards Penny held a light while Luke went up to the attic by the ladder in the bedroom. He was carrying gunny-sacks of hay, stooped over for the roof was low. Penny handed quilts up to him. Then Ellen took her clothes from the valise and hung them on pegs in the beams. She put her statue of the Virgin beside the pallet and slept well.

Below in the bedroom, Penny lay in Luke’s arms. “I’m proud she came to us, Luke.”

“So good you are, and then my bright-eyed little wife,” he murmured, drowsing.

But Penny was wide awake. “All the world and she thought of us.”

By mid-February they were making a garden. They cut potato eyes, planting them in deep rows, mulching them with litter and leaves against frost. Luke strode up whistling, bearing onion sets and seeds in brown paper bags marked in pencil with the name of the plant that would come up. They spaded, put in lettuce and onion beds, rows of radishes, turnips, parsnips, peas and Swiss chard. Penny came to Luke where he knelt. “This one’s new. Tendergreen Mustard. How come you got it?”

“I saw it was a new kind, only forty-five days to mature. I knew how fixed you were on an early garden.” They gazed at the grains of seed.

“I sure am honing for greens,” the woman sighed.

The next week thunder was rolling, thumping, across the gray sky. They waited for the downpour. “In a month it’ll come on twister weather,” said Penny. “There was one here last fall. Lady down the road had just boiled up water for her tea. The wind pulled off the roof and sucked the kettle up. Her and the least youngen got scalded.”

“Friend of mine,” Luke said, “was in the barn. Tore the door off and him holding on, flying through the air.”

“Was he hurt?” asked Ellen.

“Not as I know. He lived.”

A thunderbolt pealed directly over the house. Ellen said, “Thunder in February prophesies frost in May. That’s what I’ve heard Ma say.”

“I’m afraid,” said Luke, “we’ll lose our garden. This one’s a gully-drencher.”

Rain was falling day on day. The sprouting seeds washed up, water collected undrained on the clay of the garden bed. Pairs of rubber boots were always standing muddy at the door, for the privy was set far back from the house. The dirt-floored cellar, reached by a trap door in the kitchen, was flooded. The jars of preserves that stood on slat shelves were immersed. Their lids rusted and the labels soaked off. “If I hold it up to the light I can see some what it is,” Penny said cheerfully, “but you’re liable to get blueberry jelly, Luke, when you ask for blackcap.”

In time the clouds spent themselves. The water seeped away, the sun was brilliant and refreshed, the earth warmed. The people went out to make a new garden.

Luke was walking up the lane one night leading a gray donkey by a rope. “Mester Webster gave it to me. It was for his daughter, Star. She tired of it and so she’s got a pony instead.”

“How come he let you have it?” Penny was pleased.

“You mind that cow I told you of a while back that had milk fever? Well, I nursed her. He claims it was my hands that pulled her udder around. This morning he says, you can have this beast if you’ve a mind. Thought I might rig a plowshare and maybe work him.”

“That would be a sight,” said Ellen.

Luke tied the beast in the shed to a ring in the wall. Ellen was petting one of Penny’s seven goats. “Hey there, Tiny.” She wondered how her does Rhodie and Penny were making out, if Frankie was good to them, or whether they blatted in the woodshed pen. Frankie was ever apt to be careless.

In the stable, fastened apart from the does, was a shaggy buck goat with a long beard. His rank odor dominated the air. He baaed affectionately at Luke who was scratching his back with a stick. “Good old Brownie.” The animal turned to lick the urine he excreted in the habit of the rutting male goat.

“I’ll be glad when it gets nice so Brownie can live outside again,” Penny said. “I’m always afraid that smell will make the milk taste.”

“That smell’s healthy,” cried Luke.

“Penny, how come your goats are muley?” Ellen was asking. “My two have got horns.”

“Well, most of them were born that way. But Luke knows how to stop the buds if they start to push through.”

“You rub a stick of this strong acid stuff on, Ellie. I learned it at Webster’s. It hurts them a bit.”

“You have to do it careful,” Penny said.

“Seems like the horns are so pretty though,” Ellen sighed, remembering.

Days were going by. Ellen felt her waistbands tighten. She found it hard to grasp that a living child would come from her, believed it would die. One day she was in the shed where a dozen hens ran loose, their nests known, a few porcelain doorknobs kept in them to lure them back. “Poor things. Giving them a mock egg.” Ellen pitied the innocent fowl and she would turn rocks over for them in the yard so they gathered to peck the crawling life beneath. When she was bending to collect the eggs from a nest under a hay manger she felt the child kick. She arose, leaning against the side of the stall, frightened. She knelt again to take the eggs, walked to the house slowly. In the evening she said, “I felt it move.”

“That’s nothing.” Penny was turning to Luke. “Why don’t you see if you can get a good rooster from Mester Webster for me? I could raise a flock this summer off those old hens.”

“He’s got White Rocks,” Luke said.

“That what I’d like, a blooded rooster of a heavy breed. Then I could trade eggs, too.”

“I was in the shed,” Ellen said, “when it happened.”

“Just wait, Ellie,” Penny was jogging Clate on her lap, serene, “till it starts getting knobby and takes to rolling o’er all the while. Wait till it gets a little bigger.”

“I’ll wait.” Ellen was bitter.

At breakfast Penny asked Luke to buy chicory and soda at the store. “And get me a piece from that bolt of blue-check flannel, Luke, for Clate’s outgrown his nightdress.”

“I don’t get paid till the fifteenth.” Luke put on his straw hat. “Now I doubt the store will credit us any more.”

Ellen got up hastily. “Wait, Luke.” She climbed the ladder to the attic, came back to put nearly twenty dollars on the table. “My uncle gave me this.” She was eager. “You’ll know how to use it. It’s yours.”

Penny picked up the bills and turned them over, her eyes downcast, her lower lip in her teeth. She laughed, “Get shed of that store bill first, Luke. Then buy that length of cloth for Farmer Clate. And if you see some, get pink muslin too. The new one could be a girl.”

“I’ll look if there’s a little share at the store to make a turning-plow,” said Luke, “like I wanted to get for that little ass to pull.”

So they thanked her. For the first time Ellen sang when she milked Penny’s goats.

Mist was rolling heavy in the hollows between hills one morning. March gusts had blown in the night, seeking cracks, but Luke had banked the foundation well with straw and manure so the family was snug within. Ellen came carefully down the ladder. She smelled hidden odors, saw Penny asleep in the bed, and from the crook of her arm came a mewling sound. There was a black-haired child wrapped in flannel, born while Ellen slept. She turned quickly to the kitchen where she heard Luke talking to Clate who babbled in reply. Luke looked over at Ellen as she came in. “That bugger’s going to feel awful silly in pink muslin, Ellie.”