part three (cont. 4)

Maria’s birdlike eyes looked up from where she sat, clad in a long maroon sweater and a worn housedress. “I got my little boy here, Mam. He’s a bit cold. But he’s not dead by a long sight. That whippoorwill was wrong.” She had cradled a pillow in the crook of her arm. Her hair was loosely braided, gray wisps straggled over her face.

“Ma,” Ellen whispered.

Maria was frowning. “Shut the doors. I allowed he was out there in the ground moldering and turning. But he’s right here. Shut them now.”

“It’s Ellie, Ma.” But the woman bowed her head into her shielding hands, waiting until the doors would close.

Ellen went into the kitchen. “She’s stark mad.” She stirred up the fire, adding lighter-wood and a log from the bin.

The three men scraped noisily coming up the porch and into the room. They stood in their muddied boots, their breath steaming up. Anton stamped his boots and coughed, rubbing his fingers together above the stove.

“Evening, Ellie,” Sam said.

She nodded, holding herself from them, over at the side by the windows where a chill seeped in.

Anton had on his black bear-fur cap, the collar of his tattered mackinaw was turned up. He shrugged and said directly to Garland, “So hell, I’d get her out mealtimes. She wouldn’t go to mass and the last few days she wouldn’t get in bed. Hum.” He inquired softly, “Has she gone loony?”

“Would she cook for you?” Garland asked.

“Fair to middling,” said Sam.

“But always she’d set out for the bedroom,” Anton was saying, “and I’d pull her back. Like she aimed to anger me.”

“She needs a doctor, An. And care.”

“What are you fixing to do?”

“I’ll have to make some calls first. Where’s the nearest phone? I think the state will take her. We have to see a doctor and you’ll have to sign papers. You come with me, An.”

“Go hitch Red,” Anton said. The hired man went as bid.

“Where is she now, hon?” Garland asked Ellen.

“In the closet,” Ellen whispered. “She ne’er knew me.”

“And why should she?” Anton was glaring at her, hurt and reproachful. Like old Jess led to the sourwood scaffold in the yard. “Isn’t that right, Gar? There’s a great daughter. That one.” The door slammed after him in a gust of cold air, and Ellen shrank.

“Your ma’s probably best off right where she is, puss. She isn’t violent or anything?”

“No. Just sitting there harmless. She used to do that sometimes when Pa had his back up. I thought it was a place for her to get away. Far as I can remember she’d do that. But now she’s talking daft and she didn’t know me.”

They stood, hands hanging useless. Nothing moved. The silence was complete. Then the buckwagon clattered outside. Garland roused, picked up his homburg hat. “Be back late. Not much of a Christmas this year, hon.” From the window she watched them climb onto the seat. The chestnut horse was restive, its winter coat woolly and ungroomed, dry manure casing its flanks and legs. It carried its broomlike tail high and pawed the ground. It moved off, the two figures hunched against the cold, heads drawn down into scarves and collars.

Ellen left the house, going toward the woodshed. She called to the dog but he had disappeared. She went seeking her goats. She met Sam, and learned of their destruction from him, “You know your pa e’er was a strong-willed man, Ellie. And you be cut off the same last. I saw that when you were yet a set-along child. You’d ne’er squall when he took a stick to you. It wasn’t natural.” Sam was wagging a gnarled hand.

Ellen’s mind had only partly encompassed what he told her. She was conscious of the faint liquor scent. “What’ll I do, Sam?”

“You hadn’t ought to torment him so.” Sam was stooped over, holding one hand on a hip as if an ache lay underneath. “Being as you’re a ooman grown now, you ought to stand behind him. Mrs. Gaddy’s no use any more.”

Ellen wasn’t listening. “Where’d you put them, Sam?”

He went before her to the orchard edge. “I threw them in the wagon and toted them down here. For Gawd, took a big hole. Wore me plumb out.”

When he had gone, Ellen looked about at the familiar landscape. Penny and Leona and spotted Pie. Rhodie and the shaggy yearlings. Pa gave me an eye for an eye, it appears. Burning for burning, stripe for stripe. Because I took Simon. It’s my goats for Simon. Life for life. That’s an enduring fine trade. At last she was wending back up the hill field. Darkness dropped almost instantly as it does in the short days of the year. The bark of a dog fox was rising shakily from the woods, the eerie sound lingered. Ellen’s hands in her pockets were stiff and cold. She blew on them and rubbed them. “I’ll ne’er have truck with my pa again.”

From the house, squares of lamplight were wavering. Ellen entered, heard Dr. Trumbo’s murmur. The Gaddy brothers were sitting with him, and papers were spread before them. They all wore their overcoats, and their headgear was cast near their hands as though, in the half-warmth of the kitchen, they were passers-by with a bit of business to perform here. Ellen removed her coat. She shook the grate in the stove and laid a fresh fire. That’s all we be. Passers-by. Strangers sitting in His home, dragging the past on our shoes. If we could but lose that burden, start afresh. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. There’s Pa whom I ever loved, thinking of ways to make him see me since I was a least youngen, following him with my eyes, running to do for him. But I never saw Pa for himself, only for the way I wished him, like the songs that seem to happen in another land. From this valley they say you are going, we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. I loved Pa in the land of myself, in a valley of my mind. While Ellen was mixing the corn meal, her hand was turning the egg and buttermilk into it quickly. Tears started and fell unheeded.

She laid plates before the men and they ate silent by the mellow light. Forks and knives chinked. The smell of burning oil pervaded the room. Ellen went to where the woman hid herself. “Come get your supper, Ma.” Maria laid her head on her knees. Ellen brought her a dish and she accepted it. The doctor and Garland were lighting cigarettes, Anton puffed his pipe. Ellen finished the dishes and swept the floor. Dr. Trumbo arose then, it was time to go. He drew Maria struggling and whimpering from her place, and Ellen persuaded her to change from her ragged clothes. “Here, Ma. Take off that sweater and those rags. Put this on.” She was offering the old crepe de Chine dress. “It’s silk.”

“Well,” Maria felt of the black material. She was putting her pillow down. When she had dressed they came into the kitchen where the others waited.

“All set?” asked Dr. Trumbo.

Anton was watching his wife from where he still sat at the table. He was pushing tobacco angrily with his thumb into the pipe bowl. “There goes the last of my oomen-folk. Now who’s to do the cooking, Gar? Sam, you think?”

“I’ll get her bag.” Garland went into the shadowed bedroom.

“I’ve been a righteous man. And pious,” Anton carped harshly.

“Here we go, Mrs. Gaddy.” The doctor was taking Maria’s arm; he led the way with Ellen to the car, into the black night.

Garland was bringing Maria’s valise. He paused at the open door to the porch. Light from the kitchen made a hesitant path reaching to the top step. “Goodbye, An.” Car lights had beamed suddenly in the yard, revealing the shrouded figures of the women climbing into the back seat. Garland cleared his throat. “I’ll remember when I first met Maria.”

Anton did not move. Pipe smoke wreathed and dimmed his lined face, his strong shoulders, his powerful arms stretched on the table before him. “Man born of ooman is of few days, Gar.”

Garland was running his soft hand nervously through his white hair, fingering the place where his mustache had used to be. He hurried down the steps. “Let’s go, Doc.”

Ellen sat in back with Maria, dust from the car floor mingled with a vague clinical smell. She drew an old alpaca robe about their knees; it was damp to her hands, musty.

“I remember winters, Doc,” Garland was saying. “We cut shoes from hides my father tanned. They had only one last so both shoes were cut the same. Pa’d say, your feet will wear them into shape to fit. Times I thought it was the shoes shaping my feet.”

“You think everyone nowadays buys shoes, Mester Gaddy? They come down out of the back country or I hunt them out. Ridden with hookworm, wearing shoes made like yours were, no right or left.”

“Chrissake, bet you see some things, Doc?”

“Sure. Blacksnake root for the stomach. Butterfly root for female trouble.” Dr. Trumbo grunted. “Lady came in yesterday. Said she was near starvation. She was down to her last chicken and couldn’t wring its neck. Said it was her pet.”

“That’s the lot of a farmer.”

“That’s right, Mester Gaddy. Always dealing with death. The youngens play with the calves and lambs and maybe teach them tricks. Then they have to watch them slaughtered. Always losing whate’er they get attached to.” The feeble lights of the car parted the night. Ellen watched the slack shoulders of the men before her. Maria breathed deeply, the pillow slipping from her angular fingers.

“Fellow was a grave digger, see?” Garland was telling an old joke. “He dug one too deep, this time. So he was shouting up from it, help. Get me out of here. I’m freezing. A drunk came staggering along and he looked in. Says, Hell, fellow, no wonder. They forgot to cover you up. And he began to throw in what was shoveled out.”

“Now, that’s a good one,” Dr. Trumbo was whispering. “I’ll remember it. Sure wish I had you to go the rounds with me.”

* * * * *

A day later Ellen and Garland were back in Chicago. Simon met them at the front door. “Look here, what Aunt Vi gave me for my Christmas.” A sleeping calico kitten was within his shirt, a soft lump.

Ellen laughed at him, “My.”

When Simon touched it with a finger, the kitten stretched a paw and yawned. Simon was delighted. “See that?”

“You made him right at home, boy,” Garland cried.

Violet was stepping down the wide staircase, trailing her housecoat, her hair undone, her eyes wistful. Garland put his arm about her tall form. “Miss me, wife?”

“Sure did, Chicken. I didn’t hear the doorbell, I was sleeping so hard. You know Simon was in the school play? He was the shepherd and he brought a gift.”

“No, I ne’er,” said the boy. “I just knelt by the sheep, singing ‘Round John Virgin.’”

Garland was carving the holiday ham that night. “Next year we’re going to have a turkey, Vi. I hear they might vote FDR in for another term. We’ll see prosperity again.”

Ellen watched Simon eating, struck by it. He held the fork in his left hand, pushing the food with the knife as his grandfather did. She said abruptly, “How come you hold your fork so? I ne’er noticed that. It’s not proper. Your fork goes in the right hand.”

“Let him eat Christmas dinner like he wants, puss.”

Reckon I’ll always see those ways Pa stamped on him. Simon was reaching for the ketchup and pouring it heavily on the potatoes, his head bent over his plate. She remembered how he said, “Mind now,” to the kit. She was wondering if that too came from Anton.

“Now these quality,” Violet was saying, “had an exercise machine. You could hear it clear down in the kitchen. It was bolted to the floor and there was a wide belt they put around them. It juggled their stomach or wherever there was a fat spot and it just rubbed it away.”

“Say now, that’s what I need.” Garland was patting his stomach.

20

Anton and Dyke were loading the Burwell truck for the trip to Louisville. It was late January. They had become familiar with the town since their first excursion six years ago at the beginning of the depression. They had come to know the wholesale section and the waterfront district where the Ohio flowed and where auctions were conducted in the shadow of tobacco warehouses and mills and the newly-operated distilleries, reeking and guarded. Now too, they would manage more than one yearly trip. They found it necessary, in fact, to go many times.

Sam Offut had moved in with Anton the week after Maria went, bringing along his wife Eadie. She was plagued with lumbago and vestiges of various diseases contracted when much younger, and she seemed satisfied to settle with Sam in Mr. Gaddy’s house for as long as she was required. She learned to carry out her duties to his partial satisfaction. She cooked three meals and cleaned occasionally. She was cowed, however, by the Catholic icons, refusing to dust the crucifix or the statuettes or the framed Sacred Heart. “Be careful what you say near the things, Samuel,” she warned, “they be Romish. You know Mr. Gaddy’s not a true Christian like us.” The Offuts would go to the new Holiness Church that had set up a tent on the outskirts of Millville. There folks spoke in strange tongues and preachers would handle rattlesnakes and fire and encourage public confession. Besides being entertained, the Offuts had found an ideal place to express themselves without censure.

This morning Eadie was bringing sandwiches of bread and bacon to the truck. Dyke was gunning the motor and a white smoke streamed from the exhaust. Six fattened shoats, stowed behind the load of corn, grunted and squealed until the machine was set in motion. Then they were lulled, grew sleepy-eyed swaying warm-bodied against each other. “I’m going to get me a piece of cock tonight, Mester Gaddy,” Dyke sang out.

“Do that, boy,” Anton glowered.

“Hey. I like a ooman built like a brick shithouse.” Dyke’s ruddy face shone. Beside the taciturn older man he was feeling debonair and knowing. “Big and soft all o’er. And I know where they’ve got them.” He blew the horn, “Beep. Beep!” A flock of chickens fled squawking into ditches from the carcass of a dog that lay in the frosted road. “Want me to show you where, Mester Gaddy?”

“No. Christ.”

“Setting about the room in wrappers. Nothing underneath. For a fact, now.”

“You’ll get the claps and come home dragging your tail. Hum. Won’t be so horny then, I vow. Best stay away from harlots, boy.”

“Now, there’s one old girl does a trick with a cigarette. You’d ne’er think she could do it.”

“Get your pecker down, boy.” Anton looked out on the frozen fields that waited fallow for spring. “Give not thy strength unto oomen. Mind.”

“Reckon the corn’ll sell high, Mester Gaddy?”

“Prices always come up in late winter. Seems most folks are so strapped for cash in fall, they’ll sell when hit’s cheap.”

The stoutish younger man and the other near sixty were drawn together in the close cab, knitted by the future, unforeseen. The return trip would be different, then the tie would fall away as tomorrow became a routine of familiar chores. Dyke was laughing. “Hey, Mester Gaddy. Saw Butcher Faust last night. He’d just got in a cow carcass. Still had the udder on it. So he sliced off a front teat and let it hang out his fly. Old lady Brenner came in. He took her order, started in to cut her meat for her. Well, she jerked up of a sudden. Says, timid-like, look there, Butcher Faust. And he looked down, says, Oh that damn thing. And lays it on the block, whacks it off with his knife.”

“Haw,” snorted Anton.

“Old lady Brenner near passed out. That Butcher Faust slays me.”

Hog prices had nearly doubled over the fall rate. The men found a buyer for the corn and stopped in at a dingy corner bar for a glass of draught beer before parting company. Then Anton was making his way down Market Street, a bleak wind thrusting at his back, up the sleeves to his mackinaw and ill-fitting black suit. He took a left turn for two blocks, then a right. He swung in at the second house, his stride unaltered. The building was of red brick, one of a series of identical houses. The long hall was unheated and dark, a radio lilted faintly from under a doorway.

I don’t want your sugar sprinkled in my tea Because the gal I’ve got is sweet enough for me

Anton was climbing a staircase, knocking at the door at the head. A shapely woman opened it, her jet-black hair heavy about her sallow-skinned broad face. Anton spoke thickly, “You alone, Rose?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Daddy.” She was turning in a studied careless way. He put a heavy-muscled hand toward the slim curve of her back, withdrew it hastily as if caught between guilt and greed. He closed the door and followed her to the window where she was looking out as if waiting. His hand came upon her insistent, he was pulling her to the bed.

She asked him after a while, “Why don’t you ever kiss me? And you with those big lips.” She was slipping into her wrapper. He followed her with his eyes, made no answer. She took his coat from the chair, explored the inner pocket and brought out a flat box. “Why not, Daddy?” She was deriding, but gentle, for the kind elderly farmer suited her. She had met him a few months ago, knew he was Catholic with a wife committed recently to an institution. She opened the gift box holding a red and blue silk handkerchief. Louisville, Kentucky. The Biggest Wholesale Distributor Of The South. She knotted it softly at her neck, wise that the vivid colors set off her hair. She planned that she would marry Anton. She was preparing supper on a two-burner hot plate, boiling spaghetti, searing ground meat in a frying pan. “Vo-do-do-dee-o-do-o-o! Guess I’ll teach you to dance, Daddy. Okay?”

From the bed he was taking in the figure in the bright kimono that contrasted so completely with the shadow of Maria. He would leave Louisville tomorrow, returning to the farm. But he would be restless and irritable, lonely, his sin again unconfessed. “Come o’er here, Poppet.”

She was going to the bed. He took her to his lap. His sateen shirt was open and she stroked the red hair of his chest. “You’re a comfortable man. You’re strong.”

“Rose, you wait here for me.” He was heated. “Don’t see e’er a man. You hear?”

“I don’t know.” But Rose said it as if she would obey.

“This little grandson of mine had hair would turn pale in summer, like oat straw. Hum.” Rose went back to where the savory odors were steaming. She laid dishes and brought glasses of beer to a low table. Anton drew on his pants, fastening his belt; he pulled his heavy frame erect, began to pace back and forth. His yellowed winter underwear was exposed above the waist. He stopped in his stride as if angry, “Will you do like I say, Rose?”

“Okay, Daddy.” But this time she was amused and said it as though she would not.

The next morning Rose was frying ham and eggs for breakfast. The stale air in the flat was surfeited with the high fat odor. She made her ways soft so the pain of parting would lie in Anton like a hot ball. She was teasing him so he would never be quite sure away from her and would remember her standing by him in the bright-flowered kimono, her hips soft and her city face white. She was forking the food onto his plate. Anton observed the lift of her arm along her breast; he laid his gnarled hand against the pointed shape of it, his mind turning to a morning long years ago.

The girl Penny, who married that fool Dougherty, had worn a flowered dress patterned like Rose’s kimono. She had come to the hay field to bring Anton a drink of water in a stone jar. He was turning the damp clover alone. The girl watched him drink, smiling. “It’s a power hot out here, Mester.” She was lifting her hands to brush back her hair, seeking the breeze. She looked cool from her head to her brown toes that were small as a youngen’s. Something stirred in Anton when her breasts stood out as she raised her arms. He put his hand forward hardly knowing what he did, and cupped one in his palm. “Are you coming in the heat?” he was whispering, hoarse. Penny’s eyes had widened. She was bending for the jug and slipping away. In days to follow he named her “that roaring ooman,” angered with his own calflike ways, despising his moment of weakness. And when his older daughter had picked up the foldilay songs, ever after they would stir his ire.

He spoke dourly to Rose, removing his hand, “The lips of a strange ooman drop honey, says the Book. And her mouth be smoother than oil.”

“Banana oil, Daddy,” said Rose.

* * * * *

Anton met Dyke at the truck parked on Market Street. Hoarfrost had glazed the windows, Dyke was scraping at it with his knife while the engine warmed. The truck backfired and trundled with an effort through early traffic, past the slow gray river, and into the country where smoke was seeping from dunghills and fowl scratched the frozen earth. Anton was restless in his seat, crabbed. Dyke was driving stolidly. The radiator was beginning to boil as they chugged up the Gaddy farm lane. Dyke peered through the cloud above the hood. “Just made the well in time, Mester Gaddy.” He was shouting over the noise of the engine, and cut it. “Hey there, Sam.” He still shouted although the motor had stopped. He lowered his voice in the quiet wintry air, “Did your wife help you milk, Sam?”

“No, I shift for myself at the barn when Mester Gaddy’s off.” There was the hint of home-brew about Sam’s breath. He sighed, “But this here lumbago’s getting me down.”

Anton had descended his side of the truck. Shading his eyes, he was looking at buzzards that wheeled over one of the fields. “What be dead out there, Sam?”

“I don’t know. Could be the dog’s killed him a woodchuck.”

Anton walked to the top of the land, the other two following. “Reckon it’s old Jack himself?”

“Now I recollect, Mester Gaddy, Eadie said she ne’er seen him about yesterday to get his dinner scraps.”

Anton picked up a shovel, walked down the lane alone. A few sluggish bluebottles buzzed up in the sunless air from the dog’s decaying worn-out body, matted with burrs and beggar’s-lice, damp from melted frost. While the man was digging, clay caught in the cuffs of his shiny black pants. From the woods nearby the two notes of the carping bluejays echoed like pieces of crockery being knocked together. The birds were heralding the spring winds. Anton tipped the carcass into the grave with his shovel. A warm stench floated from where maggots quivered. Anton neither smelled nor saw. His disciplined arms were performing efficiently. His mind dwelled apart, jealous, on the woman in Louisville.