part two (cont. 4)

“No, I’m a poor country girl there. I hear them laugh. I came on my singing teacher snickering with Uncle. It was about me.”

“When do you think you’ll start playing in public like Pa wants?”

“I’m the most alone person. It’s because I’m queer, I think. Maybe Pa made me so. Or else I get it from Ma. The way I talk and act.”

Anton’s voice was audible through the doorway as they came into the hall downstairs, “And then I heard Ma saying, I’d fain have been a lady but I married you, little feist. We dragged her down, Gar. We gommed her desires.”

“Hell, An, you’re drunk. Forget Ma. Like I did long ago. Let’s get back to the subject. As I see it, Frankie’s doing the best she can. She’s not got much gumption and she’s plenty like you when she gets stubborn, but I think she’s beginning to adjust. This is the first vacation she’s had, what with lessons. I hope I can keep her present teacher. Says he’s got his hands full. Costs a mint, you know.”

“Hum. If there’s anything I can do for you.”

“You’re my brother.” Garland’s familiar slap on Anton’s back was carried up the staircase. “Covers a multitude of sins. We’ve got to stick together.”

Ellen thought Frankie was asleep until she heard the voice threading the dark. “Seems I got a black heartwood core same as that ’simmon tree.” The girl’s voice was sated with self-pity. “People can tell it’s there.”

* * * * *

The next day Garland came to the barn where Ellen was cleaning the goats’ stable, heaping the soiled litter outside the shed with a heavy fork. An acrid stench hung in the air and the flock of five moved about her. “Keep you company awhile, hon?”

“If you like.”

“You have quite a bunch of your own here.”

“I set store by them.” She was forking fresh bedding in the pen and the animals crowded in to lie down, nosing and chewing the straw. She fastened the gate and leaned to watch them.

“Long time ago,” Garland was saying, “old man Alden used to keep a pair of nannies in his shack with him. Wonder if he’s still alive.”

“Ne’er heard of him.”

“Lived a few miles up the road. Us boys would sneak over to peek in his windows. Watch him suck the milk from the udders.”

“Is that a fact?”

Garland watched her intently. “You’re wonderful, puss.”

“That’s a silly thing to say.”

“Well, you make me feel like a boy again. I always said it.”

Ellen laughed at him. “Reckon I best get to the kitchen. I’ll race you to see if you’re still a boy.”

“Now there’s a cruel wench.” He trailed after her.

At the steps she waited. As they started up they became aware suddenly of a commotion within the house, of cries and Anton’s growls. Ellen was running up the stairs. “I’m afraid it’s Ma.”

But the shrill cry of Frankie pierced, “I won’t go back. I won’t. I hate you. You can’t make me.”

And a sound was heard so that Ellen turned to Garland. “He’s beating her. He’ll not be gainsaid. What’ll we do?”

“I’ll show you what. He’s always got to lord it over someone.” Garland sharpened his wrath, ran into the hall, flinging open the parlor door.

Anton was red-faced, and Frankie, in a despair of tears, was shaking in a corner of the sofa, her knitted skirt pulled above her knees, her bobbed hair tangled. She hid her face. “I don’t care about nothing. I don’t care.”

Garland caught Anton’s arm and while they shouted, Ellen bade her sister come into the kitchen. Frankie laid her head on the table and wept. Ellen walked about the room at her work, finally coaxing, “Now these fruits have to be cut up for the cake. You always were good at it, Frankie. Here’s the knife and bowl.”

Frankie pushed them from her. “Ellie, I do hate Pa.” She fled up the stairs.

The angered voices in the parlor rose and fell until the milking hour came. Then Anton, black-faced, strode to the barn. Garland watched him from the porch stoop and then followed. “There,” said Ellen to Maria who came in from the bedroom, “things are in a state. Pa ought to let Frankie stay here where she belongs.”

“Don’t beard Mester Gaddy,” Maria advised. “Let him be.”

That night by the fireside it was as if a ghostly thing stood amid them. Ellen sighed. Maria, feeling the trouble, gestured to herself. Garland smoked one cigarette after another. And Frankie was white, holding her head erect. “Reckon I’ll go to bed,” she said at length. “Good night all.”

Anton bent his scorn-washed face over a farm journal. “Well, I see here it tells about them foreigners in the old country using artificial insemination. Now I reckon that’s a sin against a beast. It’s sodomy.” He pulled furiously on his dead pipe.

“Chrissake, An.”

But in the morning Ellen caught sight at the stairhead of Frankie and Anton. The thin words came, “Forgive my willfulness, Pa.” Frankie’s face was hard. She had purchased her peace, before leaving her father again, kneeling in the short skirt she now wore.

* * * * *

On the second Christmas of these three years, Frankie brought her contradictory ways again into focus, so that Anton stalked about in dudgeon, lying in wait for her open rebellion. She would turn him though, in a new cunning way she had learned, “Beg your pardon, Pa.”

The holiday evenings were drawn short and quiet by the hickory and oak-fed fires. After midnight mass, all but Garland ate sparely at the table, disheartened. The sliced meats and cheese, the sweet cakes and peppered blood pudding, were spread forth. “Have some Barrier Cherries, Uncle,” Ellen pressed him. “Frankie and Lily Garrett made them once.” Ellen, who knew her father and sister so well, felt the sadness of it. She knew the man was like a willful child and here was his only beloved set against him.

Frankie went back to Chicago then. Before they drove away in Garland’s Oakland sedan with the high-squared top and the yellow leather seats, Garland announced, “Frankie’s been engaged for her first recital. March the sixteenth, nineteen twenty-nine. Frankie Gaddy enters the lists of the immortals.”

“Shut up, Uncle,” Frankie sighed.

“You greening me, Garland?” Anton was suspicious. “You going to play before those folks?”

“Yes, I am, Pa.”

“Hell, An, she’s booked,” Garland shouted. “In one of my theatres.”

“I vow.”

“My,” Ellen said, “I ne’er thought Frankie’d be so bold.”

* * * * *

And time moved, weaving a tapestry. On radiant summer nights moonlight laved the meadows and frogs dripped shrill tones. Ellen would slip down the stairs to wander where flowering honeysuckle presaged the passing of time. Longings waxed in her. She lay in the honeyed grass and wept easily. The moon shone and she bared her white body, wondered at the restlessness clutching her. She dwelled on the summer she had met Christian Ay, for at that one time the even cord of her life had risen to such a gleaming line that she doubted on it ever after. I’m bound and thralled. The pleasure and the sadness are too close together. She went back to her attic room to wait for dawn.

Now and then she thought of the child, Simon, developed a curiosity, now that she counted the passion buried, to see if this relic bore any resemblances. “I have a notion to visit Penny Dougherty,” she was saying to Anton. “She’s invited me. Says she’s got guineas and we can have a clutch of eggs if we want. I could raise us a flock. Set the yellow hen on them.”

“Guineas. And that worthless ooman,” he scoffed.

“Guineas are no work. You turn them loose and they pair off and care for the eggs by themselves. When you want a meal you catch them where they’re roosting.”

“It’s a far piece to Weems Crossroads but for guinea eggs. And I declared you’d not set foot off this place save to be married. So I said.”

“I’m twenty. And I’ll be gone o’ernight. I promise, Pa.”

“I don’t like it. You’re a froward one. It costs a mort of money going on the train. All to see some poor trash.”

“I’ll make it up to you, Pa.”

“You be back in a day, girl. You got beans to plant, and the cabbages to set out now the killing frosts are gone.”

“I’ll do it, Pa. Day after tomorrow. Soon as I get back, I’ll set them out.”

So she found herself walking up the lane to the familiar small house. Penny greeted her, and her fine features seemed a little thinner. She was laughing, “You came for Simon.”

“Oh Penny, let me see that baby girl you wrote about, Blossom.”

“She’s in here, Ellie.”

While they looked at the sleeping child, Ellen whispered, “I can’t take Simon. Pa doesn’t know.”

“That’s all right. We love him, Ellie.”

“I brought more money.”

Three little boys were trooping through the doorway, shouting. The baby awoke, began to wail. Ellen saw Simon, nearly three now. He was dressed in a blue-checked pinafore, and his small bottoms were bare. He was smallish and fair with round blue eyes. He looked at her soberly and never smiled. Clate had forgot Ellen, and Anse, thin and dark, clung to Penny. Simon was leaning on the wall, his fat thumb in his mouth. Luke arrived amid the bedlam and the children shouted to see him, “Da’s home.” Ellen saw Simon squealed and leaped with the rest.

They took her out to the field to see the goats and the old donkey. Clate was prompted to recite, lisping.

When the elm leaf Be big ath a mouthe’s ear Then to thow barley Ne’er you fear

All the while nearby was Ellen’s son, gazing dumb. His foster mother called him to her. “This is your own ma, Simon. Like I told you.”

In the morning Ellen was returning on the train. She had a setting of spotted guinea eggs in a box. Her mind was on the beans to be planted; she wondered whether Love’s would have flats of young cabbage plants in yet.

* * * * *

The country seemed prosperous. But among the farmers were muffled noises of protest. Anton Gaddy growled when he got ninety-eight cents for wheat that had brought two dollars and thirty-four a bushel after the Great War. Corn dropped to seventy-nine cents, though it used to be good for a dollar to a dollar-fifty. He spoke to Sam, “Reckon you could get by with a little less a week? I’m pure strapped for cash. You could take a hen maybe.” He shrugged nervously.

“All right.” Sam scratched his back.

“Pick one of the old ones with a yellow beak and ears.”

“Now Mester Gaddy. I wouldn’t take a good layer.” Sam was squinting up, his eyes sharp in his leathery face.

“I hate it, being strapped, Sam.”

While they were talking, restless, the stock market was plunging. The depression was on. When Anton heard next week from N. J. Bilberry of the crisis, he said, “Now there’s somewhat for those rich folk to fret about. It’s no worry to us.”

Anton felt vindicated in his way of life, wondered idly if Garland had been affected. And he wished Frankie would write again. Her piano recital of last March had been a failure, the few letters she had written since ignored the subject. The flame in Anton’s life that burned through this daughter dimmed, bewildering him, causing his dream to lag. “Hum. Frankie’s going to make that music yet before the crowd. I’ve got to send her some money again, come the evening mail.”

Then a letter arrived from Chicago.

Dear Father,

It is not necessary to direct any more checks to me. You need money worse. I moved from Uncle’s house a while ago to an apartment. I’m going to get a job. Uncle is sick so we won’t drive down. I will spend Yule in Chicago. Uncle lost his Oakland. The government men took it away. He had a considerable loss in the market. He has real worries. One of his friends jumped out of a window.

I will come to visit next summer for sure, and maybe bring a friend with me to see the dear farm and meet the old folks at home. Then like the song goes, I’ll tuck me to sleep in my old ’Tucky home!

daughter Frankie