Harvest Home Part 13

I whirled at the sound of footsteps. Worthy Pettinger stood hunched in the doorway, a wrench in his hand. "I forgot to fix the pipe-" He broke off and his face paled as he stared at the thing on the drawing board. "Where did you get it?"

"I found it." He stepped back as though struck. "Can you tell me what it is?"

"Where did you find it?"

"In a field."

"Where?"

"At Justin Hooke's." The wrench clattered to the floor; I picked it up. "Have you ever seen one before?"

"No. I never." A whisper as he backed away to the door. "You got to get rid of it."

"What is it?"

"I-don't know. Does anyone know you took it?"

"No. I don't think so." I lifted it, shook it, heard a swift intake of breath from Worthy. I put it in the box and set the lid on. "I'll burn it."

"No! You can't burn the corn-it's got to go back into the ground. Bury it." s.n.a.t.c.hing up the box, he ran from the studio. When I stepped out, I saw him taking a spade and hurrying behind the garage, the box under his arm.

He dug the hole under a clump of bushes close to the hedge separating our property from the Dodds'; he shoveled the box deep into the soft ground, covered it, and jumped on the earth with his feet. Then he scattered leaves and twigs over the spot. When he finished, he leaned on the spade handle, sweating and wiping his mouth, his eyes riveted to the newly covered hole.

I waited another moment, then spoke. "Worthy, tell me what it is."

He took a breath and seemed to recover himself. "I don't know," he said with an offhand shrug. "Just some crazy thing." He sounded sheepish. "I guess I got carried away. Well, long as it's there I suppose we can leave it. n.o.body wants a crazy-looking thing like that anyways." Still he could not disguise the urgency in his voice.

I looked at him coolly. "Missy Penrose might."

"Huh?" He looked up sharply.

"She has one like it. A corn doll. You've seen it, surely."

He shrugged again. "Oh, sure, that. Lots of the kids do. 'Gagas,' they're called. Just poppets."

"You don't care for Missy much."

"Sure, she's O.K."

"Can she prophesy?"

A dark look had come over the boy's face, the blood rose to his cheeks. He fell silent, absently chopping with the tip of his spade along the edge of the flower bed closest to the hedge. His shoulders hunched, his mouth a.s.sumed a grim line.

"Worthy, I'm asking you something." Still no reply. "You don't want want to be in the play, do you?" He waited; silence. " to be in the play, do you?" He waited; silence. "Do you?" I stepped to the boy and spun him around. "Answer me, d.a.m.n it." you?" I stepped to the boy and spun him around. "Answer me, d.a.m.n it."

"No, I don't!" He spat the words hotly. "It doesn't matter anyway-I won't be here!"

"Why not?"

He yanked his shoulder from under my hand and his dark eyes flashed angrily. "Because I'm leaving. I hate this town, and I hate the people in it. They're fools, all of them."

"Why?"

"Because they think that what they think is the only way to think. They think if you plow a field you should use a mule, not a tractor. Mules are the old way, and wooden rakes are the old way, and hoes are the old way, and that's all you hear around here-the old ways. I don't want to be a corn farmer."

"Corn seems inevitable in this place."

"Not for me. Nothing to do but plant corn, nothing to talk about but harvesting corn. And their Spring Festival and their Midsummer's Eve and their husking bee." His voice rose in pitch, then broke, and when he spoke again it was with a softer tone.

"Honest, Mr. Constantine, I got to get out of here. I've got to get away."

"One-horse town?"

A trace of a smile. "Sort of. You know. A fellow gets feeling cooped up in a place like this. I never been anywhere farther than Danforth."

"Will you go there-to your friends?"

"That'd be the first place they'd look."

"Who?"

"All of them. I'm thinking of joining the navy."

"And see the world? Maybe that's a good idea."

"I been savin' my money. I got some put by, enough to tide me over. There's a fellow I know runs a pool parlor and beer bar in Hartford. I can go stay with him until I decide what to do."

"How old are you, son?"

"Sixteen."

"The navy won't take you without your parents' consent, you know. Not till you're seventeen."

"I know. They'll never give it, anyway, but I'll be seventeen soon." He lifted the shovel and stepped from the hedge, moving past me.

I stopped him. "You're right. You ought to go if it's what you want to do. It's your life, no one else's, and you can't let other people tell you what you should do. We'll miss you." I took out my wallet, extracted some bills, and held them out. Worthy shook his head.

"Go on, son, take it."

"You already paid me."

"This is just to help you along till you get things figured out." I pressed the money into his hand.

"O.K., but only till I can repay you." He folded the bills until they were a small square and tucked them in his watch pocket. "Thanks, Mr. Constantine. I'm sorry to be leaving you. You've been kind to me. Will you tell Kate goodbye?" He looked back at the buried box. "And look-"

"What?"

"Nothing."

I was sure he was going to say more, but had thought better of it. "Will you write me and let me know what you decide?"

"Sure. Would you want my tractor?"

"That's right-we were going to plow with it next spring. How much are you asking?"

"No-you can have it. It's a present."

I said I couldn't accept it, but if he thought I could manage to keep it running, I'd like to buy it; where could I send a check?

He thought a moment, then said, "Here's what I'll do. I'll write to you, and put 'Jonn Smith' on the envelope. That way you'll know it's from me." Again he looked back at the covered hole. "Don't tell anybody," he whispered. I took the shovel and we shook hands.

"Tell your wife goodbye, too," he said, and went up the drive. One thing was clear: he was lying. Something had frightened him.

I looked down at the spot where he had buried the box; then, taking the shovel in my hands, I began digging.

When I had hung the shovel in the garage and come out, the s...o...b..x under my arm, I heard Robert's hallo from the other side of the hedge.

"That you, Ned? Come and sit."

Turning the corner of the hedge, I found the blind man in his lawn chair, with his usual stoical att.i.tude, as though he had learned long ago never to expect anything but what life chose to bring him. "Well, m'boy, Margaret tells me you've been up on the roof all morning. Be careful-those old shingles can be treacherous."

I pulled up another chair, explaining that all necessary precautions had been taken, and that Worthy Pettinger had done most of the dangerous work anyway.

"Handy fellow, Worthy," Robert said ruminatively. "Good-looking boy, too, they tell me. Got the old Cornish blood in him."

"I thought the Cornish were fair. He looks more like an Indian."

"In England it's generally held that the so-called 'black Irish' were sired by those Spaniards who made it to sh.o.r.e when the Armada was sunk, but anyone who knows their apples will tell you it's not the Spanish who blackened the Cornish hair, but men from a civilization far older than that. I'm speaking of the sailors from Knossos, in Crete, long before Caesar's legions were even settling in England."

"And Missy," I asked pointedly. "Is she of the Cornish strain, too?"

"Her mother is, that we know. As to the father-that would be anybody's guess."

"Is it true she can prophesy?"

Before Robert could reply, Maggie appeared with a carriage robe which she tucked around his knees, laughing at his protests at being coddled. "Just pretend you're on shipboard, darling."

"What time do we get to Le Havre?" He smoothed the cover over his knees while Maggie knelt close by with her gardening things. "What have you fellows been talking about?" she asked, digging in some large new bulbs.

"Ned was asking about Missy's predictions."

Maggie laughed again. "Ned, you've got to get used to the country notions around here."

"I don't think you can toss them off as notions," Robert argued. "Certainly there are people who appear to be endowed with special powers. Ca.s.sandra foretold the downfall of Troy. Montezuma's priests were able to predict ahead of time the coming of the white man to the New World. Modern psychical research recognizes precognition as possible. People get portents of disaster all the time, and they're often confirmed."

"Maybe Missy just makes lucky guesses," I put in.

"Maybe. But because of her freckles the villagers believe she had communication with the G.o.d. Not our Christian G.o.d, mind you, but the G.o.d that was worshiped in the olden times, as the Widow calls them. In those days, they believed men had the power of divination which stemmed from their knowledge of the stars."

"And Missy's stars are written on her face."

Maggie placed a bulb in the hole and covered it over. "You see, Ned-country notions."

"What you have to remember," Robert continued, "is that human nature doesn't change much. You can't negate the ingrained imagination of a whole culture. When they came from Cornwall to the New World, the original settlers were a deeply religious sect. What did they find when they got here? Cold, illness, the constant fear of attack; they were foodless and homeless. They were forced to adapt to circ.u.mstances, to learn new ways in order to survive. But in learning the new they refused to give up the old, a faith based on the moon and the stars and the tides, and on ancient deities they could turn to for succor in this time of stress. During the first year the village was settled, there was a good harvest, which the Indians had shown them how to grow, and they had food."

But then, he went on, had come what was still remembered as the Great Waste, the famine where the corn shriveled up and died, and the Cornish settlers felt the cold hand of fear at their throats, and they raised themselves up and prayed for help, not in church but in the fields, inviting the blessings of the old G.o.ds, those who had come with the dark-haired Cretan sailors. And the G.o.ds answered them, for the land was blessed with crops in the fields and fruit in the orchards.

"But it's all vestigial," Maggie hastened to point out. "Like the Spring Festival and the bonfire."

"Country notions, yes," Robert replied. "You'll find evidence, though, that when the Christian priests tore down the pagan temples, the people made them leave the trees that grew around the temples. And, more importantly, the priests couldn't destroy the thinking that impelled the building of the temples in the first place."

"What would Mr. Buxley do if he found something like this in Justin Hooke's corn patch?" I took the lid from the s...o...b..x and brought out the doll.

Maggie, about to set in another bulb, laid it down with her trowel. "What on earth-?" She reached and took the doll from me. "What a strange-looking thing." She turned it over in her hands, examining it. Then she placed it in Robert's hands and let him feel it, describing its form to him in all its details. When Robert had done, she stood it up on the ground among her iris cuttings and bulbs and p.r.o.nounced it a most unhandsome thing.

"It's really quite awful-looking, Robert."

"Is it?"

"What do you suppose it means?" I ventured. "Do they believe in hex around here?"

"Hex is Pennsylvania Dutch, isn't it?" Maggie said. "I never heard of any hex in Cornwall, did you, Robert?"

"No. I don't believe so."

"Where did you find it, Ned?"

"In Justin's cornfield."

I watched Robert closely, seeking some visible expression behind his dark gla.s.ses. It was impossible to see beyond them. He drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the arms of his chair. From the corner of my eye I saw Maggie collecting her gardening things, dropping the iris cuttings and bulbs into her basket. She rose, dusting her knees. "I'm going to leave you men to sort it all out. It's too much for me."

"What would would Mr. Buxley do?" I asked Robert again when she had taken her basket and gone. Mr. Buxley do?" I asked Robert again when she had taken her basket and gone.

He shrugged. "I suppose he'd look the other way, just as the Catholic Church does. The church and the law have learned it's a lost cause trying to censure such beliefs. How can you hope to fight them, when it's proved that the old Cornishmen arrived here with the same G.o.ds the Indians already had?"

"But-vestigial, you say?"

"Margaret's word, but I suppose it suffices. All these things are the traces of the older culture. Who knows why Fred Minerva will let his barn burn before he'll put up lightning rods? Or why the Widow can cure things the doctor can't? Or how Missy can tell the future?

"Justin traces his lineage back in an unbroken line to the earliest families in Cornwall. Now, those forebears of his were -as Cornishmen are-deeply religious. They believed in one way for countless years, and then the priests came and renamed all the streams and wells and glens, and tore down the temples and built churches and gave them Christ on a cross. They accepted all this for more than a thousand years. But all the time, they were feeling some nameless longing inside. What do they do? They hark back to the olden times, where they find a source of comfort that even they can't comprehend, a fever that cools the fever, a mask that hides the mask.

"Superst.i.tious? Oh, yes, Justin's superst.i.tious. It's in his blood, his bones, his very nature. In his father's, and in his grandfather's. Because he believes that come h.e.l.l or high water, bad crops or plague, what's going to save him is that inner voice that he listens to. His or Missy Penrose's, no matter which. That's why they still have fires and dancing on the Common." He put his hands on the arm of his chair to lift himself. "No, no, I can do it. Come in and have a drink? No? Come over again, it's always good to have company."

He went across the lawn as if he had eyes to tell him the way, and when he got to the back door Maggie came and opened it, holding it for him while he entered. "Thank you, Margaret," he said, going in. I waved, but she appeared not to have seen me, and I turned to go home.