Harvest Home Part 16

"But he did, finally." I told him what I had learned from Mrs. O'Byrne about the night Roger had galloped across the river and carried her to the Cornwall side, and that Mrs. O'Byrne had wanted to fire Gracie for immorality.

Amys stared at me, speechless, then spat again. "'Tain't true! Roger never touched her that night!"

"How do you know?"

"I-" He stopped uncertainly, glanced quickly at Bert, the bartender, then hollered for more nuts. When Bert had gone to the far end of the bar, Amys continued in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "Roger never laid a finger to her. The Harvest Lord can't have relations with no girl before Harvest Home. It's against the ways. Anyhow, Roger met her just before the Corn Play. That was poor Gracie's last chance. He rode back and Tamar was crowned in her place. Next day, the day before Kindlin' Night, when they burn the scarecrows, the Widow Fortune buggies over to talk to Gracie. She come back without her, too. So Tamar goes to Harvest Home."

"To do what?"

"h.e.l.l, son, don't ask me all these questions. I'm tryin' to tell you. Roger goes to Harvest Home as the Lord, and Tamar goes as his Maiden."

"Goes where?"

"To the woods. To Soakes's Lonesome."

"Harvest Home is celebrated in the woods?"

"The seventh one is, always. But then, Gracie comes too."

"And was a disruptive influence."

"Who says?"

"The ladies. Mrs. Green, Mrs. Zalmon-"

"d.a.m.n old biddies. If she was, the Lord G.o.d he knows."

"Then what happened?"

"Two days later, Irene Tatum finds her poor body in the river. Thrown herself off the Lost Whistle. I heard, and I went to toll thrice times thrice. But Mr. Deming comes and says I can't. He tells me to dig a hole."

"Outside the cemetery."

"Mr. Buxley-he says he can't read service for a suicide, and here come all the elders carryin' a pine box, with Gracie inside, and they set it in the hole; then Mr. Deming in his black suit tells me to fill it in, and they go away. Not a soul there for the funeral. Mrs. Everdeen packs up and leaves town for the shame, and there's the end of it."

"You buried her?"

He turned his head quickly and used the spittoon again. After a moment he said, "Buried her beyond the fence, where you see her stone. Where she lies without, in disgrace, and Roger lies within, in honor. And herself herself runs the post office and makes fast and loose with anything in pants." He clutched my sleeve and spoke fiercely. "Don't you listen to folks. Gracie was a fine girl. And a beauty, don't you forget. Pretty as spring, a reg'lar fairy, that was Grace." runs the post office and makes fast and loose with anything in pants." He clutched my sleeve and spoke fiercely. "Don't you listen to folks. Gracie was a fine girl. And a beauty, don't you forget. Pretty as spring, a reg'lar fairy, that was Grace."

Bert came and collected the gla.s.ses, obliterating with his rag the wet rings left on the bar.

Amys tottered off his stool, a sad, forlorn look on his wrinkled face. "Listen to me, sir. I loved Grace, and I never forgot her, even though they'd they'd like to. Sometimes when I ring thrice times thrice, like when Mrs. Mayberry died, I tell Gracie that's for her." like to. Sometimes when I ring thrice times thrice, like when Mrs. Mayberry died, I tell Gracie that's for her."

He touched his hat brim, thanked me for letting him wet his whistle, and took up his broom and left.

I finished my drink, trying to piece together the threads of his story of the unfortunate Gracie Everdeen, and chalked it up to a case of unrequited love.

When I approached the church again, Amys was tolling six o'clock. Above the bronzy notes of the bell, the voices of the choir sounded, floating out through the vestibule door and hanging soft in the air. The sun was dropping behind the post office, and long shadows had crept across the Common, making the circles on the gra.s.s more p.r.o.nounced.

I took a few moments to step into the church and sit in one of the pews, looking up at the choir loft over the doors, where the girls held their sheets of music in pairs and sang the lovely melody. Maggie was at the organ, watching in the little mirror over the keyboard as Mrs. Buxley conducted the voices, while, in the upper corner of the loft, the Widow Fortune sat leaning her head on her hand, lost in some private reverie.

The song ended, and the church was perfectly still for a moment. Then the girls moved from their places, gathering around the old lady as she spoke to them, praising them for their singing. When I went up the aisle, I glimpsed Mr. Buxley seated at a table in the vestry, writing in a ledger. I stopped for a word, and he explained he was entering the date of old Mrs. Mayberry's death. He brought down another, showing me the entry of her birth sixty-seven years before; then he returned both ledgers to the shelf. Each volume was dated by year, a whole history of village births and marriages and deaths, the three important events of a man's life, no matter where he may live.

I complimented him on the music I had heard; he said yes, it would pa.s.s very nicely for t.i.thing Day.

I walked along Main Street, looking at the houses with their neat gardens and fences, their windows, some with as many as eighteen panes of gla.s.s apiece, the handsome Colonial doorways. The kinds of houses I had never known in the city.

Pa.s.sing Tamar Penrose's place, I saw the child Missy perched on the limb of an apple tree, playing with her doll while some chickens pecked in the dirt below. She lifted her head and stared at me as I walked by. Suddenly I thought of the other doll, the one from the cornfield, and was shocked to realize I didn't know what had become of it. As I tried to recollect the circ.u.mstances, I heard her give a little cry. She had caught her dress getting out of the tree, and when she tried to free it she lost her hold and tumbled to the ground. I ran back and opened the gate. She lay at the base of the tree looking stunned. I knelt and lifted her head and asked if she was all right. She stared at me; then her two hands came up and pressed her temples, as though to relieve the pain.

She was wearing a strange-looking cap of knitted wool, pulled down around her ears as though it were the dead of winter. Her dress had gra.s.s stains on it, her shoes were muddy.

"h.e.l.lo," I said.

She regarded me emptily; then a look of recognition floated into her washed-out eyes.

"Missy, do you remember me?"

"Mnmm-mean, um-paint-"

"That's right. I'm a painter. Do you remember at Agnes Fair, what happened with the sheep?"

She shook her head.

"You pointed at me, remember?"

Another shake. She was staring at a chicken that was scratching in the dirt around the tree.

"Did someone tell you to point at me?"

A shrug.

"Did someone tell you to pick the Harvest Lord? Or did you pick him because you like Worthy Pettinger?"

Another shrug. She was watching the chicken's bright little eyes with her dim ones.

I tried again. "When people ask you questions and you tell them things, are they just things you make up?"

She giggled, then spoke. "Sometimes." Still she eyed the chicken. "Mnmm-um-sometimes not," she added thickly, sucking air through her mouth.

"When they're not, who makes them up? Where do they come from?"

"I don't know."

"You hear things? Things that someone says to you? Like a voice?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I don't hear, I just see." Still staring at the chicken, she got up and started across the lawn to the porch. She stopped and gave me a quick look. I stepped toward her. She took another step. She seemed to be luring me to her. When I moved, she moved; when I stopped, she stopped, waiting until I moved again. She got to the steps and ran up, then spun around on the porch. When she saw I was coming up the steps, she threw herself in the porch swing and dug a loop of string from her pocket. She looked first at the place beside her, then at me. I sat on the faded canvas cushion and she set the swing in motion.

The rusty chains creaked. She looped the string over each hand, made a cat's cradle pattern, and held it up for me to take. I inserted my fingertips and lifted it, producing a new pattern. She gave me a sly look, took the string, and made another. Her look challenged me as she waited for me to make the next move. I dipped my fingers into the maze and lifted it. The pattern slid, altered, held.

"Mnm-" she murmured, staring at it.

Again I tried. "Is it a game you play? Like cat's cradle?"

"No game."

"What kind of things do you see?"

"Mnm-it's like looking through gla.s.ses," she said, suddenly speaking distinctly. "Sometimes red, sometimes blue, or maybe black, and then everything's colored black, and that's the way it looks... When I see it like it's supposed to look, that's when they tell me what to say. Sometimes there's fire and lightning. Um-and music."

"Music?"

She thought a moment, a faint burrish humming issuing from her lips. "Like at the play. You know." She made a flute-like sound and played her fingers on invisible stops; then she made drum sounds and pantomimed rat-tat-tat. "That kind," she said. Without looking at me, she took my hands and laced the fingers, then began winding the loop of string through them. "Mnmm," she murmured, her brows drawn together in a scowl of concentration.

"There." She placed my hands in her lap and stared at me. I pulled at my fingers and discovered they were bound fast. As I tugged, she broke into a fit of laughter, hiking back against the cushion and waiting for me to free myself.

"Missy, untie the man." Tamar Penrose stood on the step. She took the girl by the hand and opened the door and sent her inside. I got up, trying to loosen the intricate webbing that bound my fingers. Tamar came and examined my hands. "That's a trick of hers."

"I can get it." I struggled to slide out of the knotted web.

"I'll have to cut it. Come on in." She stepped inside and waited for me. Out on the street dusk was falling; the occasional pa.s.sing cars had turned their headlights on. I heard the familiar sound of a vehicle, then the more familiar clip-clop.

"Your little girl's a good rider," Tamar said, holding the door. "Missy, make a light." She closed the door and led me to the kitchen, where the child had turned on the light; then she looked for a knife in a drawer. A large cat blinked on the sill over the sink. "Missy, hon, run out and rustle us up a chicken for dinner." Missy went out through the screened-in porch. I heard her chasing around the yard, trying to catch a chicken.

"I didn't know it was little girls you liked," Tamar said in an insinuating tone, a smile playing at the corners of her red mouth as she sat me down and cut the string. "Isn't there a law about that sort of thing? Maybe I should just leave you trussed up and call the Constable. Child-molesting and all that?" She laughed and I caught the scent of her perfume. "There," she said when she had finally freed my fingers. "She's a d.i.c.kens, that one. What's she been telling you?"

"Nothing. We were just playing cat's cradle and-" I stopped, realizing how silly it sounded. I got up. "Well, thanks for the girl-scout job."

"What's your hurry? Now that you're here, stay and have a drink."

"Thanks, I'd better be on my way."

"Come on." She was getting gla.s.ses from a shelf and setting them on the table, her dress stretching provocatively over her full figure. "Roy Soakes brought me a jug of his pa's corn whiskey. Ever tried moonshine? It's just behind the door there; bring it-I'll get the ice."

She stepped into the back area where the refrigerator was, then went out to peer through the broken porch screening. Missy had caught a chicken, which was making a terrible squawking while she tried to control it. The screen door clattered as Tamar took a hatchet from a nail and went down the steps. I watched her seize the chicken, lay its neck on a box, and decapitate it; then she released the body, which ran in crazed circles, dripping blood onto the dry earth. When it had keeled over and lay kicking on its side, she picked it up by the feet and carried it to a pan near the steps. She tied the legs together and hung the still-flapping body on a nail where the blood drained into the pan below.

She came back in and washed her hands, then got out ice, and presently we were seated opposite each other at the table. The cat on the sill wafted its tail as we clinked gla.s.ses for luck. The child must have gone off somewhere, for she did not come in, nor did I hear her out in the yard.

"So." Tamar hitched her chair closer to the edge of the table. "You're a painter, is that it? What kind of pictures do you paint?"

I explained about the sort of things I was trying to get down on canvas. "Are you interested in art?"

"I know what I like." She looked at me under lowered lashes, her eyes narrowing slightly. I had never been close enough to see that they were green. "That's what they say, isn't it?" she continued. "'I don't know about art but I know what I like'? I like pictures, all kinds, long as they're pretty." She stretched lazily. "It's a pretty village, I guess."

"Have you always lived here?"

She laughed. "Sure, what else? Where d'you go if you're born in the Coombe? That was our house, where you live."

"I know. We appreciated your selling."

She shrugged and held her fingers up and stared at her nails. "Wasn't my idea. We needed the cash, anyway." She went on, speaking of her father, who had lost his money through corn speculations during the last drought year. They'd had to move, then move again, always to a smaller place. This had all happened after the last Great Waste; the year Missy was born. Then Tamar's father had died, and her mother, and the elders awarded her the position as postmistress. "I haven't always worked at the P.O." Her eye had fallen on my hand resting on the table top. She was staring at it. I picked up the gla.s.s and drank.

"Pretty strong, this."

"Knock the eyes out of Justin's rooster. Folks say it's rare. Smoky flavor. They call it the old stuff." She lifted the bottle again; I declined and she splashed some in her own gla.s.s and rose to add water from the tap. I watched the lines of her body move, the easy sway of her hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the arch of the neck while she turned the faucet. "I always figured I'd get married at least five times. Have a gang of kids. Shows you how things work out, don't it?" She looked up at the ceiling. "Well, I got one, anyhow. She's like her father, got the same nature when she's calm." She studied her reflection in the mirror between the windows. "Same nature when she takes fire, too. I guess she favors him in her coloring. Most girls would've tried to hide it-not having a husband, I mean-but what the heck. n.o.body around here cares."

"She's an unusual child." I wondered who the father had been.

"Yeah. She is. She don't make much trouble for me. We get on fine. It's hard tryin' to talk to her sometimes. I mean it'd be nice to have someone who understands what you're saying." She sat again. From the sink came the slow drip of water. "Darn that leak," she said.

"Needs a washer."

"Lots of things around here need lots of things."

"You knew Gracie Everdeen?"

Her brow shifted slightly. There was a pause. Then: "You're full of questions, aren't you? You interested in Gracie Everdeen?"

"Just trying to get the village history straight."

"I'll get it straight for you. Sure I knew Gracie. If it wasn't for her, we'd still be living where you're living. It was her who brought the Waste, her who ruined my father, ruined so many around here. She was a sly one, Gracie. Thought she had it all. And she did, for a time. Had Roger, got to be Corn Maiden; she was queen of the May, all right. But things didn't work out for poor Gracie. I got Roger, I got to be Corn Maiden, and there's Gracie pushing up daisies in the churchyard. If you want to know what I think about her, I hope she burns in everlasting h.e.l.l. She ought ought to have killed herself, or if she hadn't, someone-" She broke off, controlling her anger. She leaned on her elbows; the scoop of her blouse slackened; I could see the deep firm line between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. to have killed herself, or if she hadn't, someone-" She broke off, controlling her anger. She leaned on her elbows; the scoop of her blouse slackened; I could see the deep firm line between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"If you want to know the truth, Gracie was dippy. Pure dippy."

"You mean crazy?"

"I mean crazy. Crazy with love for Roger, and crazy she couldn't marry him. That's what sent her off the deep end."

"What happened?"

"She was supposed to marry Roger. Then Mrs. Everdeen revoked the banns. That's what drove Gracie crazy, because her mother wouldn't let her marry Roger."

"Why didn't she want her to marry him? Wasn't he good enough for her?"

"He was a Penrose! Lived just off the Common. Roger was poor, but the Everdeens never were any great account in the Coombe. People think the Penroses are-" She touched her temple. "But in this case it was the other way around. Gracie's brains went to pudding."

"How?"

"Lord, Roger'd picked her for Corn Maiden. That was an honor. What did she do? She tossed the honor back in all our faces, the little fool. Nothing she wouldn't do to shock people or make them think ill of her, she who had everything, Roger included. Know what she did on Agnes Fair? Roger was shinnying up the pole on the Common, and there goes Gracie up the flagpole in front of the post office in about the same time. They wasn't watching the Harvest Lord then, let me tell you; they were watching her. Then, when Roger was wrestling, out comes Gracie from the platform and throws a hammer lock on him and tosses him to the ground in front of the whole village. The Corn Maiden putting down the Harvest Lord? She was crazy, I tell you. Then she marches up to old man Deming and curses him out, swearing like a trooper. It wasn't any wonder she ran off, after that."

"And you were Corn Maiden in her place."

"Yes. I was. And I'd be again, if I could. Sophie Hooke, for heaven's sakes. Why, she and Justin are married married. That's not right. I don't think that's right. n.o.body does." She reached for my gla.s.s. I did not release it immediately and I could feel the light tracery of her nail against the back of my hand.

"What're we talking about Gracie for? People'd like to stop thinking about her, if they ever could. You're got good hands. Nice fingers. Long. I guess that means you're an artist." She was rubbing her fingertips over the dark hairs. "Nice," she said in a husky voice.

"Nice?" I let go the gla.s.s. She took it to the sink and put some ice cubes in.

"Nice. I mean, sitting around my kitchen. It's not often I have gentry sitting at my house." The cat stirred again as she poured two stiff fingers from the stone jug and brought the gla.s.s back, bending over my shoulder to place it on the table. I could smell her scent, not just the perfume but the whole womanly, feminine scent of her. I looked up, felt her hair brush across my eyes. I started to turn away; she leaned insistently and the red mouth came closer, the lips moist, parted. She kissed me. I slid an arm around her neck and held her mouth to mine. I released her in confusion, and she shuddered, burying her lips in my shirt collar, then stepping away. "I knew," she murmured, and her head nodded as though in private conversation. "I knew."