Harvest Home Part 27

She gave me one of her best smiles. "Lovely day, Ned, isn't it the love loveliest? And tonight will be one of the most exciting- see the bonfire we're going to have."

"Mrs. Buxley, what's happened to Worthy?"

"Worthy? Pett Pettinger? Why, nothing." She wrinkled her eyebrows. "Worthy's left."

"Left?"

She nodded, arranging the neckline of her dress. "Mrs. Zee drove him over to the turnpike to catch the bus. He's gone to New York. At least he said said he was going to New York." She gave a little shrug. "Of course, one never knows what the young people are going to do these days, does one?" he was going to New York." She gave a little shrug. "Of course, one never knows what the young people are going to do these days, does one?"

"He simply left?"

She threw her gloved hands out palms up. "Simply. Ewan Deming had a little talk with him. I think he rather reprimanded Worthy. Set him straight, so to speak. Then he let Mrs. Zee drive him to the bus. Isn't it strange about the sheep?"

"The sheep?"

"Yes. See-they're gone. Amys has put them to fold. A sure sign winter's coming. Whenever the sheep are gone, I know it's time to get out my fur coat. Hope you've got plenty of warm clothes-our winters can be terrible. One year the snow was five foot high right here on the-Ned? Are you all right?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Suddenly you looked-well-" We crossed to the far sidewalk in front of the church, where she gave me her arm to help her onto the first step. "Thank you." She let out a little laugh, as if we were wicked. "See you in church." Waggled fingers, went on up the steps, patted the bell ringer's shoulder as he sat knitting. "Pretty colors, Amys." Went inside. colors, Amys." Went inside.

He gave her a look and plied his needles.

"Been here all morning, Amys?"

"All mornin'."

"Did you see Worthy Pettinger leave?"

"Ayuh. Old Deming gave him what-for; then Mrs. Zee drove him off in his car."

"Did he have a suitcase?"

"Ayuh." He began counting st.i.tches. I went a little distance down the sidewalk and turned in to the cemetery, made my way up the slope through the maze of headstones, and stood on the knoll, thinking.

Then I quickly left and went down to the library, where I asked the librarian to find me a particular volume of the Farmer's Almanac Farmer's Almanac. When my theory had been corroborated, I thanked her and left. Margie Perkin's head hung out the window of the beauty parlor as she chatted with Betsey c.o.x, the bank teller, below. On the other side of the Common, the perpetual checker game at the firehouse was interrupted while Merle Penrose and Harry Gill stood in the doorway watching Mrs. Brucie come out of the grocer's and go into the drugstore. Jim Minerva tied a corncob on a stick and jammed it in the top of the bonfire pile. A cheer arose from among the onlookers, and Mrs. Buxley, who had brought Mr. Buxley out onto the church steps, waggled her fingers. Directly across the way, at the post office, Tamar Penrose came to see what the applause was about.

I stared moodily at the autumn sky, as blue as it had been in August, in June. I recalled the morning of the Agnes Fair, walking down Penrose Lane, pledging myself to the earth, thinking how right it all felt, how we would find our places in Cornwall Coombe. You folks be happy here You folks be happy here, said the Widow Fortune; That's all you've got, each other, and bein' happy together. That's all you've got, each other, and bein' happy together.

My jaw clamped. I felt aloof, apart, a stranger. Who was I? Who were they? The villagers of Cornwall Coombe; and I an alien, an outsider, never to be an insider. But I no longer cared to be. They were altered, and so was I. All I wanted now was -suddenly I wanted terribly to see Beth, to talk to her.

Tamar went back into the post office. The back room was empty now. Worthy had gone. He hadn't cared much, after all; had left without saying goodbye. When you came down to it, he wasn't any different from the rest.

Myrtil Clapp came out of the post office, followed by Tamar, who locked the door and went toward her house. I stood on the knoll, thinking about Justin Hooke. Why had he lied? I kept wondering. Why would Justin Hooke tell me a deliberate lie?

I went down the back slope and stepped over the iron fence. The marshy ground squished under me, filling with water. I shoved a branch into the earth. It drove in easily and when I pulled it out the hole filled immediately. The place wasn't a grave; it was a bog.

Amys was watching me from above. I climbed up and stood beside him.

"Wet down there," he commented. "Good land if they'd drain 'er. 'Bout run out of room up here. Don't know where I'll put the next one that kicks the bucket."

"Why don't they drain that land?"

"Wouldn't pay. She'll wet up like that again."

"When it floods."

"Ayuh."

"Amys, what's Justin Hooke hiding?"

"How can I tell? I ain't Justin Hooke."

"Grace Everdeen didn't kill herself."

"She didn't?"

"No. At least not by jumping off the Lost Whistle. Justin says she dashed herself on the rocks, because the river was low that year. Only it wasn't. There'd been a flood that spring. You said yourself that the winter before Gracie came back was a bad one. Snow five feet deep, people had to tunnel, some of your sheep died. There was a thaw, and then the river flooded. The river was high all that summer, just like this year. The drought-the Great Waste-came after after Gracie died, not Gracie died, not before before. So there weren't any rocks. Justin's lying." I paused, looked closely at Amys, then said, "And if it was flooded like this, you couldn't have dug a grave for her."

He turned away slightly, examining his h.o.r.n.y palms.

"Amys? She's not there, is she?"

He did not reply immediately, and when he did it was with difficulty. "No, sir."

"You never buried her, did you?"

"Yes, sir. I did. Mr. Deming said to dig and I dug. But it was all mud, and water three inches deep in the bottom. Fast as I bailed 'er out, water seeped in again. Only a cold man like Ewan Deming'd consign the unhappy dead to such a place. I told him it was wrong. Deming said, 'Fill 'er in.' When the elders left, I pulled out the box and hid it, then filled in the hole. That night I put her on my barrow and took her where she'd be dry and safe." He turned with a pleading look, his eyes watering. "In the name of G.o.d, don't tell. Please- they'll-"

"I won't, don't worry. What did you do with her?"

He looked once again down the slope to the grave marker, then motioned me with his head. I followed him across the Common to Penance House and out back to the barn. He took me behind it to where the sheds were, and, beyond them, the hatchway dug into the ground. Glancing over his shoulder, he crouched at the doors and undid the lock securing the chain.

Three beams set into the earth served as steps. In the musty dimness, I could make out the earthen sides of a small room lined with bare shelves where roots and vegetables had once been stored for winter use. Along the far wall, I saw a long, dark shape, shrouded by some kind of covering. Amys drew back a dusty tarpaulin and I looked down on the coffin of Gracie Everdeen.

"It's dry as the Sahara down here," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Never gets no water, never no rain nor snow. There she lies- the last of sweet Gracie."

The pine box rested on two sawhorses, and the boards were badly warped and shrunken, so that there were wide s.p.a.ces between them.

"Weren't you afraid someone would find out she's here?"

"n.o.body comes down here. I got the only key."

"It's not a very big box, is it?"

"No, sir."

"But Gracie was a tall girl, wasn't she?"

"But pretty," he said quickly. "Gracie was pretty as a picture."

"I remember you said so."

He shook out the tarpaulin, raising a cloud of dust, and I helped him redrape the box. He leaned to smooth a corner, and as he stepped back the toe of his shoe caught on a sawhorse leg, sliding it from under the coffin. The end tilted, then hit the floor with a dry, wooden impact. He bent quickly and lifted the end again, replacing it on top of the sawhorse. As he straightened the tarp again, I saw something underneath, a small pile of some substance on the floor. While I watched, it grew larger, a small cone filling out on the sides like sand in the bottom of an hourgla.s.s. I knelt, looking closer. Overhead a faint trickle still continued through a crack where the coffin boards were shrunk apart. I caught them in my palm, brought them nearer.

Corn kernels.

Small, infinitesimally shriveled seeds of corn. I moved to the head of the box, motioned Amys to the foot, and together we lifted it. Another trickle of corn fell from the bottom. We shook the box, heard inside the dry rattle as more seeds sifted down, shook it until almost all the kernels had come out, until I was utterly certain there was nothing left inside, that for fourteen years this coffin had contained not the remains of Gracie Everdeen but only a sack of corn.

Requiescat in pace, Grace Everdeen.

But where was she resting? Why the carved inscription, the monument, the false grave?

With a sketch pad open on my knee, I sat on my folding stool, drawing the pear tree under the side window at the Hooke farm. As I laid out on the page the framework of the bare branches, I was reminded of the chestnut trees in the Tuileries in Paris, whose branches are cut back every autumn to grow again in the spring. I was trying very hard to think about Paris, and about anything that might keep me from thinking of what I did not want to think about.

I had not seen either Justin or Sophie when I came, nor were any of the men I had seen on former visits working on the premises. Justin's El Camino was parked near the barn, and there was bedding hung out to air.

I found it difficult to concentrate on my work, and presently it became even harder, for I heard voices coming from the open upstairs window.

"Don't, Sophie. Don't let anyone see you like this." There was a pause, then again the low rumble of Justin's voice as he murmured something. Then, "You love me," he said.

"Yes."

"Then it's enough. For me, it's enough. If we can have a child, it will be raised as we have wished it, and that will be enough, too."

Her murmured response signified nothing to me.

"In the old ways," Justin said. "Trust them. Sophie?"

"Yes."

"Trust them." Another pause. "And tomorrow, when we go to the Common-"

"I don't want want to go to the Common-" to go to the Common-"

"We must. We must be there for them. When the bell strikes twelve, we must be there. You will behave as is fitting. Otherwise they'll hate you. You'll spend the rest of your life being hated, like-"

"Don't." I saw a flash at the half-open window as Sophie pa.s.sed. She whispered something, and I dropped my head down over my sketchbook.

Justin called, "How's it going down there?"

"Fine." I nodded up to him; he lowered the sash and drew the shade. Soon I could hear them in the kitchen, talking in normal tones again, amid the rattle of silverware and the clink of china. Then something fell and broke, and Sophie was crying again; I heard her running upstairs. In a moment, Justin came out the kitchen door and down the steps. I returned to my work as he crossed the drive and stood beside me; from upstairs came the sounds of Sophie's sobbing.

Justin shoved his hands in his pockets. "Spilt milk." He drew a long breath. "She broke the cow pitcher." Making no comment about the drawing of the tree, he wandered a short distance away and stood at the edge of the field, looking off. He took his key ring from his pocket and jingled it, his hands clasped behind his back. He ran his fingers through his hair, then recrossed the drive.

"Well, I've got to get going."

I looked up. "See you tonight?"

"Kindling Night." He shook his head. "I don't think we'll be there. We've seen lots of Kindling Nights." He glanced at my page. "Nice tree. You're a good artist." He was holding out his hand. I rose and took it. "Goodbye, Ned," he said simply. I watched him walk to the truck, get in, and drive out around the other side of the house.

I moved my stool closer to the tree, making a few detail notes of the bark and tips. Then I heard something behind me and turned to find Sophie looking over my shoulder.

"Hi, Sophie."

"h.e.l.lo, Ned. That's a beautiful drawing. How is the painting?"

I said the tree was the last thing to go in, and I would have it finished by tomorrow noontime. "If you and Justin are coming in, you can pick it up, if you like."

"Yes. Noon." She nodded absently, and I could see she was thinking of something else. She went to the tree and put out her hand, running her fingertips along one of the branches. "They never bear fruit, you know."

"Don't they?"

"No. Just leaves and flowers. I suppose that's why G.o.d gave them to us, just to be beautiful." She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again it was with a forced control. "Ned, could you do something for me?"

"Sure, Sophie."

"Could you make it spring?"

"Spring?"

"Yes. Paint the tree in spring. Not with the bare branches, but with flowers. Make the tree all white and flowery. With little green leaves?"

"Well-" It had been part of the design of the picture that the branches be bare, the simple straight lines meant to play off the simple straight figure of Justin. I did not like the idea of putting in the flowers, particularly white ones; they would make the picture too pretty.

She saw my hesitation and smiled. "That's all right. It was just an idea." She turned away quickly and her hand came up and furtively brushed at one eye. I observed her as she stepped away to the tree and stood looking at the bare branches.

"Sophie, did you know Grace Everdeen?"

There was a quick, quivering motion about her shoulders as though a cold wind had touched her. "No."

"But you'd heard of her."

Still, head lowered, she looked at the lower trunk of the tree. "Yes." Her face was turned from me; I got up and approached her, saw her hand break off a dead twig from a branch. Her shoulders stiffened, her chin lifted. "She was bad. Grace Everdeen was bad. The baddest anyone could be. Bad -brought bad to the village-" Speaking by rote, as if hypnotized.

"How?"

Her eyes snapped, the color rose in her cheeks. "She came back for Harvest Home. She shouldn't have. She was blighted blighted."

"What had blighted her?"

"She was diseased diseased! That's why she ran away, so n.o.body would know. She never should have come back."

Diseased. Not pregnant, but diseased. Amys had said she was a fairy creature, Mrs. O'Byrne had said a horse.

"No one wants a Corn Maiden who's sick." Sophie's hands trembled at her breast. "Grace Everdeen was cursed by G.o.d. As I am cursed." She covered her face to hide the tears. "Jesus help me." She tore her hands away from her wet cheeks and looked at me, crying, "Help me!"

"How, Sophie? Tell me. I'll help you."