Harvest Home Part 3

"You're an early riser," she said briskly.

"'Carpe diem,'" I quoted, watching where I walked.

"Can't speak French," she replied; the merry twinkle in her eye told me she knew it wasn't French.

"'Seize the day,'" I translated.

"It's the early mornin' that's got the gold in its mouth, as they say. I like to be up before all the trammel starts."

When she spoke, it was with a firm authority, a distinct voice that knew what things were about. Listening, she had a gentle, luminous expression, humorous but not mocking.

"Beth sent you some cinnamon buns for breakfast." I nodded toward the back-porch steps.

"Well, now, that's neighborly. I've got the kettle on; let me put the cow to pasture, and you'll come and have a cup of tea with me." It sounded less an invitation than a command performance, and I found myself nodding in accord. Her step was spry as I followed her along a footworn path to the barn, where she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, herding a large brown-and-white cow into a small pasture, carefully setting in the fence bar to keep the animal out of the corn.

"Brown Swiss." She spoke with a touch of pride, explaining that the cow, whose name was Caesar's Wife, was descended from the first herd of Brown Swiss brought from Switzerland to New England almost three centuries before. Caesar's Wife was the Widow's treasure.

She led me back the way we had come, stopping to stir the boiling pot with a large wooden paddle. "Hog," she said briefly, and I watched the pieces of meat and fat rise to the surface. "One of Irene Tatum's. Slaughtered it myself last week. Most mysterious thing! Hog had two stomachs, if you can believe it." She gave me a look. "Guess what I found in one of 'em? A collar b.u.t.ton." Her look sharpened, as though testing me. "Wouldn't you call that an augury?"

"I guess I might," I said, laughing.

"Sure you would. Anybody would. But what sort?" she asked in a dismayed voice, looking at the sky again. The pig, she went on, had been put down for salt pork, and she had made sausage with her own casings. The leavings went for blood puddings, and now all that remained was the head which was boiling in the pot; that would be for sc.r.a.pple.

She pulled out the paddle, shook it, and laid it aside. Now she took a splint basket from a peg on the wall and marched to a corner of the garden where she began examining her plants.

"Only a minute," she called, snipping several sprigs with the large silver shears suspended from her waist by a length of black ribbon. Someone was sure to have iced tea at the fair, she said as I came up behind her, and a sprig of mint always went nice. She held it out for me to inhale its cool fragrance, then cut some more and offered me another sniff; "Pennyroyal. Good for colic." When she had done, she led me to the back door, took off her boots, and coaxed her feet into the worn shoes. Enjoining me to wipe my feet, she showed me into the kitchen. She laid the basket on the table and indicated a chair where I might be seated. While I put aside my sketchbook and drawing case, she tucked the cinnamon buns in the warming oven, put out a second cup and saucer beside the one already in evidence, poured tea, brought b.u.t.ter from the refrigerator, and a pot of honey.

The kitchen was low-ceilinged, small, and comfortable, and furnished with the clutter of a lifetime. One counter, on which sat a score of green bottles, with a scattering of corks and labels, was a small bottling works. Another held several shallow crocks whose contents looked as if they had only recently come from the oven: the blood puddings she had spoken of. A large tin kettle bubbled merrily on the stove. She spooned some of its contents up, blew on it, then tasted. It was not to her apparent liking, for she made a face, then bustled about, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, until the brew was more to her satisfaction.

"How's your family?" she asked, pursuing these small homely details.

"Fine." I noticed her hands, large working hands, yet marked by their own simple grace, shapely, tapering fingers and smooth oval nails. "Except for Kate-she's been having asthma attacks."

"I know. Asthma." She spoke the word sharply, marking such a condition with her personal disdain. "That child oughtn't to have asthma." She took out the buns and set them on a plate before me. "Help yourself." Her nimble fingers separated the small harvest of herbs in the basket, tying them in bunches and hanging them from nails set into the edge of a shelf over the sink. Everywhere were jars and other containers, filled with various herbs, stalks, blossoms, seeds-what appeared to be an entire pharmacopoeia of country cures. "What's that used for?" I inquired, sniffing at the kettle on the stove which gave off an aromatic, almost exotic essence.

"For what ails you."

I wondered if she was bottling the concoction to sell at the fair, medicine-show style. As though reading my mind, she explained that she did a satisfactory back-door business; hardly a soul in the village didn't stop by one time or another for one of her herbal infusions.

Her eye fell on my sketchbook. "How's the paintin' comin'?" I a.s.sured her I was working hard at it, and had a New York gallery swindled into handling my work.

"You any good?"

"Probably not."

"You're a liar." She beamed behind her gla.s.ses. "Let me see." She leafed through the book, murmuring approval; then uttered a little gasp as her hand flew to her breast. I saw she had come upon the page of tombstones I had drawn yesterday. "My, my, 'course you're good. Dear me. Clemmon's stone." Gazing at the rendering of the grave marker, she seemed a trifle overwrought. "Aye, there's where dear Clem sleeps." Closing the sketchbook, she set it aside, and took the chair opposite me, stirring her tea with a small silver spoon. "Clem bought me these cups the year we was married. The whole set, and not a one broken, not even a chip." She lifted the cup, staring thoughtfully at it for a moment, then sipped. "How long you folks been married?"

"Seventeen years next June."

"That's a good time. Must be prett' near settled in each other's ways by now. Marryin's good, keeps a body on his toes. Me, once I lost Clem, I never cared to wed again."

I watched her peering through the window at the great cookpot in the dooryard, following with her eye the trail of white smoke as it rose in the air. "Straight up," I heard her mutter, "we'll have a nice fair."

She turned back. "Your place seems to be comin' along, don't it? You got a good man there in Bill Johnson."

"Did have." I explained about Bill's imminent departure.

"Why, he didn't say nothin' to me 'bout goin' to Las Vegas." She sounded surprised and a little miffed that Bill had not taken her into his confidence. "You'll be needin' another, won't you?"

"It's not easy getting help around here, with everyone thinking about the corn crop."

"Things'll slack off a bit now before harvest." Her heavy tread caused the floorboards to give as she got up and tied one of the puddings in waxed paper and slipped it into the sack I had brought the buns in. "Got to drop this off to Justin Hooke's. He's partial to blood puddin's."

Justin Hooke, I had learned, was the tall plowman we had seen in the field the day we first arrived in Cornwall Coombe. Owner of the most prosperous farm in the community, he was generally regarded with a mixture of awe, respect, and benevolence. His wife's name was Sophie, and their union had been one the entire village looked upon fondly. Justin must have been a decided favorite of the Widow's, for now she placed another pudding in the basket.

"How'd you like that tea?" she demanded, producing a box from the shelf. "Weber's English. It's a One-B Weber, not a Two-B. I mail to London after it. Ever hear of Fortnum & Mason?" I said I had. "That's where. Fancy store. They don't seem t'carry One-B Weber's tea in America."

I carried my cup to the sink, washed and rinsed it, and started for the door.

"Off so soon?" She laid a large quilt beside the basket.

I thanked her, and said I planned on hiking out to the Lost Whistle Bridge to make some drawings. Remembering what I had come for, I gave her the five dollars for eggs and honey. She pocketed it and said she was going out Lost Whistle way herself, if I cared to ride along. "Worthy ought to be here any moment to hitch up the buggy. Unless you prefer shanks' mare."

Again I had the feeling of command, rather than suggestion. But, yes, I replied, I'd be happy for the ride. She excused herself, saying she must ready herself for the fair, then left me, and I heard her going up the stairs and pa.s.sing overhead.

I wandered back out into the dooryard. Chickens and geese pecked at random among the rows of pole beans. In the distance the church bell sounded eight sonorous peals. Hearing a noise behind me, I looked to see someone pedaling a bicycle down the drive. I recognized Worthy Pettinger, who delivered the morning paper.

"Morning," he called.

I returned the greeting and walked to meet him. "Morning, Worthy."

"Sorry I'm late this morning, Mr. Constantine. Ma's frazzled today over the fair." He gave an energetic nod and his smile was bright as he took a paper from the handlebar basket and folded it. He was of high-school age, thin and lanky, with handsome, well-boned features, and a bright, eager smile; a thoroughly ingratiating young man. An industrious one as well; one could always see Worthy mowing someone's lawn or chopping in a woodpile or planting a garden.

"Worth-ee?" A second-story window had flown up and the Widow's head popped out. "Hitch up the mare and don't dawdle." She popped back in. "Oh, dear," came her disembodied voice, "now where in the nation's my brooch?"

Worthy kicked down the metal stand and leaned his bike on it, then deposited the newspaper on the steps. I ambled along behind while he went into the stable and led the little mare out. "Hey, old girl, hey, old girl," he said cheerily as he slipped the bit in her mouth and adroitly maneuvered her into the traces. He brought the harness, hooked it up, and hitched the leads into the shafts, all in a matter of seconds.

"You seem to keep pretty busy," I observed, admiring his dexterity.

"Yes, sir. Plenty of work hereabouts, if a fellow cares to do it. I'm trying to make enough money to go to agricultural college next fall. There's still a lot that farmers don't know about growin' corn, even if they'd have you think otherwise. Organic, that's the thing." He spoke in a buoyant, forthright manner. "I figure by different planting methods you could maybe double the yield of corn. Good land around here, but people don't take advantage of it. There's machines that'll do the work of ten men, with time to spare, for plowing and sowing, harvesting-everything." He spoke to me confidentially: "I got a tractor." I gathered from his tone this was a treasure on a par with the Widow's cow. "It's a beauty. I can take the whole motor apart and put it back together again, and she works just fine." He spoke in such a secretive, guarded tone that I decided having a tractor in Cornwall must be a daring enterprise indeed.

"Why don't the other farmers have them?"

"Not allowed. Machinery'll put the small farmer out of business, and we're sort of all in it together. But tractors could be the salvation of the whole town, them and harrows-"

"Shame on you, Worthy! Are you preachin' sedition, then?" The Widow had appeared in the doorway, waiting while the boy led the horse and buggy to her. "Here's a bun. Eat. You look thin."

She had changed her work clothes for an elegant, full-skirted black dress, with a long black alpaca ap.r.o.n over it. Her white hair was carefully brushed and pinned up in a knot, and neatly covered by a snowy cap with a ruffled edge, the strings hanging down either side of her chin. The missing brooch adorned her ample bosom.

"Thanks, Widow." Worthy picked up the paper and exchanged it for the bun.

"Don't thank me, thank the mister's missus-she made 'em. Drat that newspaper, I don't know why I spend the money. Nothin' but rape and murder and higher taxes." She flung the paper aside and went into the kitchen, reappearing in a moment with her basket and quilt, and a small valise made of worn black leather. She kept a watchful eye until Worthy stowed all this safely under the seat.

"Drat, forgot my shears." Again she disappeared, returning with her waist girdled by the black ribbon from which hung the silver shears, looking as though they were the companions of her life. She took the flowers from the bucket, wrapped their dripping ends in part of the discarded newspaper, and added these to the other things that had already been loaded. Thus fitted and accoutered, she gave the boy her hand while he aided her ascent into the buggy seat. "Did I remember to turn off the stove? Worthy, run and look." She turned to me. "See how a good-lookin' man like yourself fl.u.s.ters an old lady." She indicated the place beside her, I took it, she picked up the reins and gee'd the mare, turning the buggy in a wide arc so the wheels slid into one of the herb beds. "h.e.l.l's bells, there's my fennel ruined. Worth-ee?" She dropped the reins and waited for rescue. Worthy flew down the steps and led the mare from the dooryard onto the drive, smiling good-naturedly. "Think you'd never driven a buggy, Widow," he said, returning the reins to her. "Maybe you'd better break down and buy yourself a car."

"What should I do with one of them infernal contraptions? All smoke and noise and gas-eatin'. Better a horse that eats hay. Clem gave me this buggy for a weddin' present, and I'll be buried before it is." She flipped the reins, the mare started forward, but she immediately pulled up. "I was forgettin'. Worthy, Mr. Constantine here's goin' to need some help around his place. Bill Johnson's takin' himself out to Las Vegas for the gamblin'. Think you might find some time to lend a hand?" She fixed him with a look behind her spectacles.

"What kind of work, Mr. Constantine?" I explained about the skylight in the studio, and the terrace wall. He agreed to come at the first opportunity and see what might be done, then sped off on his paper route.

"He seems like a good kid," I offered conversationally, grateful for the Widow's concern in my difficulties.

"Aye, Worthy's a likely lad. Good as they come and better'n most. He's cheerful and obligin' and he's handy. He'll make a good farmer one of these days." I said I thought it ambitious of him to want to go to agriculture school. She did not reply immediately, but sat considering the matter. When she spoke, it was with a thoughtful tone. "He's only makin' trouble for himself. Folks won't take to newfangled ways around here. He's got his heart set on goin' away to school, but his father en't about to let him. Him nor his mother both."

I expressed surprise that parents would stand in the way of a child's wanting to better himself. The Widow shook her head. "I s'pose it sounds small to you. But you have to understand folks around here. They're set in their ways and it'd take one of them atomic bombs to move 'em. Worthy, now, he's different. Always has been. I midwifed him and I've seen him growin' up spirited. Needs a bit of cautionin' now and then, but he'll do fine. They're the hope of the world, the young. Your girl, now, Kate. Is she takin' to our country ways? Does she seem happy?"

I said yes to both questions, and she continued to query me, a catechism that I decided stemmed from her sympathetic interest in Kate's asthmatic condition. What did she eat? How many hours of sleep did she get a night? Had she ever been allergic before? What kind of exercise, and how much? Was she subject to fits of temperament or melancholy?

"She's an only child, now, en't she? Sometimes an only child'll take on sicknesses a child with brothers and sisters never gets."

I explained that while we had both hoped desperately for more children, Beth had suffered obstetrical complications and Kate's delivery had been enormously difficult. I did not tell her, however, that secretly I harbored the fear that my adult case of mumps had left me sterile, and that it might be my fault, not Beth's, that we'd had no other children.

The Widow's questions next focused on Beth, an only child herself. And me, she wanted to know, had I brothers and sisters? No, I said, though Greeks often had large families.

"Fertile, yes." She tilted her head at a quizzical angle, as though sizing me up. Her eyes twinkled as she said, "Beware of Greeks, don't they say?"

"Only if they come bearing gifts."

"Which you have-cinnamon buns. Wily folk, the Greeks. Look how they come in the night with a hollow horse to tumble the walls of Ilium."

"I'm not out to tumble the walls of Cornwall Coombe."

"Never knew the joys of children myself," she went on. "Still, every last boy and girl in the village is mine, in a way. I like to watch 'em from my parlor window, see 'em rompin' down the street. I rap my thimble on the pane and wave; they wave back but they keep goin'." I felt her gruff, crusty air hid the loneliness she must have experienced during the long years of her widowhood. In another moment, she startled me by reaching out and patting my hand. "You folks be happy, hear? That's all you've got, each other, and bein' happy together." I was about to murmur acknowledgment when the Widow called briskly, "Mornin', Tamar. Mornin', Missy."

Skirts hiked up, her bare legs showing, the postmistress was sitting on a porch glider, braiding her little girl's hair. The child eluded her and, carrying a ragged-looking doll, came down the walk to the picket gate and watched us pa.s.s. Framed by the red braids, her elf's face was milky pale, pinched, and drawn-looking, and her large, washed-out eyes contemplated us with the dull-witted, curiously vague expression that can come of closely bred bloodlines.

"Horsy, Missy." Slowing the buggy, the Widow jounced on the seat, making a to-do of the mare, causing it to bob its head and jingle its harness. The child made no reply, but only continued gazing at us. "Goin' to pick a good sheep today, Missy? There's a girl." The old woman's voice was friendly and hearty, and she gave a little nod of satisfaction. I had the sensation the child was staring not at her or at the horse but at me, and I felt unaccountably ill at ease as I looked back at the pale milky face, with its spate of reddish freckles over the bridge of the nose.

Her mother called from the porch, "Missy, come make p.o.o.poo." Before obeying, the child turned, still clutching the ragged doll; again I felt the same odd sensation that the look was in some significant way directed toward me. As we pa.s.sed on, I casually inquired of the Widow if it was true that Missy Penrose could tell the future. The old lady gave another nod; Missy had strange powers, of that there was no doubt. It was the freckles, she said, two dozen of them, rather in the shapes of the constellation Orion, with its two great stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel. These markings were the stars of her face, a kind of cosmos printed there, and as men might read the mysteries of those stars, so it had been given to the child to read other mysteries.

I continued thinking of the star-speckled face and the deep nature of Missy Penrose, and we rode in silence to the end of Main Street, where the Common lay before us, dotted with tall, spreading trees, the church steeple gleaming in the bright morning light. There was the bell in the tower, the great face of the clock below, and beside the open vestibule doors, old Amys Penrose, the bell ringer, dozing in a chair. On the Common, the green of the gra.s.s and leaves was intensified by the clarity of the clean blue sky and the white canvas of the booths and tents that had been set up for the Agnes Fair, with gay pennants fluttering from their peaks. All seemed in readiness for the day's events: livestock enclosures had been put up, chairs and long tables had been set out for people to eat at, and three tall shafts had been dug into the ground for the shinnying contest.

The idly grazing sheep baaed as we stopped at the churchyard, where the Widow made her way to her husband's grave and arranged her fresh flowers, then stood silently with head bowed.

I walked to the top of the knoll and looked down the backward slope to where the churchyard ended, bounded by the iron railing. Beyond it was the untended plot, with its marker almost obliterated by weeds and growth. Again I wondered about Grace Everdeen, whose remains lay under the forlorn tombstone, and why she had been forbidden the company of the other village dead.

I turned back.

Head still bent, the Widow was speaking: "Well, Clem, things are lookin' fine for fair day. Now all we can hope for is the right choosin'." She angled her head as though awaiting reply. I moved away, affording her a larger measure of privacy for this genial dialogue between the quick and the dead, which for some reason seemed to me a perfectly natural thing.

At length she broke off, raised her head, and, catching my eye, smiled. She came toward me, stopping at one point to look down at another headstone.

"Well, Loren, well," she murmured, stooping to pinch off a flower whose stem was broken. "Loren's gone, too, and that's in the manner of things. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh."

I looked down at the stone.

The inscription read: Loren McCutcheon Who Hoped but Failed Age 28 "How did he die?" I asked.

"Of drink."

"At twenty-eight?"

"'Twa'n't the drink so much-but the fall he took while drinkin'. Slipped off the barn in the night."

I was about to ask what misfortunes had caused the unknown Grace Everdeen's exile, but the Widow, giving short shrift to the dear departed, lifted her skirts and marched from the cemetery, shears swinging on their ribbon.

The street was quiet and deserted, except for the postmistress, who came along the sidewalk on the far side, leading her daughter, Missy, by the hand. When she got to the post office, she turned the child toward the grazing sheep, gave her a pat on the bottom, and sent her off, then unlocked the post-office door and went inside. The child ambled across the roadway and onto the Common, where she slowly made her way among the flock.

Meanwhile the Widow, hands planted on hips, was surveying the old bell ringer, still dozing in the sunshine.

"He's a codger, Amys." She chuckled and accepted my hand as I a.s.sisted her into her seat. "Forty years our s.e.xton and still he don't hold with Agnes Fair. Nor much of anything, if it comes to that." She clucked up the mare and the buggy rolled onto the roadway. "Good Missy," she called to the child, who did not look up but only stared at the sheep as they moved around her, their bells making a pleasant tinkling sound. The Widow snapped the reins on the mare's flanks, a swarm of flies arose, and the horse stepped out at a smart pace, back the way we had come, heading out the country end of Main Street.

5.

"How'd you come by that wart there?"

She had handed me the reins and now she brought my hand closer to her spectacles to examine the growth on my finger. I explained about the pressure from my brushes, and said I'd been meaning to see a doctor about it.

"Ha! You do that. Old Doc Bonfils over to Saxony. Maybe he'll rid you of it-maybe he won't. What you need is a little red bag-that'll take care of your wart, and then some."

"Little red bag?"

She laid her finger alongside her nose and closed one eyelid. "What we call the Cornwall cure. We'll see to it," she added mysteriously, giving me back my hand.

We were proceeding along the winding road, called the Old Sallow Road, which leads to Soakes's Lonesome and the Lost Whistle Bridge. In the east the sun rose higher in a sky already pure cerulean. The corn grew tall on either side of the road, and when I commented that the year promised a good crop, the Widow agreed.

"I knew t'would be. I been listenin' all summer to the corn a-growin'. Oh yes sir, you can hear it all right. You come out with me one night next year-don't smile, I'm not talkin' about country matters-and you'll hear it too. The softest rustle of leaf, soft as fairies' wings, and you know them stalks is stretchin' up to the sky, the ta.s.sels is length'nin', the ears is bit by bit gettin' fatter, till you can hear their husks pop. That's somethin', on a hot dark night, standin' by a cornpatch in the light o' the Mulberry Moon, and hearin' the corn grow. Then you can say the earth has returned the seed ten thousandfold."

She pointed upward. "See that blue sky now, that's G.o.d's sky. And up there in that vasty blue is G.o.d. But see how far away He is. See how far the sky. And look here, at the earth, see how close, how abiding and faithful it is. See this little valley of ours, see the bountiful harvest we're to have. G.o.d's fine, but it's old Mother Earth that's the friend to man."

And corn was king. Foolish folk, she continued, on a cold night might insist on burning their cobs in the fire. Burn corn? Never. Return the corn to the earth, bury it, then, when the plowman turned the furrow in the spring, the tilth would come up rich and dark against the shear, a fertile soil willing to bear generously for whatever hand was put to the harrow. Love the earth and it must love you back.