She kept back one ear of corn, went to the plowed field she had raced through earlier. There she gave a call and from the pond came an answering beat of wings. A Muscovy duck was flying up the hill. It circled Ellen, flapping to a halt at her feet, gathering its wings. Its red-wattled head was cocked to one side. She scattered the corn. “Why don’t you come to the barnyard and be tamed, you wild one?” It was watching her with a wary eye, eating the yellow grain greedily.
She looked off at the Kentucky farmland stretched before her. Orange clouds were assembling behind the brush line of tiny trees. The square fields were hemstitched with stone walls and rail fences. Near the barnyard a black gum was rearing gaunt limbs. When a crested redbird’s dark silhouette dipped through the fragrant orange air into its ragged branches, she was shaken by the sudden beauty. She turned quickly, saying to the feeding duck, “I don’t know. Seems I hate every enduring thing.”
She fed chickens that congregated in the stony yard. She filled their water bucket from the pump, watched the speckled hens dip their beaks and up their heads to let the water run down. She collected brown eggs in a fold of her dress, from boxes nailed along the cobwebbed wall. A hen pecked her wrist as she reached under it for heated eggs. The bird’s breast was hot, bare where it had plucked feathers to line its nest. “You’re broody. Sam’ll put you under the pump to break you up.”
She went up the stairs to the farm kitchen and counted the eggs into a basket. “The hens are laying good, Ma. I’m just one short of four dozen. I’ll trade them tomorrow at Love’s store.”
Maria Gaddy was turning from the stove. “I allow you can get me a length of lace too, Ellie. I need a new collar for mass. My old one’s sleazy.”
Ellen’s mother wore her gray-streaked hair in a tight knot. Her body was warped and thin and stiff. It had turned from what it might have been. Her breasts were flattened and she had swathed herself in a long-sleeved, high-necked print dress that came to her ankles. Her stockings were wrinkled above run-down button shoes. Maria lived in continual retreat. She had been given to her husband with the awesome dowry of fifteen hundred dollars. With it Anton had bought his rights to this farm from his only living brother, Garland. Maria spoke now, “Go get some new water, girl.”
* * * * *
Ellen emptied the blue-enameled pail into the sink. The kitchen was roomy. There was a kerosene stove for summer use and a huge range for winter heat and cooking. A black-painted iron sink stood at the side away from the windows. There was no running water but a drainpipe took away the waste. Fresh water was supplied by a well a hundred feet from the house, to which Ellen went. She drank from the dipper before returning. The family was proud that the water from this well was always sweet and cold. At the windowed end of the kitchen was a long table of red oak that had been dressed with ax and adz long ago by Anton’s father, Jules. The surface was whitened from lye-scrubbing, uneven from the years’ wear. On it was a blue dish of poplar honey, a bowl of salt, a milkglass jar of knives, forks and spoons stacked handles down. A pantry was adjacent to the kitchen, where staples were kept—sacks of flour and meal, curd cheeses that hung in cloths from the rafters, milk that stood in pans and jars to be skimmed, and cream that ripened in a churn. More supplies were stored in the cellar. There dusty shelves were holding jars of jelly, jam, ketchup, honey, red and yellow tomatoes, chard and collard greens, peaches, fried chicken and beef. On the lower shelves were tins of lard. From the ceiling dangled strings of dried apples and quinces. On the dirt floor of a bin, potatoes left from fall softened and rotted in the musty darkness. Root crops of salsify and parsnips lay neglected.
* * * * *
From the parlor came the familiar sound of Frankie practicing the piano, scales and exercises rippling. Ellen carried a can of kerosene from the porch where Sam had placed it to the parlor to replenish the lamps. Over the fireplace a velvet cloth was framed, on it depicted the Golgotha crucifixion in brilliant primary colors. An overstuffed sofa, Maria’s knitting basket at the end, was along one wall. The chairs included a doweled high-backed rocker. A round table bore on its lace-covered surface statuettes of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, a worn Bible, a lamp with painted forget-me-nots trimming the bowl, besides dog-eared farm journals, the 1925 _Farmer’s Comprehensive Almanac_, and a silver-banded reading glass. Braided rugs were scattered over the oak floor, once smoothed with broadax. On a wall was a tinted daguerreotype of a stunted wiry man with heavy chin and thick lips, Jules Gaddy. Beside him posed his red-haired wife Nell, whose long face, high forehead and determined mouth resembled her granddaughter Ellen’s. While Jules had been rearing this house, the couple had lived in an outbuilding that now served for a pigstall. Back of the piano hung a representation of the bleeding Sacret Heart. Nell Gaddy had placed it in that spot long years ago, saying to Jules, “Now there, little feist, it’ll stay.”
Frankie was lifting her hands from the keys, watching Ellen pour the coal oil. She swung her pointed boots as she sat at the bench, pursing her lips. “I’m making believe folks are swooning, Ellie. Because that piece I played was so good.” Frankie was fifteen. Her red hair fell silken on her shoulders, her blue eyes were mild.
“I declare, Frankie, you’re biggity. Go get washed. Pa’ll be in.”
The family were sitting to supper then, making the sign of the cross. Anton pronounced grace. When his daughters had been little, Anton had instructed them on the mealtime prayer. Once he said to Frankie, “Tonight you make the grace, Poppet.” But Frankie had lisped a rhyme she picked up in the parochial school.
Beans, beans, the musical fruit The more you eat the more you toot
Anton roared and the family had to get to their knees on the kitchen floor to ask the Lord God’s pardon for the blasphemy. Frankie had thrown up her supper later while Anton was talking to her. “You be a sinner, child. And the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate. So it’s said in the Bible.”
“Oh yes, Pa,” she had mewed like a kitten.
On their plates now they were piling garden greens cooked with fatback and then mixed with scrambled eggs. And chunks of beef from a platter, and green onions and radishes. They spread pot cheese on beaten biscuits, drank buttermilk kept cold in the old dry well beside the porch and pulled up at the last minute to set on the table. All the milk from their herd of cows went to the dairy for a monthly check, except a three-gallon can put aside daily for Maria’s needs. She set it out in pans for cream and made cheeses from the skimmed milk. The hogs got the whey mixed with scraps and middlings and dishwater. Anton would hold his fork in his left hand, pushing the food with a knife. But the two sisters copied their mother, forks held in the right. So Maria’s mam had told her the woman should eat.
“You make the butter up tonight, Ellie,” Maria was saying, “and take it along with the eggs tomorrow. I’ll give you some cheeses to trade, too. My last batch turned out proud.”
“I will, Ma.”
After supper, Ellen carried the churn of soured cream onto the steps. She turned the crank until butter came together in a lump. She poured the buttermilk into a stone jar and walked out to the well, the churn on one arm, the wood bowl and paddle on the other. The sun was beginning to set in a wash of red sky. She paused while it slipped distorted behind the trees. The sky was fading. A subdued light prevailed of twilight. Ellen sighed, torn by a vague melancholy. She was saying to the dog, “Seems I ne’er been so contented. And did you see that sign in the west? Good crop weather.” She pumped water into the churn, turned the dasher until the water that drained off appeared fresh drawn. Then she worked the butter with the paddle, folding and pressing. She spoke as if disputing with someone, “I love butter that’s made up proper.” One at a time bats that were peering restless from the loft of the barn across the way launched out and downward after night insects, then swerved into the treetops. Soon the air was busy with their bodies darting and zig-zagging and their squeaking high-pitched like mice. A cow lowed in the barnyard as it was kneeling, the alarm cry of a cock sounded as it was crowded off its roost, a gander hissed at a female barn rat that slunk along the wall.
Ellen returned to the kitchen, to press chunks of butter into a daisy mold and wrap the half-pound forms in sheets of brown paper. She carried them to the dry well and pulling up the bucket, packed them in and lowered it down to the cold region. Whenever she came out of doors, Jack would rise and follow her. When she returned to the house, he curled in the cool under the bushes.