She went into the parlor. A lamp was lit, the family sat in their accustomed places. Maria was knitting rapidly; the wood needles made dull clicks. She moved her lips occasionally, her eyes glancing sidewise. Anton’s squat figure dominated the room. He was smoking his nightly pipe, a farm journal unopened on his lap. Frankie brought him a terrarium she had made. In a glass bowl, a collection of bits of mosses and stones and a broken piece of mirror formed a minute scene. “Mandy York made one for her pa,” Frankie was telling him. “I noticed how it was done.”
The man’s heart beat strongly. “I’ll think a heap of it, Poppet. I’ll set it in the window of the bedroom where it’s shady.”
Ellen was leafing through the Bible. “Proverbs says here there are three things stately in their march, the lion and the greyhound and the he-goat. Hear that, Pa? It says the he-goat also.” No one looked her way. There were only the whispers of Anton drawing his pipe and Frankie polishing the glass bowl and Maria’s busy needles. Ellen dropped the book on the table abruptly. “Reckon I’ll go take a bath.”
In the half-dark kitchen she filled a kettle. She lit the kerosene burner and went to stand on the porch while it was heating. The meadows were flecked with fireflies, and along the stone foundations of the old house soft shadows sulked. Ellen was leaning against the porch rail. The summer dusk seeped through her nostrils, warming her blood unreasonably, almost to sadness. She took the tin wood-bottomed tub from its nail, went to the pump for more water. She threw her clothes aside, washed quickly, using the jellied homemade lye soap from the crock. She dried with a white towel from the porch clothesline. Dumping the water into the bushes and returning the tub to its hook, she ran naked up the dark stairs.
She shared the room at the head with her sister. The beds would stand in the center of the floor in winter, away from drafty corners. In summer they were moved to opposite ends, each under a small gable window. A trunk held schoolbooks, Catholic missals, rosaries and childhood miscellany. They folded their clothes into a low chest and hung their dresses from a pole under the slanted ceiling. She closed the door swiftly, breathing as though pursued. She knelt on the bed, arms on the open window sill. The moon was emerging as though pushed from the womb of a laboring earth. When Ellen put a hand up she felt tears on her cheeks, wondered at them. “Reckon I can’t bear for there to be such a fine sight.”
She was turning and groping in the chest for a nightgown. “Seems Pa always favors Frankie o’er me. Some way.” Soon she was sleeping. The moon without became canescent and utterly fair. Its colorless light coming through the window made sharp corners soft. It was like a pale rug on the girl.
She awoke from a dreamless sleep. “I nearly slept through.” She was putting on a dress, in haste. Jack, snuffling and leaping, met her at the door. She lit a lantern that hung from a bent nail, and ran barefoot toward the barnyard. A blank disk of moon was squatting above twisted trees. She stumbled over dry roots in the path and the lantern handle clanged, the sound harping on the night. In the woodshed she held the light high. The goat was in the corner by the wall, down in travail. She bleated to Ellen, who hooked the lantern on a rafter peg and opened the gate. The animal was straining again. The dog whined. Ellen turned on him. “Be still and lie down, Jack.”
The water bag appeared and burst. The doe staggered to her feet, trembling, head down, beard drooping. Uttering quick noises she was licking Ellen’s hand. Then she pawed the ground, urgent, folded her forelegs and went down again as the contractions came on. The nose of the kid appeared, a row of lower teeth visible through a filmy sack. It retreated, then appeared again. A foot came in sight beside the head. The doe bawled. “Holy Virgin,” Ellen was whispering, “help my dear.”
Penny arched her back, threw herself on her side with a guttural sound. Ellen grasped the forefoot, pulling until the leg and bulge of head emerged. Then of a sudden, the kid was slipping out in a pool, mouth gasping. With straw Ellen wiped the clinging mucus from its nostrils, gathered up the struggling limp body and placed it by Penny’s head. The dam began to clean it. Ellen looked under a caul-wet leg. “There. It’s what I wanted, a doe.” A thin wail stabbed the air as the kid protested Penny’s thorough cleansing. “I’ll run get your mash now.”
Ellen took the lantern and sped down the pathway spraying the darkness with yellow light. The dog ran after her. “Now I have three of my own, counting you, Jack.” She mixed wheat bran with hot water and molasses. When she returned with it, she was brought to a halt at the pen door. Another kid had been born, a white buckling. The brown first-born doe was already staggering on its legs. Tiny cries were crisscrossing and cutting the night. Penny was standing over the kids, chewing on a mass of discarded placenta, her pattern fulfilled for the moment. When the pan of mash was held out, she scooped it with her jaws, burying her nose in the sweetened food. And Ellen, rubbing the newborn twins with dry straw, was eased in a measure of her longings.
2
Mist was steaming up from the land before the hot ball of sun would drag through. Ellen was carrying the fluffy brown kid to the kitchen to show the family. “This is the least one. Penny doesn’t know I robbed her of it. She’s busy eating.” Ellen stood the kid on the floor. It looked about, gave a sidewise spring into the air, cocking its head, waggish. It leaped again, pattering on stiff hoofs to Maria who pulled at her apron and drew back with a low noise. “Oh look, Ma. She’s so pretty. If I hadn’t been there last night she might have died.”
“Haw. That’s what you claim,” Anton said. “They get born all the same.”
Frankie had relaxed, seeing her father was in favorable mood. She let the yeanling suck on her finger, stooping over it. “Say.”
“Don’t you want to hold her, Ma?” Ellen insisted. She knew it worried Maria if an animal was in the house; on cold nights she would slip downstairs to take Jack up to bed, creeping down again to let him out early. But this wasn’t the same as a dog for its breath was gently perfumed and it cried like a bird. “Come on, Ma.”
“Fetch the little thing away, Ellie. I don’t want hit to touch me. I can’t abide the fur against me.”
Anton supported her. “Your ma’s right. Hit belongs at the barn with the nanny. Your chores redded up, girl?”
“I did them real early.” Ellen was cradling the kid in her arms; she carried it to its dam at the woodshed. As she was going back to the house, she saw her father ahead on the path, striding from the barn. He shouted over his shoulder to Sam and continued his way to where Frankie was waiting on the steps. He was cutting the end from a twist of dark red tobacco leaves with his knife. He was clad in everyday garb, faded blue overalls and black sateen shirt.
Anton Gaddy was still winter-fat; by fall he would be lean. He was a short thick-set man. His flewed lips hung loose, his chin was long and heavy-jawed. When young his head had been heavily red-thatched, now at forty-eight was balding. His face was freckled and the sun already had burned his skin, despite the protection of a straw hat, toward the high bronze he would wear all summer. He was one of three brothers born and raised on this farm. He possessed it fiercely as he did all he made his own. In a similar fashion his mother had once ruled, driving her husband and denying her two youngest sons that the eldest might prosper. She had sent this favorite, Marc, to college to fulfill her plans for him. But he had run away, disappeared. Then she was notified he had died, and she had brought back the body. This son’s failure had broken Nell Gaddy. When Anton would think about his mother he sometimes confused her with the Virgin Mary. After her lingering death his passivity had evolved into violence, his brooding silence into action. He had taken over the farm and bought out his living brother’s share. His father, stringy, worn from a life of toil, had dropped dead behind the team one fall, his passing scarce noted.
“Want to ride the mare out to the rye field, Frankie?” Anton was folding his knife. “You can let the foal run alongside. You can play with it in the daisies and feverfews while I’m mowing.”
Sam was bringing up the horses, the bay mare Moll, and Blueberry, the buckskin gelding. A six-week colt trotted alongside, shy at the noise of harness on its dam.
“All right, Pa.” Frankie nodded and went toward the team. Her slight form in the shapeless green dress was moving listless.
“Pa,” Ellen said. “I’m going to Love’s now. I’d be glad to get you somewhat.”
“You can pick up two-three plugs for me. Get Brown Mule.”
“I will, Pa.” At the well she rinsed her face and hands in the rushing stream, ran dripping to the house. She dried with the porch towel and sped upstairs to change her dress.