The crow is black, my love you know It will surely turn to white If e’er I do forsake you Bright day will turn to night
She was taking from its hanger a dress patterned with huge white dots. “It was a sad day for us Gaddys when peddler came to the door with this polka-dot goods that took Ma’s eye. And it purely wears like iron.” She pulled on stockings, laced her shoes, slipped into the long-waisted dress. She unbraided her hair and combed it. She tied it with a string, careless, as she was stepping down to the kitchen.
Maria had packed butter and cheese with the eggs in a big basket. She was calling in her reedy voice from the cellar, “There’s a list on top of the eggs, girl. Trade careful, mind. Watch Grady doesn’t cheat me, for he’ll try.”
Ellen put the list in her pocket.
thred, white and black, elastik, small sack salt and coffee. if enough money, sack sugar small, also tatted lace for sunday collar. cinnamon and clove sticks, pepper and spice for pikles. save back for Mr. Gaddy wants apple baccy. dont you forget. and ask Stacey Love if she has some east. Mine is worn out.
She petted Jack, told him to stay. He sat back on his haunches to watch her swing down the dusty road. Grady Love’s store, on the outskirts of Millville, was two miles away.
Have you seen the green grass Trampled under foot Arise and grow again Oh love it is a killing thing Did you e’er feel the pain
The sky was blue banners and white. Young breezes were soughing in the trees’ leaves. Her trading basket was light. A mocker-bird was quavering in a cottonwood and ahead a baby rabbit was loping down the side of the clay road. A buggy passed, whirling red dust into eddies. She crossed the plank bridge that spanned the Sweetincreek. Some of the heavy boards were loose and shifted as she walked across, her footsteps hollow. She inspected a group of lanky red flowers on the bank across the ditch. “I don’t even know your name. You got one, you know.” As she started on her way again, she half paused, as though she were losing something precious, quitting a thing but partly experienced. She wandered along, her face dreamy, the basket swinging idle. As if she were seeking something. “Everything, be it bird or flower or star, has a name of its own. No matter how small it be.”
She was nearing a faded frame store, set before a stubbled field of goldenrod and chicory. Out in front were benches where customers whiled away time or waited to hitch a ride on the milk truck going to New Hope or Bethel or away down to Seven Mile Run. Ellen pulled open the screen door and squinted at the dim interior. She entered and rested her basket on the counter. A few flies were snoring lazily in the air. There were open barrels and grimy shelves, and meal, rice, bran, seed, had sifted into the knotholes and poorly joined planks of the puncheon floor. Grady Love, spare-framed, Jay-voiced, bartered with her. “How’s this lace for your ma, Ellen? Seven and a half cents.” Grady had known Ellen all her life. He pitied the poor Gaddy brat and would favor the trade on her side.
“It’s kind of ratty, Mester Love. Haven’t you got a stouter grade?”
She was stowing the spices, lace, tobacco and kitchen goods in her basket. She consulted her list. “Does your wife have some starter yeast to spare? Ma’s bread isn’t rising so good.”
When Grady returned from his quarters in the rear with a cloth-wrapped jar, Ellen was gazing at dusty bolts of yard goods stacked on a shelf. He offered to lift some down. Her wistful fingers lingered over a filmy white cotton with tiny woven points of blue. “I’d love a length of this. What do you name it?”
“That’s dotted Swiss, Ellen.”
“If Pa’ll let me trade some strawberries, would you hold a piece back for me? We’ll be picking soon.”
“Sure, Ellen. You just send word.”
“Bye now, Mester Love.” She took her basket from the counter and pushed open the door. A fluff of cotton was pinned to the wire mesh to keep off flies, but they swarmed in the blaze of sunlight as she went out. Half blinded, she bumped into the hurrying figure of a young man. She was thrown back with such force that she dropped her basket, the contents spilling.
“I’m sorry. Are you hurt, ma’am?” He was grasping her bare arms.
Ellen pushed him from her, confused. “You plaguing bastard.”
She was kneeling, but he was swifter, retrieving the thread spools before her hands could reach them, setting straight the sack of coffee beans, the yeast jar, laughing.
“I never saw you, ma’am, in the sunlight.”
He was fair-complected with ash-blond hair. His eyes were the color of the miniature blue flowers the country folk call innocence. “You’re foreign,” she stammered. “I don’t know your face.”
“I’m the new hand at Brinker’s farm on Sweetincreek Road. I’m Christian Ay. You know of Carl Brinker?”
Dutchman Brinker was a Lutheran and a heathen. When Frankie was in the first grade of the public school, Pa had got in a brush with Brinker over the prayer the youngens recited before class. Pa withdrew Frankie and put her in a parochial school, though it meant the family had to scrimp more.
Ellen was brushing dust from her dress. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mester. Reckon I’ll get on my way.” Her shoes were gritty with dirt; she was pushing the unkempt hair from her hot cheeks.
“Wait a second. Where do you live? I’m going back down the road.” He was persuasive. “Be glad to give you a lift in the pickup, ma’am.”
“Well.” She accepted and stepped lightly into the high seat of the battered truck. Leaning against the sun-hot leather, she waited while he did his errands. Idly she noted manure clods on the floor and baby shoes dangling by a pair of soiled laces from the dashboard. Musty farm smells permeated the cab.
Then he was back, sliding into the seat and pressing the starter. The motor refused to turn over. “Be just a minute. She likes to be coaxed.” He took a crank from under his feet and jumped down.
“Now, Pa sure would have raised sand,” she whispered to herself.
The motor had caught. He was climbing back while the engine puttered and gasped and the cab shook. He spit on his hand where a fresh cut bled. “Every time that crank slips I slice myself. Can’t get the hang of it somehow. My old man never had a car.” His cheekbones were broad and high, his mouth wide. His laughter was showing even white teeth. These with his tow hair made his face appear darker by contrast than it was. His legs were rather shorter than average, his torso powerful.
“Daddy owns a store in Louisville. It’s like Love’s place only lots bigger.” He made a grimace. “And it’s in the stinking city.”
“I ne’er been to a city yet.”
“Well, they stink. I hate the store. My sister does too.”
“Oh?”
“That Rose. She’s wild to leave, only Daddy won’t let her. They need me too, but I send money every week so they can pay a boy. What a gyp.” The truck was rattling over the bridge. Christian blew his horn at a hound trotting in the center of the road, “Oooo-ga!” It slunk into the weeds of the ditch, nose low. “Once the revenuers came in our place looking for Jake. If you drink too much it’ll kill you. We never sold hooch like some did in back.”
“Pa says Mester Bilberry hired two men who drained the rotted ferment from the bottom of his silo. Till he found out. To get drunk of a Saturday night.” Her voice trailed away.
“Well me, I always wanted to work on a farm. It’s the life.”
“Yes.”
“I’m strong as a bull. Just by luck I got this job. Mr. Brinker’s last man quit and he happened to come by our store. So I wrote him, not thinking I’d get hired.”
“Oh?” Ellen was awkward in her loss of words.
“My sister carried on when I went. She thought she’d get to leave home first. My old man told her he’d tie her up before he’d turn her loose in that sin-ridden city. That’s the way he talks. So I’ve been with Mr. Brinker a month now. Some day I’ll have a farm like his of my own.”
A bump in the road made her clutch the basket on her lap. The little shoes bounced.
“Aren’t they silly? Brinker’s crazy for his kids. Always got the littlest one riding on his shoulders.”
“I’ve got a goat,” Ellen was blurting, “named Penny. She dropped me a pair of kids last night.”
“A nanny? Gosh, Brinkers don’t have a goat. Maybe he’d buy one of yours. His boys could drive it to a wagon. Want me to ask?”
“No, I’d ne’er sell one. See, they’re mine.” She wondered whether this stranger could understand the value in which she held the sloe-eyed beasts.
At the yellow farmhouse Christian halted the truck. Dust was floating disturbed in the air above the beaten roadway. The pattern of the midday sun was weaving and shimmering in the shade of the cottonwoods. “See you, ma’am.” He laughed like he couldn’t help it, like a great joke had come to his mind. “Ellie, that is.”
She made no reply, watched the truck grow small, rumbling toward Brinker’s farm, three miles down the road. She moved to the house. Jack was thrusting his head into her fingers and she stroked it. She smiled as though she understood. “See you, Mester.” She took the cuts of tobacco from among the goods in the basket, slipping them into the pocket of her dress. Maria stood vigilant just within the doorway. “Here’s your basket, Ma.”