“Your dish be setting in the pantry, girl. Soon as you eat, there’s ironing. Hit’s dampened down in yonder basket.” The woman had hung the wash at dawn-dusk, gathered it quickly at mid-morning, wearing an outsize sunbonnet. “This trading sure looks poor, Ellie. Hit pleasures Grady to short me, knowing I can’t go trade myself.”
Ellen went upstairs, came down barefoot. She took her plate from the pantry, ate the fried piece of duck, the boiled potato, curd cheese, biscuits and honey. She was dipping from the blue pail. “I declare this water’s sweet, Ma.”
Maria was sorting the contents of the basket in the pantry. “You ne’er got the pickling spices.”
“There wasn’t enough to trade.”
“Well.”
“I want to stir up a cake this evening, Ma. Can I have white sugar for it?” When their taste for sweets became strong, Ellen and Frankie would ask for store-bought sugar to cook with, although they could get along with sorghum or honey. Flour and meal ground from the farm grain was ready for their use, plentiful as a rule, and drippings and lard, eggs and milk. “I’ll bake that white cake Pa likes.”
“Say,” Maria was frowning. “You remember Mester Gaddy’s tobacco?”
“Yes. I’ll run down to look at my new goats. If Pa’s in the barnyard I’ll give it to him.”
“There’s ironing, girl,” warned Maria. She was holding the new lace in her thin hands.
“I’ll hurry.” Ellen brought an armful of last year’s brown hay and an ear of corn to her goat. “This is all he’ll let me have, Penny. But I’ll gather purple vetch this evening, and before long your yeanlings will be grown enough so you-all can run with the cows.” The doe dug into the corn, using her lower row of teeth against the pad of upper jaw to tear the kernels loose. Her amber pupils stared distant. She seemed oblivious to her young repeatedly butting the new-swelled udder and sucking the moist teats.
“His name’s Christian Ay. Reckon he calls some girl his may? Reckon a man’ll e’er be partial to me, Penny?” She dropped the cob and went to the barnyard. “I don’t see Pa, Jack. And I’ve got to iron.”
In the kitchen she was placing the sadirons on the stove to heat. She brought out the ironing board, patched with bleached feed sacking, and laid it crosswise on the end of the table. She spit on the irons to test them, went about her work with familiar hands. The floor was cool to her dusty feet. Her mind roved to one of the songs she had learned from Penny Dougherty.
All on one summer evening When the fevers were dawning I heard a fair maid make a mourn She was weeping for her father And grieving for her mother And thinking all on her true love John
Without the square-paned windows, the musky earth lay under the hand of summer’s sun. Garden rows were in view, rabbits and woodchucks fenced out by a wall of stones that mounted each year as more were turned from the ground. Blooming flowers were crowding outside the barrier, begonias, love-lies-bleeding, marigolds and sunflowers, cranesbills and honesty. Later sweet peas and corn poppies would flower, and nasturtiums and youth-and-old-age. Beyond were nestled the beehives, pale apple-blossom and maple honey already stored in the bottom super. In fall the hives would tower high and the men would rob them, carrying a pan of smoke. The topmost honey would be red-black, taken by the bees from buckwheat blooms. Anton would relish the high flavor, but Ellen would find it turning her stomach, like milk when the cows had eaten wild garlic.
Maria entered the kitchen, set about mixing bread, kneading and thumping the mass of dough on the long table, flour drifting to the floor. “That was good yeast Stacey gave me. It’s raring.”
“Grady said it was new.” Ellen carried starched dresses and folded clothes up to the attic room. She put them away, then combed her hair in front of the oblong mirror that hung on the door. She made her mouth soft. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”
She looked down. Her feet were bare, her brown ankles grimy, the dress with the big polka dots was crumpled and her hands were rough. “There. You are an ugly brat.” She flung the door ajar to hide the glass, braided her hair swiftly, binding the ends. Slowly she went down the stairs.
“Come here, girl. Slop those sows. The two that’s due to farrow. Mester Gaddy said to feed them up.”
Ellen took the pail, crossing the lane to the hog lot. “Soooooeee,” she shouted, “pig-pig-pig-pig!” Grunting and sniffing, the two laden red beasts approached, eying her under horny lids. Shoulders pushing, they vied for the whey, potato peelings, crumbs of dough and flour. Ellen watched them root around for scraps and, still squealing and shoving, move off. She rinsed the bucket, filling it afresh to carry with her. The drowsy odor of green grape blossoms drifted languid from the vines. In the garden she stooped and moved, her toes grasping the earth, her nimble fingers pulling among sprouts, making small piles of weedlings. She transplanted sorrel and mustard, poured water on them, made beds of onion sets, black radishes, corn and squash to stagger the summer yield for the table.
Later on in the afternoon Frankie came to the stone wall. “Pa thinks I’m practicing. I vow it’s hot.” Her sunbonnet was shading her face, her forehead was moist. “Sam’s at the barn drenching Maisie with coal oil. She took sick. Sam says it’s the clover. Hit’s too rich for the cows.”
Ellen stretched her arms and left her work. She washed at the pump, splashing her feet, face and arms, wetting her dress.
“Hurry,” Frankie urged, “you’ll ne’er get a cake baked before evening chores, Ellie.”
“If you’ll keep your eye on the stove, we’ll make hit. How’s Pa?”
“He’s plagued about Maisie getting the bloat. But the rye’s cut and drying good.” She was plaintive. “Wish Pa’d let me go with you sometime to trade at Love’s. Why won’t he, Ellie?”
Ellen was touching the packets of tobacco in her pocket; she would use them to bribe an approving glance from her father. “Hit’s his way.” She sensed the familiar stab of rejection.
They stood idle a moment before Frankie started. “Ellie, we’ll ne’er make it.”
They sped to the house light-footed in the dust and heat. “Oh yes, we will. I’ll use Tinie Bilberry’s rule for a white one. You beg Ma for more sugar to frost it.”
They laughed breathless. The younger girl swung her sunbonnet in her hand. “Show me how that one’s stirred up, Ellie.”
The kitchen was cool, the shades half drawn. Ellen lit the burners under the oven. Frankie went to wheedle sugar from Maria, who was in the bedroom making a new shirt for her husband from a bolt of stiff black sateen. The woman was hunched over, concentrating on perfect stitches in the light from the small windows. In this room two babies had been born and one miscarried. Over the gray-painted iron bedstead hung a heavy crucifix. At the farther wall loomed a commodious wardrobe closet, smelling of camphor and holding Maria’s Sunday dresses and Anton’s black suit. “I’ll spare a teacup, Frankie. I’d rather you’d use sorghum. You girls are wasteful.”
Frankie measured the sugar and was sweeping the kitchen. Ellen was leaning back in her father’s chair, the long apron draped over her stretched-out legs as she turned the batter. “Did you heed what went in, Frankie?” The enthusiasm of her young years lifted her so the breath nearly knotted in her throat.
My true love Is a blue eyed daisy She won’t work And I’m too lazy
The batter had been poured into the pans and they were set in the hot oven when into the kitchen their father’s voice rapped, “Feeding time. Where’s that girl?”
“Keep your eye on the oven, Frankie. Don’t forget.” Ellen was running out the door and down the steps after Anton who strode toward the barn. “Here’s your tobacco, Pa.”
He stopped to take it from her. “Now can’t you e’er get to your chores, girl, without me hunting you out?”
Inside the house, Frankie was turning quietly to the parlor. Soon scale notes rang precise against the ancient paper-covered walls. Maria put her sewing aside, went to the kitchen, pinning a sack apron about her. She kneaded down the bowl of warm raised dough, forming loaves and biscuits, greasing them with soft butter. She put them near the heat of the oven to rise.
In the hills about the farmland the sun-drenched late afternoon air filled with Sam Offut’s voice pleading full and deep, “Sooo-cow. Sooook, sooook, sooo-cow.” Winding up the lane came the line of milkers, chewing cuds, dispassionate, hip-bones swaying, udders distended. Jack tailed them, head down. When one halted to crop a clump of grass, his sharp bark sang and he nipped the bony fetlocks. The old duck flapped its wings, splashed the pond water so crawfish and turtles dove to the muddied bottom. It was lifting its heavy body from the pond, and then circling Ellen on the hillside.
3
A few days passed. Lily Garrett, who lived on the other side of Millville, stopped by to make lavender sticks with Ellen and Frankie. Lily brought a pale fresh honeycomb, for the Garrett family robbed their hives all summer long, not waiting for a fall harvest like the Gaddys. “Mama says she’ll send a plate of basswood honey in July, Mrs. Gaddy, when the bee trees are busy.”