Lily was fat, and soft as custard; she would rearrange her blond curls constantly, her thick white arms uplifted. She was nimble-minded, giggling often, her chins trembling under her small red mouth. She was as abandoned as a puppy untied from a cord and it may have been because of this that Lily’s father bade her lie across her bed each Saturday night while with a locust limb he whipped her well, saying, “The one who loves his daughter chastens her.”
Lily arrived in a clear forenoon before the high heat of the day. The lavender was in full blow as the girls walked beside the bed, plucking them long-stemmed. “Say, Frankie.” Lily was stripping the leaves away and drawing the blooms into a tight bunch. “I remember Ellie and me were in the second grade when I first braided lavendery wands with you-all. Your papa had just put you to the nuns.”
“I know.” Frankie was tying the flowers into a ball with soft cotton yarn, winding and braiding it among the wilted stems. When the flowers were cured they would fasten on ribbons, keep back a few for scenting their clothes chests, and trade the rest at Love’s store. “What’ll become of us all,” Frankie cried, “in the time to come?”
“You’ll be a famous pianist, Frankie,” said Lily, “you’ll see. And Ellie and me’ll visit you up north.”
“Ellie will marry a rich farmer,” Frankie said, “and have a flock of youngens.”
“Not me,” said Ellen. “I won’t be called Mama. And I’d ne’er do a man’s bidding.” But she was thinking of Christian, dwelling on him like a lovely secret.
“Well,” Lily giggled, bold, “if a man liked me, I’d have him. I wouldn’t be biggity.”
“Lily.”
“Say, I sent off for a thing,” Lily whispered, “to catch a man.”
“What?” Frankie pressed.
“A bust developer. That’s how the farm journal named it.”
“Why do you want that? You’re big, Lily.”
“It said men like you that way. I’m going to try it.”
“Your pa’ll find out.”
“I don’t give a care. It comes in a plain brown wrapper, they claim. He might not see.”
“You’re brazen,” Ellen said.
“If I do catch a man I’ll ne’er have a log cabin chinked with clay like ours. Nor cheesecloth curtains neither. And I’ll have no squalling babies to whip.” Lily sweated in the sun, raising her pillars of arms to her hair. The shy scent of lavender enveloped the three of them.
“Reckon we’ll e’er disremember making these lavendery wands?” asked Ellen.
* * * * *
On Saturday she went to appraise the strawberry bed bordering the fence line of Sweetincreek Road. Through the mulch of old straw the creeping plants were flourishing. “The berries are swelling good. Give them a week,” Ellen said to the dog beside her. “I’m going to brave Pa to let me trade a basket when they’re ripe.”
“Hey, Ellie Gaddy, how’s your nanny goat?” Christian Ay, in blue shirt and overalls, was leaning on the other side of the rail fence amid scraggling hollyhocks and high ditch grass and mullein on the road bank. “I brought you something.” He was leaping the rails, his teeth flashing in his broad tanned face. There was a bundle under his arm. Jack growled, running toward him. He patted the dog and it trotted after.
“Hey.” She waited, the red gathering in her cheeks.
“Brinker gave me the evening off. So I walked down the road. Is this your dog? Here, it’s for you.” He was setting the feed sack he carried on the ground and opening it. A rabbit wriggled its nose and slowly blinked dark eyes upward, grain dustings sifted in its blue-gray fur.
“My.”
“I guessed you’d like it.”
She took it from the sack, holding it in the crook of her arm. She brushed the dust from it and stroked the wiry ears. “It’s trembling.”
“It’s tame. It’s not afraid. Rabbits always do that.”
She sat in the grass, bearing it carefully. “I ne’er had one.”
“Don’t pick it up by the tail. Its eyes’ll drop out.” He grinned, looking down on her and putting his hands in his pockets. “You always lived here, Ellie?”
She nodded, bending over the pet beast, disturbed by the looming stranger, charmed.
“I figured you weren’t tenants.”
“Pa owns this farm outright,” she whispered.
He kicked at the grass turf, idly flexed his arm muscles, feeling them with his broad hands, one and then the other. “You know what Mr. Brinker does, Ellie? He pens his pigs under the horse barn where it’s raised off the ground. And he puts chickens in batteries up in the loft by the hay. Beats me. I never saw the like.” Christian was plucking a grass stalk to chew. “Made his boys a windmill. A little one. Grinds real corn for their banties and rabbits.” The young man was excited by the girl. There had been her coarse words thrust at him in spite when he jostled her as they first met. And now her ease, snuggled in the grass by the strawberry bed, her face slightly flushed. “It beats me, that way Mr. Brinker does.”
In the silence that drew down, the hum of bees working the young weed blooms vibrated. The dog scented an animal trace and darted away in pursuit. The careless voice of a male thrush was dropping like liquid pebbles in the sweetened air, then it ceased. Ellen was holding clover leaves for the rabbit to chew; she was content.
“I thought you’d like a rabbit, Ellie. It wasn’t much bother getting it for you,” he bragged. Christian had inquired of Brinkers about her family, heard they were unfriendly, cut themselves off from most of their neighbors. Mr. Gaddy kept a close hand on his two daughters. That was what Mr. Brinker had claimed. I’ll bet she’s never been kissed.
Ellen was lifting her eyes, gray, gold-flecked. “I’m beholden for it.”
He spoke as though he had practiced what he said, deliberate. “I’m kind of sweet on you, honey.” He tossed aside the grass blade quickly, leaning down, his tan face darkened. He was laying a hand on her soft cheek, putting his mouth taut and firm against hers.
Surprised, wide of eye, she looked at his closed lids. The strangeness was repellent but for a moment curiosity snared her. Then she remembered Maria’s veiled hints and Anton’s heavy predictions. She spilled the rabbit from her and shoved the young man so he stumbled back. “Now get away.”
“Come on, Ellie,” he was crying, “bet you’ve never been kissed.”
“Yes, I have,” she lied.
“You got a boy friend?”
“No.” She was getting up. “And rabbit’s lost. Jack’ll get him.”
“Let him go. I heard your daddy won’t let you out. Is that so?”
“I’m going to find rabbit.” She hunted in the brush, coming on the tame creature nibbling timothy by the grapevine posts. She lifted and caressed it, stony-featured.
“Goodbye now,” he was calling.
She breathed, motionless, “My pa would so let me out.” She turned to see him walking to the fence, watched while he laid his hand on it. She called suddenly. “Here he is. I found him.”
Christian leaped the fence and laughed, shouting, “Should I come next Saturday?”
“I don’t care.” He waved as he was disappearing, and she shrugged. “Who cares?”
* * * * *
The week moved forward. She asked Anton, “Could I trade some of the strawberries to Grady Love for a dress-goods piece? I’d like a new one. Of dotted Swiss.”
He frowned. “What foolishness, girl.”
“I’d make Frankie one, too. With ruffles. For mass.”
Anton was caught and reconsidered. “I suppose you could. Crops are doing well without hit don’t get dry. When you pick, hold back five-six baskets.”
The next Saturday a thunderstorm held sway. Ellen was pacing restive about the house, at last ran through the storm to curl up drenched by her three goats. “I don’t care if he doesn’t come. What’s he to me? And we need this gully-washer for the fields.” Rain thrashed afresh on the woodshed roof. “Reckon he might walk down next week, Penny? If he’s not forgot by then.”
The storm cleared in the early evening. As she was hurrying through the delayed feeding a rainbow emerged, spanning the hills. She stopped in her chores, forgetting all but the opalescent arch in the setting of summer green. “There. That’s a sight. I set my bow in the cloud for a token between Me and the earth. Everlasting, He said.”
In the moist heat that followed the downpour, the strawberries began to ripen quickly. Ellen bartered with Grady Love and showed Frankie the ribbons the storekeeper had thrown in to match the two lengths of cloth. “That’s a dollar forty cents worth if you had the cash.” Ellen cut and stitched, Frankie set up the ironing board to press.
That night Anton nodded as the younger girl was standing before him in a yellow-dotted dress, a deep ruffle flaring around the boot tops, a yellow ribbon plaited into the round neckline. Anton pulled her to his lap. “This redheaded poppet’s so fair. Makes me wish I was her beau come courting.”
And Ellen, holding the image of Christian, felt a lesser pain as she watched them frolic. The next day though, she was wearing her drab gingham. “He won’t come. It’s been two weeks. He’ll ne’er think to come.” She walked out to the berry patch. “I’ll just see if they’re still plentiful.”
Christian was astride the rail fence. He waved, “Got rained out last week.”
“I came but to look at the berries.” She was approaching the fence.