He had a red-painted can that held a plant, the heart-shaped leaves mottled white along the veins, the flowers purple. “Here.” He was offering it. “Old lady Brinker grows them. She called it a primrose. Her kitchen’s full of flowers and vines. Too many for me. She even had her old man and me to nail up boxes outside the windows and fill them with rotted manure. And us with hay to cut. And corn to work.”
Ellen was undone by the gift. “It can live in my loft window.”
“I never saw such folks for decorations.”
“It calls to mind the shooting-stars that grow in swamp spots. You know them?” The flush lay upon her.
He jumped down from the fence, began to tell stories he’d gleaned over the past days. While he was speaking he looked away and took her hand in his. She kept her hold on the red can. They leaned back against the wood rails. He was telling about the studhorse Brinker had just purchased. “It’s a red roan Belgian. Stands near eighteen hands. I never saw a stallion to beat him for class. And light on his feet like a little filly.”
“There. I’d love to see him,” Ellen whispered. She let her hand lie soft in his.
As if it were a usual thing he put his arm on her tanned neck, under the yellow hair. She stirred restless, the plant in one arm. “Tell me about your folks, Ellie. Where they come from?”
“My great grandsir was from o’er the waters. My Uncle Garland tells how he traveled across the east Kentucky mountains. He killed elk that lived in the forests there in olden days. He saw giant eagles too, and poison scorpions.”
“What’s your old man like?” He withdrew his arm, threw himself on the grass, his head against the lowest rail. He was frowning.
“Oh I don’t know. Say, I near forgot. I made my sister and me each a new dress this past week.” She looked down at him. “They turned out proud.”
“Why didn’t you wear yours?”
“I didn’t want to. Pa might see. I’ll wear it to mass though, tomorrow.”
“What’s your old man like, Ellie? Does he still spank you?” He slid down in the grass, staring skyward. “I’d just like to meet him. Sometimes those crabby old fellows make me sick.”
She saw his eyes that were gazing at the clouds angrily, his fair hair and new-shaved face. She sighed.
“I could have killed my father,” he was saying, “trying to chain me to his store. Before I’d run that place for him, I tell you I’d go to jail.”
There was his stubborn wide mouth.
“There’s a circus coming to New Hope next week, Ellie. I heard it’s got an elephant. Want to go? Mr. Brinker’ll give me the pickup to use.” He stood up from the grass. “Let’s go ask your daddy now. I’m set on going,” he warned.
“We’ll ask Ma,” she said quickly. “Pa’ll likely be in the field at this hour.”
“Wait a minute.” He was reaching for her hand again. “Look, what’s the matter with one kiss?”
“Well.”
“You’re afraid. It’s true. You never have been kissed.”
“Yes, I have too.” So she let his rigid wide lips bear upon hers. His nose was in the way, and her arm that hugged the primrose. He pressed against her. She was staring at his eyelids, cold. I don’t see as that’s such a great thing. To write songs about and to whisper on.
“Now you like me, Ellie. Don’t you?” He was triumphant.
“Oh my, yes.” But she felt cheated. He thinks it’s a great thing.
They were crossing the field to the farm lane, walking up to the house. Maria was inside the screen door, peering at them. “I thought it was peddler. He’s past due,” she muttered and turned to go.
“Wait, Ma. This is Christian Ay. He asked me to go along with him and the Brinkers to a circus at New Hope next Saturday. Can I go, Ma?”
“As far as I care you can.” Maria was disappearing into the house recesses.
Christian looked at Ellen, demanding in a low tone, “Why’d you say Brinkers were going, Ellie? I’m taking you.”
“I’ve got to own I was afraid she’d say no.” Her eyes glowed.
* * * * *
When Frankie learned Ellen was going on an outing, she waited until they were undressing for bed. She spoke in the fluttering candlelight, her voice a child’s, “You got a beau?”
“No.”
“Yes you have, Ellie.”
“I’m just going along with the Brinkers.”
“Pa ne’er liked Brinker.”
“I know.” It was a spear of pain.
“What’s that boy like?”
“What do you mean?”
“What does he do?”
“He talks to me.”
“I hate there being boys and girls and e’er a thing jumbled. Why can’t it be smooth and all the same?”
“I don’t know. It’s the way of it. Like the priest says, God made it so.” They sat on their beds rebellious, disturbed. “I don’t like it either.” But Ellen was looking over at the new plant in her window.
In her heart a small edge of terror would reign throughout the week. But Anton paid her no heed; he ignored her proposed trip in his concern with the successful cutting and hauling in of the first hay, with the sows that each farrowed a basket of tiny piglets. When Christian drove the pickup into the yard, her father was at the barn. Ellen sped down the porch steps, Jack barking wildly. Christian wore a red shirt, store-creased, and black pants held up with worn green suspenders. His hair was slicked damp, the strong artificial odor of violet pomade pervading the cab. His face was haughty and alien. He seemed somehow shorter and broader. She sat back with a satisfied sigh, smoothing the fullness of the new blue-speckled dress. Her shoes were buffed and had new laces. She had on her best white stockings. Her hair hung down loose and in her handkerchief, scented with sweet fern and balsam needles, was a small comb. They spoke little. Christian kept his arm on the window ledge. He said, “That your new dress?”
“Yes.”
“You sew good there.” He wheeled the truck into a great dusty lot. They drove under a pasteboard sign, CURCIS PARKING HERE. Christian paid an old man a nickel. They hurried toward the huge colorful entrance arch. “Let’s go, Ellie.” He strode to the ticket booth, she followed, and they went in.
Through the noisy carnival air, hand in hand, they were wandering. Christian was devouring peanuts, sack after sack. Ellen licked a mound of pink spun sugar in a paper cone. “It’s like eating a cloud. It melts to nothing.”
He was laughing at her, glad he was with Ellen after all. They went to see the tent show, sitting on hard benches in the close-packed crowd, the dust soft under their feet. He held her hand in his lap. In the ring horses thundered by, rifles cracked, the King of the Cowboys on a graceful white horse, waved his flapping hat. A baby elephant followed by a tall one with a torn ear and an odorous camel, ambled around the ring and out again, their progress accompanied by spasmodic hand-clapping. A cage with a sleeping lion was trundled by a pair of brown oxen. The ringmaster bawled through a megaphone. In smoldering heat aerialists soared and swung as band music softened and swayed the crowd’s amazement. Ellen leaned forward.
They roamed the grounds later, eating grilled hot dogs, drinking mugs of high-foamed root beer drawn from an orange barrel. They stood before the limp-maned lion’s cage. “Sure looks mangy, doesn’t he, Ellie? He’s twenty years if a day.”
A group of boys came up to throw stones and poke through the metal bars with striped circus canes, after a while meandering noisily away. “Poor soul,” said Ellen, “those youngens shouldn’t ill at him that way.”
“Now there’s the midway, Ellie. Come on.” He was pulling her with him to the wide grassy passage bordered with peep shows and circus sights. A sinuous middle-aged woman was wriggling on a platform beneath a glaring sign, EVENING IN PARIS. A barker coaxed, “Ten cents. One dime! See the girlies. Imported from Pah-ree. Ten cents to see them revealed in their natural beauty. Hurry. Hurry! One dime. They take it off. The Parisian beauties.”
“Let’s see the strip tease. I dare you.”
But Ellen was shaking her head. “Double dare you to see the two-headed baby instead.”
“Double dares go first. All right.”
They viewed an albino raccoon, a six-legged sheep, the tallest dwarf, a mass of twining poisonous snakes. They stopped before the India-rubber man and the fat lady. “Oh Christian, my teacher, Talithie Gentry, was bigger than her. Easy.”
Christian paid the armless man a penny to write their names on a card in elaborate script, holding the pen in supple toes. Christian was pocketing the card. “This’ll remind me, Ellie, after you’ve gone.” He hitched his suspenders cockily.
Then they were in the high-seated cab of the truck again, the narrow tires jouncing in the hot dust. Christian was whistling above the racket of the motor. He was warbling, partly off pitch:
When the m-m-m-moon shines On the c-c-c-cow shed I’ll be waiting for you by the k-k-k-kitchen door
His spirits were high.
I’ve got a cute little husband Who’s just twenty-three He’s just three years older than me He goes out every night And gets on a tight And leaves the dear baby with me
He was pulling her to his side, driving with his arm about her. He was caressing her hair and moving a hard palm from her throat to her breasts, yielding and white under the stiff cloth. She was leaning into the comfort of his body in the heat as they droned over neglected clay roads. Clumps of black-eyed susans lined the ditches, and butterfly weeds bearing ragged clusters of orange flowers. No birds sang in the hot afternoon sun. Her thoughts began to drift. Without fear she considered, Pa’ll beat me, it’s away past time for chores. “Is it late, Christian? Penny must be watching for me.”