“Is that your sister?” He spoke, absent, his hand pressing upon her breast.
Ellen shook her head. “It’s hot.” She drew away from his hold, moving to lean out the window.
After a pause he said, “You tired, Ellie? Want me to stop in the shade along the roadside?” It came thickly. He reached for her hand, slowing the truck. In back of them a horn sounded and a red automobile with an open top swerved around them to disappear in swirls of dust.
“You better take me home. My chores are waiting.” Her face was a soft oval, her hand lay snared in his, feeling the rough calluses.
“All right, then. I only asked on account of Brinker milks late. Said he wouldn’t look for me back till after six.” There was silence. Then he said, “Naturally you do what you please.” He laughed, dropping her hand. “Sure do like Mr. Brinker. Not a whit like my daddy. The other day I hollered down from the top of the silo, how much feed do I give them and he says, fork her down till you get tired twice.” He spoke animated, striking the window ledge.
“Why don’t you like your pa?” Ellen asked.
“He’s a skinflint. You bet we had a fight when I said I was going to work for Brinker. Had to promise him half my pay.” He snorted. “Me, a man grown. Over twenty and turning a part of my pay to him. That sonofabitch.” He lapsed into thought. “Say, I didn’t mean to swear before a girl.”
“That’s all right.”
The truck was stopping before the yellow farmhouse. Ellen opened the door. “I’m obliged, Christian. I won’t forget the strange beasts and the people on the high swings. And everything.” She sensed the finality of the afternoon.
He had her hand all at once. “Look, I’ll walk down to see you Saturday, Ellie.” He was tender again suddenly, as if the magic of the day moving already toward nostalgia smote him.
She went to the house, that final gesture lingering. The spotted thrush winged to the grapevines where it hid its nest. Jack came bounding up, tail wagging, neck arched in pride over the wild rabbit in his mouth. “I see you caught your supper,” she whispered.
The town teacher’s buggy was in the lane, his mare hitched to the post by the well. Every Saturday he came to give Frankie a piano lesson. Anton had gone to his rooming house two years ago, waited in the hall, a round black hat atop his balding head. “I be Anton Gaddy,” he had mumbled. “I’ve heard there are ladies that make a name for themselves playing before crowds that come to her. I’ve heard tell those kind are honored and not deemed lightly in the eyes of rich folk. My daughter is to play a piano I bought her in such a wise. Can you give lessons? I got the money.” The town teacher had found his task difficult. The girl was contrary in a sly way and had but small talent. She simply obeyed her father’s will.
Ellen was listening to the piano as she mounted the steps. From the kitchen wafted the acrid odor of pot greens Maria was canning. Ellen stepped within the screen. Anton’s figure towered from out of the fawning shadows. “To your room, girl. Hum.”
“Am I late, Pa?”
She was ascending the stairs, flagging, slow. The man’s footsteps coming after were soft as the sweep of an owl’s wing, gentle in pursuit. “You’re late.”
She stalled halfway. “Pa?” The pain was there, starting, in her throat.
“Thou shalt beat them with a rod. I’ve said it. Mind, girl.”
“You knew I was going.”
She went up. He was closing the door. He gripped a belt, the wide leather strip dangling by a brass home-fashioned buckle. He would wear this belt on Sundays with his black suit. “There. Town teacher met the Brinkers trading in Bethel.”
She waited then, mute, and the hurt was high in her throat. She had trained herself to silence since she was a small child, pitting herself against his spirit, persuading herself he did it for love. He wants me to be good.
“So they weren’t at that gauded circus. It’s e’er so. You be a liar.” He was striking her, whispering harsh, gray eyes narrow, “Be you whoring so soon, girl? Here’s a generation not washed of their filthiness. I’ll set the priest at you. Hear?”
The door shut sharply. He had gone. Ellen was standing anchored as her throat ached. His violence directed against her, aside from the cut of the strap, would make her sicken and she was ruling it down until she would be at peace with herself. She waited, finally moving to hang her crumpled dress on the ridgepole and put aside her dust-grimed shoes. Her stockings like white moss, were in a heap on the floor and she caught sight of the pale pillar of her body moving in the mirror that was fastened to the door.
She was hurrying to the barn then to linger over the pair of suckling kids and tend the round of her chores. Clouds were lowering in the moist ether that rumbled before an advancing evening storm. She remembered lines from a song Christian Ay had said people sang in Louisville.
When I go toot-toot-tooting Down the street In my little Ford automobile
All that night rain fell on the receiving earth. The morning was humid and portentous. In the earth’s vitals, seeds were bursting in slow presage and primeval animal movement was rife. Above ground, bees were snoring, working their hoards, minute midges piped thinly, bottle-flies glutted at dung heaps or in company with spotted orange butterflies savored rotten things. In the pond the duck had struck and killed a fragile peeper frog, while from the woods edge a red dog fox looked on at her, his button eyes bright with greed.
In the kitchen while dawn faded, Ellen was slicing bacon with a long knife whetted to a narrow blade. She had brought the molded slab in from the smokehouse. Peeled potatoes were boiling in a pot, a pan of biscuits rose and browned in the oven. She started bacon frying in a spider and measured coffee out of a jar unscrewed from the grinder on the wall. She spooned it into water bubbling in a chipped tall pot. Frankie laid out plates, plum preserves, buttermilk, ketchup, a stone jar of butter. Both girls wore sleeveless petticoats, white stockings and church shoes. Later they would get into the new dresses. “Ellie, did you notice if that camel swallowed like a horse or chewed a cud?”
“There, I forgot to look.” Ellen went to the well for water. She met Anton coming from the barn with Maria’s pail of milk. She held her hand over the dark welt on her upper arm though his eyes weren’t on her. She followed him to the kitchen, lifting out the bacon, breaking eggs into the iron spider. She crumpled an eggshell in the coffee to settle the grounds and dumped the hot potatoes into a brown bowl. The Gaddys and Sam Offut grouped themselves at the stout table. They poured ketchup on the potatoes and eggs, drank steaming cups of coffee, ate heavily, for the workdays were arduous. They would arise by candlelight, seldom were done by nightfall with the wheel of chores.
Then Sam brought the buckwagon around, Blueberry and Moll hitched to it. “Hurry up, ooman,” Anton was saying to Maria, “we’ll be late to mass.”
His wife climbed up to the narrow seat edged with an iron rail, and sat beside him. The girls were hiking themselves on the end of the wagon bed, sitting on a rug, backs to their parents, feet dangling. As they swung out onto Sweetincreek Road Anton spoke over his shoulder, “Your nannies can go to the meadow and graze with the cows, girl. Those yeanlings are old enough now.”
“I’ll take them down tomorrow, Pa.” Joy surged within her at his words, and the hotness of the season swung in to ripen grain in the favored fields and bring flowers to bud and bloom as the fragrant undulating grace of the farm lands moved toward harvest.
4
The sun beat down like a scourge. Men moved listlessly, driving themselves and their draft beasts. Fowl with panting beaks crouched in dusty bowls they fashioned in yard corners with their fanning wings. By flickering lantern light before the sun rose, the milking was completed. Ellen and Frankie were called upon to help at stripping the udders of the overabundant animals. The first streams on the pail bottom would whine high, the tone lowering as the pail filled, becoming deep and sonorous until foam ran down the pail sides. Then it was time to pour the milk through squares of flannel into ten-gallon cans that would be placed in the hewn-log water trough to cool, awaiting pickup by the dairy truck. In the half-dark the cows shuffled to pasture, Jack nipping their heels. Ellen would follow and close the gate. The sides of the bovines were oily, their breath fragrant, eyes moist. By early morning their stomachs would be distended with lush summer grass. Then throughout the sweltering day they would lie in the shade of the woods, chewing their cuds.
Anton and Sam would down a heavy breakfast, eat plates of eggs, Ellen cracking a dozen in the skillet for them. They reached for more coffee cake and bread and slabs of cold meat. After they ate they walked stolid to the fields, working corn rows with cultivator and team, mowing and raking and hauling in towering wagonloads of timothy and soybean and clover hay. They mended fence lines, repeatedly repaired harness and machine, sharpened saw, adz and ax, scythe, knife and cutting blades. They would throw from the fields the larger stones that cropped up under the bite of the share. Some fields had a rock outgrowth too large to be removed and it must stand bared and alone, machines and men circling it. At mid-morning and afternoon Frankie would search until she found the men in a field. She brought them a stone pitcher of water spiced with vinegar or a ginger stick. They mopped their rough-bristled faces with red kerchiefs, and drank. Sam was shirtless, his overall straps cutting his scrawny sunburned shoulders. Anton, powerful upper body covered to protect his freckled skin, had soaked his black sateen shirt with perspiration. His large arms shone red and glistening. The odor of sweat and earth rose strong about the men.