She came to take the mare’s headstall from him. “Well.”
At the yard the huge seed-horse was observing them, restive, aware of their business. He squealed, striking at the fence bars with his huge hoofs. Christian laughed, catching Ellen’s eye. “What you scared of, honey? I can handle him easy.”
“So what?” she whispered to the mare, who was tossing her mane, jerking.
Christian had skillfully snared the halter of the red roan beast and secured him in his stall. “Turn her in the lot now, Ellie,” he was shouting.
But she tarried and cried, “I’ll wait for you in the truck.”
“Come on, turn her in. It’s only Baker.” He was flushed and he laughed at her from the half door of the stable.
Ellen loosed the black mare in the paddock where she curved her neck and cantered like a gust of wind. The stallion could be heard clamoring angrily, rearing and knocking the walls. Christian turned the handle of the stall door to release him, and then vaulted the fence. He came to stand with Ellen. “Why did you want to go to the truck?”
The magnificent horse was trotting out, neighing. He minced past the filly who was dwarfed by his size. He lifted his shaggy fetlocks high without effort and his tawny mane streaked. He wheeled, snuffed noisily at her neck, bit it softly and pawed it in a dynamic graceful gesture. Then he leaped the mare, falling on his side with powerful elegance. He recovered, mounted her again. His beauty was like a thunderous battle, his piercing voice rose and fell on the stilled air, waking the valleys of the farm, rushing through tree boughs.
Christian was turning, urgent, “Ellie?”
“Let’s go to the truck, Christian. I’m going to wait there.” She turned.
He grasped her arm. “Come on, Ellie.”
“No, Christian.”
He was shoving her under the lean-to by the stable where summer wheat straw was stacked for the stallion’s bedding. He was struggling with his clothing, bruising her. The coolness dwelled in the shadows there, it was quiet and made itself separate from the noise in the dust of the lot outside. His youth was adamant and awkward, his knee entreated silent between her virgin thighs.
Surprised, she was fighting. “Liar,” she gritted.
He held her in the straw. “You’ve led me on, Ellie. I won’t wait.” His arms were muscled from a hard summer, his blood thrusting purposed.
She had read of Absalom, how none was so much praised as he for his perfection. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. So the Bible said, and so she had dreamed of Christian moving in a lawful pattern she laid. She was unprepared for the painful shattering of it, betrayed. “No,” she was weeping. “Liar.” It whistled in the coolness against the pant of him.
“I have to, honey. Take it easy. I’ll be careful. I can’t wait.” His voice was blurred and hot, stabbing, overridden by the tramping hoofs and shrill neighs like a storm without.
Ellen closed her eyes. They ran tears because of the hurt there was, the receding terror.
He spoke softly then, “Don’t cry.”
“Go away.”
He stood up and went into the sun. He led Doll back to the pasture, threw a forkful of hay to Baker who was docile now, obedient. After a while he came back and looked at Ellen. “Don’t be mad.”
She wouldn’t hear him.
“Come on, Ellie. We’ve got to get back.”
She was rising, brushing back her hair. He leaned toward her, tender, and pulled a straw caught in the yellow strands. She struck, savage, at his fingers. In the truck seat she remained unspeaking until he reached for her hand. Then she unleashed at him, injured, “You think I’m that Sabatha Withers. I ne’er want to see you again. Hear?”
Christian was resting his elbow on the window; he looked down the road. He gunned the truck so dust eddies rose like a whirlwind in the wake. He slammed the brakes on the road just above the Gaddy entrance. “Come on, Ellie. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. Please.”
But she hurled the cab door shut. Her head was high. For her world that had had a sort of ingenuous beauty had disappeared. And it was never the same again.
5
October came to pass in fog and tones of droning rain. Muffled trees stood in wet leaves along farm paths. Ellen, a gray shape in the mist, was moving from clinking house lights to the obscurity of the woodshed and barns. Christian had not come for three weeks. At first she had waited in profound anger, eager to renounce him. But in the autumn sun of following days, while the two ringing notes of the partridge called back and forth, loneliness tempered her wrath and she loved him indulgently as the source of her pain and its witness.
Today she was going again to the rail fence along the road where joe-pye-weeds drooped coarse-toothed leaves. She was wearing a red stocking cap, her long coat had pendulous lapels and a wide belt that fastened on her hips with two heavy buttons. As she passed the grapevines where leaves hung chilled, a flock of crows arose, making nasal resentful barks. She waited an hour. Unending rain was falling and small gusts wove about. Finally she went to the work Anton had set, sorting and shucking corn. Later she absently stroked the alert ears and silken hair of the kid Rhodie, nearly as large as its dam now. “Reckon he’s with Sabatha Withers. Pleasuring as he did with me.” She clothed her wrath, embellished it. “Happen she’ll drag him to a priest. All his days he’ll dwell on me and what he forfeited.”
Her mind turned to when she was nine or ten and, living in fantasy and wishes, would try new ways to walk through the sun-washed fields where grass stood high. It would seem that crowds of people lined both sides of the way she took. They came to see how grand she held her head and to talk among themselves of the noble way of Lady Ellen. “I aim to hold me high and wed a rich man.” She spoke aloud in the stable. But she didn’t believe it and the anger burned. She went to the house where lamps flickered in the gloom, and Anton stacked a fire in the parlor, filled the woodbin and split lighter-wood with a deft hand.
Ten days passed. On a splendid windy morning in November, Ellen was clearing garden debris and gathering cabbages and root crops in heaps for winter storage. She faced her dilemma, rebellious. “If it be so, I’ll drown myself or it in the pond when it’s born. And if he’s run off, I’ll seek him out. I’ll knife him, I will.” She piled cabbage heads in a bushel basket and dumped them in the cellar storage bin. Her secret dwelled within her like a hidden wound. “I say, Jack, what will I do?”
That afternoon Amanda York came up the porch steps and knocked. “Hickory mast is laying thick in Bailey’s Woods, Mrs. Gaddy. Can Ellie and Frankie come nutting?”
The three girls walked a mile down the road to the woods, carrying empty baskets. Amanda had black eyes and black shining hair. She was rosy and lively. “Ask your pa if you can go once to the husking bee. This Saturday.”
“He ne’er would brook it, Mandy.” Frankie was shaking her head.
“There’ll be a sight of folks. From Bethel way and down from Seven Mile Run.”
“Because Pa don’t favor us socializing,” Frankie added.
Amanda tossed her braid. “And a fiddler and a spread of eats.”
“You know Sabatha Withers?” Ellen flushed in the asking.
“I’ll say I do. She’s wild. Boys flock after her like dogs on a rabbit.”
“What?” cried Frankie.
“She sleeps around. Things like that.”
“My.”
“What’s she look like?” asked Ellen.
“Oh, light-set, and got yellow hair like yours, Ellie.”
“Why doesn’t she have a baby,” Frankie asked, “if she sleeps around?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“It’s a mystery,” Frankie sighed.
“Did that Lily Garrett tell you what she did?” Amanda asked.
“You mean sending for that stuff to make her breasts grow?”
“Yes. And what happened.”
“What?”
“Well, she wanted it,” Amanda whispered, “for she’s boy-crazy, Lily is. She’s terrible.”
“I know. She told us.” Frankie giggled. “Men like you big, she said.”
“Well, she waited all summer to hear. We couldn’t figure why it ne’er came. I studied that her pa had got hold of the package some way.”
“Say. Did he?”
“No, last week it came. Just an old envelope. And there was a picture on a card of a man’s hand. It said underneath, Try This. Lily got scared.”
“She should ne’er have sent off, Mandy,” Frankie cried.
“Say, has that Withers girl got a boy friend?” Ellen was asking.
“She’s got plenty, Ellie. There’s always one to take her to doings.”
“Now what if Lily’s papa’d seen it,” Frankie said. “That picture and those words.”
“Wish I could go to that husking bee,” said Ellen. “I’ve got a deal of a desire to go. I might cross my pa and slip out this once.”
“Oh Ellie.” Frankie’s voice was the cheep of a frightened bird. “Don’t say that.”
“Obey thy father and mother.” Amanda spoke cheerfully as they were entering the woods. “Now maybe he’ll say yes this time, Ellie.” They began to gather hickory mast that carpeted the ground. When the baskets were full they walked to Amanda’s home, a saddlebag log house set in an apple orchard. They left two baskets in the passageway between the cabins and climbed to an upstairs room. They shucked Amanda’s nuts, spreading them with brown-stained hands on a carpet of straw. From the rafters hung strings of small ear corn with white pointed kernels that would pop over a fire. And there was a drop cord overhead with a carbon bulb, for the Yorks had electricity.