* * * * *
The sisters took their leave and walked home with the laden baskets. The evening whippoorwills were starting their spasmodic carping. Ellen said, “I’ll make a way to go to that husking bee.”
But at the end of the week Anton brought news so she forgot all about it. He had hauled grain and surplus root crops, Hubbard squashes and pumpkins to Bethel, returning in late afternoon with ground flour, meal, and kitchen and farm supplies. “Saw the new smithy, Troy Hatfield, and got the welding done. That share will hold now. And he gave me outright a great piece of hide for leather stripping, just for that heap of pumpkins Frankie planted. Shaw.” The man was growing genial, his journey a success. He pushed back his chair and strode to the door, spit his quid into the bushes. He wiped his face with a powerful arm, came back to sup coffee noisily and consume chunks of Ellen’s brown dripping-cake. He was turning to her. “Troy gave me news for your ears, girl. You mind that froward young fellow hired to Dutchman Brinker? The one that sassed me? Well, he took off in a sudden. Dutchman had a time finding a new hand. This one’s brought a wife with him, so he’ll not be traipsing about with young maids. Hum.”
“Did smithy have an idea where he went, Pa?”
“You pining after that poor trash Brinker hires?”
“I’ve got a right to ask.”
“You trifling with me?”
“No, Pa.”
“You have to put in your two cents. The fellow’s pa died. Troy says Dutchman was right plagued at having to pay wages out on a Sabbath. That’ll put a good Lutheran in hell, I allow. Haw.”
“He ne’er liked his pa nor that kind of city work.” Ellen was by the door, lingering.
“You got any more on your mind? Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”
* * * * *
Ellen went to take from its pen the gray rabbit Christian had brought her. She carried it to the edge of the field and put it down. “Go fend for yourself like I’ve got to. Look out for the hungry foxes and weasels.” She watched it hop away, then went to her upstairs room. She hunted in the wood trunk for paper and an envelope.
Dear Christian,
Smithy told Pa you left these parts. The sky is heavy and gray. Maybe it will come on a snow. I call to mind the hours we spent by the strawberry bed. Now I think winter is come. I would that you wrote me how you are getting on.
Ellen Gaddy
She sealed the envelope, addressing it to Mr. Christian Ay, Carl Brinker Homestead, Route 4, Bethel, Ky., send to new address.
Down in the woods the air was still and weighted. Pinched clouds were banking above the swollen land. The red dog fox crept to his post overlooking the shadowed water. His eyes tensed as he spied the old Muscovy duck napping, head under wing, amid brown rush stalks. He struck noiseless. Thrashing wings lashed in a frenzied struggle but the needle teeth found the jugular and blood was spattered on the rushes. Later Ellen called again and again and there was no answering rush of wings. “You’d ne’er come to the safe yard. Reckon some varmint caught you.” She tossed the ear of corn to the tame fowl in the chicken yard.
Her letter was returned by the mail carrier. She hid it under her apron. On its face was scrawled: return to sender, no address known. C. Brinker. She took it up to the attic and laid it unopened in the small trunk. She stood looking out the gable window as drifting snow made the world grow small and old familiar shapes became strange and new.
* * * * *
Down Sweetincreek Road in mid-December Anton was driving the wagon to mass in Millville. The lightweight buckboard was unsuited for these winter days and the women rode in the wagon bed shrouded with rugs. A crowd of frightened birds moved and swooped across the sky like a giant amoeba. The pale sun was melting the snowfall into slush. The horses snorted, exhaling a vapor, tramped in the ruts of the road, hurling red mud in clods from their iron shoes. Anton was complaining, “Wish hit could have waited till Monday to thaw. This is a rough piece of road.” He clucked to the team. “Reckon we’ll be late again to mass, Frankie? Here it is Advent time once more.”
“Christmas is but two weeks off, Pa.”
Ellen was praying silently, “Holy Queen, keep him from remembering to send us to confession this week. I’ll not tell it to a priest. I’ll go to hell and burn first. I’m in a sorry strait, now.”
Anton was fastening the team and preceding his family into the square clapboard building half filled with people and heated by a huge black stove at one side. He took one of the rear pews. The heavy clothing rustled, the plank floor creaked. Anton tugged his bulky fur cap off, thrust it behind him on the seat. The women were kneeling at the low bench in their long coats, their caps and boots. They crossed themselves. The priest was murmuring at the altar, his server on his knees. Intimidated by habit and example, Ellen inclined her head. She heard the sonorous chant, “O Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep, alleluia. Stir up, O Lord, Thy might and come to save us. Who art Thou? I am the voice of one crying in the desert.” She made the sign with her hand, desolate. The priest began to tell off the canon of the mass. He washed his fingers, incense drifted, the signal bell tinkled. Folk shifted and whispered; singly and in groups they left their winter covering on the benches, came with bowed heads to the altar, hands in ancient attitude of prayer, to receive from paten and cup the Body and Blood. Say to the faint-hearted, fear not. It chafed within Ellen, uncomforted. She arose with the rest when it was over. And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness grasped it not. The holy man was striding away, the people began to depart in a disturbance of noise and bodies. Ellen touched the water in the granite basin as she walked after her mother and sister.
Anton dipped his head, curt, to those he knew, stopped without the door to speak with N. J. Bilberry. The women waited, Maria whispering to Mrs. Bilberry, fleshy-faced and cheerful. At Anton’s nod they climbed back into the wagon and he took the reins. They jolted down the road. The earth lay dank-sweated, old furrows exposed. Black cottonwood trees were guarding the ditches. “N. J.’s wheat froze out,” the man commented briefly.
“Tinie says there’s chills and fever going about,” Maria told him. “And Ioway Ashby has married a man from the south. He’s thirty-one years old. Ioway was but twelve last June.”
“I heard,” Frankie cried, “he sent off for a poppet doll for her, dressed in a bride veil.”
“Ioway Ashby’s not inclined to give up her dolls yet,” Maria said.
“Now dogwood roots are near as good as quinine for chills and fever,” Anton was saying.
“Ioway’s ma told Tinie they’d begged at her since summer to let them marry. So she figured they just as well. I say, that’s a sight young for robbing the cradle.”
Under cover of the wagon’s rumbling, Ellen whispered, reciting, “Mother of Mercy, our life our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.”
Frankie pulled the rug about her boots. “It’s powerful cold. What you doing, Ellie?”
“I’m thinking. Sam says if you have a blade of five-finger grass to carry about no one can deny you what you ask. I don’t believe him. Wonder if there’s some in the fields now?” Ellen turned her eyes uncertainly to the future, where somehow she must form a plan.
* * * * *
Anton received a letter the next day. “Hit’s from your Uncle Garland. Says he’s coming in a week’s time for Christmas this year. Hum. We’ll see what he thinks of your piano-playing now, Frankie. And how you’ve grown so fair.”
“Oh Pa.”
The man straightened his back, looked out the window. “Bear in mind, one more Christmas and you’ll be going up to that city with him. That’s Anton Gaddy’s youngen, folks’ll say.”
“Chicago sounds so far off, Pa. Will Uncle be glad for me to come?” Frankie smoothed the brightened hair that hung about her narrow shoulders.
“We’ll butcher tomorrow. Hear, ooman?” Anton said to Maria.
“Yes,” she assented, “and it’s just come on the dark of the moon. It’s right to butcher.”
“You know I don’t hold by that. But my brother dotes on your blood pudding and peppered headcheese. Sam and I’ll fix to prepare right away.” He marched out.
“If you butcher in the light of the moon,” Maria told her daughters, “it’ll all drindle away while it’s frying. Just cracklings’ll be left. The grease’ll go rancid till you’ve got to make it up in soap.”
“I know,” tittered Frankie, “and that soap will turn the clothes yellow.”
“That’s a fact,” said Maria. “Don’t you laugh. My pap and mam e’er went by the moon. It’s natural.”
“Will Uncle Garland say I’m fair, Ellie?” Frankie appealed to her.
“I reckon.”
“Are you cross, Ellie?”
“No.”
“Well you sure act sick then. Doesn’t she, Ma?”