She was closing the woodshed door. Her two goats got up in the half-light by the stone wall. Their beards twitched as they chewed in unison, their hair stood out woolly. “Why did I e’er take up with the careless love of Christian Ay?”
She was putting bread crusts and salt and soybeans from her pocket in the wood trough. She laid her hands on the animals’ soft necks. “Here’s some linseed meal for richness. You feel the storm coming?”
She went to get a bucket of tepid water that had stood by the kitchen range all night, carried it to the barnyard fowl. They were huddling together, feathers ruffled, on the pole roosts. She threw cracked corn on the dirt floor of their shed, and the birds hopped down one by one to eat, singing and crooning over the food. “Tonight I’ll mix a sprinkle of red pepper in your wet mash to warm your craws while you sleep.” Tending the creatures of the farm, Ellen took comfort and so forgot herself.
6
Garland Gaddy, in a new green Ford, was returning to the home of his youth. As he drove up the lane, Anton was in the barn on his knees while the old cow Bramble, delivered him twin heifers. But Garland’s nieces bade him welcome. They showed him the feather bed and he was well pleased. He took Ellen in his arms. “You’re a handsome wench, hon. Last Christmas you were a child and here you’re nearly a woman. What does Anton say when the young men come sparking?” He pinched her thigh, smiling warm.
“You’re plaguing me, Uncle. But he’s a sight for sore eyes, isn’t he, Frankie?”
“Oh he is.”
At night when the festive meal was over they sat in the parlor. The wind growled, and above the alders at the pond the moon bobbed like a ball on a chain while water-shadows trembled. Anton kept a fire roaring, carrying armfuls of oak logs from the kitchen and piling them on the hearth. Garland brought out a fifth of contraband whisky, setting the bottle on the round table. The two men tasted from the heavy kitchen glasses. “This be good moon, Gar.”
“Well, it beats needle beer. Place I get it has all their hooch analyzed and tested by a registered chemist. Ought to be good. Cost fifteen dollars a bottle.”
“Christ.” Anton was impressed. “Smithy sold me some Jackass Peach Brandy from Virginia. Fifty cents a pint jar.”
“Better watch out for that junk. Break you down inside. Internal bleeding. I wouldn’t drink a thing made down here in the Bible belt.”
Ellen was sent to the cellar for a bottle of pale sweet wine that Anton made yearly from his scuppernong grapes, the vine of which had been planted five decades ago by Jules Gaddy, the father of the brothers. Ellen had put a scarf at her neck and it became her. She poured the wine, and came behind her uncle in his chair. When she put her head against his while he was talking, her hair fell on his shoulders. And she loved him.
Garland Gaddy was the middle one of three brothers, a bachelor. He was a head taller than Anton, overweight, not yet fat. His small eyes were light blue, his once-blond hair had turned gray, he trimmed a neat mustache. His jaw was square, his lips full. He wore hand-cut dark suits, vivid ties. As a child he had shared with Anton their mother’s neglect, had run away from home at nineteen to prowl the states from coast to coast, brawling and scattering his seed. Then when he was twenty-nine, Anton offered him the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash, Maria’s dowry, for his half the farm. Garland had accepted, hitchhiking to Chicago with the bills sewn into his belt. He soon was co-owner of a thriving burlesque house. Now, over twenty years later, from his office on State Street he handled a set of neighborhood theatres where vaudeville and the silver screen vied for public approval.
Anton was affected by the abundance of festive food, the polished house, and the women’s raiment. Maria even, had laid aside the sack apron she usually pinned on and was wearing her churchgoing black dress and an ecru crocheted collar. Anton nearly begrudged the honor they paid Garland, although his pride assured him that the tribute was to himself. “Say, Gar, I call to mind when we were youngens, and Ma was honing for that black driving rig. You recollect? Our sir had but two gold dollars. So he went to Trader Bocock. Said, Bocock, you can have this gold and all the rocks you can haul out of that rye field if you’ll trade that rig to me.”
“She get the buggy, Pa?” asked Frankie.
“Bet she did, hon,” Garland said.
“What did the trader want of rocks?”
“I don’t know. But Bocock had the field cleaned before spring plowing,” said Anton.
“Ma managed to get what she wanted pretty near every time,” Garland said.
“Hum.” Anton packed his pipe, pushing with his thick thumb. “Had her hands full. Say, Frankie, play for us, and sing the prayer you learned.”
Frankie obeyed.
Angel of God, my Guardian dear To whom his love commits me here E’er this day be at my side To light and guard, to rule and guide
“That’s a special prayer, you know, Garland. Priest says it’s worth a hundred days’ indulgence. Sing it once more, Poppet.”
“I better learn that one.” Garland kept time with his hand. He got up to stand by the upright piano, tapping his foot. “You know the old one—Captain Jinks?”
“I don’t think so, Uncle.”
“Goes like this.” Garland made several false tries before he sang in off-key:
I’m Captain Jinks of the horse marines I feed my horse on corn and beans And court the ladies in their teens For that’s the style in the army
“That’s a new one, Uncle,” Ellen said.
Garland was pulling her hand, drawing her beside him. “You sing with me.”
When they had finished, Ellen offered, “Want to hear one of Penny’s tales?”
“That roaring ooman,” growled Anton. “Tell you, Gar, she couldn’t cut an onion or hold a scrub brush without she was screeching some foldilay.”
“Let’s hear it, puss.” Garland sat back in his chair. Ellen stood behind him to sing while Frankie played. Anton bit his pipe in his yellowed teeth and the smoke wreathed. Maria knitted, her lips moving occasionally with an inner thought.
I courted pretty Pol the livelong night Then left her next morn before it was light
The song told of how Pol went riding off with the man and then,
They went a bit further and what did they spy But a new-dug grave and a spade lying by, Willie, O Willie, I’m afraid of your way I’m afraid you will lead my poor body astray Pretty Pol, pretty Pol, you’re thinking just right I dug on your grave the best part of last night
And Willie stabbed the girl and put her in the grave.
He threw a bit of dirt o’er her and started for home Leaving no one behind but the wild doves to mourn
“Now, if that ain’t a dumb fool story,” Anton snorted.
Ellen looked down at Garland and he patted her hands, placing them on his shoulders. “I liked it.”
“You e’er hear,” she asked quickly because of the tears that were trapped by her father’s scorn, “it will strengthen a man’s eyes to have a mustache?”
“Well,” he laughed, “I’ll keep it then.”
Uncle’s so kind. It came on her as he was stroking her wrists.
Anton lifted his head. “My sir said his grandsir in France owned a sporting hog one time. You mind that story, Gar?”
“He called her Slut,” Garland said. “He was a gamekeeper in one of the king’s forests. Bred his own dogs, taught them to stand and back game. They say he was watching the men and saw the pups weren’t responding. Little black shoat went by, not a wild hog, she was the kind that ran loose in the forest those days. Made a wager with the men, he could train and break the shoat faster than they could the dogs. He penned her, taught her to come to her name. She pointed small game and partridge. After awhile she’d retrieve rabbit and pheasant, careful, too, she didn’t harm them—all sorts of game. Did better than his dogs. And backed them when she saw them point. That hog’s nose was so true she’d point a bird fifty yards away. In a straight line. That’s the story anyway.”
“He win the bet?” Frankie asked.
“Oh sure, hon.”
“Came when he hollered,” said Ellen. “Wish I could have seen that.”
“Did she run good or was she too fat?” asked Frankie.
“She was trim. She’d come at full gallop. Excited like the dogs when she saw a gun.”
Maria said, “They must have set store by that beast.”
“You bet,” Garland turned to her, “and you know, Maria, when Slut was ten years old she weighed half a ton and they still hunted with her.”
“Ain’t that a tale, Frankie?” Anton demanded. “Those were the olden days. Then there came the time of Napoleon the Bonyparty. Pa’s grandsir had to soldier under him. He’d watch o’er the old country and if some land like Germany was trying to conquer a scroungy sort of a country, why Napoleon the Bonyparty, he’d say no. He’d get in front of his army and go lick Germany or whate’er land it happened to be. He stayed in France between wars and our great grandsir belonged to his company.” Anton shrugged with pride. “That fellow wasn’t the king, he worked for himself. He made his living that way, watching o’er the old country.”