“Say, my great great grandsir,” claimed Frankie, “knew Napoleon the Bonyparty.”
“Well,” Garland was laughing, “tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Let’s hit the hay.”
Ellen stayed awake far into the night. The wind was tugging at her window and the lonely dark pressed down. Her lips were dry and her mouth became as cotton. I’ll tell Uncle tomorrow for sure. At length she lapsed into a fitful sleep while in the parlor below the fire died to coals and field mice came from the walls to nibble crumbs and nut meats fallen on the rugs.
* * * * *
At breakfast Maria was stirring a pancake batter while the girls fried sausages and potatoes, set out slices of blood pudding, crocks of jam and sorghum. “I favor lacing griddle-cakes with hot sausage fat,” Anton said. “Sweetening takes the taste out.”
Garland, clad in a red shirt, new hunting pants and shining engineers boots, beamed. “Good old country sorghum for me. Well, pusses, what’s new? Anyone dream about a pointing pig? Or poor Pol? Or Napoleon?”
“I ne’er,” giggled Frankie, “but tell another story.”
“Well, you know that same great-great-grandfather of yours that trained Slut, went to Russia with Napoleon’s army. There was a bad winter and Napoleon beat it back to France. He let most of the troops die in the snow without food.”
“I don’t take much stock in that,” said Anton. “I doubt Bonyparty did that.”
“Now, Anton, you know Pa used to talk about it. How they conscripted all the men of the village, twenty-three of them. And only his grandfather came back.”
“He must have been strong. They say he was a good-looker, too,” said Anton. “Finest in the village, a proud one.”
“Doesn’t look like you or me inherited much from him,” laughed Garland.
“Reckon Marc took after him,” Anton said, “for he was the dandy of us three boys.”
“Well,” Garland asked, “what you pusses got to report this morning?”
“One of the barn cats brought in a little mole yesterday,” said Frankie.
“You didn’t know I lost my white kid last summer, Uncle,” Ellen said. “He was but two months old.” Lines still edged her eyes when she spoke of it. “You ne’er got to see him.”
“I was telling about the mole, Ellie.”
Garland listened to them, then said suddenly, “Now An, here’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up. Been thinking a lot about Frankie here. About her coming up to the city next year. You see, I want everything to go right. She needs to make a good impression from the start. Now you folks don’t realize it, but you practically talk like first settlers with that old-fashioned country dialect. Think Frankie could take lessons in grammar or speech this coming year to correct some of that?”
Anton had been spearing sausages and pancakes with a fork. He paused. The blood was leaping to his cheekbones, his freckles stood out in vivid specks. He made a guttural sound and scraped his chair back. He spat the food from his pendulous lips on to the table before him, hurled the sausage and fork to the floor. “Hit do be my sir’s tongue and my ma’s and before God, hit’ll be that girl’s. She’ll go forth with hit and no more farting teaching mesters will I suck upon.” He flung himself from the house.
Ellen began to weep. Maria was taking up a cloth to clean the table and the floor. Frankie looked at her uncle and her eyes were wary, her voice small, “You’re not afraid?”
“Jesus Wept, no, puss. Have another flapjack and I’ll talk to him when he cools off. That squirt always had a hot temper.”
* * * * *
Ellen snared the largest of the geese by a stout pink leg. She bore it to the stump, placed its head between the spikes and cleaved the neck just below the jaw. She threw the beheaded bird from her to flail its wings and flop about. She handed the head to Jack, eager and knowing. “I see you licking your chops.” She tore the down from the breast, stuffing it into a sack. She brought a pail of boiling water, scalded the carcass and finished the plucking. She gave the entrails to the chickens to pick, washed the heavy bird under the pump, hung it near the sausages dangling from the eaves in the shed.
In the kitchen, Anton was tipping his chair back. He took from his pocket a twist of tobacco leaves and sliced the end with his jackknife. He thrust his short legs in front of him, balancing. “Hell, Gar, might be it’s as you say and Frankie’s speech is queer to city folk. But what matters her way of speech if she’s to make music? If you say so, why I’ll get her a grammar mester. But hark at me, Gar,” and his eyes were glinting, “don’t ne’er speak again such as you did there before them oomen-folk. Like what I say ain’t gospel.”
“Chrissake, get off your high horse. They know you’re boss.” Garland ground his cigarette butt in a plate and laughed. He ran his little finger across his mustache, touching his sensuous lips. “I was always big enough to lick you if it came to that, now wasn’t I?”
“You’ve tried hit.”
“I always give you good advice. Now here’s another bone I want to pick. Indoor plumbing.” He hit his fist on the table. “You think you’ve progressed because you dug a new privy ten years ago. Maria and those young girls haul water from the well like pioneers. This is December nineteen twenty-five. The century of progress.” Again the fist.
“They got a sink and a clear drain that our ma ne’er had,” Anton drawled, tobacco juice staining the corners of his mouth, “and she ne’er had a deep hole like our shithouse but just a board and a shed. Nor that sweet-water well that Witch Lufty found. I see you’ve gone soft in the city.” The farmer was pleased, for now the ground was familiar. He backed down only when there was jeopardy to his younger daughter’s future.
“Yes, guess I was going soft, Anton, when I got you that loan back in the war when times were bad. So you could buy good milkers and get shed of that worthless herd you were supporting. Guess it’s soft to buy a good breed of chickens or thoroughbred hogs.”
“Hell, those are beasts where we make our living. Hit’s not the same.” Anton stumped to the stove and lifting the round iron lid with the poker, spat on the coals. They sizzled. “And I paid that loan back, Gar. Hard cash from crops and milk.” He replaced the lid with a violent noise.
“I give up. Chrissake, you’re stubborn.” Garland arose. “I suppose you’d declare you’ll never run in a line and wire the farm for electricity?”
“I was born by lamplight and I’ll see that I die by it.”
“Well, I’ve got two or three Christmas packages in the Ford.” Garland was going to the door. “Good a time as any to bring them in. Frankie,” he shouted, “call off that practicing and come with me. Jesus Wept, this is a holiday.”
Anton was sawing his fist in the air, exhorting, “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set, says the Word. Mind, Gar.”
That evening an austere meal of bread and cabbage soup was consumed. By custom the family semi-fasted before communion. They would wait to eat of the festive food when they returned from midnight mass. After supper the girls popped corn and cracked nuts to put on the table. Ellen boiled up a pan of taffy at Garland’s suggestion. She buttered her hands and pulled it with him until it cooled into long pale sticks. But all his jokes and laughter did not rouse her from her lassitude.
At mass she moistened her tongue to swallow the dry communion disk. It seemed to her that now truly the door was closed on her childhood. As she returned to the pew she grieved, weighing what she had read in her Bible. If thou hast done foolishly in lifting thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth. For as the churning of milk bringeth forth butter and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood, so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife. I’ll have to find a way to leave my home, a place to go and drop this wayside colt.
Garland drove the green car back down the road to the farm. He was talkative and his mood had passed to his brother. “Tell you,” Anton was yawning, “I’ll ne’er forget that Christmas I passed shivering and repenting while sleeping up against the cows, and thinking of you and Marc warm in the quilts. I’d been whipped on my knees for leaving the cow gate open. You remember it? That was one.”
The car lights beamed down the corduroy road. The night was parted like great doors swinging open on hinges. I haven’t told Uncle yet. A light fall of snow was starting and the wind hushed.
The store-wrapped gifts that Garland had laid on the table in the parlor were opened Christmas morning. Anton was puffing at a hand-rolled cigar. “If you be setting and your hands be idle, hit’s a good enough pleasure,” he said, stinting. “I even heard they’re rolling cigars now with a machine.”
Ellen opened her package, took out a hat of crushed blue satin, a silk rose on its soft brim. “My, that’s fair.” Her voice was tremulous because of his care for her.
“Put it on, hon,” he was saying. “Ordered it special from the milliner. You know, satin’s the thing this year. Say, when she wears that to mass, Anton, you’ll have to keep the beaus back with a shotgun.”