Ellen came to a dilapidated mailbox set on a stake under a bare-branched catalpa. She read, Luke Dougherty. She went up the mire of the lane. A flock of speckled guineas were trotting in the wet meadow. She knocked at the door to a narrow weather-washed house set beside a shed where bearded goats were lolling. A hen began to cry in the way they have when they have just laid an egg, and somewhere back of Ellen the guineas screamed. A small pretty-featured woman with clear eyes was there in the doorway.
“I came to you, Penny. Will you have me in?”
8
In a few minutes Ellen was seated in a wood armchair, a blanket about her, a heated soapstone under her feet. A pot of beans on the range was giving off a warm strong odor. There were two rooms in the tiny house. Into this one were crowded the cookstove, a table, a woodbox, two scratched chairs, a stool, a cupboard, a low cabinet. Washing of dishes, clothes, and baby was done in a dark-blue enameled basin, the water thrown out the door. From under the table a child was peering; in his teeth he gripped a piece of bacon rind, in his hand was a metal mixing-spoon which he beat on the floor.
“This is Clate,” said Penny. “He’s a real noisy one.” As Penny bent to take the rind from him and lift him, Ellen saw she was great with another child. The little boy squealed, laughing as he was swung high, and his mother held him for Ellen to see how well formed he was and how red his cheeks were.
“He’s fair, Penny,” Ellen said quietly, “but I’m afraid I’m too young for bearing one. I had to help my goat with hers.”
“Ellie, you hush. It’s a long ways off. I’ll be here. Birthing’s nothing. It’s too short to remember. And look what you’ve got.”
“I hate it. I hate what’s in me. I ne’er want to see it.”
“I’ll make coffee. Luke’ll be home. He’ll be glad you came, Ellie. He knows how I’m one for company. There, I’ll have a new baby in March.”
“You know, Penny, I studied all this time. On a sudden I said, why there’s one.” Ellen was made helpless by her gratitude. “You’re so good.”
“We got ten acres here,” Penny laughed. “Luke’s pa signed this place o’er to us last fall. The soil’s right clayey but it’s rich enough. We’re getting by. I look for spring to come. I’m going to eat boiled greens every day.” She planned, “There’s an attic where you can sleep. I aim to put Clate up there when he grows a bit. It’s hot in summer.”
“I missed you at home, Penny. When you went.”
“We had times, didn’t we? How about when we gathered those sponge mushrooms in the woods and spread them to dry on your pa’s hog barn roof?”
“You were singing ‘Charlie’s Sweet’ and we ne’er saw Pa there.”
“We had the times though, Ellie.”
“All on a sudden it came to me there in the city.” Ellen was earnest.
Penny was holding Clate while he drank milk from a mug. She wiped what he spilled and sat him in the training chair, handing him a piece of corn pone. “He’s waiting till I lift him out. Then he’ll go pee on the rug. Such a small man.”
They drank coffee adulterated with chicory. Penny got up to mix cornbread, stirring in a handful of crumbly cracklings. Ellen felt how the woman listened and waited while she talked, gathering herself. At last dusk assembled and a bird began to call. A step was heard outside and he came. “Look here, Luke. Ellie Gaddy. She’s come to bide a while with us.”
And love lay in the corners of the house. Penny, her apron high over her unborn child, moved more gracefully than before. Her face softened and all the while she hummed and sang. “Now Luke, you visit with Ellie and I’ll catch the milking.” She threw on a shawl, ran out light-footed, a lard pail in her hand.
“Be glad to see this thaw come,” the man said. “I’m that eager to lay out our garden.” Luke was mindful of Penny’s signal with her finger on her lips and so he made as though Ellen had been somewhat expected. He put logs in the stove, and lit candles, telling of the farm where he was employed. “They name it Webster’s Stock Farm. He’s got a dozen of us hands to help all winter. He’s a rich man, got a big white house. He owns these shorthorn cattle. And he’s got little old Jersey cows that he shows at all the state fairs. He brings home ribbons and silver cups and sets them in a fancied-up room. Sometime I aim to go along to one of those fairs.” Tall, black-haired, round-faced, his virility charged the room. He sat in his mild way on the stool, holding his son, who played with the shiny suspender clasps on the overalls and then made water on his father’s leg.
Then they were eating cornbread and beans and thick chunks of fatback and soft onion. Penny would feed Clate from her plate. The smell of tallow candles burning was sweetly pungent and they made a ruddy glow over the faces. Afterwards Penny held a light while Luke went up to the attic by the ladder in the bedroom. He was carrying gunny-sacks of hay, stooped over for the roof was low. Penny handed quilts up to him. Then Ellen took her clothes from the valise and hung them on pegs in the beams. She put her statue of the Virgin beside the pallet and slept well.
Below in the bedroom, Penny lay in Luke’s arms. “I’m proud she came to us, Luke.”
“So good you are, and then my bright-eyed little wife,” he murmured, drowsing.
But Penny was wide awake. “All the world and she thought of us.”
By mid-February they were making a garden. They cut potato eyes, planting them in deep rows, mulching them with litter and leaves against frost. Luke strode up whistling, bearing onion sets and seeds in brown paper bags marked in pencil with the name of the plant that would come up. They spaded, put in lettuce and onion beds, rows of radishes, turnips, parsnips, peas and Swiss chard. Penny came to Luke where he knelt. “This one’s new. Tendergreen Mustard. How come you got it?”
“I saw it was a new kind, only forty-five days to mature. I knew how fixed you were on an early garden.” They gazed at the grains of seed.
“I sure am honing for greens,” the woman sighed.
The next week thunder was rolling, thumping, across the gray sky. They waited for the downpour. “In a month it’ll come on twister weather,” said Penny. “There was one here last fall. Lady down the road had just boiled up water for her tea. The wind pulled off the roof and sucked the kettle up. Her and the least youngen got scalded.”
“Friend of mine,” Luke said, “was in the barn. Tore the door off and him holding on, flying through the air.”
“Was he hurt?” asked Ellen.
“Not as I know. He lived.”
A thunderbolt pealed directly over the house. Ellen said, “Thunder in February prophesies frost in May. That’s what I’ve heard Ma say.”
“I’m afraid,” said Luke, “we’ll lose our garden. This one’s a gully-drencher.”
Rain was falling day on day. The sprouting seeds washed up, water collected undrained on the clay of the garden bed. Pairs of rubber boots were always standing muddy at the door, for the privy was set far back from the house. The dirt-floored cellar, reached by a trap door in the kitchen, was flooded. The jars of preserves that stood on slat shelves were immersed. Their lids rusted and the labels soaked off. “If I hold it up to the light I can see some what it is,” Penny said cheerfully, “but you’re liable to get blueberry jelly, Luke, when you ask for blackcap.”
In time the clouds spent themselves. The water seeped away, the sun was brilliant and refreshed, the earth warmed. The people went out to make a new garden.
Luke was walking up the lane one night leading a gray donkey by a rope. “Mester Webster gave it to me. It was for his daughter, Star. She tired of it and so she’s got a pony instead.”
“How come he let you have it?” Penny was pleased.
“You mind that cow I told you of a while back that had milk fever? Well, I nursed her. He claims it was my hands that pulled her udder around. This morning he says, you can have this beast if you’ve a mind. Thought I might rig a plowshare and maybe work him.”
“That would be a sight,” said Ellen.
Luke tied the beast in the shed to a ring in the wall. Ellen was petting one of Penny’s seven goats. “Hey there, Tiny.” She wondered how her does Rhodie and Penny were making out, if Frankie was good to them, or whether they blatted in the woodshed pen. Frankie was ever apt to be careless.
In the stable, fastened apart from the does, was a shaggy buck goat with a long beard. His rank odor dominated the air. He baaed affectionately at Luke who was scratching his back with a stick. “Good old Brownie.” The animal turned to lick the urine he excreted in the habit of the rutting male goat.
“I’ll be glad when it gets nice so Brownie can live outside again,” Penny said. “I’m always afraid that smell will make the milk taste.”
“That smell’s healthy,” cried Luke.
“Penny, how come your goats are muley?” Ellen was asking. “My two have got horns.”
“Well, most of them were born that way. But Luke knows how to stop the buds if they start to push through.”
“You rub a stick of this strong acid stuff on, Ellie. I learned it at Webster’s. It hurts them a bit.”
“You have to do it careful,” Penny said.