“Why doesn’t he wait till the light of the moon when it starts waning?” Penny was dressed in her best, the babies were clean, their pinafores starched. One of Luke’s fellow employees was driving by in his car to take the little family to the stock farm near Hidden Creek. Penny looked forward to the outing. “Hey, Farmer Clate, come set on your potty before we go.” She turned to Ellen, anxious, “You going to be all right? How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel a thing. I might pick some berries for supper if I can haul myself down the lane.”
“Well, don’t tire yourself, hear?” Penny paused. “Maybe I oughtn’t to go, Luke. Ellie might get taken.”
The two turned in protest. “Now, you know yourself it doesn’t happen that quick. Ellie wants you to go. And Clate and me too. Even Anse is saying, Mama show me those little Jerseys that give all cream.” So the woman was persuaded and the party left, waving from the car window, disappearing down the dusty road.
Ellen sighed in the fresh morning that moved on toward the hot noon sun. Partridge repetitively whistled in the woods down the road, “Bob-white. Ah. Bob-white!” A small warm wind stirred and settled, puffs of cloud drifted very slowly, and the sky was vivid blue. Like a fall aster. Wish it was over. She was going down the warm dirt of the lane in the late morning for blackberries. She dropped the first heated ones into the tin pail; they made whining thumps until they covered the bottom. Juice was staining her fingers. When the pail was filled she toiled back up the path. At the pump she washed the dust from the berries and hung them in the well to cool. She threw water on her flushed face and arms, pumping more over her bare feet. Refreshed, she was seated in the open doorway, leaning her head against the frame. The child under the blue apron turned itself. She drew shallow labored breaths, closed her eyes. “I’m nigh to smother. Will I e’er take a full breath again?”
At noon she was restless about the kitchen. She brought fresh water in from the well, ate a square of corn pone, listless, while a bluebottle fly churned at the glass of the window. She walked to the field, carrying a bucket of water to the goats and donkey staked there. The goats drank slowly, raised mournful yellow eyes while their beards dripped. The little ass sucked noisily, slobbering, jerking his overlarge head. He took a button of her dress gently in his teeth. The girl laid her hand on his woolly shoulder and looked away to the languishing farmlands where hot air shimmered.
The flock of guineas had not come in to feed the night before. Ellen knew some of the pairs had been hiding out, setting their clutches of small strong-shelled eggs. “Some of the chicks could have hatched,” she told the donkey, “and are keeping the hens and cocks from feeding. A skunk or snake might get them.” So she took grain in her apron pocket and went past the orchard, seeking in the farthest places, calling, “Wee-wee-wee-wee. Come, wee-wee-weeeee.”
It was by a lone scraggled locust tree in an open field that a great pain smote her. She leaned upon the tree while it was subsiding. She attempted to reach the orchard and stumbling, fell. The onrush of spasms was far past her imaginings. In the intervals of withdrawal she crawled, pulled her racked body through the field. “I will not lie out here.”
A pair of guineas, followed by a stream of peeping spotted keets, flushed from a covert as she neared the orchard. She but dimly gave them heed. She was grunting, face fired red, wet from the sharp throes that came in the scorched air, in the sweet crushed grass and the round-shaped white clover blooms. She cried out hoarsely, biting her lips, detached from her sore body where the child sought its way out of darkness. Her mind was apart in a red torment where she strove unbelieving to endure. When a seizure would lapse she lay a moment supine, freed, while above in the sultry blue, a cluster of twittering goldfinches were bobbing in the Seckel pear branches.
The hand was laid remorseless again upon her. Muffled at first, it was graduating into cruel wrenching. Then she evoked the holy Virgin, swore in agony many bonds, until distracted she knew not of her body as it was arching itself. In time, from her laden womb the child had its way and was brought out upon the meadow grass. Thin wails fell on the stifled afternoon air. And overhead the finches chirruped brightly.
After long, Ellen heard the faint piping and lifted herself to see the limp warm child. She wrapped it in her blue apron and laid it at the base of the old tree. Resting weary on the grass, she waited. When the evening star showed itself hovering above the horizon as the sun began to set, her joy caught in her throat. “I came through. I’m unfettered once more.”
The Doughertys found her as the evening birds were beginning their songs. Ellen’s pallet was brought from the attic to a corner of the room below. She ate milk and berries and bread. In the early part of the night Penny put the child by her. “You got to nurse him, Ellie. He’s hungry.”
Ellen suffered the feeble seeking mouth. “Say, another setting hatched off, Penny. I saw them in the field back of the orchard. You want to go get them in?”
“Now I think you care more for those chicks than your own newborn son.”
In a short while Ellen was about the house again. Penny had Luke bring home a few yards of pink-and-white striped material and Ellen was holding her needle light. “Oh, but I’m a slim one. Look at me,” she demanded.
She told them she must go, trying to say the other thing that was in her mind. “I’ve been studying. I can’t come home dragging it. Pa’d turn me off. Could you-all find it in you to take it for your own? I’d send money for its needs.”
“It’s true what Ellie says, for I know Mester Gaddy.” Penny looked up at her husband.
“It’d be a twin to Anse,” he said.
“We’ll love your baby, Ellie. But you mark me, he’s not our blood. The day’ll come you’ll rue you didn’t make a way to keep your first-born. You can have him then.”
But Ellen was turning away. “Not me. Though I’m beholden.”
She would walk in the morning down to the Weems Crossroads station. While they had breakfast, Clate sat on her lap, kissing her endearingly with his small mouth. “Luke, I reckon it’s the hardest for Ellie to leave our Clate.”
“Oh I love him that much,” Ellen sighed to the brown-haired child.
“We named your boy last night, Ellie,” Luke said. “Simon.”
“And we’ll call him Simon Gaddy,” said Penny. “We’ll tell him you’re his ma. So we decided in the night.”
“I love him that much,” Ellen was saying to the child she held.
Jaybird up an acorn tree Shaking acorns down Little Clate in a sugar tree Shaking sugar down
part two
Take it up in your arms I said Let it lie where it must At your side on your breast Let it rest Love has life not of love But of us I said Let it lie where it must
9
A flicker was piping a thread of shrill notes as it flashed in flight before her. She looked back to where Penny waved from the lane end, a child on her arm. Then Ellen turned and strode down the road, carrying the valise. The heat of the July day was still far off, the morning was new-made. The stiff skirt of the striped dress brushed her legs. She had combed her hair from her high forehead in the old way, tying it loosely with a ribbon. A hot morning wind rippled along the dust of the road, interrupting for a stitch the stilled cool air. Wild morning-glories were twining on ditch banks, and in a distant field a boy drove a diminutive span of black horses through verdant corn rows. It came over Ellen how comely she was and she made her feet light. “I’m thankful for this day and for all that lie ahead.” Her life ran out before her harmonious, like a shining thread. All about there was a singing and a beating of wings and the sun glowed whitely. She was young and there was no ending ever. “Clear through the whole enduring ages, I’ll be.”
My true love up on the mountain Bowing up and down If I had my broadax here I’d hew that mountain down O get around, Jenny, get around All on the summer’s day
On the train, she saw the countryside flowing past the window. The milk from her breasts was dampening her dress and in her discomfort she thought of the child once more. She turned her mind from him easily. She got off at New Hope and hitched a ride with a farmer from Seven Mile Run.
“Those are fine mules, Mester,” she offered.
“Um. They’re Norman mules. They’ll ne’er balk without cause. I got a brother can start a balky mule. One time him and me came on two niggers with a load of straw and a cold-shouldered mule. Well, they were plumb desperate. Built a fire under it, but it only moved up the road a piece. Far enough so’s the wagon began to burn. They had to unhitch the mule and back the wagon off to put the fire out. They were setting there when we came on them. Brother went up to the mule, took hold of its ear and whispered in it. Well, that mule walked right off. The niggers hitched up and went down the road. Told everyone Brother talked witchcraft. Um.”