“That’s her for you,” Frankie said.
“I reckon she doesn’t like me.”
“Oh she does, Lily.”
“No.”
“Ellie’s just bossy that way.” The two girls embraced abruptly. The pot boiled. The sugary odor was filling the kitchen, seeking darkened rafters where smoke from years long past dwelled.
“Would you be best friends with me, Frankie?” The big girl was effusive.
“I will. Ellie doesn’t tell things to me ever.” They clung, whispering, comforted, sharing their trepidations. They returned to their stirring of the Barrier Cherries.
* * * * *
Ellen had made the land to her since she returned, and the creatures and birds spawned upon it. In hot night she would hear hoot owls ululating in the oaks, and sometimes a mocker-bird would hang on the stones of the garden fence, quavering through marbled moonlight. I came through. The fear is past and I’m home. She stood by while Rhodie was yeaning a kid. The doe stamped her little hoofs nervously, pawed the straw and crouched, straining. With a worried blat, she expelled a spotted kid. Ellen was tearing the caul lining to free it in a flood of water. She cleaned the mucus from its gasping mouth, gazed on the odd-looking animal with ears like a hound. “Where’d you find the buck?” she asked Sam.
“Well, I says to myself in March when she commenced to wag her tail, Ellie’d want her caught. So I took her over to a pied billy the other side of Millville.”
“I ne’er saw a skewbald goat, Sam. And those drooping ears.” Penny’s maternal instincts were aroused at the sight and smell of a newborn one; she vied with Rhodie in cleaning it. Rhodie was stretching her head and yawning as animals will do in discomfort. The kid staggered up to nurse the tiny nipples. “I’ll call it Pie,” Ellie decided. “There, Pie.”
In the mornings when she left her goats at the pasture, she took the path around the farm pond. Tiny green frogs were camouflaged in the reeds and grasses, and blacksnakes lived among haw and alder roots along the marshy bank. One would slip into the shadowed water, head crooked like a twig held upright as it moved across the unbroken glass. When the speckled thrush was buzzing and flapping by the path, she ran to find a snake twined around a sapling cottonwood. Its head was in the nest and the mother bird was darting at it, crying shrill. A single fledgling remained, beak gaped for food. Ellen seized a stick, striking the reptile until it twisted dying from the tree. She crushed its head, slit the body with her pocketknife to see if there was life in the swallowed birds. They were limp and she dropped them in an open field while the bird continued the alarm clatter. “You’d as well feed the one you got left if you can find your way to go back to that serpent-smelling nest.”
Afterwards buzzards wheeled. Ellen knew they were scenting the dried rotted nestlings. One huge bird descended and sat hunchbacked on a rail, glassy eyes fixed on her. “Stinking brat.” Jack stalked it until it made grunting low sounds and flapped away.
Only once since that day in late July when she had come home did a sharp edge touch the smooth progression of Ellen’s hours. She awoke in the night to hear Anton speaking to Maria in the hall below. “What’s amiss with your daughter? There’s no young men coming to the door.” Maria whispered to him and they were gone. Ellen lay awake a long time. But in the morning when it came to her mind, she thrust it from her. “It’s not my fault if they don’t come.”
Anton stepped aside on Sunday to speak with Craig Hedrick and his widowed mother about a boar he wanted to buy. On the way home he looked over his shoulder at Ellen. “That Hedrick boy’s got a motorcar.” He was shouting above the cart’s rumble, “And he’s done proud with that farm since his old man was killed. He says, Ellie’s a comely thing.”
She felt all her being grow still, watching the dusty road glide from under the wagon. Craig had been one of the bigger boys in the grammar school, a few years older than she. His father, Moses Hedrick, had had a cleft palate and though the boy had no actual reason for a speech impediment, he would talk in nearly the same tongue-tied manner that had characterized his father. Craig had been good-natured, his dog followed him to school, he was big enough to force the smaller boys from their torturing of turtles and frogs and insects that fell into their hands. But while Ellen’s pity made her kind, her nature had been revolted by the boy’s way of speech, his dirt-ingrained fingernails and pocked face, the sour odor that arose from his unwashed winter clothing. She did not reply to Anton now. The blood rose hot in her face and her pulse beat heavily when he said, “You’re seventeen, Ellie. Where’s all those young men?”
“You’d best take hold.” Maria wagged her head while the wagon jolted. “Lest you be caught an old maid. Get your man while you’re still blooming, for you’ll be a rag soon enough.”
“Young Hedrick’s a Catholic, as well,” said Anton.
Their words rang with finality. She closed her ears to them. Her hands were folded in her lap on last summer’s dress of blue-dotted Swiss. She clenched them tightly. The steel-rimmed wheels turned in rhythm, hate and hate. Wish I was dead like old man Moses Hedrick with a pitchfork tucked between my shoulder blades.
* * * * *
There came, early on a sultry afternoon, the yellow-billed cuckoo’s moan, “Kow, kow, kow.” Ellen lifted her head from her churning, spoke to Frankie going by with a pail of hog slop. “Raincrows. Hear them cry? Reckon it’ll come on a storm?”
“I ain’t scared.” Frankie laughed high. “Teacher Peyton’s coming and I got my lesson ready.”
An hour later the sky began to darkle. Ellen walked down the lane to look toward the pasture. She could see her goats, hoofs upon the gate bars. The cows lay in their usual spot, chewed their cuds, complacent. Almost imperceptibly the air was taking on a greenish cast. A fresh-smelling wind yawed and swept the field of rye grass. Green beyond green under the sky mass, the grass was weaving, bending to it. Over all heaved the blooming sunglow, golden and omnipresent. A rumble was sounding faint, a flash of light flicked in the west. The wind was subsiding, the heat smoldered oppressive and in the gloom of the sky the sun withdrew. Darkness ruled. Sam appeared at the lane head, waving like a tiny distracted spider, his face grimaced. “Afore Gawd, get the cows, Ellie. Could rile up a twister.”
She was running to the field. The dog rounded up the cattle, drove them in at a lope, milk-sacks swinging about their skinny legs so the white fluid spurted. Ellen took Pie in her arms. The others bounded after as she ran to the woodshed. Rhodie snorted and jumped sidewise stiff-legged, her bearded chin tucked in. The girl laughed, “You daft one.” She shut them in the pen. Lightning streaked, a thunderclap crashed upon the ground. “If you were out in a storm, you’d be safe beneath a cedar or a white birch. So Sam says. Beware the ash and the oak for it’s their nature to tempt lightning.” She was wending up the path to the house, searching cloud drifts for a down-sucked tail that could betoken the birth of a tornado. Thunder drummed, light cracked the horizon. The sweeping wind had ridden off the burdening heat.
The topmost branches of the hackberry lurched and swayed and she felt her heart catch. “It’s so fair. So enduring fair a storm be.” Tears drew into her eyes from the gladness. The wind reeled upon her so the flimsy gingham clung flattened along her young hips and the hard nipples of her breasts. She sensed her strength quicken, fathoming for an instant how she, eternal, would through the ages walk the long green soul of man.
Standing there, she heard Frankie’s scream. She turned to the porch steps. “It can’t storm. I got my grammar lesson.” The voice was protesting, “I’m afraid, Pa.”
Anton mocked her, soothing. “Haw, Frankie. Now you ne’er seen a twister.”
“I’m afraid. Afraid.”
The wind shrieked, the loft door slammed. In the kitchen a pot of scented geraniums on the window sill was spun across the floor. The noise crackled. Anton, from the parlor door, was roaring at Ellen and Maria. “Get the windows shut, you oomen. And draw those shades. Open windows are what sucks the bolts.” He was lighting a lamp in the parlor, pulling the shades. He looked at Frankie in the subdued light, drawn up rigid and white in her chair. “Hit’s just an old-timey commotion out there now.”
There came the splintering noise of a falling tree. In the instant Frankie sprang up, shook her fists helplessly, shut her eyes and clenched her teeth. “Everyone’s against me. Hit’s coming to get me.” Under the storm’s tension, her inhibitions mounted to the surface. She was sobbing in her reedy voice, “I’m going to die. Really I hate you, Pa. I hate you. I don’t want to go off to Chicago.” Maria and Ellen had come in. Frankie turned her tear-drenched face to them. “Everything’s Pa’s fault. What’ll I do, Ellie?”
“All I can say,” Ellen told her, “is I’d as lief it would rain and get it o’er. This thunder’s souring all the milk.”