“Oh my, I’d think a one-eye man would guard against such a happenstance.”
“I reckon he couldn’t gauge distances so good.” They lay awhile in silence. Then Ellen was speaking in the dark, “Craig took on the farm then. You can say that for him. And he was still going to the grammar school.”
Ellen wore the blue crushed-satin hat that Garland had brought her last Christmas. In Craig’s Model T, she was heading for the Catholic church. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the little ivory crucifix fastened on the dashboard. Under her feet the carpeting was torn; the car smelled of dust. The young man was voiceless, his tension exhibited in his handling of the machine. His collar was starched; the ill-fitted suit constricted him. “Here it is.”
They were walking in stiffly. When his arm touched her, she moved away. At mass when the bell rang, Ellen knelt by him. But while heads around her bowed in the incensed air, she was staring about. Anton was with Maria and Frankie in a back pew. Pa’s trying to trap me with Craig. She held her head rebellious among the bent ones. What’s all the begging and praying about? I don’t care for this way of loving Him. I’ll get my peace out on the fatness of the earth that is His footstool. And the dew and the smell of the fields.
“Stand up, Ellen,” whispered Craig.
Father Tompert was reading out to the people in the clapboard church the beginning of the gospel of John. Ellen listened, brooding. They can’t make me marry him. “Thanks be to God,” said the priest and the people moved to go.
Craig was driving a mile or two along a cart-rutted road on the other side of Millville, unfamiliar to Ellen. “There’s Tomkin’s Ditch,” he nodded to a joint post office and general store by the deserted roadside. “And here’s that section of land I’m fixing to buy. I aim to rent it the first two years to make the payments.” He halted the car, gazed upon an overgrown field. “Hit’s all virgin. A virgin piece. Ne’er a plowshare been put to it. Corn’ll grow ten feet tall with not a handful of fertilizer.” He moved the hand throttle and the car was lurching forward. He steered down a winding approach to a weather-beaten red house set barren of trees before a barn of the same color. “Let me point out the sights. Then you can meet Maw.”
Ellen left her blue hat on the car seat. She came to where Craig leaned on the lot fence. Steers, deep in muddy manure, idled around troughs of corn. A yellow hound wagged up to her, sniffed her dress. She patted its smooth head; it wriggled, threw itself with a grunt on its side in the rutted road, waving its feet, ingratiating.
“That’s Sooner.”
“Hey, Sooner.” She was stroking it.
“Sooner stay as come.” An elm grew by the fence. Craig cut a twig from it and offered it to Ellen. She shook her head. “Hit’s a slippery elm.” He was picking his teeth with the little stick. “Keeps off throat trouble.”
He hung his coat on the fence, rolling his sleeves, uncovering blond hair that grew long on his arms. He walked with caution around the mire of the lot and climbed into the shed loft. The steers licked at the dry stalks he was forking down; they gazed at Ellen with deep-lidded eyes. Craig shouted, “Nothing to do but eat, hey, Ellen?” He was strutting over to her. “Rather watch them eat than feed my own face. You know?”
“Well.”
He spat out the twig. “I took on a man’s ways when I was yet a stripling. I dragged this farm up from a poor bit, starting the day Paw was killed. It’ll make some folks set up.”
“Your ma take to it out here?”
“Don’t you study on her, Ellen. Maw says the day I bring home a wife to do my cooking she’ll go to live with my sister up Indiana way.”
“Craig,” Ellen warned, “I’m not marrying. I told you. If you will talk so, you can take me home.”
“But I figured on it, Ellen.”
“I’m not beholden to your figuring.” A thrill of fright ran through her, seeing he had raised up tall and pulled in his lip. He was looking upon her as though she were changed. He leaned over, gripping her upper arm, swathed in the winter coat. “I told you no, Craig.”
“I heard a girl was taught to say no to lead her sweetie on hotter. You playing games?” His hand was tightening.
“Craig, Pa’d kill you if he saw how you’re acting.”
“Mester Gaddy’s thirsting to foist you off on me.”
“But I got ne’er a liking for you, Craig. You have to give me time.” If she could but stave him off until she was safe at home. Home was distant and dear.
“Don’t you e’er get hot, Ellen?” He was thrusting his hand within her coat, roughly hunting her breast.
She pulled from him. “Maybe I would if you were good and waited.” She tried to soothe him. “Let’s go meet your ma now.”
He was dragging her to his pock-marred face with an arm that was a band of steel. “You virgin, Ellen?” The scent was there, an odd mingling of moth balls and urine and hair oil. His lips were striving upon hers while she struggled. His hand was pressing her back, holding her against his body that was a rock. She felt the hard prod of him and a streak of flame ran through her, overlaid with disgust. I mustn’t go wild, it’s like with a mean boar, like Luther. You have to deal easy with him. She forced her body to slacken and felt him relax. She drew her mouth stiffly aside. “Give me a chance to breathe.” She smiled, forcing it.
“There, Ellen. You do like me. See?”
She twisted like a snake, darting free. Upon her heels she heard him, his breath an angry roar. The five-tined pitchfork was leaning against the fence bars where he had placed it after throwing hay to the cattle. She grasped it, flailing with the prongs turned backward. It smote him across the face, leaving white streaks. He stumbled, gasping amazed. She swung again.
“Bitch,” he hissed, “I’ll prick you yet.” He grappled for the tool.
She tore it loose, driving at him strongly. He was staggering backward, tripping in a road rut, falling. He threw up a protecting arm, blood oozing from a tine-mark on his forehead. Mud covered his Sunday vest and pants and striped shirt. She turned, speeding across the stubble field toward woods beyond. The hound, Sooner, was pattering alongside. She clawed her way through underbrush, aware after a time of a hurt in her throat where the breath was sobbing. She looked about. The hound had disappeared. She took the direction that seemed true, cutting across country, skirting the few houses. She climbed a rail fence and her dress caught, ripping. She shook her head, “I’ll have to mend that.”
The afternoon was wearing on. A chill breeze was born. A faintness enveloped her. She startled when a twig cracked. She stopped to consider, speaking into the stillness. “It’s the fright makes me light-headed. I must have got my bearings turned. I should have come on the pike by now.” She was going at a slower gait; she remembered, “Now my hat’s in his car.”
She was following a stony path bordered by thimbleberry bushes. It led onto the Millville Road which she recognized at once. A mud hen ran stammering before her, “Butbutbutbutbut!” It vanished in a field. The rail-birds were seldom seen; Sam Offut claimed that in winter they changed into frogs and hid in the marshes until spring. Ellen walked swiftly, head down, as automobiles and later a buggy came from behind and passed. Then she was at the house steps and slowing her pace.
Anton was in the kitchen with Frankie who sprang from a chair. “Hey, Ellie. Is your beau with you?”
“I’ve got no beau,” Ellen said stonily. She stood a moment plucking beggar’s-lice from her coat while her fingers shook. She turned to her father. “That was a whoreman you set on me, Pa.” She began to weep freely as anger overcame her.
“You greening me? Speak up.”
“You were bound and determined to sic that Hedrick on me, weren’t you?” Ellen whimpered.
“Speak up,” shouted Anton.
“He wanted to show me his farm. Then he came after me. I said let’s go meet your ma, but he wouldn’t.”
“Tell what he did,” Anton threatened, fear glowing in the gray pupils of his eyes.
“I grabbed a dung-fork and hit him. Then I ran.”
“You seem to be safe enough, girl. The Lord God takes care of you.”
Anger caught her up again. “It’s not that. With you it’s always root hog or die for me, and you know it.” The words fell biting as her tears washed. “It’s not because of God’s help I be home again.” She was running to her room.
Later she appeared, pale and sullen, to do her chores and help with supper. When Anton came to the kitchen, she whispered, cold, “I ne’er meant those words, Pa. I was unsettled, I reckon, by all that walking.”
“Were you out walking then, Ellie?” asked Maria. “I thought you were with that young man.”
“I don’t take trifling from a youngen,” said Anton, contemptuous. “Got worries enough hanging from my neck without you laying more on.”
“I ask you to overlook it.” She strove against the alienation.
“Root hog or die, such talk after all that’s done for you. And taking God’s name. Whoso curses his father, it’s said, his lamp shall be put out.”
“I ne’er cursed,” she breathed.
“I saw you holding your head haughty in church this morning at the canon of the mass when all good souls were waiting on God. Now bend your head proper, girl. And don’t disgrace me. Mind.”