Before they blew the candles in the bedroom that evening, the sisters were sitting in their shifts on the beds. Ellen looked out the window where the curved horn of the waning moon bobbed in scuds, and the wind coursed high upon it. “It’s wild out there tonight. The Indian summer’s on the decline.”
“Ellie, what did Craig do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“I’d ne’er let a man touch me. I’d hide like Ma in the wardrobe closet first.”
“I’ll see that come the time.”
“Well tell, did he kiss you?”
“No.”
“Tell about girls, Ellie. Why are there girls and then men?”
“Go to sleep. Why can’t you let it be? You’re always going on.”
“I want to know if a man’s secrets are more like a ram or a stallion. Wish I knew.”
“You say more and I’m going to tell Pa you’re asking such stuff. He’ll whip those notions from you all at once.”
Frankie lay restless, drawing the quilts up to her chin. She sighed. The candles by the bedside flickered, and upon the slanted roof beams shadows were wavering like wings of pinned moths.
Ellen slept. She was dreaming of Christian Ay. And in the dream he had knowledge of her. It seemed this time she was willing. She came awake wondering at the vividness, sheltering its guilt. Maybe it all befell in another world as Miss Gentry the school teacher had claimed. Once Ellen had related a childish nightmare to her and she had replied, “Some say the soul is freed while you’re asleep, Ellen. And that’s when evil’s got its chance. And there’s some can prophesy from a dream. Now others go against those old ways, holding modern notions such as dreams showing up your real wishes, and you having a hidden mind with its own thoughts. I don’t hold by any of that. I maintain those fancy notions are much the same as prophesying.”
It was another strangeness to dwell on. Then she recalled the child she had borne in the Dougherty orchard. She put the memory away with distaste, separating its being from the love she had held for Christian Ay as if there were no connection. She closed her eyes again, weary from the long day.
* * * * *
The spotted boar that Anton had obtained from Craig Hedrick rooted up his fence in the night, wandering into the lot where the cows were penned for the winter months. He weighed over half a ton, had an untrusty temper, an insatiable appetite. Anton and Sam would view him in his pen when he fed. “Haw. Luther. Old bastard stinks, doesn’t he, Sam? Luther.”
“He’s ugly, Mester Gaddy. I want to see the pigs he sires to fatten for market. Say.”
The brute’s jowls below his dish face were touching the ground. His ears flapped over tiny vacant eyes. His back was arched high and powerful, his larded sides shook when he trod on his small cleft hoofs. His screw tail was twitching with excitement. He roamed, investigating the new territory, growling. He nibbled at the corn he rooted from cow droppings, at hay fallen under the racks. But he was seeking a tastier morsel. The heavy milker, Maisie, had been due to drop a calf, the men examining her judiciously every evening for signs because Anton wanted to raise it. Now she was down in straw at the corner of the shed, groaning, pushing forth a heifer calf. As Luther rounded the shed side he smelled it, half born. He fed his hunger, ripping at the moist caul-swathed fetus, his eyes glittering.
In the morning Anton had to shoot his mutilated cow. The men strung it up to skin it and dress out what meat could be salvaged. Anton was scooping the foul-smelling entrails into a washtub. “When we finish trimming this carcass, before God, Sam, we’re going to drive locust posts four feet deep. Build that murdering bastard a barricade that’ll hold him.”
12
Near the last of November there was a circle around the moon foretelling the wet weather. The downpour held for ten days, the pregnant sky slate-colored, the deluge continuous. Muck and soggy manure were deep now in stables and yards and paths. When Ellen went out to her chores she would wear Anton’s discarded rubber boots. Maria and Frankie had sickened when the rain first began. They were lying together in the big bed in the downstairs room, Anton sleeping nights in the guest bed. Though the fever of the invalids was abating, their harsh coughs were hanging on. Anton soaked inner bark of black cherry and elm, boiling it down to a thick brown brew for them to sip when the seizures came on. Ellen’s eyes were on him as he was moving about the kitchen, preparing the medicine. His loose lips drooped in concentration. “Feed a cold and starve a fever. Hear, girl?”
“Maybe we ought to get a doctor, Pa?” She whispered it, confiding.
“Nary a satchel doctor has set foot in this house, even when your ma bore you youngens.” His voice surged, “I don’t work with charms and tie papers on the sick. The way heathen folk do. I use herbs and healing trees. Like my folks before me and theirs before that.”
“A doctor might know of something new.” She was persistent.
“Now what do you reckon a doctor be? He uses the same herbs as me. He puts them in fancy bottles and gives them new names. The Word tells, remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. That goes for all old-timey ways.”
“I know, Pa.” The sharp-scented steam was filling the kitchen. Ellen took a bowl of spongy warm dough, overturning it into a bed of soft flour on the bread board.
Anton set the jar of warm liquid on the table by her. “Hum. Now, that’s ready for those two.” He pulled on his heavy jacket and fur cap, departing into the drizzle.
Ellen worked the dough down and covered it with a towel. She would prepare flannel bags of heated earth when the chills came on Maria and Frankie, heaping blankets high. Then their fever would be reborn and take possession again. “Mam,” Maria whispered hoarsely to Ellen once, “tell Pap he better make up another sweater tea if the back of this fever don’t break soon.” Red-faced, Maria threw back the covers. Pity moved in Ellen. When she came from the barn, she would leave her muddy boots on the porch and wash herself. She wore a fresh apron into the bedroom. She would bring the invalids a bowl of pudding and a plate of toasted fresh bread, walking softly.
“There’s a bit for you to try and eat, Frankie. You got to have food, Pa says, now the fever’s waning.”
“Wish I had ice,” complained the girl. “Go get the chamber pot for me, Ellie.”
No action, no word or roughness disturbed the tranquil edge of Ellen’s spirit. She was gentle-spoken. “It’ll be clearing off soon. The red cock crowed on the fence this morning. First time he’s flown off the ground.”
Frankie was sighing. “Christmas is less than a month away. And I’m missing all my lessons. I might ne’er get to go with Uncle Garland to the city.”
“Sure you will, now.” Ellen took them warm water to bathe their faces. She scrubbed bed linen in a tub on the kitchen floor, wrung the clothes out, pinned them on the lines she strung through parlor and kitchen. All the while she bore herself proudly and carefully, feeling her necessity and how they were all leaning on her. Surely her father saw she was keeping his house alone now, cooking for Sam and the sick ones, besides her work out of doors.
At length a fragment of moon reappeared in the daytime sky, and the sun was there too, embryonic, feeble. Maria came out of the bedroom to grind beans for breakfast coffee, a long maroon sweater draped over her flannel nightdress. Anton wrapped Frankie in a quilt and sat her in a chair at the table. He was filling her plate. “Now you got to eat.”
The slender girl laughed, her skin pallid, her red hair seeming to prosper unnaturally under the illness, lying abundant. “Do tell at her,” said Maria, “and my hair’s falling out. When I was a youngen I lost hit all in the epidemic. Pure bald. Had to wear a string-knit cap for nigh on a year. He knows.” Her lips continued to move.
“I was thinking, Pa,” said Ellen, striving to keep her newly won role, “I’ll start cleaning the candlesticks outside after this to get away from that mess in the sink.”
“This little old thing.” Anton touched Frankie’s hair, beaming. “Just look at her, you-all.”
The tears stood in Ellen’s eyes. And days that she had made full became empty once more. She felt her pride and her beauty fall away.
* * * * *
She was cutting down a few of the hard cheeses from the rafters in the smokehouse. Grady Love would take them in trade for the staples they needed. There was little to carry in the basket these days. In the unseasonable weather the hens had nearly stopped laying. She used water-glass eggs to cook with, put down in a crock during the summer. There was no cream or butter, the dairy taking all the milk that was produced. It was late in the day before she got started. She put on her heavy coat and boots. “I’ll be back in time to fix supper, Ma. So don’t fret if it gets dark. Days are so short now.”
“Can’t you wait till tomorrow?” Frankie was asking. “Don’t go.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Frankie. I’m strapped for salt and soda. Pa’s out of tobacco. You try to nap.”