“No telling. He thought the world of my mother, that I’m sure of. She got her way on everything.” He was blowing the smoke, stamping the cigarette into the musty bedding. He breathed broken, “Oh darling.” And his dry mouth was on hers, his old mouth, in desire. He was pulling at her skirt, fumbling on her thigh with his soft fingers. She tore her mouth swiftly away, turning her head.
“And Lot went up out of Zoar,” he whispered, holding her to him. “He dwelt in the mountains and his daughters with him. Didn’t know I could quote from the Bible, did you, hon? The first-born went in and lay with her father. Book of Genesis.” Hotly he held her but gently withal.
She was pushing him from her with violent hands. “Come to the house, Uncle. Now.”
Wordless he followed her up the path where moonlight bloomed cold. In the kitchen she hung her coat on its hook. She went upstairs to lie in the chill air, while the dying candle made a puddle of tallow on the table top. Ellen’s loneliness was an ache, for his kindness had garbed her. He was aged and knowledgeable. Despair had laid her bare. It’s not for love of me. He’s got no enduring need of me. His imperfection, his weakness, had come to stand between them.
* * * * *
In the morning Garland was jovial in a bright yellow shirt piped in red and a belt with a European clasp fashioned like a horse and rider. Ellen dawdled over her barn chores, came tardily to the breakfast table. She didn’t wear a fresh apron, she ate stolid, uncommunicative. Anton was rapt in the radio, the nasal twang.
She’s pure as the rose, like the lamb she is meek And she’s never been known to use paint on her cheek
Ellen went from the room unnoticed. She decided to clean in the parlor first. She lifted a heavy chair, viciously dropped it thudding into its accustomed place. “Can’t those old fools leave things in order? It’s clean and redd up, mop and scrub. And then they mess it all up. Hogs.” She was piling rag rugs in her arms and striding to the porch. The door slammed after her. She stood on the steps and shook the rugs, snapping them with loud whacks. The dirt whirled in the cold air. “Dust and more,” she was muttering.
Garland opened the door. He was holding a cigarette, and traced his mustache with the small finger of his hand. Behind him she could hear Frankie’s high inquiring whines and the radio.
“Well, puss?” She continued her work, her soft mouth set in a line. He came over to her. “You know what you mean to me? _Joie de la vie._ Now that’s right. I’m past fifty, hon. If I’d have met someone like you earlier things might have been different in my life.”
She let a rug drop and in a deliberate movement took up another with a sigh. “I got a tormented lot of work to get through today, Uncle.”
“Just wanted you to know that.” He was tossing his cigarette away; he lit another and went inside. She heard him in a few minutes.
It’s beefsteak when I’m hungry Rye whisky when I’m dry Greenbacks when I’m hard up And heaven when I die
The Reo was packed, and it waited to carry Garland and Frankie away the next day. Ellen was instructed to wake the travelers early in the morning before going to the barn. The household sought their beds not long after supper. Frankie was protesting in their room, “The particular thing I’m afraid of is meeting folks, Ellie. Wish you were going to be there.”
“I’m out of patience with you. You’ve not done a lick all day, flitting about like a twitting chick.”
“All the same, talk to me.”
“Hush and leave me be. I’m asleep.”
Before dawn Ellen went into Garland’s partitioned chamber to rouse him. The light of the candle wavered across his face. For the instant she was confused, thinking it wasn’t her uncle with mouth pulled in withered upon the gums. She drew her breath sharply, and he was opening his eyes. “Ell’n?” he quavered, reaching for his false teeth in a watercup on the stone-topped bed table.
“Are you awake? I have to run.”
When she returned from the barn, Frankie had dressed, her new pearls were at her neck, her lips pale, her eyes blue-shadowed. “Must I really go, Pa?”
“It’s what we planned. And it’s for you to do. You know it be my nearest wish.” He warned her, “Don’t start up.”
“I won’t, Pa.”
He took the girl on his lap. “Look here, Poppet.” The battery set was clanging to the beat of a banjo, “Off with your coat and wet your throat with that real old mountain dew.”
“Shut it off for Chrissake,” Garland demanded, and the women started. “We’re going in a few minutes and then you can listen to your heart’s content. By God, An.”
The man switched off the radio and they sat to breakfast.
“Gladys isn’t letting her milk down so good, Pa.” Ellen leaned toward him.
“Tell Sam to let her calf bump it some. It can stay with the old one awhile. I aim to veal hit anyway.”
“Did you e’er tell Uncle about old Full-pail, Pa?” Frankie was preparing to prolong the mealtime. “That Dyke told of?”
“Listen at this, Garland. Joe Burwell went to look at a milk cow. The farmer hadn’t but led it out when his old ooman came squalling, don’t sell old Full-pail. Pray, don’t sell Full-pail, Mester. Joe’s ears pricked up. The old lady kept hollering so first thing Joe knows, he’s shelling out thirty dollars cold cash and hauling the cow home. That evening he couldn’t milk a teacup. Joe was fit to be tied. Went back and the farmer said to him, ne’er said how big the pail was.”
“That’s good,” Garland approved.
Before the sun rose much higher the bags had been put in the car. Garland returned to the porch for the pasteboard suitcases of Frankie’s things. “Away we go,” he cried.
Frankie was clinging to Ellen. “Reckon I won’t see you-all till next Christmas.”
“You’ll be too grand for us then, Frankie,” Ellen said.
Garland was getting behind the wheel. “These Reos are demons. Did I tell you I had her right at fifty on route sixty-six?”
“You take care of that girl, Gar. Don’t drive so reckless.”
“Statistics prove a car’s lots safer than a buggy. You know that?” He was looking at Ellen, “Goodbye, hon.”
“Goodbye, Uncle.” She waited for them to be gone, for routines to be reestablished and the ways of peace to come over the farm. She yearned toward spring, sick of winter’s hanging on.
“So long, Maria,” Garland was calling. Maria waved, walking back to the house.
“Bye now, Ma.” And the small figure promised, “I’ll write once a week, Pa.”
The yellow car was going down the lane and turning onto the road. Stillness descended until it rang like wounded thunder. Anton went toward the porch where Maria, in her dark red sweater and a discarded broad-brimmed hat of his, waited to follow Anton into the house. Ellen walked over to the well, putting her coat collar up. She sat on the damp covering board and shivered. From her pocket she was taking the gold-linked necklace Garland had given her. She dangled it where the sun collected to glint and catch the luster. She held it over the well before letting it drop.
13
Song sparrows were murmuring. Deep in burrows, woodchucks blinked and closed their eyes again. Brave white-carved flowers unfolded wearily and narrow spires of pokeweed started from the debris of winter. A green-striped butterfly emerged misshapen from a chrysalis and pumped wet wings. Cows bawled, feeling the season, and rutting male hogs screamed. Jack carried traces of skunk musk. On Ash Wednesday Father Tompert marked the foreheads of Ellen and her parents with a cross of ashes, saying, “Remember man, thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”
From cover of the woods Ellen was watching a dog fox in a fallow field. It was hunting white-footed mice, repeatedly leaped stiff-legged above the weeds, brush high. She rested her hands on the thick winter coats of the three goats at her side. She put her mind on Frankie, who wrote abrupt letters from Chicago. They brought lines to her father’s face until Ellen would feel the compassion heating her. She climbed a stile in the rail fence and her does were clambering after, the spotted kid leaping, shaking its long ears. Her thoughts had turned to Garland, and the secret about Marc. Wish I was wise. There were him and Pa both, grieving as youngens after the love of that mother of theirs, that Nell Gaddy. And her honing all the while for Marc’s true daddy that had left her. None of them satisfied. And Pa’d never study out that secret the way Uncle did. Pa would never think Nell could get caught with a brat the same as me. Her mind touched on the money she had sent last week again to the Doughertys. I put the child to a good mother. I never wanted him. Poor thing. The goats followed as she went up through the budding, winter-bare woods.
* * * * *
And three years would pass, years of time merged and woven in a pattern on an endless loom of chores. The color in Ellen’s life would break in snatches on the cloth of the drab days. By summer the radio Garland had brought was growing dim. Anton laid his ear to it in the evenings to catch the feeble sound. “It’s that far off,” he whispered, intent. Then the batteries were exhausted and the instrument was stored away in the wagon shed to gather cobwebs and mold. Maria’s pressure cooker would blow up, rending a gash on the rafter beams. Maria hid in the clothes press, staying there until Ellen had picked up the torn metal parts and thrown them out. She wore the same clothes day on day, her light-colored dresses hanging unused on the ridgepole in her room. Mud daubers constructed a nest over them, soaring in summer with damp balls dangling from their legs, in and out the two small windows.