The woman appealed to Ellen, “Don’t ne’er have a child, Ellen Gaddy. Don’t ne’er get caught with a child.” She grasped her arm, the tears squeezing from her old eyes, watering the wrinkles of her face.
“I’ve got to go, Mrs. York.”
Dr. Trumbo continued, “She’d been hemorrhaging. These things will happen. I packed her, did everything humanly possible. I came too late.”
The woman was taboring on the discolored sheet. “Ah, now what have I got?”
“You’ve got the child.”
“I don’t want hit.”
Ellen stood a moment in the cabin passageway before starting up the road toward Millville. “There’s a thing I keep trying to remember.” She spoke aloud, dazed. At the store she cranked the iron handle to the wood box that hung on the wall. “Central?”
“You’ll have to speak up, Madam.”
“Give me the Bethel Foundry.” When she had told Jerome, and heard the click at the other end, she walked out slowly.
Stacey called after, “Tell Maria Gaddy that eggs are down three cents again. They’re hardly worth trading.”
Ellen didn’t hear. A light mist of rain had begun and a sweet smell like the breath of cows was coming from the red plowed fields. The thing that had slipped her mind was back. It was the struggle to bear her own child, the way the throes had struck her in an open field and how she’d dragged herself to the shelter of the pear tree. The sweet heavy scent of crushed grass and blood and the fluttering of goldfinches were mingled into the memory.
After a week Jerome Hatfield came to speak to Anton. “Our baby’s ailing. Doc says she might hold down goat milk.” His face was haggard, his form stooped in exhaustion.
“My daughter’s got the goats.”
“I want to buy one from her.”
Ellen went to the woodshed and tied a rope to Rhodie’s collar. The doe had a little female kid at its side. “You keep Rhodie for as long as your baby needs the milk, Jerome. And raise the kid for the baby’s own.”
“I’m beholden.” He was lifting the goats into the wagon, fastening them there. He drove away, Rhodie baaing plaintively. Ellen watched them go. Here’s the land flowing over with milk and honey. The spring grass is pushing through the red land until it’s all pink and green. And Mandy’s dead. All about was death. The early dark of morning sometimes would be interrupted, awakening her, by Jack’s bark, followed by shotgun blasts and her father’s gruff tones. Ellen would know he had gone down in his mackinaw to kill some varmint in the barnyard. There was no escape from death, no way you could forget it was waiting. Ellen was resentful, disbelieving that some day her own strength would wither. I’m glad it wasn’t me when I bore that child back there. I recall I saw the evening star. And when Luke and Penny came, I got up from the orchard floor and walked to the house myself while Penny carried him. But then I pushed him from me, turned my back on my first-born.
* * * * *
She spoke up that night after the Gaddy supper had been eaten. The May rain was falling weighted, somnambulant, the air was close. “I hid it from you, Pa. Before I came home that summer when I’d run off from Uncle Garland.”
“You played the harlot.”
“I went to the Doughertys and had him there.”
“You were in St. Louis.”
“No. I went to Weems Crossroads in Illinois. I was afraid of you. The boy’s there now. I saw him when I went to get that clutch of guinea eggs that turned bad. Now I want to bring him here, Pa.”
Anton was stumping into the hall; he returned with the wide belt that he held by its buckle. “Before God your lying tongue is an abomination. Name the times I’ve said it.”
Ellen looked at him stony-faced. “Reckon I’m too old to whip, Pa. I’m twenty-one and the mother of your grandchild.”
He paused. “The father of a fool has no joy.” His heavy mouth was shaking. He drew the strap repeatedly through the palm of his hand, the harsh sliding noise rippling into the corners of the room like stones tossed in a pond. “My brother Marc, lusted. You be bound to do the same. He ran off from the college where my ma sent him. To a whorehouse. At St. Louis. And there’s where she went to get him. Dead. Now I’ve always claimed you had his blood, girl.”
Ellen’s eyes narrowed and shone. “You know what Marc was to your ma?” Her nerves shivered to their ends as her temper swung on her. “I know what that Nell did.”
Anton halted at bay. “Don’t say her name. She was a saint, girl. She sits at Mary’s right hand even now.”
Ellen was helpless, found she couldn’t strike. She kept silence.
Anton slapped the belt limply against his overall pants. He turned to a thin-legged doweled chair that was by the wall. “A harlot,” he said softly. “Upon e’er a high hill and under e’er a green tree, thou wanderest, playing the harlot. So says Jeremiah.” He let the strap drop, lifted the chair by its rungs, crashed it violently, splintering, to the floor. “Defiled.” He went from the room.
Ellen was looking at Maria. “You heard, Ma?”
“You got a child, Ellie?”
“A little boy, Ma. Named Simon.”
“I had a boy baby once. But he was a betimes child and had no life. I named him after Mester Gaddy for he wanted it. But they took him. He’s moldering out some’eres. I ne’er liked rain some way. Seems a boy would be unhappy and turn about in a wet place.”
Anton fumed as days passed. “Who’s its pa?”
“I don’t want to say. He’s as good as dead.”
“What’ll they speak of me when it’s told up and down the county?”
“Tell that I married a Yankee, Pa. And he left me.”
“No, the damn fool foreigner was killed. His folks have raised the child till now. And you’re fixing to bring it here.” He paused to eye Ellen with scorn. “Does it favor the Gaddys?”
“Reckon so, Pa.”
“What’s hit called?”
“Simon Gaddy.”
Then he said, “You’ll tell it to the priest, girl.”
“I’d rather not.”
“You’ll tell it Sunday. Before you can go for the brat.”
“I’ll tell it in the priest’s house, but not in the confessional.” She said bravely, “I’ve got a mind to leave the church.”
Impotent in frustration and wrath, Anton turned away. He was heard bawling commands to the team as he plowed up and down, making ready for the corn-planting.
They were standing before Father Tompert in the parlor of the rectory. Ellen, emboldened by her first successful stand against her father, spoke candidly to the Jesuit priest. “It’s like the church wants to boundary God, Father. And He is thus and so. And if you say at such a time such a prayer you’ll get off so much sooner to paradise. This is false to me, Father.”
“Hold, girl, you blaspheme,” roared Anton.
Father Tompert said, “I’ll speak with your daughter alone, sir. Wait outside this room. If you please.”
Then Ellen told the priest what was in her. And she added, “In the gospel of Matthew the Lord himself says, don’t pray where you’re seen of men. But enter into thy closet. And when you’ve shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. And use not vain repetitions.”
The priest saw she loved God. He saw her mind was bright and she had thought this thing out. The wise Jesuit was not uncommon among those consecrated to the cross of his faith. He spoke to Ellen. “It’s not your kind that need the mother church, Ellen. We’ll wait till you’re ready to come again to us. Till then, the Lord be with thy spirit.”
He was walking to the door. She laid her hand on the sleeve of his cassock. “Father, is it wrong to lie to the neighbors and say I had a husband?”
He looked at her while a bell tolled somewhere outside over a stitch of time. She saw his eyes were an indigo blue and the pupil in the center was a dormant coal. “For the sake of the child, perhaps not. In the eyes of God it may have been a marriage. I don’t know.” He folded his arms, went to the door. His face was smooth, his body moved ageless below the black frock. “Don’t worry about your daughter, sir. She’s in no danger of damnation. God is with her.”
Ellen put on the faded dotted Swiss dress in the morning. She combed her hair, plaiting it tightly in a new way she had. Anton counted money into her hand. Maria was concerned about the census taker whom Tinie Bilberry had reported was coming and no telling at what hour. “Now, whate’er will I say to him? He be the government. I’m that fretted. Do you have to go now, girl?”
The train coughed and clanged into the Weems Crossroads station. The road to the Doughertys seemed longer than Ellen remembered. She was passing the burial ground. A group of black-clad people were ringed at a fresh grave, cars and buggies were parked by the roadside. She hurried by. Amanda had been laid in the ground like that, for rain to rot and worms to suck until she would be as earth herself, her rosy face and gleaming braid living on in Jerome Hatfield. And a day might come when his daughter would ask, “Now tell, Pa, what was Mammy like?” And Jerome would say, “Seems I can’t remember. Appears to have fallen from me some way.”
Ellen reached the mailbox, went up the lane and heard a guinea cry. It came to her on a sudden that she was terrified, as if she had been sent to the dark cellar for supplies again. Something lurked there in the shadows. She lifted her skirts and fled toward light and Penny and the gray-streaked house with door open and unscreened.