Maria’s birdlike eyes looked up from where she sat, clad in a long maroon sweater and a worn housedress. “I got my little boy here, Mam. He’s a bit cold. But he’s not dead by a long sight. That whippoorwill was wrong.” She had cradled a pillow in the crook of her arm. Her hair was loosely braided, gray wisps straggled over her face.
“Ma,” Ellen whispered.
Maria was frowning. “Shut the doors. I allowed he was out there in the ground moldering and turning. But he’s right here. Shut them now.”
“It’s Ellie, Ma.” But the woman bowed her head into her shielding hands, waiting until the doors would close.
Ellen went into the kitchen. “She’s stark mad.” She stirred up the fire, adding lighter-wood and a log from the bin.
The three men scraped noisily coming up the porch and into the room. They stood in their muddied boots, their breath steaming up. Anton stamped his boots and coughed, rubbing his fingers together above the stove.
“Evening, Ellie,” Sam said.
She nodded, holding herself from them, over at the side by the windows where a chill seeped in.
Anton had on his black bear-fur cap, the collar of his tattered mackinaw was turned up. He shrugged and said directly to Garland, “So hell, I’d get her out mealtimes. She wouldn’t go to mass and the last few days she wouldn’t get in bed. Hum.” He inquired softly, “Has she gone loony?”
“Would she cook for you?” Garland asked.
“Fair to middling,” said Sam.
“But always she’d set out for the bedroom,” Anton was saying, “and I’d pull her back. Like she aimed to anger me.”
“She needs a doctor, An. And care.”
“What are you fixing to do?”
“I’ll have to make some calls first. Where’s the nearest phone? I think the state will take her. We have to see a doctor and you’ll have to sign papers. You come with me, An.”
“Go hitch Red,” Anton said. The hired man went as bid.
“Where is she now, hon?” Garland asked Ellen.
“In the closet,” Ellen whispered. “She ne’er knew me.”
“And why should she?” Anton was glaring at her, hurt and reproachful. Like old Jess led to the sourwood scaffold in the yard. “Isn’t that right, Gar? There’s a great daughter. That one.” The door slammed after him in a gust of cold air, and Ellen shrank.
“Your ma’s probably best off right where she is, puss. She isn’t violent or anything?”
“No. Just sitting there harmless. She used to do that sometimes when Pa had his back up. I thought it was a place for her to get away. Far as I can remember she’d do that. But now she’s talking daft and she didn’t know me.”
They stood, hands hanging useless. Nothing moved. The silence was complete. Then the buckwagon clattered outside. Garland roused, picked up his homburg hat. “Be back late. Not much of a Christmas this year, hon.” From the window she watched them climb onto the seat. The chestnut horse was restive, its winter coat woolly and ungroomed, dry manure casing its flanks and legs. It carried its broomlike tail high and pawed the ground. It moved off, the two figures hunched against the cold, heads drawn down into scarves and collars.
Ellen left the house, going toward the woodshed. She called to the dog but he had disappeared. She went seeking her goats. She met Sam, and learned of their destruction from him, “You know your pa e’er was a strong-willed man, Ellie. And you be cut off the same last. I saw that when you were yet a set-along child. You’d ne’er squall when he took a stick to you. It wasn’t natural.” Sam was wagging a gnarled hand.
Ellen’s mind had only partly encompassed what he told her. She was conscious of the faint liquor scent. “What’ll I do, Sam?”
“You hadn’t ought to torment him so.” Sam was stooped over, holding one hand on a hip as if an ache lay underneath. “Being as you’re a ooman grown now, you ought to stand behind him. Mrs. Gaddy’s no use any more.”
Ellen wasn’t listening. “Where’d you put them, Sam?”
He went before her to the orchard edge. “I threw them in the wagon and toted them down here. For Gawd, took a big hole. Wore me plumb out.”
When he had gone, Ellen looked about at the familiar landscape. Penny and Leona and spotted Pie. Rhodie and the shaggy yearlings. Pa gave me an eye for an eye, it appears. Burning for burning, stripe for stripe. Because I took Simon. It’s my goats for Simon. Life for life. That’s an enduring fine trade. At last she was wending back up the hill field. Darkness dropped almost instantly as it does in the short days of the year. The bark of a dog fox was rising shakily from the woods, the eerie sound lingered. Ellen’s hands in her pockets were stiff and cold. She blew on them and rubbed them. “I’ll ne’er have truck with my pa again.”
From the house, squares of lamplight were wavering. Ellen entered, heard Dr. Trumbo’s murmur. The Gaddy brothers were sitting with him, and papers were spread before them. They all wore their overcoats, and their headgear was cast near their hands as though, in the half-warmth of the kitchen, they were passers-by with a bit of business to perform here. Ellen removed her coat. She shook the grate in the stove and laid a fresh fire. That’s all we be. Passers-by. Strangers sitting in His home, dragging the past on our shoes. If we could but lose that burden, start afresh. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. There’s Pa whom I ever loved, thinking of ways to make him see me since I was a least youngen, following him with my eyes, running to do for him. But I never saw Pa for himself, only for the way I wished him, like the songs that seem to happen in another land. From this valley they say you are going, we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. I loved Pa in the land of myself, in a valley of my mind. While Ellen was mixing the corn meal, her hand was turning the egg and buttermilk into it quickly. Tears started and fell unheeded.
She laid plates before the men and they ate silent by the mellow light. Forks and knives chinked. The smell of burning oil pervaded the room. Ellen went to where the woman hid herself. “Come get your supper, Ma.” Maria laid her head on her knees. Ellen brought her a dish and she accepted it. The doctor and Garland were lighting cigarettes, Anton puffed his pipe. Ellen finished the dishes and swept the floor. Dr. Trumbo arose then, it was time to go. He drew Maria struggling and whimpering from her place, and Ellen persuaded her to change from her ragged clothes. “Here, Ma. Take off that sweater and those rags. Put this on.” She was offering the old crepe de Chine dress. “It’s silk.”
“Well,” Maria felt of the black material. She was putting her pillow down. When she had dressed they came into the kitchen where the others waited.
“All set?” asked Dr. Trumbo.
Anton was watching his wife from where he still sat at the table. He was pushing tobacco angrily with his thumb into the pipe bowl. “There goes the last of my oomen-folk. Now who’s to do the cooking, Gar? Sam, you think?”
“I’ll get her bag.” Garland went into the shadowed bedroom.
“I’ve been a righteous man. And pious,” Anton carped harshly.
“Here we go, Mrs. Gaddy.” The doctor was taking Maria’s arm; he led the way with Ellen to the car, into the black night.
Garland was bringing Maria’s valise. He paused at the open door to the porch. Light from the kitchen made a hesitant path reaching to the top step. “Goodbye, An.” Car lights had beamed suddenly in the yard, revealing the shrouded figures of the women climbing into the back seat. Garland cleared his throat. “I’ll remember when I first met Maria.”
Anton did not move. Pipe smoke wreathed and dimmed his lined face, his strong shoulders, his powerful arms stretched on the table before him. “Man born of ooman is of few days, Gar.”
Garland was running his soft hand nervously through his white hair, fingering the place where his mustache had used to be. He hurried down the steps. “Let’s go, Doc.”
Ellen sat in back with Maria, dust from the car floor mingled with a vague clinical smell. She drew an old alpaca robe about their knees; it was damp to her hands, musty.
“I remember winters, Doc,” Garland was saying. “We cut shoes from hides my father tanned. They had only one last so both shoes were cut the same. Pa’d say, your feet will wear them into shape to fit. Times I thought it was the shoes shaping my feet.”
“You think everyone nowadays buys shoes, Mester Gaddy? They come down out of the back country or I hunt them out. Ridden with hookworm, wearing shoes made like yours were, no right or left.”
“Chrissake, bet you see some things, Doc?”
“Sure. Blacksnake root for the stomach. Butterfly root for female trouble.” Dr. Trumbo grunted. “Lady came in yesterday. Said she was near starvation. She was down to her last chicken and couldn’t wring its neck. Said it was her pet.”
“That’s the lot of a farmer.”
“That’s right, Mester Gaddy. Always dealing with death. The youngens play with the calves and lambs and maybe teach them tricks. Then they have to watch them slaughtered. Always losing whate’er they get attached to.” The feeble lights of the car parted the night. Ellen watched the slack shoulders of the men before her. Maria breathed deeply, the pillow slipping from her angular fingers.