“Okay, Daddy.” But this time she was amused and said it as though she would not.
The next morning Rose was frying ham and eggs for breakfast. The stale air in the flat was surfeited with the high fat odor. She made her ways soft so the pain of parting would lie in Anton like a hot ball. She was teasing him so he would never be quite sure away from her and would remember her standing by him in the bright-flowered kimono, her hips soft and her city face white. She was forking the food onto his plate. Anton observed the lift of her arm along her breast; he laid his gnarled hand against the pointed shape of it, his mind turning to a morning long years ago.
The girl Penny, who married that fool Dougherty, had worn a flowered dress patterned like Rose’s kimono. She had come to the hay field to bring Anton a drink of water in a stone jar. He was turning the damp clover alone. The girl watched him drink, smiling. “It’s a power hot out here, Mester.” She was lifting her hands to brush back her hair, seeking the breeze. She looked cool from her head to her brown toes that were small as a youngen’s. Something stirred in Anton when her breasts stood out as she raised her arms. He put his hand forward hardly knowing what he did, and cupped one in his palm. “Are you coming in the heat?” he was whispering, hoarse. Penny’s eyes had widened. She was bending for the jug and slipping away. In days to follow he named her “that roaring ooman,” angered with his own calflike ways, despising his moment of weakness. And when his older daughter had picked up the foldilay songs, ever after they would stir his ire.
He spoke dourly to Rose, removing his hand, “The lips of a strange ooman drop honey, says the Book. And her mouth be smoother than oil.”
“Banana oil, Daddy,” said Rose.
* * * * *
Anton met Dyke at the truck parked on Market Street. Hoarfrost had glazed the windows, Dyke was scraping at it with his knife while the engine warmed. The truck backfired and trundled with an effort through early traffic, past the slow gray river, and into the country where smoke was seeping from dunghills and fowl scratched the frozen earth. Anton was restless in his seat, crabbed. Dyke was driving stolidly. The radiator was beginning to boil as they chugged up the Gaddy farm lane. Dyke peered through the cloud above the hood. “Just made the well in time, Mester Gaddy.” He was shouting over the noise of the engine, and cut it. “Hey there, Sam.” He still shouted although the motor had stopped. He lowered his voice in the quiet wintry air, “Did your wife help you milk, Sam?”
“No, I shift for myself at the barn when Mester Gaddy’s off.” There was the hint of home-brew about Sam’s breath. He sighed, “But this here lumbago’s getting me down.”
Anton had descended his side of the truck. Shading his eyes, he was looking at buzzards that wheeled over one of the fields. “What be dead out there, Sam?”
“I don’t know. Could be the dog’s killed him a woodchuck.”
Anton walked to the top of the land, the other two following. “Reckon it’s old Jack himself?”
“Now I recollect, Mester Gaddy, Eadie said she ne’er seen him about yesterday to get his dinner scraps.”
Anton picked up a shovel, walked down the lane alone. A few sluggish bluebottles buzzed up in the sunless air from the dog’s decaying worn-out body, matted with burrs and beggar’s-lice, damp from melted frost. While the man was digging, clay caught in the cuffs of his shiny black pants. From the woods nearby the two notes of the carping bluejays echoed like pieces of crockery being knocked together. The birds were heralding the spring winds. Anton tipped the carcass into the grave with his shovel. A warm stench floated from where maggots quivered. Anton neither smelled nor saw. His disciplined arms were performing efficiently. His mind dwelled apart, jealous, on the woman in Louisville.
part four
Lovers who must say farewell When the road has reached the trees Lovers who have all to tell Where the road runs out of sight In the green beyond the leaves The green cove below the light Lovers who must say farewell When the road has reached the trees Touching hand to hand to speak All their love has ever known Find no words to speak and say Love... O love...
21
Ellen had spotted the wagon before Simon, drawn by a strapping team of grays. The little farmer had a white beard and mustache. He was touching his hat and yelling across the tarred road to where they sat on the station house steps, “Hi. You Mrs. Gaddy?”
They took up their bags and ran. Simon was scrambling into the wagon bed. “Hey, Mester.”
“I’m Matthew Wasilewski,” the old man said. Ellen climbed to the seat beside him. He was clicking to the team and the shod hoofs resounded on the patched streets of Hidden Creek. They came upon dirt country roads and Ellen observed how there were no stones and they stretched flat and straight, not curving and hilly like those about Millville. The horses set a fast pace.
Simon shouted, “That’s a spanky team. Can I hold the reins sometime?”
“Hush, Simon. He’s fond of horses.”
“Let him talk. I say, let boys speak out.” The man’s complexion was translucent, as happens with the aged. His beard was yellow about the mouth from tobacco stains and food. His frail body was engulfed by baggy overalls and a fresh-starched blue shirt. He bobbed his head, “Now, Mom raises Leghorn hens. She’ll want you to help with them.”
“What’s a Leghorn? How’s it differ?”
“They’ll beat any breed at laying, Mrs. Gaddy. Mom follows the Department of Agriculture. She reads the bulletins. And she sees the county agent too. He told her to put those runners on her chicken sheds and tow them out to pasture.”
“Say, feeding them on grass like a cow.”
“Keeps down disease, the agent claims, and saves feed. You think this land’s rich? You should go to the old country some day. Poland. Where I came from. Plums as big as my fist. Apples the size of my head. Never a drought.”
“We had one where I lived two years ago.”
“Where you from?”
“Kentucky.”
“I heard that drought was widespread. We had it bad; most all the crops died right in the field. Our boys took a loan on the mortgage. They shouldn’t have done it. Debts are bad. In the end it was the Triple A that pulled us through. Roosevelt paid for what we didn’t have to plant. Did he pay you folks too?”
“No, but I knew a man got a government check for letting hogs root up his tobacco. I ne’er did understand how that worked.”
“Now in Poland, Mrs. Gaddy, they never heard of a drought or a Triple A either.”
“Say, Mester,” Simon spoke up, “what are those horses’ names?”
“Off one’s Pearl. The other’s Major, son.”
“That Pearl’s a sight the prettiest.”
“Yes, and that Major’s the smartest. Who do you think’s pulling this load?”
Simon fell back abandoned in the straw of the wagon, shouting in glee. He lay gazing up at the sky and the bare treetops that came into view.
“That’s it.” The old man pointed. “Ninety acres.”
Two women and a man were coming from the white house into the yard to welcome Ellen. Mom was fleshy and large-framed, her eyes shy. She was shaking Ellen’s hand. “Guess Pop told you all about the fruit in the old country.”
“Why, he did.”
Sudduth was their younger son, thirty-two, scrawny, anxious-eyed. “We sure can use your help. We’ve been after Mom a long time to get someone. Here’s my wife, Adele.”
“Pleased,” said Ellen.
“Howdy.” The woman held her head on one side like a bird, waiting.
“You-all could call me Ellen.”
“I’ll show you to your room, Ellen.” Adele was going ahead up the stairs. Her face was harrowed from the years, but retained the child’s shape, round and eager-eyed, looking for encouragement. Two little girls with eyes like hers looked from behind a door. “This is Mrs. Gaddy, Hannah. Grace. My boy Dennie is in school.” The girls squealed and ran to hide. Adele was stopping at the room that would be Ellen’s. Simon was to have another for himself.
They came together later for the evening meal, Pop at the head of the table, Mom at the foot. They were all shouting noisily. “Let’s see those brown-eye peas down here.”
“Save a corner for the blueberry dowdy.”
“Let a child talk up, I say.” Pop maneuvered the food through his mustache, his head on a level with the children.
“I got a hundred in Penmanship,” cried Adele’s son, Dennie.
“My, at that child,” said Adele.
“The girls printed for me. I sure could follow it good.” Mom felt the sisters were being slighted at times. At her left stood an empty chair.
“That’th Uncle Dan’s plathe,” Hannah was saying shyly to Ellen.
“Dan’s my older brother,” Sudduth explained. “He’s off at the cattle sale in Weems Crossroads, trying to buy a Crestmore bull. We already have a purebred bull, but he’s the sire to so many of our heifers we don’t get the good of him any more.”
“Say, I’ve been to Weems Crossroads,” Ellen said. “I visited some folks there.”
“Dan’s going to see if he can bid a bull low,” Sudduth said.