“Nothing but the best for Dan,” said Pop.
“By the name of Dougherty?” Ellen was hopeful.
“Nothing but the best.” Sudduth was sopping the juice from his plate with dark home-baked bread.
“Never heard of a Dougherty,” Pop said. “You know, Sudduth, if a purebred cow jumps the fence and gets to a grade bull, you can just as well sell her? She’ll be no good from then on.”
“That’s ridiculous, Pop.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Ellen said.
“There was a mare bred to a zebra stallion,” Pop told him. “Every foal she threw thereafter was striped. Now that’s proof, Sudduth.” He pounded his knife.
“There,” Ellen whispered, for she had heard this same thing.
“Pop, that old tale’s been shown up long ago. I’ll get out the article for you to read, in the _Breeder’s Journal_. Old superstitions.”
While they were talking the cats were underfoot, three or four of them, tiger-striped and black. They wound under the table legs and sometimes one of the children slipped them a bite of food. A little later Ellen and Simon went up to bed. The talking and shouts from below were seeping through the flooring as Ellen dozed off to sleep.
* * * * *
She heard the cock crowing in her dream, insistent, shrill. She threw her arm in a fending gesture, engrossed in the nightmare. She was running up the stairway from the cellar, her father racing after. “I’ll kill you because you took the boy.” She shouted to stay his hand, “You dassn’t kill on the cock’s crow, Pa.” She awoke, her voice straining in her throat. She lay listening, oppressed by the dream, letting it recede. I won’t hold to any of it. I’ll button it into a far part of me. I want to weave a new way here in this land where all the folks are foreign. I’ll make a place for Simon and me. I’ll put the past away. I vow I will.
It was not yet dawn. Darkness kept the room corners. She threw back the covers. The air was chill but there was an earth odor, fresh, redolent of spring. She was throwing open the window, looking out at the muddled unfamiliar landscape. The eastern sky was gray and hushed. She sat on the low sill in the sleeveless garment she wore at night, hugging her cold bare arms. Her hair hung clinging and disheveled. It was late January but it was warm, the first false spring. There would be cold days yet, and the last frost might come as late as mid-April. But already in protected southern exposures a few flowers were opening, a jonquil or narcissus, releasing suppressed and forgotten perfumes. The earth seemed to turn itself like an animal stirring in its lair.
A bull bellowed in the half-light, pawing the floor of its paddock, shaking its brawny shoulders. It began to butt the bars with its heavy smooth head like a toy set in motion. Tiny pigs wandered to and fro in a yard beyond the bull. The gray of clouds that lay in the east transformed gradually into mauve. Shifting and changing, lights and colors were fanning upward. A man’s figure strode around a corner of the house. There was a black-and-white feist at his heels. The man was tall, seemed young, his hair thick and black, unruly. The cuffs of his pants were tucked into leather boots. He stopped to shake tobacco into his left hand, and rolled a cigarette swiftly. The dog jumped repeatedly at his arm, yapping sharply in the pink-tinged air. As he was walking off, his bass voice came clear.
The minstrel boy to the war is gone In the ranks of death you’ll find him His father’s sword he hath girded on And his wild harp slung behind him
A warm breeze stirred from the east. Ellen shivered. On the brim of the color-draped sky, the first round edge of the red sun was emerging as if pulled by a string. The fields were stretching forth under the rosy light, spreading wide and tended, damp with dew. The pungent sweetness of the earth was arising from its bowels. Time moved quickly. The sun came whole over the line of horizon, lay alive in the brilliant stained sky. The man’s song had faded.
Voices began to call back and forth in the reaches of the house. Ellen turned from the window. The room was furnished with a white wood bedstead, a dresser with a tiny mirror, a table and an upright chair. There was a striped rag rug on the floor, made by Mom; the curtains and bedspread were yellow and threadbare, streaked unevenly by sun rays over the years.
She dressed and hurried down the dusky stairs. Simon and Dennie sat whispering on the bottom step. “You seen my room, Ma?” They followed her. Adele was turning the handle of the coffee grinder, the friendly crusty noise filling the kitchen. “Dennie’s got a room too.”
“I always had a room.” Dennie hiked his suspenders.
When breakfast was nearly ready, Sudduth came in with the man Ellen had seen earlier. They washed at the sink, then leaned against the wall to wait for food to be set out. Ellen had difficulty finding things. “Where does the sugar live, Mom?”
“This is my brother Dan,” Sudduth said as she was passing with the bowl of sugar. “Mrs. Gaddy. Ellen.”
“How do you do. Mom keeping you busy? You’ve got to watch her.” He was a head taller than Sudduth, older than he had looked from the windows, with an air of authority. His straight hair hung over his forehead, his eyes were greenish-yellow, his ears pointed at the top. His lips were thin and flat, his nose angular. His skin was olive and creased. There was a birthmark on his left cheek, and when he flushed it darkened. “That damn bull’s a beaut, Sudduth. Supposed to be delivered this morning. We’ll charge a service fee on him that’ll pay his price a few times over.”
“Let’s eat.” Mom was carrying a bowl of fried potatoes in one hand, a platter of smoking ham in the other.
When they had finished, Simon got his coat from upstairs, for he would set out with Dennie to school. There was over a mile to walk. He stood in the doorway and his blue eyes settled on Ellen. “Bye now, Ma.” He picked up the yellow cat mewling at his feet.
“You tell the teacher who you are proper, Simon.”
“I will, Ma.”
“Say you’re living at the Wasilewski farm.”
“I know.”
Dan rolled a cigarette, leaning back. “You like horses, boy?”
“Oh yes, Mester.” Simon spilled the cat to the floor. “What can I do?”
“You groom them every night. Will you do that?”
“Mornings too, Mester? You won’t find a loose hair.”
“Call me Dan,” the man was laughing. “We’ll see what else we can find for you.”
The boys ran off and Ellen said, “He’s proud to just lay his hands on a horse.”
The day had begun. When the beds were made and the kitchen floor scrubbed, Ellen scoured the white refrigerator and the electric stove. She washed the white-painted wood cabinets that lined the walls. “Pop made those,” Adele said, “three years ago. They got the notion one night when Mom was reading the _Farm Woman’s Magazine_. Dan and Sudduth put the old pantry cupboards in the shed for machine parts.”
The brothers drifted in at noon, hobnail boots clacking on the floors, preoccupied in talk of the new bull that had arrived by truck. They ate hastily, hurrying out. Mom said the hens were to be deloused. The county agent advised it. The women caught each bird by the leg, shook the can of powder over it and turned it loose so it escaped to the yard, shaking its feathers, clucking indignant. Dust from the litter mingled with the powder and hung in the air. The women sneezed. Mom’s face was hot. “The roosts have to be scrubbed down next.”
At supper Ellen was tired. When she finished her plate, a cat jumped on her lap. She let it remain for she saw it was the custom. It was purring, kneading its paws. Simon joined in the clamor and Ellen was bending her thoughts to how different these ways were from the house where she had been raised.
“Come play for us, Uncle Dan,” Dennie was coaxing.
The girls joined, “Thing ‘Thay, Darling, Thay,’ Uncle Dan.”
“Tomorrow, you pesky kids,” he shouted over the din. “We have to check on the bull right now. Coming, Sudduth?” He was charging through the door.
The next morning the tractor roared out of the barnyard, Dan perched in the driver’s seat. “Land,” Mom was laughing, “he does love that machine.”
“It’s a good day to start the spring plowing,” said Ellen. “The land’s thawed good.”
“They’re not plowing yet,” Mom said. “They’ll wait till February.”
“I’ve heard folks say it ruins land for seven years to plow in January. Pa ne’er held to that notion. He plowed when he had a mind to.”
“Sakes, Ellen.” Mom was amused. “That’s not it. It’s the house. We’ve got a busy year laid out here. Adele’s going to have her own home. Her and Sudduth.” She was turning to Adele. “He went by already with the team and the scoop. Did you see him?”
“Sudduth’s just raring,” said Adele.
“We’ve got to be ready to paint and all in late summer, Ellen. So Adele and him and the kids can get moved in the fall.”
“I want everything to be perfect when we leave, Mom.” Adele was earnest.
They told Ellen that lumber was stored at the warehouse in Hidden Creek; part had been bought in fall when cash crops had been sold and part was still on credit against the early wheat crop. “There’s kegs of nails and rolls of tar paper and shingles in the shed. They drew the plans out on paper.” Mom was proud. “There’s going to be another big event here in the fall.” Mom’s eyes gleamed secret. “Wait and see.”