He still leaned unmoving, against the oak. His features were dissolved into the dark moonlight. She smelled the burning tobacco, saw the scarlet coal. “Hi, Ellen.”
She whispered, “What is it, Dan?” Pausing, she had blended to the night, a part of the grass, pliant.
He shifted sharply and threw aside the stub, moved away from the tree hole. She went unerring into his lean arms. In a little while he was putting his hands in her hair that was nearly without color, bluish in the light of the small piece of moon. “Always I’ve been waiting for you, Ellen.”
She looked at the crag of his nose, the etched bold face. “There. You’re like a hawk. I love you.”
“Half made, half a man. Waiting for you. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“No, you don’t. You’re a woman. You don’t understand at all.”
“Well.”
“You’re what I need. You make me complete. I want to do all things for you.” He was poised above her.
“I know.”
25
The square dances at Silvers Farm were held every year before the main hay crop was gathered. Dan and Ellen, Sudduth and Adele, were going together in the old Dodge. Ellen was in the front seat close against Dan. Adele was saying, “We used to go to Silvers when Sudduth was courting me.”
“Time sure flies,” Sudduth said.
“Are you positive I don’t show too much, Sudduth? To go to a public place? What do you think, Ellen? You know how girls can be. They’ll all be saying, is it September, October or November.”
“You look real nice, Adele.”
When they had pulled out of the Wasilewski drive, the children had shouted goodbye, Pop went to count the roses the damask bush had borne this year, and Mom called, “You young folks enjoy yourself.”
Mom was resigned to Dan’s rupture with Star but where she had once been warm and friendly toward Ellen, a coldness was now in her air. Where she had used to gossip freely, she was constrained. Ellen would try to please her, to think ahead, doing the tasks before Mom could assign them. “But I already picked the bush beans this morning, Mom. There’s near a bushel. I reckoned you’d want it done.” And all the time there was joy because of Dan. He would come to where she was scrubbing the baby chick brooders or polishing windows, seeking her out when he was free. “Oh, this is a woman I’ve found.”
At the Silvers barn the first cutting of hay was stacked at one end of the loft, its honey permeating the air. Wire cables had been stretched from automobiles and tractors below, and from them colored lights were strung along the rafters, and paper lanterns. On a platform near the door a fiddler and a banjo-player were busy. “Sometimes,” Dan told Ellen, “he’ll take steel knitting needles to those banjo strings.”
“All he ever does,” said Sudduth, “is play that banjo.”
“Pigeon wing,” Mr. Silvers called, his fleshy face in a sweat, his barrel stomach shaking with covert laughter.
I had an old hat with a flop down brim It looked like a toad frog Setting on a limb
“Double shuffle,” he was roaring.
“I told you I can’t dance, Dan,” Ellen protested. “Pa’d ne’er let us go.”
“I’ll show you.”
Adele went to talk with her friends and Sudduth merged into a group of men. “Any borers in your corn yet, Wasilewski?”
“A few.”
“My cow throwed twins.”
“God damn. Better look if one’s a freemartin.”
“Wrenched my back in the spring.” Sudduth put his hand on it.
“Tarred my corn this time. Crows got pesky.”
“Sounds gummy.”
“No. Roll in it wood ashes.”
“God damn. Where’d you hear that?”
“County agent.”
“God-damn bull-shitter.”
“No crows.”
“Um.”
And the women were questioning Adele avidly, “Who’s that with Dan?”
“Why that’s our girl, Ellen.”
“Never saw her before. Is she from around here?”
“She’s from Kentucky.”
“Thought Dan was courting the Webster girl. I was looking forward to seeing them. They made a cute couple.”
“Star’s real sweet.”
“What happened with Star, Adele? You can tell us.”
“He simply broke off with her. I don’t know.”
“Now, Adele, we know how these things can be.”
“Why’d Dan bring your hired girl?”
“She was there. Maybe he felt sorry for her.”
“She’s good-looking, Adele.”
“Right young, too.”
“She’s not as young as she looks,” Adele pleaded. “Told me she was thirty.” Ellen had said twenty-seven, but thirty slipped out against Adele’s will.
“Now that just shows you what the night will do for a woman.”
“You might have a new sister-in-law one of these days, Adele.”
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Now when are you expecting it, Adele? Late September? Does Sudduth want a boy or a girl?”
The floor of the hayloft was dusted with chaff. The people were spinning in the pattern of the dance.
Oh five times five are twenty five And six times five are thirty Seven times five are thirty five And eight times five are forty
Ellen was handed from one partner to the next. There were spindly angular boys caught by the music, feet tapping and shoulders springing in an extra beat. There were jovial men, worried ones, dumpy ones, old and young. Dan was across the floor, his dark face above the red shirt bending taut to a girl with curly hair. Jealousy touched in Ellen so she flinched, laughing up to her partner. Then when Dan came by, following the step, he whispered, “You’re having such a good time I’ll have to kill all your partners, honey.” And the roiling had vanished. Dan belonged to her.
The music ceased and the fiddler was leaning back. The banjo-player wiped his brow. “Hell, it’s hot.” Dan and Ellen came up to sit on the platform edge. Dan was smoking. They watched the crowd at the bench where a barrel of cold beer was rolled on its side next to tin pitchers of Mrs. Silvers’ iced lemonade.
“You sure can handle those strings,” Ellen was telling the fiddler.
“Been doing this off and on since I was ten. Maybe this child will die this away. Maybe I’ll be like that Callahan.”
“Who’s he?”
“It’s a song. Fiddler Callahan killed somebody so they were about to hang him. Says if anyone would play his fiddle while he was being strung up, they could keep it. He begged at the crowd for it was a notion he had. Nobody’d do it, so when they were fixing to trip the gallows he quit pleading, and busted it to pieces over the coffin they had ready for him.”
“Look,” Dan stood up, grinding his cigarette on the floor. “Could you play ‘Lord Lovel’ for her to sing?”
“Sure thing.” The fiddler was taking up his bow.
Ellen looked past the swaying lanterns into the June night.
Lord Lovel he stood at his castle gate Combing his milk-white steed When up came Lady Nancy Belle To wish her lover godspeed
Lord Lovel went away then, vowing to return. But when at last he did, the Lady Nancy had died.
He mounted on his milk-white steed And he rode to London town And there he heard the death bells ringing And the people mourning all round
He ordered the grave to be opened wide And the shroud to be turned down And there he kissed her clay-cold lips And the tears came trinkling down
“That was keen,” the banjo-player said. “You two want to try a Hound-and-Dog?”
“Come on, Ellen.”
“All right,” she was whispering. “I want to be woven into a part of all you undertake to do.”
“That’s why you’re my girl.” His shaven hard cheek was on her hair, the red-checked shirt was tight against the white dress. And the people were all about but far away.
* * * * *
Summer put her hand on the earth and all things flourished. In early hours earthworms coupled on damp paths. Grain fields turned yellow. Mowers and reapers hummed busily across the countryside. Mulberries and cherries ripened. The children spread an old sheet under the trees and shook the branches. They gathered the corners and ran to the kitchen. “Berry pieth and cherry pieth,” chanted Hannah and Grace.
Now that school was out, Simon was given a string of cows. He put his arm about their necks and the light of possession and love gleamed. One of them had leaped the fence and got to the bull when too young. Her teats were small and short. Simon’s hands were coaxing them patiently.
“We’d have sold that one if it wasn’t for you, Simon,” Dan shouted from his milking stool.
“Can’t abide a short-teated cow,” Sudduth said. “Come on, Lady, let those big bubbies down for me,” Sudduth was nudging the heavy udder with his fist; the cow chewed, serene.
Simon told Ellen, “Dan might let the colt be mine if Pearl got caught with one.”
“Colts are worth a lot.”
“Well, so Dan said,” the boy insisted.
They were driving over to the Doughertys. Penny gave Simon Little Tiny’s kid. It was brown with white stripes on its face and legs. “The daddy’s a Toggenburg,” Penny said. “It ought to milk proud.”
The boy was entranced. “Hey, Clate. Hey, Anse. This be a fine yeanling.”
Anse stood aside and said nothing, but Clate swaggered. He began to tell Simon how to care for the kid.
“Oh shut up, Clate. I know about burnt flour when she gets the scours.”
“You named it yet, Simon?” Penny asked.
“April.”
“That’s a fair name.” Ellen could see Penny was pregnant again. She’s liable to have another as puny as little Jess is.
Then they were waving from the truck windows as they went down the narrow winding lane. “Seems I’m always saying goodbye to Penny, Dan.” He smiled at her across Simon who held the little doe on his knees. Used to be I worried over the past, how it clutched at me. Now that’s fallen away and I’m looking ahead, making this foreign place mine.