| abstract | - From The Best Stories of Wilbur Daniel Steele 1946 It was the biggest farm of the Footstool; it had smooth swelling fields, like waves; well-tended wood lots, and clean fat cattle. Addie Joslin was part of it. The strength of her eighteen years of married life had gone into it; season by season she had served its needs, spending much on the land and little on herself. The only really hard time was the week in the fall when her husband was away in New York on his year's business, and especially now that he was taking Ray with him. But it was time their firstborn should be learning those other things, remote, but apparently as essential to the growth and well-being of the soil as the things that lay in her knowledge— tillage, drainage, and manure. And after all, no matter how long a week may seem on double and treble duty, it is only seven days. She had the church, the grange, the Daughters of the Morning Star; she had her diversions if she cared to take them. This she seldom did. Her life had little in it that was separate from the farm. Even Frankie, the four-year-old, her baby, was not separate; little that was not of her or of the fields or cattle was in him. He was made of her and the earth, and she was made of the earth. She was slow of speech and reason, a slow woman. This was because she saw all things moving in unalterable sequence. Seed, sprout, full stalk, threshed grain— as simply as that unfolded all the thoughts she needed. So her hair stayed brown and there were no wrinkles about her eyes. This evening she was a little tired. But tonight John and Ray would be home; perhaps in time for the milking. The week was all but done. A little tired, yes. When she had started the cows up from the lower pasture, instead of following at once she rested her weight on the fence in the shriveled shadow of an aspen and stood dreaming up the land, her eyes moving slowly from field to higher field, reaped and brown. It all did look pretty, with the sun setting behind the mountain. It had done well this year; well. Would they be home in time for the milking? First there was Heather to be milked, then Sally, then Dapple, then Princess, then Snow. She must be getting lazy, she guessed. She had better be starting her boots. But now there was a sound of music. It was strange to hear music down here. Forgetting the cows for another moment, she turned to look. There was a path beyond the fence, leading up from southwest of the mountain, and a man came along it playing a harmonica. He was tall, redheaded, and lank; under one elbow he gripped a pack while with the other he beat time, a perfect vagabond. Observing Addie, he halted and took off his hat. "How d'you do? Good evening." Not being much with strangers, Addie kept her mouth shut, nodded slightly, and looked beyond him at the ridges, powdered pink with sunset. The man came and got up to sit on the fence. He played softly a few more bars. Addie turned to go. He whacked the instrument on his thigh and said: "Excuse me, but do you know a town called Twinshead up this way, lady?" "Yes." She stopped and eyed him. "I ought to, I was raised there." "You was? Know a man named House there? Garage man?" "I ought to— he's my brother-in-law." "Well, I swear! He's the man I was figuring to work for." "He is? Well, he's my brother-in-law." "How far would you call it from here?" "Over down in the next valley. Around six mile." "Six mile, eh? Some step! Listen; any place around here a man could get a shakedown for the night, lady? I'm not much chopping wood, but if you got any Lord's kind of a gas engine wants tinkering ..." "Well, if my husband gets home as I'm expecting them, there's the seedan's been knocking lately. Though I don't know certain he'll come. But then if he don't there's Hurlbut's, a half mile on down." He got over the fence. "Well, what do you say we see?" He came along a little at the trail, busy again with his tunes, as, climbing and clucking, she got the cattle through the successive gates. When they had come up into the last lane she said: "You play pretty. Although I must say I don't know those tunes." "Latest things. I don't suppose they're up this way yet." "I don't know. I'm not much on town. When I was a girl though, in town, I used to know all the songs going." "I bet. Know this one? 7 thought it was a kiss, but it was just an idle dream? Remember?" "Yes, certainly. . . . Frankie!" she called to her child, who, halfway down from the house, had stopped at sight of the stranger. "Come walk with Mama; come!" And as the boy, pouting, edged a few shy steps nearer: "Yes, certainly, I know that and a lot of others: the 'Merry Widow' and ''Come, come, I love you only,'' and all those." "It's funny how those old ones stick by you. The ones nowadays —though now and then you'll find one— listen to this." Cupping the toy in both hands, he lifted his brows and drooped his lids. He breathed softly among the reeds. He loved it. When he reached the end he recited the ultimate phrase with the throaty husk of the devotee, watching her eyes for approbation: "Kiss me, kiss me, aga-i-n. . . ." She gave her thumb to Frankie. "What's the matter with you, for heaven's sake?" "Is he my uncle?" The boy pulled around behind her. She laughed. "Uncle? Land, no! He's nobody you know." "What you been givin' him kisses fer then?" Addie's mouth fell open. "Don't say such things; the idea!" She gave his hand a shake. "I— well— you don't understand, that's all." The stranger grinned, his amused eyes going from one to the other. Frankie persisted. "Did you kiss him fer playin' so nice, Mama?" The man laughed outright, arms akimbo, head up. "Look-a here," he cried, bending suddenly and holding the harmonica out on his palm. "What you say to that, sonny? Like play moosic? Well, take that with my regards; that'll keep you busy, won't it now?" "Oh, he shouldn't," his mother muttered, as the small ringers edged around her skirt. Once he had hold of the treasure the boy was away like an Indian's shadow, through the fence and into the cover of the dogwood hedge beyond. The man chuckled. "Oh no, he didn't care for it at all; couldn't find house room for it. Oh no!" He shifted his pack and began to whistle. When Addie came up to the yard after impounding the cows she found the man sitting on the kitchen stoop, still whistling. "I guess my husband ain't coming tonight after all," she said, looking up and down the darkening road. Entering the house, she came out again with some pie and cheese and a cup of milk. "Though I shouldn't feel like turning you away without a snack. Then 'tain't far down to Hurlbut's." As he sat munching, the man began to study her with a new obliquity. "How long's your husband away for?" "He goes a week every fall on business to New York City." "Aren't you ever kind of lonesome?" "No time for lonesomeness. I ought to be milking right now." "Still, up here by yourself, everybody away." He took out a cigarette and lit it. "Eh? Don't you ever wish— well— there was some man around the place, nights?" Addie shook her head. "There's nothing to harm a body up this way." The man shook his. "I give it up." He wiped his mouth and got to his feet. "Then I guess I'll be on my way. Now I've had supper, thanks to your kindness, I guess I might's well go on through. Is it around this way out?" She showed him, walking down as far as the gate. "Still," he mused, "the men have all the fun, don't they? I suppose your hubby always tells you everything he does while he's in New York?" "I don't see what you mean. If you mean he carries on, then you don't know John A. Joslin. And moreover, he's got Ray along; that's our oldest." "How old?" "Going on seventeen. But he's big for his age." The man slapped his thigh. "I bet!" "Well," he said, when he was done chuckling, "I suppose if you're dead certain you're not going to want protecting tonight— I might's well be on my way. Thanks very much for the bite, and if you're ever in Twinshead this winter, look me up. . . . Good night." For another moment Addie leaned there watching him off into the dusk. What was all that talk of his? Who was he? Where had he come from? From as near as the nearest town? From as far as China? A strange irresponsible fellow riding his legs across the mountains, whistling across the world. "I want my supper." It was Frankie at her elbow, whining. "Heavens and earth, what am I thinking of! Those poor cows!" The men came that night after all, when the chores were done and Frankie in bed. Hearing the car turn into the yard, Addie put a piece of meat in the spider and began cutting up some cold potatoes to brown, so that by the time they came in their supper was half ready. It gave her a queer turn for a moment when they arrived, like two strangers with their good clothes and their suitcases, and the way, for the first instant, they looked around, as if it were a new hotel. She would have been glad if it could have lasted longer. That was why she had hurried to get things under way and their chairs drawn up to the table. "If you'll set right down your supper'll be on in no time." "Well, no." Her husband gave her a kiss on a cheekbone— one of the year's two— and adding, "Might's well be comfortable," passed on upstairs. She wondered if Ray would kiss her too this year. But just as he was on the point of it he remembered something more important. "Oh, Ma, d'you know what? We bought you a present to bring home, a couple of nice aprons, and then what'd we go and do but leave 'em in the train. Wasn't that a bright one?" And he too went upstairs. Above the sputter of the frying meat she could hear their voices, Ray's mostly, fragmentary and muffled. Once Ray laughed. He came down in his corduroys and brown sweater, and in pulling off his shirt he had spoiled his hair. His father was in his nightshirt, over which he had drawn a pair of overalls. They might neither of them have been away. They ate in silence, chewing like tired men, their elbows guarding their plates and their eyes centered in the flame of the lamp between them. They seemed to be dreaming. Once Ray chuckled, his eyes passing to his father. The old man cast him a dour look. "You calm down." Addie opened some pears. "Everything all right in the city?" she inquired as she helped them. Joslin nodded at the lamp, protruding his lower lip. "I'd say so, yes, all right. . . ." She went and got the new Sentinel. Joslin wiped his mouth, opened the paper, cast an eye over the deaths, and yawned. "Frankie all right?" he asked by and by. "Yes, Frankie's all right." "Stock all right?" "Yes, all right. Except a funny thing about Snow's calf " "What's wrong with Snow's calf?" "Nothing, only the way she acts about the red rooster. It was the day you left — " Addie drew up a chair and put her elbows on the table. "No, it was the day after you left, I guess; yes, Wednesday morning " Joslin's lids drooped. His chin was sinking into his neck. He straightened up when Addie's voice stopped, and muttered: "Been a hard day." "Been a hard week," Ray added facetiously, staring at the lamp. His father got to his feet. "You be up and down by four sharp, son, that's all." He took a match and went upstairs. Ray leaned back and began to play a harmonica. It was "The Sidewalks of New York." "Where'd this thing come from?" he demanded, stopping in the middle of a bar. "I had one like it, but it was an 'A.' " "It's Frankie's." Addie began to scrape the plates. "Where'd he get it?" She didn't feel like talking any more; all that explanation. So she said: "Somebody or other give it to him, I guess." Ordinarily she would have washed the dishes, but this was the night her husband had come home, so she stacked them and, asking Ray to put out the light when he came, she went upstairs, taking off her apron. Just before she reached their bedroom she had a start. Then she could have smiled, for it was only Frankie, out of bed, half awake, in the dark hall. He resisted her hand. "I wan' my thing; ut's mine." "What thing? You're dreaming. Go back to bed." "Who's 'at ut's got ut, playin'?" "Playing what? Oh, I see, yes, your — " "My moosic thing, ut 'at man gin me, ut you kissed." "Shhh!" Addie stood back on her heels. "Hush your mouth!" It was absurd, but she felt helpless. Frankie turned sullen. "No, but I wan' ut; ut's mine." "Yes, all right, yes. You be still and run back to bed like a good boy, and I'll go straight and get it for you." She returned belowstairs. "Ray, gi' me that. Your brother's woke up fretting, and it's his." The child was waiting at the top. She led him back and tucked him in. "Here it is, Frankie, but listen, you shouldn't say that about that man. It's bad— naughty, because I never did. Now go bye-bye and forget it." Smoothing his hair, she left him. At the door, however, she vacillated. It was so laughable, yet it made her feel so helpless. She was used to dealing with things that had some logic in them. It exasperated her. Returning to the bedside, she got down and put her lips to his ear. "If ever you say that again about my such a thing as kissing that or any other man, I'll spank you. I'll take down your panties and spank you with the hairbrush, hard; you hear?" Then she went to their room. The lamp was turned low. Her husband was in bed, asleep. Well, he'd had a hard day, this traveling. He'd had a hard week. She undressed and blew out the light, and, going to the window, stood there awhile. The moon was up, sailing in a cloudless sky; under it the farm lay, sloping away; gently swelling smooth fields in the pale light, like pale breasts on the mountain, against the black hem of the woods below. Her thoughts were in two layers. In the top layer there were these: "Now they've come home we can get the manure started out on the west plowing and we can decide if we'll change it to rye; we can weed out the pullets, and we can get to work and ditch the waste piece before it freezes." In the bottom layer, the buried one, was this: "They are not part of it, as I am; I am part of it and it is part of me." The deep reason for her being, the long, habitual, fruitful identity with the soil and its creatures, filled her unconscious thoughts. Who, to this dark Amazonian tenant of her soul, were those two men of whom she was a little awed; those two who went away and had a time, and left her alone at last with the autumnal land, at rest after the summer's travail, at peace for a little while? They owned the farm. Yes, but it was hers. . . . What she was thinking as she crept under the blankets beside the sleeper was: "I wonder what color aprons they were." . . . The men were cutting out brush in the waste piece, preparatory to ditching. It was the day which last night had presaged: perfect autumn, chill in the shadows, glassy clear. The mountain stood solid and separate; the sky, no longer weighing on the horizons, showed itself detached and whole, going on around. Beast and fowl made themselves heard, sounds reiterant, monotonous, and good, bawling of young cattle, ruffle and cut-cut of hens, pigs grunting, and Frankie marching to his harmonica, a suck and a blow, a suck and a blow, soul-satisfying, around the barn, around the orchard, around the sheds. "Mama, kin I go down see Ray yet?" "Not yet, you'll be in the way; run try and find Speck's nest." Another circuit. "Mama, kin I go yet?" "Not yet." Even the apples Addie was sorting seemed to fall in with the cosmic rhythm: a cider, a cider, a cider, an eating, a pie. Under her breath, inattentively, she hummed fragments of old tunes. "/ thought it was a kiss, but it was just an idle dream.'''' For her and for the farm it was the beginning of another year. Clear reddening sunlight. Cut-cut! Mooo-ugh! A loudening harmonica. "Mama, kin I go down see Ray yet?" "Yes, pester you, run along; I'll be down in a second for the cows." Joslin was just coming up as she entered the lane, an ax over his shoulder and his one remaining forelock plastered on his brow. He was a lean, wiry man, a hard worker, as faithful a worker as there was. "Where's Ray?" she asked. He told her Ray was coming along. "Stopped a minute to set down, trot Frankie. Hurry him up and hurry up them cows." Crossing the upper pasture, she heard music. It came from the brush in the corner of the waste piece, and it was "The Sidewalks of New York." In the midst of it there arose a disturbance. Howls. Yowls of young rage. Words exchanged, high, low, unintelligible at that distance. Addie halted in the bare field. She felt distracted. It was that sudden rent in the fabric of the day, the break in the smooth great throb of all creation. She fingered her cheeks. "I'll show 'em!" She started that way. Before she had gone far the squabble had quieted and her older son, pushing out of the thicket, climbed over the fence twenty yards away. At sight of her he fetched up, his head ducked a little and his mouth half open. "Where's your brother?" she demanded with a hint of sharpness. No answer. Ray looked queer. He looked fascinated, embarrassed, and sullen, and his face was turning a mottled red. He was large for his age and hardly knew how to handle himself. Addie's feeling of distraction deepened. "What's ailing you? Why don't you answer me?" Ray closed his mouth, opened it, closed it again. Turning at right angles, he started walking heavily and swiftly. Frankie had appeared now, harmonica in hand. He too stopped short at sight of his mother. Then with a gulp of terror he scuttled back through the fence. She called after him into the brush: "Frankie, you come straight here." The whole thing shamed and scared her in an unaccountable way; there was nothing to get hold of, no beginning, no why, no wherefore. Lowering her eyes and pretending to think of something more important than naughty children, she turned back toward the lower lane. At the bars she couldn't help peeping. On the stony profile of the pasture Ray had stopped to watch her, a hulking, sulking silhouette; Frankie, sneaking out of the waste piece farther down, was scuttling up the hill to join him. But why? But why? As she brought the cows up in the gathering dusk, her feet felt heavy. Nothing any longer kept time; the animals' hoofs clattered on the stones till the wooden jangle got on her nerves and she picked up a stick and drove them. "Frankie wouldn't come to me; he ran and went with Ray. Why? Why?" She tried to throw it off at supper, talking more than her habit and laughing at nothing, so that Joslin began to study her, a little puzzled. But it wouldn't work. Ray wouldn't look at her. Chewing to himself, he kept his eyes on his plate, his face sallow and dark red by turns. And Frankie lay as low as a mouse in a corner, an uneasy good little boy. After his dessert Ray went upstairs. When his father had gone to the barn he came down in his serge suit and began hunting for his hat. Addie stood watching him. For the first time in her life she wanted to scream. "Where you aiming to go to?" He had his hat in his hand and the door open, his back to her. "Down to the store, see some life; that's where I'm going to." "Did your pa say so?" "What diff's that make to me?" He spit out on the stoop. Then, as though that act had fortified him: "What the hell's it to me? If he says anything you can fight it out with him; it's up to you, see? It's up to you!" Was he turning crazy? Was the boy sick? When Addie tried to get her mind to think, she began to grow frightened. Frightened of what? She went at her dishes. Joslin came in by and by. "Was that Ray I see going out? Where's he think he's going to?" "Well, I wanted a spool of cotton down to the store." "Cotton! Cotton, eh? And him having to be up and down at four!" Where was Frankie? Addie went upstairs. She found the boy in bed. Gone of his own accord, undressed without a whine, and fast asleep. When she had been standing there a moment she saw he wasn't asleep at all. "Please, please," he wailed of a sudden, "please don' spank me wuth no hairbrush!" He pulled the sheet over his head. "I never said ut, honest; I never tol' Ray ut; I never says you kissed 'at man; I never, I never!" He screeched. But she was only sitting down, weak as water. So that was the secret. She felt like laughing. Poor Ray! Poor mixed-up fellow, hurt and scared and scandalized! No wonder! Yet what a relief it was to know the why and the wherefore! She couldn't spank the child; that was too much to ask of her. Giving him a pat and a tuck, she returned to the kitchen to wait for Ray. She could almost see his face when she should tell him. She sat with her hands in her lap and waited. Half hypnotized by the still flame of the lamp, she thought and thought. She remembered Ray as a baby; then as a little boy of Frankie's age following her around; then his going away with his father last year on the trip. She hadn't realized till now that from that trip he had never come back. Nor ever would. She remembered him standing there tonight, spitting out, then swearing in a new angry audacious bass. She began again to have that feeling of helplessness. Little by little it crept and claimed her; why, she couldn't say. Ray was in and had the door closed before she saw him. Studying his narrowed, bloodshot eyes, she got up with a sudden misgiving. "Come here, le'me smell your breath; you gone and been to Hearn's." He rubbed a sleeve over his mouth and made for the stairs. "Ray! Wait!" Oh, she had never been afraid of anything— of tramps, of bulls, not even of death. But it was this helplessness. "Wait!" she cried in her deep panic. "You listen to me, I know what's ailing you— don't you think I don't!" He paused on the stair, glowering back. "I betcha." "Well, you been listening to your brother, I know that, and I know just precisely what he's been feeding you." "I betcha do." He went on upstairs and slammed his door. Well, he wasn't himself. Addie sat down on the nearest chair. Well, she would tell him in the morning. She didn't tell him in the morning. How to bring it up; how to begin? She was so slow. Nor in the afternoon. She began to find she couldn't get near him except when his father was there. Well, why not with his father there? She was so confused, so helpless about it— so worn out by it— well, why rake Joslin in? Time grew. It grew from hours to days. Five of them. "What's ailing Ray?" her husband asked her. "He eats light and he goes around like he's swallowed a pill. Suppose he's coming down with something?" If only she could have said then, matter-of-fact: "Well, he's got it into his head from something his brother said that a man that was here while you were away, that I kissed him " But just there something in her rebelled. "I don't know," was all she could say. Another time: "I'm getting uneasy about that boy. Couple times today I caught him looking like he wanted to murder somebody. What's ailing him?" "I don't know." That was true. What did she know any longer about that brooding fellow, that averter and avoider, stranger than the strangest stranger? What did she know about anything? It used to be you plant a seed and reap a crop; you commit a crime and go to prison. Now she had done nothing, yet here she stood from day to day and held her breath. Every time Ray looked at his father, every time Frankie so much as passed his father, blowing that infernal toy, she held her breath. Yet after all it wasn't to come directly from either Frankie or Ray. Addie was sorting the last of the apples one afternoon. Joslin had been to the store. She heard the car return and a moment later he came into the shed. He sat down and began to eat an apple, a thing he never did; after a bite or so he threw it on the ground and rushed out, only to return, his face contorted and his eyes narrowed. He stood with arms folded. "Wife, what's all this talk I hear down to the Crossing?" "Who?" "I want you should tell me what you got to tell me, plain out." His voice was obstructed. He spoke slowly, evidently determined to get to the bottom of this thing in a cold-blooded, judicial way. It was worse than any rage. It took all Addie's wits out of her. "Wh-why, I don't know wh-wh-what— wh-wh-what talk?" All right. He had done his part, given her her chance, fulfilled his obligations as a reasoning man. Let unreason have its way. "Who was he? You tell me that, or Goll-damn it! " Then he gave her no time. Pointing a fist at her, he lifted his lip, showing the points of his teeth. "I want you to tell me, wife; how long was he here with you, on my farm?" All of his teeth became visible, brown at the bases. "I want you to tell me: what else did you give him besides your kisses?" Addie wouldn't have known him; he wouldn't have known himself. Wheeling, he walked out of the shed and around the corner of the barn. No one could blame him. It's terrible enough to ferret such things out in the home: but to get the first inkling at second hand outside —common property, common gossip bandied over a counter or around a stove! Addie nailed up the last box of the "Selected." She walked across the yard. Frankie came out of the kitchen door with doughnut crumbs on his cheek and, seeing her, began to play furiously on his rusting instrument. She took it and threw it on the steps and stamped on it. The child opened his mouth; presently the howl came out. Still knowing as little what she did, Addie grabbed him, sat down, held him in her lap, and patted his arm. "There, there; but now see what you gone and done." Ray came across the yard. She turned her voice on him. "Now see what you done. Hearkening to foolishness; running to the store and gabbing lies. Now see what you gone and done." "What / done!" Ray sunk his head between his shoulders. "/ done! That's a good one, that is." He spit to his left and went on in. The first half of supper passed in silence; it took all that time for Addie to get her words in order. She got up and stood by the sink. "Listen, the whole lot of you's just going on something Frankie took into his head, and I should think it had come to a pass when you'll swallow for gospel what a baby his age says, and won't even hark to a grown woman you've lived with going on nineteen year." Joslin raised his eyes for the first time. He looked lined and gray. "That's just the damn part of it. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklin's." He leaned heavily on his elbows and drummed with a knife. "For instance, if I and Frankie there, we'd been to town, and you was to ask me who I'd seen, and I says nobody, and he was to chirp in, 'Oh, no, Papa, I guess you're forgetting that woman in the red hat you followed out back of the church shed and put your arm around her'— which'd you take for the gospel, Addie?" Addie turned and screamed at Frankie: "Tell 'em the truth! Tell 'em everything happened! Go on tell 'em every last thing you seen!" Joslin pointed the knife. "Yes, Frankie, now, everything. Mind now, everything! Or else, you know, you could go be put in prison." The child looked at his mother, then at his father, then at his brother; and his brother too was scowling at him in the same silent, awful way. He began to quaver: "I don' want 'at oP mouf organ— I never— I never — " and then he was under the table in a heap of fright and woe. Joslin looked at his plate. He pushed it away from him and got up. "It tastes dirty." He took his hat and went out. Ray followed. If Addie could have seen anything she might have been able to see red. But for a while she saw nothing. She stood at the window that night looking out; there was no moon, and the stars were clouded, and she couldn't even see the farm. Joslin's farm. "How long was he here with you, on my farm?" Was the reason she couldn't see it from the window that, in the superhuman violence of his anger, he had torn it up and taken it away? Her mind had been knocked down; it lay stunned and subservient to the beliefs of others. What was this sin she had committed? How had she, Addie Shoemaker, ever come to do it? Addie Shoemaker! As she crept in between the blankets, chill with emptiness, the one thing she knew was nostalgia. The house had grown frightening in its silence, hung there over the mountain void from which the farm had been torn away in a shamed man's wrath. If she could only have heard Mama Shoemaker's voice downstairs, reading the Sentinel, or Papa Shoemaker's horses stamping in the livery stable out back. Joslin slept with his son. Addie, coming down half drugged with a snatch of sleep, found they had got their own breakfast and were gone about their business. She heard their axes across in the waste piece when she took the cows down. The forenoon grew. With each hour that passed she sank deeper and deeper into the lethargy of the lost. Habit worked her hands. She got a good dinner— home sausage, mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, squash pie, backing-powder biscuit last. It was ready to the minute. She let Frankie ring the bell. Ray was in the yard, but he didn't come. Then she remembered Joslin had gone off in the car at eleven. He was returning just now. They came in together, the father carrying two paper bags and a can. "Well, dinner's on." She fastened Frankie's bib and sat down. The men went to the sink. Joslin opened his can of pork and beans. In one bag there were crackers, in the other cup cakes. Standing there by the drain board they made their meal. Addie sat and stared. There was something about this act that took away what little she had left of her powers. Her husband's face fascinated her. Under its stubble the skin looked hot and dry. But never a word. Ray wasn't the man his father was. His mouth full of cracker paste, he couldn't keep his eyes from slipping to the fleshpots on the table. Caught by his mother, he reddened and lost his poise. "Taste dirty, 'twould." His father gave him a look to slay him. "Hush your mouth!" Then Joslin hushed his own; he stopped chewing. He stared at the pump. He had suddenly envisioned the years to come. His mouth still full, he went outdoors, to return presently with a peachbutter can he had found in the dump. Bringing from the pantry a jar of concentrated lye, he emptied it into the can, which he then proceeded to fill from the pump. All his movements were deliberate. He turned to his wife. "See this? This is lye water. Well, if so be you want to go on cooking for this family, come wash your hands." "Come-what?" "Come wash your hands." Addie didn't "see red"; she saw white. Where the other blow had stunned her mind, this cleared it. Clear as zero ice. Her voice sounded flat. "You say you want I should wash my hands in that?" Joslin inclined his head. Her eyes left his and played over the table, resting for a moment on the heavy castor, for another on the broad blade of the meat knife. Strange, rushing impulses. Fearful speculations. Lusts. She heard her husband's voice: "Here 'tis; I'll leave it here." "You can leave it there till hell freezes over." Frankie gasped at the word. Joslin went to the door. "If it takes that long, so be it, wife." When he and Ray were gone she got Frankie from his chair. She couldn't keep her hands from shaking. She pushed him out of the door, away from her. "Go with 'em! Catch 'em! Stay with 'em! Play down there!" She put the knife away in the drawer. Then she scraped the untouched plates, carried the food out to the sows and watched them swill it. She went to her room and lay down. She remained there staring at the ceiling till she was exhausted with the muscular strain of rigidity; then she got up and prepared supper. She worked all around the peach-butter can but did not disturb it. She set the table with cold meat, potato chips, pickled beets, raspberry sauce, cookies, pie, doughnuts, cheese, and put the kettle on for tea. Into the kettle she stuck her thumb. Frankie was eating all alone when she came in after milking and the others had gone to the store. She took all the food to the sows, put Frankie to bed, and went to bed herself after bolting the door. Once in the night a terrible loneliness came over her. She went on tiptoe and got Frankie. Almost as soon as she had' him in bed, however, she began to shake all over again with the murderous license of her thoughts, and returned him to his room. When she awoke in the morning it was broad day. What matter? So it went. Hitherto, even when the men were away she had been surrounded by, and one with, the multitudinous life of the farm: the fields, the stock, the child. But now she felt so queerly about Frankie that she grew afraid; and as for the farm, she hated it. It was Joslin's farm; it had been his before she came; it believed what he believed and looked at her askance with its hundred kinds of eyes as she went up and down— the foolish town girl, the wicked one. She was alone on the farm. She hadn't had time yet to think of the outside world. One afternoon, however, two separate parties of her friends drove that way along the road. They didn't stop at the gate, only slowed down, necks craned and eyes slanting back at the house in morbid fascination. And that evening at dusk when she went for the cows there were three men at the bottom of the pasture. They climbed in as she approached, and when she would have turned back and avoided them, one took hold of her arm. Though it wasn't cold they had on overcoats with collars turned up, and their hats pulled down, so she could make nothing of their faces. It was so fantastic she wasn't actually frightened. When the first one spoke, she said: "You're Albert Pease, from Lower Falls." "You're mistaken," he growled. "We're more-less strangers this side of the county. But we know Joslin by reputation; we know what he's done with this farm; we know what he stands for in this community; and there's times outsiders can do more'n neighbors can. What we "want to say is, this here's always been a God-fearing, law-abiding community, and it ain't going to begin winking at goings on behind husbands' backs at this late date, nor at homes going to rack and ruin and men interfered with in raising this nation's crops, by no stubborn, unholy, un-Christian goings on." The second man broke in: "A word to the wise is sufficient." The third: "Get along in the home, or get out of it." When they let her go and went back toward the fence she looked about in a sort of daze. There was a chunk of rock near her feet; she picked it up and threw it. It struck one man in the small of the back. With the shock and hurt of it he wheeled and started for her, fists clenched, but the others caught him, expostulating in whispers. He puffed at her: "You— you— we'll get you yet, you " But then one got a hand over his mouth. She left the cows and ran home. With every step it grew darker and the footing steeper; her chest ached with the bursting of her lungs. When she came into the kitchen her face was red, her lips white, her hair in strings; she looked drunk; she had it in her mind to scream, scream, scream, and nothing more. Then she didn't. Flopping down on the nearest chair, she surveyed the room. Of the supper she had left on the table not even Frankie's portion was touched, and the boy himself hid in shadow halfway up the stairs. Joslin sat against the farther wall with his hands in his lap and his best coat on over his overalls. Ray wore his too, and sat with his hands folded. And in a third chair, with his hands folded, sat the minister. Addie had never been so embarrassed. She tried to stop panting and she couldn't; her face flamed; she dropped her eyes to the table legs. "How d'you do?" she mumbled. "Please' to see you." "I'm pleased to see you, Sister Joslin, I'm sure. As I was saying . . ." He was a hard-working fellow, their minister, a lean man on a meager living, a little worried head and a big worried heart. "As I was saying to Brother Joslin, I just dropped in going by. I often drop in on one or another of my people's homes, just simply without any fuss to kneel down in the family circle for a minute and talk with God, as you'd talk with your neighbor. It seems to me there's no prayer in any great tabernacle with stained glass and gilded steeple so helpful, so curative, nor so acceptable to our Father in heaven as that." He got up suddenly and straightened his vest. "Might we pray?" Addie couldn't budge; something held her. Tears burned her eyes. She choked: "I never done a thing— it's all lies, I keep telling you, telling you." The minister's hand fell on her shoulder, firm and kindly. "You and God know the truth of that, sister, surely. But anyway, what about just talking it over with God? That's never harmed a living soul since the world was made. . . . Well, men?" He looked at the others, who, appearing sober, impressed, and scared, got down with him by their chairs. Still Addie couldn't budge. The minister popped up again, darted at the stairs and, catching Frankie with a reassuring chuckle, brought him down and planted him on petrified knees with his elbows in his mother's lap. Then he got back to his place and began: "O God, our Heavenly Father . . ." Those backs! It was too queer and too awful. Freeing Frankie's elbows, she slid to the floor. She didn't kneel— just hunkered there, her arm on the chair seat. The good man's voice, husky with the habit of supplication, filled the room with its immemorial sedative phrases. From beyond it, beyond the walls, came the supplication of the unmilked cows, lowing at the bars. Addie's muscles slackened. Under the influence of the harmonious repetitions her thoughts slackened too, lost focus, and became a hodgepodge. "In Thine infinite mercy" . . . "Mooo-ugh! Mooo-ugh!" . . . "goings on behind husbands' backs" . . . "Mooo-ugh! . . . "Vouchsafe that which ever of us is in darkness" . . . The lamp was smoking. . . . The kettle was singing. . . . Somebody was sobbing. . . . "Mooo-ugh!" . . . She had hit him with a chunk of rock. Good! . . . "Father be good to us, little children that don't know their A-B-C's. Teach us, O Great Teacher" . . . Somebody was sobbing. . . . Addie lifted her head. Something had happened. What had happened was that a spirit had come into the room. The minister had forgotten in his worriment what he was doing; forgotten his calling, forgotten his husk; his voice had grown strident, insistent: "God, let's wipe it clean; let's look each other in the eye and see the truth and tell it and have the dirty business over with and begin all new again. There, that's right, that's right." It was Ray sobbing. Frankie blubbered. Addie put her hand on his head. Little Frankie, little baby! And all of them! All gathered around the table again discussing the fields, the smiling fields, the fattening stock. All straight in the loving light of God again; all new. "Amen." They got up, all new. Joslin blew his nose. How worn to the bone he looked! It was funny to see his face wet with tears. He walked to the sink, still blowing his nose. He looked at the peachbutter can, still there, still full. Was he going, was he going Oh, Glory, was he going to dump it out? "There, yes, brother, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, there, there . . ." "Mooo-ugh! . . . Mooo-ugh!" Joslin didn't dump it. Before they knew what he was about, there went both his own hands into it, right down to the coat cuffs. "There's for anything I may've done ever," he whistled through his teeth as he withdrew the hands, gray with the caustic that dripped on the linoleum. "Son," he said, turning to Ray, "if so be you got anything " The overgrown boy had been through an overgrown hell these weeks. His diaphragm collapsed; he too ducked his hands to the cuffs; he too stood with them streaming. What deliverance! What brightness! Supper tonight! And Addie was thinking, her eyes blind with water: "Supper tonight!" "Well, wife?" Through the blur she saw them watching, waiting. Their eyes went to the peach-butter can and came back to her again. Well, Ma? Well, wife? While she stood there trying to fathom it the minister came softly and, taking one of Frankie's hands, curled its fingers around her thumb. " 'A little child shall lead them.' " "Not on your life!" For an instant after that their faces looked so blank it was comic. Then the heavenly bubble that filled the room was shattered and the air was thick. "You won't, won't you! " Joslin spread his smarting hands on the table. Ray bawled: "You double-crosser, you!" And Joslin again: "You won't, eh?" "Not till hell freezes over, I won't!" Before the distracted arm of the minister could catch her she had the door opened and slammed again behind her as she ran. She stood panting in the middle of the yard, her knees half bent. A crescent moon in the west threw a phantom light across the world. She saw the white faces of the cows all staring at her across the bars at the lane, their black mouths all gaping at her. "Mooo-ugh!" Turning, she fled around the corner of the house and down the path and out the gate and down the road that led to the valley of the Twinskill where she was born. . . . Winter came and covered the mountain. In the short days the sun shone and there were occasional sounds. The long nights were silent. For a while in the early evening there was a light in the farmhouse on the ridge, but by eight it was gone. In the town of Twinshead, miles away but distinct in the bodiless air, lights burned in clusters till nine and ten and eleven. November, December, January, February, March. In late March a snow flurry met a cross wind and fell as rain. Another week and the gullies were running water. Around the rags of drifts the earth seemed visibly to puff up, reawakened and wishful. One evening when Ray had got a mock of supper huddled together on the table and was about to light the lamp, he looked and blew out the match instead; a shaft of pale magenta standing in at the windows from the west was enough to eat by. Spring had come. With the coming of spring and the prying of light, the ravages of winter began to show themselves— to the eye, the nose, the cheated palate; even to the ear. When the beasts began to bawl, Frankie, who had been stupid all through the cold like any little animal that hibernates, began too. First to sniffle and then eternally, causelessly, to wail. Threats did no good. His wailing wasn't the worst. He began to talk about his mother. 'When's my mama coming home?" "Hush your face and eat your supper." "When's my mama coming home?" When nothing else served they sent him to bed. But next night as soon as it darkened he was at it again: "When's my mama coming home?" His father was a man; he could set his face like frozen leather and sit quiet behind it. But Ray couldn't. His nerves set him on the child. "Your mama? You ain't got no mama, didn't you know that?" "Ray," said his father, "eat! Think we want to be up all night?" "Nothing I'd like better." Ray hulked over his plate for a few mouthfuls. But his nerves only got worse. An embittered restlessness pushed him to bravado. "Nothing I'd like better'n staying up all night once. I betcha one thing; I betcha Ma ain't going to bed no half past seven or eight these nights in Twinshead. Huh-huh! Not Ma." It kept at him. Doing the dishes later, he resumed the attack. "Not her, no sir! She knows when she's well off, I warrant you. Seeing everybody, tending shop for Aunt Hattie in the hat store, hearing everything going. And Aunt Hattie gives parties, too. Know what I heard to the store? Aunt Hattie give one party that Uncle Albert had every car from his garage lining the sidewalk to take the folks home. Don't you forget it, Pa!" His father was reading the Sentinel. "I won't forget it," he said in a steady careful voice, "if you will" Forget it! Ray had planted the wind in his own soul; the whirlwind had him. Parties and cars, bright lights and goings on. He couldn't sleep for thinking of them; all next morning was wishful bitterness. Springtime! It was he that ought to be out with the fellows and girls, and looking well, instead of penned in this make-shift life of two-legged pigs. With the afternoon a wild and weakling resolve took form. Well, he didn't care. He got away; ran away, he didn't care. He went down to the store at the Crossing where there was a telephone booth. He got his aunt's house. His mother was at the hat store. He got the hat store. He didn't care. "Ma, it's Ray. Ma, you having a good time?" "Oh, Ray— yes, Ray; how are you, and how's Frankie?" "He's all right. Ma, you having a nice time down there?" "How's everything? How's the hay holding out? How's the cows, and have any of 'em come in yet? How are the hens for eggs? " "All right, yes, O.K.; but you wouldn't fancy it up here, the good time you're having." "Your pa still got the lye can waiting?" "Ma, listen here, I'll dump it. I will! I will!" "Your pa wouldn't like that." "I'm bigger'n Pa, Ma. I'm stouter'n Pa." "Where's the use? Maybe you might see me dropping in, though." "Ma! No! No, honest, Ma! Say, Ma — " "Maybe it might be soon. Soon's tonight, maybe." Ray got home breathless, praying his father hadn't yet come in. Luck was with him. For the last time he pawed together the leavings of things for their evening meal. The last time. Last time. Frankie was at it again. "When's my mama coming home?" Ray paled. "Didn't I tell you you hadn't got no mama?" His breathlessness wouldn't go. He made a saving to-do of getting his brother to bed, pulling the soiled blankets over him for the last time, for the last time. His father was reading the Sentinel; he had read it seven times through in seven nights. Ray didn't wait to be told, he went at the dishes with a clatter. Puddling in the pan, he hadn't a thing in his mind but one— and that was as big as a mountain. A mountain at his elbow. There it stood, the peach-butter can, still in the same ring of dried slosh on the drain board, still full, each week's loss by evaporation made good with a dipper from the pump, as sure as church. Hurry! Time was passing; no time to lose. At last he touched it with an accidental thumb. But not yet. He felt blown up like a Fair balloon. "Pa," he tried at last, his face hot red, "this here can of slop here, it smells. How long we going to keep it, for Goll sake?" Joslin turned a page and coughed. His bald spot looked sweaty, but his voice was dry. "You heard her say herself. Till hell freezes over." Time was passing. Ray thought once he heard a car in the distance. He looked at his father over his shoulder. "I'm bigger'n him, and stouter." It was true, and he had never realized it till today. His father there was an old man. An old man with stooped shoulders and only a few hairs left, and they white, all in a season. A big bluff. He cleared his throat. "Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do; I'm going to dump it." He laid hands on the sacred can. Then he let go, wheeled, and swallowed. His father was halfway across the floor. He stopped with his feet wide apart and his jaw out. He began swearing in a low voice, words Ray had never heard. His veins stood out on his temples, and his eyes looked crazy. Where was Ray's bulk and muscle now? He hadn't figured on this. He hadn't seen what his father looked like till today; he hadn't seen what his father was till now. He went around the other way of the table, wiping his hands on his pants, and sat down; and still he couldn't get away from those crazy eyes or from that low-toned, almost whispering voice. "You mealy-mouthed sissy; you son of something— no son of mine; you white-gutted skunk; you— you " At the full of it the door had opened and Addie stood there in it, a suitcase in either hand. "Well?" she said. In the silence, in the dark of the yard there was the sound of an engine and a crackle of frosted mud as tires backed, turned, and gathered way, and at the last a dying hail: "So long, good-by." "Well?" She set the suitcases down, closed the door, and faced them. Ray sat there like a lump. He hadn't emptied the can; what could he do or say? Then there came a new dread. If she were to let anything out; if ever his father were to know about that telephone! He sat up. He tried to wink. He began to stammer, "How'd you c-c-come, Ma? If you'd've told me I could've dr-dr-drove down." "Oh, no bother about that. A friend kindly offered to bring me up. Mr. Hedge, a gentleman that works for your uncle Albert in the garage, he was so good as to drive me up. He's been very good to me this winter, Mr. Hedge has." She returned her eyes to the wooden image of Joslin. "Well?" She looked so queer. So strange. She had on a nice dress that fitted her, a nice hat, and brown kid gloves which she began now to pull off, her hands looking white under them as they appeared. She seemed to have lost some flesh, but she had good color, high color, and her eyes were bright. "Well?" she said for the fourth time. "Where's Frankie— in bed? I brought him a present; isn't it pretty?" She had it out in her hand, a bright, brand-new harmonica. "I hope he'll like it and be satisfied." Joslin stirred. He ran a sleeve over his mouth and backed away two or three stiff steps till he stood by the drainboard. His eyes still looked crazy and his voice was still low, almost a whisper. "Well, you keep on saying 'Well?' Well what? Has hell froze over?" "Oh yes. Oh, long ago." If there was anything on her face it was like a smile. "Well, wife?" "Oh yes." She walked to the drainboard and, laying her gloves and the harmonica among the dishes, she dipped her hands into the lye, then drew them out and held them away to dribble on the floor. A spot of pink lay on either cheekbone and her eyes were as shiny as dry diamonds. "Now," she said in a queer light voice, "I hope we're all satisfied." It was too sudden for Joslin and too complete; the strain of being adamant when he was only flesh-and-blood had been too long. All he could do was blow his nose and mumble: "There, Addie my girl, good girl . . ." Ray went to pieces too. With him it was all the winter's bitterness. His face down in his hands, he cried: "Aw, if you was going to do it, why for Goll sake couldn't you've done it last fall and had it done with, Ma?" Addie had a slow brain. She stared at happy Joslin, then at Ray. "Why couldn't I — " She stopped there. A slow brain, but it arrived. Another moment and the room was filled with a soft sound of laughter. She left them and went upstairs. She passed into Frankie's room and stood looking down at him in the little moonlight from the window. The thought came to her: "You'd say I ought to kneel down." But she didn't; she sat on the bed's edge. "I oughtn't to give him this, or at least I should think I'd think I oughtn't." But she slid the new harmonica under his pillow. "I'd always have supposed I'd have cried for shame." She bent and kissed his hair and went to her own room. She stood at the window gazing out. Under the moon the farm sloped away, gently swelling smooth fields like pale breasts on the mountain against the black hem of the woods below. The thought that came to her in the top layer was: "We'll sow it in rye this year; I like the green of rye growing; the oats can go in the waste piece. But that's so— there isn't any waste piece any more." In the bottom layer of her thought was this: "I'll make it yield because it belongs to me; it's part of me— the land, the stock, the men. But I'm not part of it. I'm not its property; I'm my own. I can go have a time in town with George and them, or I can stay here. And because I want to stay here, I'll stay, and I'll make it yield." "How'd you like some buckwheat cakes to go to bed on?" she called down presently from the top of the stairs. . . .
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