The Fields Read online

  Guerdon looked at Kinzie, and Kinzie looked back at him. Oh, this was living, a setting in the grist mill listening to tales and no grinding to do, for the mill ground it for you. You didn’t have to lift a finger, for the mill did your work. Keeping up to the times was handier than he reckoned. You harnessed the river just like you yoked up an ox. The river geed and hawed and set its hooves and pulled. The yoked creaked and cracked. You could hear the mill yoke a creaking now but you didn’t need do any driving. It drove itself. It never got you tired or raised any blisters. You didn’t need to touch anything, only see that the stones didn’t run bare. Those stones kept a grinding. The meal came out of the spout and dropped in the chest. All you had to do was scoop it up in sacks. You didn’t even have to hand-sift it, for the miller had put in deerskin sifters.

  Kinzie wet his finger and stuck it under the meal to taste it. Guerdon put his feet up against a post. This was a trade he’d sooner follow than farming. You never had to grub out roots. You could take your ease looking after your business. You heard all the latest news and oldest stories. The only thing you had to shovel was meal and grain. And grain was a pretty thing. There was some “yaller” corn, but Indian corn was what most folks raised. Some ears were red and some were blue, but most were skewballs with red and blue pied together.

  “What’s your idee?” Amasa Goodrich asked, “Is a grist mill against Scripture?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, it says ‘two women shall be grindin’ at the mill, and one taken.’ Now many a time we’ve seen two women grindin’ at a handmill, but how could they at a grist mill?”

  “Now lookee here,” John Decker began. Around the mill several leaned forward.

  Guerdon knew what that meant, arguing on the Bible. He motioned to Kinzie and they slipped out. Around in the back they could hear the water wheel chousing. Nothing would do till they found it, and then they couldn’t pull away. It wasn’t pretty. No, it moved like some old beast of the sea, dark with mud and green with moss and slime, crawling and slopping and lumbering along and never getting any place. It had no eyes, but it knew you were there. Standing on the narrow plank over the deep mill-tail, Kinzie moved closer to his brother. He could feel that old beast’s breath rising damp and cold from below. In the falling water down in the dark pool, he thought he could hear it crying and moaning.

  “I don’t like it back here, Guerdie!” Kinzie begged.

  “What you ’feared of?” Guerdon peered at him.

  The tail race was broader than the race above, and low as the river. High water backed up here. One of the men must have fetched his grist close to the mill as he could get, for a boat was tied to the bank. Guerdon and Kinzie crawled down to it. Several inches of muddy water lay in the boat from last night’s rain, and something stung Kinzie on the foot when he stepped in.

  “That catfish come in after me!” he complained.

  “I reckon somebody cotched him and put him in the boat to keep,” Guerdon said.

  “No, he walked in on his stingers,” Kinzie claimed. “I never seen one but they say he kin walk up the side of a boat like a snake doctor. He seen me barefoot and come after me.”

  Down here and wherever they went, the voice of the water wheel followed them. Even back in the mill now they couldn’t shut it out. Under the grinding of the stones and rumble of the plank and timbers, they could hear that old beast, half of the woods and half of the river, moaning to itself.

  It was late till their corn was ground, and dark when they got that sack home. Resolve came out with a shellbark flambeau. He whirled it around in the air to keep it brightly burning. Huldah and Libby came out with him.

  “Mam’s not home yit, is she?” Kinzie asked hope-fully.

  “Oh, yes she is,” little Huldah mocked him. “She wants to see you, too.”

  But Kinzie was in no hurry to go in the cabin, or Guerdon either. They took their time slipping the sack of meal to the ground. They untied the ropes and turned Star loose. They did it reluctantly. It was like losing a friend. Resolve said he would carry the sack of meal in. But Guerdon said Resolve wouldn’t carry it out, he needn’t take it in. He and Kinzie “walked” it in, first one corner, then another, anything that would take time. When they fetched it through the door, they saw their mother with her back toward them. She had a board set up in front of the fire and was baking johnnycake with some of the meal they ground before they went.

  “You oughta’ve seen Star with the sack on her back, Mam!” Kinzie told her. “The men at the mill had to laugh.”

  “Come and feel the sack, Mam, how soft it is!” Guerdon urged her. “It’s much finer’n me and Kin could ever grind it. They say you don’t hardly have to cook or chew it when it’s mill-ground.”

  Their mother didn’t answer or turn around. Guerdon looked at Kinzie and Kinzie at Guerdon. They stood it as long as they could.

  “Well, Mam, you might as well britch us now and have it over with,” Guerdon said.

  The other young ones stood around waiting. Libby had a sympathetic face, but Huldah’s eyes glittered. At the first whack, Kinzie hollered. He reckoned the louder he’d carry on, the harder his mammy would guess she hurt him. But Guerdon shut his mouth and no word came, no matter how hard she hit him. He wouldn’t give his mam or anybody else the satisfaction they hurt him.

  When they were up on the loft in bed, little Huldah mocked them.

  “The men had to laugh!” she jeered. “But you didn’t laugh when you came home!”

  “It was wuth it,” Guerdon said quickly. “Wa’n’t it, Kin? We seen the mill. We was inside, wa’n’t we, Kin? You never seen anything like it. The miller just puts in your corn, and out comes the meal. You don’t need to turn a finger. The river grinds it for you. It’s got a water wheel big as this house. We seen it a turnin’, didn’t we, Kin? I l’arned something about water machinery. It’s strong as a horse, but it has a devil in it. We heerd it carry on, didn’t we, Kin? It moaned and cried like the Old Harry.”

  “We heerd stories, too,” Kinzie put in. “About the ghost and the blind miller.”

  “You oughta heerd about him,” Guerdon said. He added nothing about the miller woman who had to walk to Philadelphia thirteen times and back. The one that minded him of his mammy. No, he wanted to forget his mam. He didn’t care if he never thought of her again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE LAUREL HUT

  SAYWARD’S family was still on the increase. Already she had borne more than her mother had. But the Lord sent them and she would provide. She had a big wheel now for wool and a little wheel for flax, and Will Beagle had set her up a loom by the wall. Her crops did well among the stumps. She had a small bunch of ewes toward wool, geese toward down, cows toward milk and leather, and a patch in flax. Now that was a pretty thing in bloom with the whole field blue as heaven. But it was a “tejus” crop. You had to plow it, drag it, sow it, weed and pull it. And that was only the start, for then it took spreading, bundling, stocking, flailing, sweating, rotting, braking, swingling and hatcheling, one after the other.

  But Sayward was a hustler, ever clearing more ground and mauling rails to fence it in, her three boys a helping. This was in fall and winter. Spring and summer they worked with her in the fields. Always were they behind in their work. Making a farm out of the wilderness is a backbreaking job. In spare time Sayward sent them out scouring the woods for sang to trade, and teas and herbs for home. My, but the cabin smelled good with its joists hanging with curing dittany and pennyroyal. They had to gather linn for rope and hickory bark for light wood when candles ran low. After dark they shelled and ground corn in the chimney corner, filled the weaver’s quills, whittled pegs and gluts and plaited straw. Resolve’s job was running the bench loom while his mam spun. Oh, she and him had no letup at all. The minute supper was done, his weaving and her spinning started. Many’s the time her heart went out to him, only thirteen years old, a young body who had worked hard in the fields or woods all day, sitting t
here by himself at night thwacking the big loom. But he could weave good as a grown person. His tow shirting and ticking were fine as she could do herself. And his red or “yaller” flannel made undergowns and bedgowns soft and warm enough to wrap a new baby in.

  Now wasn’t it a shame he had hardly any time to open a book since he got home from Kentucky, and him the biggest reader, for a young one, in these woods. Folks would stop at the cabin just to see him read. He needed no coaxing to lay down his work and get out one of his pap’s books. Soon he was so deep in it he didn’t recollect company was there. They could talk to him and he wouldn’t hear. Those folks went out shaking their heads. If they hadn’t seen it, they wouldn’t believe it, they said.

  She could hardly believe herself sometimes that she was his mammy, and her hardly able to read the alphabet. Oh, she could call most of the letters, those that had tails down or an arm up and some that hadn’t. But she couldn’t look at the first line of a book without reading herself fast. She’d feel her feet slipping and her mind a sinking down in something like Jeffers’ swamp. She could hold that book all day in front of her face and never be any the wiser. Now her Resolve’s eyes ran down a page like it was greased. Before you could sneeze, they were down at the bottom. More than once she had stood and watched him. The book leaves kept turning like it was the wind doing it. One was hardly laid over right till Resolve’s finger was down under the next. And if you asked him what he read, he could tell you by the hour.

  It was early fall after the summer’s work was done that he had to go and break his leg again. He couldn’t have broken it at a less unhandy time. He claimed a log rolled on him while he was mauling rails. It was the same leg he had trouble with before. Portius thought it hadn’t healed proper, but wasn’t it strange a log rolling on him hadn’t left black and blue marks? She and Guerdon would have gone crazy having to lay there with nothing to do. But the first thing Resolve asked for when they carried him in was a book. He had one by him now. It was a new book Portius called the Latin grammar.

  Her eyes kept going to him there on the floor. He couldn’t climb the ladder with his leg in splints, so she kept him down with her and Portius on a pallet. The rest had gone to their loft beds. Portius was reading. She was at the loom. She took it now every evening after her spinning to make up for Resolve’s lack.

  “Portius,” she said while she worked, “have you ever give it a thought to canvass for scholars?”

  He gave her a sharp measuring look from his gray-green eyes.

  “I don’t mean you to give up your lawyer work,” she went on. “You wouldn’t have to keep school past noon if you didn’t want to. It would fetch in many a shillin’.”

  “I’m no schoolmaster,” he said shortly.

  “Your own boys lack schoolin’,” Sayward went on. “They say ‘barfoot’ and ‘akerns’ like I do.”

  “They hear the correct pronunciation every day,” Portius rumbled.

  “Young ’uns need trainin’. Thar’s Guerdon and Kinzie kain’t hardly read or write yet. You don’t want your boys growin’ up ignorant as their mam.”

  “When a school is started here,” Portius assured her, “I shall see that they attend.”

  “And when will that be?” Sayward asked, her lips mutinous like her mother’s. “And how’ll we pay for it?”

  Down on his pallet, Resolve peered over his book at his mam. Now when did she think up such a notion as a school here in the wilderness? Who could have put that in her head? He had to admire the way she talked right up to their pappy, for all his children, and even Resolve, were half-afeard of him. You could always tell if he was around the cabin. If the older ones were in and not making any racket, then you knew their pappy sat by reading or writing. Or they heard him coming, setting down his boots so hard and firm.

  But their mam didn’t scare easy. She’d come right out and tell him what he had to do. A while back she told him he darsen’t help with the farm work any more. Now that the back of the woods was broken, a new kind of settler was coming in, she said, and if they came along on the trace and saw him black from niggering butts or hog dirty with dust and woody fibers from hatcheling flax, they would take their law work to somebody else, reckoning him just a patch farmer who wrote deeds on the side when he could get them.

  She’d had her way, too. Oh, his pappy had stiffened his neck, calling her Juno one time and Hera another, but that was only to save his face when he gave in. Resolve wondered would he mind her now. It would be something, if she got her way this time. For a while she tossed the shuttle sharply through the bars, first one way, and then the other. Her only talk was her loud thwacks with the beater. Then her lip looped out rebelliously.

  “You reckon it’s right holdin’ back a young ’un who’s crazy for larnin’?”

  “Who is thirsting for the Pierian spring?” Portius put to her over his week-old paper.

  Resolve felt his first uneasiness but he hadn’t need to.

  “I’m not talkin’ for any special one,” his mother said guardedly. “I feel for all young ’uns out in this wilderness that want to get some place in this world. I heerd of a boy once was so book-hungry he broke his leg just to read.”

  “How could that help him?” Portius looked amused.

  “This boy had no time for readin’. He had to work till he went to bed at night. Even the Sabbath. He got starved for his letters. A new book come in the house and it upsot him he darsen’t read it. He couldn’t wait for it. He heerd of a boy once had all kinds of time to read with a broken leg, so this boy broke his’n.”

  Down on the floor Resolve felt a kind of panic. His pappy had lowered his paper and was looking at Sayward.

  “You mean he broke it on purpose?”

  “Now I didn’t see it myself,” Sayward said. “I just heerd about it afterwards. I reckon he was mighty sorry when he seen how much work it throwed on the rest. But he didn’t think at the time. He done it first and thought afterwards.”

  “Is that true?” Portius inquired sternly.

  “I heerd it was true, or I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Who was the boy?”

  Resolve wished he had a good leg to get up now and go. But he hadn’t need to fret. He might have known his mammy wouldn’t give him away.

  “I couldn’t call his name right now,” she said.

  “Do you know the name of the book he wanted to read?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “It wouldn’t by any chance be a Latin grammar?”

  “I couldn’t say,” she said again.

  The boy pushed his book far as he could under his bed clothing. He saw his pappy get to his feet. Oh, anybody could tell he was a lawyer now by the noble look he put on his face and by the powerful way he put questions to catch and trap his witness. The boy wondered how his mammy could go on looming so steady and “cam.”

  “Where is this boy?”

  “You mean whar he is now or when he broke it?”

  “Either way.”

  “I couldn’t say. I wa’n’t ’ar when he broke it,” she said shortly.

  His father held himself back with difficulty.

  “Well, is this the first time he broke it, or did he get the idea from breaking his leg before?”

  “Did he break it before?” she asked with deceivingly slow wit.

  “I addressed the question to you!” Portius said sharply.

  And that’s where his mammy was caught, Resolve reckoned, for how could she get out of that one? But his mam was as good a witness as his pap a lawyer.

  “If he broke it before, I wa’n’t ’ar,” she said in-differently.

  “Then where did you get this information?” his father demanded.

  Sayward’s eyes retreated in their sockets like Worth’s used to do.

  “Nowheres,” she said, and you could tell by the rebellious loop of her lip that he’d get no more out of her.

  Through the lashes of his nearly closed lids, the boy saw his pappy come for the
pallet.

  “Resolve!” his voice rang sternly, but the boy never stirred.

  “Let him alone. He’s sleepin’,” Sayward flew at him. Never before had he heard his mother’s voice so touchy.

  And that was the last they said about it in front of Resolve. Oh, his pappy’s eyes would burn on him like a hawk’s when he came in the cabin, but those master lips would say nothing. One day his father was off somewheres and his mother in the woods when Hugh McFall stopped by.

  “What day is the raisin’, Portius?” he called in.

  “What raising is that?” Resolve called back.

  “Why!” Hugh McFall stuck his head in the door. “Where is everybody? It’s your pap’s idee. He said they ought to be a school in these woods. One of our lads mought be governor some day.”

  Oh, this was the time Resolve wished for two good legs. Now he had to lay on his back in the cabin while they felled and split butts for a school, while the corner men notched and saddled and while the end men fetched the logs on their hand-spikes and pushed them into place. He even had to lay there when teaching started not a stone’s throw off, just across the flax patch from the cabin. His pappy would take no girls or small boys. Let some woman come along and teach the girls and beginners, he said. He turned away many such though their pappies promised a grist of wheat or spinstuff. Now wouldn’t you reckon that every boy who got to go would count his self lucky? But Guerdon cried that a strange Indian had chased him and stole his coat, and now he couldn’t go to school, for his pappy said every boy had to wear his coat, and that was the only coat he had. For half a day a posse of men hunted for that Indian. They beat the woods and fields. Then they found the missing coat stuffed in a hollow log, and Guerdon had to give in he put it there, fore he didn’t like school or schooling.