The Fields Page 12

  Those were the longest weeks Resolve ever had to live through. He found that a leg broke the second time takes a mighty long while to mend. When his pap didn’t have it at school, the boy read the Latin grammar. He learned that book inside out, what was the penult and antepenult; what was Bonus, good, and Piger, slothful; what were the five declensions and four conjugations. Till he got through, he could rattle off with his lips the Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative and Ablative cases; the Imperfect, Pluperfect and other tenses; and the Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative and Infinitive moods.

  Oh, the beautiful smell of a book! It had nothing else in the world like it. It was a door. Even in the dark on his pallet he could smell it by him. Open that door and you were in a different world. You could see a burning mountain or sail a boat by the Turkish shore. You could hear General Washington’s last words. But the best were the strange flowing marks that were in the Greek Reader. Oh, those beautiful, slanted, pagan letters gave him a feeling he never could describe. When he found the triangular shape was called Delta and the capital L upside down was Gamma, a power like Thermopylae flowed up in him. Never could he rest now till he found the meaning of every Greek word he saw.

  If he got to be a hundred he reckoned he would recollect the mortal tight feeling he had on his chest a hobbling over the first time on his crutches. In his hand he held his own school book. It never had a word writ in it yet. Every page was a clean un-spoiled white. His pappy had got it in Maytown and his mammy had sewn a speckled calico cover so it wouldn’t soil or scuff. The sun was just up red as blood on all the fall weeds and bushes. White frost lay on the black stumps in the flax patch. The run leaped, clear and lively with the cold. And on ahead the blue wood-smoke sucked out of the school-house chimney. He reckoned nobody could have picked a prettier place for that school house than yonder with the run making a turn around it, two big sugar trees left standing for shade and the woods laying deep and wild behind.

  When he got close he minded what Libby had said. She told him it was plain nobody could live in there, for it lacked being finished smooth and tight as a cabin. The nearest thing it looked like was a haybarn with holes left between some of the logs big enough to stick your arm through, and not too much chinking and daubing. Somebody had burned ACADEMY in black letters in the log over the door. That word right above where he had to go in shook Resolve to his shoes. Fixing himself on his crutches, he pulled the latchstring.

  It was a good deal grander in there, he told himself, than he expected, with puncheon seats just for scholars to sit on and planking desks with ink horns and quills laying learnedly on them. They had bored in the logs all the way around, put pegs in and that’s what they laid the planks on. The puncheons had holes for seat legs. And the windows were high and narrow so no varmint could get in at night and suck the mixed vinegar and soot out of the ink horns.

  Up at the slab table in front a strange man sat in a long, black coat, and looked sternly at him as if he made too much noise coming in. He could hardly believe it was his pappy, for he spoke to him no more than he was a stranger, letting him stand there propped up on his crutches till the end of the lesson. When the scholars had something else to do at their slab desks, he nodded for the boy to come forward.

  “You are a candidate for the academy?” he asked like he didn’t know.

  “Yes, sir,” Resolve swallowed.

  “Your name?”

  “Resolve Wheeler,” he said, feeling foolish.

  “Your age?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Very well. We shall proceed with your entrance examination. It will be oral and very brief.”

  That was something to shake the boy to his shoes, for his pappy hadn’t told him he would have to bound Ohio, name the federal states and capitals with the stream on which each stood; solve examples in Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division and the Rule of Three. World Geography he knew tolerable enough. Of the capitals he missed only Montpelier on the Onion, but in Ciphering he felt his ears burn.

  His pappy’s face never changed.

  “You have also studied Latin, I understand?”

  “A little,” Resolve said.

  His father looked him over. Sitting behind his fine slab table, he might have been some strange justice about to try him for life or death.

  “What are Latin and Greek?”

  “Greek is the language spoke by the Greek race and Latin by the Roman race. They are the dead languages.”

  “Well, I propose they shall not be dead in this academy!” his father replied with spirit. “Do you know the meaning of the Latin word audio?”

  “I think it means, I hear.”

  “I hope that you do,” his father said. “It is the first person singular, present tense, active voice of audire, a verb in the fourth conjugation. Translate, Pro sancte Juppiter.”

  In his eagerness, Resolve’s crutch slipped and with difficulty he regained his balance.

  “O holy Jupiter!” he panted.

  A titter ran through the room, but the teacher’s face never changed.

  “That is correct. You may translate, Erro longe mea quidem sententia.”

  “I think,” Resolve told him, “it means I make a lot of mistakes in your estimation.”

  The scholars had to titter again at that. His teacher’s face never showed whether Resolve answered right or wrong, and the boy didn’t know if he could stay or would be turned out. The questions got mighty hard. Then his father rose.

  “That will do,” he declared. “Your answers are acceptable. I welcome you to the shrine of the muses. Salve. Xaipe! While you are here, bear in mind you are in a seat of learning. The temple of the Delphinian god was originally a laurel hut. Non humilem domum fastidiunt umbrosamve ripam.”

  All that day Resolve was on tenterhooks of pride to hold himself like the older scholars in this shrine of the muses. He wrote his finest and most painful letters on the inside cover page:

  Resolve Wheeler,

  Ejus Liber.

  Then for those who knew no Latin, he added something like he had seen on an old Kentucky fly leaf:

  Resolve Wheeler, his Book

  God grant him Grace therein to look.

  That he may run that blessed Race

  And let Heaven be his Dwelling Place.

  Finally he wrote many times,

  “Order is Our Maker’s first Law.”

  Not a whittle of the page could he waste but crowded his lines from side to side and corner to corner, making use of every margin of white space, even that around his name and verse. This book was his all. Till he got through it would have to hold the sum of what he knew from Latin to Single and Double Fellowship, Alligation Medial and Perambulations.

  By noon the day grew so warm with summer, they kept the door open. His pappy had put him by Alvah Brown and Paul Suydam. There he sat, his crutches laid under his puncheon, trying to be straight up as Paul, the drone of scholars’ reading in his ear. Now and then his pappy would halt the reader to correct pronunciation or prosody. All the while the colored leaves of the sugar maples came softly down, blocking the doorway. You could hear the run gurgling and babbling. One time their ewes came and looked in. Back in the woods a cock pheasant must have reckoned it was spring, for he kept drumming so deep, at first slow and then ever faster till it sounded like your own heartsblood a beating a muffled drum in your ear.

  This was the last day of the week. His mam had wanted him to wait till Monday to start, but he couldn’t miss Friday noon. That’s when school work let up and the master said, “Opus peractus ludo.” Then he would read for his scholars’ entertainment. All week the school looked forward to the treat. Portius had just started reading today when Jake Tench and Billy Harbison stopped by to see him on lawyer business. For a while they stood at the open door, waiting. Today the reading was from Vergil’s Aeneid, and as it went on for two hours, Jake and Billy came in and sat on the end of the puncheon. They heard how Aeneas, blown by a tempe
st on the shores of Carthage, was hospitably entertained by Queen Dido, who fell in love with him. When Portius got to the place where Aeneas tells Dido he must leave her, Jake and Billy leaned forward. And when Aeneas told of his vision, how he saw Mercury bearing Jove’s mandate and dare not disobey, they listened close as any scholar.

  Portius read on. Aeneas was speaking to Dido:

  Even now the herald of the gods appear’d,

  Waking, I saw him, and his message heard.

  From Jove he came commission’d, heavenly bright

  With radiant beams, and manifest to fight.

  The fender and the fent, I both attest

  These walls he entered and these words express’d,

  Fair queen, oppose not what the gods demand.

  Forced by fate, I leave your happy land.

  There was a sudden scramble and Resolve saw Jake Tench on his feet.

  “I don’t believe a word this feller Aeneas says, Portius!” he called out angrily. “He’s just tired of her, that’s what he is. He made that all up to be off and rid of her. What do you say, Billy?”

  “I’m with you, Jake,” Billy agreed. “And it’s a damn shame after all she done for him.”

  “Gentlemen, remember you are guests of the academy!” Portius rebuked them, but some of the boys said he was laughing inside.

  —

  When Resolve got back to the cabin, his mammy had a sheepish look on her face. Many a day while he lay on the floor with his leg, he had showed her how to curl her letters. Oh, it wasn’t easy for her to do. Her thumb and forefinger would squeeze so hard on that hunk of soapstone pencil, her knuckles would get sharp and white. If her hand moved that slow around the house, she complained, she’d never get anything done. Even so, her letters at first were something to see. But she’d never give up. She had a thin red ledge-stone for a slate. When it was scratched full, she would wash it clean again.

  Now, mighty humble, she showed it to Resolve. On it the long way she had traced some fourteen letters chained for the most part together.

  “Can you read it, Resolve?” she asked him anxiously.

  “Oh, I can read it good,” he told her, pleased, trying to talk like his teacher.

  “What does it say?”

  “It says your name, Sayward Wheeler.”

  “You knowed!” she protested. “Could your pappy read it, do you think?”

  “Anybody could,” Resolve told her.

  His mam’s face grew almost cruel with hidden feeling. She held the slate straight out in her hand and gazed unwinkingly at the letters.

  “That writing stands for me!” she said. “I can’t get over it.” There was a power of pride and wonder in her voice.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE FIELDS

  MORE than once in her life Sayward reckoned she was wore out, but never had she felt like this spring and early summer. She reckoned it was the hard winter she put in, clearing more land, chopping down the big butts closest to the barn, niggering them off, plowing up the new ground. Resolve and Guerdon were in school all winter. Most of the work she had done herself. And her, thirty-four, the mother of a whole grist of young Wheelers! She wasn’t as young as she used to be. But that wasn’t what made her down in the mouth. No, it was something else done it. When she got through all that back-breaking work this spring, hardly could she see she had done away with any of the woods. There the woods still stood, close as before, it seemed, hanging over them like always, big, thick, deep, monstrous, good for nothing and no end to them, a swallowing up her lonesome improvement of log barn, cabin, meeting house and school.

  All that spring she was mopey and out of sorts. From the Pawwawing days on, she just dragged around. It must be the woods-sickness, she reckoned, for she pined for some other place to be, she did not know where. Just so she could step from her door and her eye range free across a stretch of God’s earth unhindered by trees. Then something inside of her would slacken, she felt, and she could mend.

  With Resolve and the other boys helping, she bobbled around enough to put her crops in the ground. But how would she get through harvest, she wondered, with her hay, wheat and flax all coming this year in a pile and ready to spoil if you got behind? Sometimes she puzzled if that handbill had anything to do with it. There it hung, red as calico, above Portius’s table so all who came on business could read. More than once when she was alone in the house save for the littlest ones, she had spelled it out.

  NOTICE

  The public is informed of the laying out of a Town at the Confluence of the River and its Squaw Branch. Near Vrain’s Store and Tavern. To be called Tateville. Lots will be numbered and Buyers may have first and second Choice.

  Public Auction Independence Monday on the Premises.

  TATE AND VRAIN, Proprietors

  It took her back to Lancaster town in Pennsylvany her mam knew as a girl, with a center square and brick houses standing tight against each other, some on one side of the road, some on the other. It minded her of the town at the point of the Ohio, too, the one Genny had come back from her wedding trip with Louie and told them about, with smith and hatter shops and a doctor you could call day or night from his chemist shop to pull you through a bad spell. It even had a dominie, Genny said, who didn’t just visit like a circuit rider. No, he lived there and could bury you any day it pleased God you should die.

  Oh, Sayward thought, how easy and sinful it would be to live a pampered life in town with no more land to work than a garden, with no more outside chores than splitting firewood, tending a cow and a few geese, and pushing the town pump handle. Why, some town bodies even traded for their bake stuff with a cake woman! Sayward told herself she must be getting weak and wicked, a milksop and pigeon-hearted, God help her, but this spring and summer she envied them who would live in that town.

  Saturday she and the boys were out making hay. She had the scythe, and Resolve and Guerdon were cutting around the stumps with the reap hooks. Guerdon said, “Mam!” and she looked up to see a gentleman riding in from the trace on his fine, short-haired horse. He sat heavy on the saddle with a light blue cloak hanging down against the wetness of the woods. Oh, they knew that horse and the man riding him. Folks said Major Tate started out in life driving stakes for a surveyor in Maryland, and now he could drive his own coach out here if it had good enough roads to drive it on. He bowed to Say ward, asking for Portius like he had before. She bade Kinzie go along and tie up his horse while he went in the cabin.

  He wasn’t in very long before Portius came out. He looked mighty sober and dignified standing there calling her. Now what could this be, Sayward asked herself. She gave her scythe to Resolve who threw his reap hook to Kinzie. When she opened the door, the visitor sat on Portius’s hickory chair, and her four little girls in a row on a bench staring at him. Never said they a word.

  “Come in, Mrs. Wheeler, come in!” the major said, standing up and bidding her in her own house like it was his. “I was just telling your husband and he said you should hear. The Indian they call Tom Lyons was murdered on the Shawaneetown trace last night. And another with him.”

  It was mighty quiet for a little in the cabin.

  “Do they know who done it?” Sayward asked.

  “No,” the major said emphatically. He seated himself again. “They say Tom Lyons was at George Roebuck’s yesterday and brought along this friend of his from the Auglaize River. I understand he was a full-blooded, ugly-looking savage. By evening he got drunk and boasted he had killed a white man from this settlement up in the Western Reserve.”

  “It might a been Linus Greer,” Sayward said. “This was a long time ago.”

  “I think Greer’s the name. The savage told how he killed him. You know the way they pantomime! He showed how he sneaked after him, shooting off his rifle, taking out his tomahawk and making as though he scalped him. All the time he uttered such fearful yells, they said, and made such horrible grimaces that some of the settlers got uneasy and went home. But Tom Lyons and hi
s friend didn’t get home. Just a little while ago the Shawanees found them about halfway to Shawaneetown. Tom Lyons was shot and his ugly friend shot and scalped. Some of Greer’s old friends may have done it, I don’t know, but it was a very foolish thing to do. The Shawanees are bitter against us whites now. I hear they murdered a Coldwell woman and boy just before I came.”

  Sayward did not say anything. Her four little girls, one of them not much more than a baby, listened with big eyes from their bench.

  The major went on.

  “Have you ever thought of living in the safety and comfort of a town, ma’am?”

  “Oh, I thought about it,” Sayward told him.

  A look passed between the two men.

  “This is a surprise to me,” Portius said in his deep voice.

  “What did you think about it, Mrs. Wheeler?” the major asked kindly.

  “How easy it would be to live ’ar,” Sayward answered.

  “Mrs. Wheeler,” the major said thoughtfully, “I’m sure you know I’d like to give your husband more legal work to do. But before you came in, I told him he lived too far down here. It would be better to have him in town. Also he would build up a more extensive practise.”

  “I kin see he’d like it up ’ar,” Sayward agreed, meek as could be, a little too meek if anything.

  “Your children would like it, ma’am. Town has advantages, develops their wit and speech. Makes them quicker in mind and civil in manners. They amount to more — go farther in the world. Yours are especially worth improving.”