The Fields Read online

  She was good as her word, too. That day yet she picked out a batch of wool stout enough to stand a boy’s scuffling. Not the daglocks, feltings or burr matts. Those she cut out. They would do for coarse yarn. Nor the finest wool either. That was for the backs of her littlest ones. No, she took just the strong, prime staples. Resolve helped with the grease for carding. To three pounds of wool they worked in a pound of melted fat. But the carding cumbered him. It took his mam to sit there so easy, a toothed leather card in either hand, brushing and combing a lick of wool between, till she had it all trimmed one way and with a catchy motion turned it into a roll of fleecy spinstuff that was ready for the wheel.

  The young ones gazed with respect at all those rolls of wool that were to be Resolve’s suit of clothes. Resolve himself felt a swelling in his breast at the great size and lightness of the pile. Most every time he came in now, his mam was walking up and down in front of the big wheel with one of those rolls in one hand, a peg in the other, while the yarn twisted and quivered. The spokes flashed and hummed, and her feet patted mighty fast as she moved back and forward on the puncheon floor.

  She minded him of the ancient Greek woman his pap had made him learn by heart in that tongue, old Plathis, kind and brave by the gates of Eld, and how morning and evening with her skillful hand she spun, treading the long course back and forth before her wheel, going miles in a single day and yet not a rod from its spokes, toiling all night and all the years till she was withered and bent and at eighty the gods said she could die, for she had spun enough. Only, Resolve’s mam wasn’t withered and bent, and it would be a long time until she was eighty. And yet in the latter part of the day when the sun had waned and the candles were not yet lit, he could half close his eyes and think he saw her ancient and bowed with toil like old Plathis, tottering up and down before her wheel, till he would cry in his heart that she should not die. Then it was sweet to open his eyes and see her still middle-aged and strong, with her hair that once she said was “yaller” now brown with hardly a thread of gray. It was even good to hear her scold him for standing idle while so much remained to be done.

  Once the yarn was in hanks, he had to fetch water for her kettle. Guerdon and Kinzie could have done this, for it took endless buckets to scour and rinse through many waters. But do you reckon they would lend a hand? No, it was for Resolve’s suit. He could do it his own self, though he had all the weaving to do as well, soon as it was put through the dye kettle. His mam thought she’d wait to dye it till it was in cloth, but he begged so hard. He’d help her pare all the inner oak bark she needed. He’d stay up the whole night a dipping those hanks, if she’d let him. He wanted to weave stuff already dyed and see the yarn grow into sky-blue cloth in front of his eyes. Oh, never had he loomed anything so careful before, keeping his yarn straight, hitting the beater even as could be, ever hard enough to make that cloth fit close against the weather yet never too hard to mash it. Most times his little sisters crowded around the loom, feasting their eyes on the bright blue goods, wishing it was for them, each one a yelling out she had asked for the trimmings first.

  His mammy stayed up most of the last night to stitch and hem the suit, finish the button holes and sew on the horn buttons. Early by firelight next morning, proud as a young buck with his spikes, Resolve put it on and buttoned it up for the first time. By ten o’clock he was sitting in that suit in the school house. So many folks came for the last day’s doings, the scholars had to cram themselves on a bench against the front wall. One by one they got up, gave the master first attention, then obedience, and afterward set their toes to the big crack.

  Resolve never gave a sign he was his brother when Guerdon rose. Guerdon looked around wildly for escape and seeing none, swallowed and began reading fast from his manuscript book.

  “Master Wheeler. The subject I have to talk about is, Which Affords the Greatest Theme for Eloquence, Ancient or Modern Times? In my opinion, now is the best times to live in, but ancient times the best to be eloquent in. There is Rome, Carthage, Athens, all the great cities of the East. What were they in ancient times? Why, they were scenes of great victories. There was Caesar in Gaul. They were battles of great deeds, and acts of great valor. Alexander ruled the whole world in his time. They were scenes of great bloodshed. The greatest men among the ancients were Cicero, Caesar and Alexander. There is Greece. She is one of the greatest countries of the East. Look at Rome. It was there that blood flowed through the streets so it carried dead bodies and floated them along. But what are these places now? Why, they are no more than Tateville and Maytown. Hence I conclude that ancient times afford a better theme for eloquences than modern times.”

  Resolve felt shamed. He thought his pappy should have corrected Guerdon’s paper. But, no, he said, it’s Guerdon’s paper, not his teacher’s. Let him give it as he wrote it. Resolve wanted to fix it up for Guerdon himself but his mam put her foot down. No, she said, she liked it as it was. It was good for Guerdon. Oh, his mam was the great encourager. No matter how poor any of her young ones was at learning, she would say, now that was real good for him or her. It always perked them up, gave them sand to go on.

  But Resolve was bound he’d win back respect for the Wheelers today. When his pap called on him, he toed the crack, bowed to the master, and stood in his new blue homespun suit. Nobody knew what he had to say. He hadn’t set it down on paper but in his head while working in woods and barn, and there he had practised its delivery.

  “Master Wheeler, Friends and Fellow Scholars! The subject of my oration is, The Shame of Slavery in a Free State. According to the census, the state of Kentucky concedes forty thousand black slaves within its borders, South Carolina a hundred and forty thousand, and Virginia, three hundred thousand poor and trembling colored vassals. Even the Northern states that claim themselves superior to slavery — Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey — contain some fifty thousand human beings owned body and soul by their masters. Also the new territories of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan admit their contribution to this blot on humanity. Now it is said that one of the few states of the Union not to blacken a white page of the slave census is our own beloved Ohio. We citizens pride ourselves that no serf or vassal has been held in Ohio since Colonel Bouquet freed the white captives from the Indian tribes before the Revolution. But is this, like the third proposition of Euclid, true and demonstrable? No, and in the short space of this oration I shall prove to your complete reason and satisfaction that the foul and despicable badge of servitude is still flaunted in our fair state and that whatever name you call it by, it is slavery still.

  “Consider this case, of a black man whom I shall not name but a resident of Hamilton County, and supposed to be a free and unconstrained master of his own destiny. For several winters his labor has been to maul a hundred rails a day for his white employer. One day the white man told him he had made a wager. That wager was that the black man could do not one hundred but two hundred rails a day. The black man was a man of pride and spirit and the milk of human kindness. He wanted to win that wager for the white man. He got up before daylight and worked till dark and mauled two hundred and ten rails from sunup to sundown though it completely exhausted him. You would think the white man would be grateful, but now he abused the black man for doing only a hundred rails a day all this time when he could have done two hundred. He told him from this on he had to do a hundred and fifty rails a day for the wages he paid him, and fifty more every day to make up for the rails he owed him. And if this free and unconstrained black citizen of the Union refused….”

  There was unaccountable commotion in the school. When Resolve looked up, he found Zephon Brown on his feet, looking like an angered Moses, his face white and terrible.

  “You may hold your tongue, boy, and keep your nose clean!” he shouted. “Come with me, Alvah. We didn’t come here to be insulted by the schoolmaster and his son.” Then with righteous dignity, he led his wife and boy from the school.

 
; Now nobody was more surprised than Resolve to see them rise and go. He was beat out, utterly bam-foozled. He thought nobody would know who he was talking about. He reckoned folks would think his black man lived in Hamilton County like he said, and not here. Why, he never even mentioned the name of Zephon Brown or gave a hint that Caesar was the name of the black man. But if Zephon Brown knew, likely so did the others. Resolve felt a little fright and shame at what he had done. He had got his pappy in a peck of trouble. This is what he got, he told himself, for reckoning he could make a better speech than his brother. He looked mighty anxious at his pappy, but his pappy wouldn’t look at him.

  Folks didn’t know whether or not to clap Resolve when he sat down. They were watching his teacher, and his teacher gave no sign till the last scholar was done, and now it was time for the master to talk to the school. He stood there, a noble figure in his white stand-up collar that had room for his chin between the spreading points, his tie folded like a black scarf on his upper breast. He looked like a chief justice, and he talked of faraway places, of the golden sands of Pactolus and of the Pelian spear that Achilles cut from an ash on the magic mount.

  Oh, Resolve would sell his soul could he but have a golden tongue like his father. Especially now when he came near the end and was taking farewell of his academy. The school was still as death. You might have thought that these were the last sad words of Socrates, that this stretch of faces was the Aegean Sea, that the narrow place between two plank desks was the straits of Gaddes, and that Colonel Suydam’s bald head back there was a landmark across Italy, the dome of St. Peter’s rising through the golden light of the eternal city.

  “And now I wish to say,” Portius announced, “that my eldest son shall not return to the academy.” There was bottomless silence for a moment in the school and in the eldest son’s heart. Then Portius added, “He will read law with me at home and in my Tateville office.”

  Resolve sat stiff as a poking stick when he heard it. Suddenly in his mind he could see the dying man, Jude MacWhirter, sitting up in bed and could hear him say again, “The blessings of the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob rest upon you, my children and my godson.” That blessing was coming true. Out here in the school, he saw his sisters Huldah and Libby peering at him and whispering together. But his eyes went to his mam. Did she hear that? his look said. Did she know what that meant? That was his pappy’s way of saying Amen to what he did. He was telling out loud in front of everybody that he stood by him; that like father, like son. His mam’s eyes looked back at him warm but her face stayed calm as could be. That was his mam all over. You never could tell what thoughts she had behind that broad, steady, sweet-smelling face of hers.

  This is what Sayward was thinking. So that up there was the woman Portius meant to bring down from Tateville? Why, she was a good deal younger than anybody expected. Her hair was “yaller” as Sayward’s had been as a girl but never had Sayward such a quilted blue bonnet with a black velvet edge and strings. It was curious none had made them acquainted before school rapped. Sayward had to go up and make herself known. Just for a shake they had stood there and looked at each other. So this, Sayward had said to herself, is Portius’s new school mistress who knew all her letters and sums besides, who could teach girls Turkey work, the Queen’s stitch and how to knit the alphabet or a verse from the Bible into a pair of mittens? Her slight form was pranked out in striped black goods so tight-fitting and stylish it could only have been sewed up by a city seamstress. She had velvet piped mitts and in her hand she carried a fine bag of colored beads shaped like a stocking, the like of which Sayward had never seen before.

  Oh, she was very straitly attired, erect and circumspect, all except the curl on her forehead. Just a small curled lock pasted against her pale skin, but it minded Sayward of a question mark turned upside down.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE OLD ADAM

  THIS was the younger ones’ favorite place on the farm. Here to this fence corner by the run they came any time they could sneak off from their stints. When it was hot, they made a shelter of leaves overhead from rail to rail. When it was cool and sunny they took down the branches, and the close-set rails shut out the wind. In March the sun melted the snow here first and dried off the ground to sit on. In April they played Hens and Roosters, a yoking their wild white and blue violets to see which would get its head pulled off. By summer the deep fence corner made a play party house, and by fall the wind raked the fallen leaves thick as a bed in here where the sun warmed them. The best of it was they were off by themselves. No grown folks came here to spy on them. This place belonged to them. Lying here of a summer evening with the stars falling and the woods hissing and cracking over yonder, you could believe any story you listened to. In the fall when you would nigh onto freeze in the woods, you could lie here in the sun and bake like a potato in the fireplace.

  Truth to tell, they weren’t lying down now. They were sitting up, swapping a secret. Not the littlest ones. Guerdon, Kinzie and Huldah had chased them off. Libby, Sooth and Dezia had to sit off like orphans in another rail corner while these older ones put their heads together.

  “Miss Idy told me,” Huldah was saying. “She was sitting on her well curb. She called me in. Amy was with me, but she didn’t let her come in. Miss Idy said it was shameful the way me and Libby and Sooth and Dezia had to go to Mistress Bartram to school.”

  “What did she say that for?” Guerdon demanded.

  “She said on account of our mam. But she told me I daresn’t tell her.”

  “What did the school mistress do to Mam?”

  “She said she couldn’t tell me.” But Huldah’s green eyes glittered.

  “Kin we come over now?” Libby complained from the distant rail corner where the three sat resentfully watching.

  “You stay right over ’ar!” Kinzie called back sharply.

  “Why didn’t she tell Mam her own self?” Guerdon wanted to know.

  “She wouldn’t dare tell Mam what to do.”

  “She could tell A’nt Gin for her.”

  “No, she couldn’t. That would be as bad as telling Mam.”

  “She tole you.”

  “But she tole me not to tell.”

  “Tell what!” Guerdon broke out. “She didn’t tell you nothin’ you could tell.”

  “She didn’t have to. Don’t you know what she was driving at?” Huldah was only ten but sly as a black fisher fox. Now she leaned forward and whispered in Guerdon’s ear.

  “She just made that up for trouble,” Guerdon said angrily. “She’s always mixin’ in other people’s business.”

  “Can we come over now?” Sooth whined.

  “No, you ain’t old enough to listen to this,” Kinzie told them.

  Libby kicked at him although five or six poles away.

  “I know as much as Huldah!”

  “You don’t either,” Huldah disdained her. “Miss Idy wouldn’t even talk to you.”

  “Now I heard enough about Idy Tull,” Guerdon declared. “I’m a goin’ in to find out about this my own self.”

  “Don’t you dare tell her I told you!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say mush to that old goose-berry.”

  “Then how will you find out?”

  “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” Guerdon deviled her. “Well, if Pap had anything to do with it, we’ll find out. Won’t we, Kin?”

  “We will if we want to,” Kinzie said.

  “I bet I know!” Huldah cried.

  “You reckon you know everything,” Guerdon jeered at her. “Come on, Kin. Where’s Pap at?”

  Kinzie stood up.

  “You kin come over now!” he called magnanimously to the younger ones. “We’re a goin’ in the house.”

  But the littlest ones weren’t satisfied with that fence corner now. They smelled something was up and wanted part in it.

  “What you taggin’ after us for?” Kinzie scowled, turning around at them.

  “We can come if we w
ant to,” Libby told him.

  “You can’t tell us what to do,” little Dezia piped up, grave as a gravestone. “You’re not our father and mother.”

  “I kin take a switch on you!” Kinzie growled, though he didn’t, for under his rust spots he had a heart tender as white meat.

  Their mam wasn’t in the kitchen. She had company in the new room they had built this year. It wasn’t tight against the house but had a space between for the rain to run down from both roofs. A covered entry led from one room to the other, with two doors between. This was their best room. It had an off-the-floor bed in one corner and their pap’s desk and cupboard in the other. The young ones called the old room the kitchen, and the new room, Pap’s room, for he slept and did his lawyer work in it. Now their mam still slept on her pallet in the kitchen with Dezia. Sooth and Libby lay in the other corner. Huldah and Kinzie slept in one bed in the loft, and Guerdon and Resolve in the other. Soon as the new loft was laid, the three boys would sleep over there and the girls would go up in the old loft with Huldah. Oh, the boys wouldn’t mind the change. They’d be glad to get rid of the youngest ones and Kinzie of sleeping with a girl, if it was his sister. Resolve stayed over in the new room half the time now, a reading law with his pappy. Guerdon and Kinzie said he just did it to get out of work in the field. They claimed they even had to chop his firewood. That was the main thing they had against the new room. They had two fireplaces to keep in wood now where they had only one before.

  Just the same it was a very fine room with hickory chairs and a red cherry cupboard for books and household stuff. Only on Sundays did Sayward take her company in it, unless great folks like Major Tate or Colonel Suydam and his wife came during the week. Ever since Guerdon could remember, plenty company stopped at his mam’s and pap’s house. Today they found Aunt Genny, the Covenhovens, Will Beagle and Ezra Griswold, the miller, visiting in the new room.