The Fields Page 19

  How could she have been so blind not to see this a coming? And what ailed her now that she felt so weak and down? She couldn’t believe a person could get this way just from shame. Oh, Jary used to tell of a woman in the old state who had grieved herself to the grave because her man got mad and jumped out of his and her bed and in bed with her sister. But she wasn’t grieving, Sayward told herself. She always told Portius he could pick up and go whenever he wanted, and the first year they were married, she wondered that he didn’t leave an ignorant woodsy like her. That’s what he should have done first and this other afterward. Now he had done them both wrong. He needn’t have thought of his lawful wife if he didn’t want to, but he might have recollected he had seven children he had come by honestly.

  “Don’t you want to lay down, Mam?” Sayward heard them asking her now. Through the door that Libby had opened for air, she could see her oxen feeding idly by the barn.

  “No, they’s corn to plow.”

  “It’s too wet.”

  “Not now. The ground’s a dryin’ off fast.”

  “Guerdon can do it then,” they told her.

  “Sure I kin,” Guerdon promised.

  “No, they won’t have nothin’ to do with you,” she said, meaning the oxen. “I don’t see why your pappy had to take Resolve off today.”

  Her children reckoned she was mighty foolish wanting to go out and plow when she had no dinner and when hardly could she stand without the chair to hold on to. But she’d have plow handles to hold on to out there, she told them. Her mind was set and she paid no attention to what they said. She had taken off her handkerchief, good dress and shoes before cooking at the fire. Now she took off her cabin dress and put on her field gown. Kinzie went out as soon as he finished eating. Through the door she could see him trying to yoke up the oxen for her. Hardly could he lift the yoke to their necks, for it was a solid cherry piece and weighed like stone. The oxen wouldn’t do his bidding. They knew who they had to mind and who they hadn’t. You couldn’t check-rein them like a horse, and now they kept cropping the grass where they pleased, for Sayward didn’t believe in muzzling them with splint nose baskets.

  When she got there, Kinzie’s face was red from hollering at the beasts and struggling with the yoke. He gave a quick look up into his mam’s face as she took it from him. It was longer than a common yoke so the team could have room to work on the side hill if they had to. Will Beagle had promised to steam and bend a lighter and smaller yoke of black walnut so the younger ones could handle it, but he was kept too busy in his boat yard and shop.

  She set the yoke on Buck’s neck and held the other end up.

  “Come under, Bright,” she called, and after a little the off ox lumbered around and under meek as a hound. Oh, they knew her voice when they heard it, and Resolve’s, too. He could say, “Give me a buss, Buck,” and the nigh one would run his rough tongue along the boy’s cheek.

  Now Sayward fastened the second bow and locked the chain to the coupling ring. With the chain dragging she walked them out in the field and fastened the chain to the plow. It felt good to get her hands on the handles. They were something she could hold to.

  “Come on! Get up!” she called out.

  They stood stolid and stock-still like they always did, for they weren’t quick like horses. It took time for a command to get through their heavy skulls. You could see it got through Buck’s first. He turned his head and when Bright wasn’t ready to move as yet, he poked him with the end of his horn. Then both lowered their heads a lick, taking their time, letting the yoke slip into the hump on their necks, sighing and moaning softly, for she had left the plow board set deep in the ground. All the time they were leaning gradual to the pull. You couldn’t rush them. Get them mad and they shook their heads and yawed around. At such a time they would turn the yoke and foul it if you gave them a chance. You had to be even-tempered and patient with them if you wanted to work with oxen.

  The plow was moving now, slow and steady like a keel boat sailing a groundy sea. Sayward told herself she had one thing to be glad for. She didn’t know what she’d do if it was the Sabbath and she had to sit in the house today with humans for company. Oxen didn’t stare at you and you didn’t have to answer their questions. She knew Buck and Bright nigh as well as her own children. She was bound she’d make a team of these two from the time they were bull calves. She cut the meanness out of them her own self at three or four months, made a little rough yoke for Resolve to train them, and set him to pulling light poles with a log chain. Now they were red monster beasts almost as knowing as humans. They’d ask for their breakfast quick as her young ones in the mornings if she was late. Mmmmmmmmm, you could hear them from the barn, getting louder and louder, telling you that you better hurry up, rattling the manger with their horns if you didn’t come. Many a time when they were loose, they would come up to the house in winter for turnip parings or any scrap you had. If they knew you, they’d rub up against you friendly as a cat.

  It did her good now to call at them, letting off the black bile she felt for Portius. The team didn’t mind. The plow wouldn’t turn its long dark ribbon any faster around the stumps. Bawl at them all she liked, the team would move sluggishly, first one step and a kind of easy look around, then another step and a look at the country. Not that they halted in between. All was one slow steady pull. They never let up for sprout or stone, and if she didn’t throw the plow over for a stump root in their road, one or the other would have to give, for the team wouldn’t. You could get mad at them, but they would cure you. It had something restful in the placid way they went, nodding their heads or chewing their cud. Once you saw them pursue their deliberate and melancholy journey around the field, your “narve strings” could not help but let up a little. In the woods the branch of a tree could fall on them. They might puff but never would they stir from their tracks. They would go through a tight place like bars or stumps better than horses, seldom shying in fear the gate posts would jump at them.

  “Buck!” she’d bawl out. “Bright!” Every second team of steers in the country, she reckoned, was named Buck and Bright.

  They didn’t mind being hollered at. It was their tolerance and patience with their strength that “cammed” you. Their steady gait and motion talked to you plain as words. They would save themselves. They were sure to get there till the time came. No use to buck and fret. World wasn’t made in a day, a day. What was spilt, was spilt. Crying over it wouldn’t make it clean and put it back into the kettle.

  Not till evening did she give up following in the good-smelling furrow, and then she hated to part with her team for the night, but they were glad enough to quit, for they had each other’s company. Hardly could she keep up to them making for the barn. She let them in their double stall where they stayed with only a rope around their horns to the manger. They were mighty attached to each other. They ate together, slept together and worked together. They even drank together, standing side by side in the run. If you had to separate them, the one in the barn kept up a bawling till the other was back again.

  Sayward’s girls stood gravely staring at her when she came in to make their supper. They could see now that their mam felt better. The boys could likely tell, too, though the only way they showed it was by going up to bed soon as they could after supper. Perhaps they didn’t want to be down here when their father came. But Portius wouldn’t show up tonight, she knew. Not for several nights anyway. He would have business at Tateville, and even go to the county-seat if it suited his purpose.

  Tonight when her side of the house was quiet, she went to the other side. The spring wind nearly blew out her candle on the dog trot, but here in Portius’s room it burned straight and still. There was his writing table, his iron inkwell, and his pack of uncut quills. His books were in the cupboard and his clothes hanging on wall pegs. Yonder stood his cherry bed. It was really his and hers, but she found out today she had shirked on it. She had made him sleep over here by himself. That was her secret sin. All
the time she reckoned she had known it. You couldn’t cheat God and live. Sooner or later His word would catch up to you.

  Well, she reckoned Portius could come home now if he wanted to. Oh, back in her heart she would never let him off, but she wouldn’t show it much outside. He didn’t need to worry that she’d tear into him. She was broke to the yoke now. She had fought against it. She had yawed around and fouled it. But it did no good in the end. It only got her under the whip and the harrow.

  When this inside of her wore off a little against Portius, she reckoned she’d better move over here for the night. The girls were plenty big enough to take care of themselves and if anybody got sick, she wouldn’t be far off. Of course, never had she thought she would sleep in Portius’s off-the-floor bed, and rather she wouldn’t, but you didn’t go on rathers in this life. She better go along quiet as she could now in her cherry yoke and bear her load.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TOWNSITE

  THERE was one thing more that Sayward hated in this life. But she’d go through with it. That was going out the first time with her new baby after telling Genny she was through with child bearing. From Genny that boast had gone through the woods. At the time folks reckoned it true. Hadn’t years passed without a sign or symptom? Why, Sayward had borne seven living and one dead! That was enough for one woman. But now after all that time this new baby had showed up, making its mam out a liar. Such a babe is always a little joke to the countryside. Folks call it the afterclap, for the clap of thunder that comes after you reckon the storm is over. So you tried to be clever and outsmart God! such a babe says when it comes. Now you got showed up in front of everybody. Well, that’s what you get for reckoning you could get the best of the Almighty.

  Right now Sayward was in her and Portius’s room a dressing. There was the cherry bed she had slept with him for nigh onto two years. And here in the scarred cherry cradle was her babe. Oh, you could tell that the Lord had something to do with this newest one. It gave you the mortal saddest look out of its rain-blue eyes you ever saw in a babe, and its mouth drew down every minute like it was going to quiver. This was the nearest to Sulie that Sayward ever saw in a young one, not her own pert and lively Sulie, but her sister Sulie lost in the woods when she was a little tyke and never seen or heard of again. Or leastwise that was how Sayward pictured little Sulie in her mind, a wandering forlorn through the deep woods, with nothing to eat and nobody to talk to and thinking would she ever lay eyes on her brother and sisters and home sweet home again? But Sayward wouldn’t call this one Sulie. No, that was a bad-luck name. She called her Mercy, for it was God’s mercy she came so easy with never an hour of misery before she was born or afterward. The rest called her Massey, like folk spoke the name around here. Even Portius said it something like that. It seemed that was the way they spoke Mercy in the Bay State.

  The only good thing today was that she and Portius and the babe didn’t have to go out together. Portius had left a little while ago. Oh, all was cake and pie between him and her, but seldom did they go anywhere together. No, if both had to go to the same place, they saw they were never ready at the same time. If she got ready first, she would say, well, she reckoned she might as well be going. The little ones couldn’t walk so fast anyway. And he would say, yes, you go ahead, he had some paper to write first. Now if he was ready first, he’d put on his hat and say he thought he might walk ahead, could she get there all right? And she’d say, yes, go ahead, she had to dress Dezia or comb her hair or put a kettle of meal on to simmer while she was off. Oh, everything was fine as silk between them again. You couldn’t tell a lick anything had ever been wrong, not when they were in the cabin. But when they went outside there was just this small thing between them for the sake of looking right in front of other folks. It couldn’t be, more than once Sayward asked herself, that she had almost let Portius off, but not quite?

  She had her old dress off and her best one about on when Guerdon came bustling in from the kitchen.

  “Mam, kin I borrer your old wrapper?” he asked her.

  “Now what do you want with that?” she said.

  “Just for a minute, Mam! Fay and Leah Morrison are in the kitchen. They came in with Resolve to see you on the way to the river. Now you don’t need to hurry, Mam! They’re a settin’ down to wait for you.”

  All the time he was putting on the dove-gray dress she called her cabin wrapper. It was much too big for him the wide and deep ways, but not up and down. He had grown up now about as far as he’d get. He’d soon be his own man, but never would he be as fleshy as his mam. He had to go to the pile of woolstuff by the big wheel in the corner and stuff in at his waist to make a bosom to match his mam’s. Then he put her old blue sun bonnet down over his head and a smirk on his face. She stared to see who he looked like. Why, never had she dreamed her second boy with his Yankee gimber jaw favored her any. It could almost be herself save for his dark eyes like Worth’s.

  “Now what are you up to?” she demanded, but he was off in her dress across the dog trot, and she went after.

  “Don’t you come yet, Mam!” he begged her. Then he opened the kitchen door and swept in.

  Standing there on the cold dog trot, with the door opened a mite on her fingers, she could see her old dress and bonnet flounce in the kitchen and up to those nice Morrison girls. They stood up from their stools when they saw her.

  “Why, girls!” the thing that looked like her minced in a high voice, and the next thing they knew, it had bussed first Leah and then Fay on the cheek and then Fay again, the prettiest one, smack on the mouth. Fay drew back surprised and looked at him, and then was a great hullabaloo with Libby and the young girls jumping around crying, “It ain’t Mam! It’s Guerdon!” Fay brushed off her mouth and cheek and Resolve got up mad as hops, for Fay was the one he had been taking home from meeting for more than a year.

  Sayward reckoned she was just in time to stop a hitch between her two oldest boys in her kitchen. It was lucky she was home, for those two had been spoiling to get at each other’s throats a long time. And a fight between brothers is the bitterest fight of all, especially if they are nigh onto grown men and twice so if over a woman.

  “Guerdon,” she said sharply, “go in the other room and take my wrapper off. Resolve, you can stay here. Stop your hootin’ and howlin’, Sooth. Why, Fay, I’m real glad you stopped in, and you, too, Leah.”

  Now wasn’t that a Yankee trick, she said to herself, after Resolve and the two girls had left for the celebration. It made her forget for a little, but now she still had to meet what she hated to go through. Even here inside the house she could hear the hatchets and saws. They came from Will Beagle’s boat yard. They were chipping and pounding and whining at a great rate, for this was the big day when the first keel boat ever built on this river was to take to the water. Folks were coming ten miles to see it get off, and Portius had promised to make a speech for the occasion.

  Kinzie was down to the river all morning and Huldah had gone with Amy MacMahon, a red shoofly ribbon low on both their necks. The rest of her girls were all washed and dressed already. Now they fetched their tiny mite of a sister from the new room and pulled on its coat and cap. Sayward had had to make everything brand new for Massey. Dezia was easy on her clothes and never wore anything out, not even after it had been handed down from Sooth, but Sayward had given all such away. Never was she going to have another babe. Dezia was to be her last.

  Opening the door now she drew back a little at sight of all the folks on the trace. Oh, she knew all along the main reason why she hated going out to the celebration. It wasn’t just being there in front of everybody with her afterclap baby. No, it was that Mistress Bartram and her child would likely be there, too, for this was her man’s boat that was being put to the water. All the folks there who knew would be smiling to their own selves at the regular steps from Resolve down to Dezia and how Mistress Bartram’s child fitted in the telltale gap between Dezia and Massey. But that wasn’t so much what frette
d Sayward. It was what she would do when she saw Mistress Bartram who seldom came from her cabin since her babe was born. Never did Sayward see an acquaintance with a new child without going up to shake hands and ask about it, but it would be mighty hard going up to Mistress Bartram and Portius’s child. Oh, Sayward hated like poison to go to the celebration today and a good deal would she give to get out of it if she could. But if she saw that woman with Portius’s child, she knew no other way than go up and ask kindly of them, and let Portius squirm and other folks standing around nudge each other and whisper together if they wanted to.

  “I’ll tote her now, Mam, if I don’t have to later!” Libby said, boosting up Massey in her arms. Then they went out.

  It was late winter time and the snow lay in white patches on the black ground. It lay deeper in the woods, but it had no woods to the river. Hardly a tree was left standing that way any more, only roofs and chimneys along the bank. The first you saw was George Roebuck’s brick-front establishment and then Sam Sloper’s tavern and ferry house alongside. Up stream from there stood the cabins and sheds of Jake Tench and his boatmen, and south of the tavern a ways was the two-storey log house Zephon Brown built as a speculation. Ezra Griswold, the miller, lived in it. If floods hadn’t twice carried out his dam on the river, the boatmen would have knocked out the breast anyway and now he was having a race dug all the way from Crazy Creek and building his mill down here soon as spring came. Below his house stood Will Beagle’s shop and cabin, and next, several cabins where his hands lived. Here the river swept inward, and on the shelf of this bank between the turn and the sawmill, Will had leased the land from Sayward to put up his boat yard.