3stalwarts (175 page)

The sun struck full on Jerry. His trousers were white with dust, his boots powdered and caked. Sweat from his hard walk had soaked through his shirt and made brown stains under his coat sleeves. But as he stood there a smile came over his face, half shy, half fearful. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and pushed his dark hair back beneath his hat. His back straightened. Then, drawing a deep breath, he started down the slope.

The door letting out on the back stoop opened. A stout figure, suddenly familiar for its light, quick step, came down into the yard. Even at that distance, Jerry saw the shine of cookery on the round red cheeks.

Ma Halleck walked over to where a bell was hung between two cedar posts. Her red hands laid hold of the rope. Her fat arms pulled down. The heavy bell lifted its mouth. The clapper caught a spark out of the sun. Ma Halleck’s arms straightened to let the rope slide up, and the bell swung. Deep-toned, ample, brassy, the bell’s voice might have been her own. She swung it lustily, sending the notes over the wheatfields and the marsh, distributing to the four corners of four hundred acres her call to come and eat. Echoes came back from the barn wall, from the woodland, from the very heaven itself. Even when she had stopped, the overtones clung to the air in imitation of the passing clangor.

Dinner was in the act of passing from fire to table. The bell was its servant to announce its passage.

Ma Halleck stepped back into the house after pausing for a last look over her farm. A small, dark figure took her place. That would be George’s Prue. She was waiting for something. Then Jerry heard shouting, and a parcel of children streamed round the corner of the barn. One was holding up a fish on a hooked stick— a boy, as dark as Prue herself. While he walked his eyes took in Prue’s pantomime, bending to greet the children, hefting the fish with admiration. There was a bright golden head at the last, leading a little boy. He came stumbling and laughing, reaching up to hold the girl’s hand; and his hair had a copper shine in the sun. Jerry stopped a moment, waiting.

Prue was calling over her shoulder, and in a moment Mary came out upon the stoop. Her cheeks were flushed from the kitchen warmth, her hair mussed. She ran down the stoop and over to the little boy, swooping him up in her arms. She paused for a moment beside Prue, and Jerry caught her laugh before she carried the child back through the door.

For a minute his feet were rooted to the road; he could not move. Her care-free attitude dismayed him. She might have made a joke, for Prue was laughing after her. But Prue went in again and Angy took her place. There was no mistaking Angy Judson, fussing with the children to make them wash their feet in the pump-tub. Laughing loudly, her sister joined her, but she was careless with the children as her eyes roved for her husband.

As he watched Esther, Jerry’s smile came back to him and he resumed his slow walk down the long slope to the farm. Now he became aware of the men coming in from different ways and keeping pace with him in an-swer to the bell. They were like a congregation converging on a house of worship where Ma Halleck was the preacher. Out of a woods road Abijah trotted, sitting side wise on a galumphing bay mare. He held an axe and crowbar balanced on her rump, and the chisel blade and mallet in his apron pocket showed that he had been mending fence. There came the two Hal-leek brothers, long, rangy men, their lean faces unchanged, walking beside a wagon piled high with ears of early corn. Glints of the golden kernels showed through the dry green husks. Over a slope walked Abel Marcy, the arch of the scythe snathe over his shoulders, and his two arms outstretched.

The children had passed in ahead of Angy. Esther was reaching out to Abel, smacking his cheek with her plump mouth and being kissed square on it for her pains. Her high laugh echoed against the barn wall, and Abel with a sheepish look was drawing his hand across his mouth. The two Hallecks drove their wagon under a shed, their horses to the barn. Jerry’s stride loitered as he saw the horses pause to drink at the trough, dribbling diamond water from their bits. The brothers took them through the doors, came out, and walked over to the well. Judson turned loose his mare and joined them.

Now the men were taking turns hauling up the well bucket. They lathered their hands and faces and the backs of their necks with brown bar soap and sluiced each other’s heads with bucketfuls. The water poured on them a glittering jet, broke into silver spray, and left them glistening. Jerry could hear their voices as they dried themselves, men’s crop-voices, low and steady.

The road pitched down suddenly for the yard. He felt the thud of his heart against his ribs. Though he was almost on them, none of them had noticed his approach. He could hear their voices clearly now. George ask-ing Judson about the back-lot fence, and Judson stroking his pale moustache and saying how he never had liked maple for a fence post.

Ma Halleck came to the door. Her ringing voice admonished them: —

“Ain’t you boys never coming in to eat? A’ roasted loin with young potaties and our new carrots. Melon pickle, and a huckleberry pie.”

Joe lifted his lean face to grin.

“Ma’s with me like Esther is with Abel. Can’t abide to see me stay outside.”

“Shush you, Joey!” She made a flounce upon the stoop, snapping her stiff skirts in her hands. “Some day a girl is going to capture you, and then you’ll remember your fat Ma, I reckon… . Good land of gracious! What’s Ginger see?”

Out of the shadow of the bushes by the cellar wall two dogs darted. They crouched low down over their forepaws.

“Here you, Ginger! Toby! Come back here!”

The dogs stopped at the gate.

“Who is it, walking in a-foot?”

“Hello, there, mister. Them dogs won’t bother you.”

Jerry unlatched the gate, opened it, stepped through, latched it again. His breath was short and his heart felt high in his chest. He wanted to smile, but his lips were trembling. He turned full on them and took off his hat.

“Hello, Ma Halleck.”

The fat woman started. She clapped a red hand hard under one breast.

“Hello, George. Hello, Joe …” He was walking towards them with a dog snu ffin g at each heel. “Hello, Abel. Hello, ‘Bijah.”

There was a close, set look on the mouths of the four men. Their eyes stared hard at him, but he did not mind.

“I reckon you’ve forgotten me, Ma.”

Her bold stare took him in. Her mouth opened.

“Jerry Fowler!”

Her voice carried throughout the house. There was a scurry for the door. His eyes switched to it. Angy, Esther, and Prue stepped out beside the fat woman, and the children clustered behind them.

Then in the doorway he saw Mary. She stood quite still. The shadow of the doorjamb slanted just across her throat; her eyes were shadowed by it, and quiet in their surprise. As he looked at her he lost awareness of the others, but he remembered old Issachar’s voice, “So long as her eyes light on you,” and he waited.

They were all so still that when a hen dusted herself behind them the dry ruffle of her feathers was like the clap of hands. Ma drew a deep breath and bent her middle over the rail.

“Jerry! So you’ve turned up at last.”

The welcome in her voice was tinged with stiffness.

“You’re just in time for dinner. Come in and eat with us.”

She turned round, shooing the children through the door, crowding Mary back into the kitchen. Her daughters followed her like two stout ewes, but Prue lingered a moment, giving him a little smile. His hands felt empty at his sides, and he turned dully to face the men.

Abijah was stroking his moustache, Abel chewed a stick. They seemed uneasy with him there in front of the hens. George’s face was troubled. But he and Joe came up together, holding out their hands.

“I’m glad to see you back with us,” said Joe. “It’s been a real long time since we came out along the Pike together.”

George found it hard to meet his eyes. But he said, “Me, too, Jerry. I’m glad you’ve come here.” He seemed relieved when Jerry took his hand. “I couldn’t rightly tell you then. I didn’t know what Mary wanted. And you didn’t ask about her.”

“It’s all right now,” Jerry said.

Abijah and Abel followed the brothers’ example quietly. They stood around a moment, shifting feet, hiking their trousers up.

“I guess we’d better be moving inside,” Abel said.

Their shoes thumped heavily up the steps.

Joe laughed and put his hand on Jerry’s shoulder.

“You look as though you needed rinsing, Jerry. Come over to the well and I’ll draw you up a bucketful.”

George followed them.

“You’ve come quite a ways? By the look of you, you’ve been walking.”

“I walked in from Newport this morning. I was on my way back from Lockport.”

He stripped off his coat, unbuttoned his shirt and slid it over his shoulders. Joe dropped the bucket down the well and seized the dangling rope.

“It’s cold water,” he said. “Ten feet deep. It never changes level, summer or winter.”

Down in the well the bucket teetered, gulped, and sank. Joe’s hands bore down and brought it up brimming. Jerry caught a little in his hands to lather the soap and scrubbed himself.

“Put down your head.”

The icy water sloshed upon his head. The cold sank into his skull. When he bent up again the barnyard reeled before his eyes.

“You’re looking good,” said George, while Jerry dried himself.

“You too,” said Jerry. “You’ve got a handsome farm.”

“It’s good land. And we’ve been lucky. We built that barn last year. We’re notional about that barn. I’ll show you the inside of it this afternoon.”

Joe said, “There’s a comb and a piece of mirror alongside the door.”

Jerry combed the water from his hair, put on his shirt and coat. From the kitchen Ma called, “Dinner’s getting cold.”

They trooped in together.

With the sunlight full on her shoulders Ma faced them at the end of the long table. On her left the fireplace and oven lifted a dull-red mass of brick straight to the ceiling timbers. An enormous pickle cauldron, that hung on the crane, was bubbling softly, lifting its crust of foam in different places, and filling the room with a warm, vinegary smell.

“You set here, Jerry.”

Jerry saw that all the grown folks were paired off; man and wife sat side by side. On Ma’s right, next to Mary, was an empty chair. George moved over to Prue on Ma’s left, and Joe slid into an odd chair next the children.

“Maybe you’d ought to meet your children,” Ma said. “There’s Polly, growed to quite a girl. And next to her is Jerry— we call him Jed.”

Jerry looked down at his children: Polly eyeing him shyly as a stranger; Jed putting his sturdy legs apart and giving him a frank, appraising scrutiny. He could not speak. She had run off from him— and yet she had given the boy his name. “Not mad nor nothing.” He raised his eyes from their wondering stare and looked across the table. Mary was looking back at him. Her forehead was cool, her eyes steady.

But Ma said, “Come and set down here.”

She had carved a double chop from the loin and put it on his plate. Now from the steaming row of dishes she was heaping it with new potatoes boiled in their thin jackets, mashed carrots from an orange mountain running butter down its sides, stewed cabbage shot through with cheese, and strips of melon pickle. To finish it she loaded a knife blade with butter and scraped it off on the edge of the plate.

“You must be hungry after walking. Prue, cut him off a slice of bread. A man needs food.”

Mary sat at his side, eating quietly, and, when she had finished, letting her hands rest in her lap. He dropped his eyes to see them, and found them trembling. He dared not look at her face. She was wearing a lavender calico, a color that brought out the red in her hair, and her apron was blue checked gingham.

He found it hard to eat.

Ma said, “It’s a bit better meal than I used to give you on the turnpike, Jerry.”

“I can’t remember any better than those were, Ma.”

He smiled at her. But she said, “This is an actual dinner. Those was stewpot messes.”

Down the table, Joe said, “Ma likes to see a lot of dishes handy to her.

She likes to eat and eat and know she’ll have enough left over to stay her stummick with if it gets qualmish before supper time.”

“Joey!”

Ma gave a shriek.

“It ain’t true, is it, Mary? It’s only that I like the taste of real good food. Look, I’ve only had one help. Ain’t that a fact, Abijah?”

Abijah Judson stroked his pale moustache.

“It’s always seemed to me,” he pronounced heavily, “the person giving helps don’t have no call to help herself a second time.”

From the foot of the table where the children stood before their plates, a titter rose. Ma bent a frown upon them, but Joe laughed out loud.

Jerry passed Joe’s grinning wink to steal a look at Mary, but she was quiet. And suddenly Norah’s face rose up in his mind’s eye for him to put beside it, and he wondered how he had ever thought Norah beautiful. She had no strength, no quiet in her being. And seeing the strength in Mary’s face, he was afraid because of it.

Ma said, “You don’t seem hungry, Jerry. Don’t you like my dinner?”

“All people wasn’t born a Halleck, Ma,” George said.

Jerry looked gratefully over to him, meeting a smile from Prue, and saw her hand steal into George’s lap. But Angy sniffed as she reached across his shoulder to take out his half-empty plate.

Ma bent herself to conversation and the carving of the huckleberry pies. Their wide crusts shone brown with butter, and when she withdrew her knife the blade bled purple drops.

“What have you been doing these three years, Jerry? You seem like quite a stranger to me, and I want to know.”

He felt their eyes turn on him as he watched Ma’s deliberate cutting.

“I’ve been in Rochester, Ma. My partner, Roger Hunter, and I’ve been building boats and starting a freight company.”

“I believe a man can make good money in that business,” Abel said.

“We’re doing well enough to make a payment on the mortgage of our boatyard.”

“What do you call your company?”